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Geneva Initiative Jewish Ideas Weekly www.jewishideasdaily.com November 12-19, 2010 Friday, November 12 ist Left finds itself bereft of arguments. conscripts and reservists to dodge military Carlo Strenger of Tel Aviv University, a col- service over the Green Line. The European- What’s Left? umnist for Haaretz, has complained that the funded Geneva Initiative, spearheaded by By Elliot Jager Left gets no credit for having been the first Oslo architect Yossi Beilin, offers a fanciful to support the establishment of a Palestinian platform intended somehow to reconcile Usually, when Israelis speak of Left and state, an idea now accepted by all; but he also Israel’s security needs with the uncompro- Right, they are differentiating mainly be- worries that his fellow leftists, by refusing to mising Arab Peace Initiative. Peace Now tween security hawks and peace-camp admit that they were “partially wrong” about champions a Palestinian state in the territo- doves—not between liberals and conserva- the Palestinians, have created an impres- ries “occupied as a result of the 1967 war,” tives in general, or in the American or Eu- sion of having broken faith with the Israeli with no reference to settlement blocs that by ropean sense. By this definition, Israel’s left mainstream. It is more than an impression: common consensus will remain Israeli un- wing is in a sorry state. most Israelis do ac- der any conceivable agreement. From Israel’s found- cept the idea of a Consensus is the relevant word: the plain ing in 1948 until Li- Palestinian state, but fact is that the country has shifted to a con- kud’s upset victory in with trepidation; the sensus position on security issues. The new 1977, every govern- Left does so with en- viable “Left” is Kadima and the new viable ment was headed by thusiasm—and, un- “Right” is Likud, and the two are not at all Labor, which once like the mainstream, far apart. In tone, Kadima is positioned soft- had its own hawkish tends to believe that a er, Likud is positioned tougher; but no pro- wing. Not until Likud’s peace deal will satisfy found issues of principle divide Tzipi Livni defeat in 1992 did a Palestinian aspira- and Benjamin Netanyahu. Left coalition return tions once and for all. So is the Labor-Meretz Left not only dead to power, with the La- Ehud Barak. More honestly than but buried? Certainly, any uptick in Arab bor and Meretz parties garnering 56 out of Strenger, the journalist Gershom Gorenberg terror will send Israelis further into the arms 120 parliamentary mandates; this comeback has acknowledged that Israel’s mainstream of the Right. But specific events at home— paved the way for the ill-fated Oslo accords. simply does not trust the peace camp to do a recent examples include the move to legis- Since then, the Left has succeeded in elect- proper job of protecting the country’s inter- late loyalty oaths for Palestinian Arabs seek- ing only one government, which, under ests at the negotiating table. ing to marry Arab citizens of Israel, or the the brief, calamitous, stewardship of Ehud Beyond policy issues, the Zionist Left has eviction of Palestinian families from their Barak, culminated in the second intifada. also been poorly led. Ehud Barak, the current dwellings in east Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah Were elections to be held now, every sur- head of Labor, is widely detested, and his par- neighborhood—have the potential, at least vey shows that Israel’s left wing would gain no ty is gearing up for a bruising leadership con- temporarily, to galvanize left-wing forces. further ground, and that Labor and Meretz test. Meretz leader Haim Oron has been un- The Labor party could also be resuscitated would struggle even to hold onto their cur- able to fill the shoes of his predecessor Yossi by a new leader like Shelly Yachimovich, rent sixteen seats in the Knesset. Nor would Sarid. Nor are the Left’s prospects brightened who has carved out a populist niche for her- the center-left Kadima party, which is run- by the initiatives being pursued by extra-par- self in the Knesset by downplaying the peace ning neck and neck with center-right Likud, liamentary left-wing groups patently out of camp’s discredited security positions while be able to form a coalition government. step with the national consensus. focusing instead on social and economic The political historian Colin Shindler has The Gush Shalom movement, for in- inequities. traced the beginnings of the Zionist Left’s grad- stance, has made a hero of the nuclear spy And then there is this: the parliamentary ual fragmentation and decrepitude all the way Mordechai Vanunu, is in the forefront of Left may be down and out, but the Left that back to Hamas’s suicide-bombing campaign in the campaign to boycott products produced dominates the Israeli judiciary, the media