Passover, Politics and the Jewish Obsession with History

I want to speak this morning about the value of history. 

Starting with very recent history.  Last week, the Rabbinical Assembly hosted a call with Dennis Ross about the agreement with Iran. 

He identified 4 areas that need to be emphasized in order for an agreement to be sufficiently satisfying to him:

1.    There needs to be one year minimum breakout period, defined as the time it would take Iran to finalize a nuclear weapon

2.    The international  need to be able to verify; all sites need to be accessible at all times

3.    There need to be severe consequences, that include the use of force, for lack of compliance.

4.    and it needs to be understood that severe consequences, which may include force, can be applied even after 15 years.

He pointed out that there has been mistrust between the US and various nations seeking nuclear power for as long as there’s been nuclear power, that this dynamic is hardly new.

During the Q and A, he was asked about the relationship between Obama and Netanyahu.  He said, it’s not ideal.  But let’s face it – there have been rough spots in relations between US and Israeli leaders throughout Israel’s existence.

He reflected, for example, on the relationship between Ronald Reagan and Menachem Begin which was hardly ideal.  Reagan thought that Begin was a bull in a china closet.  And Begin had reservations regarding Reagan’s mastery of the subtleties of international affairs. 

I’ve referred before to Yehuda Avner’s book, The Prime Ministers, which chronicles Yehuda Avner’s perspective from working in several Israeli administrations from Levi Eshkol to Menachem Begin.

Passover is the holiday which grounds us in historical perspective.  In ways that I will make explicit, and with implications that are political and personal, the Passover story takes us beyond the OMG of the moment and allows us to look at our lives against the backdrop of history and even eternity.

The present can be a very lonely and frightening place and the perspective that this holiday brings can give us insight and hope in multiple realms.

So here we go...

Keeping the Flame Burning Every Day: We Can't Respond Just When There's a Crisis

We get worked up when crises occur – a frustrating election in Israel, perhaps.  Or a series of anti-Semitic incidents in the community - and rightly so.  We should get worked up, we should try to assess the situation, we should speak out if necessary.

But I wonder, and I want to ask us all to consider, what happens the next day?  What happens on a regular day regarding matters that are important all the time, even when a particular crisis is not taking place

I'd like to talk about the day-to-day commitment that we need to have when it comes to matters that are truly important.  Not just what to do when underlying issues erupt in crisis, but what we must do, day after day, to respond to issues that cut to the heart of the kind of nation, the kind of community, we aspire to be.

Kabbalah and Closeness: The Importance of Being Nearby

When I was in Israel recently with a cohort of rabbis, Dror Eshed, husband of Professor Melila Hellner-Eshed, died following a long illness.  I had never met him, though I have gotten to know his wife as one of our teachers, a passionate, brilliant expositor of Kabbalah.   At his funeral, she shared an insight that I want to bring to our congregation.

The Jewish mystical tradition maintains the notion that God’s energy and presence somehow flow into the world as a kind of emanation, the word for which is atzilut.  Dr. Hellner-Eshed pointed out that the Hebrew word contains the same root as the word etzel which means “next to” or “near.”  Some people, she said, associate spirituality with things that are remote and esoteric, thinking of it as a hidden force that we wait for to appear and flow into us.  But maybe the essence of spirituality, she suggested, is that it is near us and that often it flows from us, not just to us.  

She went on to describe how her husband inspired people by being near them and often by inviting them in.  He was an artist who had a studio near Jerusalem.  Frequently he worked with young people who came from disadvantaged homes, giving them opportunities to work in his studio and to gain the confidence that they had lacked.  Dror, she told us, brought atzilut to people because he was etzel, accessible, near them.

We Are Family

Two colleagues and I arrived in Israel last Thursday morning for a week with the Hartman Institute.  We were headed to Jerusalem to meet the rest of our colleagues.  There was a line of cabs waiting at the airport.  My colleague headed toward a particular cab.  As he was starting to put his suitcases in the trunk (and on the roof of the cab), I noticed what was inside the cab.  Piles of books, plates, the remains of a few peppers.  I’m not a neat freak, but the pepper rinds on the passenger seat up front were a bit much for me.  I motioned to my friend, maybe we want to take another cab.  Meanwhile, his stuff was already in the trunk and the driver, a woman named Rachel, was saying, rega, rega – wait a minute, as she picked the pepper carcasses off the passenger seat.  And we got in and away we went.

