Celebrating Israel?

Yesterday, in honor of Israel's 60th Birthday, the local Federation put on a big ol' party down on Fountain Square. For those non-Cincinnatians out there, this is basically the center of downtown with a huge fountain and plaza; it's a great place to have an event. Now, the event, one would assume, would be all about Israel, about celebrating Israeli and Jewish stuff. Except not in Cincinnati. They decided to make it about diversity and celebrating world culture. I'm all for that, I think that should happen a lot more in my city, but it felt like the actual Israel stuff was really put on the back burner. It didn't feel like a celebration of Israel at all. There was one Israeli performer (and to their credit, quite a coup of a performer): The Idan Raichel Project. But, the rest were drumming groups, bagpipers, gospel choirs, jugglers, sword swallowers and fire eaters, and Indian dancers (Indian as in from India, not Indian as in Native American). So, where was the mention of Israel? Other than a couple of Israeli flags (and I mean a couple) and some people walking around in kippot, it would be very difficult to tell that this was a celebration of Israel. It was advertised as "Celebrate As One: A Multicultural Music Festival," and it was multicultural, and perhaps they were trying to illustrate the many cultures that come together in Israel. But, it felt almost like they were ignoring the Jewish part of Israel.

My rabbi was very insistent that members of our congregation attend the festivities; in his words he described it as something good that the Jewish community was doing after so many years of not being a good community and it is something we should support. So I did go; I walked over from my office at 5, met some friends from temple, and hung around for a couple of hours. It was like almost any other festival I've been to: too many people trying to mingle, loud music that made it hard to hear people talking, and bad weather. I left at 7 to go home and take care of my dog not feeling like I'd celebrated Israel and the founding of the Jewish state at all.