So
much has been written in blogs, tweets, articles about the situation in Israel.
It
is a heartbreaking, complicated mess.
And while the world’s attention is somewhat diverted to Iraq and
Ferguson, Missouri, I want to focus on Israel because of its significance to us
and because De and I were there for several weeks during the rocket firing and
the operation in Gaza. As you
may know, I spent a month in Israel as part of a program run by the Hartman
Institute, bringing rabbis from across the denominational spectrum for
learning, analysis, professional development, etc.
I
want to share some incidents, through my own personal lens, of the time I spent in Israel and
then to offer some reflections on the larger context. Of course, such a situation is vast and
affects millions of people, but, as with any larger circumstance, we experience it as individuals, through our
own lenses, one event at a time.
I
had dinner with a friend at the beginning of my time in Israel at the old train
station in Jerusalem. At a certain
point, we noticed that the people around us were visibly upset. We checked the news on our i-phones and
read that the bodies of the three abducted teens were found. At that moment, as a parent of children
close in age to these boys, I had a profound nauseating feeling which didn’t
let up. I recall feeling
surprised, though maybe I shouldn’t have been. Perhaps others, like me, harbored the hope that they would
be kept alive.
Several
days later, I joined a few colleagues as we drove to the funeral for the three
teens. It took place in Modi’in,
about half an hour from Jerusalem, the ancient site of the uprising of the
Maccabees. I wrote about it, but I
want to share some additional comments.
I was impressed by the number of people who attended. It was about a four-mile walk from
where we parked, and thousands of people were walking from the make-shift
parking area to the site of the funeral.
Though a large crowd, it was not an especially diverse crowd. Most of those who attended were in
their teens and twenties and seemed to be part of the Modern Orthodox
community. That made sense, given the backgrounds of the slain teens, though I
sort of expected some more diversity given how widely publicized the abduction
of the teens had been. Security
consisted of a few plainclothes officers standing every hundred yards,
eyeballing the crowd that gauging if anyone looked dangerous. For roughly half an hour, the crowd was
singing soulful songs that you might hear toward the end of Shabbat at a youth
convention. People were singing,
crying, and hugging each other. I
was there the whole time and I can tell you, I didn’t hear a single angry
chant, no calls for revenge or even justice. Just songs asking for God’s mercy. Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke. The most moving eulogy, in my opinion,
was delivered by the yeshiva rabbi of two of the teens.
A
few days later, a group of rabbis went to pay their respects to the parents of
Muhammed abu Khdeir, the Arab teen who was set on fire by Jewish extremists. When I heard about that gruesome murder
I felt more nausea. I wasn’t able to
join the group because I went to pick Deanna up at the airport (another story),
but a colleague of mine told me that the family was appreciative of the
visit. When my colleague described
the visit, he said that he ran into an Israeli police officer on his way out of
the family’s mourning tent. He
tried to strike up conversation with the officer and the officer, seeing his
kippa, looked at him icily and said, “Don’t talk to me.” Which my colleague interpreted
to mean, “So you’re headed back to Jerusalem before it gets dark and I’ll still
be here.”
Less
than a week later, the first rocket siren went off in Jerusalem and a week
after that, Israel began the ground offensive in Gaza. I can definitively say that it’s
different to be there than here at such moments. I remember where I was for each siren. The first one – with a colleague in the
hallway outside his apartment. The
evening program at the Hartman Institute had finished and we had stopped at his
apartment on the way to get ice cream.
The building had no shelter, so we stood in the hallway with a group of
young women and a young family.
The second one – De had already arrived, and we were walking on the
street. We ducked into a
supermarket and the owner suggested we might be safe near the dairy
section. The third one – De and I
were halfway between the apartment we were renting and a friend’s apartment. Apparently we had a minute and a half,
but we ran to our friend’s apartment in far less time.
De
and I found it strange and tense to be in Israel during this time. My colleagues and I were participating
in the second summer of the rabbinic leadership initiative of the Hartman
Institute. The topic for this
summer was Jewish approaches to war and peace. The topic was chosen long before the events of the summer
unfolded.
To
put it mildly, it proved to be quite a relevant topic. As we know, there are virtually no
degrees of separation in Israel when it comes to conflict. Everyone knows people in Sederot and
Ashkelon and other southern villages that were the target of far more frequent
rocket fire than Jerusalem experienced.
And
once the ground incursion began, we knew several families who had sons in Gaza
– how much the more so Israeli citizens, who are constantly communicating on
their cell phones to exchange information about the whereabouts of each other's children. Israelis parents of
soldiers spend a lot of time on whatsapp.
Friends
of ours who made aliya over 20 years ago told us that their soldier son called
in Jerusalem from southern Israel to tell them he’s been having trouble with
his phone, so if the battery dies they shouldn’t worry. Which was his kind, though ultimately
ineffective, way of trying to spare them the anxiety of wondering if he wasn’t
communicating because he had entered Gaza and had to give up his phone for
security purposes.
