Eretz Acheret

“How should we” someone asked me in a letter.
I had meant to ask him
The same question.
Again, and as ever,
As may be seen above,
The most pressing questions are naïve ones.

From Wislawa Szymborska, “The Century’s Decline”

Whosoever is prepared to face the potent question “How is one to live?” must begin by looking at reality with open eyes. Only after clarifying for oneself the actual state of affairs in which we live, can one take a serious and responsible stand on it.

At the basis of our experience are particular material-economic foundations that shape the framework in which and in relation to which our culture and our ethics/values develop. These foundations are what shape our awareness, and they are the basis of our conceptual world.

Let it be first said: these foundations are not determinative. They are the result of decisions and policymaking – policy that has become hegemonic and as a result, has forcefully sketched out the blueprint of reality.

The Current State of Affairs

Loneliness. These same material-economic foundations that shape the current state of affairs are based on our hardiness as lone individuals vis-à-vis the reality. The processes of orchestrated dissolution and division that have occurred over the last thirty years have broken up old alliances and uprooted their power. These alliances, even if they required overhauling, constituted a significant qualitative basis for the relationship between workers’ and people in society. They infused human cooperation with content and structure. In the divided and privatized society that we live in today, the relationships between people are characterized by ties of dependence and struggle, not of cooperation.

Let it be first said: these foundations are not determinative. They are the result of decisions and policymaking – policy that has become hegemonic and as a result, has forcefully sketched out the blueprint of reality.

Fatalism. As individuals, we do not perceive ourselves as having the power and ability to influence society and economy. And indeed, we cannot. In complete contrast to the image of the free man, who is capable of thinking on his own and mapping out his life, the economic reality is for us a mass of data, dictated from the outside by an invisible hand. In reality, we are unable to shape reality. We are used to accepting economic directives as divine commands, since in the present structure we lack the power to change them.

Survival and sectionalism. The encounter between us as individuals is a battle for survival. In the present reality, we are pitted one against the other, struggling for our place and our status, since there is almost nothing else we can do. If a relationship is formed between people, it is based on their sector. Even the various sectors comprising our society are pitted one against the other, meeting only in a narrow discourse of interests, and not in an encounter that forges deep connections and relationships between “others” who belong to a single society.

Dissolution of the shared center. The constant reduction of the government investment in social services intensifies the battle for survival. But graver still, it contributes to processes of disintegration of the shared social center. The government’s investment is an expression of the shared and agreed content that the center commits itself to preserving. It is a manifestation of shared objectives, infusing content into the meaning of our responsibility towards one another. In today’s reality, though we are part of a single society, the shared content required is in constant decline. Every person is in command of his future, or abandoned to his future, and is left with the job of trying to secure his own existence.

Inequality of Man. The erosion of the center and its ongoing disintegration are accompanied by a widening of the gaps between us. Between 2000 and 2010, actual income of all of the deciles from the second to the ninth decreased, the income of the lowest decile remained the same, and only the uppermost decile increased its earnings. Practically speaking, there are those who are more equal and those who are less equal. The basic obligation to human equality has been violated.

We might have expected that most people whose lives became more difficult would recognize this broad trend and act together to change it, but the combination of conditions described forms a smokescreen that makes it difficult to see and feel cooperation and identification with another population. We are afraid of the other – we are strangers to him, and he is a stranger to us. The basic conflict between the sectors in society neutralizes our ability to ensure a life of dignity for every person by virtue of his humanity.

On Despair and Disconnectedness

It is only rarely that the current hegemony is exposed through a direct attack perpetrated against all of society. In most cases, this is a war of attrition: a slow, continuous, but carefully aimed “wearing down.” This wearing down brings about the disintegration of all values.

First and foremost, we lose our value as people. Even an ethical and enlightened society cannot forgo the equality of man as it’s most basic and fundamental infrastructure. This is the most ethical and righteous requirement – the most bold. Human existence and development are the most worthy inherent goal of every society.

The erosion begins with gaps between us and continues with abuse of the other. When asylum seekers reach our doorstep, we are filled with a dread of the other, threatened by difference. We hear the cries of the residents of southern Tel Aviv. This is a cry whose roots can be understood, and yet, our anger is necessarily aroused. We are angry because there should have been leadership that took responsibility and charted out a path – a leadership that took seriously the intense hardships of south Tel Aviv, rooted not in the asylum seekers, but in the current economic reality, the insecurity faced by jobseekers and employees alike. Both are devalued in our society, and there is no leadership attentive to their calls and truly concerned with finding solutions to their difficulties. Instead, our leadership, is busy inciting this population against the weakest: foreigners and asylum seekers.

This ongoing wearing down gives rise to despair. When the human experience is devaluation, disrespect, and constant fear, we lack solid ground on which to “build and be built.” The feeling of smallness is all encompassing, and despair overtakes the heart.

