Looking in Two Places at Once: An Authentic Jewish Response to Current Events

A boy named Henry was a real wise-guy and eventually was kicked out of the Jewish day school he was attending. 

So his parents enrolled him in another school.  Henry showed up that day and was doing pretty well until it came time for snack.  The children were all lined up in the cafeteria.  There was a basket of apples on one side of the serving table and one of the rabbis had written a note that was placed next to the apples:  The note said: Take only one.  God is watching.

Henry read the note.  He then noticed a big plate of chocolate chip cookies on the other side of the table.  Quickly, he wrote his own note and put it next to the cookies.  It said:

Take as many as you want.  God is watching the apples.

We like to believe that God is capable of keeping track of more than one thing at once.  We can debate that, I’m sure.

But I’m reasonably convinced that we mortals are not very good at doing that.  Given how over-loaded we are, given our particular perspectives, we tend to see one thing clearly at the expense of another. 

Jewish rabbinic tradition famously requires us to consider more than one thing at a time.

I’m going to begin with layers of understanding that go back generations and then I’d like to reflect on how we might face the very real challenges that confront us today.

In Parshat Bo, we read about how our people left Egypt . They were old and young, men and women together.

The night that the angel of death went from house to house, the night that the Israelites waited to see what happened, was also a night of vigil for God – ליל שמורים לה׳ leil shiurim ladonai.

The Torah tells us it was a night of vigil, of watchfulness, for God to bring them out of Egypt; a night of watchfulness that would belong to the children of Israel – לדורתם l’dorotam, from one generation to another.

The night before leaving Egypt was a night to be on guard – you can try to imagine the tension our ancestors felt.

But the question the rabbis asked, generations after the Exodus from Egypt, was, what were they on guard about?  What was the guardedness of that night?

Two rabbis gave two different answers.  One said – that night, there was a vigil against  the מזיקין mazikin – the dangerous forces.  Makes sense.  There was a lot of danger, immediate danger, perhaps even cosmic danger.  Another said something very different.  And pretty amazing.  The night itself had been guarded, tucked away, משומר meshumar from the time of creation, to be the time of redemption.

The answers reflect two very different approaches – one which sees danger; one which sees opportunity.

One that is on guard against threat, one that is on guard for an opening here or there to bring the world closer to what we know it should be.

I’d like to speak about the Jewish community.

I’m going to generalize here, but not without reason.  We are split, I believe, between “danger” people and “opportunity” people.

On one side, many of us feel, resonate with, worry about dangers to the Jewish people.  Our worry is a major part of our Jewish identity.  When the attacks took place in France, many of us said, “This proves it.  That life is dangerous for Jews.  And if Charlie Hebdo wasn’t attacked first, few would have mentioned the shootings in the kosher butcher shop.  As few mentioned the shootings in the school in Toulouse or the 100’s of other anti-Semitic incidents that took place in France alone in the last several years.”

On the other side, many of us resontate with opportunities for us as Jews to embrace the positive aspects of our heritage and to make the world a better place.  What gives us energy and underscores our identity primarily is celebration, learning and reaching out to those of other faiths to build bridges.

Increasingly I believe that we need both sentiments, that both are true, really true, that we each need to push ourselves to embrace the piece that doesn’t come so naturally us.

What does that look like in the context of today's complex and often harrowing realities?  

First, we all need to admit that there are very real dangers that face Jews.  And today, many of the dangers to Jews, and to others, come from radical Islamists who base their violence on their understanding of Islam. 

President Obama, who spoke appropriately in his recent “State of the Union Address” about the danger of anti-Semitism, the danger of prejudice to gays and lesbians and the danger of anti-Muslim sentiment, did not identify that the major source of violent terrorism today comes from radical Islamists.  That was an unfortunate omission in my opinion, and Tom Friedman pointed it out and mentioned, in a recent op-ed piece, that you always get into trouble if you don’t mention things by their real name.

When people criticize Israel for things that they don’t criticize other countries for, it’s anti-Semitism.

When a man trained by Al Qaeda kills people in a kosher butcher shop, it’s Islamist-based anti-Semitism. 

Those of us who are inclined not to focus on the negative, not to want to appear paranoid or intolerant, who prefer to focus on opportunity and growth and collaboration, would do well to read Tom Friedman’s articled about radical Islam and to contemplate the sheer number of anti-Semitic incidents that are taking place in Europe each year.

It’s not a hoax, it’s not made up, it’s very real. 

So we need to resonate with leil ham’shumar min hamazikin – we need to be on guard against the dangers.  The mazikin – the dangers, literally the damage-doers –are present in France, mostly in the form of radical Islamists.  And radical Islamists are surely present elsewhere.  Radicalization has repercussions throughout the world – in Europe, in Asia, in Canada and even in the United States, as the runners in the Boston Marathon tragically discovered almost two years ago. 

But this alone is not the full story and focus on the dangers without a counterbalance leaves us in a very limited state.

To be a Jew is also to focus on opportunity, not to allow those who hate us to define us. 

It’s about finding ways to pray, to celebrate, and to make the world better for everyone.

Sometimes it’s about crossing boundaries and joining with like-minded people, who value religion as an instrument of justice and peace.

This past Sunday, a number of us gathered at the AME Church on Steamboat Road at a service in memory of the Rev MLK Jr.

There was religious and racial diversity, men and women participated together, several churches and synagogues and the Islamic Center of Long Island were represented.

I know that at NYU and at Princeton, the campus rabbis and imams have had multiple dialogues with one another and have helped to open up dialogue between Muslim and Jewish students.

And that dialogue has led, on both campuses, to increased understanding, even though of course there are disagreements. 

My grandparents would never have imagined, when they first arrived in this country, that they would have a grandson who, one day, would have meaningful and respectful conversations with Christian clergy and that I would be participating in communal services with them, a rabbi of Eastern European descent doing a responsive reading with a pastor of East Asian descent.

But that required effort and risk, much dialogue with many setbacks, an effort, as we know, that Rabbi Waxman was such a big part of.

So when the Hartman institute invites imams for weeks of study, when university rabbis and imams partner up, when those of us who actively preach religion as a vehicle for peace and tolerance try to find each other, we are starting to do, with Muslim leadership, what a few brave souls did with Christian leadership.

No one can predict the outcome.  But doing what we can to distinguish radical Islamists from the majority of the Muslim world may well lead us to a place of greater understanding, not unlike what we’ve achieved with those Christian leaders who preach religion as a vehicle for peace and tolerance.

Are we people who recognize danger or are we people who recognize opportunity?  The answer should be yes to both.  It’s always been yes to both.  We take precautions and we take appropriate risks.  We say to those who deny the threat of radical Islam, you’re ignoring reality.  And we say to those who insist that we do nothing to overcome barriers with those who may share our values, you’re ignoring opportunity.

We are not God by a long shot, but with proper effort we can watch the apples AND the cookies.  Rabbi x and rabbi y are both alive within us, in fruitful dialectic.  I pray that  through our efforts, through our capacity to look at more than one thing at at ime, leil shimurim, the night of watchfulness, will ultimately lead to יום שכולו טוב yom shekulo tov, a day that is entirely good.  

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on January 24, 2015