Two poems, two Israels

There is something deeply, authentically Jewish about competing opinions, beliefs shifting with time but anchored to deep truths, and to arguing those opinions and truths with an onslaught of carefully crafted, heat-seeking words.

Rabbi Golan Ben-Chorin of Ma’alot Tivon in northern Israel will explore the use of words that shape and reflect history at Temple Sinai in Teaneck on October 9 as he delivers the Rabbi Joshuah Trachtenberg Memorial Lecture. (See below.)

“I am going to use poetry,” Rabbi Ben-Chorin said. “It is a twist on the Jewish approach of studying text. These texts are by Israeli Jews, but they’re not traditional texts.”

The first of the two poems he’ll read — both were written in Hebrew, translated into English, and make the reader cry — is Natan Alterman’s “Silver Platter,” published in 1947, the year before Israel became a state. Alterman took the precautionary words of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weitzmann — “No State was ever handed out on a silver platter” — and presented his readers with that platter. As the ceremony marking the nation’s birth begins:

“When across from it will step out a youth and a lass and slowly march toward the nation

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“Full of endless fatigue and unrested/Yet the dew of their youth is still seen on their head

“Thus they stand at attention, giving no sign of life or death…

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“Then a nation in tears and amazement will ask: ‘Who are you?’/And they will answer quietly, ‘We are the silver platter on which the Jewish state was given.’”

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“This is a poem that to some extent glorifies the sacrifice of the young generation that was needed in order to establish the state of Israel,” Rabbi Ben-Chorin said. “It is used today in schools and Yom HaZikaron observances. It’s about how the miracle of Israel had to be or is enabled by the sanctity of martyrdom.” Thinking in that way, the poem tells us, “is necessary for the establishment of the state. If you’re not willing to make the extreme sacrifice, then the state, which is an extreme reality, cannot be brought back through history. It can never exist.”

Next, Rabbi Ben-Chorin will turn to a poem by the Israeli rapper and actor Jimbo J — his real name is Omer Havron — that’s a series of questions that a little girl asks her father about October 7 and the war in Gaza, and that her father tries to evade, because it would be too painful to answer.

It includes lines like “Dad, why is Eli’s dad never home? / Eli’s dad is a soldier right now. / What does a soldier do? / He fights for the hope that one day we won’t need heroes here anymore.”

It ratchets up and up — “Dad, why do you hug me so tight after you watch the news? / Because sometimes the things you see, the things you see there, remind me that you’re everything to me.”

And it ends with a gut punch.

“Both of the writers care deeply about Israeli society,” Rabbi Ben-Chorin said. “They are writing from a place of sacrifice and questioning, but with a very different twist. Through the poetry, I will try to show the shifting mindset between the Zionism with the energy needed for the creation of a state and the Zionism needed for the sustainability of society.

“In his book ‘Sapiens,’ Yuval Noval Harari,” the Israeli historian, “speaks about the shift in energy needed to create and to sustain an entity, and how different they are. Israel is no longer a mythology, and most of the people who will hear me speak have grown up with Israel as a mythological concept.” In other words, Israel has been romanticized, but that view of the modern state is neither accurate nor useful for the lovers of Israel to maintain.

“If we’re flexible and courageous enough to move from the mythological Israel to the real Israel, then we can say that the real Israel is blessed by being a democracy. When it’s a democracy, sometimes you’ll agree with the government, and sometimes you won’t. But you can criticize the government, because it’s not mythological. It’s real. And you can still hold dear the image of what Israel can be. Those things are not contradictory.”

Not all criticism of Israel is antisemitism, although some of it surely is, Rabbi Ben-Chorin said. “If we can hold that complexity, we can try to solve the dilemma of the younger generations who say, ‘You taught me a lie about Israel. You sold me this mythology, and you didn’t prepare me in any way to be critical and still love Israel.’ But that’s a change we have to make, if there’s going to be hope for Jewish peoplehood, which includes the Jewish people of Israel and the Jews of the world.

“Unfortunately, our leadership in Israel is not able to offer a complex narrative around Israel, and therefore many Jews are disenfranchised.”

Rabbi Ben-Chorin’s roots in Israel are deep. On his father’s side, he’s third-generation Israeli. His mother is American-born. “I have the choice of where to live, but Israel is my home,” he said. “I’ve never lived in Israel because of what Israel is, but because of what Israel could be. I’ve always had a vision that I’ve been willing to risk my life for.”

His grandfather, Schalom Ben-Chorin, was born Fritz Rosenthal in Munich in 1913. He grew up in an entirely secular home but became increasingly entranced by Judaism. He moved to Israel in 1935, and “began an informal relationship with Martin Buber that grew into a study session in his living room and then morphed into the first Reform congregation in Jerusalem,” Kehillat Har-El, established in 1958. “It still exists today,” Rabbi Ben-Chorin said.

“My father, Tovia Ben-Horin, of blessed memory, was the first Israeli-born Reform rabbi. He had to study at HUC in Cincinnati because he predated HUC in Jerusalem.” So he went to Cincinnati, studied, was ordained, and “among other things, founded the Reform youth movement here in Israel,” his son said.

His mother, Adinah Charry, grew up in Philadelphia. “Her father, Elias Charry, was an important Conservative rabbi who created the Germantown Jewish Center there,” Rabbi Ben-Chorin said.

His impeccable English is because the family spoke English at home and Hebrew outside when he was growing up, Rabbi Ben-Chorin said. Then his father took a pulpit in Manchester, England, where the family spoke Hebrew at home and English outside. “Sometimes my mother couldn’t understand me because I spoke fluent Mancunian,” he added. (Mancunian is the distinctive dialect specific to people from Manchester.)

He “battled against being a rabbi,” Rabbi Ben-Chorin said; it just seemed too inescapable a fate not to try to escape from. But eventually inevitability won. He was ordained at HUC in Jerusalem and then earned a doctorate in Jewish education from the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan.

“The only place where I am not recognized as a rabbi is in Israel,” he said; that’s because the government accepts — and supports, in ways that can be surprising to those of us used to the wall between religion and state — only Orthodox ordinations, congregations, and lifecycle events.

Who: Rabbi Golan Ben-Chorin

What: Will deliver the Rabbi Joshua Trachtenberg Memorial Lecture

When: On Friday, October 9, at 7:30 p.m.

Where: At Temple Emeth in Teaneck

What else: Dinner, at 6, precedes the talk; registration is necessary

And also: It’s necessary to register for the free talk

How to register: Go to emeth.org and click down, or call (201) 833-1322