zion

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Unlike Israeli Jews, I grew up as a religious minority, among white Christians in Michigan. While I suffered from anti-Semitism, I also learned how to create my own Jewish identity. Regrettably, I was sent to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America for graduate studies. In 1987-88 I took a year in Israel and during that time asked my mother and grandmother to visit. 

I thought that having three generations of women in our family together in Jerusalem would be special. My mother and her mother declined. At the time, I did not understand how to interpret this but now consider that Jewish nationalism may have been contrary to their Jewish identities. Neither had ever spoken with me about Israel. 

THRESHOLDS

I discovered The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism by Marjorie Feld and am waiting for the Byker Library to order this for me. Feld explores how each new generation of dissenters feels that it is the first to question support for Israel. The NYU Press summarizes Feld’s work this way: “Throughout the twentieth century, American Jewish communal leaders projected a unified position of unconditional support for Israel, cementing it as a cornerstone of American Jewish identity. This unwavering position served to marginalize and label dissenters as antisemitic, systematically limiting the threshold of acceptable criticism. In pursuit of this forced consensus, these leaders entered Cold War alliances, distanced themselves from progressive civil rights and anti-colonial movements, and turned a blind eye to human rights abuses in Israel.”

TRUE FOR ME

Following the betrayal of my family involving Jewish organizations, I feel that I don't belong in the Jewish community. When I think of being Jewish and what holds me, it is my parents alone. In some deep regard, my parents are the only community that I have ever had. If my parents did not have a Jewish star on their gravestone, I would walk away and never look back. 

In my lifetime, Jewish communal organizations have caused me more pain than joy. And so-called leaders in Israel today are trading on Jews for a Christian Armageddon. Not my idea of safety -- nor of God. I needed Feld’s book decades ago, when I was marginalized in rabbinical school and earlier at JTS for not conforming to their miserable expressions of Jewish life and ideology. And I needed her book before that too, so I could have been spared JTS altogether. 

THE HAILE SHUL

My discovery of Feld’s book dovetails with a proposal that I wrote between September and December 2024 to design, build, and launch a new non-denominational and non-partisan synagogue in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I want to name this after my mother, Haile Sandra Zuppke Plafkin, on a campus named for her and my father, Roger Allen Ginsberg Plafkin. This Shul will foster communal restoration and growth through Jewish liturgy and musical arts.

UPDATE

Reading Feld's book reminds me that I don't need to walk away and never look back. I just need to walk away from ideologues who do not represent me.