[This op-ed appeared in the Oregonian]

With Ariel Sharon’s passing, I pause to consider my own journey through the Israel-Palestine conflict. Named after a Holocaust victim, I grew up in a family where commitment to traditional Judaism was only exceeded by our reverence for Zionism, and where Israel was the remarkable manifestation of a 2000-year-old dream come true.  Zionism was in the air, and Israel was a significant part of what it meant to be Jewish, for if the Holocaust broke our hearts, the creation of Israel was our redemption.

I thought I was being open-minded when I held to the conviction that there were two legitimate claims to the same land, and that was why it was so unsolvable. What was really unsolvable was the battle that raged in my heart. I had become a progressive on every issue, except one. I marched for civil rights, women’s rights, and an end to war.  But when it came to Israel-Palestine, internally I was torn up. Israel had ethnically cleansed the indigenous population, but how could I turn my back on my people after the thousands of years of suffering Jews had endured?

My dual-narrative world began to unravel when a friend challenged me to see not two conflicting narratives, but one history of what actually happened. His challenge took me on one of the great journeys of my life – the struggle to fundamentally reconcile my politics around Israel-Palestine with my values. I came to understand that my liberation as a Jew is intrinsically bound up with the liberation of Palestinians, and that the Jewish tradition of “justice, justice thou shall pursue” required me to stand with Palestinians in their struggle. In doing so, I was not only not turning my back on my people, I was upholding Judaism’s highest values, and reclaiming them for myself in a deeply meaningful way.

It is imperative to understand that being critical of Israel is not tantamount to anti-semitism. If people are engaged in this struggle because they dislike Jews, they likely are anti-semites. If, however, they do this work because they believe in justice, that is hardly anti-semitic. It’s called having a conscience. What part of supporting an oppressed people is against Jewish teachings?

The Palestinian struggle has become a profound moral issue, a successor to the struggle against South African apartheid. For Jews, this issue cuts to our core, for at some point, it will break your heart. The question is will it break our hearts into pieces so wounded that they can’t be put back together, or will it break our hearts open, to be more sensitive to suffering. Perhaps the redeeming part of this whole tragedy is how we reconfigure our lives, politics, and values to stand for justice for Palestinians, and in doing so create new and more deeply meaningful connections to ourselves and our Jewish roots. It's about untangling Judaism from Zionism to see the immense beauty of the former and the intense contradictions of the latter. It’s about reclaiming the deepest parts of ourselves as the battle around us - and in us – rages.
Sharon never woke up, but more and more Jews are.

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