Tonight, long ago I promised, that’s a vow, that I would talk about Israel. The title was “Promised Made, Promises Broken: Connecting with Israel. And I decided I could not write it until this week. Because who knows where we would be.
I stand here tonight knowing that I really need to quote the Israeli expression. Ain Milim. There are no words. I have used that phrase frequently this year. And in other moments. After mass causality events like Sandy Hook or Tree of Life. After natural disasters. Since there are no words, I am always grateful to our cellist and our cantorial soloist and our choir because they put into music what I feel but can’t say. I am aware like Peter Paul and Mary sang that Music speaks louder than words.
Music speaks louder than words
It’s the only thing that the whole world listens to.
Music speaks louder than words,
When you sing, people understand.
Sometimes the love that you feel inside
Gets lost between your heart and your mind
And the words don’t really say the things you wanted them to.
But then you feel in someone’s song
What you’d been trying to say all along
And somehow with the magic of music the message comes through.
(Chorus)
The longer I live the more I find that people seldom take the time
To really get to know a stranger and make him a friend.
But the power of a simple song can make everybody feel they belong.
Maybe singin’ and playin’ can bring us together again.
Singin’ and playin’ can bring us together again.
So we’ve had music. Now I will try to provide some context. I will repeat what I said on Erev Rosh Hashanah just after Iran attacked Israel.
I am still connected to Israel. To the land. To the people. To the State. It is a complicated relationship. But I am deeply connected. To the land that I have hiked. To the people, all of you, the stories I have learned from my earliest days, to the ethics that those stories and the thousands of years of commentary that it teaches, to each of you, to the Jewish people around the world. to the country that I once lived in, to the dream of a place where Jews could live in freedom, without fear, without hatred.
This past year has been impossibly difficult. This past week has been impossibly difficult. I am still connected to all of those things, I still believe in the dream. I still believe in the hope that Israel offers, I still believe.
Some of you may feel connected to Israel. Some of you may not. Some of you may be sitting here tonight with a range of emotions, or no emotions at all. Some of you may wonder how we will ever find joy. How can we possibly celebrate the High Holy Days this year when time seemed to stop on Simchat Torah last year. Yet, as the saying goes “We will dance again.” Or as I read this week, “We will dance for them.”
CKI has always been a political free zone. What that really means is a partizan free zone. It is hard to talk about Israel without talking about politics. We are not going to discuss the merits of either US candidate for president. But in the strongest possible terms I urge you to vote. Nor will we discuss the current prime minister of Israel. I am not a policy wonk. I do have opinions, but I will not express them here. If I could have solved peace in the Middle East, a problem for 3000 years, I would have gone to the Kennedy School or the Fletcher School and we’d be done. Instead, I am a small town rabbi who believes in peace. It is a very high value in Judaism. Tonight is not the time for that discussion either. The answer is really quite simple. Put down your arms. All of them. Return the hostages. Now. It is exactly what our friend Alden Solovy said this week.
Year Two Day One
No,
Just no.
No, No. No.
No more.
Please G-d.
No More.
Alden Solovy
Let me be clear.
- Israel needs to exist. Full stop. From the earliest times. All the way back to the promise the G-d made to Abraham.
There is a modern case for Israel. Our young people may not fully understand the history. They may not feel connected. Modern Zionism, started by Theodor Herzl wanted a safe place for Jews in the late 1800s. He famously said, Im tirtzu ain zo agadah. If you will it, it is no dream. I paid for my first trip in high school to Israel by singing that song and raking leaves and delivering papers. (Remember those early jobs?) I am not going to do a survey course here, but I am happy to provide a list of reading material on Israel. Borders were not open to Jewish immigrants across the globe prior to what became known as the Holocaust. That included the US that turned away the SS St. Louis. After the Holocaust, countries didn’t want their Jews back and Displaced Person Camps were created throughout Europe. We have one member who was born in a DP camp. The United Nations knew it had to do something. They created the Modern State of Israel by dividing up British Mandate Palestine. After 2000 years of dreaming of a return to Israel, it was becoming a reality. Part of the dream. Make the desert bloom. Israel excels at agricultural, inventing drip irrigation, at technology developments, medical research and so much more.
