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finding each other's humanity

on Saturday, 04 October 2014.

A SERMON FOR YOM KIPPUR 5775

In January 2003, I woke up one morning to something amazing. The world around me was covered in snow. Now, that may not seem like much in Toronto, but in Jerusalem, it’s magical. Can you imagine the Dome of the Rock, the streets of the old city, all covered in white? Walking around, you could see pure joy on the face of every person who passed: Jews, Arabs, Christians, Muslims – didn’t matter. But the highlight of the day was a snowball fight outside the Jaffa gate. A group of young Arab men and a group of uniformed Israeli soldiers, smiling and laughing as they pelted each other with fluffy white projectiles.
 
It was as if, just for one day, the snow had washed away all the differences and all the grudges, and it had left behind one simple truth: everybody loves a good snowball fight.
 
David Ben Gurion once said that “In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.” Lately, our Israel seems to be a place not of miracles, but of confusion and angst. A protracted conflict, yet another eruption of violence. Altercations at the Western Wall over women holding Torah scrolls. Growing animosity between left and right; religious and secular; Arabs and Jews.
 
Right now is an uneasy time for the Jewish state and those who love her, between the conflict in Gaza, the rise of ISIS, the disturbing resurgence of Anti-Semitism around the world. Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly on Monday, and he talked about opportunities and dangers: opportunities for cooperation and peace in what he called the “new Middle East,” and dangers of extremism and hatred and the potential to slide back into violence.
 
Like a lot of you, I spent the summer keeping up on news from Israel and Gaza. I read lots of articles from lots of newspapers. And I also read lots of posts on social media. That may have been a mistake, because so much of what was there was incredibly one-sided, and ultimately futile. For example, an old high school friend of mine, who has become quite pro-Palestinian, posted an article about Israeli war-crimes. So I, feeling my responsibility as rabbi and a Jew, came to Israel’s defense. I posted about human shields and rockets. Back came his response: Occupation. So I shot back: Disengagement. And so on and so forth until it was clear it wasn’t going anywhere and we both gave up.
 
Our Facebook and Twitter feeds were full of that kind of activity this summer. We felt, rightly, like we needed to come to Israel’s defence. We needed to add our voices to the dialogue. And it’s good that we did so, because Israel needs our supportive voices, especially in times like these. But in hindsight, what we were participating in wasn’t really a dialogue, because there was very little listening going on. And unfortunately, that’s mirrored in the international debate over Israel: people simply talk past each other. They quote their own arguments and try to shout loudly enough that that other side will be drowned out. And in the end, nobody changes their mind; nobody is convinced; nothing changes. And we only become more polarized.
                                                                                                  
Over the summer, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City created a prayer for peace, to be read during services. She wove into it the names of both Israeli soldiers and Palestinian children who had been killed in the fighting. That was too much for 4 families in her congregation – including a board member – who resigned their membership and accused their rabbi of “spreading propaganda” for Hamas. Around the same time, Rabbi Ron Aigen of Montreal gave a sermon that defended Israel’s ethical standards during this difficult war. His congregation also lost a member, who accused him of stifling opportunities to critique Israel.[1]
 
The debate on this issue has become toxic on so many levels. And even though we North Americans sit far from its epicentre, we are very much part of the discussion. And we need to be asking ourselves some hard questions: Why are people judged and vilified for their views on this issue? Why are rabbis afraid to talk about the Jewish state from the bima? When did the words “pro-Israel” and “pro-Palestinian” become mutually exclusive?
 
The journalist Frank Tyger once that, “Listening to both sides of a story will convince you that there is more to the story than both sides.” We have all forgotten one of the most important responsibilities in a debate is to listen to what the other side has to say.
 
This summer, Israel went to war. It went to war because it had to – because its citizens were being terrorized and its safety was being threatened by a vicious terrorist organization. As Jews and as human beings, we stand behind Israel’s right to self defence. As Jews and as human beings, we also mourn the deaths of innocent people. Thankfully, this round of fighting has come to an end. The question now becomes: What next? How do you bring normalcy to an area of the world that hasn’t known it? How do you confront the fear and the mistrust that have two peoples stuck in an endless cycle of violence?
 

The Rabbis of the Talmud teach about just how powerful fear can be. In tractate Shabbat, they tell us that:
There are five examples of a large creature fearing a small one. The lion fears the gnat, which buzzes in its ear. The elephant fears the mosquito, which goes into its trunk. The eagle fears the swallow, which flies beneath its wings. The scorpion fears the spider, and the whale fears the tiny stickleback fish.[2]
 

The Talmud’s lesson here is that our fear can paralyze us, whether it’s rational or not. An elephant has no reason to be afraid of a mosquito, but it cannot bear what it does not understand.
                                                        
There are many legitimate fears in Israel right now. Rabbi Michael Marmur, who is the Provost of the Hebrew Union College, the Reform Rabbinical seminary, and who lives in Jerusalem, gave a sermon last month where he enumerated many of his own fears. He said:
 

I fear that the physical threats we face may one day prevail. I fear that the moral challenge presented by years of occupation and periodic periods of military conflict will prevent us from reaching our finest aspirations. And I fear that the current crises may starve hope of light and sustenance and leave it emaciated.[3]
 

For anyone who loves the Jewish state, those fears are truly palpable right now. Add to that the very visceral Israeli fears of rocket attacks and terror tunnels. The Palestinian fears of Israeli military action and shrinking available land. The pervasive sense by both peoples that their lives and their wellbeing are outside of their own control. And you can understand why we’re all still fighting.
 