the spring of 1994, within scant months of the over the Green Line, and supports the Pales- and the arts, the educational system and Rabin-Arafat peace ceremony on the White tinian “right of return” to Israel proper (by, other large parts of the bureaucracy—that House lawn. Today, as the ideological assault to be sure, “mutual agreement”). Yesh Gvul Left is another matter, and another story. against Israel mounts internationally, the Zion- and Courage to Refuse have urged army Get the latest from Jewish Ideas Daily in your inbox every morning. Sign up at www.jewishideasdaily.com Jewish Ideas Weekly, published by Jewish Ideas Daily, is a project of Bee.Ideas. To contact us, please email [email protected]. Monday, November 15 olution against traditional Judaism had run static ups and downs of Bratslav Hasidism. its course, new circles, small at first, inaugu- Throughout, Sheleg distinguishes be- A Jewish Renaissance? rated a revolution of their own: a return not tween the cultural and the spiritual dimen- By Yehudah Mirsky so much to tradition as to Judaism’s cultural sions of this Jewish renaissance—between, In recent years Israel has become a vast treasures on new terms. in his words, “those searching for Judaism open-air laboratory for experiments in Juda- The backbone was study. The late 1980s and those searching for God.” The former ism, re-fashioning rituals, reading old texts saw the founding of two pioneering study cohort is more Ashkenazi, more middle- through new lenses, scrambling and frac- centers (batei midrash): Midreshet Ora- class, and more attuned to the country’s turing familiar dichotomies between secular nim, affiliated with the kibbutz movement, cultural elites. Among the latter, one finds and religious. Secular yeshivot, mainstream more Sephardim, more Russians, and, in- performers singing medieval Hebrew terestingly, more of the newly rich. Perhaps hymns, non-denominational “prayer com- paradoxically, or perhaps not, those in the munities” in hip Tel Aviv, kabbalistic ther- first group seek to influence their society apy movements, Judaism festivals on once- and the world around them, while those in socialist kibbutzim—something is going on the second are chiefly concerned with their here, but what? own spiritual fulfillment. Another paradox: Yair Sheleg, a long-time contributor to the cultural quest is a more local drama, a Haaretz and a fellow of the Israel Democ- search for a lost center with no easy or obvi- racy Institute, has for years been training ous road back, while the spiritual quest is in a journalist’s eye and insider’s knowledge many ways part of a global trend. on Israeli religious life. An earlier book, What will the future hold? Materially, the The New Orthodox (Hebrew, 2000), docu- cultural movement is still very dependent on mented the ways in which both mainstream and Elul in Jerusalem. In both, religious and American philanthropists, while the spiritu- religious Zionists and the ultra-Orthodox secular joined together to read classical and al movement is a tempting moneymaker for were adapting to secular Israeli life and cul- modern texts in yeshiva style but without a shysters. Morally, Sheleg sees large potential ture. Now, in From Old Hebrew to New Jew: yeshiva’s claim to traditional authority. In- pitfalls for each, with the cultural renais- The Jewish Renaissance in Israeli Society, a terestingly, they made a point of studying sance at risk of devolving into an ethereal, follow-up Hebrew volume, Sheleg deftly Talmud, trying to reach for wider Jewish elitist aestheticism, and the spiritual revival explores the other side of the ledger: the horizons than those embraced by classical at risk of winding up in religious dogma- not easily classifiable groups and individu- Zionism, with its leapfrogging of Diaspora tism, hucksterism, and atavistic politics. als vigorously exploring Judaism outside the history in favor of the Bible. The Zionist Signs of degeneration are already visible. structure of the religious establishment and thinkers with whom they engaged—H.N. But, in the meantime, what about the its institutions. Bialik, A.D. Gordon, H. Brenner, B. Katznel- greater Israeli public? Can either of these The political hegemony of Labor Zionism son, A.I. Kook—were searchers themselves, currents affect it, and for the better? Both are has been in dreary decline since the 1970s. swinging on the hinge of exile and revolu- up against the deadening forces of the mass No less consequential, and perhaps more tion, despair and redemption. media, cultural weariness, the inert catego- so, is the steady dissolution of the social and By now there are dozens of alternative ries of “religious” and “secular,” and a calci- cultural ethos with which Labor built the study centers, and their style has been ad- fied religious establishment.
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