The ideologies that separate East and West Jerusalem are extreme, not surprisingly. Two peoples with conflicting narratives and a heavy dose of messianic doctrine have fused to create a demoralizing situation. The distance between the two communities is a five to seven minute taxi ride, depending on how talkative your driver is.
Similarly, the ideologies that separate the Jewish communities of Chicago and San Francisco can be surprising, to say the least. Two thousand miles between the two have led the communities to diverge. Before the Nazi atrocities against our people, the San Francisco Bay Area was usually against Zionism. Many local Jews viewed California as the new Jewish homeland. Their community flourished while Jewish communities throughout the rest of the United States and the world were faced with discrimination, at best, and extermination.
Only after the local recognition of the depth of the Holocaust, did support for a Jewish State emerge in the area. The disconnect from the persecution experienced by most other Jewish communities around the country and the world helped a naïve bubble inflate.
I was raised in Skokie, the heart of the Chicago Jewish Community, where I spent two years teaching Jewish history. Skokie is known for having the largest population of Holocaust survivors outside of the Jewish State. Neo-Nazis, and more recently the Westboro Baptist Church, were compelled to march there in the 1970’s after discovering that interesting fact.
As within all the Jewish population centers of the United States, Skokie has a diverse selection of synagogues: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism. Though religious practices were always unique to each, one thing remained consistent among the groups: Israel.
Though strong differences exist regarding the politics of the Mediterranean region, an understanding of the need to love and support a Jewish homeland remains, with few exceptions. The annual Walk With Israel has always been a mixture of these Jewish identities.
After moving to San Francisco, I found work in several Jewish schools and organizations. My first encounter with the local Jewish perspective about Israel was at a staff meeting at one of these schools. This four-hour long mandatory meeting was accompanied by an educator from the Board of Jewish Education dealing with teaching Israel. The school considers itself a Zionist institution, unlike numerous other Jewish schools in the Bay Area.
Instead of focusing on how to teach Israel within the classroom, the meeting focused on whether it should be taught at all and how we, the teaching staff, felt towards the Jewish State. I, as well as a select few others, felt antagonized for supporting my heritage by those who shared the same heritage. Some of the concepts I opposed were not defining Israel as the Jewish Homeland, equating Zionism with racism, and Israel having little to no relevance with Judaism, respectively. If the teaching staff at a Zionist institution can be so divided, I can only imagine other synagogues.
For me, these symptoms seem severe. In several locations in the Bay Area, I’ve encountered Jewish groups and individuals that are pushing divestment, not only against Judea and Samaria, but Tel Aviv. These are the people that are more bothered by the construction of a house in Ariel than the education of a terrorist at a local Arab madrasa. The same individuals that add their names to petitions against Jewish-controlled lands adjacent and directly inside Israel, without realizing that an English royal (Prince William) is ensuring sovereignty far from England in the sparsely populated Falkland Islands.
Until that day, I never made the connection, not realizing that a growing number of Bay Area Jews have crossed the liberal threshold and have found themselves as radicals. Not only are Israel’s best theoretical allies, liberal Jews, in disagreement with the policies of a unique country that is under existential threat, but they have essentially transformed themselves into adversaries.
With friends like these, who needs enemies?