Our Sisters' Promised Land by Emmett Ayala;

Author:Emmett, Ayala;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press

A Partial Solidarity: Whom Do We Demonstrate With? Whom Do We Pray With?

Women’s comments in the Jerusalem conference in 1990 about their sense of exclusion in the Peace Camp mirrors profound conflicts that rock from within a society already shaken up from without. Rachel, one of the panelists, said: “As religious women and men in the Left, it is quite tough for us. But I think that from a practical perspective the Left’s disrespect for Shabbat and the sanctity of Judaism cuts the very branch on which the Peace Camp sits. Because the reality is that there are many, many people, including some who do not identify themselves as religious, who do not drive on Shabbat and who don’t light a fire on Shabbat. They may watch television or go to a soccer game; they may do many things. But Shabbat is Shabbat somewhere in their hearts. It therefore frightens me that the argument in the Left is that it is convenient to have activities on Shabbat because it is the only free day and it is important that the activity will get publicity in the 9 P.M. news on television. And therefore it is imperative to break the sanctity of Shabbat to desecrate Shabbat. In this shortsighted act there is an absence of long-term thinking of the future of the Jewish people, and the Left comes out the loser. The practical aspect of connecting to a larger Jewish public comes at the price of making our lives a bit more complicated by avoiding Left activities so that we do not desecrate Shabbat.”

Religious women peace activists reveal that in addition to the Middle East conflict and the question of occupation, Israeli society struggles with internal fractions and discords. The cloak of existential anxieties that hangs over Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors and with Palestinians also spreads over relations between various groups within the state. Anxiety meets (real) fears in ways that often sharpen internal friction, such as those between secular and religious, so that each comes to view the conflict as a matter of the survival of its way of life. To Israelis and to outsiders who are familiar with Israel’s divided political life, the women’s dilemma expresses tensions between two collectives: “we secular” and “we religious.” Each becomes a meaningful collective when the two engage in a dialogue over public culture in Israel, which at times takes on adversarial dimensions that overshadow other solidarities such as “we peace activists.”

The 1990 women’s conference in Jerusalem expressed, in debates about the nature of God and Torah, the fierce struggles between the Left and Right within religious Zionism about Palestinian rights and the future of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. As a women’s conference, however, it also brought forth issues of gender and of the paradox of female unity ceaselessly constructed and differences that constantly intrude on women’s solidarity. Categories such as gender, religion, and political positions are pliable and shifting rather than fixed, so that whenever any of these are employed to provide unity and solidarity they can do so only partially.

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