The following is an edited excerpt of an address delivered by Zohar Raviv to a conference of Jewish educators sponsored by the Zionist Federation of Australia (August 18, 2024).

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The purpose of this presentation is to attempt to give us some sort of a shared language, a conceptual canopy by which we can wrestle with some of the foundational questions that we deal with as a people and as educators. I will first make a few prefatory comments, after which I will share what I believe should be a shared strategic blueprint for the Jewish people in terms of Jewish and Israel education in the modern era.

Preface

As a preface, I believe that we are all experiencing a revolutionary moment in the evolution of the Jewish people. By that, I mean that while the evolution of the Jewish people remains a constant, we are nonetheless at the forefront of a moment of awareness—of what in Judaism is known as she’at ratzon—a moment of willingness among Jews that is unprecedented in modern Jewish history. That, in and of itself, should raise for us a great call for action as educators and as people who work on behalf of the Jewish community in charting a path for our envisioned trajectory.

My second point is that while our shared past is a fact, our shared future is a choice. The mandate of Jewish and Israel education is to work together to make sure that those with whom we come into contact choose to remain engaged, involved, and seek meaning in Jewish life. We all know that in today’s world “choice” cannot be taken for granted. In order to affect positive change toward such choices, we need to become trailblazers, leaders, and visionaries. In my mind—borrowing from the prophets of Israel—leadership is the ability to turn the world in which we live into a world in which we believe. Our ability to negotiate between what we see and what we wish to see charts the landscape of leadership—a landscape for which “despair” should never be considered an option. You cannot be a leader without that innate optimism to guide you.

In that spirit, I must say that the only thing that I identify as greater than the calamity that has befallen us since October 7^th is the educational identity formation opportunities that arise in its wake vis-à-vis the awareness of Jews as to the meaning and importance of being Jewish—even, in some cases, against their better judgment or against their conscious will.

Finally, I truly believe that we are all in this together. This is our call, and this is our charge. If you remember one thing from this address, please remember the following: One day in the future we are all destined to become part of our people’s past, and the question regarding what kind of a past we want to become to our future is a question for the present. We will be judged in the future based on the actions that we take now, at this seminal moment—a fact which commands us to think very carefully about how we wish to proceed from this point on.

A strategic blueprint for building Jewish identity

There is no doubt that the post-October 7^th era has created a level of angst and anguish of unprecedented proportions for Jews in the modern era. For the younger ones among us, this is the greatest calamity that we’ve ever experienced. At the same time, we must exercise the responsibility of leadership and the burden of optimism. By that, I mean that we need to clearly distinguish between sight and vision. We need to be able to chart a line between what we see as the reality on the ground on the one hand, and the vision of how we would want things to be on the other hand. Obviously, the sights around us right now are terribly difficult, and that includes not only October 7^th in Israel, but also October 8^th in the rest of the world. Those sights are horrendous, there’s no way to sugar-coat it. Yet leadership demands we cannot allow those sights to define the landscape that edifies our approach to Jewish education and building Jewish identity.

Sights, by definition, elicit a reaction, whereas reactions, by definition, are tactical. The reactions of the Jewish world to both October 7^th and October 8^th have been tremendous, responding in measures that undeniably testify to our resilience, fortitude, and moral backbone as a people—but they remain tactical by nature, rather than strategic. The formulation of a vision for our people—especially through education—requires a strategic roadmap, which in turn is proactive, rather than reactive. Tactical reactions are designed to extinguish fires, whereas a strategic proactive vision is about planting seeds. Should we only focus on extinguishing fires, we will end up with little more than scorched land.

The above leads me to my next point, one which I have made on any willing stage: The alarming disparity between our story as Jews and our narrative as Jews.

Allow me to explain.

