‘Yesh Atid’ (there’s a future) – but what future have Israelis voted for?

All my left-wing friends were pleased about the Israeli election results last week, as they represented, we were told, a ‘swing to the centre.’  Strange that left-wingers would welcome a swing to the centre – no doubt a confirmation of the fragmented, dispirited state of the Israeli left (which I prefer to describe less charitably as being in a state of near total collapse since the outbreak of the Intifada in 2000 if not the Rabin assassination in 1995).  I was also pleased, mostly by Meretz’s electoral success, growing back to six seats in Knesset, guaranteeing that there’ll be at least a handful of Israeli legislators who won’t sacrifice their principles for a seat at the Cabinet table and who’ll work to make progress on equality and human rights, the values the State of Israel is supposed to be built on.

Something interesting has happened to the semantics of Israeli politics in recent years.  Once, political parties were called things like Herut – Freedom,  Mapai – Land of Israel Workers’ Party, Ahdut Ha’avodah – the Unity of Labour, and Mafdal – the National Religious Party.  In those days you knew where you stood and, even as late as the 1980s, Israeli politics was marked by a clear debate between the mainly social-democratic Left who wanted a two-state solution and the mostly capitalist Right who didn’t (plus the religious parties who didn’t fit into either bloc and pursued their own sectional agenda). 

These days, most of the right-wing and religious parties have gone for names which, to the uninitiated, all sound the same: Israel Beiteinu – Israel our Home, Habayit Hayehudi – The Jewish Home, Yahadut haTorah – United Torah Jewry.  Likud just means ‘unity’ and refers to the origins of the bloc in a merger between two smaller parties.   On the Left, we still have a Labour party (much like its UK counterpart it now has hardly anything to do with labour), but the most popular party names are things like Meretz – ‘energy’, Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah – ‘the movement’, Kadima – ‘forward!’, and best of all, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid – which translates as the startling insight that ‘there’s a future.’ 

Rather than a swing away from the Right or towards the Centre (and a swing away from the Right and towards the Centre would actually, by definition, be a swing, however small, to the Left), I think the recent election confirms the trend away from meaning, ideology and vision in Israeli politics.  Every Israeli election in the last 20 years has seen the emergence of a new ‘centrist’ force, which proclaims its intention to clean up politics and take Israel in a new direction, scoops up a surprising number of votes, achieves nothing and vanishes within two election cycles.  Who remembers the Third Way or the Centre Party?  Who’ll remember Kadima or Hatnuah in 10 years’ time?  Who remembers the surprise victors of the election before last, the Pensioners’ Party? 

It seems that the Israeli electorate is suffering from two debilitating conditions: on the one hand collective amnesia which feeds a strange repetition compulsion, and on the other a desperate desire for change without any idea of what kind of change it actually wants.  We don’t know what we want other than it’s not what we currently have, and we know we don’t want the last people who offered this kind of change, we want new people to offer us a new kind change which, lacking entirely in content, is actually indistinguishable from the old kind.  A party trying to appeal to such an electorate could choose no better name than the evocative, noncommittal, and ultimately empty Yesh Atid.

All of which would be funny were it not for the fact that every Israeli government since the 70s, peace process notwithstanding, has promoted the settlement enterprise, the deepening of the occupation and the seemingly unstoppable process towards the one thing that almost no-one wants – a one state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Let’s see what Yair Lapid plans to do about that.

LAST WEEK

I met with Charlotte Fischer, the new full-time community organiser who has just started work with Citizens UK, the country’s largest civil society organising network. Noam and Marom, as well as the Citizens’ Group at New North London Synagogue, are members of London Citizens, a broad-based network of churches, mosques, synagogues, schools, student unions and university departments, affiliated to Citizens UK. Charlotte will be spending a day a week working with Masorti young people and communities, getting them involved with diverse local groups in cross-London campaigns on issues like the Living Wage, street safety and crime prevention, opportunities for young people, affordable housing and care for the elderly. Charlotte will also be working within the Reform and Liberal movements and, for two days a week, with Jewish and non-Jewish communities across Barnet as the local borough organiser. Click here to learn more about the amazing work of Citizens UK.

