“Don’t let the light go out.” Is it becoming harder to avoid the darkness?

In 2018, I was very worried.  In a blogpost discussing the dangers and implications of the “nation state” bill in Israel, I concluded with the lyrics of Peter Yarrow’s anthem, Light One Candle, along with my concern: “I do not know from where we will be able to protect the light in the years that come.  But we cannot let the light go out.”

 

Four years later, things are barreling toward the worst-case scenario.  Aaron David Miller has been a prominent supporter of Israel for decades – and his recent piece in the Washington Post illustrates just how bad it has gotten: 

 

“Having brought to life the radical, racist, misogynistic and homophobic far-right parties, Netanyahu is now stuck with them. He has cut a deal with convicted inciter of hatred and violence Itamar Ben Gvir and made him minister of national security, with far-reaching authority for the West Bank, Jerusalem and mixed Arab-Jewish cities in Israel proper. Bezalel Smotrich, who has called for the expulsion of Arabs, is in line to run the finance ministry, with additional authority over the Civil Administration, which governs the West Bank. And Avi Maoz, who proudly espouses a fierce anti-LGBTQ agenda, has been made a deputy in the prime minister’s office in charge of “Jewish identity.”

 

It is as if here, in the United States, Trump were elected president and put Stephen Miller and Marjorie Taylor Green in charge of the fundamental policies of our government.

 

I will still love our country even if Trump returns to power, just as I still love Israel at a gut level.

 

Aaron David Miller understandably calls for U.S. pressure on Netanyahu to convince him to change course.  But is it too late?  This has been building since Menachem Begin announced in 1977 that he would “create facts in Judea and Samaria.” 

 

So what do we do now?  I do not have an all-encompassing answer.  The ethnic-expulsion and homophobia which is apparently the approach the new coalition is preparing to follow (and forms of which are emanating from Mar-a-Lago now, as Trump plots his return to power) is antithetic to Reform Jewish values.  How we, as an American Reform Jewish Community, respond may determine whether the Diaspora will be able to keep the light from going out.

 

How do we convey our Jewish values to our children and grandchildren in the face of the horrors that may be approaching?  And to the extent that our children and grandchildren have absorbed the Jewish values we cherish, how do we convince them that they should continue to identify as Jews?