History, Identity, Purpose (Another Long Winded Diatribe)

So the last many posts have been uppity updates about paperwork and such. I haven't belted out a meaningful post since...well...a long time (http://alohnaaleh.blogspot.com/2013/03/blog-post.html and http://alohnaaleh.blogspot.com/2013/03/it-crazy-crazy-world.html deserve mention). I wanted this blog to be more than a way of telling the world what document I'm trying to obtain, and I was hoping to be able to share depth, meaning, and thought provoking ideas and concepts. Aliyah is not just a move, nor is it some tweetable jolly happy time [more in this later, if i can, when i discuss the party at the airport]. Of course, there's the element of time involved, and I haven't been able to write that much...
I've been holding this in for awhile, and while I don't think I have fully digested/processed/laid it out yet, I want to spit it out just the same.


History is a story. It's a human way of making sense of a million disparate activities by weaving them into a narrative, a cogent whole. We see patterns, themes, even lessons, and ascribe them to the various elements of our beliefs and knowledge of the actors in the stage of the story.

Needless to point out, most peoples have different histories. That is to say the history books in different countries may report the same events, but completely differently. Things mean different things to different people.

The idea of a people, indeed, is linked to its history. The national psyche is formed by the events that it endured (or created it). The national conceptualization of its destiny, its purpose, its dreams...are all tied to its story, its narrative, and its history.

Of course, the model for such an idea (which is not original, nor mine) is the Torah, which is a document of history, as a story, which includes and creates the national laws, dreams, and character...a document which is the raison d'être of a people and its homeland, its ethos, and its pathos. A document so thoroughly bound up in its possessors, that they themselves have become the "People of the Book" - and called such at a time this book is universally read, and claimed.

Except, of course, when this isn't true at all.

One of the unintended consequences of the Zionist movement was the stripping of the Jewish people's history, FROM THEMSELVES. A generation of kids grew up thinking history started in 1933 or so, with the vague prehistoric notions of the Sicarii on Masada and some cute gimmicky things like Saul, David, and the like. But the story, the narrative, the Exile and Redemption theme so vital to Jewish thought and Torah history telling....gone.
Of course, they had a reason to. Religious Judaism, at that point, had devolved into a bunker mentality. "The world is crazy, the Final Redemption must be at hand. There's no need to adapt, no need to change, no reason to engage anything. HaChadash Assur Min HaTorah, and we cannot lift a finger unless G-d makes it so", etc. When creating a nation, which needs an army, bus systems, garbage removal, roads, schools, technological advancement, foreign policy...you cannot have a bunker mentality, because it isn't going to happen by itself.
(Two points on this: 1. Look at our neighbors across the so called "Green Line" for an example of bunker mentalities causing a mistaken belief that states form themselves. 2. Imagine if the religious parties [UTJ, for example] ever held power in Israel. Do you think the infrastructure would be functional?)

For a while, all was good. The ancient traditions and their silly superstitions ("like this G-d thing cares what you eat?") were no longer in the way of our being able to chart our own course, set our destiny, and live free. And then that generation came face to face with existential challenges. Challenges that forced them to ask themselves the dreaded question...why?

As Yair Lapid pointed out in his now-celebrated address at Kiryat Ono College (transcript: http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2013/01/25/yair-lapid-at-kiryat-ono-the-transcript/ ), who would want to live in a desert, surrounded by rockets and suicide bombers, in some dinky tiny apartment, earning maybe $28,000 a year, unless there was a reason to?

And without the history, the story of a dormant Rose flowering yet again, the sense of national purpose in having taught and teaching a world about morality, justice, and humanity, they do not have an answer. And so they live in confusion, bewildered by a world that believes them to be evil incarnate where many wish them dead, while being told they are a democracy like any other. Small wonder thousands leave each year, tempted by the shores of the West and the Far East, where they do not have to be shot at for their democracy, or where they can learn spirituality.

Sadly, Mr. Lapid himself demanded the Education Ministry for his party, and I do not think he plans to address this issue. Nor has anyone in the past, though Gideon Saar's creating school trips to Hevron to show children the place their fathers sleep was certainly a good start.

I was particularly touched by the story a Jewish outreach worker told me of an Israeli girl who came to an Orthodox weekend retreat/shabbaton, and cried profusely at Havdala. When asked why, she said "I am angry. Angry I had to travel halfway around the world to discover something beautiful, which is mine. Where is this in Israel?" He was speechless - it's all over in Israel. Except she was correct - it wasn't in her Israel...

For a few years, I joked that the simplest way to solve the Haredi draft and unemployment problems was to send them to the public schools to teach Torah as a form of national service. Everyone wins - they stay engaged in Torah, the secular learn of their heritage, and the yeshivot don't need so many kollel checks from the government. Of course, the added side benefit of bridging the two sides by letting them meet, converse, and discover together is nice, too. I don't think it's a joke any longer.

If our children do not learn their own story, they will live with no narrative to their lives. And this, perhaps, is the biggest tragedy of all. A life that is not a story is a life that has no meaning - it has no way to be recounted. It lacks the gift of purpose, it remains stuck in its own little dreams and goals, removed from the world's story, and its people's.

And that is something we cannot afford.