Parashat Beshalach features the people of Israel being led out of Egypt by pillars of cloud and fire and the dramatic parting of the Red Sea.
In the story of the exodus, God’s emancipatory design for the Israelites is confronted again and again by the Israelites’ longing to return to Egypt.
“What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt?” the Israelites shout at Moses. “It is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” (14:11-12).
This retrograde yearning will prove a more stubborn obstacle to liberation than Pharaoh. Throughout their sojourn in Sinai, whenever confronted by an obstacle, the Israelites’ first impulse will not be to overcome it, but rather to flee backwards towards the past.
Reading this portion, I was reminded of the recent New York Times piece about the rise of “Diasporism,” a movement which holds that Jews live their most authentic lives in exile, and that we “must embrace marginality and a certain estrangement from Israel the country, and perhaps even Israel the place.”
Diasporism is an appealing movement for many young American Jews. It blends radical anti-Zionist politics with Yiddish revivalism and shtetl aesthetics. It is a likely home for liberal Talmud scholars who geek out over old Jewish Labor Bund posters.
As an ideology, it has deep roots, but while its older pre-1948 incarnation offered a plausible competing vision to Zionism for what the Jewish future should look like, the contemporary iteration has nothing to offer us but kitsch.
After all, Zionism defeated Diasporism, in large part because the diaspora became a deathtrap. No amount of shtetl-core nostalgia or Bundist cosplay can change that.
Diasporism should thus be understood less as a practical proposal and rather as a ritualistic washing of the hands. By declaring the state of Israel an aberration of Jewish history, Diasporists are free to condemn Israel without feeling responsible or beholden to the Jewish state.
Often, Diasporism is an expression of solidarity with the plight of the Palestinians, but this is a misguided form of activism. Jews who oppose Israel’s actions should not disavow Israel. The future of this land will be shaped by those who are connected and who share a real stake in building a peaceful future here. It will not be shaped by those standing on the sidelines.
As my friend and colleague Rafi Ellenson has written in Jewish Currents, “Rejecting any connection with Israel may seem to solve the problem of the occupation, but it really only makes it a problem for others to solve...”
At the beginning of Beshalach, God diverts the Israelites’ path, knowing that if they encounter war too early in their journey, they will turn back to Egypt.
I can relate. War is the cruelest thing, and this current war has utterly consumed me. I feel grief-stricken for my people, for the Palestinians, for the hostages, for the children. I feel rage directed towards our enemies and guilt over the human toll. There is something simply unbearable about the entire situation.
And so I can understand why this war has given a boost to Diasporism, which perhaps offers an escape from the heaviness of the war.
Like the Diasporists, I have also wondered if it was better before, back when we were dispersed and powerless and vulnerable. Yes, we suffered, but were things not at least more simple? Was there not a comfort in being a perfect victim with no moral autonomy or impossible choices to make?
Of course, we know that powerlessness was also a cruel fate. It was also unbearable. Which is why the Zionists movement arose in the first place.
I am deeply thankful for the state that the early Zionists built, but not all Jews feel this way. Nearly a century after the founding of Israel, many Jews are still profoundly uncomfortable with the reality of Jewish political and military power. Nevertheless, we are not free to turn away from it as if it has nothing to do with us.
It is the largest Jewish community in the world. It is the front line of Jewish history. Its citizens—our brothers and sisters—have been slaughtered in their homes. Many of them are displaced or in captivity or fighting a brutal enemy in Gaza. Meanwhile, Palestinians across the border are dying and being displaced by the war at a devastating pace.
We can either claim this history as our own and try to shape it for the better, or else take refuge in historic fantasies and alternate timelines. This choice has nothing to do with politics or one’s feelings of support or opposition to this war.
At stake is something much more fundamental than that.
One path rises to the daunting challenges of the present with bravery.
The other shrinks from those challenges in favor of an Egyptian grave.