Dan Fishback: Zionism and the politics of 'we'

I'll say "we." I'll be criticizing Israel, and I'll say "we." "We shouldn't be doing this." "We are sinking to their level." "We have to find a better way." But I'm not a Zionist. I've never been to Israel. I don't even want to go. But I'm a Jew. So, for some reason, I say "we."

I can't trace my cultural heritage back to Israel without feeling vaguely ridiculous. My ancestors lived there too long ago. I'd feel like a Cherokee getting sentimental about Siberia. I have more cultural ties to the Bronx than I do to Jerusalem. The Socialist Party Platform of 1912 probably beats out the Torah as my central cultural text. I feel more at home watching "Coffee Talk" than I do watching... um... some Israeli TV show -- I don't even know any. At Penn, I learned Yiddish, not Hebrew. I like knishes, not falafel. Klezmer makes me dance; Israeli pop makes me gag.

And I say "we."

If I traced my family back further than New York, I'd end up in Russia, and I'd find nothing. Everyone who didn't leave died or disappeared. The villages were destroyed. But before they went up in flames, my great grandfather rejected them. He was supposed to be a rabbi, like his father, and his father's father and more and more fathers.

Instead, he ran away. He became a socialist printer. The Tsar threw him in jail, but he escaped to America and became a socialist printer yet again. He wrote. He struggled. He fought for equality for everyone. And that's what we've been trying to do since then. That is why I still call myself a Jew.

Martin Luther King Jr. said that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I'm a Jew because I'm hanging on to that arc, and I won't let go.

But that's just me. Everyone has their own definitions, and they're all equally valid. They're also all malleable and prone to manipulation -- especially when Jewishness is elusive and ambiguous. In the United States, it's often difficult to define yourself as a Jew, aside from pointing out what you aren't -- namely, Christian. After all, Jews are just white people who don't celebrate Christmas, right?

If your family attends synagogue, odds are you don't actually like it that much. Bar and Bat Mitzvah lessons are a pain, particularly when you're going through puberty. By the time you get to that point, the culminating event of your Jewishness is essentially a party that your parents throw for the rest of your family.

Your 13th birthday, your induction into adulthood, is essentially an exercise in fiscal excess and an excuse for your relatives to hang out. It's not really about you.

So if your big moment, your big party, your big expression of Jewishness isn't about you, then what is? What grounds you in your cultural identity?

A nice vacation. There are all sorts of organizations that ship off Jewish teenagers for summer vacations in Israel to discover their cultural heritage. Some have ominous names, like Birthright Israel. After all, Jews have instant citizenship over there. It's like something is waiting for us when we arrive -- something communal, but also political: citizenship, belonging.

I hear wonderful things about these trips. But most of them are just summer vacation stories. I hear about summer romance, about drinking, about pot, about beaches. Most stories have more to do with freedom and teenage rebellion than they do with Zionism -- that is, until the next bombing.

Then, the newspaper seems tangible. Words like "us" and "we" take on a new meaning. For these kids, Israel has become a place of belonging -- a birthright. In the most respectable cases, it's a place of common ideals; in the least respectable cases, it's a place of great beaches and fond memories. In the most respectable, these vacations give kids a sense of history; in the least respectable, they manufacture knee-jerk, militant Zionists, whose sense of universal rights is clouded by a sense of birthright, a sense of ownership.

These kids are a political gold mine for extremists like Ariel Sharon. Each generation of American Zionists makes U.S. support for Israel all the more inevitable. Jews vote. We contribute. We want peace, but we also want land. We want "justice."

We want revenge. But I don't.

And I still say "we."

Dan Fishback is a junior American Identities major from Olney, Md.

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