Month: July 2021

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On Boycotts, Binary Thinking, and Genocide – Vaetḥannan 5781

If you will allow me to take the anachronistic liberty of ascribing a contemporary movement to an ancient text, Devarim / Deuteronomy is easily the most Zionist book of the Torah. Moshe is delivering a series of lectures to the Israelites after they have been wandering through the desert for nearly four decades, and now they are perched on the far side of the Jordan river awaiting for the instruction to cross over and re-enter the land that has been promised to them.

And Moshe’s message is intimately connected to the land, with constant reminders that an essential part of our people’s berit / covenant with God is the inheritance of this land. For example, as we read this morning in Parashat Vaetḥannan (Devarim /Deuteronomy 6:1):

וְזֹ֣את הַמִּצְוָ֗ה הַֽחֻקִּים֙ וְהַמִּשְׁפָּטִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר צִוָּ֛ה ה’ אֱ-לֹהֵיכֶ֖ם לְלַמֵּ֣ד אֶתְכֶ֑ם לַעֲשׂ֣וֹת בָּאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַתֶּ֛ם עֹבְרִ֥ים שָׁ֖מָּה לְרִשְׁתָּֽהּ׃ 

This is the mitzvah, the laws and the rules, that God has commanded [me] to impart to you, to be observed in the land that you are about to cross into and inherit.

The land and the mitzvot are intimately connected in that Divine relationship between God and the people of Israel; they go together. And it is this sense of connection which inspired our ancestors over the last 2,000 years, in all their wanderings, to remain loyal to our tradition, to keep the memory of the land of Israel in our hearts and minds and on our tongues. It is the ancient yearning for the perfection of this holy formula which yielded the best-known poem of Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi, who in the 12th century, the story goes, left Spain (“sof ma’arav,” the end of the West, according to him) to journey across the Mediterranean. He certainly arrived in Egypt, and a legend has it that he died in the Land of Israel, trampled by a horse as he kneeled to kiss the holy earth of Jerusalem. 

In more contemporary times, in the middle of the 19th century, before any steel emerged from Pittsburgh factories, this ancient yearning spurred the first wave of our people to escape the misery of the shtetl and move to Ottoman Turkish Palestine.  

And it is this ancient yearning that brought greater numbers of aliyah following the wave of Czarist programs in the early 1880s, and again in the early 1900s. And in particular, after the Shoah, when European Jewish refugees and displaced persons needed a safe haven, there was Palestine. Now in British hands, there was a well-developed economy, agricultural collectives, and bustling cities. Survivors of the European attempt at genocide defied the British blockade to enter the land of their ancestors, and soon fought for and won independence.

It is with great dismay that I read this week of the account in Jerusalem, at the location adjacent to the traditional Kotel / Western Wall that has been set up as a temporary location for egalitarian prayer. A Masorti (that’s the Conservative movement outside of North America) group was holding a service for Tish’ah BeAv, chanting Eikhah, the Book of Lamentations, when a group of zealous Orthodox folks invaded the space and set up a meḥitzah (the separation barrier between men and women found in Orthodox synagogues), shouted and sang and disrupted the Masorti service. It is especially upsetting that on the day on which we commemorate the destruction of the Second Temple due to sin’at ḥinnam, baseless hatred, that at the very spot where the Temple stood until the year 70 CE, that such intolerance would be on display so vividly.

Ezrat Yisrael, the egalitarian prayer space by the Western Wall

And it is with even more dismay that I learned of Ben & Jerry’s decision to suspend sales of their ice cream products in West Bank settlements. It makes me wonder if they have also suspended sales in other disputed territories such as Crimea, North Cyprus, Kashmir, Tibet, and so forth. 

The move is clearly only symbolic – who cares whether or not residents of Ma’ale Adummim have access to Cherry Garcia? And, by the way, you’ll still be able to buy New York Super Fudge Chunk in Jerusalem, a short drive away. But it points to the powerful voices of Israel’s critics in calling attention to who does business in the territories, a plank in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.

צ’רי גרסיה

But my greatest and most surprising source of dismay this past week, by far, was from a poll produced by the Jewish Electoral Institute, a non-partisan group which, according to its website, is “dedicated to deepening the public’s understanding of Jewish American participation in our democracy,” primarily through polling. This survey found, among other things, that in a recent poll of 800 Jewish voters, 25% agreed with the statement, “Israel is an apartheid state,” and, more shockingly, 22% agree with the statement, “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.” 

In its coverage of the survey, the Forward noted that while the Jewish anti-occupation group IfNotNow is comfortable with the “apartheid” label, even they were surprised by the “genocide” statement.

