The Other Story Is-real, Too: On Learning from Other Canadians About the Jewish State
Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon 2022/5783
By Rabbi Mark Glickman
I’ve spent a lot of time over the years thinking about Zionism and Israel. I took seminars on the topic as an undergraduate. I lived in Israel for two wonderful years during the 1980s, my rabbinical thesis was a biography of an anti-Zionist Reform rabbi who gained widespread notoriety during World War II, and who was still alive when I wrote about him. During the more-than-three decades of my rabbinate, I’ve spoken out about Israel-related issues, I’ve drawn criticism for my views, I’ve tried to comfort the communities I’ve served when Israel was under attack, I’ve sat through countless meetings with countless congregants struggling with Israel-related topics. Some of my discussions about that little country that occupies such a huge place in the Jewish heart have been frustrating, others have been uplifting. And they’ve all been spirited.
And then, six years ago, I came here to Calgary, and as I’ve noted from this bima before, here the conversations have been even more difficult than elsewhere. Here, when Israel comes up at a meeting, things can get…a little tense. Here, when I first suggested a congregational trip to Israel, one of the first questions from congregational leaders wasn’t “How many people do you think will attend?” but rather “Will we lose members over it?” Here, people either clam up over Israel perspectives with which they disagree, or they scream at those who disagree with them. “Rabbi,” people tell me, “I don’t feel safe sharing my views about Israel at Temple because everybody is so far to the left of me.” “Rabbi,” others say, “I don’t feel safe sharing my views about Israel at Temple because everybody is so far to the right of me.” “Rabbi, who does she think she is to say that about Israel. I can’t believe it!”
I’ve found it astonishing, actually, because I’ve served at a bunch of Jewish communities over the years, and never before have these issues taken on the heaviness that they have here at Temple B’nai Tikvah. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Israel discussions at other congregations have been difficult at times – plenty difficult – but never like they are here. My rabbinate has seen a couple of intifadas, growing settlements in the Occupied Territories, repeated conflicts in Gaza, the Rabin assassination, the Netanyahu administration, and much more. And believe it or not, there are Jews who disagree with other Jews about these topics. But here, the whole thing seems heavier, more intractable, more difficult to discuss in every which way.
And if you’ve been attending Days of Awe services for the past few years (or at least “attending” them), you know that I’ve been struggling to understand what makes these issues so much more difficult for us to discuss here than in other synagogue communities, and I’ve been encouraging you to engage and argue constructively about them rather than to lash out. I’ve had, to put it gently, limited success.
And so, I’ve continued to read, I’ve continued to listen, and I’ve continued to reflect on this issue, and just recently, I realized something I find fascinating about the way this issue plays out for us. It’s an insight that probably won’t serve as a magic pill to make these discussions easy anytime soon, but it’s one that may provide a helpful framework to guide us in that direction.
What I realized is that, unlike all of the congregations I served before coming here to Calgary, our congregation here in Calgary…is in Canada. And contrary to what I realized before moving here, Canada is different from the United States. And what’s more, Canadian Jewry – its people, its history, its perspectives – is different from American Jewry, too. And these differences are particularly important when it comes to our discussions about Israel.
Put most simply, Canadian Jews are collectively of two minds about Israel. We have two fundamentally conflicting perspectives on that little country along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. And these conflicting views are so fundamentally at odds with one another that the people who hold them end up speaking entirely different languages about what’s going on in Israel. Our discussions over Israel end up tending not to be arguments, but rather cacophonies – as if they were vociferous onstage debates between two people who don’t speak one another’s language.
The first vision that many Canadians hold is a classical Zionist one. It argues that a Jewish state is important to help protect us from antisemitism. First articulated by early Zionists around the turn of the last century, it was the dream of Theodore Herzl and other founders of Zionist thought – to have a place where Jews could move to be safe, and live lives free of oppression, and openly as Jews. And in places such as Eastern Europe, not to mention others like Yemen and Damascus, such fears were real. When any day, your family could be expelled, tortured, or even killed in a pogrom simply because they were Jewish, the dream of having a secure national home for the Jewish people was a powerful dream indeed.
And this, of course, is why that dream of an independent homeland only became a practical reality in the wake of World War II. As the smoke cleared after the Holocaust, and the full extent of its horrible devastation became known, the world perceived as never before the need for a Jewish safe-haven. And in a world awash with needy Jewish refugees, the need was particularly acute.
This was a powerful dream. A dream of a people long subject to the whims of history finally returning to its ancient homeland, there to be reborn free and strong, to be actors in the world, not victims; proud, not downtrodden; self-determined, and never again as weak as before.
What’s more, it was a dream that was particularly important here in Canada, , because most Canadian Jew are descendants of Eastern European countries – places where, certainly during the 19th and 20th centuries, antisemitism was force both palpable and strong. Most Canadian Jews came having left behind relatives and communities and friends who fell prey to the Holocaust. And many others came here after the war, remembering all too well the vulnerability of life in Europe, and the unspeakably tragic loss that it allowed.
