Explaining Israeli Judaism

Explaining to Jews from Diaspora as well as to non-Jewish audience, what does it mean to be Israeli and particularly the Israeli interpretation on Judaism is not easy. Sometimes is not easy to understand either. Part of the discussions are often getting stuck on particulars which endangeres the outline of the bigger picture.

#IsraeliJudaism. Portrait of a Cultural Revolution by Shmuel Rosner and Camil Fuchs is one of the best books about this new cultural phenomenon: being Israeli. Shmuel Rosner is senior fellow at the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute and Camil Fuchs is a Tel Aviv University professor of statistics and pollster whose opinions are often read in the Israeli media - especially those days in the electoral context. 

With a focus on the big picture and the main cultural trends, based on various opinion polls made among both Jews living in Israel and diaspora, it explains at a great extent the dramatic differences that are often reclaimed and hardly accommodated between Israeli and other Jews. Such a cultural conflict takes place not only from afar, but manifests tragically when Jews born in diaspora are trying to make a living in Israel. 

Defined by the authors as 'a start-up enterprise in the service of the Jewish people' Israel evolved as a 'one big field experiment for Jewish culture'. The identity is not settled and has its specific dynamism whose specificities and cultural markers are clearly outlined by the authors. It follows the chore identity values of the predominant groups within Israel: Haredi, national-religious and secular. From a group to another, those values are in conflict and each and every one of the group appears to rather prefer to set clear borders instead of interacting with each other. Personally, I might think that members of the national religious group, inspired by the writings of Rav Kook who outlined a certain openness towards all the Jews are by far the most open to other influences and interactions with secular and Haredi publics. However, as the latest elections demonstrate, the national religious block is going through a serious crisis therefore too much focus on specificities will hijack the main focus of the research anyway.

As Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, quoted in the book mentioned, the Jewish religious law was not written for a Jewish state. What happened in the last 70 years was a permanent adaptation of traditions - as diverse as those brought up by the Jews from Ethiopia, Romania or China - to the challenges of modernity while maintaining a permanent religious background checking and in some cases pressure too. Public transportation is not working on Shabbat and there are no civil marriages in Israel, but there are restaurants open in Tel Aviv on Shabbat and many secular persons would do the bar mitzva of their sons although that's the only way they will go in a synagogue in years. When you are living in Israel, you feel Jewish. In Diaspora you struggle to keep your identity, including under the permanent anti-Semitic pressures. There are sometimes two different realities that are often coming in conflict.

This book helps a lot to understand the root of the conflict while accepting that identity is not given, but a dynamic process. Being 'Jewsraeli' might have a completely meaning in a decade time. Electoral cycles and old and new elites might outline a direction or another. The elections about to hapen tomorrow might contribute to such a change too.

Rating: 5 stars

'The Yemenite Babies Affair'

Once in a while, there are news or various media reports regarding the situation of the babies of Yemeni origin that disappeared in unclear conditions during the mass immigration of Jews from Yemen to Israel in the 1950s. 

In Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict: The Yemenite Babies Affair, Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, herself of Yemeni origin, documented not only the story as such, but reflected extensively about the ways in which Israeli media and opinion makers positioned themselves to the issue. At a great extent, the different approaches are part of the biggest picture of the dramatic rift between Jews of European (Askenazi) and Oriental (Mizrahi) origin, that continues until today.

The 'Yemenite Babies Affair' affected apparently 'hundreds or even thousands of families' whose children disappeared from hospitals or directly from the camps where those Jews were settled after landing in Israel. Some of those kids that were declared dead, reappeared later as they were given for adoption to families of European origin, from Israel or America. Although most of the families affected were of Yemenite origin, families of the Jews from Iraq, Tunesia, Algeria or Libya were also affected.

This is how those kids disappeared, according to the findings of many of the commissions created to investigate the issue in the last decades: '(...) a baby was taken to the hospital despite parental assertion that the child was healthy. The baby was then taken to one of several institutions around the country, such as WIZO, an international women's organisation with centers in Safad, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The parents were told that their baby had died, even as state institutional workers later testified in such cases that these ''parents were not interested in their children'''.

A couple of years ago, when I've read about this issue for the first time, I've asked a friend that used to live in Rosh Ha'ayin, one of the immigrant camps from where children disappeared, about the case. Nonchalantly, she answered that it was quite known this situation, but...

The 'new Jew' that Ben Gurion endeavoured was: 'secular, cultural Westerner with light skin, who was attached to his land: he was newly settled from Europe with no traces of Mizrahi image, culture or history'. But not all Jews coming from Europe were equal, actually. In the book it is mentioned the case of a Jew originally from Iraq that upon arriving to Israel, dressed in his best clothes with suit and tie, he was sprayed with DDT desinfection powder. Actually, I've heard more than once such a history about DDT desinfectant used for those coming from Eastern European countries. 

Using extensively Edward Said's theory on Orientalism, the author is outlining the persistence of political projections of the European-oriented establishment against the Jews of Oriental origin. The 'Yemenite Babies Affair' is one of the most outrageous examples in this respect, because it cumulates all the mispercetions and stereotypes associated with the non-European Jews, not few of them still persistent. The indifference of the public opinion and the diluted news reports on the issue - with some noticeable exceptions - is a common denominator of the approach. Ironically, the left media who is extensively covering Palestinian-related affairs, played numb and so did the politicians. The dovish Shimon Peres is quoted in the book in relation with the 'forgiveness' that Askenazim owe to Mizrahim: 'Whare are we apologizing for? For establishing this great country?'. 

I personally think that operating under the frame of the 'Orientalism' - which says that the 'West' created a convenient, master-to-servant relationship towards the 'East' - although it offers a relatively simple/simplistic operational and conceptual framework it doesn't necessarily cover all the aspects related to a problem. It is unidirectional and risks to create a reverse syncretism that in fact enforces the initial stereotype. In the very specific case study of the Yemenite Babies this theoretical framework brings meaning to the problem,  but the relationship between Askenazim and Mizrahim are by far more complex and deserve a case-by-case approach and understanding, taking into account all the specific details of the problem. 

The episode of the Yemenite babies is heartbreaking and very hard to grasp and accept. The new generation that grew up as Israeli not necessarily Askenazi or Mizrahi is probably more open towards each other to interact, work or fall in love. But the shadow of the past ignites sometimes and the right answers and solutions cannot be found unless all the aspects of the problem are known in (their ugly) details.