Protecting Israel: This Much Is Simple

I shared these words the day before AIPAC's 2020 Policy Conference began.

There’s been a lot in the news recently about the upcoming AIPAC policy conference - who is attending, who is not attending, what is AIPAC about altogether. 

TIGN's Teen Delegation and Portion of Adult Delegation, AIPAC Policy Conference 2020

AIPAC describes itself in the following way:

"The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a bipartisan organization of U.S. citizens committed solely to strengthening, protecting and promoting the U.S.-Israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of the United States and Israel."

Full and proud disclosure - I’ll be at the conference with over 30 adult Temple Israel members and our Youth Engagement Director Avi Siegel will be leading a group of teens.

Full and proud disclosure - I believe Israel should remain Jewish and Democratic. I believe a two-state solution is still the best of a bunch of imperfect solutions.  I love some of what is said at AIPAC conferences and I despise some of what is said at AIPAC conferences.  I support and admire some of the people who will be speaking at this conference and I don’t support and don’t admire others.  

There is much about supporting Israel that is complicated and at least one thing that is not.  I will start with the complexity and then focus, by sharing a personal story, on what I believe is actually quite simple.

We Are Accountable

A man sat down next to someone on a train and was very rude to him over the course of the first part of the trip.  At one point, a third person boarded the train and addressed the second man as rabbi.  The man who had been rude to him apologized.  “I’m so sorry, rabbi,” he said.  “I had no idea.” The rabbi said, “you don’t owe me an apology at all. However, you do owe an apology to the person you thought I was.”

We come from a tradition that insists that we are to be held accountable for our behavior.  The Torah, in Parashat Mishpatim, emphasizes at least three areas of accountability.

75 Years Later: Protecting Ourselves and Others

My friend posted a video of Holocaust survivors living in Israel. The video features the survivors speaking briefly of their experiences and then, for each one, the camera pans out and you see them standing next to a grandchild, or great-grandchild, wearing an IDF uniform.  

It’s a powerful video.  It’s powerful to see Jewish people whose families and lives were destroyed because they were powerless now living in a place where Jews have the power to protect themselves and, to a large degree, determine their own fate.

This past Monday marked the 75th commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz.   Many moving tributes were offered, many profound words were shared.

75 years later, what do we want to learn from Auschwitz?  From the Shoah overall?

We Must Not Hide Who We Are

The cost of hiding who we are generally outweighs the benefit. I’d like to look at how this plays out in the story of Joseph, which we are concluding these weeks, and then as it relates to us as Jews today.

TIGN at the No Hate No Fear Solidarity March in NYC

Last week’s parasha ended on a cliffhanger.  You will recall that Joseph insists that Benjamin come down to Egypt, Jacob is terrified to let him go but agrees.  Joseph frames Benjamin by placing a silver goblet in his sack. Judah says, We are guilty.  We will all be your slaves.

And Joseph says, No, you will not all be my slaves.  Only the one in whose sack the goblet was found will be my slave.  As for the rest of you, עלו לשלום אל אביכם aloo l’shalom el avikhem.  Go back in peace to your father.  

On one level, Joseph is completely in control.  We can interpret his actions as wreaking revenge on his brothers and his father, or as a test to see how much they have grown morally since they left him to die in a pit, or a little bit of both.

On a deeper level, Joseph is suffering in his own way and he is barely holding himself together.  You may recall that earlier, when his brothers spoke apologetically among themselves, he turned away and cried, and then faced them again after he regained composure.

He is hiding from them.  He is hiding from his family.  He has a new name, a new look, an Egyptian wife - the Egyptians know he’s a Hebrew, though he doesn’t quite look like one.  His hiding - mostly from his family - causes enormous emotional pain.  

There are several reasons why Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers, but I want to propose that his main emotional, psychological motivation is that he was tired of being isolated from his family.  

In short, he was tired of hiding.

There are many reasons why we hide certain aspects of who we are, often having to do with danger.  For whatever reasons, we feel that it is dangerous to be forthright about who we are.  So we hide.