This, then, is the first form of Zionism – the classical one. It acknowledges the reality of antisemitism, and sees Israel as crucial in protecting our people from it.
But there’s another view, too. And that’s because, for us Canadians, particularly us out here in the west, the search for protection from antisemitism is far from the whole story. In fact, for many of us – even many of us here in this room – there is another story that has come to sit close to our hearts here, and even though this other story isn’t specifically Jewish, it moves us, and troubles us and inspires us in some ways just as powerfully as our own.
This other story I’m referring to is that of indigenous Canadians. Theirs, too, is a story of oppression and vulnerability. And theirs, too, is a painful one for anybody with even an ounce of compassion to take in.
Yes, for many of us in this part of the world, our defining moral issue is one that is far more local than the death camps of Europe. It’s the need we feel as Canadians to own up to the way we’ve treated the people who were living here when white settlers first arrived. I don’t need to recount that history for you – you probably know it better than I do. What’s important to note, however, is that the story is one of outsiders coming to a place where others had lived for many ages, taking over their land, quashing their culture, and oppressing them as human beings. New perspectives on the history of this country have raised our awareness of this story, as have the tragic recent discoveries of unmarked graves at residential schools, and other atrocities, too. If you have even a morsel of compassion, these stories can’t help but get under your skin.
And what’s important for our purposes here is that our sensitivity to the way we treat indigenous peoples can’t help but inform the view that many of us have of Israel. For many of us here, the story of Israel isn’t at root the story of a people returning to its land to rebuild its national life there. Instead, it’s the story of white people moving somewhere where none of them had lived before, and kicking brown people off the land where they had resided for centuries. In this sense, Zionism isn’t the story of Jewish national rebirth as much as it is the story of European colonization of innocent people…just as horrible as what happened here in Canada.
The classic, Zionist response to this, of course, would be to say, “Wait a minute! Who’s really indigenous in Israel? Jews were there long before Arabs were. If anybody in Israel is indigenous, it’s us, not the Palestinians.”
“Yeah,” would come the reply, “but that was in antiquity. Right or wrong, these people – the Palestinians – were living there for ages when Zionism arose, and now they’ve been disenfranchised.”
“Disenfranchised?” many Zionists respond. “Arabs can be citizens of Israel – they can vote. And the occupied territories were conquered in a war that the Arabs started.”
And thus, the discussion continues, rarely reaching any agreement, rarely achieving any insight.
My point is that one of the primary reasons Israel is so difficult for us to discuss is that, when we talk about it here in Canada, we’re really telling two different stories. One is inspirational and beautiful – the story of the national rebirth of our people like a phoenix out of the ashes of the Holocaust. And the other is the story of colonization and oppression of indigenous peoples just like what happened here.
Which is your Israel story? Is it a story that comes out of Auschwitz, or is it a story that comes out of Kamloops? There isn’t a right one or a wrong story, I don’t think, and in the end neither is more Jewish than the other. Yes, the Auschwitz version is more particular to our own people, but the Kamloops Israel story is Jewish, too – it calls upon us to recognize the divinity of all human beings, and to act toward them with care and compassion. What’s more Jewish than that?
Again, I ask you – which of these stories is yours? I would suggest that you to abandon the one that speaks to you most powerfully, but I would like to encourage you to see and validate that of the people with whom you disagree. You don’t need to embrace their views, but just see the kernels of truth that their story might hold. If, for you, Israel is an exciting story of a Jewish return to the land, maybe you could use a reminder that the rise of a Jewish nation in a land where others have dwelt for centuries is morally fraught and ethically dangerous, even if it is something we need. And if you see the Jewish return to the land of Israel as an act of colonialism that should make us as Canadian Jews feel ashamed, then maybe you can remember the joy of Jewish national rebirth that so many Jews feel after centuries of darkness – the joy of hearing Hebrew words being spoken and songs being sung once again on the streets of Jerusalem and other cities; of knowing that, there, the national calendar is a Jewish one, and the rhythms of time are Jewish for the first time in ages; of knowing that Israel provides an unparalleled opportunity for Jews to guide their own national history rather than forcing them to allow others to do it for them; and that finally, after centuries of vulnerability, there is now a safe haven for our people whenever they might need it.
Indeed, one of the hallmarks of civil society is the ability to hear other people’s stories, and to allow those stories to influence our view of the world. Those stories might distort the truth, but far more often than not, they can provide added insight.
Our community here in Western Canada is uniquely rich, and one of the factors that renders us rich is the unique set of stories that our members have brought here. Some have brought us immigrant stories – stories of people escaping hatred for the freedom of this great country. Others bring stories of our struggle to overcome collective responsibility for past misdeeds, as we strive to treat all Canadians with the respect that they deserve as human beings. And most of us bring some combination of these tales and many more as we constantly transform our view of our world as Jews and human beings.
This year, may we hear one another’s stories. May we learn from them. May we allow stories old and new to continue to guide us, to learn from one another, and to make us better each and every moment.
Shanah Tovah.