I Am What I Am - Identity and Persecution

If you have been paying any attention to politics over the past few weeks, you know that they have been heated. All sorts of nasty names have been thrown around. Political interactions have been pretty heated for some time. Political advocates often demonize their opponents, wanting nothing to do with people like them, comparing them to the evils in their lives, or even some of the worst of history’s evils.

This attitude is far from a modern development. It has been found in every generation. For much of the past two thousand years, the Jewish people were often a primary target of such demonization. Some of the worst offenders in history compared the Jews to rats or to a plague.

And that’s where we are in the Torah this week, after a pharaoh arose, “who knew not Joseph.” Pharaoh told his advisors:

Behold, the Israelites have become many and great, as opposed to us. Let us deal wisely with them so that they may not increase, otherwise in the event of war, they might join our enemies, fighting against us, rising up from the ground.

Those last few words in particular caught my attention, “rising up from the ground,” “v’alah min Haaretz,” in the Hebrew. What rises up from the ground? What would Egyptians have thought of when they heard that phrase in reference to something that they didn’t want to see rising up from the ground? The first thing that occurred to me was likely what was intended, locusts.

The term for locust in Hebrew is Ravah. It is based on the root – Reish-Vav, which has to do with many. Using that Hebrew connection, in the context of worry about something multiplying and attacking, rising up from the ground, a slightly different translation would be more appropriate:

Behold, the Israelites have become an enormous swarm, apart from us. Let us deal wisely with them so that they do not multiply. Otherwise, in the event of a war, they might be added to our enemies, fighting against us, rising up from the ground.

That is a statement that might have been said by numerous rulers throughout history about their enemies or at least about people who are different, whose numbers are growing over and against their own.

In fact, it is regularly used, even today. Talk of “swarming” is all too normative for people who oppose immigration or are concerned specifically about America’s southern border or about refugees coming to Europe. That is how they often describe refugees and migrants. Seeing that term in the words of Pharaoh about the Israelites, who themselves were migrants, escaping famine, resonated with me.

It wasn’t just a matter of Pharaoh worried about a people who might politically cause problems, it was a matter of Pharaoh seeing the Israelites as a dangerous other, a swarm rising up from the ground.

Whenever we want to rally opposition against someone, an individual or a group, it often begins with showing how they are “other,” that they don’t really belong in the primary  group, and then, if that isn’t working or isn’t working fast enough, portraying that person or people as evil or even inhuman. If you consider the worst persecutions in history, the greatest oppressions, from genocidal wars to slavery, from religious persecution to forced marches, all of them have included some form of degradation and some level of demonization, used by those in power to justify the mistreatment they desire to do.

In politics today, it is normal to paint political opponents, not just as having a difference of opinion, but as motivated by evil intent. Some years ago, it occurred to me that political opponent shaming in America almost always resembles Antisemitism, even when the target isn’t Jewish. Antisemitism seems to be the paradigm for rallying opposition against anyone. Consider this:

The worst political opponents are called Nazis, people who hate children, racists, communists or socialists who would destroy businesses or greedy capitalists who hate and oppress workers, people who are called “Un-Christian,” had their group or national loyalty questioned, depicted as war mongers, or depicted as having their purity corrupted, perfidious, and manipulative, perhaps portrayed as someone who doesn’t care about the very lives of children, someone who is immoral, and maybe even called something “other,” such as a member of the all evil opposing party or hated group. This is so normal in our political dialogue that we hardly even pay attention to it.

But you get the idea. That list is the same list that was used against Jews in the 20^th Century by both the Nazis and the Soviet Union, though not all the same terms were used by each, of course.

Have we seen those terms being applied to non-Jewish members of the US Congress? To Presidents or Presidential candidates? It wouldn’t take you more than a moment to find such criticism, from the left against the right or right against the left, from within the Democratic party in criticism of those who refuse to vote with the rest of the party or when the Republicans have control, in criticism of their own too. In primary campaigns? Just… yikes! Difference of opinion these days is tantamount to waving an enemy flag.

Something that is increasingly concerning to me is that whenever any of these charges are made against any political opponent, there is the possibility that someone will remember the Antisemitism to which they’ve been exposed and connect the current criticism to Jews, thus increasing Antisemitism. For example, is there any question that when someone hears that a politician supports Wall Street and Banks? Or supports New York Liberal ideas? That people might think of the criticism, the traditional Antisemitism, that they have heard in relation to Jews?