To be clear, as in all democratic countries with heterogeneous populations, Israel struggles with inequalities within society. But there is no government policy of racial segregation. However, hearing Israel described as “an apartheid state,” or a “colonialist settler state,” as is fashionable in some circles, is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

Certainly some of our South African members can reassure us that Israeli society is nothing like the apartheid era in South Africa. Most likely, when I went before an Arab judge in Family Court in Israel for approval for the child support agreement for my Israeli son, that judge would have been very surprised by the “apartheid” descriptor. And so too the Arab doctors and nurses who worked in the hospital in Beersheva where my son was born. And so too the Druze soldiers who bravely and loyally serve in the IDF, and Justice George Karra, the Christian Arab who serves on the Israeli Supreme Court, and of course Member of Kenesset Mansour Abbas, head of the Ra’am party, now the first Arab and the first Islamist party to join the majority coalition of the Israeli government. I don’t think any of those folks can credibly use the word “apartheid” to describe Israel.

But “genocide”? We, the Jews, we know genocide, and however you may feel about Israel and the Palestinians’ failure to come to a negotiated settlement, we know that applying the word “genocide” is obscenely hyberbolic, and plays on anti-Jewish stereotypes. 

My father-in-law survived Auschwitz; many more of my relatives did not. Where are the camps in Israel? Where are the cattle cars delivering non-Jews to the gas chambers? Where are the laws preventing Arabs from going to school, or owning property, or holding government positions, or even dating or marrying Jews? Where are the fields of slaughter, the Einsatzgruppen, the ghettoes?*

There are none of these things, of course. So how could it come to be that 22%, 176 of the respondents to this poll agreed with the statement, “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians”?

The only possible answer, hevreh, is that we have failed. We have failed in the education of our own people, and we have failed just as much in getting out in front of the message. For people who know only ongoing conflict in the region, and who only see the reported body counts, of course Israel looks like the bad guy. But it is perversely reductive to see the side with the higher body count as the victim and the other as the bad guy.

We have failed when those of us who do not know our history are hornswoggled by extreme voices applying the word genocide to Israel and consequently to Jews. We have failed in relaying the admittedly very complicated history of the establishment of the State of Israel, and the wars and terrorist attacks she has faced.

And of course this challenge is only made worse by the current political climate in America, where it seems that left and right are increasingly living in different worlds. Our political discourse on many issues seems like skewed lines: no chance of intersection, no apparent intention to ever seek common ground. I checked out Twitter this week for the first time in a while, and all I could see, for miles of tweets, was binary thinking. You’re either on this side or that side. There is no middle way. No attempt to reach out, only to score points against the other.

In this environment, we are going to lose the battle for the hearts and minds not only of Americans, but American Jews as well. Certainly, the majority of us still support Israel, and majorities of non-Jewish Americans as well. But the challenge of the binary approach to all things will make this battle even harder.

How might we approach this? I do not think that attempting to label anti-Israel speech as hate speech is the right path. Likewise, Israel advocacy, which is certainly good for Israel at least in the American political arena, will not solve this challenge either. 

Rather, what we need is thoughtful engagement with history and the facts on the ground. And we also need to figure out how to get out in front of the message.

So how do we do that? 

We need to make sure that we are teaching our students about Israel, presenting them with accurate material that gives an unbiased, factual telling of the Zionist project, both its strengths and its pitfalls. Perhaps there are organizations like the Peres Center for Peace in Israel who would be willing to create a curriculum for a broad audience – Jewish and non-Jewish – that would teach that story. We need to lean into the idea of peaceful coexistence – not too long ago that seemed like a nascent reality, and it can be again. We need to support institutions that are bringing people together for positive engagement between people, engagement that will lead to real partnership, and ultimately to peace.

Boycotts – by ice cream companies or against them – will not achieve anything other than more binary thinking, more Twitter-esque polarization. Our ancestral yearning for that land, and our sense of justice as Jews necessitates seeking new, creative approaches. We have the resources. Let’s do it.

בַּקֵּ֖שׁ שָׁל֣וֹם וְרׇדְפֵֽהוּ / Baqqesh shalom verodfehu, says the Psalmist (Tehillim / Psalms 34:15). Seek peace and pursue it.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, morning of Shabbat Naḥamu, 7/24/2021.)

* It has been pointed out to me, subsequent to my delivering this sermon, that genocide can take different forms; the method of the Nazis was not used by the Hutus against the Tutsis in Rwanda, for example. Nonetheless, what unites different forms of genocide, according to the United Nations’ definition, is the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Israel’s military response to Hamas rocket fire, for which she has received much criticism, does not meet that definition. If it were the IDF’s intent merely to kill innocent Palestinians in Gaza, it would certainly not, for example, provide warning signals of various types to residents of targeted buildings which contain terrorist infrastructure.