Other
friends, whose son is a paratrooper, told us that he his troop entered Gaza
while they were sitting shiva for one of their parents.
One
of our instructors, a reservist in the tank brigade, received notice of a
possible call-up for his troop. Here’s the three-day trajectory:
Monday
– he discusses Maimonides’ concept of God and its ethical implications. We’re ready to dive into some key
chapters of the Guide to the Perplexed on Tuesday, when he’s clearly distracted
by the whatsapp conversation among all of his troop members.
Are
we being called up? I can’t find
my boots. I don’t know if my
uniform still fits. I need to find
some one to fill in for me at the hospital, law firm, whatever.
We
tell him to go home to see his young children before he possibly gets called
up. Wednesday – discovering he
wasn’t called up, he’s back in class and instead of continuing the session on
Maimonides, he debriefs with us, emotionally and intellectually, and reflects
on what it means to be a soldier in the context of Jewish history and Jewish
values.
There’s
much more to tell about my time in Israel. But for the rest of my comments this morning, I want to share
some of his insights because I think they are very instructive.
Our
instructor’s name is Micha Goodman.
He is the head of Ein Prat – the Midrasha, a pluralistic yeshiva in
Israel. He is also a tank
commander and an expert in Maimonides.
He is widely regarded as knowledgeable and charismatic.
He began
by saying how freaked out he and his troop members are by the whole situation and how their lives are thrown out of whack when, at age 40, they
have to figure out how to reorganize their lives on a moment’s notice when they
are called up.
Then
he said, he thinks he has a sense of how our forefather Jacob felt when he was
preparing to encounter his brother Esau.
The Torah tells us, ויירא יעקב מאד ויצר לו Vayyara ya’akov me’od vayetzer lo. Vayera – Jacob was afraid. Vayetzer lo.
Jacob was troubled. The
midrash wonders why the apparent repetition and says, vayiyara – shema
yehareg. He was afraid that he
might get killed. Vayetzer – shema
ya’ha’rog - he was troubled that he might kill.
Micha
Goodman said that this ideally encapsulates soldiers' concerns – they
don’t want to be killed nor do they want to kill. He said that he would absolutely love to achieve the balance
of the Zen master, who is strong, but doesn’t overreach. And he spoke briefly, though we had
discussed it previously, about the IDF’s code of arms. He admitted that IDF soldiers sometimes
fall short of the mandate but suggested that the effort, which is often met,
and the ideal, which is concretized and institutionalized, reflect the dual
concern with being harmed and causing harm.
We
experience life moment to moment.
That’s true generally, and in Israel it’s especially true. One moment we’re hiding
out in the diary section, the next moment we’re wondering what happened to our
friend’s sons, wondering about the families of the slain Jewish teens and the
slain Arab teen, hearing about IDF soldiers killed and Gazan civilians killed. Multiply that by the number of
people involved as participants and observers and the constantly shifting
reality and the complexity is overwhelming.
With
good sense, with honesty, with sophistication, we can examine current dilemmas in
the context of timeless wisdom, which is what Micha Goodman was doing.
Right
now, as we read from the book of Deuteronomy, we confront the addresses that Moses offered to the people as they prepared to enter the promised land.
Moses
knew that the Israelites, who had known oppression and wandering, were now going to be in a position to experience power and to establish societies of their own.
The
two concerns that Jacob had – what if I’m killed, what if I kill – are
magnified in the book of Deuteronomy.
In Parashat Shoftim alone, you have two
impulses that are explored. One is to
defend, even if it requires destruction.
The Israelites were told to centralize worship and to destroy the local
altars – אבד תאבדון abed t’abdun – utterly
destroy. The other impulse is to
reach out. פתוח תפתח Patoah tiftah – open
your hand to the poor, the needy within your midst.
How
do you protect and reach out? How
do you protect without hardening the heart that yearns to reach out?
The
Israelis I met, the scholars at Hartman, the friends and friends of friends –
are trying to protect and to reach out.
To protect their citizens from Hamas, because they are intent on killing
Israelis and martyring their own people, but to also find ways to reach out to
those Palestinian and Israeli Muslims who are not vicious terrorists and who
are even victims themselves.
To
protect Israel’s right to exist, as a strong Jewish state, with security for
all of her inhabitants, and also to continue to reach out to those who are in
need, within and beyond the Jewish state.
Israelis
are exhausted, Palestinians are exhausted. I was exhausted after four weeks and I wasn’t in Ashkelon,
and I wasn’t in Gaza.
The
haftarah for this Torah portion, part
of the “seven consolation” haftarot,
offers the following words of Isaiah as hope for the future: “All of your children shall know God,
and great shall be your children’s peace.” (Isaiah 54:3).
In light of the unrest in Israel, the Middle East overall and elsewhere in
the world, I echo that hope for all of God’s children.
Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on August 23, 2014.
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