As we continue to respond to recent antisemitic attacks - vandalism, assault, stabbing, shooting - we are appropriately focusing on a whole range of issues including improving our physical security and the need to speak out regardless of where the antisemitic acts are coming from and what “type of Jew” is impacted.  

I want to take a few moments to reflect on a disturbing trend that is emerging, and that is the growing fear among Jews of being too public in expressing their Jewishness.  

Facing Antisemitism Forthrightly

My generation of rabbis - ordained in the 90’s - used to observe that our rabbinate would be different from those of previous generations.  Instead of focusing on the dangers of antisemitism, we would focus on the positive aspects of Judaism.  More joy, less oy.  I’m not sure who invented that phrase, but it expresses the sentiment that guided us.

On a recent Wednesday night, I asked a group of people attending a Temple Israel Men’s Club event - do you feel more afraid or less afraid to be a Jew now than you did when you were growing up?  Some said they feel less afraid now and spoke about being bullied as Jews when they grew up.  But most said they feel more afraid now.

With antisemitic incidents on the rise, as empirically charted by the ADL and other organizations, and with the genuine fear that many of us continue to have, of course I, and other Jewish leaders, need to continue to respond, to analyze, to offer insight and hopefully some direction when it comes to antisemitism.  

In one week alone, 4 people were murdered in Jersey City by to people who were targeting Jews, 3 students were assaulted at Indiana University, and Netzach Synagogue was vandalized in Beverly Hills. 

Here are some points I’ve made before, but I believe they bear repeating and expanding:

Difficult Conversations Start With Us

I recently finished a book that I would recommend.  It’s called “Difficult Conversations,” written by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen.  It’s about how to have difficult conversations in a way that is effective, that leads to understanding, rather than more frustration.

Delacroix, "Jacob Wrestling with the Angel"

Before I go on, I’d like to ask everyone here, children and adults - to think of a conversation that you are in the middle of, or one that you realize you need to have but haven’t started yet, that’s a difficult conversation.

Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking to your child about a difficulty he or she is having socially in school.

Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking to your parent about feeling anxious or depressed or, if your parent is older, about issues around independence.  

Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking with a partner about something the other person does that bothers you, or about emotional or physical intimacy in your relationship.

Perhaps you have been, or need to be, talking with someone you supervise at work about how their performance has been problematic, or perhaps you need to talk to your supervisor about receiving greater responsibility and compensation.  

Take a minute to think about a difficult conversation in your own life.

Sensitivity Leads to Strength

Last Tuesday night I attended the IAJF (Iranian American Jewish Federation) annual gala where former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley spoke.  It is a source of pride to TIGN that so many of our members are involved, including IAJF president Robert Kahen, president of IAJF.

Last Thursday, I attended the ADL’s Never Is Now conference where, among other things, Sascha Baron Cohen was given the International Leadership Award and British Parliament Member Joan Ryan spoke about her response to antisemitism in England.  It is a source of pride to TIGN that so many of our members are involved, including, of course, CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.  

On Wednesday night, I went to see an outstanding new production of Macbeth with my son Zach.  The production was terrific and watching Macbeth again solidified for me how I would, in this little sermon, frame the week and, more broadly, the way that I believe we must respond to the enormous challenges that face us these days as Jews and as human beings.

We know it’s important to be strong in the face of antisemitism and bigotry.  No one could convincingly argue, post-Shoah, and recently in the aftermath of the shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway and continued attacks of Jews on Brooklyn and just recently a stabbing of a Jew in Rockland County, that Jews should sit back passively.  We need to be strong and we need allies to be strong on our behalf and we need to be strong on behalf of our allies.

We also need to remain sensitive.  So that we can continue to feel what is natural to feel when we and those we know and those we don’t know are targeted with discrimination and violence.  So that we have the resolve to fight to protect those who are vulnerable, including but not limited to ourselves.  So that we can sense the difference between protective measures that are called for and protective measures that unfairly target the most vulnerable.  

