REFLECTIONS ON OUR CURRENT SITUATION December, 2024

REFLECTIONS ON OUR CURRENT SITUATION December, 2024 Arthur Green I am an American Jew born in 1941, just a few months before a divided and reluctant America was drawn into the Second World War by the attack on Pearl Harbor. We fought that war and won it under the banner of saving democracy. We and the British were champions of that flag. Our other major ally, the Soviet Union, carried it with hypocrisy, but we let that stand out of necessity. They, after all, suffered the greatest burden of losses. I grew up in the postwar years believing in that America, the champion of freedom, human rights, and liberal values. As the United Nations emerged as a new and strong force in world affairs, it seemed to me that my country always stood up in that arena for the best of human values. I was proud to be an American. That was true under both Democratic and Republican administrations; Harry Truman, Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy all seemed to embody it. Perhaps its greatest champion over the years was Ronald Reagan, who led a proud America through the era of the Soviet Union’s long-anticipated and well-deserved collapse. During those same years, I became a faithful believer in the state of Israel and its legitimacy. I am old enough to remember vast numbers of stateless Jewish survivors in Europe living a Displaced Persons camps. It was clear that they wanted to go to Erets Israel and that only a Jewish state would enable that. It was also clear in the post-Holocaust years that there needed to be a legitimate state to stand up for Jews if they were to be persecuted again anywhere else in the world and to serve as a place of refuge if needed. It was Jewish powerlessness, we said, that had allowed the tragedy in Europe to occur. Never again would we be without that power. The values these two nations cared for, democracy and equal rights on one hand and the ingathering of needy and often desperate exiles on the other, were not identical, but they did not seem to be in conflict. Yes, we paid rather little attention to the plight of the Palestinians after 1948, hoping and assuming in vain that they would adjust to the situation and accept the reality of Israel. We were aware of their unequal situation, but allowed ourselves to be convinced by Ben-Gurion and others that this was temporary and necessary for purposes of security. We became silent, the beginning of our long career as guilty silent bystanders. Abba Eban spoke so beautifully at those United Nations meetings and that guy from Saudi Arabia sounded so terrible that we were sure that we were on the right side of history. My friend Arnold Eisen began his distinguished academic career with a book called The Chosen People in America. It dealt with the reception of the teachings of Mordecai Kaplan, who openly rejected the idea of Jewish choseness. Eisen’s claim was that in America the idea of the Jews as the chosen people was problematic partly because Americans already saw themselves as chosen, a thought going back to Puritan New England. Boston was the ideal “City on the Hill,” a new Jerusalem, and Americans were the new Israel. The two rival claims to be the chosen one simply did not work well together. Many Jews became embarrassed by the claim of Jewish choseness, partly in the face of the American one. In the end, they were willing to set aside their own claim in deference to that of America, in which they firmly believed. Fast forward 75 years. America seems to have abandoned those values. It now begins to look like the vision of the United States as universal defender of democracy and human rights was an invention of the Roosevelts in 1941, a rallying cry to get us to fight the Nazis and the Japanese. After Franklin Delano’s death, it was actually Eleanor who carried it forward into the postwar world. Did it really have deeper roots than that? Did Andrew Jackson or Teddy Roosevelt really believe that America’s goal in the world was to project and protect democracy? The rebels of 1776 wanted freedom of their colonies from the English king and opted for democratic rule within them because it seemed to be the antithesis of despotic monarchy. They had no idea that this little nation they established was supposed to be a great beacon for democracy throughout the world. Abraham Lincoln, eventually and reluctantly, wanted to free the slaves, but that was to create a more perfect union here in the United States, not to play a symbolic and powerful role in world affairs. All that happened in the wake of World War II, with the British empire on its knees and the Soviets displaying autocracy in full force. It was then that we Americans became the real and symbolic power bearing the flag of freedom and democracy throughout the world. The American public has now twice voted Donald Trump into office as its president. Nothing could more clearly say that these values have been set aside. We might have dismissed the first time as a blip, but