Radical Judaism_ Rethinking God and Tradition - Arthur Green [80]
Another “Israel”
Any discussion of “Israel” in our day is incomplete without reference to a relatively new claimant to the title, and that is Israel the state, established in our holy Land of Israel in 1948. Its citizens (Jews and non-Jews) are Israelis, which I am not, though I am a supporter, albeit often a loving critic, of Israel the state. I visit Israel frequently, I read Israeli literature, some of my own books are published there in Hebrew translation; I thus feel myself a distant participant in the rich Jewish cultural life of Israel. Nonetheless, I am an outsider to that society and place, an outsider by choice, as are all Jews today who do not live in Israel. While I take great pride, as do most Jews of my generation, in Israel's founding and achievements, part of me is unhappy that the state has laid claim to that name, one that belongs to me as well as to the Jew who lives in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.41
Had I shared with Franz Rosenzweig the luxury of living and dying before 1933, I too might have shared his distance from political Zionism, questioning whether Jews should abandon their transtemporal sacred calendar-based identity for one that grapples fully with the reality of history. I surely would have seen myself as a cultural Zionist, partaking fully in the revival of the Hebrew language and Jewish culture, but probably would not have seen the need for a Jewish state. Suspect as I am of nation-states and their motives, and an internationalist by inclination, I would have supported another path. I would have shared the concerns of Judah Magnes, Martin Buber, and others for the rights of the Palestinian Arabs in their own land, as indeed I still do. But the realities of history did not offer that luxury. After Hitler came to power and the world evaded responsibility for the gathering storm, it became clear that we Jews needed both the protection and the pride offered by having a state of our own. The political Zionists were made right by the history we all dreaded. Israel as a place of refuge and the ingathering of exiles became a necessity after the war, and it is still unthinkable to me not to have Israel as a Jewish state, which on the most basic level means a defender of the Jewish people in the international forum and a refuge for Jews facing persecution.42 I hesitate to comment further on the state of Israel in the context of a Jewish theology because I accord the state no theological meaning. I am a religious Jew and a secular Zionist, which is to say that I do not believe the founding of Israel to be “the first flowering of our redemption,” as the chief rabbbinate's prayer puts it. I accord no messianic or protomessianic meaning to the existence of a Jewish state. The scourge of anti-Semitism, a deep blight on the Western, mainly Christian, moral conscience, reached a point at which Jewish life in Europe became impossible. The Zionists were right in seeing this crisis coming well before 1933, a reality hotly denied by others at the time. We Jews needed to create a society of our own. We did so both for both negative and positive reasons: as an escape from prejudice against us and as an opportunity to develop our own language, culture, and tradition in a society where they would be completely at home. It seemed natural to us to do this in our people's ancient homeland. Perhaps we did not fully realize how deeply