Open Letter to My Students 51: Rabbit Holes and Blue Skies

Here’s what I know about the war: Hamas is a radicalized terrorist group that would slaughter every Jew in Israel, if it could: think of it as “another six million.” Israel must try to eliminate it. Israel must also try to limit collateral damage to Gaza civilians. But war is hell and there is no way to avoid at least some such casualties, especially because of the way Hamas embeds itself among civilians and their institutions. 

I know something else also: Jews are news; and the media are happily pandering to a public that cannot get enough of blood and gore, this time factual, not fictional, so all the more sensational and saleable – like those “True crime” series, but “True War” instead. I know also that except for ever-new examples of wartime horror, most of the pundits, analysts, and commentators don’t know anything more than I do. Anyone who knows the important stuff, like the Israelis’ actual military strategy, can’t talk about it.

I know also that our thirst to know more anyway morphs easily into addictively following the 24/7 coverage. I will call it “going down a rabbit hole,” even though the point of that image is the endless tunnels that rabbits build, just like Hamas, and the fact that I even think of that parallel is a sign of my own obsessive desire to know more than what is available to me. 

The deeper you tunnel into rabbit holes, however, the darker things become; and I watch myself, and others, lose perspective in the darkness. We, who believe nothing else that is metaphysical, somehow return like the swallows to Capistrano to the notion that anti-Semitism is somehow baked into the universe like the speed of light or the law of gravity; even our so-called friends will eventually turn on us, we say. Don’t they always?

Well, no, they don’t “always,” but even the grandest of delusions may have some truth behind them: witness the anti-Semitism of erstwhile allies in academic circles, for example — scholars who normally thrive on weighing evidence for and against their claims, but who (when it comes to Israel) go down their own rabbit hole of self-righteous liberation politics instead. They are, however (so far, anyway) the exception, not the rule. The great majority of people I know support Israel’s right to defend itself. They cringe at civilian casualties as well, but so do I.  

Rabbit-holing has another terrible consequence. It saturates our consciousness, corrodes our mental circuitry, dissipates our energy, and saps the spirit to the point of terminal fatigue. 

It is time to escape the rabbit hole. I will keep up with the news in a responsible way; if, perchance, there is actual evidence that should affect my understanding, I will attend to it. With a few notable exceptions, however, I will kick the habit of wallowing in the interminable columns, podcasts, op eds, and media posts that offer advice, opinion, and assessment by so-called experts who are really just guessing themselves, after all. Instead, I will think long-term. I, personally, cannot do very much about the war; but I can begin to ponder what we must do when the war finally ends. 

Here is my short list of issues we have allowed to fester; issues that we have sometimes tinkered with but never handled seriously; issues that require urgent post-war attention; issues, also, that we really can do something about.

For starters, we will have to renegotiate our relationship with that part of the left which really is anti-Semitic. For example, I still think black lives matter (in lower case), but I am appalled at the anti-Semitic voices of Black Lives Matter (in Caps). Equally, we must confront the rampant anti-Semitism of academia that I mentioned above, a task that will entail us Jewish academicians having difficult conversations with our university colleagues; and Jews, in general, making hard decisions about what colleges to support with their philanthropy — and with their children’s attendance.

Then too, there is the tragic matter of the Israeli government and its policies. There is nothing good about the reigning Israeli coalition; we have known this all along; we cheered the Saturday-night resistance by Israelis; but we have allowed ourselves to be coopted by the government which pretends to listen to us, and then holds us in utter contempt while continuing its immoral agenda of Jewish terrorism on the west bank. 

Let me be clear: Hamas would have attacked us no matter what; in no way are we Jews to blame for the Hamas incursion. But on its own grounds, we need to resurrect the possibility of a two-state solution and do all we can to break the back of an adventurist right wing that has taken Israeli policy captive, poisoned world opinion against us, and made it difficult for our own young Jewish generations to love Israel as their parents do. To be sure, it is not clear what dialogue partners we even have on the Arab side of things. But we can at least clean up our side of the street, if for no other reason than the moral imperative that we say we represent.

Finally, we will need to invest heavily in our own diaspora creativity. I am, and always have been, a fervent Zionist; in no way do I question the need for a thriving Jewish State of Israel. But the Jewish People constitute an ellipse, not a circle: it needs an equally thriving diaspora, and it is time we poured much more money, time, and attention into transforming diasporas around the world into an entire network of communities where Jewish life flourishes.

The opposite of “rabbit holes” is “blue skies,” where we look up to heaven itself with the endless possibilities of imaginative creativity. While the war is on, we leave no doubt about our will for Israel to defend itself. When the war ends, we should leave no doubt about our will to become serious about an agenda that we have too long avoided.