One of the most persistent and pernicious features of antisemitism is not merely the hatred it expresses but also its tendency to assign blame to the Jew in order to deflect from the real, unresolved, and uncomfortable issues of the day, whatever and whenever they may be.
Take, for example, early 20th-century Russia. Your economy is in free fall, rife with instability and social dislocation. Better than confronting structural failure, conjure up a phantom cabal, an imagined “Elders of Zion” upon whom to pin your collapse. Germany after World War I - humiliated, economically devastated, searching for explanation – locate your enemy not in failed leadership or global upheaval, but within the Jew, cast interchangeably as a capitalist exploiter or communist subversive. Across the modern Middle East, where stagnation and repression are the products of autocratic governance and systemic dysfunction, direct your gaze not inward toward one’s own failed leaders but outward toward the Jewish state, held singularly responsible for the ills of countries it does not govern. Or here at home: disenfranchised by an America wrought by economic inequality, cultural anxiety, and political fragmentation, why bother undertaking the difficult work of systemic change when you can march through Charlottesville chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” Or locally, as New Yorkers grapple with the mounting pressures facing our great city, why campaign on shared domestic concerns and our common humanity when you can stump on moral outrage toward the Jewish state? It comes from the left. It comes from the right. It dates back to the Egypt of Pharaoh and the Persia of Haman. The language shifts, the context evolves, but the pattern endures. Efficient, time-tested, and tragically reliable: When things fall apart, blame the Jews.
Raw as the observation may be, I cannot claim it as either novel or my own. What is new, at least to me, is the following thought: If antisemitism is defined not only by its presence but also by its propensity to function as a tool of deflection, might it be that Jews, no less than others, can also participate in its logic? Not, God forbid, that Jews actively hate other Jews, though that no doubt does happen, but more simply this: that instead of tending to the uncomfortable or unresolved issues within our own house, Jews can be guilty of pointing to other Jews to deflect attention from ourselves. That we, too, can fall into the familiar pattern of blaming one another rather than doing the harder work of self-examination and self-correction.
It is a thought that occurred to me this past week as I read Makor Rishon, Israel’s Hebrew religious Zionist weekly. On the eve of Israel’s Independence Day, Haggai Segal, one of the most influential voices of Israel’s national religious right, penned an article castigating American Jewry for our failure to make aliyah – emigrate to Israel. Segal rebukes American Jews for not returning to the land of their ancestors and calls on Israelis to call out the betrayal. “Atem bogdim” – “you are traitors” – he writes in charged language to American Jews. Segal lays down an ultimatum that if the emigration numbers fail to improve in the next five years, Israel should defund the Jewish Agency, stop sending emissaries abroad, and Israel’s chief rabbinate should effectuate changes with regard to the status of Jews outside the land. American Jews, Segal argues, have failed Israel, failed the call of Jewish history, failed themselves, absorbed the anti-Israel zeitgeist of their surroundings, and while they may survive rising antisemitism, they will not survive without the land of Israel.
Segal’s views, as noted by Zvika Klein, are shared by a substantial slice of Israel’s religious Zionist community and while shocking in tone are not terribly surprising to those familiar with the ideology. Before Israel was established, as Israel was established, throughout its now 78-plus years, there is a long tradition of Israelis negating the diaspora. It was Israel’s first prime insister, David Ben-Gurion, who described the diaspora as “… a sad, wounded, limping, and impoverished existence.” Segal’s call for more aliyah from American Jewry is neither interesting nor upsetting unto itself. I myself have spoken many times about the importance of every Jew, myself included, to wrestle with the mitzvah of living in Israel.
What is interesting, and upsetting, comes by way of the thought with which I began. Really, Segal, is this week really the right time – as Israel, in coordination with America, is fighting a war against our shared enemies, against those who seek the destruction of both our countries – is this the week to write your article? Now, as American Jews are being squeezed between the anti-Zionism of the progressive left and isolationist right, not to mention the wear, tear, and fears of domestic antisemitism – is this the best time to tell us we are not committed to the cause? Last I checked, Israel has plenty on its own plate – a kinetic war on multiple fronts, a domestic population sleeping in bomb shelters, a Haredi population refusing to serve in its military, homegrown hilltop radicalism in the West Bank, a contentious election season, and international pressure, even from its allies, to curtail its efforts to defang Hezbollah. Maybe this is not the best time to blame other Jews. To repackage Rabbi Israel Salanter, the 19th-century founder of the Mussar movement: “Not everything that is thought needs to be said; not everything that is said needs to be written; and not everything that is written needs to be published in Makor Rishon.”
And while one article is just one article, it is emblematic of a wider trend whether it is the Knesset advancing legislation that would give the ultra-Orthodox exclusive control over the entire Kotel, or Israel’s ongoing dismissiveness of non-Orthodox expressions of Diaspora Judaism. At precisely the moment when Israel most needs the support of world Jewry, it seems to have no trouble finding ways to strain that relationship. To reframe Abba Eban’s famous line, “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” today we might say: “Israelis never miss an opportunity to alienate American Jewry.” Whatever the shortcomings of American Jews may be, and having worked for them my entire career, I consider myself something of an authority on the subject, I am pretty sure that right now, when there is no shortage of pressing concerns for Israelis to focus on at home, is decidedly not the time for Israelis to expend their energy cataloging the sins of American Jewry and castigating us for them.
