Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor

With Letter 8, Halevi attempts to describe some of the features of Israeli life and culture for the benefit of his Palestinian neighbor. Halevi worries that Israeli and Palestinian societies are growing so estranged from each other that opportunities for true understanding are drying up, so he takes the initiative in trying to offer a helpful guide to the complexities of Israeli life. He describes Israel as being paradoxical. It is both a democratic state and a Jewish nation, a balance which is maintained even with a significant Arab-Israeli minority. “I define Israel as a secular state in a holy land” (156)—a modern nation wrestling with a conviction of its ancient calling. In addition to the secular/religious paradox, Israel is also a wildly diverse mix even within its Jewish population. In Israel, Jews from eastern traditions and western traditions with wide cultural disparities come together to try to form a single family: “The core community that founded Israel was overwhelmingly Ashkenazi and secular, and secularism remains vibrant; at the same time our music, cuisine, even language are all increasingly influenced by traditional Mizrahi culture” (157). In this mix of cultures from all over the world, Jewish identity remains a binding force, though Halevi admits that its character is often less one of family harmony and more one of sibling arguments. Even that very Jewish identity exists in paradox, because the Arab-Israeli body of citizens constitutes a full fifth of the country, and many of them identify as Palestinian.

In regard to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Halevi identifies yet another paradox in Israel: a clear sense of moral conviction met with the necessities of a strict security regime. From their own history of suffering persecution, repression, and genocide, most Israelis bear a high sense of moral conscience regarding their treatment of others, and yet the circumstances of their day-to-day life appear in their view to require the exertion of force in ways that place them in uncomfortable and morally compromising roles. In all these paradoxes, Halevi sees Israel as an experiment being run for the benefit of the whole world, a place where the dual tensions of east and west, religion and secularism, ethnicity and democratic rule, and morals and security can meet and struggle for balance. These tensions, Halevi argues, are explored in a more practical and direct way in Israel than most other societies will ever have to face, and so Israel’s paradox may eventually turn out to be a blessing to the world.

The occasion for Letter 9 is the observance of Holocaust Memorial Day. Halevi writes that he has avoided bringing up the Holocaust until this point in the book, as its weight makes it too difficult to use in establishing a dialogue. It causes extreme reactions and is too likely to be denied by one side or used as manipulation by the other. Still, Halevi does not shy away from it. He is the son of a Holocaust survivor, and he makes the point that Jews lay stress on their survivorship not as victims, but as victors. Far from claiming a victim mentality, he asserts that Israeli Jews are proud of their endurance, through the Holocaust as through many other historical traumas, and that the Jews can claim to have outlasted every empire that tried to wipe them out, from ancient Egypt to the Nazi Third Reich. While the Holocaust was part of the historical narrative associated with the rise of Israel as a modern nation-state, Halevi resists the implication that Israel only exists because the Holocaust happened—it would be just as true, he points out, to say that the Holocaust only happened because Israel did not exist.

Even without taking a victim mentality, however, modern Israelis are still conditioned with an instinct toward fear because of their experience of the Holocaust. They know the warning signs well and are alert for them: a criminalization of Jewish life and the anti-Semitic tendency to view Jews as paragons of the worst social ills. Both of these warning signs, unfortunately, Israelis perceive in some of the rhetoric from their Palestinian neighbors and the wider Muslim world. Because of this, an alert and defensive posture is considered a necessary part of modern Israeli life, but it is one that makes trust and understanding more difficult to achieve.

Halevi closes the letter by recounting his experience of going to Auschwitz in a mixed group of Arab and Jewish Israelis. The trip was organized by a Palestinian Christian priest, Abuna Shoufani, and through that experience, Halevi was given hope for the future of their conflict. If Jews could bare their vulnerability from the woundedness of the Holocaust, and Palestinians could see that vulnerability for what it was instead of a reflexive and hostile defensiveness, then perhaps there could be a reconciliation yet to come.

Letter 10 is the shortest letter in the book, serving as a summary and conclusion to many of the reflections and themes of the volume. Its occasion is the festival of Sukkot, which celebrates the ancient Jewish traditions of their wilderness wanderings in the time of Moses. Since the ancient Israelites lived in tents in the desert during that time, modern Israeli Jews celebrate Sukkot by building booths—temporary shelters that they put up in their yards—and living in them for a week. The scene of the letters thus returns to Halevi’s yard in East Jerusalem as he describes his family’s sukkah and looks over the security wall into the Palestinian neighborhood beyond.

The sukkah is a symbol of transience, of putting one’s trust in God’s protection, and the festival of Sukkot was celebrated in ancient Jewish tradition by saying prayers for the nations. This international theme inspires the decorations in Halevi’s family sukkah, which is marked by Tibetan prayer flags, a Hindu elephant, a Jewish shofar, and a plaque with a verse from the Qur’an. Halevi’s decoration of his sukkah represents the consistent basis of his prayers: “I pray for the shattered peoples around me, but most of all I pray for us, for your people and mine. Ana Adonai hoshiya na: Please, God, save us” (196-97).

He also recalls another tradition of ancient Israel: the story of how the Jews entered their promised land and arrayed themselves on two mountains that faced each other, one side to proclaim the blessings of God’s covenant and the choice of life, and the other side to call out the curses that came from unfaithfulness and choosing death. Halevi writes, “It seems to me, neighbor, that all of humanity is now standing on those two mountains” (198). He emphasizes the importance of pursuing life and blessing, especially as developing modern technology offers an increased potential of widespread violence. Like living in the sukkah rather than in an air raid shelter, he implores that people choose the vulnerability of believing in peace and reaching out with open hands as we strive to make it possible.