Several years ago, when I served as minister of industry and trade, I often led delegations of businesspeople on trips abroad, seeking out opportunities for economic partnerships around the globe. We would typically land in a foreign country - say, Brazil - spend a day or two in business and political meetings, and then, afterward, I would make it a point to spend a final afternoon visiting the local Jewish communities. I would visit with schoolchildren and parents, or see the synagogues, or would meet the leaders of local Jewish life. I relished the opportunity to get a real feel for the texture of Jewish life in that locale.
Birthright participants in Israel.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski
The businessmen were usually more than delighted to accompany me wherever I went - from meetings with important trade ministers, all the way down to visiting even the most obscure factory or trade union. But I was struck that when it came to my visits to the Jewish communities, very few would exhibit a real interest to come with me. Most would use the extra day to do their shopping, sightseeing and restaurant hopping. I was puzzled by this.
These Israelis were people who proudly identified themselves as Jews. Why was it that they were so disinterested in Jewish life elsewhere in the world?
Eventually, I asked some of them about this. What became clear is that they, like many other Israelis, tended to view Diaspora Jewish life as something to be glimpsed at in the rear-view mirror. It was a vestige of an antiquated past - a past in which Jews were humiliated and oppressed, and a past that, through modern Israel, we Jews were finally beginning to outgrow. They didn't need to bother visiting Jewish schools where kids struggled with Hebrew, for that was yesterday's world.
The old Portuguese synagogue is quaint, but essentially uninteresting. Why do I need to spend my time visiting these living museums? The soccer games in the sands of Copa Cabana are so much more interesting.
THE CONDESCENDING attitude of my Israeli friends toward the Diaspora has been mirrored, I think, in a way the Diaspora itself has historically related to Israel. Jews from the Western Diaspora were used to seeing themselves as the strong ones, aiding Israel in its desperate hour of need. Whether it was emergency appeals of the UJA to help settle destitute immigrants from Arab lands, or even something as simple as buying Israel Bonds for your cousin's bar mitzva, Diaspora Jews tended to see themselves as the big brother of Israeli Jewry, someone upon whom Israel could depend on when the chips were down.
In a strange sort of way, Israeli Jewry and Diaspora Jewry had each viewed the other as if it were an unfortunate younger brother in danger of sinking into oblivion at any moment. And, truth to be told, neither attitude was entirely wrong - and each served its purpose.
On the one hand, the lion-like spirit of David Ben-Gurion, his unwavering conviction that the new Israel would be strong, self-sufficient, and could leave behind the wretched past of exile - that had its place. This vision gave the halutzim strength, and provided them with the fortitude to surmount almost impossible challenges. Similarly, the Diaspora's romantic notion that they were saving Israel from imminent threat, helped rally millions of Jews to Israel's side in times when Israel's future really was quite precarious. Each of these attitudes was rooted in reality, and served an important purpose.
Nevertheless, this paradigm - the "unfortunate younger brother" image that each community harbored toward the other - has run its course and has become outdated. Israel has become a hi-tech powerhouse, and can more or less take care of itself. By the same token, the Diaspora has proven that it will be around for quite a while yet; rumors of its death are much exaggerated. As such, each community must recognize that its paradigm, the pair of glasses through which it has traditionally peered out toward the other, is due for an updated prescription.
In seeking to adjust our vision going forward, we need to ask: If building the state and facilitating the aliya of more than 3 million of our brethren from countries of oppression were challenges that defined the last 60 years, what are the challenges that will define the next 60? And as we move toward that next 60, can the Diaspora and Israel forge a new relationship - a relationship based on something more enduring than mutual charity or patronizing beneficence toward the other? And finally: On what basis can Israel and the Diaspora develop a shared way of looking at the future, rather than clinging to the bifurcated vision that has defined their respective pasts?
LET'S BEGIN by tackling the first of these questions: What are the emerging threats, opportunities and needs that will occupy our attention and resources for decades to come? The most obvious answer is the existential menace to Israel coming from Arab terror and from Iran. But while that's true, I firmly believe there is another existential threat, too, and it comes not from the outside, but from the inside. In a word, the overriding challenge of the future will be posed by one innocent sounding phrase: identity. The great threat that faces us is mass assimilation, by default, into a homogenized, global culture.
In a world in which clerks in New Delhi answer the phone for Alamo Car Rental in San Francisco, in which national borders seem to evaporate in a blur of McDonalds and Twitter messages - in that world, Israel will be under greater and greater pressure to justify its existence as a Jewish state, and the Jewish people will be under greater pressure to maintain itself as a distinct entity. In such an environment, our future will rise or fall based on our ability to communicate to ourselves, to our children and to the world why the Jewish people must continue to exist as a unit unto itself. If we fail to meet this challenge, we will silently disintegrate from the inside, as surely as if we had been attacked from the outside.
