Israelseen is honored to present this new series by Tsvi Bisk from his book the “Optimistic Jew”.
Tsvi Bisk
The Background to Optimism
Why am I optimistic about the future of the Jews? Because the “flat (globalized) world” that Tom Friedman describes in his book The World is Flat enables the Jewish People to turn the 21st century into the century in which one’s Jewishness will no longer be a burden or barrier, or constitute a sacrifice. This could be the century in which Jews as individuals will be able to realize their human potential without sacrificing Jewish ambitions and realize their Jewish potential without sacrificing their human ambitions. No people on earth are better prepared by virtue of education, temperament, and historical adaptability to embrace the challenges of the 21st century. Two thousand years of prevailing in the face of constant discrimination have prepared the Jews, perhaps more than any other people, to take advantage of the opportunities of this globalized world. Never before have we lived in a world so amenable to our temperament and our survival skills.
To do this we must free ourselves of certain attitudes that have become a barrier to taking advantage of the opportunities of the 21st century. First and foremost we must stop making a fetish of past suffering and focus on creating a Jewish future based on our relative advantages. Classical Zionism sought to use the past as an inspiration to build a better future. This is what made Israel and its social experiments so attractive for Jews and non-Jews alike until the 6 Day War. Today, however, it seems that many Diaspora and Israeli Jews fear the future and use the past, not as an inspiration, but as an excuse not to deal with the future. As a consequence Israel and Jewish identity have become less attractive. The rise of post-Zionism in Israel and declining identification with Jewish issues amongst young Diaspora Jews are indications of this.
We seem unable to understand that the technological and political developments of globalization will affect our efforts to sustain a meaningful Jewish society in the 21st century. Many problems that agitate Israel and world Jewry today derive from our inability to reevaluate our circumstances in light of these developments. To properly address the problems we face we must acknowledge two self-evident truths: first that the Jews have always been part of world developments and, second that the future is always more important than the past.
We must rid ourselves of the “Nation that Dwells Alone” attitude. This attitude is founded on historical apprehensions that are real. But this does not release us from the responsibility to recognize the realities and opportunities of the 21st century. The Jews are part of the human race; we do not “dwell alone”. The misuse of this term by political and spiritual populists in order to suggest that the Jews can and even must ignore historical trends that affect all humanity is a recipe for self-destruction.
The Dilemma of the Past
To understand the proper relationship between the past and the future we would do well to refer to David Ben-Gurion who once remarked that the past 1,000 years of Jewish history were important but the next 1,000 years are more important. This reflects an outlook that the past, with all its glories and sufferings, can never be anything but an inspiration for our future. If we make it an idol to be worshipped instead of an inspiration, we jeopardize our future and betray those past generations we claim to celebrate and respect.
The robustness of a culture or a civilization is dictated by its attitude towards the past. Should we be slaves to the past or should we study the past for lessons and inspirations that will enable us to build a better future? As Jews we are obliged to respect our forefathers but not obligated to emulate them. As Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan once said: “the past has a voice, not a veto”.
The Jewish people, especially, must cultivate futurist habits of thought such as the ability to envisage desirable and possible alternative futures. Asking the right questions about current developments and cultivating the ability to recognize opportunities in unexpected events are essential attributes of rational policy making, which is a pre-requisite to a meaningful existence.
Creative thinking about the future differs from long-term planning. A planner in the United States, for example, would discern demographic trends and suggest building more retirement homes for an aging Jewish community. A futurist would explore the implications of the Jews being the oldest ethnic group in the United States and consider questions such as: how might this affect Jewish political influence over the coming decades? How might it affect support for Israel? What might it mean – culturally, psychologically, and spiritually – when Israel becomes the largest Jewish community in the world?
What will be the political status of world Jewry when the Moslem population of the United States surpasses the Jewish population and becomes increasingly organized and wealthier?
There was no need of futurist thinking until the Industrial Revolution. Before that, what we learnt from our grandparents we could teach to our great-grandchildren and know it would have relevance for their lives. The aim of education was to pass the values and culture of past generations onto future generations, a kind of benevolent dictatorship of the past over every aspect of our lives. But after the Industrial Revolution the rate of change increased greatly and since World War II even more so. Changes no longer occur over several lifetimes. Radical changes occur constantly, every day of our lives. Individuals living today experience more change in one year than whole generations experienced only several hundred years ago. What we thought we knew several years ago we are not so sure we know today. How can we educate our children when we have to constantly reeducate ourselves?