We are, of course, particularly sensitive to all of this at this time of year, and especially tonight, when we feel our difference from those around us. It is Chinese and a Movie Night! The night when Jews are commanded by Tradition to indulge in salty foods, reminding us of the parting of the sea, using chopsticks that remind us of Aaron and Moses’ staves, which like us they seem to have dropped all the time, all the while eating eggrolls reminiscent of Moses in the basket, but better represented still by wonton soup! The tubs of popcorn at theaters to which we journey, now roughly the size of the great Pyramids, remind us of the abundance of sand across which we journeyed in the wilderness!

As an aside, that sort of Drash on foods and actions is exactly how Jews have retold stories and put meaning behind new traditions, generation after generation. It’s very similar to how the rabbis created Jewish meaning behind the actions of a Roman Symposium Meal with its story telling, courses of foods, and four cups of wine, turning it into our Passover Seder.

Among the movies that we might see this weekend is a fantastic Spiderman Movie, No Way Home. I saw it last week. If you’re a diehard fan of the MCU, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you probably have already seen it. If not, it’s worth seeing and some of us probably will see it again.

Spiderman is one of those characters that is based on a public and private persona, like Superman. The private or hidden side is one for which if people knew the truth, it would cause problems. People would be afraid or act differently towards them. The public persona enables them to lead a normal life, or at least a life devoid of attention paid to their difference.

For generations, that was Jewish life. Also, I should mention, that was life for homosexuals too. If people knew… Well, depending on where you were and when, there could be problems. Your whole life, your whole world could come crashing down. To bring everything together could create problems.

I won’t tell you anything about the Spiderman movie, except that this is how it begins, with that barrier between public and private shattered. On the other hand, this week in our Torah portion, that very thing happens to Moses as well.

Moses’ true identity was hidden, until he was forced to make a decision between his public life and his private persona, the moment he defended a slave and attacked the overseer. He was suddenly a public Israelite. At that point, he had no choice but to flee.

If you think about it, Moses later actually proves Pharaoh’s prophecy correct, right down to locusts rising up from the ground and covering the land. 

Notably, what the story of the Exodus reminds us, and the story of Moses and the overseer in particular, is both that we cannot easily hide who we really are and that when we act like who we really are, we can be like Moses, or Superman, or Spiderman and use our difference, our unique set of skills and understanding, to overcome oppression and evil.

Sometimes, it benefits us to keep the different aspects of our lives separate, perhaps even hidden. We may see ourselves having dual identities, perhaps ones in conflict. Healing may only come with wholeness, the point when we allow what we have hidden to become part of who we are in public.

If you’re a fan of Marvel movies, there is another character who has a profound dual identity, the Hulk, a different times an unassuming calm headed scientist or a raging difficult to control monster, who is immediately recognizable. In a later movie, this duality is resolved by having the two parts exist together, the calm scientist keeping control of the mind as the monster form remains. The character then ceases to have conflicting identities and is happy.

For many Jews, finding this happy medium is difficult in America. They’re always worried about how others will view them. No few Jews have made Aliyah to Israel to alleviate the conflict, the allow themselves to feel comfortable as a public Jew.

It occurred to me, as I considered this, that when God speaks to Moses from the Burning Bush, Moses asks God:

When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?” What shall I say to them?” and God responds, “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh,” “I am what I am,” or perhaps, “I will be what I will be.”

That God, who was known by many names and identities in ancient times, was telling Moses, “I am who I am. I have one identity.” And Moses himself would realize, “I am who I am as well. I have one identity too. I am a Child of Israel.”

It is, I think, only at that moment that Moses ceases to be afraid to be in public, what he had long been only in private, an Israelite.

Shabbat Shalom

 

 

All Too Prophetic - The Night BEFORE Poway

I offered this sermon the night before a 19 year-old man entered a Chabad Congregation in Poway, California, killed an Eishet Chayil, Lori Kaye z"l, and injured Rabbi Goldstein and two others.

Dvar Torah on Sri Lanka Attacks

April 26, 2019

Last weekend, on Easter morning in Sri Lanka, a series of explosions at Churches and at upscale hotels sent the overwhelmingly Buddhist country into panic. Over 250 people were killed in the terrorist attacks carried out by a Muslim Ethno-Nationalist terrorist group that had affiliated itself with Da’esh, the Caliphatist Terrorist group often commonly called “ISIS.”

Da’esh claimed that this attack was carried out in response to the attacks against mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. In that attack, of course, a Christian Ethno-Nationalist attacked worshippers at mosques. Following on the heels of a Christian Ethno-Nationalist attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, we have been increasingly concerned about rising violence based in religious conflict.

Christians generally respond differently to these kinds of attacks than we Jews do. To an extent, this is based on collective memory. We know well that when hatred of Jews becomes violence against Jews, it can spread quickly if we do not assert ourselves and have allies join us. We cherish our allies. When we have lacked them or they have failed to stand with us in generations past, our meager number has been overwhelmed time and again. Jews represent 0.2% of the world’s population. Two-tenths of one percent.

