Last week Ari Shavit gave the keynote speech at the HUC-JIR gala dinner, talking about Israel, the relationship of North American Jewry to Israel, and the education we give our kids about Israel. Frankly, it wasn’t a pretty picture: Not entirely bleak, but challenging, and with a big challenge for us as educators. Shavit characterized the issues facing North American Jewish educators as “the millennial challenge,” which he outlined in the following way:
Our kids are indifferent, at best, to Israel. “It used to be cool but isn’t any longer,” Shavit said. The controversies over Israel’s internal politics and military policy have taken their toll on its reputation in North America, especially among younger Jews. “Israel has lost the collective Zionist narrative” it once had. We were taught, and taught our kids, that Israel was David against the Goliath of an unfriendly Middle East. That it made the desert bloom. That it was an island of democracy in a sea of repression and autocracy. Now the internal divisions of Israel loosen its ties to North America, especially among our kids. As Shavit put it “BDS is not the problem; BDS exploits the problem.”
There is real tension between North American Jewish youngsters and Israel’s leaders. According to Shavit, who travels extensively through North America visiting college campuses, “our kids are torn.” They want to support Israel but feel the story they were told about Israel is false. And we have not helped. They were taught a perfect story of an heroic Israel, and now when they hear a different story, a controversial story, a story in which Israel seems to be losing its essential democracy, they don’t know how to answer it, and their identification with Israel collapses.
And so Shavit asks: What is the narrative about Israel that will now win the hearts—and the souls— of our youngsters? “What is the next Zionism?” Shavit calls for action both in Israel and here at home. In Israel he calls for making Israel a truly democratic Jewish state. It’s hard to understand what precisely that means on a day-to-day basis, but for Shavit it includes creating a pluralistic union that has a moral dimension, that pursues justice as well as power.
But Shavit also issues a call to us. He calls upon us as educators to look at Israel fully and honestly, and be willing to discuss its greatness, its merits, its challenges, and its stumbles with our youngsters in an honest way.
And so I’m wondering: how are we doing at that?
