The modern State of Israel has been at the core of Jewish existence, concern, even obsession, since its founding in 1948, and, as we all know, Jerusalem and much of the former Canaan have been in our thoughts and prayers since the beginnings of the Jewish people over three millennia ago. Whatever your feelings about Israel--from "it can do no wrong" to "its leaders are so often deeply flawed" to "its treatment of its Arab citizens should be so much better"--there is no question that the nation is a kind of obsession for the rest of the world as well, whether due to outright Jew-hatred to sweet philo-semitism, to utter fascination. We all know that.

So, when START-UP NATION was published recently, written by Dan Senor (a former member of my synagogue in Toronto!) and Israeli journalist Saul Singer, my heart sank: would it be just another gung-ho "Israel is Great" book? Or just one more business book, this one about how Bright These Israelis Be? Well, I was both relieved and charmed to read it from cover-to-cover in just a few hours, and I've been eagerly reading my favourite parts to my wife of four decades, Merle. It is extremely well-written, it is honestly historical as well as critical, and it is a very solid study of just why Israel has risen to the top of entrepreneurial creativity in today's world. To quote from its cover blurb, "How is it that Israel--a country of 7.1 million, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war, with no natural resources--produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful nations like Canada, Japan, China, India, and the U.K.?" A great question, and answered beautifully in its too-brief but often thrilling 240 pages.

When I lecture on Israel, or the impact that Judaism has had on civilizing the world, partly through mothering both Christianity and Islam (as I love to joke, "I've given up waiting for a thank-you"), I have never fully understood before now its citizens' astonishing impact on modern industry, especially--but not limited to--technology and computers. As the authors say at the end of their opening note: "if there is one story that has been largely missed despite the extensive media coverage of Israel, it is that key economic metrics demonstrate that Israel represents the greatest concentration of innovation and entrepreneurship in the world today." Wow. Who knew? Too often, we Jews love to brag that we are the people from which Einstein, Freud and Marx descended, when none of those three cared very much about their religious origins, and the latter actually hated all faiths, especially Judaism (and his writings on the Jews read like Hitler's private notes.)

So, we read and marvel at the Israeli billionaire Shai Agassi's determination to create the perfect electric car, and how he was prodded and assisted by the aging former PM of the Jewish State, Shimon Peres. We are stunned to read the brilliant Agassi's belief that "by isolating Israel, [its] adversaries had actually created the perfect laboratory to test ideas." We are charmed and awed to discover that "more Israeli companies are listed on the NASDAQ [junior, often hi-tech stock] exchange than all companies from the entire European continent." And--this fact had this business-writer gasping, "in 2008, per capita venture capital investments in Israel were 2.5 times greater than in the United States, more than 30 times greater than in Europe, 80 times greater than in China, and 350 times greater than in India."

What I also admire about authors Senor and Singer is that they avoid, and even mock, the petty and self-serving "Well, the Jews are so smart!" belief, which can be as racist and antisemitic as the "all blacks have rhythm" and "all Asians are great in math" prejudices. The greatest insight in this much-recommended book is their central theme: that the remarkable mix of Israel's sadly-necessary military--youth of both genders being forced to serve in their late teens, so they don't enter universities until they are far more mature and in their early or mid-20s, from every country, culture and colour in the world--"seems to foster entrepreneurship." The military! Where "chutzpah and assertion are the norm"! So, in the U.S., where managers and underlings most bow to, and often blindly obey, their Presidents and C.E.O.s of their companies, "it's more complicated to manage five Israelis than fifty Americans because [the Israelis]will challenge you all the time--starting with 'Why are you my manager; why am I not your manager?'" Who would have thought?

In other words, the authors show, the Israeli armed forces has few senior officers, and 23-year-olds (who in North America are still checking for pimples and rarely travel anywhere) are forced to come up with creative solutions and profound responsibilities--often in life-or-death situations in wartime or during acts of terrorism--and where no one leaps up or salutes their officers, makes for brilliant entrepreneurs (and why Intel and PayPal and countless other hi-tech companies from around the world have come to seek out "the typical Israeli entrepreneur."

There's more, of course. Immigrants are risk-takers by their very nature (to leave their native lands and languages to move to a dangerous, threatened nation!); over one million Russians who poured into Israel before and after the fall of the USSR "had to be the best" in their dreadful native land because of its inbred Jew-hatred; how Ben-Gurion essentially ordered Technion University to create an airplane industry; why the Arab economies lag, in spite of the great natural intelligence of that people. Yossi Vardi is quoted at the opening of a late chapter, "The two real fathers of Israeli hi-tech are the Arab boycott and Charles de Gaulle, because they forced on us the need to go and develop an industry." The mother of invention, indeed.

During the 1973 war, I recall a bitter joke which several Israeli friends shared with me: "they are trying to push us into the sea. Fine. So we'll learn how to live and breath underwater." This book is no joke, and its insights are far deeper than one may expect. It's not cheap--$32.99 in the McClelland & Stewart edition, but cheaper on the net--but it is a must read. And NOT because it is petty and self-aggrandizing; far from it. Because it clearly shows the world what outside pressure, unlimited immigration (recall the Ethiopian airlifts), and a universal draft (along with a lot of admittedly bright people) can produce. Great book!

A Good 'Case for Israel'
by Alan Dershowitz, (Wiley, 265 pp., $18.99 CA)

Alan Dershowitz’s 2003 book, The Case for Israel, now out in a slightly-updated paperback, is hardly new, but then there has hardly been much movement toward peace in the Middle East since it was written. It is well worth reading, even memorizing, because the endless, usually outrageously unfair attacks on the Jewish State can eat away at our own faith in the Israelis, like acid dripping on rock, and it’s always good to strengthen our arguments against our enemies through a better sense of history and the careful use of facts.

The book will hardly satisfy either side, since while it is a polemic, it strongly advocates “the two-state solution,” (a Palestinian state next to the Jewish one) which will never satisfy those Israelis and their supporters who feel that peace is utterly impossible, so why give even an inch of land to our enemies who are so determined to destroy the State of Israel? But at its best—and the vast majority of this often prosaic and didactic text reflects the thoughtful scholarship of a brilliant defense attorney and Harvard law professor—it can strengthen most of us in better arguing our “case.” As Dershowitz declares in his preface to the paperback edition, “I sensed declining support for the Jewish nation among many people of good will. Extremists on both the left and right. . .had long demonized Israel and its supporters, but the divestment campaign sought to mainstream this demonization by miseducating a generation of young Americans and feeding them one-sided, anti-Israel propaganda.”

This important book may appear dull, because it is little more than a collection of 32 brief essays in which its author ploddingly lists the kind of accusations against thrown at Israel (“Is Israel a Colonial, Imperialist State?” “Were the Jews Unwilling to Share Palestine?” “Have the Jews Exploited the Holocaust?” “Has Israel Made Serious Efforts at Peace?” “Are Critics of Israel Anti-Semitic?”) followed by paragraphs on “The Accusors,” “The Reality” and—longest and most historical and helpful of all—“The Proof.” Dershowitz is best at showing the utter two-facedness of the nation’s enemies: the occupation of Palestine by Jordan and Egypt has never been the subject of U.N. condemnation; there is vicious apartheid openly practised against non-Muslims in most Arab lands; the Palestinians have been cruelly used by their “Arab brothers” by refusing to let them out of refugee camps to be integrated into their respective societies, and more).

What I most appreciated in this powerful book is that Dershowitz is not a cheap apologist for all Israeli actions: he lists such horrors as the killings of Palestinian civilians at Deir Yassin and notes that—in a typically inspired statement—“Like any other democracy, Israel and its leaders should be criticized whenever their actions fail to meet acceptable standards, but the criticism should be proportional, comparative, and contextual, as it should be with regard to other nations as well.” A simple example: China’s occupation of Tibet has been far more brutal, longer, and much less justified than Israel’s of the West Bank, yet the U.N. has never condemned Tibet’s oppressor, and certainly has never recognized Tibet’s right to self-determination. The hypocrisy of the world regarding Israel is usually breath-taking.

The Case for Israel is not a must for every home, but I urge all readers of this site to take it out of their local library and read sections aloud over their dinner table to their spouses and older children. The Jewish State is far from perfect, but its accusers and haters are far from honest.

Allan Gould is a long-time Kolel student and occasional Kolel teacher. (Visit his website: http://www.allangould.com)

Why I am a Zionist
by Gil Troy

Reviewed by Allan Gould


These are hard times for Jews around the world, as anyone who opens a daily newspaper knows only too well. Verbal attacks by world politicians on our religion and its sovereign state in the Middle East nearly every day; physical attacks on our co-religionists on the streets of France and Jerusalem nearly every week. And when the State of Israel is voted (this month) in a large European poll “the greatest threat to world peace today”—ahead of North Korea and Iran (!), a lot of us are starting to think, with horror, that we are now experiencing The 1930s: THE SEQUEL. (Personally, I never liked the original.)

So we get books like WHY I AM A ZIONIST—Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today, by a New-York-born Professor of History at McGill named Gil Troy.

It is certainly welcome, and, alas, more needed than ever, especially by Jews who are not very knowledgeable about Jewish and Zionist history, which obviously means a great number of our people, as we edge into the new millennium. The fact that this very cheap (and cheap-looking, and amateurishly-illustrated) paperback (a mere $14.95) was published by the “Bronfman Jewish Education Centre” of Montreal suggests that it is really a vanity book. This fact may sadden us—they couldn’t land a real, quality Canadian publisher?—but this does not deny its inherent value. (Indeed, the note in its opening pages that “all of the author’s royalties. . .will be donated to the Israeli MIA families’ individual efforts to free their children,” with all other profits donated to the Birthright Israel program is both touching and meaningful.)

The Prologue of this slim (under-200 page) volume has several little sections which make the author’s point very clearly. They are headed “I am a Zionist: A Twenty-First Century Manifesto”; “I am an Anti-Anti-Zionist”; “Anti-Zionism: Ugly Rhetoric with Lethal Consequences”; and, finally, “The Aims of this Book: Zionist and Jewish Renewal.”

In this short opening section, Professor Troy writes movingly and well about where he stands, and what he stands for: “During these challenging times, Jews should reaffirm their faith and pride in Zionism, while the world should marvel in its achievements. Zionists must not allow their enemies to define and slander the movement. No nationalism is pure, no movement is perfect, no state ideal, but today Zionism remains legitimate, inspiring, and relevant, to me and to most Jews. A century ago, Zionism revived pride in the label ‘Jew’; today, Jews must revive pride in the label ‘Zionist.” That’s very well put.

This book is most valuable when it talks of the past century and some of its ironies. My favourite: that a hundred years ago, religious Jews were overwhelmingly non- or anti-Zionist; its leaders were firmly secular. “By contrast, today, the religious community—except for the most extreme—is overwhelmingly Zionist, and it is secular Jews who are increasingly agnostic about Israel.” Touche.

There is certainly no question that many people of good will—even Jews—are shaken by the events of the past decade, certainly since Oslo: we more likely remember body parts flying and badly-reported news stories about the “massacre” in Jenin, rather than the grotesquely-generous land-and-peace offerings of Prime Minister Barak, and others, to the Palestinian Authority. And when the author reports that “parents at one day school in Brooklyn, New York, voted to send the school’s seniors to Disney World instead of Israel,” one wants to gag.

And even if you are not lucky enough (or wise enough) to get the regular emails of www.honestreporting.com, you will still not be surprised to read that recent polls have shown “nearly half of American Jews believed that ‘The Palestinians had their land taken away from them unfairly when Israel was created’ and more than a third—thirty-seven percent—believed that ‘Israel is overreacting by shooting live bullets at Palestinian demonstrators who are throwing stones.”

Whether you are sickened, or horrified, by the above, author Troy knows he has the answer: we must “teach our students about the multidimensional nature of the Jewish people’s relationship with the land of Israel, and the State of Israel. Israel should not be thought of simply as the central headache of the Jewish people, but as the historical, ideological, intellectural, and emotional epicenter of our people. We must teach ahavat yisrael (love of Israel), not simply the Arab-Israeli conflict.” Here here. And good luck.

