The Knesset last week, by a vote of 62-55, adopted a Basic Law declaring Israel to be the “nation-state of the Jewish people” (in Hebrew, medinat hale’um hayehudi). By the hysterical reaction of the Jewish secularists, leftists and non-Orthodox Jews in America, one would think that Roe v. Wade had been reversed.
The thought arises: isn’t the State of Israel already the “nation-state of the Jewish people”? Isn’t that why it is referred to colloquially as “the Jewish state”? Indeed, I recall hearing once or twice (of course, it was in the Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem) that “our hope is not lost,” that the beating Jewish heart yearns to return to the land of Israel, “the land of Zion and Jerusalem,” in order “to be a free people in our land.” Wasn’t that the essence of the Hatikvah and the Zionist movement?
Moreover, Israel’s Declaration of Independence declared (as Declarations are supposed to do) that “the Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books. After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.” (Of course, this is not entirely true. The Land of Israel was not the birthplace of the Jewish people; we actually became a nation in Egypt from which we were liberated by the mighty hand of G-d – and then our nationhood was confirmed when we received the Torah at Mount Sinai. But let’s not quibble.)
“This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.”
This assertion was the main predicate for what followed, the dramatic announcement seventy years ago (5 Iyar 5708) that: “Accordingly, we, members of the people’s council, representatives of the Jewish community of Eretz Yisrael and of the Zionist movement…by virtue of our natural and historic right…hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael, to be known as the State of Israel.”
There it is – in bold italics. Israel as the “nation-state of the Jewish people” is seventy years old. Why are so many Jews throwing a hissy fit?
One anomaly is that, for all the drama of the Declaration of Independence, it has never had the force of law in Israel. Thus, Hatikvah was never Israel’s formal national anthem, nor was the Israeli flag ever officially adopted as the national flag. Both of those entities gained official recognition through this new law. Is that a problem? It might be for Arabs, but both the Declaration of Independence and the new law assure the non-Jewish population of “full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.” Accordingly, the rights of all citizens are protected (sometimes, it must be said, to a fault), so why the uproar? Surely the Arabs of Israel are aware that they live in a Jewish state, and if it troubled them, could easily emigrate to one of the 23 Arab states in the region.
Some critics have charged that the law is unnecessary, hardly the case in a world where Israel’s legitimacy as the Jewish state is constantly under attack and especially in an environment in which previous advocates of the “two-state illusion” have now abandoned that chimera in support of a “one-state-for-all-its-citizens delusion,” essentially a renunciation of the existence of a particularly Jewish state. Sometimes laws come to reinforce basic values, norms and notions, and it is noteworthy that Israel for the first time in its history – and long overdue – it has adopted an official anthem, flag and language (Hebrew), all reflective of its Jewishness.
And perhaps therein rest the discomfort, discontent and even hostility in some circles to this law. There are too many Jews who see themselves first as universalists and only then –if then – as Jews. They are uncomfortable when Jewish symbols infringe on their universalism, and horrified when actions of the Jewish state (self-defense, for example) “embarrass” them in their social circles. The dictates and value system of Torah having been long eschewed, and exchanged for Western secular liberalism, anything that smacks of being Jewish becomes, by definition, “too Jewish” and even “Charedi.” Their Jewish identity, as noted here in the past, is primarily ethnic, not religious, but even the ethnic identity has to be bland, innocuous and couched in a universal framework.
It is odd, indeed, that a law that seems so self-evident to many is deemed repugnant to others. As Israel becomes more Jewish and religious in population, character and practice, the secular minority has become more shrill, more vocal, and to a great extent, has lost its moorings. What was natural to Ben Gurion – “the establishment of a Jewishstate in Eretz Yisrael” – has somehow become anathema to his party, no longer his followers in any meaningful sense. Ben Gurion, for all his flaws and his rancorous relationship with the Torah, had Jewish pride. That is not necessarily true of his socialist and secular heirs. Those who fear the Arab reaction to this law would have recoiled from declaring statehood seventy years ago, no doubt mindful of the Arab “reaction” to that provocation.
En route to complete redemption, the men are indeed being separated from the boys, the believers in the Zionist dream from the non-believers, the people of faith from the faithless, and the proud Jew from the pretenders. It is shameful, and of course reflective of the acrimonious partisanship that afflicts so many nations today, that the bill passed by only 62-55. The world that has not fully accommodated itself to Jewish independence in the land of Israel can rant and rave, but who would have thought that nonchalance or opposition to Israel as the “Jewish state” would have so many Jewish supporters? That too is a disturbing sign of the times.
And the recent fiasco involving Birthright, in which young participants brought to Israel on the dime of Jewish communal funds seized the opportunity to abandon the trip to visit with Israel’s enemies, simply underscores the problem of garnering support for a Jewish state in the land of Israel from people alienated from Torah. That dilemma trumps the problem of dealing with a coddled, egocentric generation that feels entitled to anything – including a free trip to Israel – and does not see the moral absurdity of taking someone’s money and diverting it for your own purposes.
In this time of Tish’a B’Av, the annual commemoration of the destruction of both Temples, the temporary loss of our homeland and the weakening of Jewish nationhood, we can celebrate this forceful assertion of Jewish pride, identity and strength, and pray that all Jews join the bandwagon. The era before the final redemption will be tumultuous; in fact, it is already tumultuous. All we can do is hang on, maintain our faith, learn Torah, do mitzvot, reach out to our fellow Jews and pray that the days of sadness and strife are soon transformed into days of joy and peace.
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