I argue that our story as Jews is a great story. Not perfect, as there are no perfect stories in the human arena—every country on earth has a few skeletons in its own national closet. Nonetheless, our story is a great one. The story of the Jewish people is a story of a people who for thousands of years demonstrate an inverse relationship between numbers and impact. It is a story of a people who turned commitment to memory into a chief value and an art form. The story of the Jewish people is a story without which we couldn’t even imagine the foundations of Western society as we know it today. What makes me proudest about being Jewish is belonging to a people who truly wish to turn the world in which we live into a world in which we believe—a passion that is intrinsic to the very backbone of our value system. We belong to a people who celebrate representatives throughout the ages who made a lasting impact on almost every imaginable field of human interest.

The same goes for the relatively young State of Israel. When you put all the politics and the ranting and the problems and the shouting aside, and instead look at it from afar; when you take a deep breath and appreciate what the State of Israel has achieved in just 76 years of existence, what you witness is truly mind-boggling.

We have a great story. The story of the Jewish people is a story of a people committed to curiosity, to betterment of their own community and the rest of the world; it is a story of a people committed to life, to progress, to education, to knowledge. It is the story of the ever-living people.

Alas! Our narrative—that is, the way we opted to tell our own story for generations on end—runs almost opposite to our story. For hundreds of years, the Jewish people have opted to narrate our own story not as that of the ever-living people but as that of the ever-dying people. Our narrative is one deeply indebted to a rhetoric of crisis, antisemitism, victimhood, bloodshed, war, and holocaust. And lest I stir a chord of hypersensitivity, I wish to be very clear: I am not, God forbid, downplaying any of the calamities that have befallen our people throughout history—quite the contrary. What I am saying, however, is that those calamities do not define me as a Jew, nor should they define our people as a whole.

A few years ago, I met with a Minister of Education for Israel. At the end of that conversation in Jerusalem, I asked why—as an Israeli and as a Jew—I was taught that the timeline of Israel runs like this: 1947, 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 1991, 2002, 2008… (I guess you see where I am going with this; wars, wars, and wars). He looked at me and said, “Because that’s our story,” to which I abruptly responded, “No, that’s not our story. These are the interruptions to our story.”

There’s a huge difference between remembering and commemorating our tragedies on the one hand, which is important and vital, and turning our tragedies into the founding blocks of our identity as Jews on the other hand. We cannot sustain a healthy Jewish body on a perpetual diet of tragedies. It simply won’t work—and should not work.

My claim here runs way beyond the realm of interpretation, as I am offended by our own tendency to chart a narrative that outright betrays our true story as a people. I’m experienced enough in the Jewish world to be fully aware of the awesome gravitational pull of tragedy to elicit identity; yet as tempting as it might be to establish identity on tragedy, it is not education—it’s manipulation. What I can do emotionally in five minutes in Auschwitz will take me a full year elsewhere, but on its own, that’s simply manipulation, not an educationally sound identity formation process. For a healthy identity, Judaism should be celebrated, not defended. I am here to celebrate my Judaism, and I will defend it if need be. As educators we must realize that defending Judaism should never be a goal, but an outcome; we need to forge a Jewish identity based on the inner mechanisms of Jewish life, rather than based on external threats to Jewish living.

Let me be clear: I was a Jew on October 6^th and I remained a Jew on the Oct. 8^th. I’m not a Jew because of October 7^th; I’m a Jew despite October 7^th. I am not a Jew because of the Holocaust but despite it! And this line of educational reasoning runs throughout each and every tragedy we have ever experienced as a people.

For example, many of us are familiar with the expulsions from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1497, respectively. How many of us truly know about the 350 preceding years of Jewish glory, creativity, art, culture, texts, and literature. We know a lot about the way 6 million Jews died, but not enough of how they lived. We need a paradigm shift to build a Jewish identity based on Jewish life, not Jewish death. We need to work diligently and together to once and for all change the narrative of the Jewish people, so it adequately corresponds with the story of the Jewish people. We are the ever-living people, not what Simon Rawidowicz once dubbed “the ever-dying people.”

Empowering the silent majority

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the overwhelming majority of young Jews worldwide do not take part in the shameful, despicable, anti-Israel, Jew-hating, anti-Zionist rhetoric. Yet, this silent majority is increasingly beginning to feel like a silenced minority, and when that happens it leaves a vacuum that invites dangerous things to happen. We, as a community of educators worldwide, need to think about this strategically on two levels:

First, we need to figure out how to raise the awareness of our young adults to the fact that they are actually a majority. What can we do, what kind of resources, pedagogy, support, and networking can we offer so that they can recognize that they are a majority.

