NOW COMES THE HARD PART

Better a Jew: For the growing minority of non-Jews living in Israel, a sense of belonging can be impossible to achieve. (Nicky Blackburn, 4/21/03, Ha'aretz)

[I]srael must face facts. Today there is a growing minority of non-Jews who live within the Israeli community. We are full members of this society and yet we are still denied some very basic human rights. My two sons, for instance, can serve in the army, they can pay taxes, but they cannot marry here, nor can they be buried alongside Jewish friends or partners. Like me, they will spend their lives listening to constant sniping remarks by politicians and officials who feel they are second class citizens, the dirty water that slipped in on a wave of immigration. They too may have to listen to jokes about goys, sarcastic comments about their parental heritage, and have doubts raised about their Israeli identity.

This, however, is a mistake. Today there are 50,000 Russian immigrants living in Israel who identify themselves as Christian, and another 270,000 who are not Jewish according to halakha. While some of them have given up and left Israel, in a few cases even seeking asylum in England on the grounds of religious persecution, the rest are here to stay. Israel must make a decision. Does it want yet another alienated minority, or does it want full citizens who feel a real bond to their country?

In the wake of all this, it is hard to understand why the Orthodox community is so determined to make conversion such an unpleasant process. Every year thousands apply to convert, but only a small number make it through. Assimilation today is a major problem for diaspora Jews. Experts are beginning to realize that it is also a growing problem within Israel. At a recent conference, Dr. Asher Cohen, of Bar-Ilan University's Institute for the Study of Assimilation, reported that the present rate of intermarriage in Israel stands at 10 percent, and is rising. Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, head of the Kibbutz Hadati Yeshiva, also told participants that rabbis who ease the conversion process and promote mass conversion, are actually preserving Judaism.

Instead of welcoming new converts, however, Judaism shows them its worst face. Potential converts are too often met with narrow-mindedness, corruption, and distrust. While some people undertake conversion with a full heart, many others view it as a game in which you cheat and lie to win.

Had I been met with understanding, then perhaps I would be Jewish now, and so would my two children. For Israel, it was a missed opportunity. Instead of teaching me to respect the religion, I learned instead to despise its protagonists. My children are growing up as Israelis. Their overwhelming identification is as Jews. But they also celebrate Christmas and Easter. If they ever decide they want to convert, I will support them, but there's no doubt my experiences will shape what I tell them about the Orthodox religion.

Today, I have no real idea of what it will mean to bring up two non-Jewish children in Israel. Perhaps as they get older they will be bullied by classmates, perhaps they will be accepted unquestioningly, perhaps they will feel they do not belong. Much depends on where we live and where they go to school. Much also depends on how Israel develops once the war with the Palestinians is finally concluded.

In the last few years, I have noticed a change in Israel's character, a growing maturity and tolerance within the secular population. Israelis today are more willing to accept people who are different. Certainly things for me have changed. I now have a warm relationship with my parents-in-law, whom I love dearly, and people rarely ask if I'm Jewish.

Despite that, however, I still feel like an outsider. At Christmas I bring out my tree and decorate the house, but inside I feel it's almost an act of defiance. A few years ago, a co-worker arrived in the office fuming because hotels in Jerusalem had put up Christmas trees. I told her that I put up a tree every year. "Well I hope you shut your curtains," she said bitterly. "It's not right that people in your neighborhood should have to see it. When you live here you should respect our beliefs." I was deeply distressed by her prejudice, but the awful truth is that I really have begun to feel that my religion should be hidden away behind curtains.

Just a few weeks ago I had another reminder. I was writing an article on Tekes, a new alternative Israeli organization set up to provide secular ceremonies for Jews who cannot, or do not want to, undergo an Orthodox ceremony. I suggested to the founder that I might also write up the article for a newspaper here. He hesitated for a few moments, and then said: "No offense, but I think it would be better if a Jew wrote the story."

It's been common in recent months to talk about how defeating Saddam is the easy part, building a healthy civil society in Iraq the hard part. This, as we've mentioned, seems idiotic to us: the years of Saddam's repression and the killing we've wreaked and sustained in twelve years of war in Iraq have been more difficult for all than even the messiest peace will be.

So our headline above is not meant seriously, obviously the bloody years of war and terror that precede Israel achieving some kind of modus vivendi with its Arab neighbors and most particularly the Palestinians have been harder than what will follow. Yet, we'd do well not to underestimate just how hard Israel's immediate future, after the peace, will be. To some significant extent it has not mattered up until now exactly what the relation of Judaism was to the state of Israel. Israelis were being blown up because they were Jews and citizens of the "Jewish state". Like all societies under attack, Israel experienced an artificial cohesion as people banded together to resist the violence being directed at them. The phenomenon of unity governments, combining Right and Left in one cabinet, is just one example of how contradictory forces ended up tethered to one another.

Mostly deferred, or at least minimized, have been questions like: what is the purpose of Israel? who is an Israeli? who is a Jew? etc. Now though, as external threats become less frightening, the internal threats will come to the fore. And they are far greater threats to Israel's existence in the long term than terrorism and war ever were, though thankfully less violent. They include: a declining birth rate that raises the specter of Judaism disappearing because Jews themselves will have all but ceased to exist; along with this decline in the real numbers of Jews comes the problem of whether a state where Jews are outnumbered can be said to be a Jewish state and whether the non-Jewish majority will be willing to preserve a special role for Judaism in the life of the nation; the rise of the secularist Shinui Party, ethnically Jews, if not necessarily faithful, and opposed to any official role for Judaism in the state; and a whole series of similar intractable issues. If demographics is destiny and secularization an inevitable function of modern democracy, the state of Israel as we've come to know and love it may well be doomed, regardless of any peace deal. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 27, 2003 9:23 PM