Guide for the lazy zionist
It’s a hard life being a British zionist. You spend much of your life rapt with guilt at continuing to live in exile and not making aliya to the promised land. But you really like your detached house in Hendon, 4x4, elite private schools for your children, occasional united synagogue attendance and the appalling NW London sense of humour. You really like them. And you know its an old reform heresy, but you’re inclined to think that Hampstead Garden Suburb is in fact Jerusalem . Don’t worry. No-one’s seriously expecting you to up sticks and go and live amongst the gun-toting haredim, fortune seeking Russians and Asian slave labourers that reside in eretz yisrael. No, the really important thing, the essence of Zionist identity, is to buy Israeli cumcumbers. As the Hassidic masters would say, start with just one mitzvah. From then you can move on to yarden houmous (hardly a sacrifice), Osem crisps, halva and golani wine. Then you’ll be a proper zionist. Of course, to become a truly excellent, authentic zionist you’ll need to take some further steps. Crucially, you’ll need to give money to the UJIA and the Jewish Agency. And don’t get hung about folkish notions of each person giving a little. It would be much better if you gave rather a lot. There are lots of poor Israelis in Jews only settlements that need your help. The third pillar of British Zionist identity is a classic: the letter of complaint. The key issue here is quantity rather than quality; fourteen a week is the recommended minimum. The slothful israel defender may wish to restrict themselves to writing to bastions of Bolshevism such as the Guardian and the Independent, but you will wish to go further, paraphrasing Ecclesiates ‘of the writing of hasbara letters there is no end’. Some of your complacent friends may feel there is no need to bombard respectable arab hating journals such as the mail, telegraph and spectator, but you respectfully disagree. After all, if you cannot find enough material to complain about you may fail to make your weekly quota, and may begin to lose your identity. If you feel particularly energetic you may wish to attend pro Israel demonstrations, and put forward motions at public meetings. Generally, however, this is done by young people, who use it as a replacement for a social life.
There you are. Ezeh yofi (a splattering of badly pronounced hebrew can never harm your zionist credentials). You’ve managed to fulfil all the demands of your religion (ok, there are a few ethical things but no-one keeps those), feel good about your identity and all from the comfort of your (extremly large) living room rather than some dusty humid place in the middle east. In short, you’ve managed to have your cake and eat it. And the cake’s kosher.
