The Hope

The Israeli national anthem is called “HaTikva”—“The Hope.” Back home in the United States, all the talk is about hope, and change, and potential. “Yes, we can,” everyone is chorusing as they cry in joy, hug strangers, pinch themselves to make sure it really happened: we just elected the first Black President of the United States, we ousted a Republican administration that rolled back civil liberties and trampled our Constitution to pursue war.

In our Israel Seminar, a course designed to explore the formation of the Jewish State and to see how conceptions of Israeli national identity have changed over time, we have been discussing the challenge Israel faced, at its founding just 60 years ago, in creating a unified nation out of a collection of disparate ethnic, religious, and political groups. With a commitment to open immigration for all Jews, Israel faces the unique challenge of absorbing newcomers and integrating them into Israeli culture. Israel can be seen as a melting pot or as assimilationist or as multicultural. It’s not simple, and it’s not static.

The United States, of course, is touted as the world’s great melting pot, a unique meritocracy where anyone can “make it.” On November 4, many Americans, for the first time in their lives, felt that this was true for them, that the American dream included them, that the promise of “America” was extended to their lives, their dreams, their hopes. This morning (6 am Israeli time), as I read the results online, I felt a sense of pride and promise in my own country that I think was only sharpened by being so very far away—in so many ways—from the pluralist democracy that just elected Barack Obama to the highest office in the land.

You can practically hear the fife and drum in the background, I know, but I do think the American project—a commitment to pluralism and a Constitution that is both enduring and flexible—is an admirable one. I don’t want to live anywhere else (as beautiful as Israel is). My only disappointment today comes from the cracks in the unity that Obama praised in his speech. In California especially, the American commitment to pluralism, the project of allowing disparate communities with disparate voices to live side by side, was rejected with Proposition 8, the anti-gay-marriage ballot initiative.

President-Elect Obama addressed the nation on Election Night with a message not only of hope but of unity. A nation of so many ethnicities and identities, America is not, he said “a collection of red states and blue states” but remains the United States of America. He called his election a call to “reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many, we are one.” He asked what will happen “if our children should live to see the next century.” “What change,” he pondered, “will they see?” My hope, voiced from Israel, is that the change we will see is the change we have begun to make with this election, a change toward greater pluralism.