1-29-07 Good News from Israel

One of the great things about being a rabbinic fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute is being exposed to the best and the brightest in Israel. Yesterday, we had the pleasure of hearing Gidi Grinstein, the founder and director of the Reut Institute, a new and unusual think tank in Israel. In a spellbounding hour of analysis, Grinstein, presented original and fresh thinking about an array of major issues that have bedeviled Israel and the Jewish world.

The most striking insight for me was his repudiation of the common Israeli condescension and negation of the significance of the Jewish diaspora. Unlike the storm over A. B. Yehoshua's comments last year to an American Jewish audience, Grinstein argued that Jewish genius was to be found in the capacity for network and community building wherever Jews found themselves. This capacity would enable Judaism to persist long into the future. But he also argued that the opportunity for the Jews to build a nation, and to make it endure and thrive is a critical dimension of the Jewish project. The health of the Jewish communities of the Diaspora and the vigor of Israel is our common project.

Behind this argument is his understanding that Judaism and the Jewish people represent a matrix of values which must all be embraced and allowed to coexist together. The problem he says with much of Israeli and Zionist thought is to focus on one value over all the other (even contradictory values). This was the error of the settler movement which became obsessed with settlement over other Zionist values such as democracy and human rights. A true Zionist must live in conflict with contradictory values, allowing all of them to be in play and attempting to balance them in living out one's Zionist commitments.

Most interesting was his analysis of the current political-military crisis in Israel. Read the articles on Reut's outstanding website that have just come out about the need for some new thinking. The new ideas Grinstein presented were completely refreshing and the most thought provoking insights I have heard in years. His presentation and comments impressed all of the 25 colleagues in the room and gave us hope and excitement about the future. Anyone who cares about Israel should pay attention to Reut and Grinstein and share with others the new ideas he is bringing to light during these eventful times.

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg