In search of the New Jew

As part of our Israel Seminar, this past week we took a three day tiyul (field trip) to the Golan Heights, to learn about this part of Israel, its role in the formation of the Zionist movement and the state, and its role in Israel’s current political mire. The trip was organized around an intellectual and emotional investigation of the “new Jew” – essentially the image of a strong, youthful, worker, fighter Zionist pioneer, who came to this land at the turn of the century determined to create a type of Jew who would not hide from the Cossacks anymore.

The idea of the New Jew is essential in early (and parts of contemporary) Zionist theology, as the founding fathers of Zionism and Israel all sought, in their own ways, to refashion their own and the world’s image of the Jewish people. They sought to build a new, socialist (in the case of the second Aliyah), secular, strong society, infused with Jewish elements, but also wholly modern and nationalistic. In many ways they’ve succeeded. In many ways, the place of the New Jew in Israeli society has vanished.

The area of the Eastern Galilee and the Golan Heights was important because there, we could engage and discuss a few key elements of the New Jew theology and history. For instance, on our first day we went to the tomb of Edmund Rosthchild, THE benefactor of the first wave of pre-Zionist farmer immigrants in the 1880s and 1890s. In our second day we visited Tel Hai, the location of a minor skirmish between Zionist settlers and their Arab neighbors in 1920, but a skirmish that became a huge, major symbolic rallying cry for the development of the Zionist ethos. We spent a morning at Tel Dan, a nature reserve and archaeological site in the North, mimicking and exploring the early Zionist fascination and appropriation with archeology (our guide at Tel Dan was David Ilan, our biblical history professor, the head of HUC’s archaeological school, and the head of the Tel Dan excavations – not too shabby a tour guide!).

Our trip also examined current geopolitics of Israel’s northern borders. We visited Metulla, Israel’s northernmost city, and stood on a viewpoint mere meters from Lebanon (our view was more Lebanon than Israel). We saw Hezbollah bases from a distance. We spent an afternoon on the Golan Heights, looking down at Israel proper and our at Syria in the distance (we couldn’t see it, but we were a mere 35 km from Damascus. Damascus, Lawrence! Damascus!). We talked with members of the Golan Residents’ Council about the prospect of the Golan being returned to Syria (they’re against it). We debated issues and politics, and expanded our own worldview of Israeli history and geopolitics.

And it was beautiful up there. I haven’t uploaded pictures to the computer yet, but when I do I’ll post them.

It was also tremendously fun to get away for three days. It was a little like teen trip: we were programmed from 7AM to 10PM every day; we had numbers for a “count off;” our meals were prearranged; we had madrichim shuffling us on and off the bus. But at them same time, it was different. It was seeing the country in a new way, but also seeing the group, my cohort in a new way. It was definitely a bonding experience, and also the emergence of a little major drama here and there. And the year has only just begun.