the second time around makes us sit up and take notice. That glorious postwar period seems to be over, not because America is weakened on the world stage, but at the behest of the American voting public. “America First” seems to mean power and privilege for us Americans and especially for our companies and commercial interests around the world. The “American Dream” is not one of freedom and equality, but one of wealth and comfort for ourselves (and that is often restricted to our white-skinned American selves), combined with disinterest and disdain for the fate of anyone else in this world, extending to the fate of the planet itself. This change, of course, did not happen overnight. It was during the Bush era that I first began to see the transposition of American values from the extension of democracy to the success of American business interests. Remember that all through this era, both Democrats and Republicans had gone ahead with the support of brutal dictatorships, including those of Papa Doc in Haiti, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, and Somoza in Nicaragua. Even Chiang Kai Shek in Taiwan and Sygman Rhee in Korea belong on that list. As long as they were right wing rather than left-wing dictatorships, meaning that they opposed the expansion of Soviet power and were good for the US-dominated business interests, we tolerated them, even giving them significant support against rebels who sought to overthrow them. But at least George Bush was the sort of American who still believed in Christian charity. While he supported all the wrong forces in the American political arena, he was a decent human being. He didn’t fight the progress made for the American poor and his heart told him to give to some good causes around the world, especially the defeat of AIDS in Africa. But Bush was, apparently, just an intermediate step. We now have a president whose own charitable foundation was indicted for fraud and who cares not a whit about anyone beyond the narrow circle of himself and his family. Free market capitalism turns into crony capitalism turns into Kleptocracy. Welcome to the new era in which we live. Perhaps it is just the stubbornness that comes with old age, but I am not ready to give up on this vision of America, one that has been deeply ingrained within me for seventy years or more. My father (born in New York in 1907, a year after his parents’ immigration) was a teacher of American history and civics in high school throughout his career and he instilled in me a sense of faith in that liberal and essentially decent America, or at least its potential. He was a democratic leftist who understood that it still had a long way to go, especially around issues of both racial and economic justice. He nevertheless was a strong believer. “American,” as we understood it, was not an ethnicity; it was a principle. “Un-American” never meant non-WASPish; it meant anti-democratic. We viewed this as a nation engaged in the ongoing process of creating itself. Those of us who came from parts of Europe where democracy was not part of the legacy, including Italy, Poland, Ireland, and lots more, were happy to assimilate to the Anglo-American tradition with regard to how to govern ourselves. The Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution, Hobbes, Locke, and Thomas Paine became part of “our” political legacy. Preserving ethnic identity definitely did not mean preserving the way politics worked in the “old country.” (Contemporary Latino immigrants: Please take notice!) We Jews, remember, were among the greatest cheerleaders for the idea of the American melting pot. Not only a democratic country, but a new people was being forged here. We hoped that Americans would forget the hatreds of the old world from which they came, especially that most ancient one directed against us, and we would all begin with a clean slate. It was Emma Lazarus who wrote the poem for that vision of America, Irving Berlin who wrote the song, and Horace Kallen who fleshed out the ideology. In the 1960s, when our eyes were finally and belatedly forced open to see how deeply this America was afflicted by racism, most of us joined forces with those who called for racial equality in this country as well. Jews were so very successful among 20th century immigrant groups in United States primarily for two reasons: we understood both the value of education and the importance of saving and thus accumulating wealth. The primacy of education was an essential value of our tradition. Judaism is a highly intellectualized religious system, one that always valued scholars above all others. Our history, including frequent expulsions and the need to start over in new places, had taught us the other. Together these paved the way for our success in the American adventure. In the course of the 1960s, the same decade as the civil rights movement, another major change occurred in the situation of American Jews. Members of the old establishment began belatedly to see us as “white,” meaning that we were acceptable in all kinds of places from which we had once been excluded. This included the ability to buy homes in lily-white suburbs, employment in industries such as finance, insurance and real estate, where we had previously been frozen out, and in a few cases even membership in formerly “exclusive” (meaning no Jews, blacks, or other undesirables) country clubs. This process extended over several decades, but by the ‘90s was quite complete. By then, Jews were regularly marrying into “Mayflower” families. It was only the Jewish grandparents who were distressed. This acceptance left most Jews overjoyed and relieved. But when juxtaposed to our natural enthusiasm for civil rights, it put us in a strange and complicated position. What were we to be in America? Were we a minority group, wise to cast our lot with other minorities and eventually work toward the still emerging minority-majority America? Or were we going to accept this gift of “whiteness” and all the privilege that went along with it? Who wanted to make such a choice? As a result, we tried to do both and, predictably, failed. Once black leadership insisted on running its own civil rights movement, they felt that our participation in it was unwelcome, even condescending. Many blacks saw us as having backed out, perhaps even stabbed them in the back, by accepting the white privilege and, of course, doing so very well at it and gaining so much from it. We certainly acted as though we were happy to receive it without insisting on bringing our darker skinned brothers and sisters along with us into this new limited “melting pot” of the upper middle class. Now the reappearance of right wing antisemitism, manifest primarily among working class whites, perhaps suffering from a degree of jealousy, shows us that our acceptance into the wonderful world of whiteness was also not quite as complete as we might have hoped. It was in the same postwar era that we American Jews began to call ourselves a religious, rather than an ethnic, minority. If you would have asked my grandfather among whom the Jews lived in America he would have answered: Irish, Italians, Poles, Ukrainians, and others. He certainly would not have said that we live among Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists. Author Will Herberg, in the 1950s best seller called Protestant Catholic, and Jew, tried to claim a third of the American religious landscape for us, quite a feat for our 2% of the population. But we Jews grabbed onto it, seeing it as a lifeline for our ongoing survival in America. It was becoming ever clearer that ethnicity among those with white skin was not going to be taken seriously in this country, one where color meant everything. Even the census forms made that very clear. You could check off “African-American,” “Asian American,” “Hispanic American,” Pacific Islander,” or “other/Caucasian.” “Jewish-American” or “Greek-American” or “Polish American” did not exist as categories of significance. But religion remained a sacred cow in America, the most pious of all advanced countries. People could certainly not be expected to give up their faith. The problem with this remains that an awful lot of American Jews do not see themselves as religious in any way. This does not mean, however, that they want to melt away entirely into the American pot. In the pre-Holocaust era, forms of Yiddishism were seen as an alternative. But after the extermination of most of the world’s Yiddish speakers, and as Israel privileged newly revived Hebrew, those circles began to fade away. It did not help that some of them were linked to far-left politics, not good baggage to carry in the McCarthy era. Zionism became the refuge for such Jews, who shared pride in Israel and support for it with all the rest of the Jewish community, and with a great many other Americans as well. That takes us back to Israel, which also seems to have abandoned the dreams and values for which we once thought it stood. Many of us American Jews who were great lovers of Israel before 1967 have become its sharpest loyal opposition, still committed to its existence but horrified by the direction in which its voters have taken it. The turn toward the Likud in 1977 was the first sign that the humanistic ethos was going to be threatened in Israel. Under Menahem Begin’s administration, it became clear that Israel was not interested in overcoming the shadow of the Holocaust that had so necessarily and rightly determined its original character. Regular pilgrimages of high school students and soldiers to Auschwitz became the order of the day. The characterization of Yasir Arafat as another Hitler and the conviction that Arabs were out to destroy Israel and slaughter all Jews became the bread and butter of Israeli self-consciousness. Of course, the awful airline attacks of the 1970s and then the two intifadas of the 90s underscored this perception, and their reality and horror are not to be denied. But while Israel was constantly