And while there is more to say, perhaps the most important point is that the thesis of Jews criticizing other Jews in lieu of self-examination cuts both ways. Not just Israelis wagging their fingers at American Jews, but American Jews making a practice of critiquing Israel rather than tending to our own house. For American Jews, our connection to Israel is part and parcel to our faith, a foundational building block of Diaspora Jewish identity. And for the most part, that is a good thing: It reflects Israel’s central place in Jewish history, theology and identity, and it serves as a vital organizing principle for we who stand as Israel’s primary advocates beyond its borders. What becomes more complicated, and I have spoken about this before, is when what is part and parcel to our faith becomes, unto itself, a vicarious faith; when we make our religion Israel and Israel our religion. It is problematic, first and foremost, because it misrepresents both Israel and Judaism. But it is also problematic because, when Israel - as does any imperfect nation-state - elects leaders both good and flawed, makes decisions both wise and unwise, and exhibits moral courage alongside moral failing, for some American Jews something has to give, and they will choose to opt out of Israel altogether. Rather than accepting that, like my patriotism, my marriage and my support for Michigan football, love is not contingent on perfection, the baby is thrown out with the bathwater. The connection to Israel is forsaken, and in some cases, those once among Israel’s strongest defenders become its sharpest critics.
This morning is not the time for a deep dive into Jewish anti-Zionism, non-Zionism, and post-Zionism. Eeach of these terms, amongst others, must be understood on its own, a subject that cannot be responsibly shoehorned in before Musaf. My critique is not of the intelligence or integrity of its proponents, some of whom are friends, present and past, but of its fundamental detachment from the world in which we live. To be an anti-Zionist, not unlike being an anti-vaxxer, is to refuse the constraints of reality itself. There may once have been a world without vaccines. I can imagine it. I simply do not wish to live in it, and I believe it to be irresponsible to advocate that we do so. So, too, Jewish anti-Zionism. We live in a world of nation-states in which the Jewish people have a state. The question is not whether Israel should exist but how it should be shaped. My central critique of anti-Zionism, like my critique of those Israelis who make an industry of rebuking American Jews, is the misdirection of energy – the decision to devote one’s voice to tearing down fellow Jews rather than building them up, or better yet, building up one’s own Judaism.
Assimilation, rising antisemitism, the prohibitive cost of Jewish education, declining affiliation and observance, the fragility of Jewish literacy – American Jews do not lack for challenges that demand our attention. And Israel, especially now, does not lack for external enemies. There is, in Courtney Martin’s words, a “seductive reduction to other people’s problems;” a tendency to focus on the problems of faraway places, like Israel, rather than engage in the unglamorous work of addressing issues in one’s own backyard. If one seeks to effectuate change, then support those efforts that advance Jewish life here and Jewish self-determination there in consonance with your values and the Jewish and democratic aspirations embedded in Israel’s founding vision. But when you adopt the label “anti-Zionist,” you are not only expressing dissent, you also are relinquishing authorship. And what is worse is that you cede the language, the narrative, and the moral vocabulary of Zionism to others – people who neither share your commitments nor wish the Jewish people well. You step away from the table and leave it to be reset without you. That is not prophetic critique. That is abdication.
Let me be clear. To offer critique, to rebuke, is not merely permitted in our tradition; it is commanded. As stated in our Torah reading: Hokheakh tokhiakh et amitekha – “You shall surely rebuke your fellow.” To have the capacity to critique and remain silent, to harbor resentment without speaking, is to share responsibility for another’s misdeeds. Delivering critique, by a certain telling, is core to who we are as a people. Think of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, or my mother. But like my mother, we do so with love, as an expression of our investment in each other. Lest we forget, immediately adjacent to the Torah’s command to rebuke stands the best-known commandment: Ve’ahavta l’re’akha kamokha, “You shall love your fellow as yourself.” How does one criticize? As you would want to be yourself. Lovingly. Gently. Privately. Patiently. Above all, with the humility that comes from recognizing one’s own imperfections and the ongoing work of self-correction. As the Talmud teaches: Correct yourself before you correct others. In this moment of time when so much feels off the rails, and so much is beyond our control, and there are so many who would seek us harm, would it be so much to ask that within our own tent, in person, online, and across the ocean, we treat one another and critique one another, as we ourselves would wish to be treated? After all, if we cannot model the balance of truth and love, of critique and care within our own community, how can we possibly expect the world beyond our tent to honor the very standards we fail to uphold within it?
“Kedoshim tihyu, ki kadosh ani Adonai Eloheikhem.” “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” At the risk of stating the obvious, our Torah reading – the Holiness Code, the spiritual and moral spine of our tradition, filled as it is with commandments, the dos and the don’ts, the ritual and the ethical, is framed, above all, by a single, insistent focus of attention: you. Not the person sitting next to you, not your neighbor down the block, not that imperfect nation across the ocean, but you, the man, the woman, the person in the mirror. Interwoven as we are in a shared human tapestry, commanded as we are to offer critique, obligated as we are to repair this broken world, the place to begin making change is never farther than ourselves. Not with them but with us. And maybe, just maybe, with that as our shared starting point, we can begin to sanctify the world.