I'm a Traitor

Please attend my excommunication

This is an open letter to Haggai Segal, an Israeli author and journalist, who recently threatened American Jews with excommunication in the Israeli weekly Makor Rishon for not making Aliyah (moving to Israel).

Dear Brother Haggai,

From the very beginning, your letter to me was both passionate and clear: “Dear brothers, you are traitors. You are committing treason against us and against yourselves.” I thank you for that and hope to be as passionate and clear in my response.

While I wish you had included our sisters in your condemnation, I immediately understood that the “us” referred to Israeli Jews. However, I wasn’t sure which act of treason we American Jews were guilty of. Was it supporting Israel’s destruction of Gaza? Turning a blind eye to her apartheid policies in the Occupied Territories? Remaining silent as Netanyahu wages war on Israel’s justice system? Ignoring his turning Israel into a vassal of Trump, Inc., fueling antisemitism on the American right and left?

Eventually, however, I figured it out: our act of treason was refusing to make Aliyah and to become Israeli citizens. Guilty as charged.

What I really loved was your ultimatum: Failure to move to Israel by 2031 will result in our excommunication by the Israeli rabbinate. Wow. The Israeli rabbinate.

Haggai, Brother, do you mean the Israeli rabbinate, which sees all forms of non-Orthodox Judaism as illegitimate? The Israeli rabbinate, whose Chief Rabbi, Shlomo Amar, said Reform Jews were “worse than Holocaust deniers”? The Israeli rabbinate, whose former Chief Rabbi, Mordecai Eliyahu, said Reform Jews were responsible for the Holocaust? Or just the Israeli rabbis who call Reform Jews “vermin”?

Honestly, Brother, being excommunicated by these people is a badge of honor. Threaten us with something we care about, like being banned from Chinese restaurants on Christmas.

Writing your ultimatum in Hebrew, a language most of us can’t read, and publishing it in a magazine most of us have never heard of didn’t help your cause either. I suggest you rewrite the ultimatum in English and post it on a social media site like Truth Social. Post something like this:

DEAR BROTHERS! YOU ARE TRAITORS. IMMIGRATE TO ISRAEL EN MASSE IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS OR FACE EXCOMMUNICATION BY THE ISRAELI RABBINATE! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. HS

This might have some impact, but not on me. Here’s why:

First, your waiting period is too long. Five years? By then, I’ll be 80 and likely dead. Shorten the deadline. Try five months instead of five years, or even two weeks. Bullies like you love “two weeks”.

Second, I’ve been reading Molly Crabapple’s book Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Labor Bond. One of the things I’m learning about is the Yiddish word doikayt, or “hereness.” According to Ms. Crabapple, doikayt is the idea that “Jews had the right to live in freedom and dignity wherever it was they stood [...] fight for freedom and safety in the places where they lived, in defiance of everyone who wanted them dead.”

I have to tell you, Brother Haggai, I’m not a Zionist. I’m a doikayt-ist, a supporter of Diasporism, the idea that Jews and all people should be free to flourish anywhere in the world.

Anyway, I don’t begrudge American brothers and sisters who will make Aliyah to avoid excommunication by the Israeli rabbinate, though I hope they will fight for a secular, democratic Israel/Palestine without an Israeli rabbinate and with one law for all her citizens (Exodus 12:49). And I don’t begrudge you for threatening me.

In fact, Brother, if I’m still alive in five years, I’d like to invite you to my excommunication ceremony, which I plan to hold in Amsterdam, outside the Talmud Torah congregation, on July 27, 2031. That’s the same place, month, and day Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated in 1656. It will be fun. You can bring the babka.

L’shalom,

R