And we respond as a people, not as a diverse faith community as Christians do. We connect to members of Jewish communities everywhere, no matter what kind of Judaism they practice or if they practice Judaism at all. We feel their joy and their pain. We know the struggles of persecuted minorities.

It has been our role in many nations, to lead the fight to defend minority rights, to not only stand at the forefront of the cause of immigrants, but to walk into the waters of hatred, like the midrash tells us that Nachshon did when the sea split, demonstrating faith and courage. We walk into the waters of hatred with faith and courage that we will make those waters split too. We will part the waters of hatred and march ever forward toward the promised land in which our house will be the house of all peoples, welcoming, embracing. Not all of our brethren, of course, are similarly welcoming, but the vast majority are, around the world.

Others do not share this vision. Ethno-nationalists who believe that people who are like them are the only ones who should be able to live among them and who are willing to engage in violence to make that happen are among the greatest of threats to peace wherever they are.

There are certainly very fine people who are devoutly religious Christians, Muslims, and Jews. We know that. But there are no fine Ethno-Nationalist advocates for violence against anyone not of their in-group. It is not acceptable to allow political correctness or concern about harm done to the image of the broader group to avoid both severe condemnation of and taking action against Ethno-Nationists.

We condemn Kahanists. Those who preach Meir Kahane’s hatred were banned from the K’nesset for decades. A party that is somewhat related to it rose up and was again condemned even though it did not take close to the same position. Israelis and American Jews alike are concerned to even have one representative of that political party in the Knesset, as a member of the United Right party, and attention will be paid not to allow hateful views to impact how Israel treats its minority populations. Just as we will all pay attention to how confrontational rhetoric that at times may have crossed the bounds into overt bigotry will or will not result in changes in policy.

We also perceive the threats coming against Jewish communities from Christians and from Muslims in different parts of the world. We cannot understand attacking innocents. The lone example that people can name, Baruch Goldstein, stands out in glaring uniqueness in our people’s long history.

Never have we as a people believed that sacrificing ourselves to harm others will benefit us in the world to come. We’ve never had a tradition in which Jews would willingly sacrifice their own lives to harm members of other religious or ethnic communities. It didn’t even happen before or during the Holocaust when such extreme action under duress may have made some sense. Instead, our tradition repeatedly stressed, even then, “Whoever saves a single life, it is as if they saved the entire world.”

So it is all the more difficult for us to look at what happened in Sri Lanka and understand, how wealthy and successful educated people could, based on their religious views, calmly walk into the midst of innocents and commit atrocities. How a pregnant mother could do so, ending the lives of her two children as well in order to harm police officers. In our tradition, there is no question that we would rather die ourselves. That much has been proven by our history.

We respond to that level of evil, evil that we have seen in generation after generation, so often affecting our community—we respond to that evil with a commitment to not follow it with our own hatred as pained as we have been at many of those times.

Having just come through the holiday of Passover, we easily recall the story to mind. “Let my people go,” we said. “We cried out time and again.” “We walked away.” “When horse and chariot came against us,” we did not turn. “We walked on.” “When Amalek attacked the weak and vulnerable,” we pledged to remember. Only once from the time we entered Egypt to the time we left and wandered the wilderness did any Israelite lift a hand, and Moses fled for having done so. God fought our battles for us.

This Wednesday is Yom HaShoah, the day on which we remember and mourn. We do not do so with pledges of retaliation and vengeance, nor with anger and hatred. We remember to remind ourselves that it is our duty to never let it happen again, to never again allow that kind of hatred that could result in the slaughter of innocents to occur. This year, we not only mark the day amid a time of rising Antisemitism, but at a time when the world mourns the effects of irrational hatred.

It reminds us, as we look back into the darkness of the past and out into the darkness of the world around us, that our mission as a people has long been, “To be a light unto the nations,” a beacon in the darkness. And as Hillel said, “At a time when there is no humanity around you, be a human being.” That is our challenge. Let us be lights of caring and love amid the darkness of indifference and hatred.

Shabbat Shalom.

Enough! Balaam's Ass and Church Conventions

When we teach bible stories to the kids in the religious school, there are many that are difficult for the students to understand or which fail to hold their attention long enough to explain so that they might. This Torah portion contains one of the stories that belies those problems. This Torah portion is one during which they giggle when we discuss it. You see, it features a donkey. But of course, the text doesn’t use that term. It uses “Ass.” Giggle. Giggle. “The rabbi said ‘Ass!’” Yep, it’s even true for adults. The story of Balaam’s Ass is one of the best in the Jewish tradition and certainly one of my favorites, not because I get to say the word “Ass” from the pulpit, but because it is a meaningful story.

