Lots of people are commenting on Jay Michaelson's recent piece in the Forward, How I'm Losing My Love for Israel. When I got a link to it on the Jewish Mosaic weekly newsletter, I decided I had to post my thoughts.
I thought of calling this entry How I'm Losing My Love for Jay Michaelson. But I don't actually know Jay Michaelson, I just admire him from afar as an out Jewish gay leader, part of a new younger generation who have moved so far forward on Jewish LGBT issues. I see him referred to often in Jewish Mosaic posts. In the awful aftermath of the Bar Noar shooting August 1, I was so touched by the response of Jewish Mosaic. I felt that I really was part of a worldwide Jewish LGBT community responsible and committed to one another. So Jay's article was a big disappointment.
I thought of calling this entry How I'm Losing My Love for the USA. Of course, that goes back awhile, to 1993 when I met and fell in love with a woman who is not a US citizen. The year we married the US passed DOMA, and four years after that we were on our way into exile here in Israel because the US has no same-sex partner immigration rights. But my love for the country I was born and raised in and its ideals has been on the upswing since the recent elections and I still entertain hopes that some of the grave injustices present there will turn around.
I thought of calling this entry How I'm Losing My Love for the American Jewish Community, but that would be pretty self destructive to write. I've spent the past 16 years working full time in or for the American Jewish Community - one way or another it's the resources of that community that pay my salary. And half my family and most of my friends are part of that community. So despite my frustration with how easily many North American Jews are willing to dismiss Israel, as though somehow it might be possible for them to disconnect from the world's largest Jewish population center, from the history, the heritage and the miracle that Israel is despite its faults, I can't say I'm losing my love or giving up on the community I grew up in.
I thought of calling this entry How I'm Losing My Love for the Gay Community, but such a statement would feel even more heretical and betraying. I've often felt very ambivalent about the gay community, which makes very little place for observant Jews like myself, but organizations such as Jewish Mosaic and Nehirim have help me maintain a sense that I am part of something, and this blog is in part my attempt to be more out and more connected in the aftermath of the Bar Noar shooting last month.
So I thought the only honest thing I could call this is How I'm Losing My Love of Love, at least the romantic ideas of love I had when I was younger. From where I am today, love is more an action than a feeling. Love is holding my 3 year old when he was vomiting last night and the 2 hours my partner watched the kids so I could sleep it off this morning. Love is going to a parent meeting exhausted at 8 pm and struggling to understand the Hebrew and the completely foreign culture so I can be part of my daughter's education. Love is the hundreds of volunteer hours put a couple of dozen families here in Tzur Hadassah so that we can have a thriving progressive synagogue, the only one in this area. Love is the hours that I and my co-workers spend helping North American students (like Jay Michaelson once was) find funds, housing, Shabbat meals, and all they need to be here in Israel for however long they can and make a connection. Sure, it's our paychecks, but we do it because of our love and commitment to the Jewish People.
M. Scott Peck explained this in The Road Less Travelled. I'll paraphrase him badly no doubt, but he said that when we love, we want what is best for our beloved, and through our love and commitment, we work toward that. All kinds of wonderful things here in Israel, from the Israel Religious Action Center, the Reform and Masorti movements, the Jerusalem Open House, Rabbis for Human Rights, BeTzelem, etc., are here because of the actions and the love of Jews in North America.
So if you feel like your love for Israel or for anyone or anything in the world is waning, think about what the last thing you did was to nurture the connection. Love is an action.
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Beautifully said. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteYour statement: Love is an action, not a feeling really hit home. Thank you. And you are so right: if love is fading, what have we done to nurture the connection.
ReplyDeleteb'shalom
and thank you for helping Psalms breathe new meanings into my spirit!
Amen Gail! I was always fond of the following definition for love: Love is a verb. Bless you for writing this (and Bless you, period!)
ReplyDeleteGail,
ReplyDeleteIt's always hard to weigh in on discussions like this, because so many emotions and factors are all active simultaneously.
I do know Jay personally and, while he certainly doesn't need my protection, I'm more inclined to respond because I feel that much closer to the conversation. I'm also very involved in, and grateful for, Nehirim, which has added a much needed dimension to my Jewish life.
I read Jay's essay very much as I read your words about love. Love is an action. But love is also in the moment. Relationships are long, covenants are enduring, and within them emotions rise, fall, and evolve. Holding a vomiting 3-year-old is a true element of the relationship. I'm sure there are moments in the loving relationship when you get fed up with the 3-year-old and give him a time out, yes? To me, Jay's article so clearly depicted his emotions and experiences of this moment in his on-going relationship with Israel.
Real relationships require maintenance work from both (or all) parties involved. I don't always find Israel (writ big) makes it easy for me to love her/him/it. It struck me that Jay may be feeling some relationship fatigue with Israel. He's not out, he's not dropping out, but he's tired. Nu? There are aspects of the beloved that become clearer to us, the longer we're in relationship -- some more endearing, some less. It took me a while to realize that the sweet singing I heard on Friday nights in Jerusalem was often from homes in which I would be neither welcome nor comfortable as a Jew or a queer man. I can still love Shabbat in Jerusalem, but I need to find a different basis for that love.
