The Zionist Dream...And the Reality

Rosh Hashanah Day 2, 5761 (2000)

I would like to share with you a story, written in the style of a folk tale, by the great Hebrew writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon:

It is entitled, "Ma'aseh ha-Ez," "The Tale of the Goat."

Once upon a time, there was an old man who was very sick. The doctors were sent for, and they advised him to drink goat's milk. And so he went out and bought a goat and brought her into his home.

One day, the goat disappeared. She was nowhere to be found. Finally, she returned by herself, and when she returned, her udder was full of milk, milk that tasted as though it came from the Garden of Eden. This happened time and again. The goat would disappear, they would search for her, and not find her until she returned by herself with her udder full of milk that was as sweet as honey.

One day the old man said to his son, "My son, I would like to know where the goat goes and from where she gets this wonderful milk." His son said, "I have an idea." He tied a cord to the goat's tail. He said to his father, "When I feel a pull on it, I'll know that she has decided to leave, and I can catch the end of the cord and follow her on her way."

Sure enough, soon the goat set off, and the young man followed her, holding on to the cord. He followed her through the woods until she disappeared into a cave. He followed her the whole way, firmly holding onto the cord. They walked for a long time. It might have been only for an hour or two; it might have been several days. But eventually, the goat wagged her tail and bleated, and the cave came to an end.

When they emerged from the cave, the young man saw beautiful hills. He heard the chirping of birds. Fountains of water flowed from the ground, and the breeze was scented with fragrant flowers. The goat nibbled at the lush fruit on the trees, and drank the sweet flowing water.

There were people around, so the young man asked them, "Where am I?" They told him, "You're in Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, very close to the City of Safed.” The young man lifted his eyes to the heavens and said, "Barukh ha-Shem, Thank you, God, for bringing me to the Land of Israel!" And he kissed the soil and sat down under a tree. And then he said, "I must bring my father to Eretz Yisrael."

But just then he heard a voice proclaiming that Shabbat was about to begin, and so he wrote a note to his father: "Father, I have come in peace to the Land of Israel. Here I sit, close to Safed, the holy city, and I am drinking in its sanctity. Don't ask how I got here. Simply hold onto the cord which is tied to the goat's tail and follow the goat's footsteps. You will eventually find your way here."

And then the young man rolled up the note and placed it in the goat's ear. He said to himself: When she arrives at my Father's house, Father will pat her on the head, and she will flick her ears. The note will fall out, Father will pick it up and read what is written on it. And then he will pick up the cord and follow the goat here to Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.

Well, the goat returned to the old man, but she did not flick her ears, and the note did not fall out. When the old man saw that the goat had returned without his son, he clasped his hands to his face and began to cry. "My son, my son, where are you? Would that I might die in your stead!"

He continued to mourn for his son and he refused to be comforted. "Surely," he said, "a wild beast has devoured him and my son has been torn to pieces."

Whenever he saw the goat, he would say, "Woe to this creature who drove him from the World of the Living!"

It grew intolerable for him to look upon the goat, so he sent for the shochet, the butcher, to slaughter her. The shochet came and slaughtered the goat, and as he did so, the note fell out of her ear. The old man picked it up and said, "My son's handwriting!" When he had read all that his son had written, he clasped his hands to his head and cried, "Oy. Woe to the one who robs himself of his own good fortune, and woe to the one who pays back good with evil!"

He mourned over the goat many days and refused to be comforted, saying "Woe is me! There’s no longer a short-cut! I could have gone up to the Land of Israel with one leap, and now I must suffer out my days in this exile!"

Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, is a magical, dream-like place in that tale, remote and inaccessible, lush and beautiful.

Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel is, in its own way, a glorious place. It is a Jewish state, where Hebrew is the national language, where the culture is Jewish, where the Jewish holidays frame the calendar. And, after all, any of us can drive to the airport and get there in a day. But, for better or worse, Israel is a real place, with real people and real problems. It may be accessible, it may be beautiful, but it is hardly serene. Ironically, given the piety of that folk tale, one of the key sources of tension in Israel is the role of religion in a Jewish state.

Here's a story from the real Israel: About three weeks ago, a former Israeli cabinet minister who had been convicted of bribery, fraud and breach of trust finally exhausted all of his appeals and went to jail to begin a three year prison term.

This was no ordinary corrupt politician. This was Rabbi Aryeh Deri, former leader of the third largest political party in Israel, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party. Rabbi Deri was found guilty, by a fair and impartial trial court, of corruption while in office. Yet he and his supporters look at it totally differently. Thousands of them lined the highway from his home in Jerusalem to the gates of the prison, creating huge traffic jams as the parade slowly made its way. As many as 50,000 attended a rally on his behalf at the entrance to the prison. At the rally, speakers compared Deri to the biblical Joseph, who was thrown in prison in Egypt, but who subsequently was freed and rose to become second only to Pharoah in Egypt. Others, equally grandiose, compared him to Alfred Dreyfus, the French Jewish captain who was falsely accused of treason at the end of the nineteenth century. As he was led off to prison, Deri sanctimoniously clutched a Torah scroll, playing the role of martyr to the hilt.

