Loyalty and Patriotism: The View from the Rathhausstrasse

The President’s series of comments and tweets about the questionable loyalty— both towards our own nation and towards Israel—of American Jews who do not support the Republican party came as a shock to many. This was not, however, because the President hasn’t made outrageous comments before or because his lack of personal restraint hasn’t surfaced in more contexts that I could list in just one letter, but because the specific nature of the charge was so overlaid with so many disconcerting overtones at once that it was hard to separate them one from the other even just for the sake of discussing them discretely.

When we lived in Germany in the mid-1980s, Joan and I were part of the Jewish community in Heidelberg. In those days, it was a small operation: a series of rooms rented on a busy shopping street near the center of town with windows only facing the inner courtyard of the house in which the community had both its offices and its modest worship space. This specific arrangement, I was told, had been set in place years earlier for security reasons: by choosing a building housing only stores and offices that were closed on Friday evenings and on Saturday mornings, no one other than members of the community or their guests would have any reason to enter the property when services were underway. And that, in turn, was intended to make it as simple as possible for the police officers guarding the building to do their work successfully. (This European model of a back courtyard leading to a building without its own address and all but invisible from the street—like the Achterhuis in which the Franks hid out in Amsterdam—will be unfamiliar to most North Americans. But it’s the way most of Heidelberg’s buildings were built—and also most older buildings throughout Germany and elsewhere in Europe—and the seclusion suited the community’s needs to a tee.) Even though this concept of being both in full view and yet somehow also invisible, thus simultaneously present and absent, was peculiar in the extreme to me as a new arrival used to our American ways. In time, I got used to it. Even the irony of being guarded during worship by German policeman faded and eventually became just part of how things were. By the time we were ready to leave, I hardly noticed the officers other than to wish them a good day on the way out and to thank them for watching over us.

Nor was any of this viewed as excessive by anyone at all, including not by myself or Joan: on our way to shul on Shabbat, we never failed to notice the granite monument marking the spot on the Rathausstrasse where the Rohrbach synagogue stood before the neighbors burnt it to the ground on Kristallnacht. (Now part of Heidelberg, Rohrbach was then its own little village with its own tiny Jewish community and that is where we lived during our years in Germany.) Nor were we alone: people to shul coming from the other direction just had a different marker to pass by—the one on the Grosse Mantelgasse marking the spot on which the synagogue of Heidelberg itself was burnt to the ground in 1938. (Click here for a photo montage connected with that site and its terrible history.) And that experience of walking by those sites provided more than enough historical background for anyone to feel entirely secure about having maximal security arrangements in place when the community met for prayer or for study, or in communal fellowship.

One of the interesting features of life in Germany in those days was the fact that the expression “German Jews” was not ever used to describe the Jews we met in Germany. At first, this struck me as odd: referencing myself as an American Jew seemed entirely natural to me, but that was not at all how things were in Germany, where the members of the community referenced themselves solely as “Jews in Germany,” reserving the title “German Jews” for the pre-war community that was either murdered or hounded into exile. Those people, the usage seemed to me to be saying, they were the ones who were insane enough to think of themselves as some version (i.e., the Jewish version) of German, who were oblivious to the degree to which they were despised, resented, and disliked by their neighbors and colleagues in the bank or in the academy or in the workplace…and who paid an unimaginably huge price for their own naiveté. (The reverse usage, “Jewish Germans,” was also in use in the pre-war period, although mostly as part of the strange expression deutsche Staatsbürger jüdischer Herkunft, meaning literally “German citizens of Jewish origin.” That expression, though, I only read in history books and never heard anyone use in normal discourse other than ironically.) Nor was this a mere local usage: even the national association representing Jewish interests to the public and to the German government referenced itself that way, calling itself the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland (that is, The Central Council of Jews in Germany), a title weirdly reminiscent of the name of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (meaning something like “The Reich-wide Union of Jews in Germany), the umbrella organization that represented Germany Jewry during the Nazi years until its final members were deported to their deaths in the course of the war and the organization stopped existing.

