This is the week between Yom Hashoah and Yom Hazikaron followed immediately by Yom Ha’atzmaut. As my dear friend and colleague, Rabbi Menachem Creditor said, earlier in the week it is almost like the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe. These are days set aside to contemplate. To think deeply about the Holocaust and its legacy, the birth of the State of Israel, My father used to describe sitting by the radio the night that the UN voted to partition the land of Israel and create what would become the State of Israel. To hear him tell the story, it was awesome. A modern day miracle. We all know the story. Out of the ashes of the Holocaust, the real, actual ashes, Israel was born.
That story is complicated. That birth led to complications that to the present day we wrestle with. Maybe that is appropriate since the word Israel, Yisrael, means one who wrestles with G-d and man.
Wrestle we must. My own history, as you know, with Israel is complicated. Tonight’s remarks are dedicated to the memory of Yuval Berger. We had dreamed of living half the year in Israel and half the year in the States, working with Jewish teens so that they would love Israel and the Jewish people. Only part of that dream was realized. I still get to work with Jewish teens and I love it. He died a hero during the incursion into Lebanon in 1983.
I often say that if I really thought I could have solved peace in the Middle East I should have gone to the Kennedy School or the Fletcher School and done it. But I am a small town rabbi, what do I know about peace? What right do I even have to express an opinion?
Israel is complicated. There is the land of Israel. Eretz Yisrael, the children of Israel, bnei Yisrael, and the state of Israel, medinat yisrael. And the people of Israel, Am Yisral. Am Yisrael Chai, the people of Israel lives. We do.
I have a relationship with each of those, the land, the children, the people and the state of Israel,
The land of Israel is beautiful, varied, rugged. I lived there. I have hiked it, camped in it, run a marathon there around Yam Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee. The stars in the desert near Masada are like no others. They are awe-inspiring and they make the words of our Torah and our prayers come alive. Sometimes, we read by detractors that Jews don’t have a historical connection to the land of Israel. That’s BS. It is simply not true. The archaeology alone tells us otherwise. So don’t let anyone tell you differently. Similarly, I get concerned every time I ride spaceship earth at Disney and it tells us that if we can read we should thank a Phoenician for inventing letters. No, even in my fifth grade public school history class we learned about the Hebrew Alef Bet. I swell with pride. Organizations like CAMERA help us sort out fact from fiction.
The children of Israel, the people of Israel I am deeply connected to. That’s a good thing since I am a rabbi. Even as people, including the Orthodox rabbinate and the state of Israel continue to debate who is a Jew. When I lived in Israel that was a debate about me. Given my name is Margaret and mother’s name was Nelle and her mother was born in Ireland, I needed to prove I was Jewish to even consider marrying Yuval. It was painful, So very painful and some of that continues for others raised as Jews, others who have chosen to be Jews, who want to live in Israel as Jews. We recognize that it was a mixed multitude that left Egypt with the Israelites, that there have always been others who have joined with us.
I swell with pride thinking about our being the People of the Book, our commitment to education, to science, to tikkun olam. I swell with pride with Gal Gadot or the recent third place runner at the Boston Marathon. I swell with pride thinking about the innovations that come out of Israel, the cell phone, the research at Hadassah Hospital, including new developments with T-cells and immunotherapy that might just prolong my own life.
The state of Israel is even more complicated story and this is an especially complicated time. But I as a rabbi, even a small town rabbi, have an obligation to speak up and speak out.
As T’ruah, Rabbis for Human Rights, an organization I have supported for more than a decade, pointed out, “In this tenuous and difficult moment, we must not turn away — we have a responsibility to be in relationship with the State of Israel and help ensure that it upholds and protects the human rights of all its residents. Our tradition compels us to address these contemporary issues and hold ourselves and Israel to this standard.”
I get concerned when organizations I have supported for decades are threatened. Women of the Wall, founded in 1988, the same year I was married. Parents Circle Family Forum comprised of members who have lost family members to the ongoing conflict promotes dialogue and reconciliation. https://www.theparentscircle.org/en/pcff-home-page-en/
I swell with pride when I see every day Israelis out protesting for justice. Next week we will hear that our Bar Mitzvah chose his portion to read “You shall not render an unfair decision, do not favor the poor or show justice to the rich. Judge your kinsman fairly.” (Lev. 19:15). In Numbers we are told: “There shall be one law for you and for the resident stranger; it shall be a law for all time throughout the ages. You and the stranger shall be alike before God.” One law, like for Israelis and Palestinians? Israelis and other? Why are we “othering”? In Deuteronomy it tells us, “Tzedek, Tzedek tirdof. Justice, Justice shall you pursue.”
