How will we be remembered? — The Jewish People After the War

The Reconstructionist Press publishes a series of prayerbooks for use in Reconstructionist Jewish communities, all of which are titled Kol Haneshamah: Everything that Breathes. The Kol Haneshamah machzor—high holidays prayerbook—is common in Reconstructionist synagogues across the country. Reconstructionism is considered to be the furthest left-wing stream of Judaism, and most "non-zionist" or "anti-zionist" synagogues affiliate with themselves with the Reconstructionist movement.

On pages 687 and 688 of the Kol Haneshamah machzor, there is a memorial candle lighting blessing to begin the Yom Kippur fast and lead us into Kol Nidrei. Inserted into the traditional blessings, is a memorial for fallen soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces who, the machzor reads, "sacrificed their lives for the sanctification of G—d and all those who died in the holocaust."

Even the most progressive stream of Judaism has inserted a framing of the Israeli Defense Forces as fighting a holy war, and in the same breath says this holy war honors the victims of the holocaust.

Immediately, I do want to push back on this. Holocaust survivors in Israel are among the poorest and most mistreated demographics in Israel, even when you include Arabs. Furthermore, the "holy war" that the IDF fights is against Arabs and funded partially by reparation payments from Germany. Arabs had nothing to do with the holocaust. The holocaust was perpetuated by Germany.

On pages 695 and 696 of the Kol Haneshamah machzor, after the reading of kol nidrei, is an excerpt from Numbers 15:26

And there shall be atonement for the whole community of Israel, and the stranger dwelling in their midst—indeed, for an entire people that has gone astray.

Indeed, an entire people has gone astray. The Jewish people have gone astray. We experienced a genocide so awful that the word genocide was invented just to describe what we experienced. The generational trauma has severely impacted our families and communities. And now, supposedly in honor of those we lost in the holocaust, the Jewish people are enacting a genocide.

It is impossible to deny on legal and logical grounds that Israel is enacting a genocide in Gaza. You rarely even see people trying to argue that it's not a genocide, only that it is necessary, or that it's unfair to call it a genocide given that the word genocide was invented to describe something done to the Jewish people. It is absolutely heartbreaking to acknowledge it. The cognitive dissonance and trauma rends our souls to think about it. Yet still, it is an undeniable fact: The Jewish people are committing a genocide in Gaza. It is being enacted by the Israel government, and the vast majority of Jews unyieldingly support it. Not all of us, but so many that to dissent makes you a pariah. So many, that the majority will ostracize dissenters and say that we have turned our backs on our people.

How will we be remembered? As the Jewish people, what will history remember of our actions today? What will be the narrative they tell about us? We were victims of the holocaust, and then enacted a genocide ourselves. We have truly gone astray.

Ultimately, the war in Gaza cannot last forever. The situation in Israel and Palestine cannot last forever as it is. Someday, it will end. The question is, how? When it's all over, what will become of the Jewish people? How will be remembered?

Scenario A: Palestine Will Be Free, Without Majority Jewish Support

Someday, Palestine is free. Israeli apartheid ends. Perhaps a successful two-state solution is implemented, or the state of Israel ends and a new one-state Palestine is born. This happens despite the majority of Jews supporting Israel. What happens to the Jewish people in this scenario?

Israelis will be remembered like white South Africans. Settlers whose atrocious project failed. Sure, Jewish Israelis could stay in Palestine, but many will leave, and to have Israeli heritage will be seen as shameful, embarrassing even.

It will be remembered how the vast majority of the Jewish people supported Israel. We will all bear shame eternally. The existence of Anti-Zionist Jews will not redeem our entire people. Anti-Zionist Judaism will likely be somewhat forgotten or obscure, similar to the Anti-Zionist Jews who chose to fight alongside Bolsheviks instead of making aliyah.

I imagine going to shul, and listening to older generations say atrocious racist things about how Palestine has gone to shit, and the good old glory days of Israel were really something to behold. It will be embarrassing. Palestine won, the fight is over, why still be so hateful?

Younger Jews will be even more alienated from Jewish identity than ever. I imagine many more will stop going to shul than even today, seeing it as something they don't want their non-Jewish friends to know about. They might quietly admit to having "Jewish heritage" in private, but mostly hope nobody knows that their grandparents had supported the IDF.

Is this how we want to be remembered?