So that’s the baggage I bring to this conversation: years among people who couldn’t even begin to describe themselves as Jewish Germans, even though many of them were born in Germany, had German passports, spoke only German to each other or to anyone, and had no other nationality to claim other than their theoretical right to Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. Except that they all (or mostly) had German citizenship, these people were truly stateless, the human version of flotsam adrift in a world that somehow had room for them but couldn’t quite figure out where they belonged. I myself, of course, didn’t feel that way at all: in those days I felt as unambiguously American as I do today. As noted, I got used to how things were in Germany. But I came from an entirely different world, one in which it would be unthinkable for a leading academic to publish a book presenting an analysis of the place of Jewish Americans in the national fabric of the United States as being about the relationship in the U.S. of Americans and Jews. But even Jews in Germany spoke that way in those days: unselfconsciously talking about “Jews and Germans” without suggesting even obliquely that the Jews in questions were themselves also Germans…or at least citizens of what was then called the Federal Republic of Germany.

Here, things are supposed to be different. And, by and large, they are different. And yet, there is apparently still enough self-doubt underlying the whole Jewish enterprise in America for the President’s comment to have struck a nerve in a way that some equally inane comment that didn’t call into question the American-ness of American Jews never would or could have.

The notion that American Jews are being disloyal to Israel by supporting the Democratic Party, after all, is one thing. Among the Democratic leaders of things in the Congress are people like Chuck Schumer, Nita Lowey, Hakeem Jeffries, and Nancy Pelosi—all of whom have very strong pro-Israel voting records. And, indeed, a group of forty freshmen Democrats visited Israel a few weeks ago and came away, judging from their own post-trip comments, both impressed and encouraged in their pro-Israel orientation. Yes, there are the odious Rashida Tlaib and Ilan Omar, about whom I wrote last week and whose statements about Israel, as I said then, fall in my estimation somewhere between bizarrely naïve and wholly dishonest. But to condemn any Jewish American who is a member of the Democratic Party or who votes Democratic as disloyal to Israel because of a tiny handful of backbenchers whose views are specifically not shared by the vast majority of their Democratic colleagues—that really does suggest a level of willful invidiousness hard to square with reality.

But the other part of the President’s comment—that by not supporting his bid for re-election, American Jews are being disloyal to their own country—that is, and by far, the larger and more serious accusation. (For my comments from last January when Congresswoman Tlaib raised the same dual loyalty issue, click here.) It’s hardly a new canard. Indeed, words spoken by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis more than a century ago are suddenly eerily relevant: “Multiple loyalties,” he wrote in 1915, “are objectionable only if they are inconsistent. Every Irish American who contributed towards advancing home rule [i.e., in an Ireland then fighting for its own independence from Britain] was a better man and a better American for the sacrifice he made. Every American Jew who aids in advancing the Jewish settlement in Palestine, though he feels that neither he nor his descendants will ever live there, will likewise be a better man and a better American for doing so.” In other words, Justice Brandeis was saying simply that feeling a deep sense of interest in the wellbeing of people to whom one is tied by bonds of ethnicity, culture, or religion is not inimical with being a patriotic citizen of one’s own country. And, really, why should it be?

To wave away the President’s remark as just another over-the-top comment reflective solely of an idea that momentarily popped into his head and thus nothing to take too seriously is an extremely tempting way to respond. And, indeed, the fact that no one at all appears to have taken that approach could itself be waved away as an example of extreme over-sensitivity on the part of our American Jewish leadership. But I would like to think that the tidal wave of angry responses to the President’s remarks were and are indicative, not of a lack of self-confidence, but rather of the willingness of the Jewish community to speak out against bigoted canards questioning our loyalty even when given voice by the President himself.