The value of words is also eroded. Many words are uttered. Our culture is full of words. Full of endless chatter. Some would have us chatter ourselves insane, as long as there is a guarantee of complete disconnect between words and deeds. As long as the words take up space but distance us from reality, they distance us from responsibility for our lives here. Most words are not an actual invitation. At the most they are a nice debate not accompanied by the ethics of responsibility.

Even an ethical and enlightened society cannot forgo the equality of man as it’s most basic and fundamental infrastructure. This is the most ethical and righteous requirement – the most bold. Human existence and development are the most worthy inherent goal of every society.

Return to a Living Vision

Perhaps that is the root of everything. We are disconnected.

The war of attrition being waged against us has succeeded in disconnecting us from reality. It has distanced us from the pulsating experience of life. We are looking with open eyes, our vision has become blurred, the deep recognition that reality is the work of our hands and the creation of people like us – and that we have the responsibility to act within this reality – has been distorted. We are alienated from it. Moreover, our connections, which enable joint effort, have been attenuated and even cut off entirely: the connection to one another, arising from a lively and real encounter among ourselves – the connections to our culture, our heritage, our mother’s milk.

When we lost those connections, it was necessary to also lose our connection to vision, to the shared Zionist project that brought us to live here. We have no living vision that awakens and mobilizes. It is difficult to think in terms of objectives, to assume that our deeds are tied to a mission. It is difficult to perceive ourselves as shaping our fate and authoring the future of this society and its daily character. But above all, it is difficult to dream.

Not windmills of fancy, not farfetched illusions plagued by distance and disconnect… dreams that lack the power of execution, that cannot be grasped, maybe ethical, maybe pure, perhaps truly exalted, but that do not deal with reality in a deep way, do not confront it or look at it squarely to trace out a path of truth.

We are floating, going about our business, dragging on day-by-day. Far removed from our powers of creation. Far from ourselves.

There is a need to recommit, to return to thinking constructively about reality, to formulate new dreams… living dreams, the kind whose power inverts, the kind that create reality, that give birth to new desires and strengths.

Sometimes it seems as if any ability to obligate occurs through the ability to negate, to erect a boundary in reality and to say: “This far, and no farther!” Disconnectedness blunts the senses, and makes it difficult for us to counter the injustice in our midst.

There can be another kind of despair: a despair that is deep, but connected.

Erecting a Fence Against Evil

The protest was born of the deep cry – a cry that was strong and very sincere. This cry was not only an expression of the difficulty of continuing to bear the burden with dignity, but also of the unwillingness to continue accepting an unjust reality. From its inception, it was based on rejection – it rejected the present conditions, these very foundations that are pushing us to commit terrible injustices.

This cry is full of despair and excruciating pain, but this despair and pain are not an expression of disconnect, but of connection to people and their situation. There is a connection to suffering, to hardship, and also to the value and meaning that are negated in the current reality. It is an authentic aspiration to end the wrongs. It is a discomfort that resided for a long period in our hearts that translated into anger, into a readiness to establish a boundary and take a stand against injustice. The despair has become a demanding position that is unforgiving of evil.

The despair engendered a sharp statement, and scattered the fog that had been covering our eyes. Erecting a boundary brought content back in, and around this content, people united and became partners along the path, partners towards a goal.

Taking a stand within the reality, a direct and sensitive look at the environment and the people who live in it – each of these in themselves is a highly valuable achievement that the protest accomplished from its first moment. And, wonder of wonders, those voiced the outcry are not stopping here. They have a deep desire to translate the pain also into a strength channeled into a positive force.

Encapsulated within the protest is the potential to renew values. The protest is the embodied desire to reassert the equality of human beings as a foundation of our lives, and to take responsibility for ourselves and our society – its image and its values. It re-invites all of us to engage in the act of “tikkun” – repair. It again asks the naïve quests that, as stated, are the most urgent. This is an economic project, but even more so, it is an ethical-social project. The Zionist project must be infused with new content.

The important achievement of the Zionist project until now has been that it has given us the privilege of a life of sovereignty in our own country. Sovereignty, while it may involve authority and power, is foremost responsibility. Responsibility for our destiny, for the reality of our lives, for our culture and for its and our ethical values. Today, it is necessary that we look this responsibility in the face and reaffirm the choice of bearing it on our shoulders.

This is not a need. It is not an obligation. It is a moral imperative that makes demands on us. Our real ability to continue to exist here together, as the sons and daughters of a sovereign society, requires that we respond today to the problems at hand. We will not be able to sustain a society and country here forever without reclaiming our responsibility for the reality that has been created.

This is the time to turn bitter despair into a despair that creates, and a binding force.

One must not run away from reality, even for a vision; but let us not live in it in passive acceptance that lacks the perspective for making the decisions required of us. We are responsible. There is no other option.

Muki Tzur, from “Without a Coat of Many Colors”