Reflections from Jerusalem on a Difficult Few Weeks

Tuesday night, July 8.  My friend and I had just left his apartment building in Jerusalem when we heard the alarm siren.  We looked at each other and realized that we needed to go back into the building and search for the shelter.  When we asked a few residents of the building where the shelter was, they responded with a single Hebrew word, “אין ein.” There is no shelter in our building.  So we all stood together on the landing of one of the floors, two American rabbis, half a dozen young Israeli women and an ultra-Orthodox family with young children tugging on their mother’s dress and telling her they were scared.

Hostility and fear have risen steadily in Israel over the past weeks.  Three Israeli boys were kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian terrorists while returning from yeshiva.   A Palestinian boy was lit on fire by Israeli terrorists on his way home from morning prayers.  Rockets, fired by Hamas into the south of Israel for years, increased in frequency and distance as the IDF began its operation in Gaza.

What’s it like to be in Israel when all this is going on?  As journalist and Hartman faculty member Yossi Klein-Halevi put it, Israelis seldom have time to process events since they unfold so rapidly.  Along with our Israeli brothers and sisters, we offered condolences to the families of the Israeli boys and condemned the killings.  (My colleagues and I were among thousands who attended the funeral.)  Several days later, we offered condolences to the Palestinian family and condemned the killing.  (Hundreds of Israelis, including rabbis, went to the home of slain boy, Muhammed abu Khdeir, to offer condolences and to condemn the murder.)  And now we go about our business, making sure we are never too far from a place that is at least reasonably safe in case the rocket siren goes off again which it did, two days after the first one.

Am Yisra'el United in Grief

On Tuesday afternoon, a few colleagues and I drove from Jerusalem to Modiin to attend the funeral for the three murdered Israeli teens - Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar and Naftali Frenkel.  Given the enormous crowd, we needed to park several miles from the cemetery and walk to the site of the funeral along with throngs of people.

It appeared that the attendees were nearly all religiously observant and mostly in their teens and early twenties, the ages of my sons.  I felt surrounded by the next generation of Israelis, expressing their grief and their solidarity with the families of their peers.  It was quite hot and several people in our area fainted, requiring medics to be called over. 

A small group started to sing a slow, soulful melody and the entire crowd soon joined in.  “May God be merciful to our fellow Jews who wander over sea and land or who suffer persecution and imprisonment.  May God soon bring them relief from distress and deliver them from darkness to light, from subjugation to redemption.”  This was followed by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s stirring setting for the dramatic verse from Psalm 23:  “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no harm, for You are with me.”  For half an hour, we sang songs of grief, hope and comfort.

The ceremony consisted of prayers recited by the Chief Ashkenazic and Sephardic Rabbis and speeches by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres.  I was especially moved by the eulogy given by the rabbi who leads the yeshiva that two of the teens attended.  He spoke about the boys' kindness and creativity, giving specific examples from their lives. Reflecting on the outpouring of support from the crowd, he said that while two Jews may have three opinions, they share one heart.

Following the ceremony, the families proceeded to a private burial and the crowd began to leave the cemetery. 

I will never forget that afternoon.  Though the size of the crowd exceeded people’s expectations, things never got unruly. There were no demonstrations, no violent incidents, no calls for revenge, just a sad, soulful, communal demonstration of unity and support.  Am Yisra’el showed up that afternoon to grieve the senseless deaths of three teens who will never attend university or have families of their own. 

Toward the end of his eulogy, the boys’ rabbi reflected on the importance of prayer when all other words fail us.  “The essence of prayer,” he said, “is the underlying belief that tomorrow can be better than today.” 

Surrounded by even larger crowds than I entered with, I left the cemetery praying that tomorrow would be better.

If Only

Jews throughout the world are have been feeling immense anxiety due to the capture of three Israeli teens, Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach.

Our friends who live in Ranaana, a suburb of Tel Aviv, described how their son, currently serving in the Israeli Army, was called back to his base on Shabbat morning, possibly in order to join his fellow paratroopers doing house-to-house searchers for the kidnapped teens in Hebron.

People of good will, Jewish and non-Jewish, are praying for the safe release of these teens.  For the first few days, the only reactions I saw were prayers on behalf of the young men and supportive words for their families.

And then, as the week wore on, people started to express their opinions regarding this situation and its larger context.

And I began to think that the way people view the tragic abduction of these three men is kind of Rorschach test for people’s overall perspectives and politics.

In this corner – Samuel Heilman, Professor at Queens College, writing that he blames the yeshiva where these boys were studying for not providing adequate armored buses to transport students from one place to another. 

And in this corner – Avraham Burg writing an article for the left-leaning Ha’aretz newspaper titled, “The Palestinians:  A kidnapped society.”  In it he argues that Israeli society by and large has become desensitized to the pain caused to an entire people through the occupation.  He writes, “All of Palestinian society is a kidnapped society.  Like many of the Israelis who performed significant service in the army, many of the readers of this column, or their children, entered the home of a Palestinian family in the middle of the night by surprise, with violence, and simply took away the father, brother or uncle, with determination and insensitivity.  That is kidnapping, and it happens every day.”  (Ha’aretz, June 18, 2014)

And he goes on to blame the Israeli government for not making genuine gestures toward reconciliation.

