Amazed, for good and ill

We've come to live in Israel and we are amazed, for good and ill. We have found the makings of a sovereign nation. We seethe with the courage that shouts its pride from every stone and tree and smile we encounter in the homeland. We are satisfied and bursting with joy at the fullness of this experience of political autonomy.

We have also found a cultural backwater. We have encountered, for the first time in our lives, prejudice against Jews about their religion; and we struggle against an entrenched diaspora-ism that is as deep, and, because it is in the homeland, even more pernicious, than the diaspora-ism we discarded in NYC.

The Jews came into Zion but it seems at first flush what they wanted to do was to carry Zion into diaspora. The Jews were unwilling to leave the diaspora when they moved into the homeland. The Zionists managed to build a homeland but they didn't mean it. Israelites have freedom to make political choices but they have not incorporated that sense of freedom into their self-understanding. Israelis cling to servility even as they try to build a new national home.

To serve YHWH as a Jew is to know freedom in one's soul. We need to unpack the experience of the covenantal ceremony from the point of view of the mundane experience. What was it Israel's sons embraced when they accepted the covenant with YHWH?