Noam Cohen ’23

Posted on July 19, 2024

“I think hearing the Jewish-American voice in the conflict is important.”

I think we’re the first Israeli group to have gone to the U.S. under such unique circumstances and with such an enormous challenge. It was a dilemma — when do we raise the topic of October 7th? To what extent should it be present? We discussed it a lot among ourselves, the Amitim, but we were unsure whether we could talk to the Fellows about October 7th and the situation in Gaza. I think it was hard for us, as Israelis, to handle criticism we weren’t used to hearing back home; and the gap between saying “ceasefire” and seeing demonstrations with Palestinian flags in one of the largest cities in the world is one we were unprepared for.

We wanted to feel at ease with the Americans and not feel that tension, and there were those who wanted to avoid hearing harsh opinions. I think at first it was difficult for us to have that conversation and go into these topics, but over the following days it happened naturally, it was unavoidable. It showed up even in small talk — when asked about our plans for next year, and some answered, “military service.”

We did have some very interesting conversations. There were opinions on both sides, both in our group and theirs, and some internal conflicts, too. But I think these were exactly the conversations we came for. I also think hearing the Jewish-American voice in the conflict is important. Just a few days after we left New York, all the chaos began in the big universities; at Harvard, and at Columbia… just a few blocks away from the synagogue where we had been on Saturday morning. Many of our friends from the American group will be going to those same universities, where the situation is the most difficult, where the conflict is the greatest, where the antisemitism is at its worst. So I think these conversations were extremely important and clarified for us what we were there for.

Throughout the seminar, I felt that the Fellows were terribly afraid to talk about the war. One of the Fellows said she felt as if the Israelis are sitting shiva, and that she never knows what to say to people when they’re in mourning because one needs to be sensitive, and you don’t know whether they want to talk about their pain, or what that person has been through and how sensitive the topic might be for them. I thought that was very powerful.

Then one morning, when we split into chevrutot, we finally opened up the subject and they started asking me questions about the war, questions from a distant perspective — they’re not in Israel, they don’t read the same posts that my friends read, they watch different news and are more exposed to the situation of the Palestinians in Gaza than I am. When I’m in Israel, I never talk about politics; I go to a religious school where I’d be crucified if I said a word, and I don’t want to get into it. But I thought, come on, let’s try. I realized I wasn’t afraid at all of how they would react, that I didn’t feel they were biased towards one side and that they would get upset with me for what I was saying; nor did I need to sugarcoat things and make them sound nice. They really challenged me, asking questions like, “What about what happened in the War of Independence?” — questions I’d never hear people asking in Israel. At first, I was taken aback, and a little angry. I thought, this is our country, you can’t ask such things! And then I said to myself, wait a minute, they’re challenging you, they’re asking you questions that other people wouldn’t ask you, and these are things that really happened: we really came here and established a state and there were people here, and you can ask about it, you don’t need to be scared of it. I realized I enjoyed not being afraid and not saying there are questions that shouldn’t be asked. You can ask anything. It was challenging, but it also felt good. Now, back in Israel, I allow myself to read things I wouldn’t have read, things that would have thrown me, and I find myself wanting to see more sides and more perspectives. And when I talk to my friends I’m less afraid to express my opinion, simply because I had this place to answer questions without anyone having an agenda, and a chance to talk about it all, just because they really wanted to listen.

The word “diaspora” has always seemed to me a legitimate term, something that people say. The way I was educated, even since kindergarten, it was always clear that the aspiration was Kibbutz Galuyot — ingathering of exiles — when all Jews would come to Israel, and that the existence of the Jewish diaspora is cute and all, but the goal is for everyone to come to Israel eventually. But then you meet Americans who say to you, “This is my home. I’m not in exile, I’m not in a temporary dwelling. I am part of generations upon generations who live here and I intend to raise my children here and probably establish a Jewish home here, and that’s good for me; Israel can be another Jewish center, and that’s amazing, and Israel can also be a historical center, and we will come to visit and educate our children a lot about Israel, but that’s not our aspiration.”

At first, I was really surprised to find that I thought about it at all; I mean, I didn’t think there was even an option to consider that the concept of exile is not something they relate to. I talked about it with some of the Fellows and I think the conclusion I reached is that the Jewish diaspora plays a very important role, and that the Jewish center in America is no less than the center in Israel, and the fact that there are two centers that are very, very different from each other serves a lot of people who find what works for them.

Ever since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “diaspora” again, and whether ingathering of exiles is an aspiration we should hold at all.