excoriating the Palestinian authority for the negative images of Jews on airwaves and in textbooks, it did little to change the image of Palestinians, including those who were Israeli citizens, in the eyes of its majority Jewish population. Jewish Israelis were encouraged to fear Arabs (again, Palestinian responsibility for confirming this is indeed real) and fear easily leaks over into hatred. The worst arena in which all this played out was, of course, the West Bank, now renamed by the Israeli right as Judea and Samaria. This territory, conquered in 1967 from a Jordanian state that had entered the war reluctantly, should have been held in trust to return to Arab rule once there was a Palestinian entity willing to offer true peace. Instead, Israeli settlements began to eat further and further into the territory and all Israeli administrations permitted them to do so. These incursions began under a religious and quasi-messianic banner, but they then continued and expanded for Israelis, including new immigrants, many Americans among them, who chose the “lifestyle” of living on what they saw as the Israeli frontier. The Americans among them cared about as much for the lives of Palestinians and their welfare as had their American predecessors (hardly “ancestors”) cared about the lives and welfare of the Native American tribes 100 years earlier. The decades of the various Netanyahu administrations have continued to aggravate the situation. The nation-state law, passed more than a decade ago at his urging, says right out loud that the Palestinians have no collective national rights in the historic land of Israel, their ancestral home for many generations. Their individual rights were not in much better condition. This is especially true in the occupied territories, where Palestinians continue to live under military rule and Israelis, increasingly side-by-side with them, are considered citizens. It is significantly better for Palestinans living with Israeli citizenship inside the ever disappearing Green Line, but that hardly means that they have equality. The Israeli Dream, once epitomized by the Socialist Kibbutz movement that was held in such high esteem, has now become a dream of comfortable living in a Ramat ha-Sharon suburb, meaning wealth, mostly derived from the high-tech industry, and an exclusively Jewish-Israeli and international social setting. Palestinians are best located where their existence can be ignored and forgotten. In fact, it does not look very different from the value system of upper middle class America. Israel was very different from America in its early years in maintaining various versions of a collectivist ideology. We were working together to build a new country a new society. For some, that was a Jewish socialist vision; for others it was religious. But in both cases the life of the individual was made to contribute to the building of a new collective entity call the state of Israel. For secular Israelis, their vision decline sharply in the years following the Yom Kippur war. There was a turn inward, both toward financial reward and the more comfortable life for the individual and family and toward self-care, sometimes including healing and meditation, directed inward. It was only the national religious camp that seemed to maintain a sense of commitment to a vision for the society. They then have tried to “share” (or impose, depending on your point of view) that vision with the rest of the society. In recent years, there is a turn inward and toward the spiritual life of the individual also within religious circles, expressed particularly in the great popularity of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav and other Hasidic thinkers. My own Zionism came from synagogue and summer camp rather than from home. The rabbi at Temple B’nai Abraham in Newark was Joachim Prinz, well known as a famous Labor Zionist orator and champion of liberal values. The synagogue filled up each Friday night with over 1000 people back in the 1950s, almost all of them there to hear Prinz speak. In later years, he was closely linked to Dr. Martin Luther King. His Zionism was such as believed in Erets Israel helping to create a new Jew. That meant one liberated from the narrowness of the shtetl vision of yidn and goyim to become a spiritually healthy person, one who saw universal values of humanity emerging from the renewed connection between the people and its land. Once a clever and persistent Hebrew school teacher got me going to Camp Ramah for several summers, I was well on the way to becoming the Hebraist that I am today. I was thirteen years old when I met a couple named Tzvi and Miriam Westreich, presented in camp as Israeli survivors of the Warsaw ghetto. To say that I was impressed is a vast understatement. From then on I was “brought up” on Israeli songs and Zionist mythology. The first Hebrew book I read, after textbooks, when I was sixteen, was Agnon’s Bi-Levav Yamim, “In the Heart of the Seas,” a fable about an early ‘aliyah to the Land of Israel. I had bought in to the Zionist dream, religious and national. On the American side, I am a mere citizen. I have renewed my membership in the American Civil Liberties Union and make regular contributions to a fund for the environment. I don’t feel very capable of much more than that. I am beyond the age of regular appearance at public demonstrations, and the signing of petitions or manifestos, in which I still occasionally engage, feels pretty fruitless. I mourn the passing of the America in which I placed my faith and hope it is only temporary, but I am not sure about that. In the end, I believe that power and wealth corrupt and America has too much of both to be able to resist. But on the Jewish side of things I feel a greater sense of responsibility. I am, after all, a rabbi and some sort of leader within the Jewish community. I am still committed to a religious vision of what it means to be a Jew in this world and that obligates me to speak out. What follows here is my attempt to do that. * I believe in the Jewish people. We are first called that (by the Egyptians) in the opening chapter of the Book of Exodus. I thus find quite ridiculous the claims of some historians that Jewish peoplehood is it invention of our response to the 19th century nationalism. However, the phrase ‘am yisra’el, as such, is rather rarely found in our sources. It is almost always inflected with a possessive, ‘amkha yisra’el or yisra’el ‘amekhah, “Your people Israel.” The word ‘amkha, “Your people,” even crept into Yiddish parlance to mean “the ordinary folk.” They are truly Your people. We Jews always saw ourselves, until the secularization of the late 19th century, as a people standing in relation to God, Y-H-W-H, the Creator of the Universe and the Source of ever-renewed life. We were a people who had dedicated ourselves to God in a particular way, a covenant that began at Mount Sinai, where we agreed to be “a nation of priests and a holy people.” The historicity of the Sinai narrative is of no concern to me here. It fixed itself as a collective memory of ancient Israel and I see us as continually committed to it. I understand neither modernity nor Holocaust as a reason to declare that commitment at an end. On the contrary, each of these in its own way has made our commitment to that faith more urgent. “A nation of priests” means that we are a people committed to a life of service. Priesthood makes sense only in a context where there is a community to serve. Our community is clearly that of the nations of the world. “Give thanks to Y-H-W-H for He is good; declare His works among the nations,” says the Psalmist. My prayer service each morning opens with that verse. I am a somewhat unusual believer in the covenant of Sinai. I do not know a God who speaks from the heavens and chooses a particular nation to be His own. The covenant, as I understand it was one that we made, a national declaration that we would stand in relation and service to Y-H-W-H. I believe that covenant is the secret of the Jewish people’s long survival, not because God has come down from the heavens to manipulate history on our behalf, but because it implanted in us a meaningfulness and fortitude in passing on our legacy from each generation to the next. I also do not believe that loyalty to this covenant requires commitments to all the mitsvot found in the Torah and especially not to the halakhic system that the rabbis constructed around them. In the Kabbalistic/Hasidic tradition, which is my primary lens for viewing the earlier Jewish tradition, it is made clear that the essence of revelation lies in the first two Commandments: “I am Y-H-W-H your God who brought you forth from Egypt” and “Have no other gods beside Me.” The Creator is also the Liberator, giving you the freedom to accept (or reject) the life of service. Worship nothing less; do not let yourself become distracted. The other 611 mitsvot, along with all that is built upon them, are called by the Zohar “counsels,” a system through which to fulfill these two, somehow created by or filtered through Moses. I live in accord with many of these counsels, but not all, nor do I consider the ritual aspects among them fully obligatory. My somewhat flexible religious praxis is one that I choose out of love and devotion, not one I see as legally binding obligation. These two utterances, one positive and one negative, are the essential teaching that we as priests are to share with the world. They are offered in the singular form, meaning that they apply to each individual, quite universally. Every person has been brought forth from one sort of mitsrayim (meaning either “Egypt” or “narrow strait”) or another. Each of us is tempted, every day, to find something other than Y-H-W-H to worship: money, power, beauty, security, and all the rest. Of course, these principles have political implications as well. Every person is liberated by Y-H-W-H, deserving of freedom. That includes people of all skin colors, of all