That said, perhaps Jay's experience is less disenchantment with Israel than disenchantment with the mythologizing of Israel that still prevails in North American Jewish dialogue. Speaking for myself, I'd say it is a wearying conversation to sustain. The wonderful initiatives you list above are very much part of the Israel I love. I led a tour this May of the Israel I love that included nary an instance of the Israel I don't -- it was the best trip I've led there and reinforced my belief in a "lovable" contemporary Israel that you, Jay, and anyone who'd join me would appreciate. It's NOT the Israel that most Jews (or non-Jews) here want to talk about, though. If my love for Israel had to survive on contemplation of the mythologized Israel lauded stridently in most of the comments appended to Jay's article, it would get shaky, too.
It only bothers me that whatever negative thoughts or doubts we have about Israel are so loudly and aggressively shouted down over here. Too many Jews here continue to use the George W. Bush technique of labeling critique or disenchantment as unpatriotic betrayal. In that experience, to paraphrase Oscar Hammerstein II, I occasionally get weary and sick of trying. That's what I recognized in Jay's article, and I'm glad he has a public forum in which to say it.
With warmth and respect,
David Bauer
David - Thank you for your thoughtful comment. On the one hand, I agree with you that it's good Jay can write about how he feels. On the other hand, I think all of us need to ask ourselves all the time about the impact of our words. In titling his piece "How I'm Losing My Love for Israel", Jay clearly placed his feelings in the context of the way love is usually understood, and in that way perhaps bought into the world of mythologizing you are talking about. He could have called it "How I'm getting frustrated with the politics of Israel" and it would have sounded quite different. I chose to use his metaphor and give examples of why I would not use that kind of language (losing love) to talk about what I consider a committed relationship (between Israeli and Diaspora Jews).
ReplyDeleteIn the end, one does not have a relationship with a country. One has a relationship with people and institutions. My relationship with the INS is not the same as my relationship with the US Congress which is not the same as my relationship with the people in the US that I know. When I narrow my relationship with the USA to how I feel about US immigration laws, it's obviously a gross reduction of what the US is about.
For 8 years Americans asked me not to view them solely in terms of their president. I am asking you the same courtesy.
And when it comes to relationships, I don't think you can pre-judge what people singing in Jerusalem would think of you. I spend my life coming out to Israelis from all walks of life, religious and secular, whenever possible I feel safe to do it. I believe we will build bridges one at a time, like you did with your wonderful trip to Israel. And we will build bridges by not assuming what others think of us and by not demonizing settlers, Haredim, Arabs, or anyone else. This is the lesson I committed to when Avraham David Moses, the son of a dear friend, was murdered in the Beit Midrash of the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva on Rosh Hodesh Adar 5768. May his memory and the memory of all who have lost their lives here inspire us to listen and to commit to what we believe in.
I'm asking you, my friends and Jewish leaders in the US, not to succumb to "Israel fatigue" - to find what it is you can connect with here, to connect and to inspire others to connect.
Gail,
ReplyDeleteWe can let this thread go -- I'm often not good at knowing when done is done -- but you wrote a couple of things to which I wanted to respond.
Jay's title may accurately reflect his feelings or it may also reflect the love discourse that's current here -- either one love's Israel or one doesn't, and only one expression of love is kosher. I'm not sure. He might have been saying both to some extent (I'll ask him when I see him at the end of the month). I wish more people had made your point in the reams of commentary after his article, engaging him in dialogue rather than calling him a fascist, as many Forward readers (emphatically, NOT you) did.
I certainly know better than to see you and all of Israel as in synch with the Israeli government. It's not true now, it never has been true. I'm sorry if I didn't make the distinction clearly.
My experience of anti-gay and anti-Liberal Jewish prejudice in Israel is not second hand, however. Stuff has been said to my face, to my friends. I've found wonderful places to sing and folks to sing with in Jerusalem, but I know better than to expect that every group that sings beautifully is going to welcome me or my boyfriend or my Torah insights. I don't demonize Haredim, but I have a lot of anger about some things that have been said by some of the few Haredi Jews with whom I've spent time. I'm willing to build bridges, but I'd like there to be a construction crew working from the other end, also. You have accrued exponentially more positive and negative experiences, no doubt. I'm not disputing either your experiences or your wisdom, but neither my frustrations nor my moments of satisfaction are built solely on stereotype. Some stuff just plain happens.
I couldn't agree more -- Jews in the States have a responsibility not to succumb to Israel fatigue. It does take thought, energy, time, and money to fulfill that responsibility, to find and maintain the individual relationships that are genuinely nourishing. I find Jay's words -- the ones I agree with and the ones I'd tweak -- very plausible utterances from within that life-long process.
David
David- Thanks for continuing the dialogue, which I'm happy to do. Talkbacks to articles, as you describe with the Forward, seem to me to attract extreme views. I see this blog as a place where constructive dialogue can take place, and I agree pretty much with all you wrote. I do wish Jay's article had focused a bit more on the ongoing commitment I think it likely he also feels to Israel.
ReplyDeleteRegarding homophobia, I did not at all mean to imply it does not exist in the religious and haredi communities - of course it does. And I'm still waiting for the police to find the shooter from the Bar Noar shooting. As you know, homophobia is all over the US - perhaps we expect less from fundamentalist Christians, Mormons, you name the group.
But I believe there is also a construction crew, as you put it, on the other side. Especially within the modern Orthodox community, there are people who work on these issues. I've come to see things as much less black and white and to be able to discern shades of grey among various members of the Orthodox and for that matter Conservative communities. The level of acceptance is, I think, well beyond what I might have expected several decades ago.
B'kavod rav,
Gail
Nice post. Your message is strong -- love is action.
ReplyDeleteYou offer a serious challenge -- if you love Israel, do something!