June 17, 2008
Israel Office
SHATIL
Weekly Message
The Following message, written by NIF’s Executive Director in Israel, was distributed as part of a special Independence Day e-mail.
New Israel Fund (NIF) Perspective
Israel at 60: Living the Dream
By ELIEZER YA’ARI
In the summer of 1949, in a temporary hospital, I was born in Jerusalem, a city that had just emerged from the War of Independence, torn and divided into pieces. I was the second son born to my parents – Yaffa (Sheina), who managed to flee in time from the Jewish town of Slonim in Poland, and Moshe, from the city of Tarnow in Galicia, the tenth son of a typical Jewish family, who also came to Palestine before the Holocaust.
Many dreams were hung above my crib. Before I had managed to understand where I was, my parents named me Eliezer after my grandfather, Eliezer London, whom the Nazis shot in the head and whose body they threw in the Shchara River. Together with my circumcision, about which I was also not consulted, they imparted in me all of Jewish destiny, and I was not even 10 days old. Afterward they suspended over my bed my mother’s dreams that I would be handsome and tall and smart like her father, that I would be a doctor or at least a lawyer, that I would be rich and successful, that I would be the best student in the class – and if not that, then at least better than the neighbors’ children. I had to fulfill my father’s dreams that I’d be a new type of Jew, a proud Israeli, strong and brazen, but also disciplined and sensitive, that I’d grow up quickly and join the breed of heroes in order to defend the homeland, the only homeland, the refuge, the country in its dreamy infancy, already schooled in suffering and longing, the Land of Zion and Jerusalem.
Not a long time passed before I understood that above my bed were suspended not only the dreams of my parents, but the dreams of an entire nation. They called it 2,000 years of exile, they sang Hatikva in my ears and set me to guard this tiny and imaginary plant, the State of Israel. You are not alone in your crib, they told me, you are our representative in the Holy Land. Israel is not only yours, but also ours, they said; and “ours” meant the cousins in the American exile who want you to be healthy and successful and not leave Israel, to be smart and just, strong and merciful – so succeed and flourish, we’ll come soon.
When you are born out of a dream, and so many dreams are hanging over your head, there is a fear that you’ll never know how to live a normal life, that you won’t know when to stop dreaming yourself. Reluctantly you learned that, even if you won’t be the best student in the class, you have the right to exist in the Jewish family; that even if you won’t be a hero like Bar Kochva, daily life in Jerusalem, at work, in the family, in the society around you is important and daring enough. You learn, painfully, that you can’t fulfill all the dreams, that you can’t be as perfect as your mother wanted; wonderful, just, strong, and wise as 2,000 years of exile, and millions of Jews in the world want you to live. You know that the world isn’t perfect, not in Israel and not anywhere else; but you understand that the only way to bridge the disappointments and difficulties is by not ceasing to dream.
Each morning when you wake up you try to fulfill a small piece of the big dream, before it disappears. You also learn that the dream is the fuel that propels you all along the way – not the dreams of others but your own dreams; the small dreams of home, children, friends, health and welfare. And also the big dreams – those about the Land of Zion, about peace, justice, coexistence; they are also a part of you. You become a part of the supreme effort of the woman fighting against the occupation at the checkpoint, but also the pilot defending the country. You are part of the dream of the Ethiopian boy to be an equal part of the Israeli picture, and of the Arab woman who wants her own independent life at home, in society, and as part of her people. You are a partner with the single-parent mother, with the Russian man trying to exist in a new country, with the female Bedouin college student, with the female rabbi in the synagogue and the pupil in the development town – and you understand that you have been given the privilege not only to dream for yourself, but also for others. You don’t merely dream about justice and talk about it, you try to change the general DNA so that it will exist.
And that is actually the entire story of the New Israel Fund: You know that the world is not perfect, not even Israel, but it is a wonderful thing – part of us, a part that is not a dream but a reality in which we take part in making Israel a better place; more balanced, open, creative, just, and enjoyable. Sixty years after the establishment of the State of Israel in a world of difficult realities, there are still people who are not ashamed to dream, and they are not reluctant to try and fulfill their dreams. They have built a partnership – yes, a partnership – of Israelis, Jews and Arabs, with people outside of Israel, Jews unlike themselves, and called it the New Israel Fund. With joint means they are making the social desert bloom, working so that we will indeed be a light unto the nations in the spirit of the prophets, just as the first pioneers wrote in the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel, 60 years ago today.
When my children were born, I also hung dreams above their crib. Today they dream on behalf of my grandchildren, and all of it in this new and tumultuous place, frightening and exciting, that is the State of Israel. For my grandfather, Eliezer London, Israel was a dream that he never dared to dream of. To my great regret, he never lived to see it fulfilled.
Eliezer Yaari, (Eliezer@nif.org.il) an author, is the Executive Director of the New Israel Fund in Israel. His Hebrew blog can be found at www.notes.co.il/eliezer.
In this week’s NIF News, we report on the NIF family’s response to the controversial decision by the Rabbinical Court of Appeals to retroactively nullify thousands of Orthodox Jewish conversions performed by the Israel state-sponsored Conversion Authority. We also feature a demonstration organized by NIF in Or Yehuda near Tel Aviv to protest the burning of dozens of New Testament books in the city last month. SHATIL highlights its Mixed Cities Project, a recent seminar on evaluating social change work and the alternative book fair in Jerusalem.
** Please note: NIF News will not be published next week while our board and senior staff meet in Jerusalem.** |
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