Aliyah, Post-Amona

A friend I grew up with in Albany, New York (who happens to have founded K'Cholmim) wrote the following in response to what some have been calling a good old-fashioned 'pogrom' in Amona. He wrote it in the talkback section of an IsraelNN.com article posting live pictures as the battle in Amona raged:

"...After wasting so much time and energy to try and better a state that I thought was "reishit smichat geulatenu" [the beginning of the flowering of our redemption -ed.] I now understand that good and evil can not mix, that this State is truly evil (this is hardly the first example, just one of the more shocking). Though I will continue to identify as a member of the Jewish People, I can no longer side with the "Israelis." This is an evil state and an evil society, and I will not volunteer to continue to be a part of it.

"Goodbye Israel. You broke my heart."

I shed a tear after reading it, and after seeing emails from others, some who have not even finished their Aliyah paperwork, talking about reconsidering, realized that although I have been in news-writing mode for the past few years, I must return to my former writing style to address this issue.

My first emotion was anger. Anger at the Israelis-by-lack-of-Green-Card who have hijacked this mighty nation toward the path of national assimilation, demoralizing and physically beating down good member of the tribe along the way. Then came pain - pain that a good man, who laid it all on the line for the Land of Israel is now saying, "We are grasshoppers in their eyes and are but grasshoppers in our own eyes," - just like ten of the twelve spies sent by Moses to scout out the land before our people first left exile for the Promised Land.

The pain and anger subside quickly though, once I acknowledge the part of the glass that is so full: There is an Aliyah Revolution afoot, like it or not. The rise of Nefesh b'Nefesh, with planeloads of olim-by-choice, are not due to any economic boom or enlightened government here in the Jewish State during these years since the collapse of the Oslo Accords and the launch of the Temple Mount War (merely translating the Arabic 'Al-Aksa Intifada') ? but due to a conscious return Home by people who know it is time. This Aliyah does not consist only of activists, nor does it consist largely of settler-types like myself. It contains within it suburbanites, Hassidim, good ol' American Jewish hippies together with PhD students, kids straight out of high school who join the IDF instead of some fraternity, and a whole bunch of hipsters who are just way too cool for the Exile. This Aliyah is not about escaping some outside force (economic hardship, Jew-hatred) that can change at some future point - it is about Israel simply being the place for the Jew who wants to do Jewish in the 5766.

Everybody is on their way home to Zion and everybody is needed here (even if you want to see a reenactment of the Six Day War with an armed Hamas PA and nuclear Iran). For a moment though, I am just going to address my homies - if you will. Those Jews who are tuned-in, but are considering dropping out (of the Jewish Project), due to seemingly insurmountable odds.

I for one, don't see Ehud Olmert, some consistently-wrong polling agencies and a state-controlled press to be 'insurmountable,' but that's just me.

I don't know what the events in Amona looked like to those who were not there, but if they weakened your resolve that this is the place to be, then the bloodied heads of teenage activists and the brutal order-followers with the batons distracted you from the panoramic shot of what went on there. What I saw on the beautiful mountain of Amona, where Abraham stood and was shown all of the Land of Israel by the Most High, was a glimpse of the Land of Israel. It was the glimpse that we American Olim, (we American ascenders, literally) saw for a moment, or longer, that initially brought us to consider staying here and making it our home, leaving perfectly excellent lives in the Exile.

Through the blood and smoke, I saw dedicated youth, some having dragged the adults in their personal sphere of influence along. When I say 'youth' I mean to include post-army grads and entire families - families who expected Amona to be a festival of democratic carry-me-away-gently protest, like back in the days of 'Nam or the Civil Rights Movement. Oh wait - back then people also had to submit to police violence in order to stand up for justice! Every generation has its challenges.

You know who those people were? Those parents who took off from work to risk a broken bone? Those kids who are no longer dazzled by the uniform the order-follower who comes to tell them a Jew has no right to the Land of Israel was wearing? Olim. A majority of the protestors were olim or the children of immigrants - and I was not surprised.

Every Diaspora community brought with it some key ingredient from the Exile to modern day Israel - a spark, if you will - that enriches and drives the Jewish Project being played out in the Land of Israel.

