Possibility, Responsibility, and Agency
Reflections on Israeli Independence Day
Almost exactly a year ago, someone asked me if I regretted having made aliyah. Israel was, at the time, at the height of the protests surrounding the so-called judicial reforms (remember those?). And most of the country was absolutely terrified about what would happen if those reforms came to pass (or didn’t); both sides of the debate were convinced that if their side lost, it meant the end of Israeli democracy. And as the country was tearing itself apart, my interlocutor wanted to know whether I regretted having moved here along with my young family.
When I tried to sidestep the question, my interlocutor tipped their hand and explained to me just how big a mistake they thought I had made in coming here:
“America is like a big ocean liner. It’s really hard to turn it. And a bad captain isn’t going to do a lot of damage. But Israel is like a small boat and it’s really easy to move – which is really dangerous in the hands of the wrong captain.”
I agree with the basic premises of the analogy, but I think it actually works the other way around. I’m not blind to the dangers of being in a small boat; but when you’re surrounded by rocky shoals and dangerous icebergs, I’d vastly prefer to be in something that’s easily steered and easily maneuvered (as opposed to, say, the Titanic). Plasticity and malleability in a nation are not necessarily bad things. To the contrary, they are essential qualities in times such as these…
Some 171 years ago, Frederick Douglass took the stage in Rochester, New York, to deliver a Fourth of July address. Frederick Douglass had been born into slavery and escaped into freedom as a young boy, becoming one of the leading advocates for abolishing slavery and for the civil rights of Black people. A statesman of singular impact, the speech he gave that Independence Day – “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” – is one of the most important political texts in American history. In it, Douglass challenged his audience to stare unblinkingly at the ongoing evils and horrors of slavery, highlighting the obscene contradiction between America’s founding ideals and the gross injustices that were being presently inflicted on millions of Black men, women, and children. And Douglass demanded that his audience join him in doing something about it.
The entire text is well worth your while, though I hope you’ll forgive my focusing on only a small piece of it. It’s hardly the most impactful or important section of Douglass’s speech, but I find what follows particularly resonant given the present context.
That is, July 4, 1852, was America’s 76th birthday… the same age that Israel is today. And Douglass’s opening remarks from that day are as relevant now as they were then:
I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon.
The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young.
Douglass focuses on the very things that so troubled my interlocutor and flips the concern on its head. Youth, childhood, impressionability — qualities that Douglass attributes to and celebrates in a seventy-six-year-old nation — boil down fundamentally to the magic word possibility. Young nations have a certain plasticity and malleability to them — a rare and singular blessing when it comes to human affairs. And that’s precisely Douglass’s point:
Every nation has its original sins. Every nation has latent contradictions at the heart of its political project. Every nation has deferred hard decisions and avoided necessary but difficult conversations. But only a young nation has any hope of actually grappling with those things successfully.
And that’s precisely why we’ve got the responsibility to try.
It’s Israel’s 76th birthday. And like so many others, I feel deeply ambivalent about whether and how to celebrate amidst the horror and pain that we’re still experiencing.
Re-reading Douglass’s speech has helped me a little. It’s hard not to be simultaneously shaken by his wrenching account of injustices and cruelty, galvanized by his call to action, and moved by his concomitant expressions of love for and faith in his country. And so as part of my observance of Yom Ha’Atzmaut, even as I thank God with all my heart for the blessing of the modern State of Israel, I’m also trying to take stock of the challenges that we’re facing… what might become of this place and what we’ll have to do in order to get there.
It's daunting to consider. We’re trying to sail through terrifying and uncharted waters in a tiny little boat held together by duct tape and an inanimate carbon rod.
And I don’t say any of this with anger or ingratitude towards those who founded the State of Israel. It makes some sense that things played out as they did. The nation was built by refugees and Holocaust survivors, threatened on all sides by well-armed enemies who have sworn to push the Jews into the sea [they are still trying to do this]. The architects of this country needed to work quickly and – in a war for survival – they understandably held some hard questions in abeyance. It even makes sense that we’ve collectively deferred some necessary reckonings for decades, considering that our national existence to date has been characterized by repeated attacks and ongoing trauma.
But we’re at a point now when it’s clear this approach cannot work any longer. Even though we as a country are still young enough to change, we’re old enough by now to know by now that there is no “day after.”
Changemaking under fire? That’s the essential condition of this place. And so if we were waiting for peace to write a constitution, we must instead learn how to write one while at war. We’ve likewise been waiting for blue skies and sunny days to try and figure out the relationships between Haredim, Arabs, secular Jews, religious Jews, Mizrahim, Ashkenazim, Tel Aviv, Periphery, Jerusalem – how these groups will live together, decide together, move together, work together. But those days aren’t coming. It’s never going to get any safer, any calmer, or any easier. And so we must learn how to do all this and more while navigating ongoing internal strife and external threats.
That’s an insanely difficult task. But I’m not despairing.
Notwithstanding the difficulties that surround us, including dire crises of our own making and innumerable self-inflicted catastrophes… I sit here filled with genuine hope for the future. Not passive hope (“someone should really do something!”). I know that there are no adults in the room and that the cavalry isn’t going to save us. I’m not praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets. But I am filled with genuine hope that is rooted in the fundamentals of this place… hope that’s rooted in the people of Israel.
I landed here with my family at the height of COVID-19. I cannot exaggerate how tumultuous the last forty-five months have been. We have lived through lockdowns, multiple elections, constitutional crises, paroxysms of violence on the homefront, two wars with Gaza. But throughout this time, I’ve seen the best of the people of Israel.
I have stopped playing the so-called Anne Frank game, so common among Jews who grew up living in Diaspora. That’s not because I’m safe; again, I feel safer here than I do anywhere else but I know that safety is an illusion. Rather, I have stopped with this morbid exercise because it’s just ridiculously inapposite here. I don’t have to wonder whether my neighbors would someday hypothetically risk their lives to protect mine; I see them do it regularly. Point in fact, we just concluded a day mourning the tens of thousands of our countrymen who paid the ultimate price while doing so, including 766 in the past year alone.
At the end of the day, actions are what matters. And here, we put our minds, bodies, and souls on the line for the sake of our people and our values. We do so in ways big and small.
I’m not blind to the real dangers that we face and the massive challenges that lie ahead. I fear it’s going to be a rough couple of years.
But I have faith.
I have faith because I live in a young country, bursting with possibility. I have faith because I am part of an activated, engaged, and empowered citizenry. And if you put those things together, I have faith – real faith – that we might live to see possibility realized.
May it be so.
Love the framing, and the sentiment. And I share your faith - yet I fear that too much faith can leave us imagining the storm will pass and calm waters will follow, to borrow your metaphor. Given the obvious need to chart a path out of this current mess, what beyond faith is necessary to affect system wide change to prevent us from returning to the same dire straits?
This was beautifully written and very meaningful to me, an American. I appreciate your linking to Frederick Douglass's speech--a man born into slavery, the "Great Compromise" that underlies our countries' founding. Israel, too, made many compromises when she was founded and after the war of 1967. She will emerge stronger and more united, but as you write so powerfully--it remains a possibility.