I am concerned about rising anti-semitism, on the left and the right. The numbers remain shocking. Anti-semitism and hate crimes are up some 67% whether you are looking at ADL stats or FBI stats. I think many of us thought we were past all of this. We are not. But that doesn’t mean we should not be proud of being Jewish. We need to be proud…I am still convinced that is our best method for combatting anti-semitism. I am concerned about protesters, be they in downtown Chicago or on any number of college campuses, who don’t fully understand the context and the nuance. From the river to the sea is a great sound bite but if you ask what it means, many have no idea what river and which sea or that it calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews everywhere. The use of the word genocide which was created after the Holocaust is not what was happening in Gaza. Great Britain was really the colonizers. I have reached out to each of our college students and their families to see how they need our support. I am concerned not only about our college kids but our middle schoolers and high schoolers. All of whom report some anti-semetic iinciddent. Often just a joke, but still those jokes can lead to other things.
2. Israel has the right to defend itself. Full stop. It needs to protect its citizens. And it does. We as a Jewish people need Israel. The current loss of life is tragic. Traumatic.
And yet…as Sarah Tuttle Singer said recently, “But alongside our rage and grief, there is something more—something that pulls at the edges of our soul. We know there are innocent people, too, those who live in Gaza, whose lives are crushed beneath the weight of this war, families in Lebanon who are also terrified. Their death toll rises, and it is a terrible thing to hold in our hearts at the same time as we mourn our own. This isn’t a call for us not to defend ourselves—we must. We have no choice. But within this fight for survival, we are also reckoning with the pain and the loss on both sides, knowing that war spares no one.”
So how does one create peace or hope in this climate. It isn’t easy. But it is necessary. For all involved. Earlier this month I received a text from Rabbi Melaine Landau who is a rabbi and a therapist in Jerusalem. She offers blessings for the new year. She is as she said, “starting to be involved with an inspiring group of women, initiated by Palestinian women, inspired by non violent communication who are setting up a space- Satyam- in the West Bank where all people – Israelis, Palestinians and Internationals can safely meet and hold the seeds of common humanity at this very difficult and charged time. If you would like to find out more, if you would like to share this seed of hope with your community in some way let me know. Options include supporting projects, learning non violent communication, having a presentation from the ground or of course, visiting in person.” She adds she I knows people are struggling in different ways around how to address the situation here, how to hold opposing values, how to hold the grief, wondering where hope or light is and I thought this project can speak to some of those concerns.”
There are other such groups emerging. And that gives me hope. She raises an important point. How do we hold opposing views or values. There is a story that is important to consider tonight. Each of us has two truths in our pockets. One says “You are but dust and ashes.” the other one says, “For my sake the world was created.” How do you hold both at the same time. Both are true.
Similarly, May 14, 1948 was Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel Independence Day. For Jew around the world it was and is celebrated with much fanfare. For people displaced by the division, it became known as the Nakba. Both are true. At the same time.
There is a lovely story told. The Legend of the Two Brothers. Or Brothers A Hebrew LeggendLong ago, in the land of Israel, two brothers each have a field of wheat. Their father told them that they needed to be friends and help each other. And so they did. Each night the one with no children would get up and deliver wheat to the one with lots of children. The one with lots of children would get up each night and deliver wheat to the one with no children. The wheat exchange went on for years. The legend, shrouded in mystery, is attributed to the midrash, to Legends of the Jews, to Palestinian Arabs in the Arab market in Jerusalem, to Indian Muslims. In the Jewish telling it is the origin of the Holy Temple being built in Jerusalem, the City of Peace. I love the message of this story and it is the basis of the song from Psalms, Hiney Ma Tov, How good and how pleasant it is for brothers, (and sisters) to live together.
