A diversion from the usual matters at hand…

Supposing you were in a gathering of strangers, and each person in the group was asked to take a few minutes and say something about themselves, what salient points would you mention when it was your turn? Some people tend to get flustered when they have to speak in public, but that sort of thing is easy-peasy for me. I’d mention my family and some of the things I’ve done in my life, but somewhere along the line, I would describe myself as an ‘American Jew living in Israel.’

The ’American’ part? Born and bred in N.Y.C. to parents born and bred in N.Y.C., whose parents (all four of them) in turn arrived in N.Y.C. before there was an official ‘Ellis Island.’ Good enough for you? The Jewish part? Let’s just say, we go back a lot further and leave it at that. And, as everyone knows, we’re here now in The Land, so I’m also a card-carrying Israeli, with teudat zehut, a drivers license, a passport, and a mortgage to prove it. Now I have three distinct parts to my identify to juggle around and harmonize as best I can.

We know a lot of people who fit this description: born and raised in The Exile, now living in The Land. How much do they identify with their former homeland, how much do they consider themselves true Israelis, and how much they are comfortable with their split identity? Every person responds differently, depending on how old they were when they arrived here and how long ago, how well they speak Hebrew, whether they ever worked here, where members of their families are now living, their cultural preferences, on and on. The following anecdote, which happened years ago, says something about how the Casdens handle it.

Barbara and I, along with a friend, were at our local concert hall to hear a performance by Ma’ale Adumim’s youth orchestra, a dress rehearsal for their participation in an international festival at Carnegie Hall – to which they had been invited because they are that good. A good concert and a way to cheer on the home team. (applause, yes; cheering and waving banners, no.) And how to start the concert? Hatikvah, for which everyone in the hall stood at attention, and the Star-Spangled Banner, for which Barbara and I and a few others in the crowd rose to our feet. Our friend had remained seated throughout The bombs bursting in air, and we posed the question, trying all the while not to seem accusatory, why she hadn’t stood for the American national anthem. Her reply? It had never occurred to her to do so. Me? If I were on the dark side of the moon, I would be standing at attention, because I am an American Jew living in Israel, and I have no problem having more than one identity and even one loyalty. (Doesn’t everybody?)

I usually do not focus unduly on this matter, but two things recently caused me to sit up and think. The first one, to use a description that has become au courant, is ‘weird.’ There is an American political figure running for office, whose family tree is intriguing, her mother coming from one part of the world and her father from another. And her opponent is questioning her ethnic and racial identify. This has nothing to do with your agreement or disagreement with her politics. If I can self-identify as an American Jew and an Israeli, why can’t she – or anybody else – celebrate the cultural heritage of two parents who came to the U.S. from far away?

There’s something else that I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere, and I don’t know why not. For the longest time in large parts of the U.S., it was THE GOVERNMENT that decided who you were. If a person had a single grandparent, or great-grandparent, or great-great-grandparent who was descended from someone brought to the Americas on a slave ship, that person was officially Black in those States, no matter what. You could run but it was very hard to hide. (Like a different government in more recent times deciding who was Jewish.) So when I hear about politicians anywhere trying to decide the ethnicity of others, I get nervous, even though I’m usually OK with ‘weird.’ Can’t help it.

More to the point is the advice I’ve been given recently by well-meaning op-ed writers, usually in the Jerusalem Post, about whom I should be voting for in the next American election. One such piece was ‘An Open letter to American Israelis,’ by a respected elderly British journalist, in which he implored his target audience to eschew our ‘preferred U.S. politics’ and vote for his candidate, because only this guy would insure the ‘long term future of Israel.’

I certainly admire the writer’s dedication to the cause, but, as I wrote in my letter to the editor, which I was confident would never see the light of day in their paper, his methodology was strained. With stunning irregularity, Israelis are sent to the ballot box. When Barbara and I head down the block to vote, teudat zehut and voting petek in hand, I’m laser focused on the state of the nation – this nation, a/k/a The Land. I have my own ideas about what should be happening here and who should be in charge. And I am grateful for the opportunity to express my opinion without coercion.

Elections in The States are held in a more predictable manner, after an overly long pre-election cycle, and the spending of an unconscionable amount of money. I know it’s hard to believe, but the future well-being of the Jewish State is rarely a high priority on the mind of the typical random voter east or west of the Mississippi River, and I’m OK with that. There seem to be other issues being considered, some of which are of immediate concern to me. Such as: rising anti-Semitism on the Left (Hamasniks) and the Right (NeoNazis/White Supremacists); the banning of abortions, and the untoward effect on women’s health caused by such inappropriate legislation; there’s many more concerns I could mention, but you get the idea. Your list of priority items may be different from mine, but you needn’t ignore them or feel ashamed if you consider them when you vote – if you vote. The Casdens dutifully apply for absentee ballots and do what is necessary to get them back on time to the Board of Elections in New Jersey. We have lots of friends with strong opinions, but since they don’t bother to vote, who cares?

But there’s something else which I think is the crux of the matter. Our family came to The Land to make a difference – tiny, tiny, tiny as it might be, the feeling being that if we here are reasonably united, the country is strong morally, economically, and spiritually, and we work and play well with others, we will have the kind of future all of us hope for – even if our preferred candidate is not in the White House. But if we have a leadership in the Knesset that is unwilling or unable to deal wisely with our allies and appropriately with our enemies, we may be celebrating the bar/bat mitzvahs of our grand-children or great-grand-children in a bomb shelter somewhere. I’m not suggesting that it doesn’t matter at all what’s going on or who the leaders are in The Exile. Still, the inescapable conclusion is that it is mainly on us to secure our future. Don’t tell me that your candidate in the U.S. election is better than my candidate. I didn’t come here to depend on the whims and vagaries of foreign leaders – the ones I trust and admire or the ones I don’t – for our collective future. If that’s what’s stoking your fires, you’re barking up the wrong tree. (Today’s best mixed metaphor.)

To put it as simply as possible: Let the Americans (which includes me) decide what’s best for them and let the Israelis (which includes me) decide what’s best for us – without stepping on one another’s toes. If nothing else, we’ll have fewer bunions to contend with.