                                My colleagues and I (back right) at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem

Along the way, she’s asking us questions, where are we from, what are we doing in Israel, she’s schmoozing and schmoozing.  About her family, about her trip to New York, how she hopes to get to the pool by 10 o’clock – she doesn’t swim for pleasure but for therapeutic reasons, she’s facing some economic challenges, etc.

By the time we were on the main highway to Jerusalem I knew a whole lot about her.

The endless conversation, the sharing of good and bad, the few remaining pepper seeds that I discovered underneath me, her pointing out of the shkeydiya – you see, she said, the almond tree blossoms really do bloom on Tu Bishvat - reinforced one thing for me.  That I was with family. 

The week I spent in Israel with over 20 rabbis at the Hartman institute was devoted to Jewish identity in Israel and in the US.  We discussed lots of challenges that face both communities which are in many ways very different from each other; Israeli Judaism by and large is becoming more nationalistic, more tribal, less open; American Judaism is becoming more assimilated, more universal, more open.

But one theme which emerged for me in Israel, which has repercussions in the US, is family. 

What does it mean to be with mishpacha?  The good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly – what does it mean?

One Day with the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem

I’m writing from Jerusalem where I’m participating in the second winter portion of the Rabbinic Leadership Initiative, a program for over twenty rabbis from varying ideological perspectives sponsored by the Shalom Hartman Institute.   In the past I’ve shared teachings and insights that I gleaned from my experience and recently Temple Israel hosted two other rabbis from the program, Rabba Sara Hurwitz and Rabbi David Ingber.

In order to give a sense of the depth and breadth of the program, I’d like to present a chronology, with minor descriptions, of most of the events that transpired on a single day.  Below is an account of my experience with the Hartman Institute on Monday, February 2, 2015.

8 am.  Breakfast with several of my colleagues and Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.  Yehuda spoke with us about the inaugural year of a new program, a Gap Year for American and Israeli students that allows them to explore Jewish topics together and to engage in dialogue about the realities of American and Israeli life.  He told us that he is thrilled by the enthusiastic engagement of North American Israeli teens that he has witnessed.

9 am.  Study and discussion of Jewish sources from Bible to Zohar that deal with the theme of universalism and particularism in Jewish thought.  Unfortunately the scheduled instructor, Dr. Melila Hellner-Eshed, Professor of Jewish mysticism and Zohar at Hebrew University, was unable to teach due to the death of her husband the night before.  Dr. Biti Roi, a Lecturer in Jewish Mysticism at Hebrew University, filled in for her colleague after offering a brief reflection about Melila’s husband and leading us in the chanting, in his memory, of a medieval poem about the soul.  We made plans to pay a shiva call to Melila. The subsequent study and discussion raised questions that we applied to contemporary Jewish life.  How is the Jewish experience of God and history unique?  What are the parameters of our loyalty to our people specifically and to humanity overall?

With my colleagues at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem

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.

From Opposition to Governance, Becoming to Being: Thoughts About the UN and Paris after a Tragic Week

Menachem Begin was a tough opposition leader when the Israeli government was presided over by Labor prime ministers.  He criticized Ben Gurion for multiple reasons, criticized Golda Meir for not having adequate intelligence during YK war, criticized Rabin for making too many concessions for the sake of peace.  He was a clever polemicist, sharp-tongued, and as the leader of the opposition party for decades, he got to take his shots and he took advantage of every opportunity and then some.

And then, he became prime minister, the first non-Labor prime minister elected.

He was no less sharp-tongued, no less polemical, but he quickly learned that it’s different to govern than to criticize government, different to be in charge than to be the opposition.

The opposition merely has to demonstrate why the leader is wrong.  The leader has to actually figure out to do that is the most right given circumstances that are often very difficult.

I think people were surprised that Menachem Begin was so successful at negotiating peace with Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt. 

Begin transitioned well, in my opinion, from leader of the opposition to leader of the country.  He navigated and compromised more effectively than many might have expected. 

I doubt everyone in this sanctuary shares Begin’s political or ideological perspective.  But his transition from oppressed leader of the opposition to empowered statesman was a really important one.  It required him to accept incremental and even partial success.

Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal wrote the following about Palestinian leader Abbas’s recent efforts at the UN:  “Why does he persevere?  Because the pleasures of dreaming are better than the labors of building, just as the rhetoric of justice, patrimony and right is so much more stirring than the fine print and petty indignities of compromise.  Mr. Abbas consistently refuses a Palestinian state because such a state is infinitely more trivial than a Palestinian struggle.  Becoming is better than being.”  (Bret Stephens, “The Dream Palace of the Arab,” WSJ, January 5, 2015)