We American olim - immigrants-by-choice from the pinnacle of western civilization, bring with us the willingness to stand up for justice, no matter how impractical 'The Man' tells us that justice is - until justice prevails, and injustice crumbles. We bring with us the knowledge that the statement my friend wrote - that "good and evil cannot mix" - is merely an excuse to sit on the sidelines and allow evil to be perpetrated until good just drops from the sky - which would defeat the entire purpose of our creation.

We bring with us from the fleshpots not only liberal arts educations, imbuing us with the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Jewish brother Abbie Hoffman, but the cultural Torah of twin-souls and mass Aliyah-enthusiast Rabbis Shlomo Carlebach and Meir Kahane, who taught American Jewry, each in his own way, what Love of Israel was all about.

We came to Israel to build and are unfazed by physical destruction. We came from the permanent spiritual destruction be wreaked in the Exile and compared to that the demolition of a concrete structure is not an emotional hardship. Those in Amona left not with the feeling of defeat, but with the sense that they had stood up for justice, breathed the sweet air of revolution and were forced to pay a heavy price. The wounded all say they are ready to continue to pay it on behalf of the Jewish project and the Jewish destiny.

We need more people, though. I am not just talking about more people to stand up to face the police horses and clubs, but more people to be here, to play their role in improving and enriching all aspects of Jewish statehood and the rehabilitation of our nation after an extremely long and difficult journey through Exile. If you are alive in this generation and see something wrong with the State of the Jews, or even have the desire to turn it into the Jewish State ? then you are, as Stephen Gaskin once said, "God's eyes on the scene" ? and it is your responsibility to get a move on and get fixin'.

The wounds incurred in Amona will heal. The wounded in the hospital told each reporter the same thing: they don?t regret a thing and vow to return the next time. Israelis-by-choice are a growing force on every level, fixing our people's great sin of rejecting the Land the first time around by embracing the good and fixing the not-yet-awesome.

I am told Ehud Olmert has two sons who refused to serve in the IDF and a daughter who lives in Paris. Meanwhile, I have a brother moving here in less than two years and recognize at least one person every time Nefesh b'Nefesh brings a planeload of American revolutionaries (they call 'em olim) over.

Meanwhile, Israel is now the largest Jewish population center in the world, and will soon be home to the majority of the Jewish people. The Land of Israel where the game is being played and the only place where the Jewish Project can be carried out and implemented, in all its glory. Moreover, if you believe the Master of the World indeed gave us a blueprint for perfecting the world at Mount Sinai, then you must concede that the holy document makes it quite clear where this society must be built. If you don't buy that, but somehow have the secular Jewish urge to implement some sort of massive world-fixing project - forget Honduras, the cameras of the world are focused on Jerusalem, just waiting for someone to do something right here so it can be broadcast as an example to the rest of humanity.

And seriously, between the color-war and the school yard skirmishes (ok, even following the ocassional 'pogrom' called for by an unelected interim Prime Minister), life in the Promised Land remains rich and beautiful. You meet human gems on the streets each day and in the line at the supermarket. Spring has arrived early and everything is in bloom and, all the while, more and more Americans are packing their bags to make the move and American accents are heard in places like Afula, Jaffa and Beit She'an. At my home in Sde Boaz, where a house was demolished less than a month ago, trees are taking root in soil was evidently was not meant for a house, and a community has grown stronger. I planted a Carob tree yesterday before I went to work in Beit El (Home of the original Stairway to Heaven).

So please, as someone who was hit with a baton by an Israeli policeman in Amona, as someone who saw a house built laboriously by Jewish hands crushed under the bulldozers of the Jewish army, let me assure you that not only are the other 45 homes in Amona still standing, the community of Sde Boaz is still planting and growing and building.

The only way we can lose this struggle, or fail to deliver the goods to our children's generation, is by throwing up our hands and choosing the irrelevance of Jewish exile, replete with its struggles against Holocaust-forgetting and gentile-marrying, over the awesome task of moving the Jewish destiny forward using the puzzle pieces each and every one of us holds, which together constitute Jerusalem rebuilt.

With love and blessings from the Holy Land,
And with hopes that Israel does not lose one of its greatest Levites,
Ezra