To optimally exploit the historic opportunity the “flat world” is offering us we must first answer questions such as: how might the technology that is creating this new global order affect the social, economic, political, spiritual, and Zionist development of Israel and the Jewish people? What opportunities does this present to Israel and the Jewish people?
The Future Belongs to the Individual
If we don’t recognize the essential individualism of young Israelis (Jew and non-Jew) and Diaspora Jews we will be unable to construct a social, economic, and Zionist policy that rationally addresses the problems, challenges, and opportunities of modern Jewry and Israeli democracy. We require a new Zionist ideology that accommodates the radical individualism of globalization and the Internet.
The term Jewish people is meaningless unless it has significance for the Jewish person. If we do not recognize that the individual is a finite, one-time entity compelled to fill his or her life with meaning, then growing numbers of young Jews may see no reason to cultivate Jewish aspirations. The 21st century search for social solidarity and community is real and palpable. But in my view it is essentially different from the communalist ambitions of 19th and 20th century idealists in that it is primarily a pre-requisite for individualistic self actualization and not a call for idealistic self abnegation. It may be that a renewal of the original kibbutz ideal (not a misplaced loyalty to outmoded kibbutz frameworks) will have a serious role to play in this new reality.
In the 21st century the individual is king. As much as this statement might offend the social ideals of 20th century “progressives” it is nonetheless a simple fact of life. If we are to build a just society, with the necessary solidarity required to live a civilized life, we must accept the centrality of the individual as axiomatic. Denying or denigrating individualism will not lead to greater social justice or solidarity – it will only hinder it.
I am not endorsing individualism as an ideology. I am claiming that the rapid rate of change demands it. Centralized management or management by committee (even democratically elected committees) is no longer appropriate. Management has to be decentralized as decisions must be made in real time and cannot wait for decisions from above. This requires the empowerment of the individual. Modern technology – encapsulated in everything connected to the Internet – empowers the individual like no other previous technology. Individual bloggers, to mention just one example, have had as much impact on our politics in recent years as major media outlets. Just ask Dan Rather.
The notion that every Individual (is) a King was an integral part of the social and political thought of Ze’ev Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder, ideologue and political leader of Revisionist Zionism (the chief opponents of David Ben Gurion’s Labor Movement). For him this was a fundamental value. Given the requirements and characteristics of our globalized world, this abstract value has now become a concrete practical necessity: economically, sociologically and psychologically. This is as true for Diaspora Jews as it is for Israelis. The aspirations, ambitions and dreams of a young modern Jew from Tel Aviv, a kibbutz or a development town are not different from those of a young modern Jew from New York, London, or Paris. Even the younger generation of Israel’s non-Jewish minorities has begun to develop the same aspirations and ambitions as their Jewish counterparts.
By what standards should we evaluate the relationship of the individual to the community? I believe in the following way.
The Individual: Classical Zionism focused on the Jewish person as much as the Jewish people. Zionism saw the uplifting of the Jewish person and his or her individual self-realization (Hagshama Atzmit) as the means by which the Jews could be renewed as a people.
The Community: Human beings are social animals. We cannot fulfill our individual potential and give meaning to our lives in isolation. What kind of communal frameworks do we need to realize our potential? The kibbutz was supposed to have provided the answer to this question. But it pursued an unsubstantiated “ideal” of human nature instead of asking what practical tools actual kibbutzniks needed to realize their individual potential. It is doubtful whether Israel could have been created without the collective heroic contribution of the kibbutz. Yet since its heroic period ended, it has had difficulty in reinventing itself as an agent of individual self realization in line with its own original ideology.
The Economy: We require an economy that enables us to realize our individual potential. It has to be innovative and profitable, providing ever-increasing options that reflect the possibilities of the new global reality. An inefficient unproductive economy hostile to the new global reality will not suffice.