Strength and sensitivity are not mutually exclusive.  In Jewish tradition they never were.  They always went hand in hand.  The Kabbalists speak of chesed/love/sensitivity on one side of a cosmic and human scheme and gevurah/resolve/strength on the other side and the idea is that in the world, and through us, they work together.

Starting with Macbeth.

Becoming More Assertive

Starting this Monday night, I’m going to be teaching a class at Temple Israel about Musar.  Musar loosely translated means ethical behavior.  We will be looking at texts that answer the basic question, how should we behave?

A depiction of Abraham conversing with God

Broadly speaking, texts about “how to behave” go way back in our tradition.  The Torah explores human behavior in numerous stories about our forbears and concretizes expectations of behavior through laws. 

The book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes provide advice.

Medieval Jewish philosophers wrote about how to define proper behavior. 

During the 19th century, the so-called Musar Movement developed and musar instructors wrote and taught about how one might change one’s behavior for the better.

They established frameworks for self-reflection and behavior modification.  A recent framework, established by the Mussar Institute, offers the following guidelines:

In the morning, you identify a type of behavior that you want to embrace. 

You say it, think about it, meditate on it.

In the afternoon, you do activities that strengthen the behavior.

In the evening, you write about your efforts. What went well?What didn’t go well?

When it comes to improving our own behavior, lots of things get in the way.

Often we aren’t aware of how we’re behaving.  We say and do things that are angry or timid or selfish and we aren’t even aware.

When we look at other people who behave in positive ways, we might be intimidated by them.  If we get as far as saying, “Gee, I’d like to do that,” we don’t necessarily know how to go about it.

In this morning’s Torah reading alone, we see examples of behaviors we might want to follow (and perhaps some that we don’t want to follow).

I’d like to focus on one behavior of Abraham that I would say is a positive behavior, one that we might want to emulate.

Engaging With a Scary, Unjust World

We tell a lot of stories to children that are terrifying.  The Brothers Grimm - two German scholars - are best known for their fairy tales and they are quite scary.  But we don’t even need them as examples.  The Bible has plenty of scary stories.  

To be sure, when we tell the story of Noah, we focus on the cute little animals and there are even cute songs about them walking onto the ark which I’ll spare you.  But the overall story is terrifying.  Destruction by flood is terrifying and if children use their imaginations to consider what that would be like, it might keep them up at night.

There’s another scary aspect of the story, and that is, that God decides to give up on humanity.  And at least as scary as that is the fact that the human that God picks to be saved along with his immediate relatives says nothing and starts to build a big boat just like God commands in order to save himself, his family, and certain animals.

Giving up is one answer to the fact that human beings are various shades of imperfect/dismissive/downright cruel.  There are lots of ways to give up that don’t involve wholesale destruction, though we’ve certainly done that to one another as a species.  We give up by allowing injustice and violence to continue without saying or doing much.  Ignoring and denying are very common ways that human beings give up on one another.

The first thing Noah does when he leaves the ark after the flood is plant a vineyard and get drunk.  Usually we don’t teach children that part.  I imagine he gets drunk in part because it is too painful to face sober the reality of the destruction that occurred and the reality of his own complicity, his tacit agreement to “give up.”

There is an alternative to giving up. It occupies the rest of the Torah, such that the Noah story becomes the exception rather than the rule.  The alternative to giving up is engagement.

One Year After the Tree of Life Synagogue Shootings

I grew up in a town that had, and still has, a large Jewish community.  My public high school had a sizable Jewish population but was mostly Christian.  I imagine there were students of other faiths as well, though I wasn’t aware of it.  

Great Neck community prayer gathering following the shootings

I experienced so little antisemitism as a student that I distinctly remember the very few times it occurred. 

Now these were the 1970's and early 80's in Fair Lawn, NJ, a suburb half an hour west of the George Washington Bridge. Towns with fewer Jews, towns in different parts of the country, generally experienced more antisemitism. 

The 70’s and 80’s, when a significant number of us came of age in this country or were raising our own children, were what I’ll call a little gan eden, a little Garden of Eden.  Great Neck in the 70’s and 80’s must have felt like my childhood town, even more-so.  A more sizable Jewish majority, more Jewish influence, more of a feeling of stability.