Scenario B: Total Victory for Israel

Someday, Palestine is destroyed completely. All living former Palestinians now live in other countries. Israel has annexed Gaza, the West Bank, and Golan Heights. There is peace in Israel, at last. The Jewish State thrives. A small Arab minority continue to have fewer rights, but perhaps a sort of liberal movement exists to at least equalize their legal rights despite social discrimination.

Palestine is remembered how Indigenous North Americans are remembered in the US and Canada. There is a permanent bloody stain upon the land. Oh, the Palestinians? I mean yes they aren't completely extinct, but they mostly don't live here anymore. It's sad, but it was necessary. How could it have been avoided? It was different times, and they weren't blameless themselves.

The Jewish People are forever remembered as the people who enacted and completed a genocide. Where the Germans were ultimately defeated, the Jews succeeded. One of the few people who were so good at genocide that we actually finished the job. We are no longer remembered as victims of genocide, but history's greatest perpetrators. Worse than Germans.

Perhaps younger Israelis will do land acknowledgments at universities. These land acknowledgments could never possibly be meaningful. The war is over and Israel won. Older generations will tell the younger generations to be grateful for the genocide, because otherwise we wouldn't have Israel.

Jews try to forget Palestine, or rewrite history to erase the atrocities. It will be justified, because the United States did the same thing. To be Jewish will come with an original sin from your birth: we are benefactors of genocide.

We will be more hated by more of the world than at any prior point in history. We will not be able to accuse people of blood libel, for what they accuse us of will be undeniably evidently true. What reparations could we possibly make? Palestine has been destroyed beyond repair. We are irredeemable. Famous Jews who fought against South African apartheid or for Black civil rights will be long forgotten as unusual exceptions. The vast majority of Jews in Israel and the diaspora supported genocide.

Is this how we want to be remembered?

Scenario C: Palestine is Free, with Jewish Support

Someday, Palestine is free, and it is due in part to Jewish allies who stood up in solidarity with Palestine. Israelis turned against their government, the diaspora turned against Israel, somehow the role of Jewish solidarity becomes deeply entwined in the narrative of Palestinian liberation. Perhaps a two-state solution is reached, and Jews help rebuild Gaza en masse as volunteers. Perhaps a single binational secular state of Palestine-Israel is established, with our harmony enshrined in the constitution. Somehow, we achieve peace together.

We are remembered as holocaust victims who, in our trauma and shock, fell for the leadership of fascists. However, when things got worse than they had ever been before, we woke up. We returned to the path of chesed and tzedakah. We fought back against Likud and Netanyahu. We stopped supporting the war. We redeemed ourselves.

There would be historical revisionism here as well. I imagine everyone would try their best to blame all of Zionism's atrocities on Likud and Netanyahu, and deny the atrocities committed by HaAvodah and the Haganah. It would be contentious. People would revise family histories to frame themselves as being the good ones who opposed the genocide.

Zionism would be remembered the way Germans remember Naziism. Our people faced dire times, and we went astray, but now we have learned from it and steadfastly fight against anyone who tries to return to those ways. It is an embarrassing stain on our history, but one we have overcome. We would emphasize all the anti-zionist Jews in history, and downplay the way the majority of the Jewish diaspora shamed anti-zionists as traitors and fools.

If the genocide is halted early enough, then reparations could be paid. I imagine, knowing Jews, we would somehow find a way to incorporate reparations payments to Palestine into our Yom Kippur rituals. With the financial support of the diaspora, we could meaningfully restore the Palestinians to a good quality of life enough that maybe someday a level of forgiveness could be achieved. After all, not many Jews today still resent every German they meet. Israel happily accepts German reparations and support, so perhaps Palestine could accept Israeli reparations.

Everyone would have that racist grandpa who insists that the IDF should have completed what it started and created the glorious Greater Israel, but efforts are taken to shut him up lest he bring shame upon us.

This is, I think, the best outcome I can imagine. A great shameful stain is still left upon our Jewish identity, but so too could we embrace the work of t'shuvah and take pride in having been a part of fixing what our people started.

This is how I would like us to be remembered, of the possibilities I can see.

Kaper Lanu

Please, G—d, turn our hearts. Change our people and redeem us. Turn us towards life and the worship of You, our Source and Sovereign. Turn us away from the worship of blood, death, and Nation. Return us to the path of peace and harmony. Deliver us away from a mindset of Holy War that has poisoned even the most progressive of us. Soften our hearts, in Israel and in the Diaspora. Guide us to t'shuvah for what we have done in Palestine.

Remember us, for life. May we be remembered as those who chose life—for an entire people has gone astray.