Reinvigorating religious Zionism with a national creative effort
A national creative effort would require not only the presence of many creative individuals. It would also require some coordination.
By ESTHER CAMERONJethro and Moses (watercolor circa 1900 by James Tissot).(photo credit: WIKIPEDIA)Back in January 2020, The Jerusalem Post published an op-ed of mine titled “Analyzing the Religious Zionist Debacle.” In that article, I quoted the religious-Zionist thinker Motti Karpel to the effect that a “national creative effort lasting a generation” is needed in order to reinvigorate the movement. At the end of the article I suggested that such an effort could be facilitated by one concrete step: setting apart Motzei Shabbat (Saturday night) as a time for “brainstorming” sessions.I wanted to follow up with another article elaborating on the rationale for that suggestion and envisioning possible logistics. I was afraid it would sound a bit impractical and otherworldly. But since political chaos does not appear to be sorting itself out, and since the coronavirus plague and the lockdown have seriously rearranged the world as we knew it, perhaps there is room for weighing proposals of this kind.The rationale: a national creative effort would require not only the presence of many creative individuals. It would also require some coordination. Setting aside a specific time when everyone committed to such effort would be meeting and sharing ideas, would be a first step toward coordination.Motzei Shabbat appears to be the logical time, when the work week has not yet begun and some of the spirit of Shabbat lingers. Practically, it is the time which the most people would have free, because not many events are regularly scheduled then. Symbolically, it is appropriate to religious Zionism’s mission of bridging the sacred and the secular.Setting this time aside would entail sacrifices. Participants would have to be prepared to say “I can’t attend this simcha or this concert or (chalilah) this funeral, because at that time I am engaged in an urgent enterprise on behalf of all of us.”Such statements would send a message about the importance of this work and would hopefully move others to get involved.The groups should be small enough to give each participant significant time, but large enough to enable a many-sided discussion. Ten would seem to be the optimal size, both because it would have these properties and because it has traditional precedents – not only the minyan but also the plan suggested by Yitro (Jethro) to Moses, to which I will return.The discussions would need to be structured so as to avoid several perennial pitfalls of group meetings: the constant struggle for the microphone, the tendency for a few people to dominate the discussion while others keep silent and the tendency for arguments to arise where participants try to demolish others’ positions rather than developing their own thoughts. Meetings that do not avoid these pitfalls are wearisome and unproductive.One procedure that I have suggested, and have seen work when adopted, is for participants to sit in a circle and speak in turn for at least two rounds, for five minutes each, according to a timer that is passed from hand to hand. This enables participants to relax and listen, and then speak without fear of interruption.Next, channels would need to be set up for the sharing of ideas among the small groups. Here the “Yitro Plan” could be invoked. Each group would choose a representative, who would communicate with the representatives of up to 10 other groups. When there are 10 such groups of groups, each second-level group would choose a representative, and so on. Thus the structure suggested by Yitro could be built from the bottom up.Here time is a limiting factor. The representatives of the first-level groups might possibly find another time to meet (perhaps once a month). But regular meetings of the higher levels in real time would become impractical.Here the Internet could play a role. Imagine a website with a page for each first-level group, where members would post the ideas that had surfaced in the meetings. For each 10 first-level groups there could be a page with a link to each of the groups. Ten such websites could be linked together by another page. And so on. Each higher-level webpage would have an administrator who would read the postings from the level immediately beneath and forward selections to the webpage of the next higher level. At each level, the administrators would have to communicate, in order to choose the representative to the next level, but this communication need not be in real time.A second question that arises is how the composition of the groups would be determined. The first circles would probably form among people with preexisting connections. When a certain number of participants have been reached, perhaps participants could be regrouped according to interests and fields of knowledge or activity. Here “matching” programs, like those used in computer dating, might play a role.The organization thus formed would incubate ideas and facilitate the recognition of abilities, the making of connections and the formation of an intellectual and political community that could address the questions of the Jewish commonwealth in a spirit of problem-solving. If this is possible, then religious Zionism will regain its leadership position – in Israel and beyond. ■The writer is a poetess living in Ma’aleh Adumim
