-Andrew Fretwell-
It’s a storybook ending when they board the plane. They have found their destiny, their spiritual home, cultural core and Jewish navel. They’re making Aliyah! It’s their fresh life, reborn in the ancestral homeland. So we wave with teary eyes as they cruise off into the sunset, content with their new fully Jewish life.
So why do so many of them come back and ruin the picture perfect ending? It seems like the majority of 20-30 year olds who have made Aliyah end up back in America after a few years; some just go to serve in the army. Is that ideology, to love a place enough to die for it but not enough to live for it? What happened to the ideal of Aliyah? Returning from Aliyah is not a new thing but with so many olim who aren’t able to outlast the average Knesset, is Aliyah where ideology goes to die?
I think in some ways it has. Part of the premature nature of Aliyah has to do with modern mobility. If you can spend a year or two in New York, and a few years in California, why not spend a few years in Israel? But that’s not the whole explanation. Aliyah was established as the highest ideal in the time when Jews didn’t go to Israel to live, they went to build. As the saying goes, they went to build and to be built. With Israel’s prosperity and development, is that over?
There’s a scary realization here, one that leads down the road of Post-Zionism: the belief that Israel’s normalcy relegates it to just another name on the UN roll call. Aliyah was a shield against that. What other country had these brave ideologues who dedicated their lives to altering a country they were not even born in? Olim who came out of choice were the lifeblood of Zionism to so many. Aliyah was important and immediately gratifying when an oleh could assess his/her contribution to Israel through the existence and success of the Kibbutz they helped found, live on land they helped defend or liberate, or enjoy the Jewish majority they helped establish. But with Israel’s success in establishing its institutions and presence in the region, that gratification couldn’t be replicated the feeling of building Eretz Israel leading up to and shortly after the state’s founding.
So the question naturally arose, “Why should I make Aliyah?” The question only became more profound and harder to answer throughout as Israel became more modern, capitalist and began resembling America. Now, people felt less compelled to make Aliyah for the sake of building Israel or for the sake of moving out of the capitalist frenzied US to the socially egalitarian Jewish State. So why make Aliyah? Because Israel is my home? But what if America also feels like my home? Repudiation of Jewish life in the Diaspora has always been a reason for Aliyah, but with the American Jewish community’s comfort and success, that’s not going to resonate with too many. So if I don’t hate my life in the US, I’m not moving across the world for the sake of saying I removed myself from comfort for the vague benefit of the Jewish People.
So is it game over for Aliyah? No, it just needs new meaning, new significance. The state may be built but there’s so much more building that’s being done. No, they’re not draining swamps or doing guard duty to protect from Arab armies. They’re in the slums of cities working with the abused, with foreign workers and refugees, with the neglected and forgotten in Israeli society. Those NGOs and non-profits are building their better Israel. They’re also in settlements, Ofra, Maaleh Adumim, and Gush Etzion. Though the left-wing volunteers and the settlers have totally different visions for what makes Israel a better Jewish state, they both have given themselves the task of building Israel that way.
If we motivate American Jews to go beyond being great spectators and cheerleaders but active participants, we can reinvigorate Zionism and Aliyah. But to do that we need to go beyond the comfort zone of ensconcing ourselves in the unchallenged Israel but to place it under a microscope. The discomfort of breaking with the traditional turning of a blind eye to serious and deep reaching questions may be too much for Jewish institutions, but that comes at the cost of the Jewish world as a whole. We must move Israel engagement to where we are inspiring Jews not just to get to know their home, but with a vision of how their home should look, and to equip them to get to work and will that dream into a reality, because as Herzl said… well you know.
My friend's son recently "made aliyah". I put that in quotation marks because what his mom thinks he really did was go to Israel for a while and see what happens.
ReplyDeleteAs this article points out, there is a vast difference between the two in both idelogy and mindset. Things are getting tough for him at present, and already he is putting pressure on himself to live up to his commitment of making aliyah. His mom is saying, "its not like he's in jail, he can come home whenever he wants." I am not sure what to make of his plans, in some ways he is bound in his mind by the history of all those who have made tremenous sacrifice to make aliyah, and will feel as if he has failed if he returns. His somewhat cynical mom sees aliyah as a way of using the system to get support while he gets settled - rather than commitment to a life long ideological decision.