I got a call from one of my chevruta partners today. She has just returned from Israel. What can I possibly say to her. She just spent several weeks in Israel, in Jerusalem studying, in Tel Aviv and in Haifa, the city she was born in and where family still lives. In each city she spent time in safe rooms and shelters. She said never had sirens gone off in Haifa and it was disorienting. She was haunted by memories of her childhood and other wars.

I, too, am haunted.

I am too young to remember 1948 or 1956. By 1967 I was beginning to understand the optimism that occurred after the 6 Day War. We–and I use that term deliberately–won and we were David to the Arab world’s Goliath. Jerusalem was ours again. All was right with the world. Of course, I was still young and I could sing Hebrew songs for peace as well as I could sing Girl Scout Day Camp songs. The bigger question was which good deed was enough to turn my Brownie pin right side up.

In 1972 we moved to Grand Rapids. That first summer I spent high jumping in the back yard and watching Mark Spitz in the Olympics. One day I too would be an Olympian. Then the world stopped. We watched the hostage crisis live. Who could forget Jim McKay broadcasting live for ABC Sports. The PLO held a press conference. I remember thinking with all the cameras in the room shooting photographs someone should shoot Arafat–with a gun, a real gun. And I couldn’t believe I could even harbor such thoughts. They didn’t fit with Oseh Shalom, Sim Shalom and Hiney Ma Tov!

In 1973 I was in temple when the Yom Kippur War started. I remember shortly thereafter going to Ahavas Israel for a fundraiser for the Jewish National Fund. I was amazed at my young age how peer pressure upped the amount of the pledges. I also remember a song that came out after the war, “Ani Mavtiach Lach. Yalda shell katanah. Sh’zot Yehiyeh hamilchama ha’achronah. I promise you my little girl that this shall be the last war.” And I believed it.

In 1977 I went with my Confirmation class to Israel. I raised half the needed fund by delivering papers, raking lawns and babysitting. With every lawn I sang, “Im tirtzu, ayn zo agadah.” Herzl’s words, “If you will it it is no dream.” The trip to Israel was wonderful. Six wonderful weeks. We toured the country, celebrated Shabbat and Tisha B’av, worked on a kibbutz, climbed Masada and Mount Sinai, sang Eli, Eli on the coast of Caesaria where it had been written. So much of what I do as a rabbi came out of that trip. And I met my first boy friend. He would be coming to Grand Rapids as an exchange program in the fall.

In 1981 I lived in Israel and reconnected with that boyfriend. It was a complicated time. But I learned the standard Israeli philosophy that Israel can’t give into terror. We must continue living normal lives. I spent some time teaching all those camp songs to kids stuck in the bomb shelter with me. I worked on a kibbutz where in the plastics factory we made two things: high chairs and practice bombs. I argued that it didn’t make sense to sell these bombs to Argentina and Chile, two of the most anti-Semitic countries in the world. I was told I didn’t know anything. I was the victim of a violent crime and yet still I loved Israel.

In 1982 Israel entered the first incursion into Lebanon. My boyfriend called on Yom Kippur afternoon to tell me he hadn’t been involved in Sabra and Shitilla, the massacre in southern Lebanon. On my birthday in 1983 my mother called at 7:30AM. I assumed to wish me happy birthday.  She had called to inform me that Yuval had been killed. She had no details. Today there was a picture posted from the IDF of the girlfriend of Tal Yifrah lying on his grave, curled in a fetal position. It is heart wrenching.

And it could be me. How does she ever go on? How can she not? Only time will tell. There are two ways (at least) to respond to tragedies of this magnitude–on the personal level and on a global level. We can curl up–and that is appropriate. We can grow bitter. We can become afraid. We can hate all Arabs. And some do that.

Or, we can realize that this fighting has not worked. It doesn’t even matter who started it and why. It doesn’t matter how many have been killed on each side and what they stood for and whether they are civilian deaths or military. All you need to do is look at the pain of this girl friend. When will her life return to “normal?” It has been 34 years since Yuval died. You tell me.

My approach was different. In the semester before Yuval was killed, Brandeis published an article I wrote explaining how the incursion into Lebanon was justifiable under traditional Jewish halacha. I stand by that paper. I stand by Israel’s right to defend itself. I don’t want friends to live in constant fear of running to shelters. I was moved to tears when I read about the little boy who woke up with a bloody nose who thought he had been bombed and the one who heard phantom sirens who woke his mother up to take them to the shelter. Hamas cannot be allowed to build tunnels and rain missiles down. They should be held accountable for using their own civilian populations as human shields and using money for weapons while keeping their own citizens in poverty.

