Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on September 22, 2021

Democracies must treat all people fairly and humanely, and certainly this is true for people who have lived and contributed to that democracy for decades. The African Hebrew Israelites threatened with deportation have family and community ties to Israel. They see themselves as part of the fabric of Israeli society and behave accordingly. They have excellent relations with their neighbors and often serve in the Israeli army. Hebrew Israelites are hardly strangers, but even if they were, to love the stranger, the oppressed, the disadvantaged, is a profoundly Jewish value for the Jewish state to uphold.

There is, however, a larger challenge here. In addition to being kind-hearted and generous, Israel must get beyond the provinciality of assuming that everyone who really belongs is either a grandson of Tevye from Fiddler, or a daughter of Baruch from Marrakech. Not every Israeli grew up eating gefilte fish or couscous. A great many others Jewish and non-Jewish are part of the reality of Israels past, present and future. Israel is a beautiful, frustrating, exciting, and for some, painfully challenging country. After 73 years, it is still very much a work-in-progress. It has always been, and always will be, home to all kinds of people.

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Therefore, Israel must endeavor in ways large and small to expand its national narrative to not only understand and show compassion for the other, but to embrace the other as full partners in its becoming. Its well past time for the Israeli government to abandon the notion that Israel is exclusively for people who look (up until now at least) like their still mostly white, male, Jewish ministers.

Along the road to independence, and in years since, successive Israeli governments have not adequately embraced indigenous Palestinians, nor handled as well as they could the challenges of refugees, minorities, asylum seekers, migrant laborers, and non-Jewish religious and cultural communities who have braved their way to Israel. Some arrived through legal means, while others entered illegally, often fleeing from neighboring countries or from the continent of Africa. Too often, religious sects that consider themselves part of the Israeli narrative but have been shunned by Israels religious and political establishment, fall victim to discrimination by the authorities.

Non-Jewish citizens and residents of Israel have lives and stories that matter. The Israel we love has compassion for the other, and more crucially, is open to fully accepting others as sisters and brothers.

Jonathan Kessler, Ashanti Gholar, Joe Perlov and Stav Shaffir are on the board of Heart of a Nation, an international community of purpose committed to Embracing Better, Together. For more information about this new organization visit: heartofanation.io.

Read more:

African Americans are threatened with imminent deportation from Israel - The Jerusalem Post

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