The Society: What kind of society can sustain the kind of economy we need without selling ourselves to economic considerations only? This is a challenge facing all humanity but Israel, supported by World Jewry, could take a lead in addressing it. Our bold utopian social history, tempered by practical experience, provides us with moral and intellectual resources unavailable to other societies. The vast reserves of social idealism within American and European Jewry would be able to find a creative outlet in contributing to such an ambition. That they would be doing this within a Jewish framework would constitute a major barrier to assimilation.
The Country: What kind of country do we need? We need a Jewish country: demographically, socially, culturally, politically, and even economically. We need a country in which the modern Jew can realize his or her ambitions as part of the new global reality and not sacrifice individual ambitions to those ideologies which place us in opposition to the world reality now being created.
The World: What kind of world do we need and how will Israel’s economy, society, culture and country relate to it? No country or nation dwells alone. It never has, does not now and, given the new global reality, certainly never will. Indeed, world developments of the past 200 years have probably influenced Jewish history more than other nation’s.
Historical Analogy
The Jews have already had to deal with a similar revolutionary period in the Industrial Revolution. It would be a useful to review the impact this period had on us. The three most important events of the past 200 years of Jewish history have been: the creation of the state of Israel; the creation of North American Jewry and the Holocaust. All three would have been inconceivable without the means of production and transportation provided by the Industrial Revolution.
The first Zionist Congress, which took place in 1897 in Basle Switzerland, could not have taken place one hundred years earlier on anywhere near the same scale or format. Hundreds of Jews from all corners of the earth came to Basle at a specified time and took part in a discussion pertinent to the future of the Jewish people. Up until the nineteenth century and the Industrial Revolution such a mass convocation would have been impossible.
In 1797 no railroads and steamships existed and consequently no mass movement of people and no large hotels. There were no mass-distributed newspapers (as there were no technical means to produce them or literate market to consume them) and no reliable international mail or telegraph system. The organizational existence of the Zionist movement depended on the Industrial Revolution and so, too, the physical existence of the Zionist enterprise in the Land of Israel.
Opponents of Zionism often used the argument that Zionism was unrealistic because a wasteland could not absorb millions of Jews. Zionists replied that this may have been true in the past but the technical and engineering skills and the scientific knowledge of the Industrial Revolution would enable us to turn this wasteland into a flourishing garden productive enough to absorb all the Jews who wished to come. This argument has been confirmed by history.
Between 1870 and 1914 an estimated thirty million people immigrated to the United States to work in new American industries. This mass immigration was possible because of the new transportation technologies of steamships and railroads. Two million Jews were included in this migration. From a minor Jewish community during the Civil War, American Jewry had become, by World War I, one of the largest and certainly the most powerful and influential community in the Jewish World. The rise of Nazism and its industrial methods of murder made North American Jewry the largest Jewish community in the world by the end of World War II.
Democratic capitalism, the product of the Industrial Revolution, as well as its precondition, made American Jewry the richest, freest, most powerful and self-confident Jewish community in history. American Jewry’s power mobilized wisely was one of the preconditions for the creation of the State of Israel, an event that altered Jewish history and further increased the self-confidence of Jews as American citizens.
Industrialization, and the secular Enlightenment values and scientific frame of mind that had made it possible, created new concepts of human civilization and interaction that stimulated German Jewry to create the Reform, Conservative, and neo-Orthodox versions of Judaism — the modern Judaism familiar to us.
As we have seen, the advent of Industrial civilization was a revolutionary event in Jewish history. When considering the Internet Revolution we should be aware of even more opportunities and far-reaching changes awaiting the Jews in the 21st century.
The Enlightenment and the Jews
Even before the Industrial Revolution the Jews were profoundly affected by other universal developments. Foremost amongst these was the European Enlightenment. Zionism itself was a late product of the secular humanist Enlightenment and had no problem conforming to its moral standards. Zionist leaders from Herzl, to Jabotinsky to Ben Gurion propounded Enlightenment values.
There are also inherent parallels between Enlightenment scientist Francis Bacon’s maxim that it was humanity’s task to penetrate Nature and tear her secrets from her and the Zionist imperative to conquer the wasteland. Adam Smith and Karl Marx – both products of the Enlightenment – hoped that their endeavors would result in a new man: more rational, just, and moral. This ambition is reflected in the Zionist aim to create a new type of Jew: more independent, less obsequious and more heroic. Without the Enlightenment concept of the New Man, it would have been impossible to develop the Zionist concept of the New Jew.
