Are We Two Separate Countries or ….

I love Israel. I love that there are so many places where Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouins, and so many others play together, live together, work together, make music and beautiful art and drama together, cook and share meals together, learn more about each other, and solve challenges together. Sadly, these wonderful initiatives and organizations do not get enough publicity to offset the anger, the enmity, the extreme positions, and the bad behaviors that are often associated with Israel by those who are her detractors. Then of course on the other side of the attitudinal spectrum, the supposed purists who do not want to be tainted by the “other” do not acknowledge these wonderful programs and the many, many people who are part of these shared experiences that truly reflect the best of who we need to be and can be.

I am thinking of this always and particularly after our recent Tisha B’Av observance, it feels so present for me as an image to hold onto in these times in which so much destruction, discord, and extremist positions threaten what so many have painstakingly built and created. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for – that dystopian horror as reflected in the Israeli mini-series “Autonomies” illustrates what I have longed believed – that destruction from within is far more horrific and difficult to come back from than destruction from outside of an entity, a nation, a people. People who subscribe to either of these extremes do NOT represent Israel to me nor the Judaism that is my soul and heritage.

In the same vein, I love the United States of America. I love that there are opportunities for people who have not had similar chances elsewhere. I love that SO MANY OF US WHO ARE IMMIGRANTS OR THE CHILDREN OF IMMIGRANTS who took serious chances in changing and uprooting their lives and their families have the lives we have. I know I am filled with gratitude beyond words for the life I am able to live and my children and grandchildren are the beneficiaries because of those who took that chance and this country that allowed them their do-overs. I am grateful that I and my daughters and so many women have opportunities to truly soar, accomplish so much and heal so many. ( I have to say GO WNBA here, in deference to my daughters, the sports fanatics). I love that I can have wonderful relationships with colleagues, friends and neighbors from so many different racial, ethnic, national, religious, and other groupings.

In the meantime, I am painfully aware of those who are not in favor of these interactions and want the same “pure” and narrow groupings they self-identify as preferred. This pains me when human beings who benefit from so much in this country would withhold the very resources that bolstered them from others. I hurt profoundly when people reacting to those who exclude others do the same in their own extreme positions. This country was built by and depends on the cooperation of all – not self-identified narrow groups in a silo. We are all in the boat together, and no one can dig a hole under their seat without peril to all, nor can one throw everyone off the boat and do everything on their own to make sure it will stay its course. Those on the extremes do not represent me nor the America my grandparents put their faith in and my parents and their generation helped to defend and make better.

The Israel I love and to which I am so connected, as well as the America to which I am so grateful, are ongoing experiences of compromise and understanding the other. In my Israel and America, 100% of the people will never be 100% happy 100% of the time, but will realize that what I personally may give up will be for the betterment of the collective and I in turn will benefit from the compromise of someone else. Arabs/Palestinians and Israelis share more than what divides them on so many levels; all of us who have been the beneficiaries of the American hope and dream should have gratitude, not succumb to hubris. The Israel and America I love are collectives of ideas, people, customs, different perspectives, and so much else. By engaging with each other, we each learn and become so much more enriched. EACH IS AN ENTITY --- not separate silos. However, there are those who want the exact opposite…. And these days I feel like there are two separate collectives in the USA – those who are part of the collection and coalition of ideas and perspectives and those who want all of us in the first group OUT! Similarly, that dystopian drama that is Israeli shows Israel as two separate entities – one for the “purist” religious grouping (self identifies as superior) and the second entity for all who accept each other. Here THE WALL separates people within the Jewish community due to the exclusion of one of the groupings of all who do not live according to their standards.

In a world where people are so against vaccinations and then have to use resources by those who are living by the rules to heal from their illnesses due to COVID and where many Israeli Haredim (though not all fervently religious individuals) benefit from “the others” of whom they disapprove but keep them safe and pay the way for them to not pull their weight in contributing to the country that provides for them, let us consider what would happen if these two “country entities” were really allowed to separate – the destruction, the lack of resources for one half, the danger to all. WE NEED EACH OTHER and this is one of the powerful lessons of Tisha B’Av – that the only way we can continue is to realize that we all have to work together in a united manner, not separate into exclusive entities, ignoring, at least, and maligning, at worst, the other.