The Zionist Spark http://www.hadassah.org/news/dec97/spark.htm After 100 years, Zionism still exerts a powerful impact on the Jewish imagination. Hadassah Magazine asked a variety of people — young and old, Israeli and American — to relate an experience that crystallized Zionism as a component of their identity. Wendy Elliman helped gather these stories in Israel. ------------------------------------------- Dara Horn, student, Boston - Most American Zionists trace their ideological roots to a trip to Israel. I first visited at age nine, and I was mostly impressed with my guide's accent. But when I was a little older, my parents took me to a Jewish Museum exhibit about the Dreyfus affair. I had never heard of it. Soon I found myself staring at pictures of his sword being broken, photographs of Devil's Island and dozens of cartoons of Dreyfus — Dreyfus the snake, Dreyfus the dragon, Dreyfus the devil. I laughed at them, until I understood what they were. It seemed that Dreyfus himself was scarcely a part of the affair. His fate was completely random, the way that bullies at school could choose anyone as their victim. But when bullies bother you at school, at least teachers could rescue you. Who could rescue Dreyfus? So I became a Zionist the same way Theodor Herzl did. When I visited Israel again, I saw the meaning in it, and my thoughts on Zionism became far more complex. The world has changed since the Dreyfus Affair, and the greatest problems facing us today come from within our community, not from without. But now we can choose how to deal with those problems. There are no Devil's Islands anymore. ------------------------------------------- Eitan Cooper, Education Director, Young Judaea Year Course, Jerusalem - It was October 1973. I was 15 and had just gotten back to New York from Young Judaea's Summer in Israel program when the Yom Kippur War broke out. I wanted to do something, so I went to the Young Judaea office. They sent me to the corner of Fifty-seventh Street and Sixth Avenue with a collecting can labeled Money For Israel. I stood there in scruffy jeans, with long hair — and people converged on me. Wordlessly they stuffed dollar bills, tens, twenties into my can. In less than half an hour I had hundreds of dollars. I remember looking at the people thrusting money for Israel at me and thinking: 'They really care about Israel, they want to be part of it.' And then I thought: 'That's how I feel as well.' And that, I guess, is how I ended up living here. ------------------------------------------- Shoshana Shoubin Cardin, Chair, United Israel Appeal - For 21 years, all documents and forms which required my birthplace were filled with 'Palestine,' which was not a valid translation of Eretz Yisrael and which did not reflect the Zionist dream of a Jewish homeland. For years, as a young Zionist, a Habonim member, I had solicited for the Jewish National Fund, talked about the Yishuv and promoted Zionism and Jewish nationhood. In November 1947 all those efforts, songs, meetings, solicitations and prayers culminated in the fulfillment of Herzl's dream, my dream. On May 14, 1948, the transformation of the Yishuv into Medinat Yisrael, Palestine into the State of Israel, validated all that permeated my life. It was then I realized how fully Zionism had been and remains integral to my very being. ------------------------------------------- Jack Riemer, Rabbi, Editor, Boca Raton - There were two moments. The first was on my father's sixtieth birthday. His brothers purchased trees in his honor in a JNF forest. He had the certificate hung proudly in his office and from that day I felt I had an investment in the land of Israel. The second was during the Six-Day War. I pulled up at a gas station to fill the tank. As I was paying for the gas, the man smiled and said, 'You Jews really gave it to them, didn't you?' Ever since, I may disagree with some of Israel's policies, get angry at some of Israel's decisions, but that is a family — you fight more than you do with outsiders because you care more. ------------------------------------------- Esther Wachsman, Jerusalem - I was a Brooklyn girl, the only child of Holocaust survivors. When I won a free semester in Israel in 1967 I took it only because I was pushed. But that semester changed everything. Immediately I felt a total connection with Israel. There's a freedom to being Jewish here, an instant identification with people, culture, faith and land, all naturally intertwined. The food, the language, the rhythm of Israel's year are all ours. I knew I could live in no other place. Raising my seven sons here, I felt like a biblical figure: Our home was Jerusalem, our children spoke Hebrew, the Torah was alive. Yes, of course, disillusion set in later. The Yom Kippur War showed us our political and military leaders can err. The [murder] of my son Nachshon [by terrorists] showed how badly they can err. But after Nachshon's murder, did I pull his older brother out of the army? Did I stop my next son from enlisting five months later? Of course I didn't. We were and are devastated by Nachshon's death, but we still love our country. ------------------------------------------- Hadassah Braun, Teacher, Jerusalem - Pesah 1947. I was in my late teens and the only member of my family still alive. I'd seen my father, mother and sister killed, I'd spent long years hiding in Nazi Poland and I'd finally reached the coast of Palestine. But massive British warships surrounded our small leaky boat and towed us into Haifa port. At gunpoint we were transferred to British vessels bound for exile in Cyprus. As we forlornly boarded, the faint cries of a demonstration outside the port reached us: Medina Ivrit! Aliya Hofshit! [A Hebrew State! Free Immigration!] At that moment, I was swept by the strongest of feelings, by the certain knowledge that despite everything we would