We Are in a Different Era Now

As a teacher of history, I often told my students that eras, centuries, are structures historians make up to help clarify our understanding of the nature of things in the past and get a grip on change and continuity. Such categorizing is necessarily retrospective; you mostly only know when something major has happened, changed, after it’s well established.

We in Israel, many of us, anyway, have been saying for years  that there are trends here that are very ominous, dangerous. That perception certainly animated my participation in many demonstrations against the judicial coup and the writing I’ve done about it and about other terrible acts, laws, events.

But it is very clearly a different situation now, a different status, and a different era. Fascist, authoritarian. It is not a trend, it has taken hold. Between what Netanyahu did a few nights ago, firing Gallant, for the reasons he did (to get a law passed to enshrine Haredi draft evasion and continued subsidies– in order to stay in power), rewarding failed politician, Gideon Saar, and his tiny band of followers with ministries and sub-ministries for their agreement to be bound by coalition discipline and vote for that bill– which Saar had said just last week, he and they would not– meaning, that the few Likudniks who had said they would vote against are no longer enough to sink the bill– never mind, this government — between that and Trump’s election and clear mandate to do what he does — a shift in eras, situations, is very clear.

It is a very sobering, horrible reality to take in. But there is a certain relief in the clarity, in not thinking any longer that we are fighting to prevent something, but must shift to resisting what has clearly taken hold and is now the reality.

Here is what I wrote to the head of the social action committee of the shul in the Cleveland area that I used to participate in, in response to a lovely letter she wrote to the congregation, urging people gently to engage all the projects they have until now, which are the more needed now, in order to maintain their own humanity and to fight tyranny:

We are in a new, different era. Fascist, authoritarian. In the US, and here, with the regimes reinforcing one another, not just in our two countries but across many, from Orban’s Hungary to Russia’s Putin to Modi’s India and Ergogan’s Turkey. That is the reality. It is very sobering and worrying but better to face it. As many before us did, and do now. They used to be them; now, they’re us.

How we resist will depend but we must resist. And surely, activating, exercising, our humanity and goodness, is an essential part, if not at all sufficient.

Your note was so wonderfully worded. Kol hakavod.

Wishing us all much strength, of all kinds.

Be’khavod, shabbat shalom,

Shulamit