Obsessive Jews and Israeli Flag Chocolates

Ittay wrote (at 4:49PM, Feb 10th 2006)

You write, "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."

Living within the pre-67 borders is not exile. Ezra, you clearly have a deep love for the land of Israel. Why not direct your energies into building halachic communities for religious and secular Jews in Tel Aviv and Herzeliya. Create new settlements that embody a unity of purpose rather than an obsession with land.

I respond:

Ittay -

I am sorry that you mis-read my words. I was not calling the parts of the Land of Israel won in our War of Independence "the exile." I was referring to America. I was saying that self-exiling oneself from the Land altogether (in this case by moving to America) rendered one irrelevant in terms of the Jewish Project and the national collective obligations laid out in our Document from Mount Sinai.

You have succeeded in bringing up a very important point, though.

I am talking about staying in all parts and any parts of the Land of Israel (hey, you can even live in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria or the Sinai and I won't say you are choosing the "irrelevance of Exile." I am talking about fighting for justice, even if 250,000 Jews are forcibly transferred into the coastal plane from the Biblical heartland of our homeland due to the mass-cliche you seem to have bought into, urging the Jewish people to get over its "obsession" with land.

I don't know, man, is it really me who suffers from an obsession here? Our people have a state smaller than New Jersey and are being convinced by their state-run media to shrink it down to the size of Delaware so we can all huddle together in the warmth of the television image of the US President offering our (now comatose) Prime Minister Israeli flag-shaped chocolates and promising to defend us from Iran, which is another way of saying "don't defend yourselves."

It seems to me that many of our people indeed have an obsession with land, which involves the belief that transferring ownership of it to a hostile Arab world will somehow allow us to have more "normal" lives on this planet, even as Hamas sweeps the elections and the most dangerous regional force goes nuclear as the world looks on and yawns.

Come to think of it, I suppose a people that sits gets together three times a day to pray, meditate and declare publicly their intention to return to this place, for 2,000 years, reciting verses about the ingathering of the exiles and the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple after every bit of bread they consume, is by its nature a bit obsessed with the controversial real estate between the Nile and the Euphrates.

I will now answer your broader question regarding building a model community on land won 19 years earlier than the land I currently live on was won (albeit this land was home to Jews just twenty years earlier, before they were killed, with their wives and kids sent to Herzliya ahead of the battle) in order to focus on what is really important: unity.

It happens to be that small communities of ideological and caring Jews who understand the power of Jewish unity continue to be built in Herzeliya as well as Tel Aviv ? such things exist already on various scales, but city-life is a whole different ball game. What we at Sde Boaz are doing is creating a community of people with different backgrounds and religious ideals who have come together with a reason and a purpose: to build the Land of Israel and let those out there with an internet connection or a couple spare hours to come and visit, know that there are still Jews - from all walks of life, wearing all sorts of clothes, head-coverings or facial hair - who care about building, who do not aspire to normality but to living up to the grand charge that is our task, and to building strong stone foundations for the Jewish people here to replace the rotting ones that are crumbling faster than many of us imagined when we decided to join our people here in the Land.


Unity is useless if the apex of that unity is mediocrity and passivity. Unity happens when one fraction of the nation stops imposing its dream on the other half. You don't want Judea and Samaria? You don't want the Temple Mount? Don't go there. Why do you want to take that away from the part of your people who cares? Can you still utter that same "maybe it will work" that cost us thousands of dead since that sentiment allowed Oslo to happen? Is it really about hating reserve duty? Is it about sending your child to be a soldier? What if you knew those things would not change with a withdrawal?

What about after the Great Retreat, when I move next door to you and your kids. What happens, when in your hopefully liberal society, kids start to come home wanting to learn more about the authentic parts of Judaism you dismiss with clich?'s like "fundamentalism" and "extremism"? Will you suggest I move elsewhere? I would be careful what you ask for, because if the Jews of Judea and Samaria are forced into "exile" - never thought to call any part of Israel exile, but I have to admit that those forced out of their homes in Gaza certainly feel exiled - they will gather the sparks wherever they go and elevate that "exile" as well.

It may very be what the Master of the World has planned for us, in order to bring our people around. That, however is not up to us to plan and the Jewish blood that would flow due to such a retreat is not ours to gamble with. Justice. Justice shall you pursue, my friend.

Injustice is not the opposite of Justice, lazy "pragmatism" is.

Looking forward to Sde Boaz Bet and Gimmel in Tel Aviv and Herzliya,
Ezra