The story is about how Balaam riding his donkey encounters an Angel blocking the road. Of course, the donkey sees the Angel. Balaam, looking right at the Angel, doesn’t see it and gets angry with the donkey which does. Balaam then beats the donkey, which then speaks up to stop him. Of course, the fact that this is a TALKING ASS doesn’t register as strange for Balaam either.

By now, you’re all thinking “And I know a few of those…” That’s another reason that adults giggle. Regardless, this Torah portion speaks to us, for sure. But other than enabling us to giggle at its vocabulary and get a jab or two in at those we know who at times act like donkeys, how is this story relevant for us today?

To get there, I’ll ask a question. What does the donkey say to Balaam?

He says, “Look, I am the ass you have been riding all along until this day! Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?” And Balaam answered, “No.”

To what topic does this simple conversation apply? It occurred to me that it applies all too well to one that is important and problematic for Jews today.

Any guesses as to the one about which I speak?

How about if I rephrase what the donkey stated as follows, “Look, I am a Jew that you have known and interacted with years? Have I been in the habit of doing or supporting what you casually accuse other Jews whom you don’t know of doing and supporting?”

This is a good explanation of how antisemitism and anti-Jewish racism found its way to be commonplace at the national conventions of our progressive Christian friends. This story helps us understand how, knowing Jews in their personal lives who act nothing like the way that some in their movements are accusing Israeli Jews of acting, progressive Christians too often nonetheless ignore the Jews in their midst whom they know well and instead act as if even the most heinous accusations make sense of the entire population of Israel.

This week, the United Church of Christ, perhaps the Reform movement’s closest of all of our friends in the Christian community, with whom we regularly interact on almost every social issue that arises, chose to beat us without talking to us. That’s a bit blunt. What a significant majority of its national conference delegates did was to condemn Israel based on false testimony, to advocate for the spreading of falsehoods about Jews and Israel as facts, and to do so without making any effort to reach out to Jews who were loudly protesting their actions until after the fact, if at all.

My friend, Rev. Matt Mardis-Lecroy of Plymouth Congregation, the largest UCC affiliated church in Iowa, reached out to me yesterday to apologize for not conversing with me before the vote which took place earlier in the week. He also sent along comments which he will publish stating that this vote doesn't necessarily bind or represent his church. I appreciate those sentiments, especially since he is the only one of a number of UCC ministers who could have reached out. We have yet to meet to discuss the issues, but this far he, nor any other UCC minister here in Des Moines has offered any statement of significant disagreement with or outright rejection of the contemptible discussions and votes which took place at the UCC national convention.

And they were contemptible. Not only did the UCC vote to divest itself from companies that “profit from the occupation,” a significant majority of UCC voters actually supported a vote that would have deemed Israel an “Apartheid state,” AND the UCC is advocating that the basis of its education concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be the “Kairos Palestine” document which the Central Conference of American Rabbis stated in 2009 was both full of falsehoods and outright antisemitism.

On Wednesday, the CCAR issued what is perhaps its strongest ever condemnation. I am going to read it to you:

With sadness and dismay, we condemn the action of the United Church of Christ (UCC) to target Israel with divestment and boycotts. With this vote, the UCC has now taken sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has explicitly joined the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a contemptible effort to delegitimize the State of Israel and deny the Jewish people's right to statehood. We do thank and commend the small, brave, minority of delegates to the UCC General Synod who voted against the wrongful, self-defeating resolution.

[I add my appreciation for all those in our local UCC churches who would have done so if given the opportunity.]

We note with even greater revulsion the majority vote of the General Synod to brand Israel an apartheid state. We take cold comfort in the fact that the "apartheid" resolution failed for want of the two-thirds majority required for adoption. This vote most closely resembles the odious 1975 United Nations resolution equating Zionism with racism. Though later revoked, it marked the emergence of the U.N. as a venue of implacable anti-Israel hostility.

Reform rabbis are particularly saddened by this development, because of the long-standing and meaningful relationships that many of us and our communities have cherished, and will now be forced to re-evaluate with UCC clergy and congregations. We note with disgust that our UCC colleagues chose to consult a virulently anti-Israel organization, calling itself "Jewish Voice for Peace," rather than their trusted friends and allies who lead the organized Jewish community. Like our UCC colleagues, Reform rabbis are deeply engaged with the plight of the Palestinians, and we strongly support the peace process to achieve two states for two peoples.

