"You'll take hits until you're sorry," Likud MK Oren Hazan wrote to actress Natalie Portman in response to her announcement that she would not be attended the Genesis Prize ceremony. As he usually does, Hazan took things to an ugly place to gain some attention. But other responses from the political sphere, such as the ones from Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan or Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev, for example, show that they don't seem to have a clue about what is going on in the U.S. Jewish community, or prefer to ignore it.
This week, the University of Maryland held an event marking the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel. While other conferences exalted the state's achievements, Professor Yoram Peri, head of the Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies, decided to devote the conference to an examination of how U.S. Jewry sees Israel. The decision wasn't a simple one: At a time when the Jewish community is dealing with tough issues, and there is growing internal dissent about Israel, it would have been easier to hold a birthday party with cake and candles than to palpate the wounds.
One of the interesting questions raised at the event was how to present Israel to Jewish American kids. The U.S. has thousands of frameworks in which Jewish children can learn about Israel. There are families for whom the connection to Judaism and to Israel is so important that they take out loans to send their offspring to private Jewish schools, where tuition can be as high as $30,000 per child.
But if we look at what the children are learning about Israel, we discover that they are being taught about an imagined reality in which Israel is a perfect, wonderful place where the problems that concern us all don't exist. There are no disputes, not conflict, everything is "milk and honey," it's the best of all countries. True, Israel has a Jewish majority and there is no anti-Semitism there; kosher food is available everywhere and people are warm and open, like in the stories. But there is also an occupation, oppression, and racism – and many of the American values on which these children are raised do not exist there.
This contradiction shocks them. It causes those same children, who in the meantime have grown up, to be disappointed. The backstage of life never bears any resemblance to what we see on stage. As the beloved Israeli band Kaveret put it: "Queen Esther? [Here] she's just 'Estie.'"
No country could live up to the expectations that American Jewish education creates for Israel. At the end of the day, Israel is a country with a special character and essence, but day-to-day life is hard work. Maybe it's time for American Jewry to recognize that Israel is the realization of a dream, but one that includes elected officials like Hazan. Maybe it would be better if we all exposed our children to the bitter as well as the sweet.
