This week I’m feeling the distance. Thanks to Israel’s 70th, my emotions feel much sharper and more raw. To compensate for not being there for the commemorations and sirens of Yom Ha-zikkaron (Memorial Day) and the celebrations and parties of Yom Ha-atzmaut (Independence Day) I’ve resorted to a steady diet of Israeli media – radio mostly, and also the news and television websites – the past few days. Hearing, seeing, reading through my blue tooth speakers and onscreen has simultaneously (and ironically) enabled me to feel closer and has also highlighted the distance. Yehudah ha-Levi’s most famous words resonate powerfully for me right now. Libi v’mizrah v’anochi b’sof ma’arav – My heart in the East, But the rest of me far in the West (in Hillel Halkin’s creative and lovely translation).
Distance is physical and temporal, and also emotional and spiritual. Even with Israel’s Reshet Gimel blaring, my internal sound system has been playing an old Dire Straits song on a continuous loop. “You’re so far away from me, So far I just can’t see…And I get so tired when I have to explain, When you’re so far away from me. See you’ve been in the sun and I’ve been in the rain, And you’re so far away from me…” Judging from the avalanche of essays and articles in recent months describing, diagnosing and prescribing the ever widening gulf that separates Israel and American Jewry (not to mention the seemingly unending population studies and attitudinal surveys whose results routinely fill my inbox), I’m not alone in feeling that Israel is ‘so far away from me.’
Distance takes many forms. Mine is very particular, rooted in my personal experience, my philosophical commitments, my temperament. I feel deeply connected to Israel, in love really, and so for me distance is coupled with longing. My distance aches and it’s a rather complex web of emotions – pride, disappointment, joy, worry, desire, and more all rolled into one. For others, distance means a (nearly) complete absence of connection. Israel’s there, I’m here, nothing more to say. For others still, distance takes the form of distaste, even disdain. Those varieties of distance are also rooted in individual commitments and experience. We American Jews are all over the map, but in one way or another, we’re all distant.
A rather extraordinary teaching from the Sefat Emet – R Yehuda Leib Alter of Ger (late 19th-early 20th century Poland) – explores the dynamic of distance and closeness. Rooted in the Torah’s insistence that an individual suffering from scale disease, a significant source of impurity in ancient Israel, be removed from the encampment (mi’hutz la’mahane moshavo), the Sefat Emet reflects on the possibility that “there are some who attain wholeness by drawing near and others who do so by distance.” For some, our teacher daringly suggests, “distance is redemption (takanato)!”
“Learn from your distance”, might be another way to express the Sefat Emet’s idea. Seek out the tikkun – the repair or redemption – present within. There is much to be learned from American Jewry’s distance – physical, temporal, emotional, spiritual – from Israel. Our work as a community, it seems to me, is to engage in that exploration in a deep and serious way. What is redemptive about our distance? How might we locate the inner tikkun, the divinity and redemption, that is assuredly there? Those questions, and queries like them, feel meaningful and worthwhile to me. We who dwell outside of the camp called the Land/State of Israel have much to consider this Yom Ha-atzma’ut.
A word about the photo at the top of this page. The picture was taken on Ben Yehudah Street in central Jerusalem in 1987 or 1988. The juxtaposition of a religious Jewish man and a woman in her IDF uniform walking past one another caught the photographer’s eye as it catches ours. Look a little deeper into the picture and you’ll spot the top of Nomi’s head just above the religious man’s black hat and my profile just over the top of the soldier’s head. I happened upon this photo in a very beautiful album published in honor of Israel’s 50th. I now understand that it conveys one piece of my own distance in a particularly striking way. I’m happy to share it with you in honor of Israel’s 70th!
Shabbat Shalom & Hag Atzma’ut Sameah!
