I long for Israel, shed tears while I sing or hear Hatikvah, and walked down my wedding aisle to Naomi Shemer’s evocative Al Kol Eleh – On all These Things. I have been there as many times as I can get there, and through my career and my personal activities have always been close to her, have fought for her and will defend her forever. A few years ago, on my children’s first trip to Israel, my son's greatest joy was sitting alone with me at a small outdoor grill off Rechov Azza and Rav Berlin in Jerusalem, eating schnitzel in pita stuffed with pickles and chummos. He didn’t need to do anything more but sit in the Israel air taking in the city sun, absorbing the similar tones of Jerusalem stone adorning every building and watching the cars and the people pass by. I felt proud and content for the moment.
For the moment only – because I know there is so much to do. If it were so easy to create new Zionists and defenders of Israel through outdoor grills and Mediterranean air, I suspect Israel’s future would seem immutable, rendering the politics of who American Zionists choose as the 44th President inane as could be. Yet, my son’s attachment comes from what he sees in my heart and eyes as much as from the school he attends. His being there only raised it to the surface. For so many, attachment is lacking and that is where the work needs to begin.
What Israel needs is a new approach to an old problem. Keeping it important—making it central—to the lives and hearts of people around the world, living in an evermore secularized and assimilated society. Many young Israelis themselves, tired of living in a perpetual state of war and with internal religious struggles, no longer feel the Zionism their grandparents believed in as they fought for the country’s right to be born, or even the Zionism their parents believed in as they fought for the country’s ability to survive. For the Twentysomethings, Entebbe is a story one reads about in a history book and the reunification of Jerusalem happened before their parents were born.
Instead, daunting questions stemming from as far back as Sabra and Shatila haunt Israelis. Continued with failed terrorist assassination attempts, bad press in Jenin more recently, as well as Gaza and Amona, the Second Lebanon War fiasco, and then the countless, pointless and absolutely heartbreaking collection of corruption stories on every level of Israel’s government and of every variety - from money to sex. Israel was supposed to be the savior of the Jewish people and the return to Zion that God promised in the Bible. Yet, debates linger among Jews themselves regarding whether Israel today is that redemption from Diaspora. How to fix it remains at issue, and while the hard answers can be debated for centuries beyond my lifetime, the simple solution for now is better public relations.
What began for me as a just a fun trip sparked a fire in me that has burned ever since. Back then I would argue with my father in law the rights and wrongs - often from the wounded dove's point of view. Time, work, knowledge and experience have brought me closer to the point of view he had always taken on faith. Yet, I also know that making the case for Israel is never simple.
Today, we’re all about cell phones and fancy cars, trendy clothes and American Idol, Facebook and JDate. What Israel needs now is less talk about politics, less news about internal and external troubles and more about what Israel offers our world. Just about all that we are, from Asia to the Americas, developed, underdeveloped and undeveloped, stems from some iconic trend, personality or technology; and Israel, as small as it may seem, has advanced enough of all to celebrate. Much of what we know and have today is irrefutably connected to Israel.
Advances in technology, like harnessing the sun and now water to replace oil as an energy resource; Internet applications within Microsoft to Google stem from Israel’s Silicon Wadi; medicine, biomedicine and stem cell advances far beyond most other countries; and culture, music and art as well as production of some of today’s mainstream celebrities like the Apple songstress Yael Naïm, American Idol Elliot Yamin, Natalie Portman, and the infamous Gene Simmons, are all what Israel can and should be known for.
That is the Israel that our children will look to, and that is the Israel that will survive the daily news and routine thrashing from her mendacious opponents who choose to ignore facts for rhetorical one-upmanship. If Israel can learn to deal with its own internal strife and make an organized effort to promote what’s good and relevant to today’s generation, then my fond memories of debating in Israel’s pubs and watching the sunrise over Masada as I escaped New York to chase a dream can be succeeded by my own child’s memory of eating schnitzel and chummos at a sidewalk café while infusing his longing for Israel into his children one day.
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