As this morning’s Torah reading makes clear, the Garden of Eden didn’t last so long.  Was it meant to last longer?  From a literary perspective, I would point out that the story, in keeping with other origin stories, was likely was meant to be etiological, to explain to its readers why life was the way it was - why life was hard, why people had to struggle with constant disappointments, with human beings not only loving and creating, but also hating and destroying.  

And so a story was told about how the creator put us in a beautiful secure garden לעבדה ולשומרה l’ovdah ul’shomrah - to tend and to care for - and we messed up, resulting in our living in a world that is beautiful but also dangerous.  

No one who came to this country from Poland or Germany or Iraq or Iran or many other places believed this was a Garden of Eden for Jews because they understood, based on their experience, that there is no such thing.

But even for these individuals, and certainly for those who came of age here in the 70’s and 80’s, and for our children, it felt in general, and for Jews as well, that life was safe and secure.

One year ago, as we heard the news of the shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, whatever feeling of safety and security we might have had was shattered.  A sense of American Jewish life as being somehow protected was in a profound way threatened.

Fear is Real - A Message for Yom Kippur

This past Sukkot, shortly after last Yom Kippur, a member of our family had a health-related issue that, thankfully, reached a positive resolution.  The experience, as you might imagine, caused a considerable amount of anxiety at the time.

There’s a well-known Jewish song which begins כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאד kol ha’olam kulo gesher tzar me’od.  The world is a very narrow bridge.  והעקר לא לפחד כלל Ve’ha'ikar lo l’fahed klal.  And the essential thing is not to be afraid at all.

The song is sung at Jewish summer camps and youth group gatherings and we often sing it here at Temple Israel

I’ve always liked the song, but at the same time, it always bothered me.  The essential thing is not to be afraid at all. 

Does that mean that if we or a loved one are facing a danger and we are afraid, we are somehow missing the mark?  Somehow not strong enough or brave enough?

The words of the song are attributed to a certain rabbi, Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav.  I was intrigued by him years ago and decided to read a biography about him called Tormented Master, by Professor Art Green.  The title alone might tell you something, and I dove right in.

Rabbi Nachman, or Rav Nachman, was descended from the Baal Shem Tov, considered the founder of Hasidism, and Rav Nachman is credited with having revived Hasidism in a variety of important ways.  

He was known for being incredibly intense emotionally and apparently he was an extremely anxious person.  He thought things through to the point that he worried about them incessantly.  He had profound personal conflicts that lasted his entire life.

I imagine that when he wrote these words - the essential thing is not to be afraid - he was writing them as much for himself as for anyone else, kind of like when Dori, the fish in Finding Nemo, kept reminding herself to “just keep swimming.”

When you are worried about something, you know that the fear is real and cannot be denied or ignored.

If you have ever worried about the well-being of someone you love, or about your own well-being, you know that the fear is real.

We Need Each Other - a Message for 5780

We need each other.  That’s my message for the New Year.

A few years ago I was sitting with a group of parents in our religious school and I asked, what qualities do you want to instill in your children?  I made a list.  The qualities included hard work, honesty, compassion.  One quality that rose to the top of the list is independence.  Parents unanimously said they want their children to become independent.

Independence is an important quality, obviously. 

However.  We also understand, when we reflect honestly, that none of us is fully independent.  We rely on others all the time, for all kinds of reasons.

Looking back at our tradition, I had trouble finding references to independence.  In fact, I’m not sure I could identify a Biblical or rabbinic word that quite conveys the concept.  עצמאות atzma’ut, the modern Hebrew word for independence, does not seem to go too far back.

What you do have going way back in our tradition is ערבות areivut, which is interdependence.  Areivut is the notion that we are responsible for each other, we need each other.  We give and we get.

As a New Year begins, following a year in which we often have felt polarized and pulled apart from one another, I want us to consider several of the ways in which we are interdependent.  

Let’s start with the exciting world of romantic dating.  I want you to imagine that you’re coming up with a profile for yourself for a dating app.   

