WHAT I OWE TO ZIONISM

WHAT I OWE TO ZIONISM.

By Paul Merkley.

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One day in the early Spring of 1979 there appeared an item on the Department of History of Carleton University bulletin board (just a few steps down from my splendid and spacious office), drawing attention to a forthcoming teaching exchange, open to my University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Just imagine! Me and Gwen and our four children living in Jerusalem, our accommodation paid for by the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University – in exchange for a little lecturing on favorite topics!

It came completely out of the blue!  Gwen signed on after minimal discussion, and the children, ranging from six years old to 18, seemed keen – or at least, they pretended to be. Gwen quickly set to the herculean effort of getting six of us packed and organized. Each of us would be allowed one suitcase, for six months! If we forget Amy’s stuffed animal toy (Sylvester) it would be the end of the world. We would have to find  an English or French-language school in Jerusalem that was open to a Canadian child at Grade One level. We would have to get passports and medical records for all six of us. If we failed to get Michele enrolled as an exchange student at Hebrew University; if we could not work out the procedure for Sharon and for Bob to fulfil in Jerusalem the requirements for their High School year here at home — it would all fall apart.

I had originally assumed that there would be many candidates, and that my candidacy would likely be the least attractive to the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University. But already the chilly effect of anti-Zionism was closing down reason in  all of the professional organizations and the chattering class, so that the thought of living in the Jewish State had little lustre – I mean, in comparison with Italy or Spain or Germany. Non-Jewish candidates like ourselves were a special rarity.

In fact, all four of my children, as well as their mother, came away from our semester in Jerusalem with at least a rudimentary  understanding of the Jewish legacy and a strong commitment to honoring the Jewish people.

Years later, I learned that the field of contestants for that exchange visit in 1980 came down to me! The low prestige of Zionism among academics was already being born out by hassles that take place, year after year, in the various professional and academic associations, where Resolutions of denunciation of Israel for its alleged ongoing crimes against the “Palestinian people” and measures intended to make sure that the members of the various associations never have to break bread with visiting Israelis.

Seeking the company of Zionists is considered very poor form by those who provide direction in the company of academics and intellectuals today. Back in the days of my active teaching at Carleton University, I would make my way every day past an array of fierce anti-Zionist propaganda, contributed by the Student Council and affiliated Arab and Muslim advocacy groups. I cannot say that my vocal Zionism has de-railed my career. But it certainly has not helped it.

As for me, that semester began forty years of steadily deepening commitment to the study of Judaism and the History of the Jews.  I have subsequently undertaken ten trips in all back to Israel – mainly to the visit the Central Zionist Archives. Three scholarly-academic books eventually came out of this research.

All of this immersion and re-immersion  in the History of Israel and in the present State of Israel has simultaneously strengthened my Christian faith. It led me, about two decades after my initial visit, to active membership in the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, which  vigorously advocates on behalf of Israel in the churches. Meanwhile the leaders of the so-called called “mainline” churches have been slipping deeper and deeper into pro- “Palestinian ” advocacy – a hegira that inevitably undoes the commitment to history, to theology and  to truth.

Immersion in the History of Israel should not be undertaken lightly. It is extremely difficult to concentrate the minds of European and American and Canadian and British historians on the simple but powerful fact of the immensity of the History of Zion. There are, for example,  roughly three-and-a-half-millennia more History packed into the History of Israel than there is in the distinguished History from which Canada emerges!

We Christians cannot hope to understand the Jewish identity unless we at least make an effort to sort out the story of the Ancient Egyptians, the Ancient Akkadians, the Ancient Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans,  as well as a succession of Islamic Empires and the British Empire.

And then there is the story of the Creation of the State of Israel, Seventy Years Ago this May.

Quite apart from this matter of the longevity of the record of Israel, there is the simple fact that the History of Zionism carries us right down to the present day. It is full to bursting of the biographies of incredibly heroic men who  committed their entire lives to a cause that was generally regarded as hopeless in their own time. I think of Theodor Herzl, who said of his commitment in 1897 to the impossible programme of Zionism: “He who wants to be right in thirty years must be thought crazy for the first two weeks.” And I think of Chaim Weizmann, and David Ben Gurion and the other giants who dominate Israel’s public life in our own time. Heroism on the scale of that which each and every one of these contributed to their Cause is rare at any time and is virtually extinct today – as far as I can see. For this reason alone, I recommend the study of the lives of the major Zionist figures.

The story leading to the establishment of the modern State of Israel is a bright line running through all of recorded History for the last three millennia and more. An understanding of the roots of Zionism takes serious scholars back to Biblical times, when the Jewish people slowly got used to the idea of being a distinct people, separated by God for a particular purpose.

Zionism is the word that correctly describes the process that brought Israel back to existence as a nation in 1948 after many centuries of diaspora. Zionism is the correct word for the spirit of loyalty that has sustained her ever since, despite her patently impossible situation, surrounded by an utterly hostile world which Jews are not permitted to enter.

Working on the story of Zionism is not a matter for the faint of heart. “Zionism” is there in the earlies books of tanaach – Hebrew Scripture. It is the force that gives meaning to the disjointed troubles of the Patriarchs. It is the Cause to which the LORD calls David and the Prophets. It sustained the People of God thereafter through three millennia of challenges. And in my own lifetime it has issued in the re-establishment of the People of Israel in eretz Israel – where their history began.

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