I lived among people so unsure of themselves that they couldn’t even bring themselves to self-define as citizens of their own country, of the country they actually were citizens of. I understand the historical circumstances that led, not at all unreasonably, to that extreme level of insecurity. But our American Jewish community is nothing like that, nor should it be. The across-the-board responses to the President’s remarks were universally condemnatory. Even in the right-wing press, I didn’t see anyone—and certainly no one of stature—eager to walk along with President Trump on this one or even to appear mildly supportive. That, in and of itself, is more buoying and encouraging than the remark itself was disconcerting. We live in a vibrant, dynamic American state. That Jewish Americans have no need to disguise their feelings or hide their true sentiments about Israel—or about anything at all—is a sign of the health of the republic and one of which all Americans, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, should be proud.

Omar and Tlaib: A Way Forward

Sometimes I have to search around to find the topic I wish to write about in this space, but other times the universe simply presents me with an issue that it feels almost impossible not to write about. This is one of those weeks. And that was before President Trump called the loyalty of Jewish Americans who vote Democratic into question.

I am thinking, of course, of the huge brouhaha surrounding the proposed, then banned, then half-unbanned, then cancelled trip of Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) to Israel.

The single point of near-universal consensus is that the whole incident was handled maladroitly by all concerned—and that really is saying the very least.

The congresswomen, by declining to go on the actual trip of members of the House to Israel that took place just a few weeks ago, were making it clear that they had no interest in actually visiting Israel or hearing what representatives of our staunchest ally in the Middle East might or might have had to say to them…and then feigned shock when they were called out for insulting the leadership and citizenry of Israel by planning a propaganda tour featuring meetings solely with Palestinian bigwigs and Arab members of the Knesset. (The itinerary for the trip they then proposed to make on their own confirmed their intentions clearly, although Rep. Omar now says—contrary to the itinerary she herself released—that she would have met with at least some Israeli officials.)

President Trump, by putting his oar in where it wasn’t even remotely needed, seems to have made Prime Minister Netanyahu feel obliged to ban the Omar and Tlaib from entering Israel lest he appear weak or—and, yes, I know how weird this sounds to say out loud—unmanly. (The ensuing firestorm on this side of the world would have been considerably less hot had it not seemed that the Prime Minister’s decision reflected more than anything his desire not to provoke President Trump or to irritate him—which paradoxically actually did make him look and sound weak. And unmanly weakness was indeed the specific issue in play: the President’s tweet confirmed as much: “It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib to visit.” He didn’t have to say who specifically was going to be labelled weak for not banning the two!)

For his part, the P.M. himself, more than aware of the importance of playing ball with his nation’s biggest supplier of foreign aid and himself an extremely savvy politician, seemed somehow not to understand what a huge error of judgment it was going to be to appear to disrespect members of Congress…and, at that, the specific members of the House that the world was just waiting to see if he would dare to insult.

The whole incident played out in Israel entirely differently than it did here. For your person-in-the-shuk Israeli, the whole rumpus was basically uninteresting. I saw very little coverage in the Israeli press—not none, but nothing like what I saw on every American website I visited while we were in Israel. When it did come up, most regular Israelis I talked to seemed confused why this was even an issue. Although I think most Americans surely do not, everybody in Israel remembers when, in 2012, the United States barred a Knesset member, Michael Ben Ari, from entering the United States because the party he represented, the Kahanist Kach party, was formally labelled as a terrorist group. (Nor, for the record, is it unheard of for the United States to bar entry to people deemed undesirable for one reason or another, a list that over the years has included such dangerous criminals as Amy Winehouse, Diego Maradona, and Boy George. For a full list of people now or once barred from entering the United States, click here.) So the notion that Israel would bar entry to two individuals who have been outspoken in their animosity towards the Jewish state and who openly and shamelessly support the BDS movement, and neither of whom is above lacing her rhetoric with openly anti-Semitic language, merely because they were also elected to Congress—that didn’t seem that big a stretch to most Israelis that I heard giving forth on the topic. Indeed, when I did hear Israelis talking about the issue, the question was more why Israel shouldn’t decline to offer unambiguously hostile people a public platform on which to promote invidious policies than it was why they should let them in without any assurance that they would be at least minimally respectful of their hosts’ sensitivities.

