Words of the Week: Nate Lebowitz
The Jewish home we fought to build — something earlier generations could have only dreamed of — has been described to me by some students as a place where open expressions of Jewish peoplehood can feel constrained. Students report that they were told earlier this year that there needed to be community conversation before an Israeli flag could be displayed in the JRC. Even taken at face value, that rationale reflects, in my view, a profound misunderstanding of Jewish identity. More broadly, it raises a deeper question about why expressions of Jewish identity — particularly those connected to Israel — are sometimes treated as contingent on communal discussion in spaces meant to serve Jewish students. For Jews, Israel is not simply a contemporary political question. The Land of Israel appears throughout the Tanakh, throughout Jewish liturgy, and throughout the covenantal memory of the Jewish people. Jerusalem lives in our prayers, our holidays, our blessings after meals, our fast days, our wedding ceremonies, and our rituals of mourning. For thousands of years, Jews facing east did not do so as a political gesture, but as an expression of covenant, memory, and peoplehood.
Every year, at the end of the Passover Seder and at the close of Yom Kippur, many Jews conclude their festivities with the words “Next year in Jerusalem.” Jews have spoken those words for centuries — in Spain, Poland, Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, and America — long before modern political debates existed. The phrase was never a slogan. It was memory, hope, and identity carried across generations of exile.
Of course Jews have always argued about Israel. Debate about governments, policies, borders, war, and peace is not new. Argument among Jews is itself an ancient tradition. But the claim that Judaism can be neatly separated from any attachment to Zion places enormous strain on Jewish history and religious identity.
Source: Nate Lebowitz (Williams College alumnus), “The College wants my donation. First it owes Jewish students moral clarity.” (The Williams Record)
