Last week, William Safire received the Guardian of Zion award of the Ingeborg Rennert Center of Bar-Ilan University. The Jerusalem Post has published his acceptance speech (“
Communication in our world is going through a Gutenberg moment. Twenty years ago, eight Americans out of 10 read a newspaper every day; today, that’s down to five out of 10. The percentage of newsprint readers is dropping faster than the percentage of Jews, which . . . is dropping fast.
Throughout the civilized world, we have entered the era of the "screenager" — people who get information by the computer screen, the movie screen, the television screen, the cell phone screen, the Blackberry-Bluetooth-You-name-it screen.
This instant transmission of sight, sound and digital data is creating revolutions in media and politics, in education and entertainment and evangelism. It also offers an opportunity, if you will pardon the crass political term, to "broaden the base" of world Jewry.
Thanks to the Internet, world Jewry — those seven or eight million people outside
Israel who used to be called the Diaspora, in addition to some five million Israeli Jews — will be far less scattered or isolated. On the contrary, electronic Jewish communities can be created in screenage congregations of the like-minded. Thus can some of tomorrow’s blessed bloggers spread interest in studying Judaism, or in chatrooms awakening one’s dormant Jewishness, or in making a "virtual aliya" — thereby to begin to reverse the direction of assimilation.
Safire forsees a new electronic world in which Jewish scholars “might seek to apply their understanding of biblical precepts and their talent for learned disputation to the neuroethical dilemmas that are rushing toward us” such as cloning, stem-cell research, and drug enhancements, and thus provide a guide for the newly perplexed.
Coming from the tiny slice of humanity that has maintained its identity the longest in history, it would send a magnetic message of relevance.
Safire ended his speech by suggesting that Israelis might adapt a line from the Pledge of Allegiance in thinking about
The city in which we meet . . . has often changed hands over the millennia. Its sacred sites have been built and destroyed and rebuilt. Its very name has long been a rallying-cry for Jews all over the ancient and modern world.
Jerusalem now stands as symbol of the religion of Judaism, of the stamina and unity within diversity of the far-flung Jewish people, as well as the capital of the vibrant nation of
Israel. Jerusalem is in good and tolerant hands at last; even so, some want to redivide it; others want to internationalize it; still others hope to demographically overwhelm it.
By nationality as a Jewish American, and by religious belief as an American Jew, I join my lifelong Israeli friends in the conviction that their
Jerusalem — our Jerusalem — will remain "one city, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Safire joins a distinguished list of recipients of the Guardian of Zion award, which includes the incomparable Ruth Wisse. Professor Wisse’s 2003 acceptance speech is also worth reading in its entirety.
UPDATE: Soccer Dad emails that Charles Krauthammer also received the Guardian of Zion award. Indeed he did. His 2002 acceptance speech (“He Tarries: Jewish Messianism and the Oslo Peace”) is quite remarkable.