Still We Rise: Encouraging Resilience

A few years ago, Rabbi Adelson and I led a series of discussions in the home of members of our congregation having to do with parenting.

We had over forty people there who had children ranging in age from infancy to adulthood. 

During the first discussion, we asked the question, what qualities do you want to encourage in your children?

And we made a list.

The qualities included:  Compassion.  Honesty.  And one that I want to focus on because it sounds great, but it’s complicated.

Everyone agreed that they want to raise children who are resilient.  This morning, on the holiday in which we celebrate the centrality of the Torah in our lives and moments before we recall our loved ones who are no longer with us, I want to talk about resilience.

The popular magazine Psychology Today offers the following definition of resilience:

"Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. Rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes. Psychologists have identified some of the factors that make someone resilient, among them a positive attitude, optimism, the ability to regulate emotions, and the ability to see failure as a form of helpful feedback. Even after a misfortune, blessed with such an outlook, resilient people are able to change course and soldier on."

I want to speak about us as individuals, I want to regard us in the context of our tradition, which exemplifies resilience, and then I want to challenge us to encourage resilience in ourselves and in those we love.

I Would Not Complain: Must Embracing Religion Require Belief in God?

The NY Times recently interviewed a woman who grew up Muslim but basically left Islam.  She claimed to be an atheist.  She said that at a certain point, the tenets of Islam didn’t make sense to her.  She found herself at odds with her parents, who couldn’t believe that did not want to remain a Muslim.

Among the things she questioned was why she couldn’t have a boyfriend?  And why she needed to observe Ramadan?

Apparently, she found some comfort with self-described atheists from other religions.

The article got me thinking further about a cluster of questions that many of us have thought about and discussed, as it pertains to us and also as it pertains to our children and grandchildren.  And that is:  What’s the connection between belief in God and adherence to religious tradition?

Do you need to believe certain things about God in order to find direction and meaning in religion?

Or, to put it more starkly, when children say, “I don’t believe in God!” does that mean that parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, need to freak out? 

I’m all for belief in God.  But I think we do everyone a disservice when we bundle everything together.  Just because a person has doubts about God, does that mean that he or she needs to abandon religious tradition and community?

Or, conversely, just because a person questions the values of their religious tradition and community, does that necessarily mean that they have issues with God?

I’m going to explore something this morning that some may find outrageous and others may find obvious.  I’m going to suggest that it’s not such a terrible idea to separate God and religion, at least in the short-term. 

The refrain of my comments will be, “I would not complain if…”

NBA, TIGN and the Purpose of Religion

By now we’ve all heard about the owner of the LA clippers, Donald Sterling. whose unacceptable comments to his girlfriend have engendered the maximum fine the NBA imposes as well as consideration of a lifetime ban from NBA involvement.

You may also know that he’s Jewish.  And whether we think it’s fair or not, his Jewishness has been mentioned in some accounts of what transpired. 

I don’t want to spend much time this morning talking about the unfortunate comments of an NBA team owner. 

What I do want to do is reflect for a bit on how ideally being Jewish needs to lead us to a better ethical place.  Otherwise we’re missing the point.

We can’t control what every Jew says or does, but I believe we can say that when a Jew is dismissive or pejorative toward a racial or ethnic group or socioeconomic group, when a Jew cuts corners in business, when a Jew behaves in ways that are base and undignified, it represents a measure of failure for all of us.

Not because it’s important for us to look good, but because it’s important for us to actually be good.  And while I hope that my colleagues of other religions are delivering similar messages to their communities, I can only start by worrying about my own.

Judaism Should Challenge Us

Jon Stewart did a great routine two years ago, comparing Passover to Easter.  Stewart himself is Jewish.  He went over to his special “camera 3” where he "addresses" the Jews in the audience. He said, "mishpocha, we’re losing the contest with Easter."  He held up a basket and said, "Check this out.  Chocolate bunnies, eggs filled with chocolate."

And then he held up the seder plate and said, “but we have matzah, bitter herbs and eggs filled with – EGG.”

It’s a funny routine, worth watching if you haven’t seen it yet. 

In the aftermath of Passover, it’s hard to deny that sometimes Judaism is challenging.  It’s challenging to prepare a house for Passover.  Parts of the Seder are difficult to understand. 

To be sure, there have always been attempts to make it more user-friendly.  Selling the chametz, for example, allows us to avoid serious waste and financial loss.  (Though the legal fiction, whereby all of the chametz in your house belongs to a non-Jew for the duration of Passover, has sparked its own share of jokes.  One Jew sees another smoking on Shabbat, which is against the rules.  He says, “My friend, what are you doing?  You’re not supposed to smoke on Shabbat.”  And the friend says, “It’s OK.  I sold my lungs to a gentile.” )

Notwithstanding efforts to make Passover more manageable, it’s still a challenge.

If anything, we’ve seen increased effort over the years to make Judaism more user-friendly and to the extent that we are engaging more people in the experience of our tradition, that’s a good thing. 

But I want to urge us, this morning, to consider various ways in which Judaism challenges us and why that’s a good thing.