Second, we need to take all measures to transform them into a vocal and visible majority. And when I say a vocal majority, I’m not talking about building masses of young Jewish adults who flaunt Israeli flags and chant Hatikva in multiple languages. Rather, I’m talking about fostering communities of people who will claim their inherent right to explore Israel, Judaism, and Zionism in responsible, intelligent, meaningful, and critical manners, as they deserve—in a climate that does not allow that to happen anymore and almost anywhere! It’s our responsibility to furnish them with an alternative landscape for meaningful dialogues about what it means to be a Jew, what it means to be a Zionist, and what it means to have a connection with Israel in the 21^stcentury—in a contemporary social climate plagued by what I have long since called “junk food for thought, served on a cheap plate colored only black and white.”

Reclaiming the Zionist narrative

Indeed, such a climate demands that education not only focuses on content but reclaims its hold on context. Accordingly, another issue to discuss relates to the way we narrate both Israel and Zionism. These are hard questions for which I would like to offer a number of concepts for consideration and argue that the narrative of Israel and the narrative of Zionism have also been kidnapped from us. In part, we are to be held responsible, as we neglected these topics for many years, which means that we need to work hard to reclaim them in a broader context of Israel and in a broader context of Zionism, as part and parcel of our narrative and educational efforts.

I would encourage each and every one of you to take a very close and hard look at Israel’s Declaration of Independence, a document whose language and content need to be critically examined. No matter how you look at it, it is a tremendous landscape for educational work when it comes to Jewish identity and the place of both Israel and Zionism in the accumulated consciousness of the Jewish people throughout history. Let’s look at a number of points as examples.

First is the foundational realization that the State of Israel was established as the homeland of the entire Jewish people, not just the Jewish people who live in Israel. In other words, the land of Israel is our homeland, irrespective of the lands that different Jews call home. You can live wherever you want, but at your Seder table you will say, “Next Year in Jerusalem.” So, we need to address the question of what it means to have a homeland as an integral part of who we are, and also assume the great responsibility and honor of being part of those who created that home, in and outside of Israel. One of the things that I tell Israelis all the time is that Israel would not have been established without the uninterrupted and rigorous effort of world Jewry. So, Israel is the result of the accumulated efforts of world Jewry and of Israeli Jewry, and it should be investigated as such.

Second, Israel was established as a state of ideals, not an ideal state. Israel tries to celebrate certain ideals that are an essential part of who we are, but never really aspired to or claimed to be an ideal state. It has its fair share of mistakes and problems, like any other country on earth. That means that the false aspiration that some people put on Israel to be above and beyond everything else does it, and us, a disservice. Ideal states simply don’t exist, except in the delusional realities of certain autocratic and abusive authorities.

The distinction between a state of ideals and an ideal state is important, as it invites us and our students to critically examine those ideals, checking intelligently whether they are being fulfilled or not—in a responsible and meaningful way.

Third, we live in a world with great access to information, but no in-depth engagement with knowledge. It is a world of surfers without a diving license, attracted by “waves” (sensationalism, headlines, scoops, and the like), but with no interest or clue as to what transpires in the great deep underneath. This leads to a reality wherein there’s a huge disparity between the multi-layered reality of Israel on the one hand and the often single-layered perception of Israel, on the other hand. For Jewish and Israel education to prosper, we need to intentionally, perpetually, and consistently aim to bridge the gap between the multi-layered existence of Israel which functions in many fields, and the single-dimensional perception of Israel, which usually revolves around Israeli geopolitics, warfare, and the Conflict. We must engage the extra dimensions of appreciation of Israel beyond these important yet myopic lenses—this is a strategic need that requires everybody’s enlistment and integration into our curricula.

