On being a saddened Zionist - The Jewish Standard

“When God returned our exiled people, we were like dreamers.”

In my house and thousands more, this verse from Shir Ha-ma’alot (Psalms 126:1) precedes reciting the Grace after Meals on Shabbat.

Thirteen years ago, my wife and I became Israeli citizens. With our children and grandchildren in the States and planning to remain there, we did not put down permanent roots in Israel, but our visits were frequent and extended.

What was the impetus for making this kind of aliyah?

We believed that Israel was the most significant project of the Jewish people after 2,000 years of exile. We believed in an Israel where the most ambitious Jewish dreams could be realized. We wanted a vote to help steer the course of that project and to show in some tangible way our love for our homeland. After all, how could we sing “When God returned our exiled people, we were like dreamers” without really meaning it?

Our Israeli experiences were shaped by kibbutz volunteering, developing deep friendships with Hebrew-speaking Israelis whose connection and service to the country went back to the 1920s, and living mostly in Tel Aviv. Remnants of the pioneering spirit and the continuing presence of a values-oriented Zionism among the people we knew convinced us to put more of our Jewish lives into an Israel we loved.

Israel, which had for decades proclaimed its desire for peace with its neighbors, began to see the fruition of that hope. Between 1979 and 1994 there were peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, and after six bloody years of the First Intifada, the Oslo Accords, with their promise of a future two-state solution and the end of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, were signed in 1993. The Jewish state seemed to be supporting the value of seeking peace (Psalms 34:13, Avot 1:12).

We might have been dreamers, but events like the assassination of Rabin shook us out of slumber, and it shook the nation as well. Indeed, the fact that the nation was shaken was, for us, a good sign. It seemed to be proof that supernationalist fanaticism and the violence that went with it were anathema to what Israel was and who Israelis were.

But there were more slumbering dangers that would eventually awaken. There was the continuation of the occupation of the West Bank. The failure to create a Palestinian state there by the date set in the Oslo Accords led to the Second Intifada, which killed and maimed hundreds if not thousands of Israelis, and terrorized the country.

The ongoing occupation also meant frequent degradation and massive arrests of Palestinians. This created cycles of retaliation that killed Israelis and Palestinians alike. Relations between Jewish and Arab Israelis, which, no matter how fraught, had once existed, now completely unraveled.

And Israeli democracy also has been unraveling at a startling pace.

Over the past few years, the present governing coalition has provided us with a surfeit of what Israelis call (in Arabic!) fashlas. Translated, these are huge and often catastrophic mistakes. Among these mistakes have been this government’s threats to Israeli democracy. Among these threats are the so-called judicial reform, which would have neutered the Supreme Court, allowing the present government to undermine the rule of law with no guardrails; the government’s refusal to acknowledge and inspect its role in the catastrophe of October 7; its incompetence in dealing with release of the hostages trapped in Gaza; its laissez- faire attitude to settler violence and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank; and the government’s failure in public relations and diplomacy regarding Israel’s war in Gaza, especially in view of cabinet members’ public statements about how the Gazans would be punished for October 7.

When we spent time in Israel, we lived in what Israelis humorously called “the State of Tel Aviv.” It was a liberal and sophisticated city, but these fashlas turned the State of Tel Aviv into the center of revolt and the engine that drove hundreds of thousands of Israelis from all over the country into the street week after week, month after month, to protest the abhorrent anti-democratic, racist, and violent behavior of this Israeli government. It is those citizens that keep my Zionism in place. They are my hope.

But my sadness is caused by how so much of the Zionist dream of an Israel that could have been a light unto the nations has become a nightmare. Israel is now governed by pseudo-Zionist criminals and super-nationalist fanatics who allow violent and murderous deeds to go unpunished in the name of a Greater Israel. It is a nation led by people who spit in the face of friends and allies from other nations and hold the life of the Other as worthless. It is a government that fetishizes land over Jewish values even as it hypocritically claims to be the true representatives of those values.

I am not only sad about this. I am also angry, as are hundreds and thousands of Israelis.

We are now in the Jewish month of Tammuz. On the 17th day of the month, many of us will fast in commemoration of the siege that ended in the destruction of the Temple and the beginning of the long Roman occupation of Eretz Israel. The Temple was destroyed because a group called the Zealots murdered anyone who sought to negotiate peace with the Romans. Those who did so were the true patriots. They cared enough about their people to try to prevent the trauma the loss of the Temple and the destruction of Jerusalem would bring to the nation. The Zealots were murderous wolves in sheep’s clothing, and today’s zealots are no different.

I love my Israeli friends and family and admire what Israel has accomplished for the good in its relatively short history. I am not naïve about its failings, past and present. No nation is perfect. But I fear that our present-day zealots, with their twisted notion of what is good, their extremism, and their cruelty, will bring the nation down once again.

The destructiveness of these zealots saddens me very deeply and angers me greatly, but knowing what I know about so many decent Israeli citizens, I will not cede the appellation Zionist to the zealots or anyone else. And if you love Israel, even as a critic, you shouldn’t either.

Rabbi Dr. Michael Chernick of Teaneck is professor emeritus at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. He received his doctorate from the Bernard Revel Graduate School and rabbinic ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.

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