This is personal. For all of us. It is gut wrenching. As others have said this week, including Rabbi Wendi Geffen at the gathering of solidarity in Glencoe, Israel is 6208 miles from here. And while we often talk about 6 degrees of separation, for us, this is just one or two. Everybody knows someday directly affected. Who has family in Israel? Who knows someone injured or captured? Who knows someone who was killed? Who knows someone in Gaza? That includes me. So, this is personal. Currently we have two family members in Israel. One is the cousin of our Israeli niece who is one of the hostages. One is my grandnephew who is a lone soldier. You don’t have to agree with me. But you do have to listen.  

Once, I drove down the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut. The song “Ha Milchama Ha Achronah, The last war” written about the Yom Kippur War, was playing on the radio. Ani mavtiach lach, yalda sheli k’tanan, I promise you my little girl, this will be the last war. I found myself sobbing. What about my little girl? Would it ever be the last war? Could I make this promise? I got off the highway.  

The Yom Kippur War, 50 years ago, was not the last war. Nor was the incursion into Lebanon 40 years ago. An almost war when I lost my first finance, my first love, to a terrorist bomb. Nor were the “intifadas”. If a generation is 20 years, it has been 2 generations already since Yuval was killed. 40 years. 

Lador vador. From generation to generation. It is often a rallying cry.  

40 years is also considered the age of wisdom. At 40 you can begin to study mysticism. (If you are male and married).  

40 years. What have we learned? The young people murdered look like we looked. They could be our children and our grandchildren. They would be the third and fourth generation 

Once, I was sitting in a Holiday Inn in Waldorf, Germany on a Sunday morning. CNN was on in the background. It was the only channel I could understand. I was working on my rabbinic thesis. On the 13 Attributes of the Divine. Adonai, Adonai, El Rachum v’chanun…The Lord, the Lord G-d is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, filled with lovingkindness and truth, extending love to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. That’s what we say for the selichot prayers that begin the High Holy Days and continue throughout Yom Kippur at a fever pitch. That’s what we chant on festivals before the open ark. That was my Bat Mitzvah portion and why I became a rabbi. We are told we are to be like G-d. We are to walk in G-d’s ways. We are to clothe the naked like G-d clothed Adam and Eve. We are to visit the sick, like G-d visited Abraham. We are to bury the dead like G-d buried Moses. This week I saw a plea to show up at three cemeteries in Israel to help dig graves. Burying the dead is considered chesed shel emet, lovingkindness of truth, two of those 13 attributes.  

But there is more to this verse: “yet not remitting all punishment, but visiting the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.” (Exodus 34:7) 

Once, before there were terms like “trauma informed care” and “generational trauma” I sat in that hotel room listening to CNN. Israel had just “accidentally” by everybody’s analysis just bombed an apartment building in Lebanon. A young parent clutching a 3-month-old was being interviewed. He repeatedly said he was not angry with the Israelis but he worried about his young daughter. What would she think in 20 years? 

Once I finished that thesis. I became a rabbi. Something Yuval and I had dreamed of. After much study of domestic violence, German-Jewish reconciliation and yes, even audaciously the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I concluded that there are “sins” that are passed down generation to generation. In order, to break the cycle of violence, someone needs to feel safe. In order to forgive, you need to be safe, to know that the cycle is not going to be repeated. The cycle is repeating itself. 

Today I stand here and wonder where that daughter is. Is she in Lebanon? Is she part of Hezbolah? Does she look like the images of the children mowed down at a music festival? Is she gearing up for a war? Is she going to attack my daughter? 

Today we read Bereshit. In the beginning G-d created. Or if you prefer, When G-d began to create. G-d created us all b’tzelem elohim, in the image of G-d. As I often say, “All means all.” 

The Talmud teaches that to save a life is to save the world. To destroy a life is to destroy the world. It is repeated in the Koran. We are taught that we are created from one person, Adam, so that no one can say that my lineage is better than yours.  

When did we lose our humanity, G-d? When we learn to devalue human life?  

In our Torah portion this week, Cain kills Abel. He asks, famously, “Am I my brother’s keeper.” The answer is yes. The same Talmudic story about being created from one person also teaches that the spilling of blood (in this case a plural Hebrew noun), means that Cain is responsible not just for Abel’s blood but for all the descendants as well. Lord, there has been too much blood spilled for too long.  

As I stand here today, my heart is so very shattered. On this Shabbat Bereshit we remember the story from the Zohar. When G-d began to create, G-d made it full of light. G-d placed the light in a vessel but it was so bright, the vessel shattered. Our job is to gather those shards back together again. That is tikkun olam. Our job is to repair the word.  

We have collected other shards in Judaism. The shards of the first set of 10 commandments that the Israelites collected and placed next to the full set in the ark as they wandered through the desert. They were keeping the memory of their dreams unfulfilled alive. At a wedding we smash a glass, symbolic of our mourning. Some collect those shards as a reminder to create beauty out of brokenness. 

Somehow, there were weddings in Israel this week. Weddings, B’nei Mitzvah, brises. Acts of defiance and hope.  

 Lord as I stand here today, I am angry. It says, O-G-d, that you are slow to anger, erech apayim. But I am really, really angry. There can be no justification, no moral equivalency for the murder of babies, the mowing down of children at a music festival, the kidnapping of women in wheelchairs, the deliberate slaying of entire families. There is no justification in rape. There is no justification in taking hostages. Period.  

Yet You tell us that “Vengance is Mine.” Lord it says we are to forgive but surely there are sins so heinous that we cannot forgive. Do I need to forgive? How can I possibly forgive?  

Help me to remember that all people are created b’tzelem elohim. Help me to see the humanity in terrified children hiding in hospitals and schools. Help me to achieve balance in a world that does not seem balanced.  

HaRachamin, the Merciful One, a name both Jews and Muslims call You, help me to mourn. Our dead, our dreams, our hope. Help us to find the glimmers of light, the shards of glass, the helpers. Help us to find our way back to You so that we can put our lives, our world, back together again. Help me to find hope. HaTikvah.  

Please rise for HaTikvah.