The “Pintele Yid”

 

I would buy the book that answers a question that I have been struggling with for a long time.

In the coming elections, Israelis are presented with two distinct political/culture/religious camps to choose from. As Yair Lapid calls it, "the future vs the past" In broad terms, one represents uncompromising Jewish identity, the centrality of the land of Israel. and "traditional (Jewish) family values''

The other camp is represented by mostly secular and anti-religious Jews and their anti-Israel Arab allies whose worldview is not affected by a Jewish past.

I understand the anti Israel  Arabs. I also understand  Jews who have become estranged from their faith and People for lack of Jewish education. Their Jewish identity has weakened and has been  replaced  with  the "progressive", post - Zionist / Jewish  narrative  which  surrounds them.

What I would like to understand is why Western Jews who made Israel their home, will vote for the post Jewish camp. I am especially curious about those religious , Western Jews who attend my synagogue who will vote Left.  After all, they made the decision to leave the "progressive", assimilationist West for something far different; a particularistic Jewish state and specifically Jewish land.

Having decided to immigrate to the (embattled) Jewish land, they still feel a need to "understand" the enemy who claims that very land these Western "Olim" disdain other Jews who unapologetically and uncompromisingly love and defend it.

The latter are impatiently scorned as racists; however the Arabs must be approached with patience and conciliation in the hope that they will change their attitude towards Jews and the Jewish state.

This situation is not unique to Jews in Israel.

The well known  psychological malaise of Jews in the West was best witnessed in the tragic history of Jews in Germany; apologizing for their enemies and despising those who are "too Jewish" is not a  new phenomenon.

It is natural spiritual damage incurred in a people who for too long detached from their land and history and made to feel like unwanted guests. The same torn souls brought the Exile psychosis to the "New World" as its self-destructiveness descends towards the oblivion of the Jewish community before our eyes.

The question is why would Jews who identify with  "progressiveness", multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism etc.. move to the most particularistic country in the world where by definition is not any of the above?

I asked one of them, why do some Jews from the West identify with the Left in Israel?  He said that he was "raised on Jefferson and Lincoln". I asked him to explain. He said something about "uniting and understanding". And asked that we not discuss politics. That is about as far as I get when I dare ask.

I don't think they made "Aliyah" to consciously remake their adopted Jewish state and reproduce  the "Progressive" Jewish ghetto from whence they came.

Why did they make Aliyah?

I think that these people remain confused Jews in the Jewish homeland as others were in Germany and the New World.

On one hand they are not able to  relinquish their progressive identity and on the other, the "Jewish spark" within them draws them to the ancestral homeland and their people even as this spark is now gone in most of world Jewry.

Perhaps it can be compared to an inner instinct directs migrating  birds. The "pintele Yid" calls out.

People, and more so Jews, are more complicated than birds and so I am still waiting for the book that will help me understand some of my  fellow immigrants who attend my shul who will vote for the post Jewish and anti Israel  coalition next week.

Or perhaps I answered my own question and I should write the book?

shalompollack613@gmail.com
Israel tour guide and author