genders and orientations, Palestinians as well as Jewish Israelis. We cannot present ourselves as a nation devoted to human freedom while we are busy subjugating others, no matter how strongly we feel threatened by them. We are at least co-creators of that threat and it is time that we take responsibility for that truth. That first utterance or commandment is a call to human dignity. We are all brought to freedom by the divine hand or voice, however we understand it. It is deeply related to the other great truth to which we are called to witness: every human being is created in the image of God. It is no accident that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was authored by two Jews from the same city in Galicia. I believe that Israel has grossly violated the principles of that declaration over the course of the past year, responding to the horrific and utterly unjustifiable violations of it of October 7. Israel is guilty of two major war crimes, the excessive bombing of civilian residential areas and the intentional blockage or delay of humanitarian relief for the civilian population of Gaza. Both of these are quite serious and I believe that both political and military leadership should be held to account. As a lover of Israel, I prefer that this be done on a local level by Israeli courts. If that is impossible, it must be treated on an international level and I do not object to that. If the state of Israel is guilty, we who continue to love and support her bear some of that guilt as well. I acknowledge that with a deep sense of shame and regret. This does not mean that I have ceased believing in Israel as a Jewish state. On the contrary, this call for justice emerges precisely because I continue to maintain such faith. I refuse to give in to the cynicism telling me that all states act only in what they perceive as their own immediate self-interest. As a believing Jew, I demand more of a Jewish state. I expect a country created by “the children of prophets” to see beyond just today and tomorrow. But what do we mean by a “Jewish state?” The State of Israel has now existed for three quarters of a century without clearly defining the ways in which it is to be “Jewish.” This is largely because some have insisted upon classical halakhic definitions of the state’s Jewishness, wanting it to be governed by halakhah as much as possible. This lack of definition has allowed many to see its Jewishness as one that privileges the rights and status of Jews, minimalizing the rights and claims to legitimacy of all others. Liberals, both within the state and outside it, have generally shied away from asserting anything essentially Jewish about the state, citing western notions of separation of religion and state, and wanting to be sure that Israel is a state that equally represents all its citizens, thus avoiding the religious question altogether, but without success. In the Middle East, religion is just too important to be ignored or wished away. Part of the problem is that there exist two overlapping entities, the Jewish people and the Israeli citizenry. About half the Jewish people live in Israel; the other half are citizens of other countries, most prominently the United States, and express little desire to change that situation. Nevertheless, most identify with Israel as an enterprise undertaken with the support of the entire Jewish people, and see themselves as somehow related to it. In Israel, about twenty percent of the population is non-Jewish, seeking full equality as citizens, but having no interest in being counted as part of the Jewish people. (Exactly whom does Benjamin Netanyahu mean when he speaks of and for ‘am yisra’el? He is prime minister of a country, including all of its citizens, but not of the Jewish people). About 20 or 25% of Israeli Jews are fully observant religious. The rest range from the moderately traditionalist to the militantly secular. Should Israel annex Palestinian territories, the non-Jewish (mostly Muslim) percentage will grow exponentially, given the higher Palestinian birthrate. There are also about a million Israeli Jews who have emigrated or live abroad long-term; that population too must be considered. Membership in the Jewish people is itself problematic. Traditional law defines it by matrilineal descent or religious conversion, but large groups of Jews, both in Israel and the diaspora, abide by much looser definitions. So too does the Israeli government’s Law of Return. The state, although initially created by and for the Jewish people, belongs not to them, but to its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, who are subject to its laws, pay its taxes, and vote in its elections. In posing the question of the state’s Jewish character, all of the above must be taken into consideration. The state cannot define Jewishness, lest it negate the right of non-Israeli Jews. It cannot enforce or impose halakhah, against the will on its non-Jewish and many secular Jewish citizens. Yet it has been