by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky
It would be edifying if Israelis truly understood what is happening in American Jewish life and paid less attention to the instigators of insincere indignation, such as those who smeared Hotovely. Netanyahu should have supported her.
As if on order, no sooner had I written “Life with a Smear”
when we were presented with a real life example of a smear – a
deliberate and conscious attempt to manipulate and distort the words of a
public figure in order to shame her, force an apology, get her fired
and ruin her life and career – all for the purpose of gaining some
petty, partisan, political advantage.
The other
day, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely purported to
“disrespect” and “outrage” “all of American Jewry” (these are actual
quotes from her critics) by articulating basic truths of which all American Jews are aware. Asked
why there is a disconnect these days between much of American Jewry and
Israel on diplomatic issues, and how such matters as the “Kotel”
controversy have angered such a large part of American Jewry, she
answered that Israel is the homeland of all Jews, “of all streams,” and
every Jew should come live here and thereby influence Israeli society.
But, she added, most American Jews are “not understanding the
complexities of the region,” as they are –and here are the phrases that
allegedly ticked off the self-appointed leaders of branches of American
Jewry that are in such a steep decline – “people that never send their
children to fight for their country, most of the Jews don’t have
children serving as soldiers, going to the Marines, going to
Afghanistan, going to Iraq. Most of them have quite comfortable lives.
They don’t know how it feels to be attacked by rockets.”
If
we parse her words fairly and objectively, it is clear that her
sentiments are true and indisputable. Most American Jews do not have
children serving as soldiers, Marines, in Afghanistan or Iraq. That is
obvious, and I would speculate that most American Jews don’t even know someone
who serves in the American military or served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
(I do – a young former congregant was a Marine who fought during some of
the harshest combat in Fallujah, Iraq, and I was proud to officiate at
his wedding at which he wore his full dress uniform, replete with sword,
and of course a good number of chaplains.) But most don’t, and that is
true today of most Americans.
This is not
because American Jews are selfish, uncaring, unpatriotic or disloyal. In
truth, we are underrepresented in the American military according to
our percentage of the population, but that has to do mostly with the
underrepresentation of particular socio-economic brackets in the
American military and the underrepresentation in the military of
sections of the country where most Jews live. The higher socio-economic
bracket to which one belongs and the more liberal the area of the
country in which one lives, we find the lower the rate of participation
in the military. This is true for Jews and non-Jews. We can quibble
whether this should be so but not whether it is so. It is, and so it has
been since the United States abolished the draft 45 years ago.
(Parenthetically, only 25 % of the current members of Congress have
served in the military, compared to close to 80% of the congressmen in
the 1970’s.)
What Tzipi Hotovely said is absolutely true.
But
this is how a smear works: Rick Jacobs, the leader of Reform Judaism
who has become an open foe of a strong, proud, traditional Israel,
castigated her for being “ignorant and ill-informed,” because, as he
said, “my father served with distinction” in the American army. Indeed –
we honor his father’s service! – but she did not say that Jews have
never served in the American military (“never send” is not the same as
“never sent,” and even that phrase was clarified), but rather that most
Jews “don’t” serve in the American military. Note the verbal legerdemain
– pretending her remarks were a blanket statement about the past rather
than a comment on the present. That is rank dishonesty, and he should
be ashamed of himself for engaging in it.
The
point is not whether his father served or even whether he served (I
assume he didn’t; he and I both came of age after the United States
switched to an all-voluntary military). When there was a draft, Jews
were drafted and served like any other citizen; American Jews fought in
World War II in a greater proportion than our share of the population.
I’ve walked the grounds of the American military cemetery at Normandy.
The Stars of David that mark the graves of the dead American-Jewish
soldiers stand out, if only because the thousands of crosses are
arranged so neatly. But they are there, in almost every row. She was
speaking about current events, how most American Jews today are detached
from a military life, and how that surely taints their views on Israel
where fighting in the military in an existential conflict that will not
end is part of life and the expectation of almost every teenager. And
she is correct – so correct that I would be curious to learn how many of
her critics, or her critics’ children, have fought in the American
military.
Here’s another shameful smear: the
accusation that she was disrespecting all those young American Jews who
go to Israel and enlist in the IDF. Again – smear. Distortion.
Misrepresentation. Lie. And this is how it works – did she mention lone
soldiers? Did she mention the IDF? Of course not. Look at both her words
and the context. In our community, many dozens of youngsters over the
years have enlisted in the IDF, and we are proud of all them. But have
any of them fought in Afghanistan or Iraq? Not to my knowledge… So
this is a blatant effort to willfully distort her words. She made no
reference to the IDF – so how can she be accused of disrespecting those
who fight in the IDF? But this is how the smear game works – more verbal
sleight-of-hand – denouncing someone for what was said and is true by
attributing to them things that were not said and are false.
