Defining the Jewish future on our own terms

Defining the Jewish future on our own terms

By Gil Troy
Canadian Jewish News
January 19, 2006

On Jan. 10, a ceremony in Jerusalem eloquently repudiated the cartoonish, cops-and-robbers, amoral evenhandedness of Steven Spielberg’s Munich, while offering a redeeming response to the anti-Zionist epidemic that Palestinian terrorism unleashed: Israeli environmental activist Alon Tal received the $100,000 Charles Bronfman Prize for humanitarian work by a person under 50 that has “contributed significantly to the betterment of the world.”

In a nihilistic sea of negativity, the happy alliance of these two visionaries, Alon Tal and Charles Bronfman, demonstrates that Zionist dreams still can come true, elevating the Jewish people and the rest of humanity – just as Theodor Herzl hoped.

Prof. Alon Tal, 45, is a whirling dervish of social action – jump-starting initiatives, establishing institutes and plunging into projects exuberantly. I first met him 30 years ago, when he was the national programmer for the Young Judaea Zionist youth movement. A good old boy from North Carolina, he combined the mischievous charm of the fraternity king he was at the University of North Carolina with the formidable intellect of the Harvard University PhD he would become. He could sweet talk honey from a bee, dazzle drunken louts with his energetic fiddlin’ at Rohman’s Inn in Shohola, Penn., and generate enough energy to illuminate a city.

In the late 1980s, during our weekly tennis games at Harvard, Alon, fresh from Israeli army heroics and legal studies at Hebrew University, dreamed of creating an Israeli environmentalist infrastructure as sophisticated as America’s. Israel had one environmental lawyer. Alon wanted to be the second, buttressed by a science background from Harvard’s School of Public Health. In true Herzlian style, Alon returned to Israel and fulfilled his dream. The organization he founded in 1990, when he was 29, Adam Teva V’din, Israel Union for Environmental Defence, has become Israel’s premier environmentalist NGO and has inspired many imitators.

Alon’s vision was doubly bold. His Zionist dream focused on quality of life, not simply survival. Moreover, he believed pollution, which respects no boundaries, could scare warring neighbours into co-operating. In 1996, Alon founded the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (AIES) on Kibbutz Ketura, the Young Judaea-affiliated kibbutz where he lived. The AIES invited Jordanians, Palestinians, Israelis and Americans to study and work together on one of the last functioning collective farms, which was making Israel’s stark desert next to Jordan bloom.

To have established either of these institutions would be a lifetime achievement for mortal folk, yet these are but two of Alon’s many contributions to Israeli environmentalism that showcase Zionism as a beautiful, liberal, unifying, humanizing, constructive, creative force in the Middle East – and the world.

Bronfman’s children established a prize in his name to honour their father’s 70th birthday. He is another hero with a roster of superhuman achievements. Had he “only” co-founded birthright israel, which just welcomed its 100,000th visitor to Israel on a free 10-day trip for 18- to 26-year-olds – dayeinu, that would have been enough. Had he “only” been the mensch that he is, inspiring so many of us with his personal warmth and passionate devotion to the common good that, too, would have been enough.

But birthright israel is one of many Bronfman initiatives that are revolutionizing the modern Jewish conversation about Israel, identity-building, education and youth culture by focusing on effective, life-transforming, values-oriented Jewish journeys without guilt or schmaltz. Unlike other philanthropists, Bronfman likes building pride, not buildings. That his children recognize his investments in a flourishing, affirmative, broad-minded Jewish future and are perpetuating it with the prize – and especially with this year’s recipient – demonstrates the vision’s infectious timelessness and timeliness.

All this makes the timing of Alon’s award so delicious. Lost in the debate over Spielberg’s softheadedness on terrorism is the filmmaker’s broader disservice to the Jewish people. Spielberg and his screenwriter Tony Kushner only see Jewish death, not Jewish life. “Munich” and “Schindler’s List” together define Judaism and Zionism by violence and victimization, without splendour or serenity. Reducing our magnificent, multi-dimensional, life-affirming civilization to surviving the Holocaust and fighting terrorism lets Nazis and Palestinians, not Jews, define Judaism.

I’ll take the humanistic values, Zionist dreams, Jewish romanticism, faith in the future, appreciation for the day-to-day beauty of Israeli life, and the impressive nation-building and world-transforming accomplishments of Alon Tal and Charles Bronfman any day.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and the author, most recently, of Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s and Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today, which will soon be released in a revised and expanded third edition.

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