What a sad day for Israel! That a cabinet minister, one representing a religious party, should be found guilty of corruption! That his conviction – rather than his behavior – should be condemned by the religious leaders of his party, in the same language that we would use to condemn anti-Semitism! And, worst of all, that those same rabbis and scholars would excoriate the state so scathingly, so contemptuously, describing the state as their persecutor, as their enemy, and relating to it as they were living in a foreign country, as if the government of Israel were not a legitimate heir to the age-old dream of restoring Jewish sovereignty to the Land of Israel! This is about as far as you can get from that beautiful, dream-like Eretz Yisrael of the story.

How did this happen? Israel was created mainly through the efforts of socialists who had abandoned their religious faith. When these pioneers left Russia and the Ukraine for Palestine in the late 1800s and early 1900s they were fleeing from, among other things, the authoritarianism and the pre-modern sensibility of the religious life in their villages and towns. They were striving to create a new nation in which democratic, socialist ideals would prosper, a place where religion as they had known it would be irrelevant.

Ironically, they failed because they didn’t appreciate the power of religion. The only form of Judaism that the early secular leaders of the state knew about was the one they had rejected in their youth: traditionalist Orthodoxy, and they frankly paid it no mind, figuring it would soon die out. In the early years of the state, a compromise was reached with several Orthodox religious authorities. In exchange for their support and cooperation, the Orthodox leaders were granted exclusive jurisdiction over the Interior Ministry and domestic relations among Jews, and Orthodoxy was recognized as the only legitimate expression of Jewish religion.

As a result of that compromise, reached over fifty years ago, Israelis have been denied the freedom to choose just what kind of Jews they would like to be. The liberal denominations that we take for granted in this country were never permitted to flourish. Most Israelis understandably have come to see Judaism as dogmatic and coercive, rejecting scholarly insights and teaching superstition instead of belief. Most Israelis have no meaningful way to connect with Judaism, and the recent scandal involving Rabbi Aryeh Deri has only confirmed this.

What is our role in all this? We have a choice: to look upon the scene and do nothing -- to be, in a sense, like that passive old man in the story, who pays lip service to his dream but takes no initiative; or we can get involved, and try to fix what is broken.

If we believe in democratic values, shouldn’t we try to promote them in Israel? Shouldn’t we support those in Israel who are trying to create a constitution for Israel and create legal options for civil marriage and burial? And if the notion of religious coercion -- even Jewish religious coercion – here in America would repel us, then shouldn't we support those who suffer from it and are seeking to eliminate it in Israel?

There are Jews in Israel today who seek an interpretation of Judaism that is respectful of Jewish tradition and yet doesn't denounce the insights of modern scholarship, that is open and welcoming and committed to the future of the Jewish People and the state of Israel. Masorti Judaism, which is the name that Conservative Judaism goes by in Israel, is able to offer Israelis this alternative.

What can we do? We can support our fellow Conservative or Masorti Jews in Israel, who badly need it. We can help Israel become a better exemplar of Jewish values by supporting organizations that promote social justice and religious pluralism. We can connect with Israel in a variety of ways. I’ll leave it to Dr. Richard Curtis, the chair of our Joint Israel appeal this year, to fill in the blanks in a few moments.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon, the author of that folk tale that I read, began his career as a Hebrew writer living in Europe. He was born in Buczacz, in Galicia, and then he lived for several years in Berlin. But he eventually made aliyah in the 1920s. He moved to Talpiot, a suburb of Jerusalem, where he lived for the rest of his life and played an active role in Israel's culture and intellectual life. You can still see his house today. For Agnon, Israel was a dream, but it wasn’t just a dream; it was a real country, with real struggles, a place to which he devoted his life and his creative energies.

Like Agnon, the great Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, who died just last week, struggled to reconcile the dissonance between dreams and reality. I want to share with you this morning, in translation, a portion of one of his better-known poems. It really captures, I think, this challenge for all of us:

Once I was sitting on the steps near the gate at David's Citadel and I put down my two heavy baskets beside me. A group of tourists stood there around their guide and I became their point of reference. "You see that man over there with the baskets? A little to the right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. A little to the right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!"

I said to myself: Redemption will come only when they are told, "Do you see that arch over there from the Roman period? It doesn't matter, but near it, a little to the left and then down a bit, there's a man who has just bought fruit and vegetables for his family."

(“Tourists,” by Yehuda Amichai, translated by Chana Bloch)

Amichai is telling us in this poem that, to make dreams come true we can't just be observers, we can't just be tourists. We have to get involved. We have to take it seriously. Like Amichai, living his day to day life in the shadow of that Roman arch, it's our obligation to come to terms with Israel the reality as well as the idyllic Eretz Yisrael, and do whatever we can to make redemption happen.

Let us not let the cord connecting us to the Promised Land slip out of our grasp!

Please now give your full attention to Dr. Richard Curtis, chair of our joint Israel appeal. Thank you.