“Many love it with the uncritical exuberance of a doting mother toward her child. Many more hate it with what one observer has aptly characterized as an almost ‘eroticized’ passion.”
So writes Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor, author and defender of Israel, in the introduction to his latest book, “What Israel Means to Me: By 80 Prominent Writers, Performers, Scholars, Politicians and Journalists.”
The anthology includes a number of Bay Area personalities, including professors, authors and rabbis.
Avner Even-Zohar, the former campus director at the Israel Center of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, writes about his maternal grandmother’s family that was in Safed for generations, and how he relies on this history when pro-Palestinian supporters at San Francisco State challenge Israel’s legitimacy.
But not every author speaks of the conflict.
Jane Falk of Berkeley is a communications consultant to both Israeli and American companies, and notes how different their styles can be.
“I love the Israelis’ informality,” she writes. “It is refreshing to be able to call everyone by first name and to not be able to tell by the way someone is talking whether he is addressing the prime minister or a close friend.”
Bay Area author Donna Rosenthal, who wrote “The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land,” speaks of interviewing average citizens for her book.
“Some order Big Macs in the language of the Ten Commandments, others believe waiting in line is for sissies or light up under ‘no smoking’ signs. Israeli kids, the world’s biggest MTV fans, took me into their bedrooms decorated with Brad Pitt posters. We surfed the Internet and chat rooms where they discuss teen heartthrobs and Hamas.”
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, scholar-in-residence at San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El, admits, “Like Jews everywhere, I am furious, livid, that Israel is routinely held by the world press to a higher standard of political ethics. What for any other nation-state would be just another ho-hum, business-as-usual blunder, misjudgment, or indiscretion, for Israel is front-page news. But the truth is, like many Jews, I suspect, I also secretly love it.”
U.C. Berkeley professor Robert Alter writes, “Zionism, as plain to see, is an imperfect solution to the problem of Jewish collective existence, but it is also a necessary one.”
And then, perhaps for a bit of controversy, Dershowitz includes Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the left-wing magazine Tikkun, who writes, “I love Israel so much that I will not be silenced until it becomes true that from Zion will come forth Torah — not the Torah of hate and anger and fear, but the Torah of love, kindness, generosity, social justice and peace.”
And perhaps even more of a lightning rod is Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and the chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at University of San Francisco.
“I firmly believe that one can be critical of Israeli policies and be no less a Zionist,” Zunes writes. “Indeed, it is that very right to dissent from government policies without fear of persecution — a right that is unusual in that part of the world — that is one of Israel’s greatest strengths.”
“What Israel Means to Me: By 80 Prominent Writers, Performers, Scholars, Politicians and Journalists,” edited by Alan Dershowitz (368 pages, Wiley, $25.95).