Today, the 20th day of the Omer, is also Yom Ha’atzma’ut, Israel Independence Day. The day before is Yom HaZikaron, Israel Memorial Day when Israel marks the death of 22,000 Israelis who have given their lives protecting and defending Israel. In Israel everyone knows someone who has been killed. I am no exception. My first love was killed serving his country in 1983.
Israel was born out of the Holocaust. It is no accident that the week before Yom Ha’atzma’ut is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. Integrating Holocaust survivors and refugees from Arab and northern African countries was no easy task. Martin Fletcher in his book, Walking Israel, said this: “When these emaciated and traumatized victims finally landed in the arms of their Jewish brethren, they were regarded as unwelcome reminders of the ‘lambs who went to the slaughter,’ an embarrassment, just as Jews in Israel were reinventing themselves as farmers and warriors, as fighting Jews. True, their bodies were welcomed. New immigrants from Euro[e contributed half the Jewish fighters in Israel’s War of Independence, and a third of the dead. But the part of them that most needed help, their souls, was ignored and silenced…David Ben-Gurion, a legend of bluntness, famously lumped Holocaust survivors and immigrants from North Africa into one dismissive phrase: avak adam–human dust. He wondered what they did to survive and once said that the best had died.”
Harsh words indeed but it explains so much. When I was a student living in Israel I did a sociology primary research study about Moroccan Jews living in a development town, Kiryat Gat. Kiryat Gat was a planned town. It was known for making Chanukah candles for a worldwide Jewish market. It had 70 different synagogues organized by country of origin. It had three high schools. One secular, one traditional Ashkanasi and one traditional Sephardi. My research was done in the classrooms and then in the evenings in homes of the Moroccan families.
I learned I could only do two interviews with families a night. They always served food, roughly 15 courses, and if you finished a course, they would refill your plate. (And the food was yummy–ask me about the carrots another time!) I learned that they didn’t understand the difference between religious and observant. That Judaism was black or white. Either you observed everything or nothing. THat they had never heard of anything as ridiculous as a woman rabbi, but that was out of scope. I was trying to understand how the next generation of Moroccan Jews would observe Judaism. At that I failed.
And yet, it is critical to understand that Israel has done much with/for the Jews of Africa. Golda Meir believed that the lessons learned by Israelis could be passed on to Africans who, particularly during the 1950s. were engaged in the same process of nation building. “Like them, we had shaken off foreign rule; like them, we had to learn for ourselves how to reclaim the land, how to increase the yields of our crops, how to irrigate, how to raise poultry, how to live together, and how to defend ourselves.” Israel could provide a better model for the newly independent African state, Meir believed, because Israelis “had been forced to find solutions to the kinds of problems that large, wealthy, powerful states had never encountered.”
These efforts by a young Israel should be highlighted and celebrated. Israel airlifted Jews from Morocco, Tunsia, Libya after Israel became a state. The Ethiopian community, Beta Israel, was airlifted again to Israel. It is now common to see black Israelis, Ethiopians serving proudly in the Israel Defense Forces. They may not have wanted to but they took their responsibility as a refuge with its door open to any Jew who wanted seriously. In today’s world, sadly, we still need that refuge.
Israel has been the refuge for many Africans seeking asylum, some 60,000 people who have walked from the Sudan and other sub-Saharan countries. Again, in the wake of the Holocaust, Israel understands its role in protecting the citizens of all countries against genocide.
It is not easy to integrate all the cultures. My experiences in Kiryat Gat with its 70 synagogues as a young college student taught me that. Recent news about Israel deporting illegal immigrants have sent chills down some Holocaust survivors spines. Protests have been held in Tel Aviv–both for and against illegal immigrants. However, I wonder how different the government of Irsrael is reacting compared with some US policy.
As early as December 2011, the Mayor of Tel Aviv, Ron Huldai, addressed Netanyahu and demanded, “immediate emergency actions” against the immigrants since they are not an “existential threat.” The threat seems to be in his mind, economic, taking away jobs from Israelis. He cites a rise in crime in South Tel Aviv and a fear of illegal immigrants being a security risk, passing information to terrorist cells. Yet, in May of 2012, a thousand Israelis showed up in the Hatikva Quarter to protest how illegal immigrants are treated by the Israeli government, some now subjected to forced deportation. Unfortunately that demonstration turned violent. Again in late December another protest was held with thousands of marchers from Levinsky Park to the city center, demanding that detention of African refugees with trial has to stop. How this tension will ultimately play out is not clear.
Tonight, however, is the chance to pause and celebrate all that Israel has accomplished. Israel has turned 66 today. The traditional Jewish blessing is Ad Meah Esrim. Until 120–and beyond!