Israel is not my birthright - Salon.com
"The rabbi encouraged us to go to Monday’s pro-Israel rally, and my stomach turned..."
I’m writing this in my new baby niece’s room. I am here in Florida
visiting my family because of this niece, this tiny pudgy innocent baby.
We are Jewish, and it’s time for my niece to receive her Hebrew name in
a sweet little ceremony at our longtime synagogue.
Last night I
sat at the synagogue next to my 19-year-old daughter. I felt a swell of
joy as the services began; I’d been away too long. I’d loved services as
a child and teenager.
And then we hit the first mention of Israel as the Promised Land, and I burst into tears.
On
the way to services, I’d caught up on Twitter a bit. I’d read about the
Israeli missiles still falling on Palestine. I’d read about the
outright murder of Palestinian children.
And I sat there and listened to the rabbi call Israel our Promised Land, and it broke something in me.
I
am an American Jew of a certain age (40), and what that means is that I
was raised to believe that Israel was ours by divine right.
It
sounds ridiculous when you say it aloud. Especially because, like many
of my generation of Jews, I’m not particularly religious. Many Jews my
age slid into paganism, a sort of ambivalent agnosticism, or outright
atheism; we are cultural Jews rather than religious Jews. And yet when I
first spoke about the conflict between Israel and Palestine some years
ago, I found that falling out of my mouth – that God promised us Israel.
It’s ours because God said so.
My daughter, trying to comfort me after the services, said, “Maybe it is the Promised Land, just not right now.”