recognized since its inception that it should undertake certain gestures that reflect its Jewish nature. It follows the Hebrew calendar, making the Jewish sabbath and holidays its own. Its institutions, including the army, serve kosher food. Its educational system, including the track considered “secular,” includes instruction in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition. Alongside these, there are ethical and moral principles embodied within Judaism and derived from Jewish historical experience that should be invoked to guide the state’s conduct. Vague lip service is paid to “Jewish values,” but in a way totally lacking definition. These must be invoked selectively, so as not to contradict contemporary standards of universalism and impartiality. Over two millennia of diaspora and bitter oppression, views entered the tradition that reflected antipathy and disdain toward non-Jews. A truly free and proud Jewish state must have the wisdom and self-respect to leave these behind. Any statements preaching exclusive concern for Jews alone, or virtue of Jews over others, are no longer acceptable. Jewish principles that should guide a Jewish state must include the following: Recognition that each human being is a unique and precious creation, worthy of being treated with dignity and respect. Concern for the oppressed and the socially disadvantaged, including the poor, the dislocated, and those lacking the support of family. Provision of educational opportunity to all, and a social fluidity that allows one to rise based on educational achievement. A court system that maintains integrity, resists corruption, and treats all people equally. A concern that the rights of minorities of all sorts be respected. Respect for marriage and family as key institutions of society. Recognition that rest and leisure are essential to maintaining human dignity, and thus constitute a universal human right. All of the above can be footnoted two passages in the Torah or the seven Noahide commandments, but that is not the point here. As bearers of one of the great spiritual and ethical traditions of humanity, the Jewish people, including both its religious and secularized sectors, have a historical obligation to create a society that will be a beacon of justice and peace in the world, fulfilling the vision of our ancient prophets. I have great hope that the Jewish people may one day help contribute collectively to that redeemed world of which we dream. I know many Jews, both individuals and communities, within Israel and outside it, who are doing so, day by day. But this dream will come true only if we remain faithful to the best of our beliefs and traditions. Unlike some of my compatriots on the left edge of contemporary Jewish politics and religious thought, I do not believe in the possibility of a single secular state from the Jordan river to the sea. I am committed to the ongoing Jewishness of Israel. In the most essential sense that means its being a welcoming place to Jews who suffer persecution. I believe the current Law of Return should be emended, to extend only to those suffering oppression for their Jewishness, as opposed to welcoming all Jews for immediate citizenship. Israel, excluding the Palestinian territories, is far too small a land to encompass all of world Jewry. It should not pretend to be otherwise, thereby opening itself toward dreams of expansion. I find myself most attracted to idea to the idea of an Israeli – Palestinian confederation as outlined by groups like A Land for All, of which I have been publicly supportive. As a non-Israeli and the non-professional in the world of politics and diplomacy, I do not feel obligated to offer details. But that surely seems to be the right direction. Of course, it winds up being much like what people like Buber and Magnes were suggesting already in the 1930s. Think how much blood has been shed along the road that leads back to a truth we knew 90 years ago! My problem with regard to both of these visions, the Jewish and the American, is that there does not seem to be a sufficient voting block for either of them. I sadly do not accept that so many Americans voted for Trump because of their concerns over the price of eggs or gasoline. Something much bigger has happened here and we would be fools to try to ignore it. Demographic shift in Israel seems to make it almost impossible that the voting public there will agree to anything rational or reasonable at any time in the near future. Where, then, do we turn? In 1941, in the newly-established Warsaw ghetto, mystic and poet Hillel Zeitlin called out for – of all things - repentance. In the face of utter powerlessness, all we can do, he said, is to repent of our sins. Maybe Someone will listen. We are by no means in the Warsaw ghetto. We still have agency. But some aloud confession of our sins, publicly and honestly, might not be a bad place to start. The long road to redemption – for both societies - has to begin there. Thoughts and responses welcome.