People sometimes wonder what the modern implications of these ancient texts are. These are the implications. The State of Israel needs to have just courts and a just judicial system, precisely because it is mandated in Torah. Period. I stand in solidarity with hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have packed the streets for 15 straight weeks demanding nothing less, and as they continue to do so, even after the temporary judicial overhaul freeze went into effect in late March. I stand with the Union of Orthodox rabbis who condemned the increasing violence. Does that surprise you? I stand with the rabbis of the Reform Movement, the Conservative Movement, the Reconstructing Movement, all of whom have issued statements condemning what appears to be a power grab. I stand with American Jews, and Israeli Jews who came out in droves in the US to protest the recent appearance of Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich. That was not a little protest. While there is little agreement on much in Judaism, 73 Jewish groups issued a statement that read: “We pledge to not invite Smotrich to speak at our congregations, organizations, and communal institutions during his visit and to speak out against his participation in other fora across our communities.” Why are people, both here and in Israel so opposed? https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2023-03-09/ty-article/.premium/over-70-u-s-jewish-groups-vow-to-shun-far-right-israeli-minister-invoking-kahane/00000186-c596-d430-ade7-e79f40950000
Recently, in my role as police chaplain, I was called to a murder scene. I thought that is what I would be speaking about tonight. I started reading a book called On Killing but it isn’t helping. It seems we have been trying to figure this out since Cain and Abel. We were unequivocally commanded, “Thou shall not murder.” But it doesn’t seem to be enough. People still murder. I cannot seem to understand why we don’t understand that everyone is created b’tzelem elohim, in the image of God, that everyone has a spark of the divine inside. I cannot explain how one person can deliberately kill another. I cannot explain how that murder happened. Or the Holocaust where 6 million Jews were systematically murdered. Or the shooting at school in Nashville or a bank in Louisville or a dance studio in Alabama. There is no one fix. It is not just mental health or video games or violence on TV or easy access to guns.
These murders are not limited to the United States. I mourn previous violence committed in Israel. I mourn the death of Yuval in 1983 by a terrorist bomb. I mourn the massacre at the mosque by Baruch Goldstein in 1994. Attacks like these have led to a continuiing, escalating cycle of violence.
I mourn the murders of Rina, Mail and Lucy Dee. The police beating of Palestinians during Ramadan at the Al Aqsa Mosque, the pogrom, no other word for it in the Palestinian village of Huwara that I spoke about several weeks ago. The violence continually seems to be escalating. What I learned working on my thesis about generational trauma, is that peace cannot come unless the people feel safe. We cannot have an end to violence until there is lasting peace. We cannot have lasting peace without safety and without the recognition of basic human rights for both peoples, for all peoples. We are all created b’tzelem elohim, in the image of God.
Our tradition is based on creating peace. We are told to “Seek peace and pursue it.”
Rabbi Amy Eilberg teaches, “Notably, two commandments are explicitly articulated not as responses to a particular situation, but as imperatives to be followed – indeed, pursued – at all times. We are not only to act in accordance with these imperatives passively when the occasion arises. We are to actively seek out opportunities to engage in them. The two cases are the pursuit of justice, of which it is said, “Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Deut. 16:20) and the pursuit of peace, of which it is said, “Seek peace and pursue it” (Ps. 34:15). “
Our liturgy is full of references to it. It is the hope of Jews everywhere. We sing Oseh Shalom, Sim Shalom, Shalom Rav. We sing modern songs, Yerushalyim Shel Zahav. L’shanah Ha’ba’ah. My favorite piece of liturgy is, “Ufros Aleinu Sukkat Shlomech, Spread over us, the shelter of Your Peace”. We read the poem that follows in Siddur Sim Shalom by Jules Harlow that reminds us that each month on the new moon and each Shabbat that all people will worship God and search for peace in Jerusalem. And that God, too seeks peace in Jerusalem.
We pray that one day everyone will sit under their vine and fig tree and none shall make them afraid.
But in order for that to happen, we must stay informed. We must stay engaged. We must work for peace. We must run after it. We must pursue peace and justice. May this be so as we continue our celebration of Israel at 75.