-Andrew Fretwell-
Last year, the teen leadership of Young Judaea, the oldest Zionist Youth Movement in North America, did something that has for the most part gone unnoticed in the Jewish world. It placed humanitarian assistance to Darfuri Refugees currently residing in Israel at the center of its agenda. Its lack of reverberations throughout the Jewish world can be explained away by the economic turbulence of the Jewish philanthropic world as well as Young Judaea’s current budgetary and staffing challenges. However, this initiative is still developing and there remains huge potential to make waves. Supporting Darfuri refugees has generated vigorous debate within Young Judaea and Hadassah and has revealed a generational clash over the essence of Zionism and Israel.
In one corner is the school of thought that has traditionally dominated Jewish philanthropy and activism in Israel: Save the Jews! This philosophy is rooted in the older generations who remember Israel before its rise to military prominence and a world with an Auschwitz but no IDF. To them, Jews have not achieved a sufficient level of comfort. Anti-Semitism will never be dead, just disguised or dormant. The next great pogrom waits patiently in the dark for the right moment to erupt. To them, IDF organ harvesting stories in Sweden and vandalism in Venezuela are just microscopic samples of the inevitable.
And then there is Iran, the perfect mixture of every Jewish nightmare amalgamated to detonate our collective paranoia, mostly because of the legitimacy of the threat. President Ahmedinejad is the perfect villain: an unapologetic tyrant who denies the Holocaust, brutally suppresses his own people, he trains, equips and advises multiple terrorist organizations, he verbalizes his fantasies about destroying Israel, and he is getting so very close to building the bomb. With all these problems, it is dangerously irresponsible to look beyond our own needs, they argue. We need every ounce of strength and ingenuity just to survive in such a hostile world. However, in the other corner is a new generation increasingly on the ascent. This generation only knows a world with Israel as the preeminent military power of the Middle East and has had little to no direct experience with anti-Semitism. Their primary struggle is not the Jews versus the Goyim, but instead the village versus the globe (particularism versus universalism). They have unintentionally grappled their way to the same conclusions as Ahad Ha’am and Mordechai Kaplan: When it comes to Medinat Yisrael, it’s all about achieving Klal Yisrael.
Due to Israel’s military prowess and political stability over the past twenty years, they believe the Jewish state has been irreversibly established and though Israel is not invincible, its problems are primarily political and social, not military. Therefore, their concern is for not the command center, but the community center. To them, Israel does not just need soldiers and advocates to guard the Jewish State, but also organizers and activists to guard the Jewish Soul. They believe Israel should now have the confidence to fully embrace its destiny of fulfilling Klal Yisrael. To do that, a higher priority must be placed on Israel to embody the values that bind us together as a people, even when the circumstances seem dubious.
Enter these Darfuri Refugees into the conversation. Foreign refugees are never a desirable demographic but we know what it is like to be forced out of our homes and wander endlessly at the mercy of our hosts. This is our chance to be the change we always wanted to see in the world, to be a living protest of our old oppressors. These refugees escaped the first genocide of this century and while Israel cannot be the solution to the plight of the refugees, the Jewish state is compelled to be part of the solution. Not doing so is a betrayal of Israel’s Jewish character and an affront to its mission to manifest the Jewish People’s ideals. As a Jewish collective, the State of Israel is only as strong as our care for those strangers who have wandered into our country, hands clasped, pleading for compassion.
That is the basis of Young Judaea’s actions and critique of mainstream Jewish society and traditional Zionism. The teens who have lead the way with this effort have at every turn been forced to justify how they can supposedly neglect their own people for these African migrants. Their critics say it is all too easy to have a short memory and forget how comfortable Jews tend to be right before its worst tragedies. They are accused of resting on false comforts and taking grave danger for granted. However, though they are yet to consciously articulate it, they intuitively understand they are not abandoning anyone, but are instead challenging us all to think more seriously about how Israel advances the Jewish People.
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