Rabbi Marmur asserts in his sermon: “Our vision is clouded by our fears.” And the only way to uncloud it is for those fears to be “acknowledged and confronted.”
 
There is a Jewish word for acknowledging our fears and confronting ourselves. It is called teshuvah – turning, or repentance.
 
The Chassidic masters tell the story of a disciple who went before his Rebbe to try to understand the punishments for breaking Torah law. “In the Torah,” he said, “it declares that a sinner is to receive 40 lashes. Yet the Rabbis reduced them to 39. Why?”
 
His Rebbe answered, “A person should never believe that he has fully wiped away his sin. So the Sages took away one of the lashes, to remind us that no matter how far we’ve come, we should still work to better our ways.”[4]
 
On the High Holy Days, we come together to confront our wrongs and challenge ourselves to do better. In conversations with some of the leaders of our Reform movement in Israel, they believe that while this summer’s war was just and probably unavoidable, there cannot be lasting peace without teshuvah on both sides.
 
A painful example: This past year, it seems like much of the Jewish world is reading Ari Shavit’s new book, My Promised Land. Ari Shavit is a celebrated journalist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The book tells his version of the story of Israel, starting with the arrival of his own Great-Grandfather, the British Zionist Herbert Bentwich, in 1897, and continuing through the years of the yishuv and the history of the State. Shavit tries to be both honest and thorough, teaching about what he calls the triumphs and the tragedies.
 
Among many other things, he writes about what he calls “black box” of Israel’s history. That is, the moment in which the leadership of the state ordered the evacuation and resettlement of the Arab residents of the city of Lydda during the 1948 war. It’s not a story we tell very often. We mostly teach that it was the Arab governments that told the Palestinian residents to leave their homes. And that’s mostly true, except for the few instances where it’s not. Israel has made mistakes; Israel has done wrong things.
 
Here I’m quoting Rabbi Marmur again:

I believe that there is much which Jewish society in Israel must face up to. We have to stare down bigotry and struggle against inequality. We have to acknowledge the full and unconditional humanity of all individuals, and the legitimate political aspirations of the Palestinian people. Unless and until they have the conditions for a just and workable state, the dream and promises of Israel cannot be fulfilled.
 

Earlier this week on a conference call with North American rabbis, Rabbi Yehoyada Amir, the President of the Israeli Reform Rabbinical Association, echoed those sentiments. He said that teshuvah is precisely what our Israeli colleagues are talking about during this holiday. And he also said that this is where Israel needs our help as North American Jews:

 

We need your helping hand when we are trying to fight racism in Israel. We need your assistance in strengthening Israeli democracy.

Even those of us who don’t live in Israel need to be asking ourselves hard questions. Have we ever clicked away from an article on Palestinian suffering because it didn’t fit with our narrative? Do we ever, in defending Israel’s actions against terrorists, fail to acknowledge the plight of ordinary Palestinians, who have also been victims of this situation for decades?

Israel is just and good. But there is also humanity on the other side of the border. And admitting Israel’s imperfections is not a condemnation or a denial of the country’s goodness, any more than chanting Ashamnu Bagadnu is a denial of our own goodness. Rather, it is a statement that is Israel is a good society. One of most basic of all Jewish teachings is that when human beings are good, they can become better.
 
That being said, it’s important to stop here and stress that teshuvah must be mutual. If Israel is to take an honest accounting, then it would necessarily request of the Palestinian people to do the same. If Israelis are to ask themselves questions about settlements and occupation, then Palestinians must ask themselves about terrorism and victimhood and Anti-Semitism. Teshuvah does not mean accepting total guilt or giving in. It means trying to see legitimacy in both sides of the narrative. It means admitting that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a zero-sum game where one side has to lose for the other to win. It means recognizing that the enemy is not the person on the other side of the border, but rather extremism in all its forms. Any ideology that would say: my way is the only way, and your way doesn’t deserve to exist. Whether that ideology wears a kafiyya or payos; whether it lives in Gaza City, or Beer Sheva, or downtown Toronto.
 
If there’s anything we learn from the High Holy Days, it is that our differences and our imperfections are what make us human. When we can see both sides of the story, then and only then can we begin to see each other’s humanity.
 
Over the summer, Israel’s Channel 10 aired an extraordinary news story about a 7 year old girl named Afnan, who lives in Gaza. On July 29, during of some of the fiercest fighting, Afnan was on her way home from Haifa after 9 months of cancer treatments at Rambam hospital. She was being driven by Iri Kassel, the past President of the Israeli Reform Movement, and by Yuval Roth, who the founder of Road to Recovery, an organization of more than 500 volunteers who drive Palestinian patients to and from hospitals in Israel.
 
