The Tao of Steve

I was at the Tikkun Leil Shavuot this week  and the featured speakers were two Rabbinic students from Ziegler.

The presentations were good but one of the students made a comment during the Q&A that I found absolutely astounding. He said that some of his Rabbinic classmates were, in his words, “dismissive” of Israel. 

I found that choice of words to be curious, and so I asked him about it. 

It wasn’t as if his classmates were disagreeing with a particular leader or a particular policy of Israel. I myself have certain disagreements with people like Bibi or Smotrich, or Ben Gvir, or for that matter, certain choices that Israeli leaders may or may not have made in the prosecuting of this war in Gaza. 

But, he seemed to be implying that that these classmates were “dismissive of the entire Zionist project.” 😯

Needless to say I found that pretty disturbing. I always viewed anti-Zionism as the provence of kooks, like Neturei Karta or some of the kitzonee settler Rabbis.

I brought this, up to a friend who’s an academic in a Jewish Studies program on the West Coast and he suggested I  Google the work of Shaul Magid or Aryeh Cohen. I did a cursory Google Search and my jaw hit the floor a second time. These guys apparently are fellows at the Shalom Hartman Institute, of all places!

Is it possible, that a certain significant subset of future “liberal” religious leaders in our community are in fact completely dismissive of the State of Israel? I find that really hard to believe, but, and again only based on this cursory Google Search, there are academics in certain institutions that are spreading this nonsense. 

And of course this brings up a whole slew of other questions not the least of which is what was their learned experience in Israel if they ever visited Israel at all during their Rabbinic training? I know there’s a trend that many young people are being dismissively critical of Israel that have never been there. (Look at some of the things that are going on on college campuses these days on the part of some of the protesters.)

To his credit, that Rabbinic student mentioned that he had been to Israel several times before he started his studies and he found that some of the Israel programs that he went on were a little too much about “THEM” and not enough about “US.” So he took it upon himself to engage with people in Israel that he didn’t feel that he necessarily agreed with.

I don’t think I’m necessarily crying wolf here. I’ve gotten several responses from several respected Rabbinic friends of mine who seemed to indicate that this is not just an aberration or something on the margins but it’s becoming an increasingly worrying and frankly cancerous trend.

If it’s true, and that being dismissive of Israel, is a pretty disturbing trend in our future Rabbinic leadership, I think we’ve got a lot more to worry about.

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Ever since I first wrote this piece, I’ve gotten quite a few responses some of which are literally as jaw dropping as what I described above.

Yes…sadly unfortunately there are Jews and even rabbis who are anti-Israel, anti Zionist, also…I think the rabbinical schools wanted to allow for diversity of opinion, then some of it got out of control. Now they are trying to figure out how to rebalance.

My May speaker was from the (geographic region and shul omitted)… and his wife is the Cantor. He told me that there are so many anti-Israel members of that shul that she is not allowed to sing Ha-Tikvah.