Present in the Present

I’ve told this story before but I was thinking about it again recently.  Our oldest son was born when we were living in Riverdale, along with many other rabbinical students.  The day after they came home from the hospital, Deanna asked if I could go down to the nearby pharmacy and get some diapers.  

I said sure, and then I started to get emotional and I said, you may think this is crazy, but I started to imagine standing with our son under the chupah and wondering what I would say.

And she said, that’s beautiful. And then she said, please go down to the story and get diapers.  The smallest size they have.

It’s fun to dream about the future and it can be illuminating to reflect on the past.

However, I believe that many of us, from time to time, find that we prevent ourselves from appreciating the blessings and the opportunities of whatever moment we are in.  

If you have ever catapulted yourself out of the present by rushing toward the future, or getting stuck in the past, these next few words are for you.

I’ll use myself as an example in the hope that you can relate.

Effective Thoughts and Prayers

Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahamas, skirted Florida, and continued northward near the Atlantic coast.

Marianne Williamson, presidential candidate and self-help author, wrote the following tweet once the storm turned course away from the Florida coast.

"The Bahamas, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas...may all be in our prayers now. Millions of us seeing Dorian turn away from land is not a wacky idea; it is a creative use of the power of the mind. Two minutes of prayer, visualization, meditation for those in the way of the storm.”

Hours later she deleted that tweet and replaced it with the following:

"Prayers for the people of the Bahamas, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. May the peace of God be upon him and their hearts be comforted as they endure the storm.”

I don’t know if she realized herself the deeply problematic nature of her original tweet.  She was implying, it seems, that it was powerful, collective thinking that resulted in the hurricane turning away from making landfall in Florida. It might have hit Florida, but powerful prayer, visualization, meditation, shifted it away.

Someone responded to her first tweet with the following, I’m paraphrasing:  I guess the prayers, visualization and meditation of the people in the Bahamas just weren’t good enough.

The original tweet presents a spiritual approach, a theology, that, to me ear, frankly, is self-congratulatory and deeply offensive.

If you escape natural disaster, it’s because you said or thought the right thing.  By implication, if you escape medical catastrophe, it’s because you said or thought the right thing.

And if you don’t escape those things, it means you didn’t think or pray right by God?

So much guilt and spiritual suffering has been inflicted on people by adding theological insult to physical, medical and emotional injury.

Confronting Our Own Prejudices

On Tuesday, August 27, Rabbi Avraham Gopin was exercising in a park in Brooklyn and was assaulted by someone with a brick, knocking his teeth out and injuring his face.  This is the latest in a string of violence against Orthodox Jews in New York. 

Rabbi Avraham Gopin, attacked on August 27, 2019

A day after the assault, Avital Chizkik Goldschmidt, a self-identifying Orthodox Jew who writes for the Forward, wrote an article entitled, “Why Does No One Care About Violence Against Orthodox Jews?”

She observes in her article that the response to these antisemitic hate crimes so far has been insufficient both by the city administration and by the organized Jewish community, with the exception of the ADL who are offering a significant reward for any information about the perpetrator.  

She goes on to write that in the liberal circles where she often finds herself professionally, where all kinds of discrimination is appropriately opposed, she routinely hears slurs about Orthodox Jews.

We Get to Tell Our Loyalty Story

I want to talk this morning about loyalty and the Jewish people. Starting in the past, commenting on the present, and looking toward the future.  

You may recall that Moses had a very instructive conversation with the two and a half of the tribes of Israel. They tell Moses they do not want to cross over the Jordan to the west with everyone else כי באה נחלתנו אלינו מעבר לירדן מזרחה kee ba’ah nahalateinu eleinu me’ever layarden va’hal’ah - because our portion is on the eastern part of the Jordan.

And Moses says to them:  האחיכם יבואו למלחמה ואתם תשבו פה Ha’ahikhem yavo’u lamilhamah v’atem teshvu po?  Will your brothers go off to fight while you stay here?  Moreover, you will discourage the rest of the Israelites from passing over the Jordan.