prevail. I knew then in my heart that I'd come back to these shores and live among Jews in a Jewish state. ------------------------------------------- Aviva Cantor, Journalist, Lecturer, New York - Although I have been a Zionist since seven — when my father, Joseph Cantor z'l, wept with joy as the UN voted for a Jewish state — it was only in the two weeks before and during the 1967 war, when Israel was imperiled, that I realized my passion for Israel and my commitment to its survival. In the next decade I expressed this intense consciousness through activism in the Jewish Liberation Project, a socialist Zionist organization which was one of scores of groups constituting 'the Jewish movement' of the late 60's and early 70's. We struggled to revitalize American Jewry, its education and culture and its relationship with Israel. It was during this work that I experienced Zionism as the overarching principle that unified all the components of my identity into a whole and infused it and my life with meaning, purpose and direction. ------------------------------------------- Joanne Greenberg, Author, Golden, Colorado - Our family had no interest in Zionism. None. I never heard it mentioned in our home, and it appeared on my landscape only in the kufsa [charity boxes] of people we knew. Maybe this was because Jerusalem held no charm for us. My grandmother had been born and raised there until she was 16. Her mother and grandmother were buried there and it was her memory-place of encysted poverty, shame and Arab raids. But in 1946, when I was 14, I was sitting in the Saturday movie, my place of worship at that time, ballasted with raisinettes and jujubes to see me through the afternoon. A short subject came on. It was about the possibilities in the foundation of a Jewish state. As the narration went on, pictures of kibbutz farms, cities and towns were shown, land reclamation, the clearing of harbors and the building of roads through one-time wilderness. I realized at that moment that I was seeing something wonderful, history being made, and that for the Jews this was truly a transforming event. Since the 1950's my family has become deeply connected with Israel and its possibilities. ------------------------------------------- Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Psychosexual Therapist, Author, Adjunct Professor, New York - By the age of 11, I was already feeling Zionism quite keenly. I was a refugee in Switzerland and wrote in my diary how important it is for Jews to have a country they can call their own. There is a song I remember singing to myself, in German, that says, 'Every person in this whole world has a country they can call their own, only we Jews don't have a country like that.' At the conclusion of World War II, at the age of 16, I made up my mind to go to Palestine and be an active part of the fighting for the establishment of an independent state of Israel. I became a member of the Haganah and in 1948, on my twentieth birthday, I was badly wounded by shrapnel from a cannonball that killed a couple of people right next to me. I remember vividly that in addition to the horror I felt at these deaths and the concern I had about maybe losing my legs, I also felt the conviction that whatever happened, this was for the right cause. Now I'm 69 years old and have not wavered in my allegiance to the state of Israel, returning every year. ------------------------------------------- Phyllis Chesler, Feminist, Scholar, New York - I expressed an almost instinctive Zionism in 1948 when I was eight years old and joined Hashomer Hatzair. My Borough Park Orthodox family was shocked. I attended Hashomer 'services' religiously until I joined the more radical Ain Harod movement in 1951. In 1971, when I first encountered anti-Semitism among intellectuals, including feminists, I proclaimed my Zionism by visiting Israel often, working with a nascent Israeli feminist movement, educating both Jews and non-Jews about how anti-Zionism was, increasingly, functioning as an acceptable form of anti-Semitism. Between 1972 and 1982, I found myself arguing with Israelis about this and about sexism and racism. Zionism gave me vital information about how to resist and overcome persecution and pariah status. Herzl's vision taught me that sovereign territory and the ability to defend it, and oneself, are essential for independence and liberation: for Jews, but for women too. ------------------------------------------- Ida Nudel, Former Prisoner of Zion, Karnei Yosef - In 1978, a year since the mass arrests of dissidents in the Soviet Union, when no exit visas were granted, spirits among refuseniks were at their lowest. Something had to be done. A small group of women planned a public demonstration, something then unheard of. We timed it for International Children's Day. It was too dangerous to take children into the streets, so we women and children gathered in my fourth-story Moscow apartment, with banners on the balcony demanding: 'Let My People Go To Israel!' and 'KGB! Give Me My Visa!!' Naively, we hoped the press would come, but within 45 minutes the KGB had closed all roads to traffic. Hundreds of KGB and policemen surrounded my building — you couldn't see the sidewalk for the cars. And that, of course, brought the crowds. Literally thousands of people converged. Some shouted 'Hitler didn't finish the job!' but others seemed more sympathetic. After that demonstration, I was convicted of hooliganism and sentenced to four years' exile in Siberia, but nonetheless I'd won. The KGB announced that 'the disturbances yesterday in Moscow were organized by Zionists from abroad,' but both they and we knew the organizers were Zionists from the USSR. ------------------------------------------- Morton A. Klein, National President, Zionist Organization of America - About 10 years ago, when I was not involved in