Jacob Becoming Israel: Thoughts Following the Recent Killings in Jerusalem

When you visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, you walk through the series of exhibits and toward the end of the exhibits, you begin to see light shining into the museum.  At the end of the path that you’re walking on, you stand looking out a huge window and you realize that you are looking at the hills of Jerusalem and that, scattered onto those hills, are several residential neighborhoods.

One of the neighborhoods you see, looking out the window of Jerusalem’s Holocaust Museum, is Har Nof.

Har Nof is the neighborhood where four Jewish scholars and one Druze policeman were killed Tuesday morning, November 18, by two Palestinians who entered a synagogue with axes and firearms and brutally murdered and wounded several worshippers.

Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, Rabbi Kalman Ze’ev Levine, Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky, Rabbi Moshe Twersky and Officer Zidan Saif

The thought of this is downright sickening.  The acts need to be condemned in the strongest possible terms and the families of the victims deserve all of the compassion and comfort we can muster. 

The murders are part of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, of course, and this morning, I want to try to put it in a larger context.

Israel is a mature sovereign nation.  I want to reflect on what this means given the recent tragedy

God Loves Us: A Complex Message We Need to Hear

Deanna and I were in the city recently and stopped in a park where a whole bunch of families were playing soccer together.  At one point, the soccer ball was kicked over to where we were sitting and a little boy, probably no older than five, came over to claim it.  He picked up the ball and smiled at us.  I noticed that his T-shirt had the following words on it:  Jesus Loves Me.

I had a burst of clarity and said to myself, now I have my sermon topic for Yom Kippur.  With one change, as you might imagine.

Truth is, even before I saw the boy I wanted to talk about how God loves us.

But when I shared the idea with a colleague of mine, he said, emphatically “Don’t do it!”  I asked, “Why not?”  He said, “People don’t think about God in that way.  They’re not sure what they believe about God.  They feel abandoned by God.  And it sounds too…Christian."

When I texted my son about the topic, he texted back, “What about 9/11 and the Holocaust?”  Followed by suggestions for how I should give the sermon that concluded, masterfully I must say, with a request for some additional funds.   If God loves us, and I love him, then…

If enough people tell you your tie is on crooked, you look down to check your tie.  So first, I want to acknowledge why this topic is difficult.  But then I want to talk about why it’s so important.

As many people as are sitting here, that’s how many various opinions and shades of opinion there are about God, and how God operates in the world.