Avraham Burg, executive chairman of the World Zionist Organization and touted by some as the next prime minister of Israel, said he could not predict Benjamin Netanyahu’s next political moves because “I don’t know how he wants to be remembered” in Jewish history.
The same uncertainty could be said of Burg’s political future.
Burg was one of four panelists who discussed Jewish life in Israel and America last week in San Francisco.
Hosted by the Jewish Museum San Francisco, the panel also included Rabbi Brian Lurie, president of the Jewish Museum; Daniel Libeskind, the architect for the museum’s new building; and Daniel Ben-Simon, a journalist for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz.
The panel, moderated by Steven Spiegel, professor of political science at UCLA, was held last Thursday night at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Approximately 50 people attended.
The main message of the panel was that Jewish identity and Israel’s history is up for grabs.
Will Burg indeed be the next prime minister of Israel, the moderator asked?
It depends on how the political parties shape up in the coming years, Burg replied.
He noted, however, that as the two major parties — Likud and Labor — keep losing voters’ support, more room is cleared for new parties to form.
If a party is established in the center, and it stresses traditional religious values with a sensitivity to social issues, Burg said he’d “be more than happy to join.”
Burg described himself as a non-affiliated Jew who is “looking for a meaningful life.” That life, he explained, would include “pro-love, pro-caring and pro-solidarity” with other Jews.
On the topic of relations between American and Israeli Jews, Burg called on the groups to work collectively to form a new Jewish identity. That call meshed with Lurie’s interest in encouraging new forms of Judaism in the diaspora.
Gesturing toward that not-yet-formed identity, Lurie cited local prominent Jews Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor of the S.F. Symphony, and David Ross, director of the S.F. Museum of Modern Art. Lurie characterized them as “committed Jews” working in the public sphere.
During a question-and-answer session, an audience member queried Lurie why the Bay Area Jewish community should construct an expensive, state-of-the-art museum when many local social programs for Jews are struggling for funding.
Lurie responded that the museum will help fill “the need for new Jewish institutions” to be involved in developing a distinctly Jewish-American identity.
Libeskind agreed, saying the museum will serve to examine what Jews “are actually doing outside of the old ideology” of pre-World War II European Jewry.
Libeskind is hot in the world of architecture — known widely for his design of the recently completed Jewish Museum in Berlin. The museum has garnered international acclaim for its zig-zag-shaped building influenced by the Jewish history specific to that German city.
He noted that while San Francisco’s Jewish community holds a much different history and promise than Berlin’s, there are “eternal” themes which both museums seek to exhibit.
But those themes have yet to be fully realized, Libeskind argued. One should “not look back and feature clichés of the banalization of Jewish life,” he said. “There needs to be an opening of questions. The [new] museum will address not only the future of Judaism, but the future to the future.”
Though Lurie did not disclose much on what the new museum will contain, he indicated it will not limit itself to Jewish art. For example, he mentioned there will be an archive of Jewish humor.
“It’s not going to be just a museum, it will be something dramatically different,” Lurie said.
Ben-Simon, who offered thoughtful riffs on Jewish political and cultural matters during the panel discussion, related American Jewry’s redefining itself to a similar process in Israel.
As the country approaches a new era of peace with its neighbors, he said, it is groping for a “new look” and cultural direction. The struggle to establish Israel’s laws and social norms, Ben-Simon said, “is the real fight.”