…the Jews have to decide, once again, if we want to survive. If we want to make it, then we need to rekindle one of the basic premises of Zionism, and take matters into our own hands. It’s not enough to simply feel that we’re back where we started, 110 years ago. The question is what we’re going to do about it. The question is, how do we restore hope? — Daniel Gordis, This Place Called Hope
Israelis are struggling with a combination of internal problems and external threats. Gordis asks what the Jewish people — not just Israel — need to do in order to to survive. Read it here.
I believe that Gordis has really hit the major issue. I would disagree however with his contention that this feeling of lostness and hopelessness is a recent product. For as long as I have been in Israel, that is over thirty years there has been strong expression of the mood that our situation is impossible that there is no way of getting out of it, that there is no real way to peace with the Arab world, that we will always have to live by the sword, that the hostility which we face is not really susceptible to being transformed into something else.
Nonetheless I do believe the botched- up Lebanon War, the host of government scandals, and perhaps above all the looming nuclear threat give a special sharpness to the ‘desperation’.
I wish I had a simple positive reassuring answer. I don’t. I believe Gordis is right in emphasizing the importance of new leaders. We also need new ideas.