CHOOSE TO SHINE

Just over 100 years ago, the Balfour Declaration proposed the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. While met with joy and pride by Jews across the world, this statement had an opposite reaction among the majority of existing native residents and their Arab brethren in neighboring countries. A casual perusal of Al Jazeera and similar websites will yield an entirely different perspective. They call it the Nakba, or “Catastrophe.” Long narratives of pain, persecution, ethnic cleansing, and upheaval can be found aplenty. They decry the displacement of three quarters of a million Arabs, many of whom remain refugees without rights in reluctant host countries. They wonder by what right the British, and later the U.N. allowed Zionists to kick them out of their homes to create this homeland for the Jews. Not every article is filled with vitriol. I found some which sound quite logical and well-reasoned. They speak of Palestinians who still have the keys to their houses yet even now have no place to go. Their descendants have now grown to over 7 million people. Unemployment in Gaza is over 40% and residents feel desperate, hopeless, and persecuted. Many Arabs who do hold citizenship feel like second class citizens. 

It would be so easy to sit back with a deserved confidence and count on the Israel Defense Forces to continue to secure our place. Yet with these ideas spreading from college campuses to the mainstream media, we would be well advised to take pause and consider the other side. I realize this is not a very comfortable idea, and I am likely to receive energized feedback on this article. But try to remove yourself for a moment from the way you were raised. Think honestly and clearly about how the other side feels, and what this means to them. Do you have an intellectually honest, unbiased answer for their charge? Why does the State of Israel deserve to exist at the expense of the prior residents? Why should Arabs abandon their struggle to regain their homes, their collective culture, their place?

As I grew up I was exposed to various opinions about the State of Israel. In one camp I learned about the religious Zionists, whose very heart is wrapped up with State of Israel. They recite Hallel on Israel Independence Day. A different point of view stressed the Land of Israel rather than the State. They do not say Hallel on Yom HaAtzmaut but recite tachanun. I have a friend who belongs to the Satmar sect of chassidus. He truly believes that the State of Israel is the work of the Satan, and it has no validity. Still others are eager to give land back to the Palestinians in the name of peace. Despite many failures of this strategy over the years, I am old enough to remember when Anwar El Sadat and Menachem Begin signed the Egypt-Israeli peace treaty in 1979, which has lasted until this day. I also recall the famous handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein of Jordan in 1994. That peace has also endured. I have heard people say that no Jewish soldier’s life is worth a single inch of land, and others say that this is the only truly safe place we have, and must defend it with everything we have.

Who is right? How should a Torah observant family feel about Israel? For insight we turn to the Torah itself. The very first rashi in Chumash asks why the Torah begins with creation, instead of with the first mitzvah. He answers, if the nations of the world call Israel robbers for taking the land of Canaan, they will reply that G-d created the earth and gave it to whomever He deemed proper. He took it away from them and gave it to us. 

The primordial claim we have to the Land of Israel originates with the Torah. I personally have wondered by what means a secular government can justify a claim to Israel without recognizing the validity of the Torah as a divine source (as well as the responsibility to abide by its commandments). I would welcome further discussion about this apparent dichotomy. As the holiday of Shavuos approaches and we celebrate receiving the Torah, it is a perfect time to educate our children and ourselves about the complicated history and the current controversy surrounding our homeland as we attempt to comprehend the meaning of the modern galus. May we all merit to be in Jerusalem in the coming year.