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January 2001 Issue

Mood on the Street: This is a Homeland?

By Gregory Newmark

The biggest insight I had into Israel came rather improbably in Paraguay. The South American country most likely to be forgotten is home to fewer than 300 Jewish families. Nonetheless, there is a Jewish school, a community center, a Zionist youth group, a synagogue and a, no surprise here, Chabad house. I was in the country as part of a summer exchange program and after several weeks in the countryside felt the need for something more familiar. So I decided to go to Asuncion, the capital city, to go to Friday night services.

Having been raised in a somewhat formal Reform congregation, I arrived in a sport jacket and tie, only to discover things here were far less dressy. Nonetheless, as I sat down in what could only be loosely described as the "men's section," I felt extremely comfortable. The people looked like the people at my synagogue. They sang the same songs and read the same prayers. I felt so at home that I turned to my neighbor for the traditional mid-service schmoozing and, totally forgetting I was in a foreign country, started chatting in English. Only his "No hablo ingles" brought me back to the reality that I was still in South America.

That almost familial sense of belonging that characterized the Diaspora Jewish world is best defined by the Yiddish adjective heimish. It is a sense that is forged in its members being raised to a lesser or greater degree with a knowledge of the traditions and more importantly with the ethic that those traditions impart. It is also a sense that comes from the challenges and ironies of maintaining a minority culture in the face of a much larger society. Sadly, much of that sense of being Jewish has been lost in the modern state of Israel.

This became particularly clear after services. I went home with an older family that was celebrating the return of their son and his family from Israel. The son's teenage boys, raised totally in Israel, were invited to do the blessings before the Shabbat meal. They stumbled awkwardly through the ancient Hebrew, like middle-schoolers reading Shakespeare. Clearly, it was their first contact with the blessings. A lifetime of speaking Hebrew was totally disconnected from one of the most basic and universal of Jewish ritual observances--blessing the wine and challah for Shabbat.

My father always prefaces the same blessings in Cincinnati, Ohio by noting all around the world Jews are doing the same thing at the same time. Ironically, the one place where that may not be the case is Israel. The modern state of Israel was forged in an era of secularism. While that was fine for the founding generation that had largely been raised in traditional homes, their Israeli offspring have less and less a connection with Judaism. They are Israeli and that is the sum total of their conscious identity. While they have the Hebrew skills to rapidly learn the tradition, they do not employ them.

It seems almost paradoxical that the inhabitants of the Jewish state are among the least observant and Judaically knowledgeable Jews. The rituals that bind the Diaspora community are foreign to many raised in the Jewish State. In Paraguay, the grandparents had sought to honor their grandkids with the blessings. Instead they had created a very awkward moment.

While I do not feel that ritual observance is the essence of Jewish hominess, it does create the common culture that enables a critical sense of familiarity and belonging. Maintaining the rituals, in whatever form, ensures some connection to the Jewish ethical tradition and broader nationhood. That is what is missing in Israel.

The classic, sophomoric Sunday school query, "Are you a Jewish American or an American Jew?" would be totally lost on most Israelis, who see a Jewish identity as only a technical part of being Israeli. The sensitivities to being Jewish disappear where Jews are the sovereign majority.

As a result, it is easy to feel distanced from the 70 percent of Israelis who are totally not religious. They have succeeded in creating a state of Jews, but their lives lack the rhythms central to Diaspora Jewish life. So while I feel welcome in Israel as a Jew, I feel more Jewishly at home in Paraguay.

Greg Newmark was born and raised in Ohio. After graduating from Yale in 1997, he moved to Boston for two years to work as a public transportation planner. Currently, he lives in Jerusalem where he struggles with Hebrew and is in desperate search of a good burrito.

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