Being Jewish in Europe/Býti židem v Evropě (only English)
I have not written much in the last days. In addition, most what I have written was in Czech. Therefore, I thought I could perhaps offer you this letter that I wrote to Barbara Spectre, the director of Paideia. I wrote it 2 days ago on my way from Stockholm Paideia Conference back to Jerusalem. I decided to paste the letter here hoping it would be interesting for you to read what crosses my mind these days regarding my leaving Israel and going back home to the Czech Republic after living abroad for 3 years.
The following letter was written as a reaction to a discussion we had at the end of the conference, a discussion about the relevance of the effort to maintain and help to develop the Jewish life in Europe as opposed to trying to encourage alyiah to Israel or Jewish immigration to the U.S.
Dear Barbara,
When we were leaving the boat to Vaxholmen yesterday, Diana Pinto and your son Levi came to talk to me about what other students and I said during the discussion on our way back from the island. I am still thinking about what we had said now when I am waiting for my flight back for Israel. I decided to write to you to make my yesterday’s point clearer and perhaps even stronger and more convincing.
Last year this time, when we were leaving a similar boat after a discussion about the regional groups, I felt confused, depressed and misplaced in a way. The cruise was the last event of the one-year program for the Nelly Sachs fellows and perhaps for this reason it was very emotional and also full of pathetic and exaggerated promises and hopes for saving Europe’s Jewry. I am very thankful that this year this was not the case. I was grateful that despite the presence of all the important Paideia donors, you raised the question of relevance of the efforts of Paideia and of its agenda for Europe.
After being in the Paideia network for 3 years now and seeing that many fellows like Dina, Petr, Ute, Benji, Debbie, Valerie and many others managed to translate their Paideia knowledge and experience into real work for their communities and after many Paideia fellows have shown what big of an impact the year in Sweden has had on their personal lives it is possible for us to say that perhaps there are moments when we feel lost, moments when we lose hope and strength to continue our efforts to live meaningful Jewish life in Europe, because being Jewish in Europe is not easy. There is far too much that works against us – other fellow Jews that don’t respect our ways of being Jewish, other Jews that don’t want to be Jewish and that make us feel that our efforts are irrelevant for others; we are put off by political tensions in our communities, by our own doubts, by lack of our own knowledge and patience and perhaps also by a prospect of a more comfortable life without religious observance or involvement in things Jewish. If we admit that this is the case – that indeed we have doubts and that we don’t always feel over-enthusiastic about being European Jews, we can say with much more honesty and self-integrity that despite all the problems we want to give it a try, because at the end of the day we feel very strongly about being Jewish, we want and need to express our Jewishness and therefore we need to create a space where this would be possible.
All this, however, could be said also by an Israeli or an American Jew. Having lived in Israel surrounded by Americans and Israelis for almost a year now, I can see that they face similar kinds of problems, even though in on a different level. We, European Jews, and especially those of us that have experienced the relative ease of being Jewish in Israel, the U.S. and indeed also in Britain, very often have to justify (for others as well as for ourselves) our decision to be Jews in Europe.
In September, I came to Israel as a skeptic. Open expressions of Zionism were foreign to me. I was inclined to be suspicious about intentions and sincerity of people praising the possibility for Jews to live in their own country. To my own surprise, during my year in Israel, I developed a strong and sincere love for the country. Having lived in a real Israeli space with all it has to offer for the good and the bad I hope I managed to develop an adult kind of love for Israel. I remain critical about many phenomena of the Israeli reality, but I learnt to appreciate what it offers to me as a Jew and what it has to offer to other Jews around me. Israel became a very strong part of my Jewish identity and I do think of it as of my potential home, however the real home for me is the Czech Republic. As much as I enjoy speaking Hebrew every day, listening to Hebrew radio every day before I go to school, the ease with which my green grocer wishes my Shabbat Shalom on Friday morning and the possibility of living in a space where there is nothing more natural than sharing Jewishness with others, there is another part to my identity that I painfully miss in Jerusalem:
I miss sitting at the corner window of Café Louvre in Prague sipping tea, I miss the gentle green hills of the north of my country, I miss going to cinema to see the new Czech films which are so different from any others that I know and I miss being a part of the audience that discusses them with passion, I miss listening to Cimerman theatre plays with my brother, I miss the specific Czech language humor, I miss reading the weekend culture and science supplement of my favorite Czech newspaper. Indeed, I am a part of the cultural tradition of Abraham, Ruth, Rabbi Akiva, Maimonides, Shay Agnon, Yehuda Amichai, Aaron Barzel, Chava Alberstein, Shay Charka, Shlomo Artzi and Eretz Nehederet Shows. But I am also – and indeed even more strongly – a part of the cultural tradition of Maharal, Dvorak, Kundera, Forman, Komensky, Palach, Milada Horakova, Vaclav Havel, Zdenek Sverak or Zuzana Navarova. I am Jewish, but I am not Israeli nor American. To borrow A.B. Yehoshua´s terminology and to argue with him, I am wearing a multicolored skin, on which the Czech and the Jewish are the prevailing colors. The Israeli color has a very important and stable place on that skin, but while it is irreplaceable, it is not the prevalent let along the only one.
The third point I want to make a little clearer is what Paideia´s role is in the picture I have just drawn. You know, perhaps better than anybody else, how instrumental Paideia has been in my life. Thanks to Paideia, I became Jewish not only in the sense of becoming a halakhic Jew. “Give a man a fish and you’ve fed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you’ve fed him for life.” This is what for Paideia did for me. Paideia certainly did not teach me all I needed and need to know as a Jew. But it taught me I can become the modern Jew I want to be if I decide to do so, because a) there are many other people who are striving for the same goal and therefore there are people to learn from and struggle along with, and because b) you can access the sources for what you need for your Jewishness yourself and you don’t always have to wait for others to provide these for you. Paideia not only introduced me to the community of the alumni, with whom I share many goals, worries, hopes and joys, but also to the wider Jewish world in which I found both help and support, and also a space where my own help and contribution is needed and welcome.
In a couple of days, I shall be leaving Jerusalem and going back to Prague. I am not leaving with a light heart and I know I will need patience to overcome the problems of adjusting my old Czech self to the new Jewish self that has changed so much during the past 3 years. Nevertheless, I know I have the tools and convictions that will help me maintain my Jewish life and I know have become a part of a human framework in which I can always look for advice or help. My life has undoubtedly become much more complicated than it used to be. But I can say without pretence or guile that it has also become much richer, more challenging and interesting through my Jewishness. To all this, Paideia contributed tremendously.
With much respect,
TG.