Modern Jewish life is inconceivable without the Enlightenment and the development of science and capitalism. Science and commerce were the basis of the modern humanist revolution as well as the prerequisites for eventual Jewish emancipation. Science and commerce are ethnically neutral, and reward competency and imagination regardless of the religious or cultural affiliation of those exemplifying them. Together, they were the basis of a major paradigm shift. Countries that took part in this shift prospered, those that rejected it became backward.
It is no accident that Holland, the first commercial republic, possessed a built-in resistance to ethnic discrimination and that Spanish and Portuguese Jews found refuge there from the Inquisition. Renaissance humanism, the Scientific and Commercial Revolutions it engendered, and the European Enlightenment that encapsulated these developments were the prerequisites to Jewish emancipation and the birth of modern Judaism and the modern Jew.
The Enlightenment/Industrial Revolution paradigm has been responsible for the greatest material and moral progress in human history. Its technological promise has stimulated a great advance in our moral, ethical, and even spiritual expectations. Few of us would be willing to return to a period when 70% of children died before the age of five or to live without electricity and modern medicine.
The Internet Revolution
The Internet Revolution parallels and perhaps even exceeds the revolutionary impact of the industrial revolution and constitutes the new human environment the Jews must deal with. The advent of the Internet represents a radical change in the intellectual and spiritual environment of the human race. It provides us with an entirely new framework in which to pursue humanity’s cultural evolution. It enables human beings to create and innovate in distinctly new ways. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth has noted:
The Internet is one of the most wondrous developments of all time…From…earliest days…(until) the West caught up with the idea, Judaism was predicated on universal education and the democratic access to knowledge. Knowledge, said Francis Bacon, is power. That is why, through most of history, it has been jealously guarded by elites.
Judaism is not a religion of elites; least of all in the arena of knowledge . . . the Torah is the heritage of every Jew. We all have a share. We are all expected to learn. We each have a right to know…Today, because of the Internet, the vast treasury of Jewish knowledge is open to everyone…what the Web allows us to do is to share the thoughts of teachers throughout the world and sense the fact that we are a truly global people, linked by the shared act of learning.
This emerging historical force requires the radical transformation of the centralistic institutions and organizations that have developed since the Industrial Revolution. We must develop new methods of human and Jewish organization and governance to be in tune with the experiences and expectations of the Internet generation.
Conclusion
A new paradigm of society is being born, based on new developments in science and in the organizational possibilities of industrial, scientific, and technological civilization. This is the world we live in. These are the practical, spiritual, and moral challenges we must deal with. The Jewish people must develop a cultural paradigm that relates to this world in constructive ways particular to itself.
What can we take from the cultural resources of the Jewish tradition that will enable us to creatively confront this reality and provide that added value to the modern Jew in the 21st century? The answer to this question is the key to a flourishing and meaningful Jewish way of life.
This book is an attempt to answer this question. It is divided into two parts. Part I presents a condensed but comprehensive picture of where the Jewish People are in 2007. Part II depicts an “imagineered” (and very optimistic) Jewish future from the vantage point of the year 2020. This is a device borrowed from Edward Bellamy’s famous 19th century social fiction Looking Backward from 2,000 to 1887 as well as from Theodore Herzl’s futurist tract, Old New Land. It is a device that enables me to demonstrate a logical progression based on real organizations, real people and reasonable policy aims. Most of all, it enables me to forestall the accusation that I am dealing in fantasy. Critics of my imagineered future will have to cite errors in fact or mistakes in logic in order to confound my optimistic vision. There is of course no guarantee that my vision will be realized. This is a question of national leadership and will. But as Herzl said: “if you will it, it is not a dream”!
Tsvi Bisk is an American-Israeli futurist. He is the director of the Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking (www.futurist-thinking.co.il/) and contributing editor for strategic thinking for The Futurist magazine.
He is also the author of The Optimistic Jew: A Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century. Tsvi is available as a lecturer or as a scholar in residence as well as for strategic consulting
http://www.amazon.com/Tsvi-Bisk/e/B001HQ3J68/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
Tsvi Bisk
