LOOKING AROUND :Israel on their minds

By Barbara Sofer
Mar. 13, 2003

I'd left Israel less than 24 hours earlier, but I'd already been assailed by our brethren abroad, both for Israel settlement policy and for the evenhanded treatment of Jews and Arabs in our hospital.
With one ear to the latest war prognostication, I recently flew to Los Angeles to fulfill a commitment to deliver a series of speeches in the American West. Back when I happily agreed to the assignment, visiting far-flung Jewish communities, March seemed an unlikely time for the beginning of the war with Iraq.
But when the date came around, the plan felt problematic. Sitting in a middle seat on the flight from New York to Los Angeles, my Israeli seatmate to the right was reassuring. He held a high-profile military job. If he could go on an approved vacation to Hawaii, certainly I could go on a shorter speaking tour. I felt better. We Israelis rely on our insider tips. On the same flight, the passenger to my left was a local member of our tribe. After the usual exchange of pleasantries, he expressed his displeasure at the expansion of towns in Judea and Samaria. There we were, cruising from New York to California, reviewing policy from the Peel Commission to Taba.
The bottom line of all such disputes is the morality of the Jewish state. I thought I did all right. When my dinner came, he asked if he could get a kosher meal also. The Angelinos who kindly hosted me for Shabbat lunch have Israel's morality much on their minds too. They thought it was our physicians' moral responsibility to refuse to treat Palestinians. Israelis needed to let the enemy bleed to death, they insisted. On what moral principle was I basing my belief that our medical staff should not be handing out death sentences?
Most of the dining companions agreed with the hosts. At last, another guest rallied to my side. She felt proud when she saw a photo of an Israeli soldier giving a handcuffed, blindfolded Palestinian a bottle of water.
THE VEHEMENCE of the opinions pleases me, if not the arguments themselves.
How glad I am that Israel is so much in the minds and hearts of our American brethren that they are eager to leap into heated battles. I never resort to that ultimate trump card - my living in Jerusalem while they spend their lives abroad.
Tucked into my notebook is that old quote of Golda's, "We have nothing against the Jews in the galut [Diaspora], it is the galut itself that we protest." Chase Manhattan Bank used to advertise, "You have a friend at Chase Manhattan." But Bank Leumi shot back, "You may have a friend at Chase Manhattan, but we're mishpocha." Still, the difference between here and there weighed heavily as I described the events of the last two-and-a-half years and our preparations for the next Middle Eastern war. My in-flight reading was Yoram Hazony's The Dawn, the Shalem Center political scholar's analysis of the Scroll of Esther. Hazony contrasts the different roles successful Jews played in ancient empires - Joseph, Daniel, Nehemia, Esther and Mordechai. Joseph's work in the service of Pharaoh prepares Egypt and the Jews to survive seven years of famine, but ultimately builds the Egyptian House of Bondage. Daniel is a man of no compromise, who relies on miracles. Nehemia uses his influence to allow the Jews to return to the Land of Israel and rebuild their autonomy. Had Queen Esther not endangered her own secure life to rescue her people, her success at becoming the most important woman in Persia would have been nullified. Says Hazony, "Purim added a cosmopolitan message for Jews far from their homeland and their God: If the Jew will stand up for himself and fight for his faith, the Diaspora can allow power and life not only for individual Jews, but for the Jewish People as a whole." With which of our biblical heroes will the Jews of today's Diaspora identify if need be?
I hope they will never be faced with this dilemma, I pray as I take an early morning walk through Beverly Hills. The lawns advertise candidates for city council. Nearly all the names are Jewish.
In America, the forthcoming war with Iraq has replaced the headlines from Israel on the news. "Only nine health workers in Chicago have been inoculated for smallpox," says one headline in a Sunday supplement.
A Washington-based writer likens her daughter's fears to a pebble stuck in her brain and contends that East coast residents feel more threatened than Californians. In California, North Korean missiles are on everybody's lips.
In Colorado Springs, hosts point out the granite headquarters that will function if - God forbid - Washington falls. "There" isn't so secure either. As we prepare to sit down to our Purim feasts in Jerusalem, I'm glad to be so passionately in the minds of our brethren there. To keep them in mind here too, at our table we have the tradition of raising our glasses in a toast to the continued health and well being of our brethren in the Diaspora, and praying for their speedy return to Zion.