The End of Centrality

The debate about whether Israel is, or is not the center of the Jewish world is hereby declared over. The good news for Israel is that it won: it is indeed the center of the Jewish world. The bad news is that it doesn't matter anymore.

Israel's victory was sealed in the midst of the intifada. It happened in the most subtle ways – when Diaspora Jews who were otherwise uninvolved in Jewish life were asked for their opinions on the conflict by work colleagues; when CNN forced us to ask complex questions about the nature of our Jewishness simply by beaming images of Israel into our living rooms; when new books about Israel – like Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel – had a habit of finding their way into our lives. Today, for good or for bad, Israel has a way of impacting the life of Diaspora Jews.

And yet, wider sociological trends have simultaneously made the whole notion of centrality completely obsolete. However we may wish to construct the Jewish world in our hearts and minds, the sociological changes of the past decade are forcing us to redefine the very way in which we see it. Globalization has created a radically different world to the one we are used to, and in this new era the very duality of Israel/Diaspora ceases to make sense.

In a global world, Israel can no longer be in the center. It can no longer even be primus inter pares. In a global world, nothing holds center stage. Instead, all places, all people are linked to one another in cyberspace, and all vie with one another for attention. No single place holds more significance or value than another. The potential for creativity and innovation exists everywhere and in everyone. In the new technological age, nothing is central and everything is central simultaneously. In short, today Israel is both as extraordinary and as extraneous as everything else.

In policy terms, this forces us to think in new ways. If every Jew and every Jewish community now has the potential to influence and be influenced by others, we have to develop new methodologies to really benefit from this. We have to find ways to maximize the unique qualities of individual Jewish communities, educators and thinkers and allow as many Jews as possible access to them. Conceptually, we need to reconstruct our understanding of Israel as medina (state) or eretz (land) – a place, a resource, a classroom – to include the notion of Israel as am (people).

What does this mean in reality? When we think about Israel Experience programs, we should move beyond the Diaspora notion of sending kids to Israel to get their injection of Jewishness to bring back home, or the Israeli notion of bringing Diaspora kids to Israel to bolster tourism or aliyah. Instead, we have to think about how to bring Jews together from Israel and the Diaspora, in Israel or the Diaspora, in order to learn from one another, and to work together to strengthen the Jewish People.

When we think about shlichut, the emissaries Israel traditionally sends to Diaspora communities, we should no longer simply think of Israeli educators in the Diaspora teaching about Israel and encouraging aliyah. Instead, we have to start seeing shlichim as Jewish educators who come from any Jewish community, and go to any other Jewish community. Shlichim could be American Jews in England and vice-versa, Canadian Jews in France and vice-versa, and Israeli Jews in the Diaspora, and, dare I say it, vice versa too.

And when we think about organizational partnerships, we have to reach beyond our immediate community and beyond Israel, and strategize how our institution – our synagogue, JCC, seminary, school, etc. – can both enhance, and be enhanced by individuals, institutions and communities throughout the Jewish world. The overarching principle is that every Jew matters, and every Jew – wherever he or she happens to live – has something to learn from and to teach to others.

This is the new paradigm. It no longer positions the land or the State of Israel at the center of the Jewish world, because, sociologically at least, that notion is becoming increasingly meaningless. It rather positions the people of Israel – the social capital of the Jewish People as a whole – at the heart of the Jewish world, and asks all of us to strive to learn from, and contribute to the collective task of strengthening the Jewish People. In this way, we will encourage a global cross-fertilization of ideas and build a real sense of commonality, not simply for the benefit of Israel, but for the benefit of Jews everywhere.


(Also published on ynet.com in July 2005
- see: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3120533,00.html,
in the November 2005 edition of the KolDor Review
- see: http://www.koldor.org/imagez/1132069125.pdf, p.10),
and originally in Sh'ma Magazine in December 2004)