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Why I Am Not Leaving The Jewish People
An important Zionist politician recently tried to leave the Jewish people to protest Israeli policies. I’m sympathetic, but here’s why I won’t follow suit.
Avrum Burg a “scion of the Zionist aristocracy” recently announced that he no longer wanted to be a member of the Jewish community. I can sympathize. Reading the recent news out of Israel it is easy to think, “Why would I want to be any part of this?”
The current reality seems to contradict everything I was raised to value in Judaism. I was raised to value anti-racism, justice, compassion, sensitivity to the other, a belief in education, reasoning and clear communication, non-violence, humane-ness. I was taught that if one could think and speak clearly and bring compassion to the table, humanity could move forward. I was taught there was something particularly Jewish about this sensibility.
Yet when I look at the community today I see defenders of the Israeli state accusing those who offer moral critiques of its actions of not even being Jewish–as if Jewishness was not defined by the moral, spiritual, or communal commitments of the last two thousand years but only to fidelity to a state that was never accepted by, lived in, or created by all Jews. One which was not created as a fulfillment of millennia-old Jewish religious expectations–whatever one thinks of them– but as a…
