Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
As Jeffrey Goldberg explains, Netanyahu's Ministry of Immigrant Absorption is sponsoring advertisements in American communities warning Israeli expatriates that they will lose their identities if they don't return home.
The Ministry is also featuring on its website a series of short videos that, in an almost comically heavy-handed way, caution Israelis against raising their children in America -- one scare-ad shows a pair of Israeli grandparents seated before a menorah and Skypeing with their granddaughter, who lives in America. When they ask the child to name the holiday they're celebrating, she says "Christmas." ,,,
The idea, communicated in these ads, that America is no place for a proper Jew, and that a Jew who is concerned about the Jewish future should live in Israel, is archaic, and also chutzpadik (if you don't mind me resorting to the vernacular). The message is: Dear American Jews, thank you for lobbying for American defense aid (and what a great show you put on at the AIPAC convention every year!) but, please, stay away from our sons and daughters.
Well that's just great. If I date a Turkish guy, his family will pretend I don't exist. If I date an Israeli guy, I'd damned well better move to Israel, because my experience of being an American Jew is inferior--even if that's the only experience of being a Jew I've got.
Keep it up, world, and I swear I'm running off with a young, proud telegraph operator from Aratacara.
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Jun '10
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
The ads seem very realistic to me. I don't understand Hebrew, but I understood (and believed) the grandparents' facial expressions. If you're a small group trying to maintain an ancient religious and cultural tradition, undiluted, then assimilation is death. Nobody wants to be the last of the Mohicans. At least not at the time it happens.
May '11
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
Come, run away with me Claire! My hand is up. Pick me! Pick me!
Feb '11
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
I saw that first ad yesterday and am trying to decide what I think about it. (Two of my sons are in the US, both married to US girls with backgrounds like theirs.)
It is certainly uncomfortable but I'm not sure it's bad or wrong.
On the other hand, I had some sympathy to the very old Israel Radio policy of not playing music by ex-patriates, in particular Theodore Bikel. So I am probably an outlier. As was my mother.
Edited on November 30, 2011 at 5:03pmRe: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
Oh dear. I know it's not the advertiser's goal to make me laugh, but I actually laughed at the second one. Or maybe because it hits close to home ...
Jun '10
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
Some random observations.
As an American Christian, I certainly believe in efforts to maintain a cultural identity in our ever-more secular, relativist world.
TV ads seem like a poor way to do it. And if you feel you need to go public, a lighter touch on this kind of issue has got to be best.
Here's what I don't understand. If I were Israeli leaders, I would want a strong, large, motivated Jewish population in Israel AND a strong, large, motivated Jewish population in America, which, despite the ambivalence of the Obamites, is still the best ally of Israel. I would think a better strategy would be to reach out more and more to American Jews in an effort to keep them strong and motivated in their support of Israel (i.e., keep them turning into J-Street types).
Ask Melanie Phillips what it's like to be a Jew in the UK, where the Jewish community is small (400,000?). You can say anything you want about Jews in London and the elites will applaud it.
Mar '11
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
Yeah, the ad is definitely harsh, but I can understand the motivations (if not necessarily agreeing with them). Christianity is very much a faith based on converts. But Jews just don't just have a faith, they're a people (in both the cultural and racial sense ) as well, (or Tribe, as Claire put it) and while you can convert to Judaism, "recruiting" is not a Jewish tradition. You don't see Jewish missionaries, after all. So yeah, 99% of the time you're born into it, and playing cultural/religious/tribal defense all your life. Further, many American Jews are notoriously secular, with most being Jewish only in a cultural sense, and many outright mocking that pesky Covenant-With-Yahweh stuff. Perhaps that's why there isn't a big push to bring American Jews to Israel. Maybe they're considered a bad influence? It sure seems that in my lifetime, Israelis have become more religious (contrasted with the founders of Israel, many of whom were atheist and socialist). Look at the growth of the Hasidic movement.
Aug '10
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
Aracataca? Macondo? A literary allusion. It's got to be.
Dec '10
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
I remember reading Herman Wouk’s Inside Outside. The attitude sixty-seventy years ago was that Israel was no place for a good Jew. The Zionists were a bunch of atheist trouble-making radicals.
Dec '10
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
Douglas
or Tribe, as Claire put it · Nov 30 at 8:22am
Actually they are two tribes out of an original twelve. Nobody is sure what happened to the other ten.
May '10
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
This is the exact same policy that was engaged in over the years by elements of the Catholic church, where if you married outside the faith, you had to agree to raise the children in the faith, etc. I remember what a terrible tragedy it was when one of my grade school classmates had a sibling who was getting married to a Protestant.
Strong ethnic and religious identities always want to preserve themselves, and our homogenizing society naturally assimilates those who are not locked into the origins lines.
It is fruitless to fight the wave, but some seem to feel compelled to try. I wonder if Netanyahu is concerned about domestic population. He could just be on an electoral strategy to add more Likkud voters via imports.
Meanwhile, I think that Claire should marry a Turkish guy. On the condition that he converts to Judaism.
Oct '11
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
It sure beats celebrating diversity and the Balkanization of a culture.
