Aliya is a four-letter word
David Breakstone

(February 8) - Aliya is a four-letter word in Hebrew. It isn't
in English, and it shouldn't be treated that way. But it is now 
part of a vocabulary uttered only in undertones or with apologies, 
or not spoken at all in mixed company - i.e. between Israeli and 
Diaspora Jews. 

I'm not talking of grandiose pronouncements on the need to 
encourage aliya, or "mom-and-apple-pie" declarations solemnly 
joining it to sacrosanct but non-obligatory statements on the 
centrality of Israel. No, I'm talking about the 
"pack-your-bags-and-get-on-a-plane" kind that, after more than 
100 years of Zionism, is still, apparently, primarily for the 
oppressed and unfortunate. 

When, a number of months ago, the Jewish Agency declared a 
campaign to bring one million new immigrants to Israel from 
the West over the next 10 years, I received an e-mail from a 
young Zionist activist in America asking how she could help us 
achieve that goal. The simplest and most effective answer never 
even occurred to her. In English, aliya still means somebody 
else. 

Several years ago, an article appeared in The Washington Post 
penned by professor and rabbi, Jacob Neusner. Titled 
"Is America the Promised Land for the Jews?" one didn't have 
to read far for the answer. The piece began with the declaration 
that "It is time to say that America is a better place to be 
Jewish than Jerusalem." 

It does not matter that his arguments were spurious. It matters 
that they touched a responsive chord in the local Jewish 
community, which breathed a collective sigh of relief upon 
discovering that their sense of being "at home", was not only 
justified but also legitimate. 

Neusner, in one stroke, had managed to undermine more than 4000 
years of tradition which began with the journey of a lonely man 
of faith, and continued into Exile where Jews invented numerous 
devices intended to ensure that they lived a life of longing, 
and that their greatest joy would never eclipse their yearning 
for Jerusalem. 

To be sure, these devices did not always work. Today's Western 
Jewries have plenty of antecedents to model themselves on. They 
are not the first to proclaim "next year in Jerusalem" at the 
conclusion of the Pessah seder, and then, next year, proclaim 
it again, without ever deviating from their position of reclining 
as free men and women in a society they call home. In the past, 
of course, there was no Israel, obviating the need for our 
forebears to rationalize their inaction. 

It used to be that we Israelis would ask Jewish visitors to our 
country when they were coming back here to live. While the 
question could be irksome, it was essentially ignored, or 
laughed off. Then we stopped asking it altogether, having 
become too cosmopolitan to ask, embarrassed by the myriad 
implications of what we were suggesting. 

We should have had nothing to be ashamed of. The Zionist 
commandment of aliya is in keeping with the best of our 
tradition. Since Talmudic times, the mitzva of settling the 
Land of Israel has been considered equivalent in merit to 
the performance of all other commandments combined. We should 
have had nothing to be ashamed of, but we forgot what we were 
doing here in the first place. Confusing the attainment of a 
safe haven for Jews everywhere with the realization of the 
Zionism dream, Israelis no longer had any reason to ask others 
to move here. 

The fallacy of this position is that it is based on a 
retroactive redefinition of Zionism, which was never a 
movement whose sole objective was to secure a safe refuge for 
persecuted Jews. While Zionist visionaries have certainly 
differed from one another in terms of what the Jewish state 
should look like, they were also bound by a passion for 
forging a chevra l'mofet, a society that would exemplify the 
very best in terms of Jewish morality and tradition that 
Jewish civilization has to offer. 

Aliya is the highest expression of Zionist fulfillment, 
because it allows for the most direct involvement in shifting 
Jewish values from the realm of theory into the practice of 
statehood. We need to proclaim this unabashedly, calling upon 
others to join us - for positive reasons - in the incredibly 
exciting process of Jewish state-building. 

This is not part of the consciousness of Western Jewry. If 
the unsatisfactorily low number of North American immigrants 
weren't testimony enough to this reality, the emerging patterns 
of Jewish migration from the so-called "Zionist" communities 
of South Africa and Argentina provide abundant evidence of it. 

On a recent trip to Johannesburg, I met far more Jewish families 
with relatives in Australia, Canada, England, and the US than 
in Ra'anana. 

Jews are staying put, or moving everywhere but Israel, because 
they have not become truly enamored of the Zionist idea. Bringing 
this about is a long and complex process, but it begins by 
taking issue publicly with Neusner, and declaring that it is 
Israel that is the better place to be Jewish than anywhere 
else. Here one ties one's destiny to the destiny of the Jewish 
people in a way that one cannot in the Diaspora, and contributes 
to the shaping of a Jewish society and Jewish culture that is 
impossible anywhere else. 

To those who dismiss these phrases as mere clich?, I can only 
express my disappointment that they will never experience the 
deep satisfaction that comes with living in accordance with 
them. Aliyah is not only a great challenge facing the Jewish 
people, it is also, potentially, the greatest source of 
fulfillment for the individual Jew. 

(The writer is the head of the Department for Zionist Activities 
of the World Zionist Organization, and a member of the WZO and 
Jewish Agency Executive. He is also chairman of the Masorti 
Movement in Israel.)