zionism_unsettled_scan

'11.I.i
Ii
i 1:1
. FOCUS
What Diaspora
l 'l.i ,r
},
II
,I'
! !
, ,
i'i
GLOSSARY OF
HEBREW TERMSl
• Aliyah _ascent;
immigration to Israel
• Yerida descent;
emigration from Israel
• Galut exile; a nation
uprooted from its
homeland and subject
to alien rule
Jewish life Is alive and well in
the Islamic Rep\Jblic of Iran.
Estimates of the current Jew­
Ish Iranian 'population range
from 10,000 to 30,000. The
Jewish presence In Persia!
Iran Is ancient,' stretching
2,700 years to the Assyrian
and Babylonian conquests of
the Israelites. Mlddle"Eastern
Jews, also called Mizrahi
Jew~, share a history of_largely
harmonious Integration
and acculturation in their
host countries. Sadly, this
model qf ,coexl.stence was
destabilized by the regional
penetration of ZionIsm
beginning in"the late 1,9th
century.
The Hebrew terms used to describe the physical ie,
- ,- - iationship of Jews to Israel are mirrored in Zionism,
- -the political movement. Jewish existence outside·
_ '-' , Israel, according to Zionism, is a diaspora (a Greek
term meaning "scattering") from the spiritual and
~ricestral homeland.
Ga/ut notwithstanding, more than half of the world's
Jews choose to live outside Israel. And in doing so, Micah
Goodman writes, they are contributing to Jewish-and
globakuhure in a way that, across the span of 2,000
years,· has been thoroughly and essentially Jewish.
Indeed, the great achievement of the Diaspora was
precisely the formation of a living, meaningful Judaism
in the absence of a political or territorial. base. To deny
the worth of Jewish life outside the larid of Israel is thus
essentially to deny millennia onewish creativity,2
Millions of Jews are not only "voting with their feet" on
Zioni.~m, they are living richly diverse Jewish lives around
the globe despite the scolding voices telling them they
can't. Recent opinion polls of American Jews "do not·'
indude even one question about th~ir attitude toward
aliyah or about Israel as a place to live," writes Israeli jour, .
halist Shlomo Shami,r. A veteran American Jewish activist
explains to Shamirthat "It is better not to ask," because
"the disgrace to the community and to Israel would
.be great if they were to reveal the depth of alienation
among American Jews from the idea of making a/iyah."3
Many-perhaps most~Jews embrace an identity and
culture that rejects the Israel,or,exile perspective on Jewish
life. Caryn Aviv and David Shneer,
envision a new map for the Jewish world, one that has
multiple homelands, that does not break the Jewish
world into a dichotomous relationship between 'diaspo,
ra' and 'Israel,' and that suggests a positive vision of the
Jewish future .. .4
Aviv and ShnE;:!er note the enormous "resources expended
"to cultivate among Jews a sense of connection and
JeWs, (
some Jewish scholars to locate the US. not 15(ael, global
center of Jewish life. Given the number of Israeli emigres to
the us (somewhere between 600,000 and a million), the US is
a,n increasingly important center for Israeli life as well.
bflonging to Israel and, through Israel, to one another," 5
They see the diversity of Jewish culture and religious!
nonreligious practice around the world -as something to
celebrate, There is no diaspora; Jewish life is alive and well
in many expressions both inside and outside Israel.
Some Jewish communal, Qrganizations, however, see a crisis_
in assimilation and diversity_of practice. Lacking an answer
to the queStion "-Who is a Jew" expans'lve enough
to describe the many ways Jews relate to their history,
identity, and culture; Jewish communal institutions have
"made support for Israel a civic religion around which to
build a modern secular Jewish identity, "7
British .historian Eric Hotisbawm describes the Jewish state
as "the new segregation of-a separate ethnic-genetic
state,community" and warns that this historical develop'
ment is not "good either for the Jews or for the world,"B
Mizrahi Jews-that is,Jews who descend from the centu,
ries,old Jewish communities throughout the Middle East, .
have a ,different, sense of diaspara than their European
cou~terparts, Ella Shohat PQints out that the Jews "who
had lived in the Middle East and North Africa for millennia
... ~nnot be seen as simply eager-to settle in Palestine and
in many ways had to be 'lured' to Zion." These Jews, she
writes, "c;jid not exactly-share the Europ~an-Zionist desire
to 'end thediaspora' by creating an independent state
peopled by a new archetype ofJew/'g
ii
.-~
Jewish :lif~ is p