The Cerebral Exile or, The Forgetfullness of Being

Yishai Fleisher, a founder of Kumah, and a broadcaster at Israel National Radio (aka Arutz 7) has a great op-ed in Ynet:-

A state of exile

A methodical exile is taking place; the exile of location and exile of the mind


Excerpts -

...But what then is a full exile? A full exile is when the connection between the land and the people is forgotten. If there is no memory of prior ownership, no longing to return, no stories told to children, then the exile brought about by an enemy nation which wished to impose a disconnect between the people and its land comes into full effect. If the very fact that the nation has been exiled is forgotten, then that is true exile.

The idea that the loss of collective national memory brings true exile has a surprising corollary: a nation can be in a state of exile even while living on its original soil! Like a person suffering from amnesia while sitting in his own house – a nation may be so utterly without memory that it has no idea that it is at home.

Such is the case in Israel today. The memory that has been carried in our collective conscience for two thousand years has steadily worn away and no longer serves to keep the exile at bay...

...As we have noted, physical exile is one thing, but cerebral exile, the cutting off of memory is the final guillotine of exile. Here, the groundwork for forced forgetting has been in the works for decades. On the one hand, the Jewish people's historical connection to the land has been systematically un-taught. In schools, many Jewish children learn to hate the Bible, learn a revisionist anti-Zionist history, and are simply never taught the stories and the emotional connection to places like Rachel's Tomb. On the other hand, a new milieu and accompanying lingo fill the void left in the young mind: Occupation, Palestine, Peace, and Post-Zionism. Our history and with it, our emotional connection to our land, is being erased.

...Today, those who still teach and preach a connection with these places are branded extremists, so their message makes little sense to our people. Say the word "Hebron" to a young disconnected Israeli and he will only conjure up an occupied Arab city with a few cantankerous crazy Jews who cause all the problems. The majesty of Hebron's history from Abraham to King David to the first Hasidic settlement of 18th century, to the murderous Arab riots of 1929, to the valiant return in 1967, is completely lost on him. It is no wonder then that for him it makes sense to "give it back" since nothing seems to tie us to these places in the first place.

Today's post–Zionist leaders have made Israel into a State of Exile, exiling our people from their homes, exiling our land by cutting it off and giving it away, and exiling the minds and hearts of the Jewish people by teaching them to forget. After waiting for two thousand years to return, Jews are being taught that Hebron isn't Jewish, that Bethlehem isn't Jewish, that Nablus isn't Jewish, that the Temple Mount isn't Jewish. A methodical exile is taking place, the exile of place and the exile of mind.