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Yom Ha'atzmaut

Written by Rabbi Charles Wallach Tuesday, 20 April 2010

Rabbi Charles Wallach of Brighton and Hove Reform Synagogue reflects on our relationship with Israel on Yom Ha'atzmaut.

Travelling along the Number 15 bus route through Jerusalem is a fascinating experience. It commences at one end in Katamon, those areas which were the front line to fighting in 1948 and today is a typically mixed populace of secular and mildly observant Jews. It winds through Talbiyeh, the president’s residential area and past the Sherover Theatre: leafy suburbs attracting the upper crust of Israeli society, before going through town and into the strictly orthodox, ultra orthodox in fact, areas just off the Jaffa Road, ending towards Har Nof, also strictly observant, often populated by “born again” new orthodox American immigrants: The Number 15 bus: almost a microcosm of Israeli society.

Or one could use a different route: one that links the old Hadassah hospital on Mount Scopus to the new one built in West Jerusalem because access to Mount Scopus was denied Israel for 19 years between 1948 and 1967. A look at the passengers would reveal a different mixture: one that includes many Arabs – both citizens of Israel and others, able and willing to be treated in Israeli hospitals. For Israel is seen as having the facilities – as Israel has had the facilities going back to biblical times as our Haftarah from last Shabbat has it: and even then the country from where that captain came was not quite at peace with Israel or Judah: Aram is another name for Syria, just to the east of Israel, then as now a thorn in her side. Leprosy, or tzaraat, for we do not know whether it was truly that disease that Albert Schweitzer met and conquered in West Africa, was nevertheless a contagious killer and destroyer. The priests, acting this time as government medical officers of health, as it were, were able to deal with it though: isolation, destroying it at source with even the need to bury the very fabric of the housing seems to have been the best and most effective method... but it worked.

Modern Israel, with its hospitals, its technological advancement in other branches of science, its advancement in so many different fields remains this amazing enigma: An enigma attacked by the outside world because of its apparent intransigence on issues where for so long its neighbours have been intransigent: For the lack of recognition, the taking of pot shots at the populace, the burrowing of tunnels to bring in weapons with which to take those pot shots and launch rocket attacks are really the thing, you know. And so, opportunities for talks, for true peace come and go, leaving the world to have to deal with a current Prime Minister in Netanyahu who will not give what, say, a Prime Minister Rabin, Peres or others of that ilk might have done a decade or two ago.

One knows the stakes are ever changing: The Iranians may be able to be kept in check as of now, but let us not bury our heads in the sand. Realpolitik tells us all that the danger lurks. A split with the USA will not help, on the contrary, that alliance simply has to remain strong, and deft diplomacy is needed in a world where old alliances sometimes give way to new ones.

But Israel’s only constant reliable is ourselves: even that link is often under scrutiny, with a body of critical Jews going under such titles as “not in my name” and so on being not only internally critical of Israel, but openly and publicly attacking her. Of course, let us not ask how they felt in 1967, 1973 even after Entebbe and so on when Israeli action and counter action made not only for Israeli victories but for World Jewry to walk tall. A country, any country, as our leaders are showing in the current campaign, is in need of constant scrutiny and review: In the aftermath of the tragedy that recently befell Poland’s elite many still said that they had disagreed with the major aspects of the president’s policies. But all were united in their grief and in the need to pull together to bring Poland through this disaster.

Israel is and remains ours. And we are its, we are united as one: land, people, faith. It remains for us to deal with it as perhaps we do our families: sometimes critical, sometimes all loving, but always as uppermost in our thoughts seeking its very best.

So, as we salute Israel’s 62nd anniversary, let us drink a l'chaim to its continuing achievements, let us do what we can to support those endeavours, and, as always, let us ultimately hope for that one elusive but constant: The hope for shalom, the hope for peace.