From the Desk of Rabbi Jacobs

A Longing To Return To The Land Of Israel

by Yehuda HaLevi

My heart is in the east, and I in the uttermost west.
How can I find savor in food? How shall it be sweet to me?
How shall I render my vows and my bonds, while yet
Zion lieth beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains?
A light thing would it seem to me
to leave all the good things of Spain -
Seeing how precious in mine eyes
to behold the dust of the desolate sanctuary.

[via: bestpoems.net]

Since early Saturday morning, when I heard of the violent, concerted terror attack on the ancient Philistine region in Israel’s southwest that emanated from Gaza, this 11th century poem has been echoing in mind and spirit. Yehuda Halevi, among the greatest of the Spanish Golden Age, reputedly made his way across the long axis of the Mediterranean Sea and reached his destination immediately before his death. Like generations before and since, he was a Zionist. 

In our days, being a zionist is less challenging than being a Zionist. So if Lynne Truss could produce a whole book about the comma (Eats Shoots and Leaves—Avery, 2006), I will try to peck out a few lines regarding the upper case “z’”. The shift key on my laptop moves the eternal bond of Jew and Eretz Yiraeil to the 20th Century political movement set into its successful quest by Theodor Herzl. The success came to be on May 14, 1948, Israel’s Yom Ha-atzma’ut—Independence Day.

My first memory of Israel is connected with October 1956, the 3-day ‘Sinai Campaign’ led by General Moshe Dayan that was the response to Egypt’s President Nasser closing the Suez Canal. A similar scenario was claimed 21 years later, with Jordan and Syria joining Egypt in an array against the much smaller Israel. We know that as the ‘6-day War’, during whose short duration, the occupation lines moved from the 1950 Armistice “Green Line” (on the UN map) to include the Jordan River, the Golan Heights, and for a time the expanse of the Sinai Peninsula. With those territories came the fertile population known today as the Palestinians.

Of course 1956 was not the beginning. The so-called first and second Aliyah of the Yishuv—Return—began in the 1880s; throughout the half century before the British closed immigration (the 1939 “White  Paper on Palestine”), and World War II erupted from Europe, were marked by multiple threads worth following, including the founding of a modern industrial economy, establishment of kibbutzim and towns, even the city of Tel Aviv. Jerusalem expanded beyond the ancient city walls, too.

Until 1918, the area was a sub-province of the Ottoman (Turkey) Empire; under the League of Nations, Great Britain became holder of a Mandate—sanctioned authority to rule—that included the swath from the Mediterranean eastwards toward the Arabian Peninsula. By 1922, the area east of the Jordan River became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. 

Everyone wanted a piece of the pie. A secret treaty of 1916 (Sykes–Picot Agreement was a 1916 secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire. –Wikipedia) set the stage. 

As is true in Europe, the boundaries of modern nation-states have been set recently, without regard to the ethnic make-up of local resident populations. Yet in many areas there are flash-points where diverse groups have co-existed for some time. The aspirations of various groups often conflict, as do their socio-political make-up. 

In 19th Century Palestine, the low population density, arid climate, and economic backwardness nonetheless held a diverse population: Jews, Christians but predominately Muslims—not to overlook Druze and Bedouin, and an array of outside groups (Armenians, Ethiopians, Copts and others from all the reaches of Ottoman power). The traditional division of social roles formed social islands on the dry land. 

Partition of the Mandate—or Protectorate as renamed by the United Nations after its founding in 1945—was agreed on November 29, 1947; six months later, Great Britain withdrew. David ben Gurion proclaimed the Jewish State of Israel while the leadership of the Arab population simply refused, again. Le plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose—the more things change, the more they remain the same—leading to the asymmetry of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, represented in Gaza by Hamas.

Surprise attacks by terrorists are a familiar litany, yet the Simchat Torah invasion—which is being turned back by inches and yards by the Israeli military—stands apart. The suffering is enormous for towns and cities, kibbutzim, music festival attendees swept up in the innocence of their ordinary lives. 

Psalm records: Eyn Omer V’eyn d’varim  – “There is no speech and there are no words” (19:4)—in these emotionally draining days. Too many captives, too many injured, too many deaths. All unnecessary.