Jews and the Sacred Balancing Act

(I shared these words with the Temple Israel community the morning after I returned from a synagogue trip to Israel.  Click here to see photos and reflections from the families who participated in the trip.)

I returned yesterday morning on the red-eye from Israel, having spent 10 days with a group of Temple Israel families. 

It was an amazing trip. I’m suffering a little bit from jetlag and my brain is currently somewhere over Greenland, but I’m going to do my best to share a few interesting stories about our adventures and, hopefully, to make a worthwhile point.

Monday morning, 2:30 am.  Three adults, including me, and three teens, all of whom celebrated becoming bar mitzvah on our bimah, left the lobby of our hotel in Jerusalem to drive to Masada so we could climb it and then watch the sun rise.

While we were planning it the night before, it seemed like a great idea (and in the end it was, as you can see!)

Anyway, I kept the driver awake by schmoozing with him about his shul and his family.  We got to Masada before the path opened and had to wait for an hour.  We did not succeed in convincing the guide, a former Israeli army officer, to let us up early. . .

At 5 am, we started to climb the snake path.

Each of the three adults had a different situation that required a different response.  One of us found it helpful to rest every 10 minutes.  One of us needed to take pictures every 10 steps.  One of us was a little uncomfortable looking down at the sheer cliffs that descended thousands of feet down to the Dead Sea, aptly named, and wanted to keep climbing and not stop at all.

God bless them, the teens were trying to accommodate all three of us.  They encouraged us to pause just a little, only a few times, then keep walking, and they told the enthusiastic picture taker to ease up on his photography.

What these three young men did, whether they intuited it or not, is actually at the heart of what it means to be a Jew.  They balanced competing needs.  Two or more needs that are somehow at odds with each other and need to be considered.

The world isn’t simple and Judaism is not a simple religion.  We’re constantly balancing.

Friday night, the entire group had Shabbat dinner together in a separate room in the hotel.  I checked out the room earlier that afternoon and met Amin, who would be our waiter.  I started speaking to him in Hebrew and he told me he wanted to practice his English.  His English didn’t need much practice; he was quite fluent.  He told me that he was born in Jordan and received his BA in hospitality management.

When we all got together Friday night, Amin was standing next to one of the chefs, who introduced the menu.  A parent in our group said, “I don’t think my child will eat too much of what’s on the menu!” and the chef said “No problem.  Israel is a democracy.”  And gesturing to the waiter, he said, “except for Amin, over here, who’s an Arab.”

Amin shrugged his shoulders and gave a kind of half smile.  None of us said anything and the meal began.

I felt uneasy.  I wasn’t sure if the two of them had done this shtick before and how each of them felt about it.  But I felt uneasy.

During Birkat Hamazon, the blessings after the meal, I recited the prayer in which we ask God to bring peace between the children of Isaac and the children of Ishmael.  And I said a word about our waiter, who is a child of Ishmael, and about how he served our meal tonight, and maybe one day we would serve him a meal, and wouldn’t it be nice if we could have a real and lasting peace between the descendants of Abraham?

A few days later, I saw Amin again and we spoke about American culture, which he loves.  Clint Eastwood, Grateful Dead.  He said, I hope you don’t mind me telling you this, but on Friday night, when the chef made a comment about Israel’s democracy not being for me, I smiled because I knew he meant to be joking.  But it really hurt me. 

I told him that I had felt uncomfortable and that I should have said something at the time, and I apologized to him. 

Israel has every legitimate reason to protect herself from those that seek her destruction, and lately, most of the people seeking Israel’s destruction have been Arab Muslims. 

Security and democracy are often competing needs; they often pull in different directions.  Ethnic profiling can be unseemly, but it also can save lives.

And yet, how often do we allow the need for security to eclipse the importance of basic humane, dignified treatment? 

I was all set to say a word about this, among other things, at a final lunch we had at the Begin Center, a museum about the life and teachings of Menachem Begin.  The last exhibit of the museum, which we walked through right before the lunch, contained statements made by the late Prime Minister.

I wrote down the following statement attributed to Menachem Begin:

“In a free and democratic country there can be citizens of many different ethnicities and they are all equal before the law and they all share the same rights.”

That means same rights for Amin as for Avi, according to Menachem Begin, who knew a thing or two about security. 

It’s a challenge to balance democracy and security, but a state that is loyal to Jewish values will genuinely try and will acknowledge, like I did, when it messes up.  And it may even discover that democracy and security can ultimately reinforce one another.

I’m going backward in our itinerary.  A few days before we got to Jerusalem, we were in Caesaria, a lovely Roman seaside town built by King Herod. 

We saw the amphitheater where gladiators fought one another thousands of years ago.  Our tour guide told us that the rabbis at the time permitted Jews to attend the competitions, even though it was at odds with Jewish values.

One reason was as follows.  At the end of the competition, the ranking Roman ruler would turn to the audience to ask whether the gladiator should be put to death or spared.  The rabbis reasoned that if Jews were present, they could vote to save the life of the defeated gladiator.  The more Jews present, in fact, the greater the likelihood that his life would be spared. 

How amazing is that, I thought!  Again, two potentially competing values – the Jew was to remain apart from the majority culture, to remain distinct (as per the urging of many passages in the Torah); but there was also reason to take part in the majority culture, sometimes because it was inherently worthwhile, and sometimes so that the Jew could have a positive influence on the majority culture.

We have always wrestled with how separate should we be?  How integrated should we be?

This little fact, from 2000 years ago, suggests that we must take part in what’s going on around us in order to learn and in order to influence.

To be a Jew is to conduct a sacred balancing act -  to preserve the self while respecting the other; to remain apart, but also to take part.

One final story:  I left my phone charger in the wall at our hotel in Tel Aviv.  I thought I’d taken everything, but whatever.

I called the hotel and they said they couldn’t find it.

In order to call the hotel, I needed to know the word for charger.  I discovered that the word is מטען, mat’en.  It contains the same root as the verb which, in one form means “to carry” and in another means “to load up.” 

It makes sense that the word would be related, since a charger loads an electric current into an appliance.  Of course, there were no electric chargers in ancient times.  Modern Hebrew speakers generated a new word for a new object that uses an old form.

Hebrew is constantly expanding, constantly using the old to express and embrace the new.

And that, I would say, is a fine encapsulation of what the children of Israel do at our best.

To be a Jew is to engage in a sacred balancing act, forever confronting concepts that seem at cross purposes with one another until we find creative solutions, engaging old and new, self and other, for everyone’s benefit, not just our own.

Have you been to JFK airport after 10 pm?  Almost all of the stores are closed; it’s as lively as a cemetery.  Have you been to Ben Gurion airport at midnight?  Schwarma is being sliced, “ice café” is being poured, jewelry is being sold.  It’s a modern shuk on the gateway of three continents!

For a model of the sacred balancing act, we continue to turn to the ever hustling, ever bustling, medinat yisrael.  Long may she serve as our inspiration.  Long may she be encouraged to exemplify creativity and justice.  Soon may she and her neighbors achieve security and peace, and long may they enjoy it.   

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on September 1, 2012