Still, Israel could have turned this whole affair to its own advantage by inviting Rashida Tlaib and Ilan Omar to come to visit, but by making the invitation conditional upon their agreement to meet with Israeli officials and learn about the Israeli take on the Middle East conflict. It would have been a good thing if that happened too, because, as their comments about Israel over the last few days prove, both Omar and Tlaib are as naïve as they are hostile towards the Jewish state. Omar wants Israel to grant Palestinians “full rights,” but without saying what she means exactly. Does she want Israel to annex the West Bank and make its Palestinian population into Israelis with the full rights of citizens? It seems hard to believe that that’s what she means. But then what does she mean? Is she in favor of a two-state solution featuring a State of Palestine in which the Palestinian citizens would have “full rights?” But then why is she not addressing the Palestinian leadership and telling them to declare independence and get down to the work of nation building? When she denounces the Israeli decision to bar her entry as “unprecedented,” does she not know that our own country also bars entry to people deemed hostile or dangerous, or likely to promote views considered inimical with the nation’s best interests? When she speaks about “the occupation,” does she not realize how bizarre it is to blame Israel for “occupying” the Palestinians’ land when Israel has repeatedly offered the Palestinians an almost complete withdrawal in exchange for their willingness to live in peace? And, of course, also without showing the slightest interest—at least as far as I can see—in the places in the world that actually are occupied by foreign powers—Tibet, for example, which has been occupied by China since 1951 or the part of the Western Sahara that Morocco has illegally occupied since 1976.

For her part, Rashida Tlaib sounds more calculating then naïve. When she denounces Israel for setting up roadblocks that inhibit free travel from the West Bank into Israel, she conveniently forgets to mention the reason those roadblocks were set up in the first place: to prevent terrorist attacks on innocents of the kind that were part and parcel of daily life in Israel during the first and second Intifadas. To suggest that those roadblocks were set up to harass innocents like her elderly grandmother instead of owning up to the fact that they have worked so well, as has the security fence, that terror attacks inside Israel have plummeted to almost zero—that crosses the line, at least in my estimation, from finessing the details to make a point and approaches something more reasonably called manipulating the facts to create a wholly false impression. (I think we can all be confident that, if violent terrorists were blowing up children in discotheques and pizzerias in her own home district, she would support any plausible effort to end the carnage even if it caused her grandma some inconvenience.)

It would, therefore, be a good thing for both Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to come for a visit to Israel. Nor is it too late. In my opinion, Israel can and should offer to invite them to Israel if they are willing to listen, to learn, and to refrain from promoting anti-Israeli views while they are in Israel as guests of the State. Contrary to the President’s tweet, principled reaching-out towards people who have in the past been hostile but who could conceivably change their minds would be seen by all—or certainly by most—as an act of strength, not weakness. There is, after all, a lot to learn. Understanding Israel today requires knowing a lot about Jewish history and its impact on Jewish reality today. It requires understanding the relationship between Israel and both Judaism and Jewishness, a relationship that is obscure in many ways even to relatively savvy observers of the Middle Eastern scene. And it requires understanding the specific way that Israeli identity has been forged over the decades against a background of unremitting hostility on the part of most of its neighbors and, even more perfidiously, on the part of the United Nations—and how decades of exposure to that kind of stark enmity so often tinged with not-so-subtle anti-Semitism has made Israelis, to say the very least, wary and mistrustful of the world.

It would surely have been better if we hadn’t come to this impasse in quite the way we have. But having come to this crossroads, we must now traverse it and I believe we can. If they are truly sincere in their interest in learning about Israel, Representatives Tlaib and Omar should indicate their willingness to come and to listen. Israel, for all it is barred by its own laws from admitting to the country people who advocate policies inimical to the nation’s survival (and specifically the BDS movement), should find a way around that restriction to welcome them both and to help them understand where Israel is coming from and why it acts as it feels it must. If everybody involved is willing to take a step back and to calm down a bit, what at the moment is an impasse can become a crossroads that all concerned can grow mightily by traversing.