Reclaiming Zionism: Rebuilding the ‘Jerusalem of Below’ ELISHEVA GOLDBERG
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And yet, there is something so endearing actually dead, therefore very much alive and and hopeful about Keret’s vigorous imagination rising. By the end of the story, the tube of and unflagging sense of humor. One after an- “stuff” no longer works at all, even on them; “It other, his postmodern stories depict an Israeli might as well have been hummus.” Somehow, embrace of the Yiddish image of the schlemiel; it’s being hummus seems good enough for us they suggest an enduring, exilic Jewish hope readers — reason enough to continue hoping that dreams are ever-dying, therefore never and laughing along. SHMA.COM Reclaiming Zionism: Rebuilding the ‘Jerusalem of Below’ ELISHEVA GOLDBERG Why Is Jerusalem Always in Twos?1 One bless the State of Israel, the beginning of Why is Jerusalem always in twos, one of Above our redemption.” I subscribed to Rav Abraham And the other Below Isaac Kook’s teaching in the first chapter of Orot And I want to live in a Jerusalem of the middle HaKodesh (titled Eretz Yisrael) that the Land of Without turning my head above and without Israel is tied in its very lifeblood to the “uma,” Wounding my legs below. the “nation” of Israel. According to the author And why is Jerusalem in the language of Micah Goodman, this is Kook’s version of the pairs, like hands Hegelian dialectic: The uma is a living, creative And legs, organism with Body and Soul. Its Soul is Jewish I only want to be in one Jerusalem culture, religion, being, and its Body is the land of Because I am only one, there are no more. Israel. This makes the Diaspora effectively a soul —Yehudah Amichai without a body. Bringing the soul back to the body — Judaism to Israel, or Zionism — is t’chiyat ha- iriam-Webster defines “Zion” as “a metim, or the resurrection of the dead, rebirth. I so dwelling place of perfect happiness loved that idea then (perhaps differently from the Mfor the soul after death,” and gives it way I love it now), that when I was 18 years old synonyms such as “above,” “bliss,” and “para- and living in a settlement, I believed that I was on dise,” and antonyms such as “Gehenna,” “pan- a redemptive journey, seeking an ethereal Zion by demonium,” and “perdition.” Zionism, then, is connecting to the land. almost by definition an ideal — either a dream Slowly — and painfully — I discovered that of national liberation or a mode of redemption. Israel, though it has a soul, is not just a ves- Zionism has unearthly origins. For centuries, sel for a religious people — in other words, for it held a mystical place in the minds of Jews. And me. It is a place, and it contains multitudes. It Elisheva Goldberg is a it maintains a sense of that original unearthly qual- produces both excellence and suffering. It is a researcher and editor at ity. Aharon Appelfeld, one of Israel’s most famous reality of flesh and blood. Molad: The Center for the authors, talks about the first time he saw the Jewish Today, many who take the term “Zionism” Renewal of Israeli Democracy. Brigade after the Holocaust — that it was a “mes- for their battle cry tend to find their political She previously was the sianic revelation.” And historian Zeev Sternhell, an home on the radical right — both in Israel and assistant editor at Open Zion, a Daily Beast blog edited by outspoken secular leftist and expert on fascism, has America. In growing numbers, they are propo- Peter Beinart. said that the establishment of the State of Israel pro- nents of the Greater Land of Israel — willing duced in him an “almost religious exaltation.” participants in the internationally condemned 1 A note on translation: Some nouns I grew up with that same notion of Zionism occupation of a people, funders and actors in in Hebrew form their plural by using a “dual” suffix. This form is often used to as a “messianic revelation” and a “religious exalta- projects that essentially steal property and deny indicate that the noun comes in pairs, tion.” I attended a religious Zionist summer camp civil liberties. Often, these are the same people like eyes, breasts, hands, feet, or ears. where we simulated Israeli military actions and who allow the otherworldy to enter into their The sound of the dual ending is “A-IM” just like that of the end of the Hebrew lived the sort of collectivist identity promoted by political discourse. They speak of the redemp- word for Jerusalem, “YerushalA-IM.” Israel’s first kibbutzim. When we said the Birkat tive powers of nationalism; they insist that God Amichai is claiming that the ending of the word “Jerusalem” denotes that it is Hamazon, I included (and still do) the words, is in their political camp. But this insertion of a dual noun — a pair of Jerusalem(s). “Harachaman hu yivarech et medinat Yisrael, otherworldliness is inappropriate and danger- reishit tzmichat geulatenu,” for which a feeble This poem is reprinted with the ous. In fact, it makes me want to fight against permission of Hana Amichai. English rendering might be: “May the Merciful Israel, against a perverted Zionism. [4] MARCH 2014 | ADAR II 5774 But reclaiming Zionism may not be impos- need to talk about what is happening on it — the sible, and perhaps a clue to how we can do so physical realities we are creating and how those can be found in the Talmud, in Ta’anit (5b), realities are changing us. Because if we make which quotes Rabbi Yochanan who, in turn, the mistake of treading in “Jerusalem of above” quotes God: “I will not come to Jerusalem of when we should be striding through “Jerusalem above (Yerushalayim shel ma’alah) until I have of below,” then we do ourselves — and our own come to Jerusalem of below (Yerushalayim redemptive projects — a gross disservice. shel mata).” The Talmud asks the obvious When Zionism was a dream — when it SHMA.COM question: What is “Jerusalem of above”? brought to mind the “Israel of above” — it was If we understand “Jerusalem of above” as the epic: heroic, powerful, and profoundly worth- ideal — a romanticized, beautiful, important na- while. But now that Zion has become a real- tional liberation movement of another era — we ity, we must reorient ourselves. There is much can begin to reorient ourselves. First, God (or we, we need to do in order to live in the Jerusalem as the case may be) must go to the “Jerusalem of of below. We can start by ending the occupa- below,” to the realm where redemption means tion. God will come to “Israel of above” only placing one’s feet ever more fervently on the after coming to “Israel of below.” That is the ground. To reclaim a Zionism of the earth, we Jerusalem we should be building up. The Perils of Hope JAY MICHAELSON he millennial impulse — the belief, hope, the Jehovah’s Witnesses movement predicted or fear that a fundamental global change that the world would end. Many people left, but Tis imminent — seems universal in human those inside became more ardent. experience. It may be messianic (that is, focused What, then, of the political messiahs we around an individual savior) or impersonal. It all tend to venerate? The iconic red and blue may be religious or secular. But as scholars have poster image of candidate Barack Obama, usu- shown, millennialism (the term refers not to the ally with the words ‘Hope’ or ‘Change’ writ- year 2000, but to the Christian notion of Christ’s ten beneath his image, was quintessentially thousand years of future rule) appears in all millennialist. And intrinsic to such outsized cultures, and all times. The Rapture, the Xhosa hopes is the certainty of disappointment. Of cattle-killing movement, Nazism, Y2K, Zionism, course, Obama has accomplished one of the the false messiah Sabbetai Zevi, the end date largest transfers of wealth in American his- of the 2012 Mayan calendar, socialist utopias, tory (“Obamacare”), made history as our first UFO cults, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, the African-American president, ended two terrible celibate Shakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Chabad- wars, restored some of America’s global repu- Lubavitch messianism, Jesus Christ himself — tation, and won countless victories for progres- all of these are instances of the same cluster of sive values — including rebalancing the federal human hopes and fears. Such impulses seem es- bench and moving same-sex marriage forward. sential to the human condition. But his shortcomings have also been apparent Perhaps even more interesting is what over the past five years: too much deliberation, happens next. Usually (so far, always), the re- too little political strong-arming, blind spots on demption does not arrive. What then? Beginning surveillance and security. He is no messiah. with the classic study When Prophecy Fails, by And so, as Festinger and other scholars Leon Festinger, a legion of scholars — myself who followed in his wake would have pre- Jay Michaelson is a weekly columnist for the Jewish among them, as I wrote my doctoral disserta- dicted, while many believers have become dis- Daily Forward and the tion on the quasi-messianic figure Jacob Frank illusioned, the hard core hardens. author of Evolving Dharma: — has traced the arcs of disappointment that In Jewish tradition, the failure of millennial Meditation, Buddhism, inevitably follow the failure of the apocalypse hopes seems inevitable. As much as Jewish tra- and the Next Generation of to materialize. Often, the inner circle becomes ditions stoke such hopes, they also voice skepti- Enlightenment.