Personal reflections and some needed history 

When I was pregnant, my husband and I went to Israel on a group tour. He had never been and it seemed the easiest way to see much of the country that I had lived in, in the limited time we had. My relationship to Israel is complicated, because of having lived there. We will come back to that.  

One day we went to Yad V’shem. I am always moved as you are exiting the museum the one baby shoe encased in glass. It gets me every time. I felt strongly that that this child not yet born would not have to face the atrocities of the era we call the Shoah, the Holocaust. In the gift shop, (I love museum and hospital gift shops), a menorah for as yet unborn child due during Chanukah that year. I raced to the bus breathless and showed it to the rabbi leading the tour. He promptly pointed out that I had bought a menorah, not a chanukiah and that there was no time to go exchange it. The next day, while everyone else was at an archaeological dig, I did go back to Yad V’shem and pick out a real Chanukiah. That candelabra is still my daughter’s who is now 33 this Chanukah. 

I have been thinking a lot about that chanukiah. In the 1930s and 1940s, there were people, not just Hitler, who wanted there to be no more Jews. The term genocide did not exist in 1944. It has a very specific definition.  

https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/learn-about-genocide-and-other-mass-atrocities/what-is-genocide  

Lots of people have been using this on both sides of the Gazzan-Israeli War. The Hamas charter calls for the utter destruction of Israel, from the river to see. So if you see signs reading “Free Palestine.” that is a call for genocide and the destruction of all Jews living in the land of Israel. That’s what makes it not only anti-Zionist but also anti-semetic  if you prefer anti-Jewish. And yes, there are some who don’t want to stop at the borders of Israel but the worldwide destruction of Jews. That would be genocide. 

Others have said that the bombardment of northern Gaza isn’t war but it Is genocide. I would rgue that it is not. It is not when Israel leafleted in advance and tried to get people to move to the south. It is not when Israel moved infants from Al Shifa to Egypt. What do you do when your military enemy uses schools and hospitals as shields as they have for decades? I am not sure. 

The scenes are impossibly difficult to watch. I want to scream, “The children, the children, the children.” 

And this morning, let me be perfectly clear. Children in Israel. Children in Gaza. Children in the United States. No 6 year old Palestinian child living in Illinois should be murdered by his landlord for being Palestinian. Three students near the University of Vermont should not be gunned down. Period. Fulls stop.  

That complicated history with Israel. My father would tell the story of staying up listening to the radio in 1948, the night the UN partioned the land of Israel. For him, it was thrilling. My mother was not a Zionist. Growing up as a Reform Jew, she believed that Israel did not recognize her Judaism and so was not a place she could support. My husband’s mother felt similarly. Yet, the Reform Movement started something called ARZA, The American Reform Zionist Association, so some Reform Jews were Zionists. There was a time when the Reform Movement sent more kids to Israel in the summer than any other organized Jewish group. I was one of the lucky ones. In 1977, I was bouncing on a bus in the Negev, learning much about the history of the land and how to be a songleader. And falling in love. With Israel and with a certain individual. The leader of that trip, an American, has lived in Israel now for decades. I reconnected with him at a J Street conference. 

Sadly, that person who I had hoped to marry was killed in 1983 as part of the incursion into Lebanon. My last phone call with him, around Yom Kippur of 1982 was that he was not involved in the massacre of Shaba and Shitila. For years I held Arik Sharon personally accountable for his death. Somehow, I never held Hezbolah or Lebanon accountableI still miss him and wonder what would have been.  

I don’t always support the policies of the modern State of Israel. That does not make me an anti-Zionist.  I have been a champion of Women of the Wall since its inception in 1988 arguing that women should have the same access to praying at the Western Wall as men. I have donated money and time to organizations like Parents Circle—Famiy Forum because no one should have to go through the pain I endured. https://www.theparentscircle.org/en/pcff-home-page-en/ Peace is the only option. How we get there, I don’t know. 

My daughter had the Torah portion that includes the verse from Deuteronomy that explains how to make war. It includes a verse that when you siege a city you cannot cut down fruit trees. Yet this has been a policy of the IDF especially on the West Bank. Therefore, I have supported Rabbi for Human Rights in Israel that plants new olive trees after Israel destroys ancient ones.  

The question of settlements on the West Bank is complicated. It is all complicated. In 2010 when I was in Israel on a interfaith clergy call, then Vice President Biden was also there. His message to Israel was that friends need to tell friends when they are wrong. He, and I assume Obama, felt that expanding settlements in the West Bank was a dangerous policy. I watched as the Damascus Gate was closed. Having lived there, I didn’t even know it was possible. It was a scary moment. 

Jews have lived in the land of Israel continually for millennium. They did not start living there in 1948. The history is complicated. I have read extensively on this topic. 

Here are my favorite of the books: 

• Noa Tishby’s Israel, currently reading and already seems out of date after Oct 7.but worth it. 
• Martin Fletcher’s Walking Israel, written by NBC’s former chief Isarel correspondant  
• Shavit, My Promised Land 
• Yossi Klein Halivni, letter to my Palestinian neighbor 
• Tolan’s Lemon Tree (also exists as a movie) 
• Friedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem (I was once told if I only had one book to read that year it should be this one but may be dated) 
• Dershowitz, The Case for Israel (not my favorite, not objective enough)
  Junaid Afeef is recommending, 100 years war on Palestine.
  Someone else recommended Israel/Palestine,  

This is the list I gave to ECC. But since there is some confusion about whether you can be anti-Zionist without being antii-semetic, I would add two on anti-semitism: 

• Rabbi Evan Moffic’s First the Jews 
• Bari Weiss’s How to Fight Anti-Semitism. 

I said this earlier in this current crisis. I wrote my thesis on the topic of the 13 Attributes of the Divine. It too Is out of date because I dared to write about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The conclusion remains the same. In order to make peace, in order to forgive, people need to feel safe. Generationally, no one, especially the children, feel safe.  

I pray for the children, All the children. I pray for peace, I pray for a return to a dream of the prophets, where everyone can sit under their vine and fig tree and none will make them afraid. I pray for a time where in the words of the Chanukah haftarah, “Not by might and not by power but My spirit alone, shall we all live in peace.” That chanukiah will gleam brightly this year. And I will continue to work for peace, for a time when no one lives in fear.