Page 5 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - January 19
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We’ve all been there! But I really love this quote “Ah, but you’re Jewish as well” they cry
because of the questions it raises. Here is a man triumphantly.
who felt that his ‘maternal tongue’ was Ivrit, even So now I am British and Jewish.’
though it was certainly not his mother’s language,
nor his own. Indeed, he couldn’t speak it at all. So the situation is this; I can denounce my religion
Marks’s thinking, therefore, reveals something altogether, say I’m Jewish and therefore Israeli
else. That he thought that he belonged in another (but with an English passport), or could I say that
place, with another voice, and somehow couldn’t I have two Motherlands or what? Does merely
live up to that, or had been robbed of it. Of course, being born in a country give me the right to say I
we can (and do) all identify with multiple places am an Englishman? What happens when a
and people. Yet the challenge of Zionism Chinese couple have a child in England? He’s an
undoubtedly caused identity confusion for British English citizen but Chinese through and through.
Jews. Take the following letter, for example, These two examples encapsulate the questions
written to the editor of the Habonim Newsletter in that I want to ask in my study. What does support
1967 in the wake of the Six-Day War (thanks to for Israel among Jews in Britain tell us about
Mike Schnur for helping me find this at Yad Jewish thinking in the post-war world? What does
Tabenkin). A British volunteer, new to the the aliyah of British Jews, and British-Jewish
country, Michael Gordon, explained how he was volunteering in Israel, say about Jewish belonging
feeling in his new home in Israel: and belief? What was Simon Marks’s mother
I have found that being in Israel for about a month tongue, and what does the answer mean to the
has left me completely confused as to who I am Jewish past and future?
and where do I come from…. To answer these questions, as some of you will
….upon entering 109 Hayarkon Street, the already know to your detriment, I have been
Moadon for all foreign olim and now for interviewing olim in Israel. If you would like to be
volunteers, I was handed a gestetnered sheet interviewed, or if you have any comments or
headed, “Welcome to your homeland”’. suggestions regarding the project, I’d love to hear
from you. My email is g.schaffer@bham.ac.uk. In
“Whose homeland?” I ask.
Hebrew or English, as a Briton, an Israeli, as both,
“Your homeland!” reply the distributors. do get in touch
“But I’m British” I say.
“East is East, and West is West…”
But, this is the Middle East
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