Aug '11
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
Its perhaps unpleasant for American Jewish sensibilities, but I completely get it. Its classical Zionism to promote the idea of Aliyah to Jews in the diaspora, and a part of that is bringing Israelis that have left back home. Its got nothing to do with thinking that American Jews are inferior in some way. I wouldn't want my daughters or son moving away from Israel, not only because i would miss them, but also because I feel very strongly about living in this country. I wouldn't have moved here from Australia if I didn't feel that way, and one of the reasons why I did was because I feel a strong connection to Israel that I never felt for Australia. Perhaps only someone who feels this way can understand that, but thats pretty much the ideological foundation that Zionist youth movements abroad and in Israel such as Betar, Habonim, Hanoar Ha'oved, Hahomer Hatzair, Bnei Akiva etc. are built on. All of these movements are the feeders of modern Israeli political parties - Betar into the Likud, Habonim & Hanoar Haoved into Labor, Bnei Akiva into the National Religious Party, etc. etc.
Jun '11
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
As an American Jew/ "Born in the USA"..
Lived in Turkey and Iran.. been all over the Middle East.. but never Israel.
I have on affinity for Israel. I do support it's existence as the only democracy in the Middle East.
Worked with some Israelis while living in Iran.. they were totally alien (and rude) to me.
Apr '11
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
This is the problem I see with Judaism, is it wants to be, and in some ways is, both a religion and an ethnic culture. The problems is that other religions are not so closely associated with an ethnicity, as Judaism is. The conflating of ethnic culture and religion that occurs could lead very easily to Israeli Jews looking at American Jews as less Jewish or improperly Jewish, since for them the culture and the religion are one in the same. Which for practically everyone else in the world that is not the case. Is is proper?
As an American I can't really sympathies with this kind of view. It stands, I think, in complete opposition to what our nation is founded on, which is an understanding that people can share the same culture but not the same religion. It is because of this very tolerant view that our nation has that Jews have been able to be very prosperous and successful in America, and become very well integrated into the larger society.
Oct '10
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
Perhaps we as American conservatives need to rethink our support of Netanyahu; the Israelis deserve better. I'd forgotten that conservatives in other nations tend to be more ethnocentric than American conservatives.
Besides, why is he encouraging an immigrant inflow right when Israel is suffering from a capital bulge? His government is suffering politically as it is from the rising cost of living and the inflation generated by the capital inflow; immigration will only make it worse.
Edited on November 30, 2011 at 9:11pmOct '10
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
But it doesn't beat celebrating the melting pot and the coming together of peoples. I completely agree on our current suicidal diversity fetish, but I do think the original American ideal of assimilation has merit.
Aug '11
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
Joseph Eagar:
Besides, why is he encouraging an immigrant inflow right when Israel is suffering from a capital bulge? His government is suffering politically as it is from the rising cost of living and the inflation generated by the capital inflow; immigration will only make it worse. · Nov 30 at 12:10pm
Edited on Nov 30 at 12:11 pm
Sorry, but you really don't understand Israel. Israel is all about bringing Jews back home. It doesn't matter how bad the Israeli economy will ever be, Israel - as long as it is governed by Zionist parties - will always encourage Jews to immigrate. Zionism is not about the mere existence of a Jewish State in Israel, it is about making that a State for all Jews, from all over the world - whether that be from distressed communities such as the former Soviet republics and Ethiopia, or from wealthy, western countries such as the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. Understand that, and you will understand the advertisements. Israel has missions all over the world for this purpose. Israelis that leave Israel for seemingly greener pastures such as the US are looked upon as deserters.
Apr '11
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
Jonorose: If the goal of Israel is to get all Jews to come to Israel does that not then encourage the separation and alienation of Jews from the countries they have become or are becoming integrated in to? Isn't it a problem then that Israel has is that they are only unified by a religion, but they are made up of people who culturally are very different. What kind of country is that then? Doesn't that kind of attitude make it very uncomfortable for other religions in Israel. What would Zionists do if Muslim or Christian missionaries started making real head way in converting Israelis to their respective religions?
Mar '11
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
I have a big problem with this idea that all western and/or democratic nations should ape the US. Take Britain and Germany for example (or Japan, for that matter). There is currently a push for "diversity" in both countries that is largely resented by the native populations, and with good reason. Neither are traditionally immigrant countries (indeed, "immigration" in Britain usually meant the Saxons or Vikings were invading). European countries are ethnocentric. They're not melting pot countries. If you want a melting pot, isn't that what the US is for? Speaking the language doesn't make you one of the tribe, when a major feature of the tribe is ethnic identity. I can learn to speak Japanese like an expert, but that will never make me Japanese. Ethnicity is real, it's not some social construct. So I understand the the Israeli commercial. Israel, after all, was created for Jews. We have no business trying to force the melting pot on other countries.
Nov '11
Re: Way to Make Me Feel Like Part of the Tribe, Israel!
Being vastly ignorant of Jewish culture, I should keep my mouth shut.
And I will keep my mouth shut, except for observing that allocating the influence of blood, AKA "the family," AKA "the tribe," AKA "la raza," is a problem of politics . . everywhere . . . always.
In the USA we've "solved" the problem by pretty much limiting the religious, social, and political influence of blood to the realm of nuclear family. Once we escape mom and pop, we are free, for the most part, to marry whomever and to practice whatever religion. Unless you're black (somewhat less so if you're tan like me), no one much cares who your daddy is, and no one cares at all who your grandpa was.
Is that good?
Too soon to tell.
Destruction of the tribe as a political entity helps solve some apparent problems (e.g., furthers acceptance of individual autonomy), yet almost everyone agrees that the failure of the nuclear family takes things a bit too far.
Can the nuclear family survive without a surrounding tribe pressing it together?
Still too soon to tell.
"We the People," with nothing much between Me and "the People," makes Me feel small and lonely.