Alef: The NEXT Conversation

19: Israel

This week we introduce issue #19: Israel.

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In one early Zionist song about Israel, Eretz, Eretz, Eretz, Ilanit sings quietly and with love about how small Israel is, about how it’s filled with flowers and children, and how the Eastern border kisses the Western border. “Eretz she nohav, hi lanu em ve av” – Israel that we love, she is to us our mother and our father.

Like any parent-child relationship, the Jewish people’s relationship with Israel can be extremely intense and extremely complicated.  Some love with unquestioning devotion, some fight back against the maternal bonds, and some, consciously or unconsciously, choose never to know their parents in hopes that there will be no emotional attachment.

No doubt about it, Israel as a state continues to court controversy. But let’s not forget that Israel also exists as a nation, devoid of political connotations but full of hot, dusty Tel Aviv summers and cucumbers from the Galilee. It is the country with which American basketball star Amare Stoudemire has so recently fallen in love and the land where Army service often includes late-night pit-stops to McDonald’s.

It is both home to a secular majority, some of whom petition for the right to import pork, and a religious minority that forces others to question the very essence of “Who is a Jew.” For all of these reasons and more, it is easy to both love and be frustrated with Israel, as children often are with parents.

For the next couple of weeks Alef will take a look at Jewish relationships with Israel at a particularly interesting time, a time when, despite public opinion sometimes turning against Israel, more Americans are continuing to make aliyah and Taglit-Birthright Israel continues to turn down trip applicants who want to see more.

For this issue, we eschew the big, global questions in favor of examining ties to Israel on an individual level.  Contributors write about what it means to have “an Israeli moment,” compare their Zionism to green shoots, describe Amos Oz-like picture-perfect snapshots of couples entwined in sunlit cafes, and detail the experience of being on the first-ever Birthright trip.

A relationship with Israel, like a relationship with parents, can be many things, but most of all, it begins with the desire to find out more, simply because it is an inextricable part of who the Jewish people are.

Photo by Wilson Afonso, licensed under Creative Commons.

Israel Posts:
Forgetting Tel Aviv
Traveler’s Prayer
The Earth is Not Quiet
The Magnet That Pulls At My Soul
On Park Avenue
A Piece of Land
The Hair Test
Thoughts of Israel

Tags: Amare Stoudemire, controversy, Conversion Bill, Israel, jew, jewish, McDonalds, Parents, Zionism

Posted by Emily.Comisar@birthrightisraelnext.org, Sunday, August 1st, 2010, 11:43 am, Israel.