Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor

The occasion for Letter 2 is Tisha b’Av, a day of mourning over the loss of the Jewish temple in ancient times. This event happened twice, according to tradition, with both times on the same calendar day: the temple’s destruction in 587 BCE under the Babylonians, and again in 70 CE under the Romans. In both cases, the Jewish people lost not only the temple but the land of Israel, being forced into exile. The Babylonian exile lasted seventy years, but the Roman exile was nearly two millennia. Halevi notes that the return of the state of Israel in 1948 was the partial resolution of a long and heartbroken historical arc, and he conveys a sense of wonder that he is privileged to experience the fulfillment of his ancestors’ aspirations by living in a restored Jewish state in Israel. He writes, “We have returned to our place of origin, just as Jews always believed would happen, to reconstruct ourselves from disparate communities back into a people” (28).

Halevi writes that his people continued to consider the land of Israel their home throughout their long exile at the hands of the Romans. While Jews accepted the necessity of exile, they refused to view it as permanent, and their traditions and prayers continually looked forward to the future restoration of Jewish life in Israel. They also continued to hold onto a calendar based on the annual cycles of Israel, thus experiencing the rhythms of life there year after year, even though at a great distance. Israel remained the Jewish homeland in the enduring hopes and prayers of Jewish people scattered in many different countries.

Halevi also traces the story of the Jewish return to Israel, taking pains to note that it was not simply a movement among European-based Jews, as it is so often construed. Rather, it was initiated by groups of Yemenite and Russian Jews in 1882 and eventually included large swaths of others, like Ethiopian Jews, who would be startled by the claim that the return was a movement of European-style colonialism. Zionism itself only developed as a European-based political movement after the first waves of emigration had begun, and its followers nearly accepted a proposal of emigration to central Africa rather than Israel. That move was only circumvented by the protests of ordinary Jews, who insisted that Israel was their indigenous homeland. Halevi closes the letter by recounting his own journey from New York to Israel in 1982, emphasizing once again the wonder of being a Jew returning to his ancestral home. 

Letter 3 seeks to answer the question, “So who are the Jews?” (50). Halevi resists attempts to portray Jews simply as a religion, an ethnicity, or a race, as none of those groupings capture the full scope of the global Jewish community. Instead, he presses for a definition of Jews as a people. He notes that Jews began as a family some four thousand years ago with Abraham, his wife Sarah, and their descendants. That fundamental shape of Jewish identity has not changed in the intervening millennia: “The form that Jewish family takes is peoplehood” (52). The breadth of a term like “peoplehood” can encompass the many globally dispersed local cultures within Jewish experience and a wide range of religious expression, from ultra-Orthodox Jews to secular Jews, while nonetheless insisting on a singular and united identity for them all. Further, much like a family (but not an ethnicity), the boundaries of Jewishness are open to outsiders who desire to become Jews.

Halevi notes that the definition of Jews as a people also fits the traditional narrative about them, going back to biblical times. The Bible presents God as choosing the Jews specifically as a people, a chosen, discrete group through whom God would carry out the divine plan for all nations. Because Judaism as a religion only expresses its claims upon Jewish identity, it is able to accept the validity of other faiths, unlike universalizing religions that believe their message to be binding on all people. From Halevi’s perspective, then, there need not be an intractable conflict between Judaism and Islam because the former can entirely accept the latter. Even secular Jews, though non-religious, tend to hold that Jews have a special role to play in the history of the world, a mission of bringing blessing to all nations.