May 9, 2008
4 Iyar, 5768

This message was written by Marty Levine,
General Director, JCC of Chicago.

As a child, Israel was not a regular topic for conversation around our dinner table. The Zionist dream was not very vibrant in the Levine household. We were an American Jewish family, closer to the legacy of my parents’ Russian ancestry than to the emerging State of Israel. Through college and graduate school, I translated these experiences into a deep concern for the great ills of our country, the United States of America – civil rights, poverty and a raging war half way around the globe. As a Jew, I was drawn to these challenges with a sense of purpose; what I learned about tikkun olam meant I must be a part of righting these wrongs. Israel and its peoples’ challenges may have been headlines in the paper but not up close and personal.

Oh, how that has changed, and not just because of where I have chosen to take my social work training. In a way that I am only now beginning to grasp, I have found myself drawn toward Israel and its people, my people. I have a deep need for a living bond with the only other place on earth where a large number of fellow Jews live and build a modern society. Its has become clearer and clearer to me that I have a very basic need to be connected to my roots and that this connection is critical to living in the present and facing the future with optimism and hope. The challenges of America have not gone away, faded, or become less important. What I now realize is that my need to take them on is connected to what we share with our Israeli brethren.

We all seek to know where we have come from. And the answer to this question helps us know where are we are going.

Israel and its people are on the same journey we are on. They face the same questions and our collective experience can be so rich. With the people of Israel we share a common history. The land is the land of our Patriarchs and Matriarchs, the figures that live often only in the words on the pages of our books and on the parchment of our scrolls. In Israel, the land they walked is the land we walk today. The ruins of their homes, market places and temples lie just below us. The common heritage we share comes alive. In being so close, I find a way to know where I have come from and what that heritage can tell me about today.

We are two Jewish communities which have emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust and the depths of other places where we once lived and flourished. We share a common challenge to give a different meaning to the tears of our ancestors, to keep alive what they paid so high a price for. We are two Jewish communities that have been blessed to bring together the many cultures of the Diaspora and have before the need to blend something common from these differences.

We share the challenge of figuring out where, as a Jew and as Jews, we are going, what we can take from our past to address the present and where our personal and collective journey leads.

This is a very real challenge for a Jew living in America and for our Jewish community. It is as much a challenge for a Jew living in Israel and for all Israel. Because we share this challenge there can be so much richness in our relationship, in our ability to share what we find energizing and authentic, in the new meanings of being a living Jew we each can and do invent. And this is where the real excitement arises, from the living bonds between us as we seek for the way forward.

JCC of Chicago’s celebration of Israel’s sixtieth year of statehood provides us with an opportunity to deepen the impact that Israel already has on our members, lay leaders and staff and to strengthen our connection to Israel and her people. Israel is significant as a dream fulfilled, as an idea, as a country, as a place that will impact our Jewish future for all time. Israel is such a vibrant and ever-changing society, whose contributions to the world in so many fields including science, technology, education, agriculture, the arts and culture amaze and give us pride.  From the moment of Israel’s birth as a nation, JCC has placed our Jewish homeland at the forefront of our thoughts and deeds. In our programs – from early childhood to day camp to overnight camp to adult education – Israel is integrated into the JCC curriculum and daily activities. More than just teaching about Israel, we regard Israel as core to our individual and collective Jewish identities.

As the Jewish homeland, Israel is a place where Jewish values are incorporated into every dimension of life – secular, cultural, political, economic and religious. Learning more about how Jewish values are woven in to the very fabric of everyday life in Israel will nurture our own JCC efforts to do the same. Through dialogue with Israelis grappling with shaping the modern state of Israel, we can discover commonalities and learn from one another. This is why JCC of Chicago is actively engaging with our Partnership 2000 city of Kiryat Gat and the Shafir/Lachish region in order to strengthen our living relationship with modern Israel.

From the bonds we can form and the relationships that will grow, we will go beyond just building support for the State of Israel. That Israel must thrive and flourish is a given. Our Jewish Community and the Israeli Jewish Community have so much more to gain. Together we can create a living, vibrant and diverse Jewish reality that can confidently take on all of the challenges of modernity, be energized by them while savoring the richness of our past. The gift of our celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the State of Israel is our ability to feed off the ruach we can create and use it as a catapult for our ongoing commitment to Bringing Jewish Values to Life.

Chag Ha'atzmaut Sameach and Shabbat Shalom!