But as I learned about the different sources for this story I was reminded of the necessity to check multiple sources. I read the following sources, religiously, one might say: Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Ha’aretz, the Chicago Trib, the Boston Globe and the New York Times. I also read occasional articles in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the Atlantic. I watch NBC, CNN and some Fox. (Mostly after football games but I do watch) I listen to NPR, mostly while driving. I listen to briefings from the ADL, JUF and SCN. It is not exhaustive and it can be exhausting. I limit my news coverage. That is important too. Last week when NPR was covering Lebanon from Kiryat Sh’mona I had to turn it off. The sound of the air raid sirens was too much. I spent a week in a bomb shelter in Kiryat Shmona.
3. While we cannot vote in Israel, criticizing Israel, for instance for not allowing full access to women at the Walll, or not taking care of the 70,000 displaced persons from the north now living in hotels is not anti-semetic. In fact it is very Jewish. Calllling for the destruction of Israel ll is anti-semetic.
So here are my promises tonight, ‘bli neder,” without a vow.
- I promise to continue to teach the complicated history of Israel from its earliest times to right up to the minute. At CKI, At U-46 or other local school systems and whenever I get the chance.
- I promise to source material appropriately and to stay informed as best as I can.
I promise to make Israel relevant and important to our students and their families.
- I promise to continue to build bridges, here in Elgin and around the world, in order to work for peace.
- I promise to decry anti-semitism in all its forms.
- I promise to invest in Israel. In Hadassah. In technology. In organizations like Leket, Yad L’kashish, Women of the Wall, Parents Circle, organizations I have supported for decades and need our support now more than ever.
- I promise to seek peace and pursue it.
When I was putting together the program for our observance of October 7th. I was reminded of an Israeli song.
Ani mavtiach lach. I promise you my little girl that this will be the last war. Written after the Yom Kippur War, it is a promise, a vow that has not been achieved. I remember crying down the Merrit Parkway in CT listening to it. I made that promise to Sarah, I will not tonight make that vow tonight.
I grew up on Peter Paul and Mary songs. Ask Simon later about one of our first dates. One of the songs that got me through the death of my first fiance, my first love killed by a terrorist bomb in Lebanon in 1983 was another Peter Paul and Mary song. Carry on sweet survivor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTBxndWfZ3w
You have asked me why the days fly by so quickly
And why each one feels no different from the last
And you say that you are fearful for the future
And you have grown suspicious of the past
And you wonder if the dreams we shared together
Have abandoned us or we abandoned them
And you cast about and try to find new meaning
So that you can feel that closeness once again.
Carry on my sweet survivor, carry on my lonely friend
Don’t give up on the dream, and don’t you let it end.
Carry on my sweet survivor,
Though you know that something’s gone
For everything that matters carry on.
You remember when you felt each person mattered
When we all had to care or all was lost
But now you see believers turn to cynics
And you wonder was the struggle worth the cost
Then you see someone too young to know the difference
And a veil of isolation in their eyes
And inside you know you’ve got to leave them something
Or the hope for something better slowly dies.
Carry on my sweet survivor, carry on my lonely friend
Don’t give up on the dream, and don’t you let it end.
Carry on my sweet survivor, you’ve carried it so long
So it may come again, carry on
Carry on, carry on.
That’s our obligation. That is our vow. That is our promise. That is our hope. This song, in between my tears, still give me hope. It still connects me. It still connects allll of us. To the land of Israel, eterz yisrall, to the people of Israel, am yisrale and even the state of Israel, medinate yisrael. Am yisrael chai.
At the back of the room I provided a list of resources:
Resources on Israel and Anti-Semitism:
- Noa Tishby’s Israel, A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth
- Martin Fletcher’s Walking Israel, written by NBC’s former chief Isarel correspondent
- Ari 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
- 100 Years War on Palestine.
- Israel/Palestine,
- The Netanyahus
- Rabbi Evan Moffic’s First the Jews
- Bari Weiss’s How to Fight Anti-Semitism.
- Jonathan Greenblatt’s It Could Happen Here