Life is Elsewhere? The Israel of Fantasy and Reality.

This week marks the 73rd anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, a place I have called home for the past eight years. The Israeli writer Etgar Keret once noted, “My Israel isn't the postcard version, it's not an Israel of camels and kibbutzim…I always say that a guy doesn't get up in the morning here and think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He thinks, `Why doesn't my girlfriend love me, why don't I have a job, why did my car get towed?’”In the imagination of many people, Israel engenders hyper-sized fantasies, where each day represents—depending on your point of view- the potential for violence, bravery and heroism; a haven from persecution or a fresh start for Jewish dreamers; a Start-Up Nation mixed with spiritual elation; a brutal occupation and ethnic discrimination. It’s not that there aren’t fragments of truth to all of these depictions. But my Israel is much closer to Keret’s reassuring mundanities, because human beings are not poster children for ideologies and political platforms- they are simply human beings, Israelis and Arabs alike.Part of the reason for the perpetuation of an “invented Israel” for so many Jews, is that from a young age they are inculcated with narratives that tend to leave out subtlety and the messiness of daily living in favour of different types of myth - the Israel of religious ecstasy, the Israel of endless anxiety, the Israel of ceaseless conflict. But for me, Israel is neither a place of ultimate salvation, nor of utter immorality. It is a tiny country (the province of Ontario in Canada is 52 times bigger than the entire land of Israel) with a wide variety of individuals and outlooks, a fractured political consensus where people argue and support one another and have vastly different life goals. In short, it is a big family living in a small apartment, loving and fighting and looking to find their own way even as they recognize and try to co-exist with their brothers and sisters. Some days are beyond frustrating to the point of enraging; other days are glorious and filled with sunlight.But the picture I am drawing here has often been subsumed to a weightier agenda, which is to create an Israeli story that will resurrect a fading Jewish identity in the postmodern Diaspora. The roots of this attempt go back decades and speak to the huge panic that set in, in the late 1980’s and early 90’s, about the onset of Jewish assimilation and intermarriage, perhaps an inevitability from the moment the ghetto walls were sprung open and freedom of choice inundated the Jewish world as it did to everyone.The most significant challenge to Judaism-indeed all faiths- in the modern world is the very idea that things could be different, that one’s life is not fated, that there are options about what school to attend, where to work, whom to love and what god or gods to worship or to neglect. It’s the possibility of possibility, what the French philosopher Emanuel Levinas called the “temptation of temptation.” Jewish commitments are thus now only one alternative, not a taken for granted certainty.In response to the hand wringing-head scratching data that has caused Diaspora Jewish communities so much consternation in the past 30 years, there have been multiple attempts to find the right formula for Jewish survival. One approach which gained traction in the past number of decades is to stress, along with Holocaust commemoration, the modern State of Israel as a crucial marker of Jewish identity. Go to Israel, rediscover your Jewishness, return to your home country, revitalize your Jewish self, marry and live as a Jew – so goes the thinking underlying the huge financial and human investment in the form of Birthright and other programs.There is nothing wrong at all with such programs as long as we do not inflate their ability to achieve these lofty goals all out of proportion. Because it is a risky and ultimately short-sighted model, whether you live in Toronto or Omaha or Sydney or Buenos Aires, to link the essence of your Jewish identity to a land that many Diaspora Jews will never visit, let alone live in. It is one thing to appreciate Israel, to draw benefit or inspiration from its culture, geography, vibrancy, literature, Torah study and sense of peoplehood; but, as a rule of thumb, life cannot be elsewhere. If you are married but gain your core emotional sustenance and identity from someone other than your spouse; if you are in a job in which you constantly think you’d be more satisfied in a different walk of life- that does not bode well for your future happiness or simply the ability to inhabit your own life.So unless you are “divorcing” and embarking on a new path (i.e. leaving the Diaspora and actually making aliyah), I would trade in the Israel of fantasy and start focusing on the life you are actually living, wherever that may be, and see if you can forge a meaningful Jewish existence out of the materials that Jews have always relied upon – the power of Jewish texts, the thick substance of Jewish ritual, the deep bonds of family and community. And in the age of the Internet, the possibilities for meaningful Jewish engagement have multiplied exponentially, even for Jews living in far flung locales with little in the way of a physical Jewish community.Which is why I do not believe in the guilt trip that some immigrants to Israel sometimes throw down at their former Diaspora compatriots, about how “every Jew should be living in Israel,” a statement I think is categorically false and belittles the complexity of people’s lives. There are all sorts of good reasons why Jews live where they live outside of Israel - taking care of aging parents, raising families in what they believe are the best conditions for those kids, doing work that they value that brings benefit to others, cultivating their mental and emotional wellbeing the best they can, and yes, providing a Jewish service or contribution to others that they would never be able to once they moved to Israel. One size does not fit all, Israeli garments included.So the notion that all Jews should suddenly flock to the Promised Land is a piece of propaganda that does not bear much scrutiny. Having said all of that, there is no doubt that a renaissance of historical proportions is taking place here, with an immense outpouring of creativity and new thinking in all matters Jewish and human. I do not often (or ever) use the word “miracle,” but there is a sense when you are here that something miraculous is underway. Like all Israelis, I stand in sacred silence and listen to sirens ringing to mark Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day), testimonies to the sacrifice of Jewish blood and the maintenance of Jewish resolve. Perhaps more than any other time of the year, these are the truly holy days on the Israeli calendar.It may be painful to live here at certain moments, but given the long shadows of Jewish history, it is a privilege never to be dismissed. The poet Philip Larkin, once wrote of stepping into a church and being struck by its enduring power, despite his complete lack of belief. His words resonate when thinking about Israel entering its 74thyear of existence: “A serious house on serious earth it is/In whose blent air all our compulsions meet/Are recognized, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising/A hunger in himself to be more serious/And gravitating with it to this ground.”