Jewish communal affairs, my wife, Rita, brought to my attention the escalating one-sided United Nations resolutions against Israel, the pro-Arab bias in the media and the anti-Israel slant in textbooks, travel guides, universities. Her descriptions were so searing that for the first time I felt the assaults were against my people and my homeland. As the child of Holocaust survivors, I understood what our people had suffered 50 years earlier, but Rita made me realize I have a responsibility to do all I can for Israel and the Jewish people. ------------------------------------------- Dani Rotstein, Student, Woodcliff, New Jersey - I was taking part in a peula [exercise]: What is your path as a Zionist and where will you be as a Zionist a couple of years down the road? It's the rather cheesy peula of the man with a path in front of him marked by numerous obstacles and ominous challenges (we're talking bridges, rocks and forests here). I ended up with the realization that when I grow up I might live on a kibbutz! I'm spending my freshman year of college in Israel, yet I was struck by the reality that I might choose to stay there. Zionism for me includes living in Israel, and this was the first time I realized Zionism was a part of my identity. ------------------------------------------- Marlene Post, National President, Hadassah - The main characters of my father's stories were not kings and queens, but young Zionist pioneers in Palestine. If my mythical land was less romantic than those of other kids, I didn't notice. I listened with keen attention when my father told stories to me alone or around Grandma's Passover table, just before singing 'Next year in Jerusalem.' As an adult, of course, I was enthusiastic about the building of the real Israel, but the stories my father told me were somehow separate and special. I made my first visit to Israel in 1972, and as soon as I stepped off the plane I had a surge of belonging. I was in the place my father had drawn and placed in my heart; the people around me were the characters of his tales. My head and heart were in sync, forever bound! At that moment I knew with clarity that I was a Zionist. ------------------------------------------- Bella Freund, Cofounder of Shiluv, Jerusalem - On November 29, 1994, I stood outside the crematorium at Auschwitz, holding high the Jewish flag. I was there for my mother, one of thousands of twins who fell into the depraved hands of Josef Mengele and never truly recovered. Her sister, three brothers and her parents had all died within yards of where I stood. I'd never been to Auschwitz before, but I knew it well — the guard towers my mother had described, the electrified fences, rail tracks, ovens. I knew where to find her hut in barracks 18. We sat on the ground, Jews from 32 nations, and shouted aloud Shema Yisrael. When liberation came 50 years ago, my mother was without a living relative in the world. They wanted to take her to America, but small and weak as she was, she refused. 'There is no place for us but Eretz Israel,' she said. Standing in a different Auschwitz all those years later, I understood her words in my heart. Back in Israel, I knelt and kissed the ground. I put the flag I held at Auschwitz at the door of my home next to the mezuza, and it flies there still. ------------------------------------------- Haskel Lookstein, Rabbi, Principal, New York - It was the summer of 1945. I was 13 and a first-time camper at Massad. On Tisha B'Av night the entire camp sat on the floor in Bialik Hall following the reading of Lamentations by candlelight. At one point Shlomo Shulsinger, director and founder of Massad, who seemed to me to be a very old man but was probably no more than 35, began reading aggadot from the Talmud about the destruction of the Temple. He wept as he read the Aramaic words which I did not understand. But I will never forget the feeling of this 'old' man shedding tears over an event that occurred 2,000 years earlier and speaking about what it meant to lose a Jewish state and how important it was that the Jewish people return to Palestine. If I had to pinpoint when Zionism became an integral part of my identity, it would be that summer night. ------------------------------------------- Sam Orbaum, Columnist, Jerusalem - The greatest day I ever spent in Israel, the time I felt most complete here, was Purim 1991. That morning, the country woke to the news of our modern-day Haman's defeat. Saddam Hussein was overcome, the War of Nerves was ended and we could unseal our rooms and put away our gas masks. That afternoon, my wife and I took our daughters downtown for the first time since their birth six months earlier. It was a crisp, sunny Friday. Jerusalemites spilled out into the streets, ebullient, intoxicated, liberated from siege. And niggling even the most skeptical mind was that, by quirk of fate, that morning's newspapers and that evening's Megilla reading had eerily juxtaposed. ------------------------------------------- 19-year-old Soldier, Haifa - It was the people around me in the hospital who first made me realize that Zionism is a central part of my being. When I recovered enough to understand how badly I'd been hurt, how long I'll still be in the hospital and that I'll never completely recover, people expected me to be bitter. But I'm not at all. Our mission was a military success, despite my injuries. When I went into the army, I knew what could happen. OK, so now I know the reality as well as the theory of it, but it doesn't change anything. I believe with my whole being that we're right to be in Lebanon. Talk to anyone living in the north of Israel, and they'll tell you that their life is better when the IDF is there to protect them. I won't say I'm glad to have been hurt for my country, but I believe it is an acceptable price to pay. -------------------------------------------