This Land is Also Your Land

Deanna and I recently spent a week up in Vermont with our son and his girlfriend.  Our son, who works in a vineyard, spent the week supervising a group of workers who came to the US from Bhutan.  

In speaking with some of them and doing some of his own research, he discovered that this group left Bhutan due to persecution.  They were persecuted because they came to Bhutan from Nepal a few generations ago and were never fully accepted as Bhutanese.  

So they left Bhutan and came to the US, settling primarily in Vermont and Ohio.

"You’re not one of us, you don’t belong, get out of here, go back to where you came from."  

These are familiar thoughts, familiar comments.  This makes them no no less pernicious, but they are familiar.

They surely are familiar to Jews. You come from somewhere else.  You have dual loyalty.  You are not one of us.  

Using our experience, I want to urge us to consider what it means when one person decides to tell another person, or a group, this is not your home.  You don’t belong.  Go back to where you came from.  And how we as Jews should respond and position ourselves when such things are said.

We’re all familiar with the concept of the wandering Jew.  It goes way back.  This morning’s Torah reading, in fact, traces the journey of the Children of Israel from one place to another.  They traveled here and encamped there, again and again and again.

And then the Children of Israel prepared to enter the land which would finally be home.  Except that there were people living in the land, Canaanites and Jebusites and others.  

So even after we entered, there were those who said, this is not your home, get out of here, go back to where you came from.

Earlier this month I read a book by Sari Nusseibeh called Once Upon a Country.  Nusseibeh, Professor of Philosophy and President of Al Quds University in Jerusalem, grew up in Jerusalem, descended from a prominent Muslim family who came to Jerusalem 1200 years ago and, for generations, owned land and was in charge of the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  

The book speaks of the history of the modern State of Israel and its impact on the Palestinian people, of Zionism, of Israel’s defeat of the Arabs in 1948, of the establishment of the State of Israel.  It speaks of Palestinian peaceful resistance and terror, of Israel’s response, of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, of peaceful and non-peaceful efforts to change the status quo.

Nusseibeh is a gifted writer, writing about his efforts, in the context of his family and his people, to advocate for Palestinian sovereignty.  He has been a consistent advocate for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

I mention this book because it contains an extended analysis of the concept of homeland.  Who is home and who is not and who gets to decide.

On several occasions Nusseibeh bemoans the fact that Arabs living in Jerusalem, in homes that were part of their families for generations, found themselves considered neither full citizens of Israel nor citizens of a Palestinian state, neither here nor there.  Not “home” in their own home.

By and large Nusseibeh advocates for dialogue that includes recognition of the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state and recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people to a state of their own, not as a perfect solution, not as a full restoration of what was lost for his people, but as the best path forward given current realities.

Like everyone, Nusseibeh has biases which he sometimes states explicitly and which sometimes emerge in the turns of phrase that he uses.   One phrase in particular stood out to me.  In describing checkpoints that Palestinians need to go through in order to travel back and forth from the West Bank to Israel, he depicts an elderly Arab woman being interrogated by, as he put it, an 18 year old soldier who was born in Russia.

Implication:  the Arab woman (who is being interrogated) is the native who belongs.  The soldier (who is doing the interrogating) is an interloper.  Things have been turned on their heads; the interloper is empowered to restrict or enable the mobility of the native.

Ladies and gentlemen - we can, and should, dig deeply and carefully in trying to understand the exquisitely complex questions around homeland as they pertain to Israelis and Palestinians.  It’s not enough to just have a few talking points, it’s not as simple as “we’re always right” and “they’re always wrong,” and we should strive to have as deep and broad an understanding as possible.  Which is why we hosted a program in our youth house in June to educate our high school students about these issues and why I am pleased that SHAI and IAJF are coordinating a program that will be held here this Tuesday night.  

Whose home is it?  Are two homes possible?  These are questions that remain, and hopefully will gradually reach some resolution.

And now I turn our attention to the United States of America.

We may like what people say or not like what they say.  If we don’t like what they say, if we don’t like what they stand for, then the proper response is to oppose them with words and actions.  

That’s fine and as it should be.  To take a recent and significant example, the US congress overwhelmingly voted to oppose BDS, the boycott/divestment/sanction efforts that in my view and others unfairly target Israel and are an expression of antisemitism. 

But no one who lives here, surely no one who is a citizen of this country, should be told, directly or through implication, as our president told four members of congress, that if they don’t like what’s going on, they should “go back where they came from.”  Three were born here, the one who was not is an American citizen.

As Jews we should hardly be rejoicing when such a statement is made; primarily, because it’s not right, and secondarily, because it’s not wise.  

We who know what it’s like to be told, directly or indirectly, in a booming voice or a subtle joke or a dogwhistle - "you don’t belong here," we who have been told that in England, in France, in Iran, in Iraq, in Russia, and in Israel, should not deliver that message ourselves, nor should we stand by quietly when others, especially our leaders, deliver that message.

If we have issues with other Americans, then we should speak out and act out in protest and we should use our influence to try to effect the outcomes that we believe to be just.  But we shouldn’t say or imply that they belong here any less than we do.  

"You’re not one of us, you don’t belong, get out of here, go back to where you came from." 

I’m not going back to Russia or Poland or Egypt, for that matter.  And as a Jew, and an American, I will not state or imply or whistle an unhappy tune indicating that this one or that one should go back to wherever, nor will I stand quietly when others, especially the president of the United States, whistle or imply or state outright that this one or that one doesn’t really belong.

I urge us to think carefully as we navigate the complexities of identity and affiliation, of belonging and not-belonging, here, in Israel and elsewhere.  When we are angry or frustrated, it may be tempting to lash out at the other by undercutting that person’s legitimacy of belonging. 

However, we who have been kicked out of so many places must resist that temptation if it ever arises.  We should be able to acknowledge, I’m home AND you’re home.  Let’s argue when we need to argue, let’s find common ground if and where we can find common ground.  We may love each other or hate each other, we may collaborate with one another or oppose one another with every resource legitimately available to us.

But we must never say, or countenance those who say, that one American is any less “at home” here than another.

We who fully appreciate what it means to have our legitimacy of belonging questioned, we who have been shown and told time and again that we are not at home, must internalize and offer and enforce the words that were written over 100 years ago in the heartland of this great nation:  

This land was made for you and me.

Originally shared with the Temple Israel of Great Neck community on August 3, 2019.