On that particular day, the military had closed the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza for security reasons. And since Afnan’s escorts couldn’t get her home, they took her for a few hours Kibbutz Hatzerim nearby, where she spent time playing with Israeli 7 year olds in the bomb shelter had been been converted to a school classroom.
 
It’s hard to tell from the video exactly how long Afnan spent in that classroom, but you can tell it wasn’t THAT long. Maybe an hour. And in that hour, a remarkable shift occurs. The children start off asking each other strained questions:
-       Where do you live? Gaza.
-       Are you shooting rockets at us?
-       “No,” answers another child. “Not everyone is shooting. There are good people there too.”
And over the course of about an hour together, the children talk about life, they learn each other’s names, and they play with blocks and dolls. And then Afnan heads home.
 
The remarkable thing about watching this news story is how completely ordinary these kids are. Afnan makes faces at the camera; she melts down at the border crossing when she can’t get home; she puts on a party hat and talks about missing her Ima. By the end of the video, these children have been transformed for one another from a “faceless other across the border” to “someone kind of like me.”
 
Yuval Roth says, “Afnan can create a better future. She can be an ambassador of peace.”[5]
 
These are the ways that barriers are broken down. These are the ways that conflicts are ended – by helping children see both sides of the story. By helping children see each other as human.
 
During this latest war, the Reform Movement in Israel was very, very busy. Our sister congregations created a nationwide system of programming and food delivery to shelters. They provided counseling for traumatized families in the south. And they made every effort to maintain the Jewish-Arab dialogue that is so crucial for building a better future.
 
And on this side of the ocean, many of us supported the “Stop the Sirens” campaign, which helped make those efforts possible. I would urge you this year to considering joining or rejoining ARZA Canada, our Reform Zionist organization, so that this important work can continue. You can find their brochures in the lobby on your way out, and you can join through the Kol Ami office.
 
All around Israel are little pockets of dialogue and co-existence, some of them sponsored by our movement. Our own sister congregation, Birkat Shalom at Kibbutz Gezer, has been engaged for 2 years now in bringing together Jewish, Muslim, and Christian women. Rabbi Miri Gold wrote to me in an email that, “This has been very powerful, learning each other's narratives and pain, and embracing one another in friendship and great warmth and affection.”

 
In a few cases, Jews and Arabs have chosen to create institutions and even towns together. Midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is the village of Neve Shalom, or Wahat al-Salaam – which means “Oasis of Peace.” It is, their own words, “an intentional community jointly established by Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel.”[6] And in Jerusalem, the Yad B’Yad Center works to build bridges through mixed schools,[7] bringing Jewish and Arab children together to learn in an atmosphere of equality and partnership. When Rabbi Andy Bachman of New York City visited one of the Yad B’Yad schools, he said that what impressed him most was that he couldn’t tell which students were which.[8]
 

The Rabbis of the Talmud ask: Why did God create only one human being – only Adam - at the outset of the world. Why not a whole tribe, or a whole nation? And they answer: So that no one might say to anyone else, “My ancestors were greater than yours.”
 
It is our blessing and our curse to love a corner of the world that is loved by others as well. But if we can hear each other’s voices, if we can listen to each other’s stories, then maybe we find each other’s humanity.
 
On a sunny day this past March, five Streiffers were sitting just outside the Western Wall plaza, at the gates of the Old City. There is an ice cream truck there, and an Arab boy who sells bagels from a cart. He was hollering – almost singing - the word beigele, over and over again to try to attact customers. BeigeleBeigeleBeigeleBeigeleBeigeleBeigele. My six year old son Yair hollered right back at him: “Bagel bagel bagel!” The Arab boy looked at him, with a twinkle in his eye, and they both laughed.
 
It doesn’t snow in Jerusalem in March, but in that moment, the world might as well have been blanketed in white. Differences and history melted away, and two boys – separated by culture and religion and nationality – found something to laugh about.
                                                       
Sha’alu Shalom Yerushalayim. Let us pray for peace in our beloved land. May there be security and tranquility for all those who live between the Jordan and the Sea. May we find the strength to reach across borders. And please, God, may we find the will to build a lasting peace.
 
Amen v’amen.


 

[1] “Talk in Synagogue of Israel and Gaza Goes from Debate to Wrath to Rage.” New York Times, September 22, 2014.
[2] B. Shabbat 77b.
[3] Marmur, Michael. “Vision in the Mist: Sermon Delivered in South Africa.” August 24, 2014.
[4] Agnon, SY. Days of Awe. Schocken, 1948. p. 166.
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_1Mv7F9pyc&feature=youtu.be.
[6] http://wasns.org/.
[7] www.handinhandk12.org
[8] “Popular Rabbi’s Parting Shot.” New York Jewish Week, September 3, 2014.

 

Thu, March 28 2024 18 Adar II 5784