How dare you act in such a way that denies your responsibilities to the rest of the people and actively discourages them?

Moses is angry.  You could say that he is accusing these leaders of not being sufficiently loyal to the rest of the people. However, it doesn’t end there.  The leaders say to him, we will settle our wives, children and livestock east of the Jordan.  Then we will cross over and fight alongside the rest of the tribes as they conquer the land.  Only after that effort has been successful will we return and fully settle down.

Moses is pleased with the response.  Following his ardent critique, the two and a half tribes come up with a compromise solution which Moses accepts.

Here are three reasons why the Biblical exchange differs from recent events, reasons that I hope will be instructive for us as we navigate the current climate:

Being Who We Are Called To Be

I was recently sitting on a train heading into the city, wearing the kippah I always wear.  A woman who seemed to be in her 20’s was sitting in front of me, turned around, and said, "Excuse me. Are you Jewish?" And I asked, "Why do you want to know?" She said, "I see you’re wearing one of those coverings.  I wondered if you could tell me about them and why Jewish people wear them."  

TIGN 2019 Teen Trip Meeting with Muslim Students at Givat Haviva

So I told her about my kippah, about humility, recognizing a higher power.  She told me that her godparents in Ireland are Jewish (she is originally from England and moved to Ireland), how much she loves celebrating Passover with them.  We spoke about kippot and hijabs, about various religious and how they bring good and bad into the world.


I realized during that train ride that like it or not, I was serving as an ambassador for Jews in general, although she already knew Jews, and observant Jews specifically.  Many of us find ourselves “representing Jewish people” at one time or another. And when that happens, we probably want to make a good impression.

It is normal and understandable - in encounters small and large - for us as people in general and as Jews specifically to want to make a good impression.

This Land is Also Your Land

Deanna and I recently spent a week up in Vermont with our son and his girlfriend.  Our son, who works in a vineyard, spent the week supervising a group of workers who came to the US from Bhutan.  

In speaking with some of them and doing some of his own research, he discovered that this group left Bhutan due to persecution.  They were persecuted because they came to Bhutan from Nepal a few generations ago and were never fully accepted as Bhutanese.  

So they left Bhutan and came to the US, settling primarily in Vermont and Ohio.

"You’re not one of us, you don’t belong, get out of here, go back to where you came from."  

These are familiar thoughts, familiar comments.  This makes them no no less pernicious, but they are familiar.

They surely are familiar to Jews. You come from somewhere else.  You have dual loyalty.  You are not one of us.  

Using our experience, I want to urge us to consider what it means when one person decides to tell another person, or a group, this is not your home.  You don’t belong.  Go back to where you came from.  And how we as Jews should respond and position ourselves when such things are said.

We Tell Our Stories to Make the World Better

NY Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez caused an uproar recently by referring to the situation at the southern border of the United States as follows:

Elie Wiesel speaking at Yad Vashem in 2008

” The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are – they are concentration camps – and if that doesn’t bother you...I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that we should not — that ‘Never Again’ means something.”

As we know, this sparked a heated response, and then a heated response to the response.

Curiosity Can Save Us - a Message for Shavuot

There are many things I miss about when our children were younger, but one thing I don’t miss so much are parent teacher conferences.  Sometimes they were illuminating and sometimes they were frustrating.

Curiosity undimmed in the British TV series, "Call the Midwife"

I remember once Deanna and I went to speak with our son's English teacher.  I walked into the room and the teacher had his grade book out, and started telling us about how he averaged all the scores and came up with the final grade.

I listened and said thank you and then asked, Is our son interested in what’s going on in class?

I realized that what I said could be interpreted as a critique of the teacher which was not my intention at all, so I said, I’m really just trying to ask if he’s curious about what’s going on.  Does he seem to like the books you are reading?  Is he excited to write about them, to be be part of the discussions you’re having?

I want to take a few minutes this morning to talk about curiosity. It’s at the heart of this holiday of Shavuot and it’s at the heart of whether we succeed or fail as individuals, as a people, as a species.  Curiosity.