Since this is a Zionist blog, I thought I would make my first post about why I am a Zionist. Much of what I have to say, and will be saying on this blog, may seem on its face radical; out of context my points can be grievously misconstrued. For this reason I want to start out by emphasizing that I was not always a Zionist, that I understand from personal experience the logic of anti-Zionism, that my Zionism is a carefully considered conclusion. The following essay, which I wrote after returning from my first trip to Israel two summers ago, does not detail my logic and views – you’ll get plenty of that in the future – instead hoping to give an emotional glimpse of the moment I became a Zionist.
Two millennia ago, the Second Temple’s razing fresh, Jewish zealots, called by the Romans sicarii, daggers, silently scaled Masada’s shear cliffs. Ambushing the fortress, for three years they defied Rome’s legions; a citadel of resistance lodged in the tiger’s throat. As the Judean ramparts finally fell, Elazar ben Ya’ir instructed the Zealots, taking the sin of suicide on himself, to in turn slay each other, rather than surrender the Sabbath to slavery. Zionism resurrects the flag of Judaism synonymous with sovereignty. Israel’s soldiers, as a final step before activation, often scaled the sicarii cliff, yelling in unison atop the mesa’s south face, “Mitzada! Sheni! Lo! Tipol!” – Masada will not fall again.
Finite clay composes a cereal bowl, but the bowl contains infinite space and possibilities for contents. Maimonides taught that Torah, like a cereal bowl, delineates what God is not, leaving infinite room for what God is. God is an ocean, waves His attributes. In an unbounded ocean, all waves resonate equally: flat water. The cereal bowl produces standing waves, however, according to its shape, the crests of which reach sublime heights, the troughs profound depths. Thus by restricting behavior, Torah enables ecstatic spiritual fulfillment. The human soul is a microcosm of God within the Divine sea.
My parents raised me by the cereal bowl, unconcerned about my brand of Judaism as long as I was decisively Jewish. I became Bar Mitzvah with passionate spirituality, but shallow understanding. Adopting the philosophy of my parents and my community, I explained the Torah as purely metaphorical, neglecting piety for social action. I felt zero connection to Israel.
I stumbled blind out of David Ben-Gurion Airport last June, hands outstretched, grasping for spiritual connection. Searching the horizon from my spiritual rowboat, I struggled to reconcile Moresha and the City of David with my moral and spiritual relativism. The Western Wall pitted my innate demand for philosophical consistency against my entrenched metaphorical theology.
I awoke with my fellow pilgrims at three A.M. to scale Masada. We climbed in pitch black, achieving the summit at five, sunrise. I was swimming in the Divine ocean, alert for a spiritual landmark. As the sun rose above the bifurcated Dead Sea, silhouetting the Israeli flag among the ruddy ruins, a sliver of land appeared on the horizon. On the same dust as stood Elazar ben Yair, we shouted, “Mitzada! Sheni! Lo! Tipol!” The wave of voices surged toward the distant island Zion, propelling me upward like a muscular hand. The sicarii’s voices echoed from the rock face, and stabbed me, daggers. Water surpassed me, engulfing me. The words became a mantra, an oath that I, personally, swore to defend Israel as a Jewish State. No religion without nation. I struggled for the surface. No nation without state. My parents were receding toward the ocean’s cereal bowl edge. No Jewish state without religion. I fought for flat water, relativism. Sunlight shone through the breaking waves. A light to the nations.
I breathed in desert air. I felt assailing an unaccustomed contentment, a sense of home, of true moral purpose. Israel filled my cereal bowl.