Much of this book, sadly, is either preaching to the converted—I sense it would convert few to his love of Zionism, who don’t already have a deep understanding of the centrality of the land to our religion, our culture, our history, our people. Indeed, much of WHY I AM A ZIONIST reads like a simplified study guide for counselors at a Jewish camp. He describes the beauty and power of experiencing Shabbat at a summer camp; he tries to teach us “how to fall in love with Israel”; he notes that “living in Israel leads to a Jewish connection”; and he gives us an extremely superficial history of the Jews and their relationship with the Promised Land, going back to before 70 of the Common Era, right to modern times. (I do appreciate the often extremely witty chapter headings, such as the one about the “crisis of emancipation and the rise of Zionism,” entitled “MUGGED BY MODERNITY.” How true that is.

So, we get the Arab view of the establishment of Israel (the “naqba”—the catastrophe); the “six day miracle” of the ’67 war; what Oslo offered and what was rejected by the other side; “the blessings and the curse” of power (good point, that). But his easy mocking of “exile Jews” such as Spielberg and Woody Allen doesn’t strengthen my Zionistic feelings at all; who looks to Hollywood for leadership or understanding of our people and our land?

Is there much of worth in this very low-priced volume? Maybe to a not-very-well-read 12-16 year old Jewish kid who has never been to Israel, and might be considering the Birthright programme; after all, the price is right. But I’m being a bit unfair: the appendix called “ADVOCACY 101: How to Talk About Israel on Campus and Elsewhere Without Apologizing, Cringing, Crying or Yelling” is certainly worth the price of the book, alone.

WHY I AM A ZIONIST is not a bad book; I just wish it were better. If you really want to strengthen and deepen your knowledge and understanding of the history of Zionism, and the Arab-Israeli conflict today, I think you’d do better with another very low-cost paperback (this one also low-cost, since it was sponsored by the late, great Israel Asper of Winnipeg): It’s called MYTHS AND FACTS: A GUIDE TO THE ARAB-ISRAEL CONFLICT, by Mitchell G. Bard. Every decent Jewish book store carries it. Heavily footnoted, with over a hundred pages of maps and historic documents, it’s got some of the most powerful, often shocking, proofs of just how right (and occasionally righteous) the Jewish/Zionist side is. Does Israel make mistakes? Of course. Personally, I still refuse to forgive Sharon for the disastrous invasion of Lebanon. But when 19- and 20-year-old Israeli soldiers went door-to-door through Jenin, searching carefully for terrorists (yes, CNN, they are terrorists, not militants), losing over a dozen young lives as they did so, rather than simply blasting the buildings and probably killing hundreds of innocent Arab men, women and children—and most of the world believes to this day that there was a horrific, Jew-caused massacre there, then, boy, do we need facts, and lots of them.

You’ll get a broader selection of those facts, and a deeper understanding of the many myths and how they arose—more easily codified and explained, in Bard’s little paperback, than in Professor Troy’s.

From Jerusalem to the Edge of Heaven: Meditations on the Soul of Israel by Ari Elon.

Reviewed by Rabbi Loevinger

This is not an easy book, but it is a deeply rewarding book. Ari Elon, a Talmud scholar of great learning, grew up on an Orthodox household, served in the Israeli Army, gave up his Orthodoxy, rediscovered Jewish learning, and now calls himself a religious secularist. He has taught Talmud on kibbutzim, in universities, and at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where I had the pleasure of studying with him. This book, which is comprised of four distinct sections, each with its own themes and subjects, is unlike any book I've ever read- not fiction, not theology, not history, not criticism, not social theory, not textual commentary, not poetry, not journalism- but somehow all of these, and more.

Elon wants most of all to reclaim a deeply, playfully creative mode of Jewish learning and culture, free from pre-modern theological boundaries but imbued with a traditional kind of spiritual seriousness and attention to text and story. The four sections of his book deal with his own life journey, his thoughts on the spiritual psychology of the rabbis of the Talmud, his view of the current state of religious affairs in Israel, and his experiences as a soldier in the Israeli army. Each section is also structured around part of a painting of children at play- the painting, reproduced on the cover, serves as kind of a midrash on the book itself.