PS Booking is still open for Yom Masorti - Feb 10 at New North London Synagogue

If you liked this blog post, come and hear Daniel Sokatch and Adam Ognall, CEOs of the New Israel Fund in the US and the UK on the Israeli protest movement, and a diplomat from the Israeli Embassy on Israel after the elections (full details to be announced).  You can also hear Mike Whine of the CST on the new antisemitism, Stephen Shashoua of the 3 Faiths Forum on Interfaith Innovation, plus dozens more sessions, the new show by Danny Braverman, and a full children/families track.  Click here to book or to see the full programme.

Judaism without God?

Last week was my second week back after more than two weeks away – five days at Limmud Conference and then a week and a half in Israel.  More on Israel next time....

At Limmud I taught a series on ‘Judaism without God, partly stimulated by reading God is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens’ powerful attack on faith.  I’d previously been unimpressed with the ‘new atheists,’ having read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.  This is a book which brings home the point previously made by Dawkins himself in his attacks on non-scientist religious opponents of Darwinism, that you shouldn’t write about what you don’t know – in Dawkins’ case, religion and philosophy.  But unlike Dawkins, Hitchens had a fantastic education in the humanities and did know all about theology and the Bible.  As a result, his attacks on religion as untrue, barbaric, sexist, violent and destructive, have a lot of force.  While reading, I agreed with almost everything he said and then – tearing myself away from the book – remembered that I’m the Chief Executive of a religious organisation.

The hole in Hitchens’ argument, as pointed out by my friend Rabbi Joel Levy (who’s currently teaching a series on the topic) is that for most people, Western, liberal secularism is not enough.  it certainly does not have the resources to build communities and create the deep structures of meaning and value which our atomised, utilitarian society is sorely lacking.  I believe our goal is to create a genuinely liberal, humanist, open-minded form of communitarian religious practice, which respects the other, is open to science and western values, is committed to social justice, but at the same time is solidly and authentically grounded in our textual and cultural traditions. 

And it seems to me that if we want to defend a conception of liberal, non-fundamentalist religion as a positive force in the world, we need to be able to ground it in a conception of God that doesn’t make a mockery of our philosophical principles, not to mention common sense.  This was the basis for my sessions at Limmud.  To give one example of the insights we reached:  Maimonides taught that the most important commandment is to know that God exists and is the ground of all being.  But reading his philosophical work, the Guide to the Perplexed, it becomes clear that we can’t know or say anything about this God without limiting it (him?), projecting our own concepts onto him (her?) and sliding down the path to idolatry.

The conclusion is that Judaism believes that the whole of existence is grounded in something which we know to exist but can by definition know nothing else about.  It reminds me of my answer to then 5-year-old son who asked me if I believed in God.  I said yes – as long as we’re clear that we can’t know  what God is, I don’t understand what ‘believe’ means, and I’m also not too sure about ‘in.’ 

I find this idea powerfully comforting.  It allows me to get on with being Jewish, doing mitzvot, learning Torah and being involved in my community, while acknowledging that there’s no need to be clear about the fundamental value that ostensibly lies at the heart of all these things.  It effectively centres Judaism on God while practically removing God from the equation.  In this case, practice definitely precedes belief, as the Torah says, ‘na’aseh venish’ma,’ we will do and then we will hear.

THIS WEEK...

We finalised an amazing programme for Yom Masorti, our movement-wide day of learning, culture and fun, 10 February at New North London Synagogue.  Come and hear Daniel Sokatch, Chief Executive of the New Israel Fund USA on social justice in Israel, Rabbi Jeremy Gordon and Zahavit Shalev on Jewish parenting, Stephen Shashoua from the 3 Faiths Forum on Overcoming Stereotypes through Interfaith Innovation, and loads of other great sessions.  There’ll also be good food, great music from Los Desterados musicians, ‘Wot? No Fish!’ the the new show from performance artist Danny Braverman, and a free all-day children’s track with art, music, drama and family disco. For the full programme, more info and to book for Yom Masorti, go to masorti.org.uk.