We affirm what the CCAR resolved in 2005: "We deeply deplore efforts that blame [only] Israel for the failure of the peace process or that seek to use economic actions against Israel, including singling out for shareholder actions or divestment, companies working in Israel. These shareholder efforts are more likely to hinder rather than advance the peace process. Israel's adversaries may interpret them as endorsing continuation of their strategies of rejectionist and terror. In addition, the one-sided nature of these actions undermines their credibility [,. . .] thereby creating the perception that the sponsoring entities [in this case, the United Church of Christ] seek to delegitimize the very existence of the State of Israel."

This decision is a shameful episode for the United Church of Christ.

Yet, how more shameful was it to invite Rev. Mitri Raheb to offer a keynote speech the day before the UCC voted to support divestment?

Rev. Raheb, beloved by those who advocate for the Palestinian side, believes that Palestinian Christians have inherited all of the blessings offered to the people of Israel in the Torah, that the Jews who exist today are all people from Eastern Europe, descended from Khazars who converted to Judaism, and that today’s Jews have no historical connection to the land of Israel at all. Raheb always refers to Jesus as a Palestinian and not as a Jew.

These things are not representative of a difference in policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they are representative of racism and antisemitism as well as utter ignorance and hate.

Let me be very explicit here. It is both ignorance and racism to argue that Jews as a race descend from Khazars. End of discussion. Racism. And antisemitism as well because this utter falsehood demeans Jews as people. It is therefore clearly anti-Jewish. Finally, the argument that Jews have no connection to the land, an obvious falsehood, is designed and used to instill contempt of the Jews by arguing that the Jews as liars have stolen what never belonged to them and therefore have no rights to any state at all.

My friend, Dexter Van Zile, wrote about Raheb’s speech at the UCC Convention. He said in a recent article for CAMERA.org:

No, Raheb is not a Nazi, but no one who knows about previous efforts to separate Jesus from Judaism can applaud Raheb’s sermon in good conscience. No one who knows anything about the impact of efforts to separate Christianity from its Jewish roots can applaud Raheb’s polemic.

But that's what UCCer's did at the denomination's 30th General Synod.

What makes Raheb’s sermon so much more troublesome is that when he did mention Israel in his sermon it was in reference to “the occupation.” Clearly, Israeli policies have an impact on Palestinians, but nowhere during his talk did he mention Palestinian violence against Israel, only the “suffocating Israeli occupation.”

In sum, Raheb removed Jews from the land of Israel, deprived them of their history and then portrayed the modern Jewish state as the singular source of suffering endured by the Palestinian people.

And for this he got a standing ovation.

Raheb, the people who invited him to speak, and the people who applauded after his sermon engaged in a sinful act of false witness against the Jewish people and their homeland.

Our friends, who have known us a long time, are blinded and are wrongfully beating us. It is time for us donkeys to speak up about it.

Rev. Matt Mardis-Lecroy and I will be meeting in a couple of weeks and I will make an effort along with others among the Jewish leadership in town to reach out to others.

Our message is simple:

We may disagree on the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in the possible ways in which it might be resolved, but the promotion of anti-Jewish racism and traditional antisemitism as well as Christian supercessionism are not an acceptable part of the conversation whether they are being discussed by known White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis, for whom they are standard tropes, or by Palestinian Christian religious leaders, or even by Nobel laureates. And furthermore, study materials concerning the history of the conflict and its possible resolutions, along with any discussion of the nature of the Jewish people or of Israelis as Jews, must be devoid of that racism, antisemitism, and Christian supercessionism to be meaningful and helpful in approaching possible resolutions.

It would be unfair to suggest that only the UCC is guilty of this type of behavior, though the extent of what took place at its recent convention deserves specific condemnation. Unfortunately, the UCC simply has added its advocacy to a number of other churches who have chosen to promote hateful Antisemitic tropes in their anti-Israel pro-Palestinian advocacy efforts. 

This week, as we read the story of the Ass, let us hope Balaam will stop beating us long enough to realize he’s wrong.

Shabbat Shalom!

Israel and the Jews : Jewish Identity at Times of Conflict. A Sermon for Erev Rosh Hashanah 5775-2014

This summer, my daughter Hanna and I had the opportunity to go on the Jewish Federation’s Mission to Israel. We visited the major Jewish tourist sites, of course. We ate schnitzel and falafel like it was going out of style and wandered through many a shop selling tourist oriented chatchkies. We rode “Tornado Boats” over the waves in the Mediterranean off the coast of Caesarea (a lot of fun, but feeling has only recently returned to our backsides). We walked in, floated on, and occasionally dragged rafts down the Jordan River as Druse adults and children held Saturday afternoon Bar-B-Qs all along its shore. We enjoyed hearing Hebrew spoken as a living breathing language in a living breathing modern and amazing Jewish state.