Fourth, one cannot intelligently, meaningfully, and thoroughly talk about the modern State of Israel without discussing the land of Israel as a necessary context. Without the idea of the land of Israel and our people’s enduring connection to it for over three millennia, the modern State of Israel indeed has no leg to stand on. This is evident in Israel’s Declaration of Independence opening statement, clarifying that “In the land of Israel rose the Jewish nation….” We cannot discuss the State of Israel without understanding our historical connection to the land of Israel—a fact that remains valid irrespective of one’s religious beliefs.

Fifth, the same goes for Zionism, which became a concept non grata in many circles. It, too, needs to be reaffirmed, reintroduced, re-narrated, and re-contextualized. And just like the State of Israel, which cannot be fully discussed without understanding the concept of the land of Israel, Zionism cannot be intelligently and responsibly discussed without making a clear distinction between Zionism as a modern political movement and Zionism as an ancient Jewish value statement. As much as I regret to say it, I maintain that policymakers in Israel have continuously done a miserable job throughout the years with the concept of Zionism, precisely due to treating Zionism primarily, if not exclusively, as a 19^th century European-based political movement (which, incidentally, was reactive in its foundation, with all the problematics of reactive movements that I mentioned earlier). In other words, they tried to respond to specific things that happened in Europe and other parts of the world and decided that the Jewish people “needed” a homeland, rather than have the right to return to their ancestral homeland. Allow me therefore to be as clear as I can: the Zionist movement’s raison de’tre is not in reaction to modern atrocities against European and other Jews! Rather, it is a proactive renaissance of an ancient and unbinding connection between our people and our homeland. The persecution of Jews during the 19^th century may have expedited the process of modern Zionist awareness—but it did not invent it ex nihilo!

With all due respect, Herzl was not the first Zionist—it was Abraham and Sarah, followed by their descendants. Lekh Lekha (go forth to the land which I will show you) is a Zionist directive. Moses, whom in jest I call a terrible tour guide, was nonetheless a great Zionist—leading our forged nation in a particular direction and under a particular directive. The Passover Haggadah narrates our Zionist aspirations and celebrates our memory of them. Ezra and Nehemiah rendered their excursion from the Babylonian exile Shivat Zion (return to Zion); as was the case with prophet Ezekiel—a staunch Zionist—who laments “by the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept, remembering Zion.” The same goes with Rabbi Judah Halevi in Spain thousands of years later, who wrote from the depth of his Zionistic soul, “My heart is in the East, and I’m in the farthest reaches of the West.” When a groom crushes a cup under the hupah, he does so in memory of Zion—a Zionist ritual Jews have been performing for thousands of years. Every time we build a synagogue where the direction of prayer is established as toward Jerusalem, that’s Zionist architecture…; and the list goes on and on.

The grounding of Zionism within the 19^th century political movement has robbed our many generations of a fully contextualized understanding of Zionism. If I had it my way, Herzl would not be in the center wall of Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, but rather at the end of a long wall that celebrates the great Zionists since Abraham. The same goes for the Herzl Center on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem, an educational center that should present Herzl in an appropriate context as the continuation of a story that began four thousand years before his appearance.

Zionism is not an addition to Jewish identity; it’s inherent to Jewish identity. It amazes me each time to witness how many Jews are oblivious to the fact that the very word “Jew” actually means “of Judea” (Yehudi)—a fact that binds our existence as a particular people with that of a particular land. This fact has nothing to do with political, religious, or ideological affinities; it is a simple issue of a people’s identity in an appropriate historical context. The Zionist Movement and the State of Israel are not a colonial enterprise; they are a Renaissance project! Therefore, for someone to say that they are a Jew but not a Zionist is akin to declaring that they are a human but non-breathing. Both claims are inherently paradoxical, let alone absurd. We need to reintroduce these ideas to our youth, as prerequisites for an intelligent discussion about what Israel and Zionism may mean to them in this complex day and age.

In conclusion, the above meditations are offered here as a platform for additional thought and discussion among us. We have great work ahead, but I truly believe that this could also become our finest hour. We’ll let history judge us when time comes—but now is our time to rise up and realize our potential as educators on behalf of our people.