None of these subjects are treated as a dry essay, but in a poetic, learned, almost free-associative style. His writing is rich with allusion to Jewish texts and traditions, and is not always easy to follow without the footnotes and glossary. Yet it is precisely this richness that proves the viability of his vision- an imaginative Judaism, thoroughly contemporary, yet deeply rooted in classic texts.

Dream of Zion

Dream of Zion
by Jeffrey Salkin
Jewish Lights Publishing

reviewed by Allan Gould

Jewish Lights Publishing is one of the more interesting “ethnic” firms in the world today: in the past few years, they have published dozens of high quality books on everything from the scholarly (Bible Study and Midrash) to children’s books; ecology to grief and healing; meditation to Kabbalah. A few years ago, JL put out a remarkable, deeply moving collection of short essays called I am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl, the journalist who was savagely murdered in Pakistan for exactly that reason. A powerful concept, and it worked very well (and now a major motion picture: A Mighty Heart).

I wish I could say the same for Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin’s A Dream of Zion, sub-titled “American Jews Reflect on Why Israel Matters to Them.” True, the Jewish State is undergoing hard times today—when has it not?—and the ugly boycotting of Israel’s scholars, and the way so many major politicians and actual countries treat the Jewish homeland condescendingly, compared with the vicious abuse which women, gays, and their own citizens are treated by so many other lands, may seem like a good reason to produce a book like this one.

But it doesn’t work, and not only because of the half-dozen rather mediocre essays by American Jewish university students, talking about how exciting their first visit to the State of Israel was (!) When one interviews many intelligent rabbis and teachers on such subjects as “Identity and Heritage,” “Refuge,” “Faith and Covenant” and “Tikkun Olam,” you are surely going to get the occasional glimmer of insight, even the memorable statement of fact and opinion, and there are, undeniably, a few. For instance, Rabbi David Wolpe, a superb author, writes beautifully that “We who live outside the land have to be sufficiently imaginative to understand all we do not know. In Europe, a bloody battlefield for centuries, there is a monument for every 10,000 fallen soldiers. In Israel, there is a monument for every sixteen. . . . it is a society that lives under a pressure so far unimaginable in this spacious and generous land [of the U.S.]” And who could not be moved by the poetic declaration of the admired American author Thane Rosenbaum, who writes, “Israel is not just a nation. It is, even more so, a state of mind. That’s the bedrock of its geography, the map that it monopolizes, the mental space and energy it consumes like a burning bush. You don’t have to ever board El Al to be obsessed with Israel’s existence, to love it or hate it, to feel its gravitational weight as a magnet for both revulsion and romance, to know that without it, the world would be a very different place, a planet even more tilted and adrift than it is right now.” Exquisite—and his words move me to want to read his prize-winning novels, several of Jewish content and focus.

I had hoped to find Giants with Great Words to say about the State of Israel and its importance today, and I was taken aback to discover just how few real gems can be found in this anthology’s 250 pages. In fact, I find it sadly telling, that it is in Part V—An American Historical Perspective: The Words of the Fathers and Mothers—where the best comments are found: long-dead American-Jewish leaders and rabbis such as Louis D. Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Abba Hillel Silver, Stephen S. Wise, and, naturally, the glorious Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose words and insights put nearly all else in this flimsy gathering of writing to shame: “What would be the face of Western history today if the end of twentieth-century Jewish life would have been Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Auschwitz? The State of Israel is not an atonement. It would be blasphemy to regard it as a compensation. However, the existence of Israel reborn makes life less unendurable. It is a slight hinderer of hindrances to believing in God.”

Would that even one in ten essays in this under-whelming anthology had such power and majesty. Check out I am Jewish (a national Jewish book award winner) and other fine books from this important Judaica house (located in Woodstock, Vermont of all places!); Jewish Lights is almost always worthy of your support. Just not this particular book, alas.