On our first Friday night in Israel, July 13, most of our group attended services in Nahariya at Emet v’Shalom congregation with which Temple B’nai Jeshurun has had a relationship for over a decade. We were welcomed by our friend Dr. Norman Loberant, who specifically thanked the Temple for our financial support over the years. Some time ago, nearly a decade now, I believe, we helped Emet v’Shalom purchase a computer and other office supplies. Generosity is always remembered.

Partnership Together arranged for us all to have dinner in the homes of people involved with the partnership after Shabbat services. Though news had trickled to some of us later in the day, many of our group found out during conversations at those dinners that three Israeli yeshiva students had been kidnapped.

Jews as a people are worriers. We know that the sun is supposed to disappear at night and reappear in the morning, but our inherent anxiety makes us feel better reassuring ourselves with prayers and offerings of thanksgiving during services just in case.

In a now by-gone day, the Jewish joke about this worrying was:

What’s the definition of a Jewish telegram [aka the original form of text messaging]?

‘Start worrying… [stop]

Details to follow.’

And so at those Shabbat dinners, there was anxiety about “our boys,” which only increased over the next couple of weeks, along with whispering about what might be yet to come. Unfortunately, fears that the boys had been captured by terrorists were true and the boys lost their lives. Only a few days after our group left Israel, the latest installment of a very old conflict grew into a war.

Tonight, I would like to talk about the impact of events in the Middle East this summer on Jewish attitudes toward Israel, the rise in both anti-Israel sentiments and hatred of Jews and Judaism, and a bit about what the future holds for Israel in a realigned Middle East. While this all appears to be distressing, there really is some good news out there as we celebrate this New Year, in spite of the ongoing violence in the region.

Jewish Attitudes Toward Israel

The statement is “Two Jews, Three Opinions.” When it comes to Israel, those two Jews are much more likely to express many more than three opinions. I don’t want to discuss the history of debate concerning Israeli policies nor do I remotely have the time. I’d end up closing this sermon by welcoming you to Rosh Hashanah morning services, if I tried to do justice to the topic. Instead, let me simply say that debate among Israelis concerning how Israel should act in regard to Palestinians is extensive, emotional, often heated, intensely personal and full of discussions of Jewish values, morals, ethics and obligations both to Israelis and to Palestinians. Not that different from debate in the US.

In most past conflicts, there has been a relatively easily recognizable divide between the Israeli left and right concerning how the government should respond. Yet, during the conflict this summer, the opposition leader from the Labor Party, Boogie Hertzog, sometimes sounded like he was more assured that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was making the right decisions concerning Gaza than Netanyahu himself was.

At one point toward the end of July, polling showed over 90% of Jewish Israelis supported Netanyahu’s actions in regard to the conflict with most of the remaining 10% advocating for stronger Israeli military action against Hamas.

Where did this sudden change toward “Two Jews, more-or-less One Opinion” among Israelis come from? I think that Rabbi Arthur Green’s letter that he sent to students and friends offers the answer. Just so you have some perspective, to say that Rabbi Arthur Green, a leader of the spirituality movement on the progressive left, leans left is like saying that Rush Limbaugh leans right.

After explaining that he is by no means a fan of Prime Minister Netanyahu and discussing his criticisms of Israeli policies regarding the peace process in the past, Green stated in regard to the recent conflict:

Then we saw the tunnels.  That changed a great deal for me.  Those tunnels were there for the clear purpose of attacking, killing, and kidnapping Israelis (witness the handcuffs and tranquilizers found in them), surely including civilians living in the nearby kibbutzim and towns.  Those are Israelis who are not settlers in post-1967 territories, but within what all of us (except Hamas, of course) recognize as part of Israel.  Those tunnels had to be destroyed, and I give TsaHaL and Netanyahu lots of slack for accomplishing that vital task.  That’s “vital” in the literal sense of “life and death.”

This said, Israelis also could not help but shift their gaze from the south of Israel a bit to Israel’s east and north and see the horrifying things that the army of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) was doing to its opposition there, especially to Yazidis and Christians. The rise of the Islamic State, for Israelis, even for very, very far left—leaning Israelis, has had an impact on their thought process in regard to the battles against Islamist fighters in which Israel has been and continues to be engaged. Thus, Rabbi Arthur Green came to argue something you might hear from someone on the right that:

I have little doubt, my friends, that many within the ranks of Hamas would do the same to us – yes, all of us: “Jews,” not just Israelis – if they could.  True, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood that spawned it are of different and more moderate origins than ISIS.  But that, I’m afraid, is no longer relevant, a distinction without a difference.  The hatred of Jews spewed forth from the Hamas and Hezbollah propaganda machines, including blood libels, literal demonizing of Jewish souls, etc., make it quite clear to me that we, in their fantasy world, would not be protected “dimmis” (subjugated minorities, thank you), but candidates for slaughter. 

