Second attempts

-Sometimes I write a whopper of a post, and it will then occur to me a few days later that what I'd meant to convey could have been done far more efficiently. Case in point: what I was getting at here, without realizing it, was that the food movement is fundamentally about romanticizing poverty. Which is why, on a superficial level, its goals can often seem entirely compatible with having nothing. They romanticize not having a dishwasher, so it can seem as though of course what they're advocating is universally accessible. After all, they're not demanding that you go out and buy heaps of yuppie kitchen equipment. Meanwhile, what they are asking is plenty inaccessible - not just to the proverbial single mother barely making ends meet with her three full-time jobs, but also to run-of-the-mill middle and upper-middle class Americans who have been given no compelling reason to give up TV (tsk tsk!) or reading or staring at a friggin' wall in exchange for time with mortar and pestle.

-Case in point, II: The typical reaction to the anti-Israeli-American-Jewish-marriage (or anti-Israeli-emigration) ads has been a diasporic nuh-uh, asserting that there are vibrant Jewish (and culturally Israeli!) families and communities in 'merica. This is on the one hand true, and on the other hand missing the point. The point, that is, of Zionism. (I am, of course, especially curious to see David Schraub's response, so David, if you have a moment...)

All along, the point of Zionism (and the reason I consider myself a Zionist) was to make the world better for a) Jews, and b) the Jews. Which is to say, it's on the one hand about making life more pleasant (or, circa the 1930s and early 1940s, feasible) for those who happen to have been born Jewish, and on the other, about Jewish continuity, which is to say, the perpetuation over generations of Judaism and of individuals who consider themselves Jewish.

Which is to say that it's entirely in keeping with Zionism - just ask Herzl! - that some Jews won't want in on the Jewish state, and will make use of the freedom that the existence of a Jewish state in the world helps provide them to not care an ounce about their Jewish identities, and to blend unnoticed into whichever mainstream or not-mainstream population they see fit. Why is that fundamental to Zionism? Because one of the problems Zionism was and is (or ought to be) about resolving is the idea that Jewishness is a) externally-defined, and b) fate. Jewish? That's going to be the central fact of your life. Zionism's about letting it be that if you want, and really making something of it in that case, and if not, not. Others who do care can certainly do their caring in the diaspora, but if their principle interest is continuity, they might want to head on over to Israel, where "Jewish" is the default. Given this dynamic, it's not so surprising that one would see a great deal of back-and-forth migration between Israel and the Jewish diaspora.

The point here, though, is that Zionism ideally isn't about forcing anyone to be more Jewishly-involved than they'd like. So things like these ads, that use negativity as a tool, don't fit with its mission. Israel either offers something positive for you, in which case great, live in Israel, or you wish to embrace your freedom as a human being (without being in any way impeded by being a Jew) to be a fashion blogger in L.A., a taxi driver in NY, a receptionist in Mississippi, etc.