In 1992, the Meretz Party was formed, and
everyone voted for it. me too. It was clear to me that Shulamit Aloni, who topped the list, would be the prime minister. Although the first year of the party's existence was the most successful in its entire history - 12 seats, these were only enough to enter the Rabin government. Aloni served as Minister of Education until the new Shas party, for me a representation of complete foreigners, demanded her dismissal. In the next election, everyone voted for Meretz again, and so did the 15th Knesset election. I was surprised when Meretz - again - did not form a government. Only 10 seats, but nothing matched the surprise I came across when the Mi-Ham-Klal Shas party won 17 seats in the Knesset. No one I knew voted for Shas, and I learned an important lesson: "Everyone" is not what I thought.
Everyone has their "everyone", and it seems to me that the desire to be like everyone else is common to most of humanity, although it is not always pleasant to admit this emotion. After all, each and every one of us is a rare greenhouse orchid, at least in his own eyes, and only by chance does he surround himself with rare greenhouse orchids like him. Even the most special orchid does not like to feel alone. Even a disposable orchid needs a pot and roots in the ground. Not so the mosses of the wall, and Judaism is a piece of wall. Apart from the fact that it is the cornerstone of Western culture and its values - it is also a family. It is DNA and it is a common story and a common history. And even when we disagree loudly on the issue of where we are going, we know very well where we came from.
Like everyone else, I came from the Bible and left Egypt and found out after the destruction of the Second Temple and returned here, and will never be a citizen of the big world. Maximum citizen of all the little ones. The Jewish fate and the Jewish story. I am not one of those who believe that it is possible to exist without them. The burden is not easy with them either, but in my eyes the difficult, old, eternal story is better than the substitutes.
Not everyone really wants to be like everyone else. Whoever wants, must first identify the size of the circle he calls "everyone", and also where this circle is located. It has always been clear to me that my "everyone" is Israel and the Jews. I did not bother myself with the question of who is an Israeli and who is a Jew, because the answer was clear to me: I am. The songs I loved, the clothes I wore, my political opinions. I was "everyone" until I met other Israelis and it became clear to me that Israel is much more Jewish than I am. And since I am Israeli, I wanted to be as Jewish as Israel. Like all of them.
He whose "everyone" is the great world will live in peace even with diluted Judaism like mine. After all, have we not seen "Seinfeld" and laughed at the jokes like all Americans? Weren't we as excited about Charles and Diana's wedding as all the subjects of the British Empire? People like me understood American movies even without translation. Our school year opens in September, not Tishrei, and I was born on October 18, not on the 9th of Cheshvan. I am a product of an education system and environment that believed that Israeliness could exist even without a practical and everyday connection to Judaism in the religious sense, and that the existence of Jews for whom "Judaism" is not an abstract or decorative concept can be ignored. Opposite them is the belief that one can choose to belong to a beautiful idea, or an interesting social theory, or not choose at all - to assimilate into what is there and hope that the Jewish story in its full power will not apply to you. That the State of Israel constitutes such a strong framework that it has the power to allow complete secularism, and to exempt its citizens from religiosity. To some extent this is true,For the State of Israel is also a synagogue, but there is no synagogue without an ark.
There are those for whom Israel could have been another country of many in the West, but go tell it to who it is in the East and its heart in the East, only it has no idea how to behave in the East, has no idea how to be Jewish, but does know that it is Jewish. . And when you feel like you belong in your flowerpot, the moment may come when you will also feel the need to act belonging, even if no one has taught you how. There comes a moment when a person has to teach himself.
I am not a wise student
nor do I have a faith mind that is directed to the sublime, not even to the mystical. You may also be lazy. But perhaps this laziness prevented me from inventing a new Judaism that suited my measurements, or claiming that I was no less Jewish than those who kept more commandments than I did. In fact I am so lazy that I did not start keeping kosher. But about yes. Not at a level that religious people will eat with me, but at a level that a Jew like me will eat with me.
Two years ago I noticed that I never knotted on Yom Kippur and that I no longer like to say "I never knotted on Yom Kippur." Like many seculars of my kind, Yom Kippur was the holiday of bicycles and non-television and sometimes social gatherings in the neighborhood, but modestly, because the other, who is not really me, should still be respected. So I fasted on Yom Kippur, because Jews fast on Yom Kippur, and I finally installed a mezuzah in this place that fell, because Jews have a mezuzah on the door, and especially because personally and personally I feel closer to Yehoram Gaon singing Slichot than to Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman.
I'm not going big. This is how it is when trying to get closer to the average. And maybe like then, when I mistakenly thought I was the average, I'm wrong now too. But even if I am wrong, I am closer to my space, to my story, to the chain of my generations and to the wisdom of the generations that preceded me, who clung to the Jewish story and expressed in their actions their desire to continue to participate in it. May he be part of them, in this year and in those who come after it.
Happy New Year, beloved Jews.