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Why I Went to the Israeli Day Parade, By: Mordy Plotsker

My friend, Mordy Plotzker took his family to the Israeli Day Parade and wrote about it. He explains my sentiments exactly and I believe the sentiments of all those that attended. Thanks Mordy.

My preface: I've seen the parade myself as a boy, just like I went to the Chabad Lag Baomer parade, these were some of my most exciting memories growing up, but I thought I grew out of it.

Camp Sdei Chemed Girls at the Israeli Day Parade 2011

It was over a year ago that some of our girl campers were sitting around our Shabbos table and the topic of the Israel day parade came up. Some girls were from Bais Yaakov schools and some from more Modern schools. There was a small debate as the Bais Yaakov girls tried to explain why they didn't march. It sounded like they were reading it out of a text book. They were convinced that there would be some kind of anti-religious propaganda behind the parade.I then listened to the girls from schools that did march and were luminescent about it. They explained that it gave them something to be proud of and excited about. The BY girls heard and I could see the envy they had, and that's when I decided that we were going to march!

Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe we created another monster that doesn't exist. These schools are convinced that we are still fighting secular Judaism as if this was still the 1950’s. They repeat stories about kids payous being shaved off and religious children being kidnaped to raise them as anti-religious. Get real. The parade today has no agenda other than a love for Israel and Am Yisrael. Anything else is just creating issues out of nothing. We marched. We had a great time and now these girls feel just a bit prouder of being Jewish and maybe -- just maybe -- will make Aliya one day. (Oops, did I say a bad word?)

Guest Post: Mordy Plotsker

It had been nine years since my last visit to the Israeli day parade when I took my two oldest daughters, aged 3 and 2, respectively. The weather was real nice and we reasoned that we would treat the girls to a memorable outing. So when my wife said, "Let's go" - we went!

Nevertheless, getting there was nerve-wracking. Maintaining a safe distance to the tracks, seating, rapidly closing train doors and finding room for a double stroller - with eyes peeled on our girls - to the inevitable bathroom request, this sure turned out to be an experience! I found myself thinking like my wife and daughters "Are we there yet"? I simply couldn't wait. 

We finally arrived, but then a massive storm with strong winds enveloped. People ran for cover. Fortunately, my wife prepared for any eventuality and the girls were safe under a large tree which shielded them, (for the most part). Despite the weather the parade kept going and after 5 minutes, the rain and winds dissipated, the sun came out and we had a front row view of the parade procession. 

What followed was a really nice parade. Though there were many people, all were pleasant, friendly and courteous. There was a real sense of national pride - it was palpable in the air - as were the dozens of large and small Israeli flags. The theme of this year's parade appeared to be "Israel Branching Out" T-shirts that stated "Israel Est. 1948" and "Celebrating 64 years of national independence." The Jewish Diaspora seemed to congregate with ease; thank you NYPD for helping secure such a large event.

Growing up on New York’s Lower East Side, I attended MTA (Yeshiva University's high school), Israel and then YU. Therefore, marching at the Israeli day parade was a historic pastime, and I was glad to have returned as a bystander observing the colorful displays, marching bands and cheerful mood that was unique to this year’s parade.

Observing the diversity yet congeniality of our people was a refreshing sight. There were yeshiva bochrim wearing velvet yarmulkah's to leather kippa's to knit/srugi kippot. There were religious people marching standing next to, and easily conversing with, those that had no head covering. There were floats where we recognized some of our friends, others with live bands singing their love for the Land of Our People. My daughters were thrilled to recognize some of their classmates marching with religious and social organizations with whom their respective families are affiliated.

I am reminded that every Jew, regardless of level of religious observance, has the pintele yid – which when ignited could light up the world. There were pro-Israel right-wing political parties and left-wing political parties - all seemed happy and united. Whether one is a practicing Jew or not, we all pray for peace and security. For Israel, however, this prayer may feel more obvious and warranted.

Most importantly, the parade afforded my wife and I, as parents to inquisitive daughters, the opportunity to explain that indeed everything HSHM does in the world is and always will be good. That HSHM decided to allow the formation of the State of Israel, through UN votes from countries like the United States and Russia - both of which, during the onset of the Cold War, could agree to vote in favor of the formation of the State of Israel - was nothing less than a miracle. That Israel was triumphant, with the help of HSHM, defending herself with a fledgling group of native Jewish Palestinians, holocaust survivors and former U.S. & British soldiers, all united in the belief and disbelief against insurmountable odds - seven invading countries, is in fact a great miracle worth recognizing and celebrating.

That there are great Rabbis in Israel who study Torat Eretz Yisroel and who are able to observe many mitzvot applicable to the Land of Israel – chief among them, Yishuv Eretz Yisroel – settling the Land of Israel. That there are Israeli soldiers, many fresh out of high school that had in the past and will continue in the future to lay down their lives to defend a fellow Jew regardless of his/her level of religious observance or political affiliation. We share a bond with our brethren: Those who learn and observe Torah and those who do not yet know how to learn Torah. That we recognize that despite ones outward appearance, a Jew is a Jew and that we must respect and help one another. We are one people with many different voices, many different mannerisms and modes of interaction. However, at the end of the day, when the parade ended, we longed to experience further instances of mass unity and mutual appreciation.

Next time we will skip mass transit and opt for wheels to the parking lot.

 Signed,
A friend of Dovid
Mordy Plotsker

The Case of American Religious Zionism

Few things divide and provoke American Jews like the question of Zionism.  Though many wish to remember otherwise, this was also the case before the founding of Israel in 1948; and, though many wish to forget, the story of Zionism in America belongs not just to Labor Zionism, dominated by culturalists and secularists, but also to Orthodox Jews.  Recently Yeshiva University's Center for Israel Studies held a study dayon the history of religious Zionism in America.  The questions raised by this history have profound implications for the future of Jews and of Israel.
According to Rabbi Yosef Blau, president of the Religious Zionists of America and mashgiah ruhani—spiritual advisor—of Yeshiva's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), the religious Zionist, or Mizrahi, movement began in Europe at the turn of the 20th century and arrived in America on the eve of World War I.  American Jews generally, and Orthodox Zionists in particular, were split between the earlier German generation and the newly arrived East Europeans.  Zionism was further split between Orthodox Zionists and the largely non-Orthodox American Zionist mainstream.  During World War I, amid the fragmentation, cut off from the European leadership, the Mizrahi movement foundered.

But important foundations within Orthodoxy were laid.  One was the "auxiliary" Mizrachi Women's Group, fiercely independent and hardly auxiliary.  Other foundations were the Teachers Institute at what would become Yeshiva University, the newly established day schools dedicated toIvrit b'Ivrit, or teaching Hebrew in Hebrew, and the B'nei Akiva religious Zionist youth movement.  After the war, the Mizrahi movement was rejuvenated through partnerships with Yeshiva University and the RIETS.

In contrast, a delegation from the anti-Zionist Agudat Israel movement, arriving from Europe in 1921, was met with decisive rejection by American Jews.  As described by Professor Jess Olson of Yeshiva University, another speaker at the study day, the Agudat delegation delivered an unthinkable message of deference to Torah sages on political matters and refused to recognize as Orthodox any Jew who was a Zionist.  They won no support, even on the Lower East Side, and were relegated to marginality in America.

Instead, said Rabbi Michael Rosenzweig, professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University, the institutions and personalities of American modern Orthodoxy made Zionism was a fundamental tenet.  Generations of rabbis graduating from Yeshiva and RIETS integrated Israel and Zionism into Orthodox thought.  The key figure in this development was, of course, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who succeeded his father as head of RIETS in 1941.  For all believing Jews, the creation of the state of Israel was a theological challenge: Was it a portent of the messianic age of the Jewish people?  Soloveitchik answered with a strong defense of both Diaspora Judaism and the Zionist project, which remains dominant in American Orthodoxy.  Indeed, over time Soloveitchik's religious Zionism has become, both conceptually and demographically, the center of American Zionism as a whole.

Soloveitchik's intellectual counterpart, who had built his own foundations earlier in Palestine, was Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, for whom the Jewish people's return to their land was an explicit part of the divine plan for redemption.  Scion of a famous Lithuanian yeshiva, Kook moved to Palestine in 1904 and in 1924 he founded his famous yeshiva, Mercaz HaRav Kook, which has long been an epicenter of religious Zionism.  He became Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of the British Mandate before his death in 1935.  As speaker Rabbi Shalom Carmy showed, Kook's religious thought was heavily engaged with 19th-century philosophy.  His disagreements with the Rambam reflected insights from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.  Modern art and science lowered morality but, in an almost Hegelian dialectic, all would work out according to the divine plan. The vision of Kook and his son, Rabbi Tzi Yehuda Kook, inspired the Gush Emunim settlement movement whose offshoots dominate Israeli Zionism today.

The questions remain. Where is the center of Jewish life?  To what extent is it tied to the land of Israel—defined how and by whom?  Who leads the Jewish people, and by what right?  Is Israel the answer to the Jewish Question in this world or the next?  These questions cannot be answered by reference to artificial polarities between Kook and Soloveitchik, even between Agudat Israel and Mizrahi.  

In a 1947 letter to Agudat Israel, David Ben-Gurion, then head of the Yishuv, guaranteed full rights in the coming state of Israel to non-Jewish citizens—but agreed that the state would mandate Sabbath observance for Jews, kosher food in "every state kitchen," and marriage supervised so as to "satisfy the needs of the religiously observant"; moreover, "no steps" would be taken that "adversely affect the religious awareness and religious conscience of any part of Israel."  These concessions, along with the draft exemption for yeshiva students, have become the core of Israel's internal cold war.  The rabbinate controls Jewish life from birth to marriage and conversion to death.  Haredi religious parties occupy government ministries and channel resources to their ever-growing communities, which have the country's highest levels of poverty and lowest levels of labor participation, while settlers find theological justifications to defy the state and demand its protection and subsidies at once.  In a sense, American religious Zionism has abetted these developments.

American Jews are now undergoing one of their periodic paroxysms over Zionism.  Liberal Jews are as unnerved by strong expressions of religious belief as they are by unapologetic nationalism.  Compounding matters are bad neighbors and perfectionist aspirations.  Secular American Zionism seems to have foundered on its own contradictory expectations and now contributes few to aliyah; religious Zionism thrives but is used for explicitly or implicitly illiberal ends.  

Within Israel, "Jewish nationalism" is becoming less nationalist, in the sense of dedication to the nation-state, and more Jewish, making the state a means to a theological end.  The distinction is profound. The real and potential breadth of the people is constrained by a narrowness of religious expression.  To correct this asymmetry, what may be required is just what Soloveitchik called for: a strong, assertive, theologically self-assured Diaspora Orthodoxy.