Struggling in the Dark

The Bible recounts the struggle of the Patriarch Jacob on that dark night of the soul along the banks of the river Yabbok. Confronted with the prospect of a violent reunion with a resentful brother the next morning, Jacob sends his family away to remain alone in his fear and trembling. With a terse description that amplifies vagueness and mystery, he wrestles with a divine being, suffers a cosmic charley horse with dietary implications, and seems to vanquish his foe, earning a blessing and a new name: Yisrael—a God-striver.

The account is ripe for interpretation and projection. But one take on the text has been as resonant through the centuries as it remains today: Jacob was wrestling with himself. The selfish schemer and exploiter is transformed through the crucible of his possible death to become a figure worthy of the mantle of leadership of his tribe, and by extension, successive generations of Jews. In this moment, American Jews are in a similar bout of self-struggle regarding our relationship with the State of Israel.

Since its founding, the vast majority of us offered vigorous support for Israel’s existence and survival through its vigilant defense against dangerous and implacable enemies. After October 7th, we rallied against the existential threats that echoed the Holocaust and the War of Independence. Through a year of bitter conflict and extensive civilian casualties in Gaza, most American Jews held fast in their constancy, even in the face of rising antisemitism at home. This despite waning trust in Israel’s extremist governing coalition and a prime minister seemingly willing to pay any price to stay in power and stay out of jail.

But as the first phase of the war ebbed into the present, with Israel standing astride a Middle East remade through a degraded Hamas, an eviscerated Hezbollah, and a defanged Iranian patron of both, sentiment has shifted. Concern for the fate of the hostages—both the living and now the growing dead—supplants Netanyahu’s phantom military objectives and fantastical promises of “total victory.” The continuing civilian death toll, empowerment of West Bank settler violence, and exploitation of Gaza humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip has turned a justified act of defense into a war of attrition and futility.

In the current conflict with Iran, some claim that we must postpone these probing moral discussions while engaged in the heat of battle. How can we dare to question broader Israeli policy—the thinking goes—while the missiles of the mullah’s fall on Tel Aviv? In many ways, this has been the Netanyahu camp’s claim over the last 18 months, hoping that a forever war in Gaza will delay or deny the reckoning due for the government’s arrogance and neglect leading to October 7th.

But like thoughtful, intelligent people individually, a society or nation can confront two existential issues simultaneously. Indeed, they must navigate these concerns if they truly are or aspire to be moral entities. The messianism, radicalism, and corruption of the Israeli government, and its prosecution of a war in Gaza that increasingly appears to serve political expedience, are dire threats to Israel’s survival that amplify Iran’s vision of the demise of the Jewish State.

Most Israelis have soured on this longest of the nation’s conflicts in Gaza, as cynical political machinations eclipse the fate of long-suffering captives. Increasing numbers of former intelligence and military officials have spoken out against the threats to national security emerging from the status quo. And a recent poll revealed that 70% of citizens demand a ceasefire that will keep faith with the promise of Zionism to bring home the taken and the fallen.

Those of us who have loved, advocated, and fought for Israel’s survival have walked the narrowing tightrope of unconditional support for Israel as a national refuge and core of Jewish identity, while criticizing—sometimes quite vehemently—the actions and policies of specific governments. In many ways this mirrors the efforts of so many Americans, who cherish the liberal democratic foundations of the United States, while decrying an administration that seeks to undermine its tenets toward authoritarian rule in the service of shameless graft.

But as the prospects for the war’s end and a resolution to the conflict become more distant, we seem to have arrived at a point in which a conceptual defense of Israel becomes more strained in the face of the actuality of its actions. Jewish tradition describes a Jerusalem of supernal ideals (yerushalayim shel mala) and the messiness of its earthbound reality (yerushalalyim shel mata). This is echoed in David Ben Gurion’s famous hope that a mythic Israel might become a “normal” nation, with prostitutes and thieves speaking Hebrew.

But Jews see Israel as a unique and special nation, guided and inspired by Jewish values, aspiring to exceed the normal requirements of statecraft. Thus, expectations for Israel’s exceptionalism vie with concessions to its realpolitik. The challenge lies at the point in which those concessions become too costly, subsuming our ideals, trying our faith in Israel’s future, and jeopardizing continuing support of a beloved homeland on a tragic trajectory.

Israel is at a crossroads. One path leads to a pariah state, one that doubles down on continuing war and endless occupation masking radical extremism, authoritarian governance, and unchecked corruption. The other road is one of return and repair, as the dream of Zionism once again drives a military devoted to defense rather than forced into subjugation, a civic life that shines a democratic light unto the nations rather than casting a dimming shadow of global autocracy, and a spirit that inspires the pursuit of visionary ideals rather than a surrender to ethno-nationalism.

Jews the world over have a stake, a voice, and a responsibility to speak out, to stand up, and to declare unequivocally that this war must end. We must join with Israelis who are rising in the streets and shouting in the public squares to bring our beloved homeland back from the brink of a descent into a culture that has more in common with European dictatorships and Islamic theocracies than Western democracies founded upon Jewish values. We must bridge the growing chasm between the arc of Israel’s current policies and the liberal values—borne of the Torah’s wisdom– cherished by most of American Jewry. We risk losing not only the current but certainly future generations of Jews who will see in Israel not the flowering of Jewish redemption but the sorrow of unrequited dreams. This is not a threat nor an ultimatum, but rather an inevitable cause and consequence. It is a warning as old as the biblical prophets and as imminent as the call of conscience in this moment.

Like the reborn Jacob on that dark and tussling night, we—all Jews–are Yisrael—destined to struggle and to strive—torn between the obligations of the world and the demands of the spirit—with a heart yearning and an eye gazing toward a Zion that is exceptional in its pursuits, judicious in its compromises, and exemplary in its reconciliation of the world as it is with the world that can be.