May 1, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 82 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session
THE 72ND ANNIVERSARY OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL; Congressional Record Vol. 166, No. 82
(Extensions of Remarks - May 01, 2020)
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[Extensions of Remarks] [Page E418] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] THE 72ND ANNIVERSARY OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL ______ HON. A. DONALD McEACHIN of virginia in the house of representatives Friday, May 1, 2020 Mr. McEACHIN. Madam Speaker, l rise today to include in the Record a statement from Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman, founder and spiritual leader of Temple Lev Tikvah in Virginia Beach, and the representative of the Jewish Community at the City of Chesapeake's civic occasions. As the State of Israel celebrates its 72nd anniversary in its eighth decade, we miss the prophetic voice and heroic presence of Amos Oz (1939-2018), one of Israel's premier authors whose books were translated into forty-four languages. His life mirrored the history of the reborn Jewish state out of the monumental Holocaust that consumed a third of the Jewish people. He was the very embodiment of an inspiring Israel and its acknowledged representative to the world, with foreign leaders seeking his perspective on events involving Israel. He fought in both the 1967 and 1973 wars. Oz was honored with significant international literary awards, though the Nobel Prize somehow eluded him while being a perennial nominee. He served as Professor of Hebrew Literature at Ben-Gurion University in Be'er-Sheva though he was courted by Jerusalem's Hebrew University from which he graduated. Oz was a great humanist and a distinguished member of the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism. He was born in Jerusalem during the British Mandate to Fania and Dr. Arye Klausner, a gifted linguist of sixteen languages. They immigrated to then-Palestine from Eastern Europe. Oz's great-uncle was Professor Yosef Klausner, the Hebrew University's renowned scholar of the Second Temple period. Following Fania's suicide at age thirty-eight, Oz opted at age fifteen to leave his Jerusalem home by himself and move to Kibbutz Hulda where he changed his surname Klausner to the Hebrew Oz which connotes courage. It befitted the kibbutz's pioneering Labor ideology and its break with the European experience to which his parents were attached, particularly its culture. It was a turning point for Oz who was raised on Zeev Jabotinsky's Revisionist ideology of manifest Jewish power. He consequently began identifying with the ``new Jew'' finding fulfillment in returning to till the ancient homeland, in contrast to the perceived Diaspora Jew represented in his own family. There is an intriguing early religious chapter in the author's life attending an Orthodox elementary school while his family was secular and even anti-religious. He was exposed to working class students who regarded him as an outsider, a rejection he later experienced in the kibbutz. His second-grade teacher, who deeply impacted him, was the famous poetess Zelda, whom Oz described as his first love. In his book, A Tale of Love and Darkness, Oz recalled the dramatic vote at the United Nations on November 29, 1947 to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, which the Arabs refused to accept. His father, Arye, was moved to tears lying next to him in bed telling Amos that he would never be exposed to anti-Semitic attacks the way he and Grandpa Alexander were in Poland with their pants forcibly removed by hooligan students at his high school. Oz witnessed the unforgettable night of the critical vote with his neighborhood gathering to listen to the one available radio. His family's small apartment was home to about twenty people during the 1948 War in Jerusalem, all enduring hardship with some losing dear ones. Oz, an iconic Israeli figure, was a peace activist and a ardent supporter of a two-state solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, regarding it as vital to Israel's best interests politically as well as ethically, no less than ``a matter of life and death for the State of Israel'' that must retain a Jewish and democratic identity. He feared for Israel's future internally as well as externally, regarding Judaism's genius in its Biblical prophets' humanistic ideals and moral sensitivity towards society's weak and disenfranchised. Oz advocated the curbing of the establishment's raw power ``to cause pain.'' He was gravely concerned for the growing conflict between those advocating for strict Orthodox Jewish law (Halacha) and the great majority opting to preserve democracy. He lauded secular Israel's significant and multiple accomplishments in revitalizing the Hebrew language and culture, establishing a flourishing modern Jewish state recognized as the world's start-up nation with such humble beginnings and acute security concerns. Oz's sharp arrows were aimed not only at the political Right but also at Israel's Socialist founders for failing to acknowledge the full tapestry of the Jewish heritage, with patronizing treatment of the Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews who had a moderate approach toward religion and diversity. He bemoaned the worldwide rise of dangerous fanaticism of Islamic fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, white supremacy, racism, and xenophobia. Amos Oz, the secular prophet of pain and promise, doom and deliverance, concludes his last book, Dear Zealots, with whom he sought dialogue, on a stirring message of both searing pessimism and consoling optimism, ``I am extremely fearful for the future . . . But I like being Israeli. I like being a citizen of a country where there are eight and a half million prime ministers, eight and a half million prophets, eight and a half million messiahs. Each of us has our own personal formula for redemption, or at least for a solution . . . What I have seen here in my lifetime is far less, yet also far more, than what my parents and their parents ever dreamed of.'' Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman is founder and spiritual leader of Temple Lev Tikvah (Heart of Hope) in Virginia Beach. It meets at The Church of the Holy Apostles, the only world's community of both Episcopalians and Roman Catholic. He was born in Chu, Kazakhstan (USSR) in 1945 to Polish Holocaust survivors. He and his family lived among Jewish refugees in Poland, Austria and Germany, prior to moving to Israel in 1949. He is a member of the Virginia Beach Human Rights Commission. ____________________