As Israel stands at a crossroads, with its existence challenged as never before, it is time to realize that the national trauma surrounding the disengagement is only a symptom of a much deeper and dangerous problem – the liquidation of the inner spirit of the Israeli Jew. While Israelis may be exposed to a great amount of information about their Jewishness and its traditions, they are exposed far too little to its spirit. There is a great deal of proficiency but too little reference, a great many skills but too few inner attitudes and appreciation. One cannot build a nation’s eternal future solely on knowledge. It is urgently necessary to cultivate inner values and feelings, and to refrain from doing so is a serious abdication of responsibility. Israeli society, including much of its religious segment, has become hijacked by the mass culture that has captured the minds of old and young so powerfully. Hollywood, Madison Avenue and the desire for luxuries are a major threat to the independence, sensitivity and inner balance that are so vital to the spiritual freedom of today’s Jews. The constant flattening of the inner spirit finds expression in spiritual boredom, which leads to the search for extreme materialism, cheap entertainment and a sincere lack of sensitivity towards one’s fellow human beings.
There is a deep need for spiritual audacity, educational guts and defiance that will create a radically different atmosphere in Israeli society. It is suicidal to argue that unless the climate favors these principles, there is no chance of making major changes successfully. The environment has never been conducive to spiritual concepts. Judaism’s major essence is warfare. It was Avraham, the first Jew, who declared war on spiritual indolence and desensitization. His daring personality turned the tables on the world, creating the greatest revolution ever to take place in the history of the human spirit. Although he knew that everything was against him, he was not discouraged. He knew that the inner human spirit could be rescued.
Why was Avraham so successful? How was he able to become the founding father not only of Judaism but of much of the moral value systems of other monotheistic religions and western civilization? Avraham realized that there was little value in teaching people about the oneness of God, the need to observe Shabbat or the importance of observing the dietary laws. Any insistence upon these important values would no doubt fall flat on the deaf ears of his generation. He realized that these concepts are conditioned by a set of assumptions and opinions that were totally alien and irrelevant to most of his contemporaries. Therefore, Avraham searched for a common dominator about which all people could agree, and concluded that this could only be found when he was able to reach the inner lives of his fellow men and women, the very core of their being – to cultivate their souls together with their minds. Avraham knew that deep down, human beings are searching for meaning and that moral beings look for empathy and reverence and, above all, need to do good for their fellow human beings. Only then can human beings discover their real selves. Only when they can find a sense of personal vocation and mission can they surpass themselves.
So Avraham started his Tent Revolution, which became the backbone of authentic Judaism. High on a hill, so that it would be seen by all, Avraham built a small, inviting structure that became the center of social intercourse and where people of opposing backgrounds could meet, speak and share. Here he started the greatest educational-interpersonal project in human history. It was through his astonishing dedication to treating his fellow human beings with goodness and showing love even to the coarsest idolaters that he reached the hearts of everyone he met and took the world by storm.
Israel needs to return to Avraham’s Tent Revolution. It needs to build tents of Avraham throughout the country in which inspired teachers and laypeople, Orthodox, liberal and secular, teach, debate and exemplify the great Jewish ethical values as found in Judaism’s classical sources. They must share their knowledge not as academicians or scholars trying to decipher ancient texts but rather as feeling human beings looking for ways to shape a society in which menschlichkeit is a guiding principle.
There are too many yeshivot and too few, if any, tents of Avraham. After elementary studies, most yeshiva students should be motivated to prepare themselves for the great task of bringing Jewish ethical values back into the center of Israeli life. In a time of great danger we can no longer afford to allow most of them to study Talmud for its own sake. Unless we make these tractates relevant to the needs of the Jewish people and share them with our fellow Jews, we badly underestimate the power of the Jewish tradition and rob our fellow Israelis of what our society needs the most: Jewish ethics. No doubt this requires a radical restructuring of the yeshiva curriculum. The need to read the great classical texts of Jewish philosophy will have to become the center of these studies. Whether these are found in the writings of Yehuda Halevi, Maimonides, the Maharal, Abraham Yehoshua Heschel, Franz Rosenzweig or Joseph Ber Soloveitchik is of secondary importance. What is important is that all of them focus on the powerhouse of Jewish ethical wisdom not as dry texts but rather as moving, passionate teachings. This applies even more strongly to many university teachers who sometimes, in their obsession with philology or comparative studies, lose sight of the great spiritual message of the texts that they discuss with their students.
Since the mass media is by now the most powerful way to create public opinion, Israeli society should include programs on radio and television which cause their audiences to want to emulate Israel’s sages. Jewish tradition holds an infinite storehouse of inspirational stories that show the Sages’ sensitivity towards their fellow human beings’ feelings. Posters on bus stops and in shopping centers should ask Israelis whether they smiled at someone else this morning (“He who shows his neighbor the white of his teeth [who makes him cheerful] is better than he who gives him milk to drink” – Ketubbot 111b), helped an elderly person or child to cross the road, gave charity to the poor, a lift to a soldier, dropped in to see an old acquaintance, thanked their waiter or waitress. While some Israelis describe people with sensitive character traits as freierim (pushovers), they must learn that they are the backbone of our society. Better an Avraham complex than a narcissistic one. Israel has an urgent need today for coherence and unity. This can only come about when Israeli society rediscovers its Jewish ethical and compassionate roots and recreates them with passion and commitment. Only when we return to Avraham’s tent will we overcome our problems in spite of all the obstacles. The great question in Israel is not whether there will be a Palestinian state but whether the State of Israel will be a Jewish one.