But no one needs to experience that pain again. Ever. Yesterday I asked someone how to carry on. I was echoing a song of Peter, Paul and Mary’s.

“Carry on sweet survivor
Carry on my lonely friend
Don’t give up on the dream
Don’t you let it end.”

I first heard these words at a rally for Soviet Jews. My youth groupers, now adults with children of their own remember holding the banner for Peter and Mary. I remember crying at these words as I was trying to live them out.

I am crying again. How do we live out the optimism of 1967? How do we live out the dream of Herzl? How do we pray our ancient words for peace? Perhaps Golda Meir had it right. It has been quoted recently in the last few weeks.

“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

During the second incursion into Lebanon, I was in Germany. I was writing my rabbinic thesis which included a chapter on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. My question, based on the Thirteen Attributes of the Divine which includes God will visit the sins of the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation, could the cycle of violence be stopped. I looked at many groups doing the work of peace. I concluded that unless people feel safe there cannot be peace.

Then I heard an interview on CNN–it was the only news broadcast I could understand well enough in Germany. It stopped me in my tracks. A young father was standing in front of his recently bombed apartment building holding his two month old daughter. He said he hadn’t had a problem with the Israelis. But he feared for his daughter. He feared that he and his country had just lost twenty years–a whole generation.

I am writing on that topic again tonight. My book about the Thirteen Attributes will be published next month. I spent part of the day looking at photos of Mount Sinai that I took on that first trip to Israel in 1977. I still believe that God is a God full of lovingkindness. And maybe we ourselves are responsible for visiting the sins of the ancestors on the next generations. How many generations, O God?

After every surge of violence. After wave of terror. During every incursion. During every intifada I would read this poem at services:

THE YOUNG DEAD SOLDIERS DO NOT SPEAK
Nevertheless they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.
They say, We were young. We have died. Remember us.
They say, We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done.
They say, We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.
They say, Our deaths are not ours: they are yours: they will mean what you make them.
They say, Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say: it is you who must say this.
They say, We leave you our deaths: give them their meaning: give them an end to the war and a true peace: give them a victory that ends the war and a peace afterwards: give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died. Remember us.
(Archibald MacLeish)

When my daughter went to Brandeis for a high school summer program, she met Israelis, some of whom upon their return, went into the army. Some of the kids on that program responded, good, go kill some Arabs. My daughter wondered where her voice was. What could she say to her friends? Where was the voice of peace?

I cried driving down the Merritt Parkway listening to Ani Mavtiach Lach. I promise you, my little girl, that this will be the last war. I hadn’t heard it in years. It wasn’t the last war in 1973. It wasn’t the last war (sorry incursion) in 1982. It wasn’t in 2006. I fear that this will not be the last war either. I no longer feel I can make that promise to my little girl who has friends who are fighting in this war.

Perhaps I am just a child of the sixties, raised on peace rallies in Evanston. I hear echoes of Blowing in the Wind. “How many deaths will it take ’til we know that too many people have died?”

Are we there yet? O God? Are we there yet? Because we cannot go on this way. There must be another way.

Tonight I am not speaking as a rabbi. I don’t have answers to large geo-political questions. I speak as someone who has loved and lost. I speak as someone who has mourned for too long. I speak as a mother.  It is so painful to see these images. I cannot answer the haunting question of MacLeish’s poem. The young soldiers have died, and now died again. Did their deaths have meaning? I don’t know.

I do know we cannot sacrifice another generation. We cannot afford to.  I fear we already have.

Immediately after 911, it was Rosh Hashanah. Most rabbis changed their sermons. Mine was about Hagar. She was desperate. She put her child under a bush and cried out, “Do not let me look on while the child dies.” I wondered how desperate a mother is when the prayer is “I don’t want to watch” rather than “Save my child.” But God opens her eyes and she find the water that was already there, allowing her to save her child. She found another way. We have to find another way. We have to find the people who want to make peace. Who want to save their children. And ours.

I can’t promise you that this will be the last war. There needs to be safety. On both sides.

Tonight we mourn. For the Yuvals. For the Tals. For Tal’s girlfriend. For the Sarahs. For Hagar and Ishmael. For Abraham and Isaac. For all the children who wake up to the sound of sirens. And those who wake up to the sound of bombs and no sirens. For the death of innocence. For the death of the dream.

I promise you, that in Yuval’s name, I will continue to work for peace. Not just pray for peace. Actively work for peace. Pursue peace. Run after peace. We have to find another way. It is the only response that makes sense to me. No one needs to go through this pain again. Ever. Period.