There
are two real problems at play here, and Minister Hotovely is
responsible for neither of them. The officialdom of the heterodox
movements is uncomfortable, even resentful, of a successful woman who is
proudly Jewish, proudly religious, proudly traditional, proudly Israeli
and proudly right-wing. She undermines several of their persistent
narratives about Orthodoxy and traditional life in Israel. Seeing the
Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel wearing a shaitel must gall them. Too bad – for them.
And
the bigger problem is this: with the heterodox movements in a free
fall, both in terms of raw numbers as well as influence in American
politics because of the persistent liberal bias, they need an enemy to
energize their base. They need to periodically – these days, it’s every
few weeks – find a scapegoat, an accusation, an insult or a cause to get
their people riled up. It can be the Haredim to whom they attribute all
sorts of mischief and ill-will. It can be the Kotel, where suddenly –
literally, suddenly, after many decades – the status quo of exclusively traditional prayer bothers them. It is as if they woke up one day and realized – or contrived – that the status quo must
bother them. It can be the non-acceptance of their conversions, their
rabbis, or their modes of worship in one form or another. It can be the
growth of the settlements or a forceful response to Arab terror or Gazan
rockets. But it is always something.
That is
why even an apology from Tzipi Hotovely, which she proffered because
that is the way the smear game is played (and shame on the Prime
Minister for not standing behind her), will not suffice for the
complainants. They want her and her kind out! It is not her but what she
stands for that irritates them. She is a constant reminder of what they
too could have – with their children and grandchildren – if only they
would return to the honest study of Torah and the true observance of
mitzvot. That is why they seem to be perpetually aggrieved and always
cross about something going on in Israel.
When
many Israelis speak of “American Jewry,” they conjure to themselves a
benign image of Jews who proudly love and support Israel, feel a deep
emotional bond, and constitute a solid bloc of the type of encouragement
and cooperation that one can expect from family. Would that it were so –
but those days are long gone, sadly. Most American Jews today are unaffiliated –
they do not identify as Orthodox, Reform or Conservative. They don’t
feel that bond with Israel that their parents and certainly their
grandparents did, most by far have never even visited Israel, and the
ranks of American Jewry (including the heterodox movements) have been
decimated by intermarriage that has obviously sapped their
identification with Jews and the Jewish State. And the heterodox
movements are permeated with Western ideas and values that occasionally
conflate with Jewish ideas and values, but not always, and they can by
and large no longer tell the difference.
The
cause of Israel struggles today on college campuses because too many
young Jews are cut off from their Jewish identity. The more the Jew is
disengaged from Judaism, Torah, mitzvot and Jewish values, the more he
or she will be disengaged from Israel. It is a tragic but accurate
formula – that is why Minister Hotovely was banned by a “Jewish” group
from speaking at Princeton – but there is little that Israel can do to
reverse that trend. Identification and support for Israel will result
from an enhanced sense of Jewish identity but those young Jews who are
estranged from Israel have already embedded another identity and set of
values and priorities. That is what has to be reversed and at this the
heterodox movements are ill-equipped as they have long fostered an
alienation from Torah.
That is why they force
themselves to be outraged, manufacture slights and insults, and are avid
players of the “Gotcha Game,” in which they monitor every single word
of their targets in order to find the one word that they can wrench from
context, cast in the most negative light or otherwise twist and falsify
– all so that they can show relevance to their dwindling flock and
their fellow travelers in the secular media. This is the smear game in
action.
It would be edifying if Israelis truly
understood what is happening in American Jewish life, paid less
attention to the instigators of insincere indignation, and more
attention to those Jews whose Jewish children and grandchildren will be
building Torah, supporting Israel, making aliya and preserving
the future of the Jewish people. And, of course, it would be an absolute
delight if all Jews – of every stripe and background – did the same,
and in so doing brought the era of redemption closer.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is spiritual leader of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey and anoted lecturer and author.. A past President of the Rabbinical Council of Bergen County, he also served as a Vice-President of the Rabbinical Council of America, is a trustee of the RCA on the Board of the Beth Din of America, as well as a dayyan on the Beth Din itself, is a member of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, and was American co-spokesman for the International Rabbinic Coalition for Israel. Ordained at Yeshiva Bnei Torah in Queens, NY, he also has a Juris Doctor degree from the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law.
Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/21318
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