The broader view of Israel’s neighborhood also gives a new light on why there is a need for a homeland for the Jewish people to live in peace and security. Green summed up Israeli fears quite accurately when he stated that, he “shuddered” to think of surviving bands of Jews fleeing from these fighters in the way that the Yazidis were doing at the time, literally huddled on a mountaintop with nowhere to go to evade “convert or die” demands and quite possibly with no help forthcoming. He concluded by noting the impact of these conflicts on his own mindset regarding the peace process:

So do I still believe in what I would have said a month ago, that we need to “take risks for peace?”  Yes, I still say it, but you’ll hear it coming out with a lot less confidence, and hopefully no self-righteousness.

The response to that statement from Arthur Green is “Wow!” It’s a change in attitude almost along the lines of Senator Ted Cruz saying that he now thinks the Affordable Care Act might not be such a bad idea. This summer changed many perspectives.

Antisemitism

The events this summer have also created opportunities for those harboring anti-Jewish views to share them openly. Deborah Lipstadt, expert on Antisemitism and the Holocaust, has noted with alarm the recent rise of blatant Jew-hatred in Europe.

[In July and August], pro-Gaza protesters on Kurfürstendamm, the legendary avenue in Berlin, chanted, “Jews, Jews, cowardly swine.” Demonstrators in Dortmund and Frankfurt chanted, “Hamas, Hamas; Jews to the gas!”

On the eve of Bastille Day, a group of Parisian Jews were trapped in a synagogue by pro-Palestinian rioters and had to be rescued by the police. A [couple of months ago] signs were posted in Rome urging a boycott of 50 Jewish-owned businesses. In central London.., anti-Israel protesters targeted a Sainsbury’s grocery, and the manager reflexively pulled kosher products off the shelves. (The supermarket chain later apologized.)…

Seventy years after the Holocaust, many Jews in Europe no longer feel safe.

It is in this context of threats against Israel and a spike in Antisemitism, that Yair Lapid, Israel’s Minister of Finance and the leader of the Centrist Yesh Atid Party, spoke in August at Platform 17, a Holocaust memorial site in Berlin. He asked a question that no few others have asked over the years:

Why didn’t they fight? That is the question that haunts me. That is the question that the Jewish people have struggled with since the last train left for Auschwitz. And the answer – the only answer – is that they didn’t believe in the totality of evil. They knew, of course, that there were bad people in the world, but they didn’t believe in total evil, organized evil, without mercy or hesitation, cold evil that looked at them but didn’t see them, not even for a moment, as human.

As Lapid suggests, for the most part, we tend to think that people around the world and in every circumstance act as we would if we were in that circumstance. We have empathy. We put ourselves in their shoes. Too easily we forget that when we place ourselves in the position of others, we are replacing their understanding with ours, often including hindsight; their faith with ours; their emotions, their experiences, their attitudes with ours.

Yair Lapid argued from Platform 17 in Berlin that empathy makes it difficult for us to understand that real evil can happen. Knowing ourselves, we, in Lapid’s words “cannot believe that human beings — human beings who look like [us] and sound like [us] — are capable of behaving that way. Because good people always refuse to recognize the totality of evil until it’s too late.”

Acting as if we can put ourselves in the place of Hamas fighters does a tremendous disservice to Israel, because Israel isn’t fighting people in Gaza who think or act like us. As a good example, here is a statement by Muhammad Deif, leader of Hamas military operations in Gaza during the recent conflict: 

Today you [Israelis] are fighting divine soldiers, who love death for Allah like you love life, and who compete among themselves for Martyrdom like you flee from death.

We do not think as they do. Meanwhile, Yair Lapid concluded his statement on that Platform in Berlin with words that sum up both Israel’s dilemma and ours as supporters of Israel as it considers how to respond to Hamas’ attacks:

The Holocaust placed before Israel a dual challenge:

On the one hand it taught us that we must survive at any price, and be able to defend ourselves at any price. Trainloads of Jews will never again depart from a platform anywhere in the world.

On the other hand, the Holocaust taught us that no matter the circumstances we must always remain moral people. Human morality is not judged when everything is ok, it is judged by our ability to see the suffering of the other, even when we have every reason to see only our own.

