My Promised Land - by Ari Shavit

 A review of My Promised Land by Ari Shavit

A thoroughly entertaining and informative trip through the history of Zionism and the state it created - coinciding, to a limited extent, with the author’s family history.  The story is framed by references to his distinguished ancestor, Herbert Bentwich. And the whole book feels personal.  Rather than the distant, clinical view of the historian, we get interviews with the men who made it happen. ( I can’t recall meeting a single woman)

As the title makes explicit - the author is a Zionist and he lives at the center of the world he observes..  There is no hidden agenda here - it’s all upfront. He acknowledges that Israel needs American support to survive - and this book follows the grand tour he made throughout American universities to pitch the case for the survival of a small Jewish state in the heart of the Arab Muslim Middle East. He is a passionate advocate - but he has not written propaganda.  He presents his case even handedly. He respects the intelligence of his readers - and his own as well.  He exemplifies the adage: "Two Jews, three opinions"

As an American, I have no greater, or lesser, responsibility than any other citizen to consider that case —- and that is how I will respond to this book.  Full disclosure:  I am one of those totally assimilated Jews who - as the author sees it - exemplify the tragic disappearance of secular Judaism outside of Israel.  My mother’s parents were Jewish.  My Jewish connection, however, goes further than that.  As a young man, my German/Norwegian father chanced to meet a Ukrainian born Jew who was teaching art at a small Midwestern college.   Milton Horn’s mission was the creation of Jewish liturgical figurative sculpture pretty much in the style of  the medieval Christian art he collected. That chance meeting transformed my father’s life — and eventually provided a path for mine as well. 

Antisemitism was a good reason for Jews to want  their own country - and the Holocaust was a good reason for other countries to get on board.  But the project looks even more impractical, if not reprehensible,  today than it was in 1948.  What was supposed to  happen to all the Muslim Arabs who were living there?  Why would Arabs elsewhere be any less eager to help their own kind than the Jewish diaspora has been to to help theirs?  Looking at a map of the Middle East, it’s so much easier, and almost unavoidable, for them to do so.  Israel is so very small and isolated.

So 75 years later ( I know the number because I was born the same year), what can be done now?  Shavit is optimistic because Israelis remain vigorous and inventive, regardless of the changes in their demographic (being now more oriental than European in background).  He is pessimistic, however, because their problem with Palestinians and the Arab/Muslim world has not gone away - while their support from other countries is growing ever weaker. 

Ten years after the book was published, the recent breakout from Gaza exemplifies both Arab intransigence and incompetent Israeli leadership. Their solution to the Gaza problem was to build a super-wall to lock the Arabs in.  When they failed to monitor it, 1200 Israelis were brutally murdered.  Then their response was to invade and kill the Palestinian leadership.  So far, more than 20,000 Palestinians have died.  Will this work any better than the violent responses that began with the Arab revolts in the 1930’s and continued through several international wars and popular uprisings ? 

Why couldn’t Israel just rebuild the Gaza wall and monitor it much more carefully? Probably because that would be unacceptable to the nationalist Israeli public - just as peace and reconciliation is a minority, if not extirpated, voice in Palestinian politics.

I can see America helping Israel fend off the neighboring autocratic Arab states.  We usually help small states resist invasion from larger ones - especially if they are democratic,

 But should America help Israel fight the residents of their own occupied territories ? Should America help them exact a revenge that’s not going to make anyone safer?  Why should Americans be more concerned with the destiny of the Jews who sought refuge in Israel -  than Israelis have shown concern for the Palestinian population trapped in the struggle between two belligerents ? Even Shavit, who interviewed leaders across Israel's diverse society, including a Palestinian attorney, gives no voice to anyone living in the occupied territories. 

So as much as I enjoyed this informative, passionate  book -- it did make me less sympathetic to the author’s cause.  Shavit asserts that secular Judaism will eventually disappear without Israel - but he hasn't even tried to convince me that this problem is serious enough to merit warfare, much less a century of it.  He regrets that Israeli policy is currently driven by right-wing nationalism - but he asks for American support regardless. 

Looking back, Shavit has documented Israel’s survival as an ethno-centric state - and it is indeed a remarkable, thrilling story.  Looking ahead, however - the next remarkable achievement might  be to transform itself into a pluralistic nation with a Jewish minority.  But Shavit, the Zionist, doesn’t really want to look ahead . The other  two possible scenarios are endless war or nuclear annihilation.

And  given my own proclivities, I am less pessimistic about the future of a secular Jewish identity without Israel.  I am never going to raise Jewish children or keep the Sabbath or any other Jewish holiday.  But the Jewish tradition in literature, sacred and otherwise, has always fascinated me - and the literary importance of this book may outlive its subject matter - along with books by other great secular Jewish writers of recent times.  (my favorite being Isaac Singer).  Every character that Shavit introduces is succinctly and passionately drawn.  And as amazing as many are, they all feel true to life.

All good things must come to an end - but as long as free inquiry is protected, Jewish intellectual life , from the Torah to the latest Shavit, will live on — whether waxing or waning.  The rule of law in a pluralistic democracy is worth fighting for.  Other stuff — not so much.