Israel does not mean very much to me. What Israel could be is another matter.

Partly, this is because I have an uneasy feeling about the idea of any particular place being holy or spiritual as opposed to any other place. Inevitably, my relation to Israel is connected to the question of my being Jewish. My feelings about this question are perplexing and unresolved. To explain all this, I must begin with my father, his family and how their history became my history.
 
My father was born of a Jewish mother, but he grew up to be an anti-Semite. This may be putting it too strongly. His view on the Jewish religion was disbelief, contempt for rabbis and profound indifference. He denied being Jewish and did his best to cover it up. My father changed his name to Charles Walker from Solomon Vulkovich some time in the 1930s. All four brothers, the sister Dorothy and the parents became Walkers also.
 
The first sense of my Jewishness came from my mother who herself was raised by a lapsed Catholic and an indifferent Lutheran. She had more than a passing interest in the accoutrements of colloquial Jewish identity picked up by association with my father’s siblings. Perhaps she was attracted to the novelty of Jewish life in Detroit known for the anti-Semitism of Henry Ford and Father Coughlin in the 1930s or maybe she thought it was just the right thing to do. My sister and I were not raised in a Jewish home. And although we celebrated Christmas and Easter, I can’t say it was a Christian home either. The holidays were about toys and candy. The holiday observances were habits my mother brought with her into the marriage. For my dad, celebrating Christian holidays was altogether secular. Maybe it was about passing, which he thought was good for business. He sent hundreds of Christmas presents to buyers and business associates. Nancy, my wife, and I received a fine set of copper bottomed-stainless cookware and our first color TV as recipients of this Christmas giving ritual.
 
For reasons unknown to me, my mother took pains to introduce us to her idea of Jewish culture. This amounted to a hodgepodge of ethnographic clichés:
o    Jewish men are good providers but helpless around the house;
o    All Jewish grandmothers have grandchildren who are geniuses;
o    Jews place great value on education, but better to face life with a good profession;
o    If you want to find a good Chinese restaurant open on Sunday, ask a Jew.
 
This was held together with an introduction to Jewish delicacies, hard salami, rye with seeds, bagels and lox, dill pickles, etc. The jewel in the crown was exposure to Jewish humor. Weren’t all comics Jewish? We got to hear cleaned up versions of burlesque routines and shaggy dog stories from the borscht circuit with the Yiddish parts translated.
 
I did not think much about Jews, World War II and the Holocaust until I was in high school. It was then that I first saw documentaries about the Holocaust on television. The images of stiff, rubbery, naked and emaciated bodies being bulldozed into mass greaves; the pictures of mountains of shoes, suitcases and eyeglasses frightened me and made me ill. When I think about it, I can still see these images. Before seeing these pictures, I did not know anything about the Holocaust. I also did not know where the rest of my Jewish family came from. Some of the victims I saw in these documentaries might have been members of my extended family. I was saddened and moved to grieve, but there was no one I knew to grieve for. My dad kept all information about his family a secret; perhaps he did not know much either. His mother and father were already established in America before World War II. These feelings are still unresolved for me and became painfully clear when, as an adult, I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

At no time in his life was my dad willing to talk about his family, being Jewish or the Holocaust.
 
My response to the Holocaust as a boy was deep sadness and irrational anger. I hated Germans, particularly the ones who said they knew nothing or could not do anything about it. I hated Germans for more than ten years until I realized that any people who give uncritical support to authority and the state are capable of genocide. Add to the mix irrational fear along with a history of violence, and Kristallnacht and death camps are possible anywhere.

My view in college was that the Jews needed a place they could not be pushed out of, installed in a ghetto, or shoved into boxcars to be gassed and incinerated in places like Auschwitz. I believed then and I still believe that Jews have a right to survive, no matter what. However, my views on how to exercise the right of survival have changed.
 
I grew older. I became interested in fundamental philosophic questions about origins, and the purpose of life. As to religion, I have come to believe that a man should be allowed to have more than one. However, I was skeptical about the revolving door of conversion to eastern sects among my comrades in the 60s and considered starting, as a joke, a dues paying religion of the month club. Later, in graduate school, I became friends with some very thoughtful Jews. I learned to glimpse eternity in the celebration of a Shabbes meal on Friday evenings. I looked forward to the celebration of freedom at the Passover Seder, while questioning the need to destroy innocent Egyptians to make a point. For me, next year in Jerusalem did not mean looking for a seat special for the flight early in January, but an aspiration for freedom of all people. I especially was moved by the idea of making atonement for the wrongs I committed over the year, making restitution and asking forgiveness rather than having my “sins” absolved by a priest and through the flesh and blood of a God who became man. I came to think of myself as Jewish. Initially, this meant Jewish enough for the Nazis to take me off to the gas chamber too. Now my Jewishness is about believing that any God worth recognizing is to be wrestled with and that the covenant requires that God too be accountable to reason, truth and justice. Even if God isn’t, I have an obligation to make the world a better place and be accountable to the same reason, truth and justice I expect from the God. As to the rest of it, the dietary laws and the like, this was mere dross.
 
For many years, I accepted the fact of Israel’s existence as a necessary commitment so that Jews everywhere would have a place for sanctuary. I realized that Palestinians had been displaced from their homeland, but was willing to accept that as a necessary evil. This was easier to do when secular Jews predominantly controlled Israel. Although even then I was troubled by reports of European Jews treating Sephardic Jews like second-class citizens. There were stories of Jews and Muslims who had lived together peaceably for generations. My understanding that militant Palestinians vowed to drive the Jews into the sea eased my conscience also.
 
While I still think there is need of a place for Jews to go for shelter from the evil of anti-Semitism, I have become troubled by the means used to accomplish this end. Israel was created by those willing to commit acts of terror to achieve their end. How is this different from the terrorism of the Intifada? The honest answer is there is no difference.
 
I have reconsidered my own situation of late, Jewish enough for the Nazis, but not Jewish enough to be accepted by those who run the show in Israel. I have thought further about several questions. If Zionism and the Jewish state provide full rights of citizenship on the basis of religion while denying this to others, why should this not be considered racism? If the rights of a homeland do not extend to Palestinians, how can justice be served? If Israelis and Palestinians cannot appreciate their common history of oppression by Europeans, how will the wounds ever be healed? If all theocracies inevitably lead to idolatry, how can the need for a secular state be denied? If a secular state is possible, not just an ideal, why is there need for more than one state? I have taken forty or more years to move from passive acceptance of a Jewish state, to my conviction that survival at the expense of justice is a bad bargain. I believe that survival without justice for all is a weak foundation to build on. For now I am a proto-Jew without an Israel. I look forward to creation of a secular Palestine/Israel where both survival and justice are served.