The need to survive teaches us to strike hard to defend ourselves. The need to remain moral, even when circumstances are immoral, teaches us to minimize human suffering as much as possible…

This is all the more true for those who wish to create a two-state solution that will both create a Palestinian state and preserve the Jewish state in the process. Israeli author, Yossi Klein Halevi’s now famous statement meshes well with Lapid’s sentiments. Halevi said, “I have two nightmares about a Palestinian state: That there won’t be one and that there will be one.”

We know that so long as there is no peace agreement that creates at least a two-state solution, if not a three state solution with a separate Gaza, that we’ll be worried that someday, there may no longer be a Jewish state of Israel. An Israel that would include the West Bank and Gaza may not maintain a Jewish majority for long, even without bringing Palestinian refugees into the land.

We know as well that if Hamas rearms in Gaza, it is almost certain that we will see another conflict in the not too distant future. And we can imagine that if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues, the possibility increases of Hamas or some other group taking over in the West Bank and turning it into another Gaza, especially if the Jordanian border were to be controlled by them, where rockets will fly by the thousands into every corner of Israel.

But that is also the central fear connected to Halevi’s “That there will be one.” Can it be assured that a fully independent Palestinian state will not pose an even bigger threat to Israel’s existence than the absence of one poses? That it won’t be taken over by Hamas or even worse militants? Especially, looking across the region today, at the rapid rise of ISIS? The problem at the moment is that the answer to that question is clearly, “No, at the moment it can’t.”

Yet, as messy as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s solutions are, the situation today is not as bad as it sounds. The Palestinian economy in the West Bank is one of the fastest growing in the world. There is a great deal of economic cooperation across the border and there are many Palestinians who’ve struck it rich in the tech industry alongside the Israelis. The two sides are peacefully coexisting, cooperating more and more, and doing so peacefully, even though there are issues that divide them and for which negotiations remain essential.

And there is more good news. First, not only do we as a people survive, but the Jewish state continues to thrive. Israel has the ability to wrestle with choices of how to respond to threats. There is little doubt that it can defend itself against most of them and respond substantially to all of them. 66 years ago, when Israel was founded, and during the wars of 1967 and 1973, there were concerns that the Jewish nation would not long survive. The question now is not if it will survive, but how. Today we can ask, “What will Israel be like a decade from now? How about when it celebrates its centennial?”

And while there have been fears of isolation over the years, Israel is far from isolated today. Sure, votes almost always go against it in international fora, especially in the UN, where it confronts both Jew-hatred and anti-Western voting blocks. However, Israel now has many strategic partners and friends including India and China which have significantly increased their economic and academic ties with Israel in recent months. Israel’s economy is booming, especially the technology sector, where Israeli tech companies impact virtually every corner of the computer and biotech markets. Israel faces a growing problem of wealth disparity. The challenge is to spread the success around a bit more.

Most importantly in the category of good news is the strategic cooperation between Israel and Egypt in the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Never has Israel had an Arab partner whose strategic goals aligned with Israel’s to the extent that it now has in Egypt. It is not as if Egypt and Israel are suddenly best friends, but they do see eye to eye, especially in regard to Hamas. Along with Egypt, Israel maintains excellent relations with the Kingdom of Jordan, which is not only a strategic ally, but a partner in many endeavors. Israel just signed a $15 billion dollar agreement in which Israel will become the primary supplier of natural gas to Jordan. Israel and Jordan already have had strong security cooperation with Israel helping Jordan to defend its Syrian and Iraqi borders. And while relations with Saudi Arabia are not as good, they are far better than they ever have been. The same, by the way, is true of Israeli relations with the Palestinian Authority which is part of an informal alliance of pro-Western anti-Islamist regimes in the region, of which is Israel is now seen as a primary cog, cooperating behind the scenes.

So while we’re still looking at a situation in which Iran moves ever closer to obtaining the capability to quickly produce a nuclear weapon and we’re witnessing ongoing violence and chaos in Syria and Iraq, Israel is not doing as badly as you might otherwise think. Not that badly at all.

I think that Yossi Klein Halevi summed it up well in a recent article for the LA Times when he said, "Here we are, in a traffic jam—in Jerusalem. But sometimes I think about how the most ordinary details of my daily life were the greatest dream of my ancestors." We are Jews living in an age when we can make the age old messianic dream, “Next year in Jerusalem,” be a reality simply by getting on a plane.

While all of us may not agree on just how to accomplish the task, may the coming year be one that sees peace increase in our world, especially in the Middle East, and particularly among Israelis and Palestinians. May it be a year of health and happiness of joy and sweetness for ourselves and for our families and friends.

L’shanah tovah u’metukah tikateivu, May we all be inscribed in the Book of Life for a good and sweet New Year.