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Life in the Fast Lane – Shabbat Ḥazon, 5781

As a child, I used to look skyward on clear nights and imagine going to space. I was a fan of science fiction stories and movies; I fell in love with Kirk and Spock and the whole gang on the USS Enterprise at a young age.

But adulthood has the unfortunate tendency to kill many a childhood fantasy, and I must admit that I had not been paying so much attention in recent years to human efforts to conquer space. But something caught my attention this week, and you probably heard about it as well: Sir Richard Branson, English business magnate and founder of Virgin Group, flew into sub-orbital space, about 50 miles up, achieving weightlessness for a few minutes. Among the many companies he controls is Virgin Galactic, a company that promises to be able to provide flights into space for the general public in the near future. 

Sir Richard

Branson just barely edged out Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, who will also be traveling into space in his own craft in a few weeks. And of course there is investor Elon Musk’s SpaceX project, which has sent a few rockets skyward recently, including partnerships with NASA.

All of these endeavors are the stuff of dreams. And, of course, they are fabulously expensive. These companies are somewhat tight-lipped about how much money they are investing in these flights, but it must be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Bezos will have a companion on his flight who has reportedly paid $28 million for the seat. Three people have paid $55 million each for seats on a SpaceX flight to the International Space Station next year. Virgin Galactic already has 600 people signed up for trips into space that will cost more than $250,000 per seat.

But what about the rest of us here on Earth? As much as I am sure that many of us would love the opportunity to travel into space, I will confess that this strikes me as, in the words of Qohelet / Ecclesiastes, “Hevel havalim.” Vanity of vanities.

After all, if these investors were to take that money and invest it in people here on Earth – education, literacy, health care, clean water, clean energy, democratic governments, solutions for climate change – imagine the good that they could do on the ground. And in particular at this time, when we are still suffering from a worldwide pandemic.

I am certainly not accusing these men of not being charitable. Bezos made the largest charitable gift in the world last year: a $10 billion commitment to fight climate change. According to what I could find on the Interwebs, Musk and Branson have each pledged to give away half of their wealth to charity. I am merely concerned about the optics of this race into the final frontier when so many are suffering down here on Earth. The great ballyhoo surrounding such extravagant projects that will truly only benefit a tiny few seems a bit tone-deaf.

OK, so let’s face it: there is so much to celebrate right now – success in creating vaccines, returning to something approaching normalcy, seeing people again. The rate of joblessness is going down as people return to the workforce. The economy is beginning to move again, particularly in the hospitality and tourism industries, which were devastated by Covid.

But there is also much to mourn. And that brings me to Tish’ah BeAv, the official Jewish day of mourning. Starting this evening and going through tomorrow night, we will fast for 25 hours to remind ourselves that we are a people that is still in mourning, 1,949 years after the Romans laid waste to Jerusalem, destroying the Beit HaMiqdash, the Temple that was the center of Jewish life up until then, for the second and final time. While the Beit HaMiqdash occupies a special place in our hearts and minds, it has never been rebuilt. In recalling this destruction, we chant the book of Eikhah / Lamentations this evening, perhaps the most evocative poetry of desolation ever composed (1:1): 

אֵיכָ֣ה ׀ יָשְׁבָ֣ה בָדָ֗ד הָעִיר֙ רַבָּ֣תִי עָ֔ם הָיְתָ֖ה כְּאַלְמָנָ֑ה

Eikha yashevah vadad ha’ir rabbati am hayetah ke-almanah.

How lonely sits the city, which was once full of people; She who was great among nations, now is like a widow.

Tonight and tomorrow we will mourn not only the destruction of the First and Second Temples, but also many other cataclysmic moments in Jewish life: the Crusades, the Expulsion from Spain, the Shoah, and so forth. We are a people whose paths of exile are wet with tears, whose persecutions and dispersions we carry with us just as much as we carry our words of Torah. We are a people for whom there is little solace in history, not much more comfort in the present, and only a modicum of optimism for the future. Jerusalem, rebuilt though she may be, still vibrates with the rumblings of ancient destructions.

Tish’ah BeAv keeps us close to mourning. And that is a good thing. We should not be so high on ourselves that we forget the misery, the pain of our history. We should not be so proud as to think we can conquer time or space, or be free of anti-Semitism, or be liberated from the woes of human life.

Now, I’m sure that many of you are thinking, “OK, Rabbi, we’ve had nearly a year and a half of isolation, of anxiety, of losing beloved family members to a deadly virus. We have grieved enough. It’s time to party, right? Now is not the right moment to lean into the official Jewish day of mourning.”

But, as with Yom Kippur, the goal of fasting and remembering on this day is not for its own sake; it is not merely a day on which we should be miserable just because. As with Pesaḥ, when we recall being freed from slavery and deny ourselves a whole range of foods, we do not do so merely to encourage constipation.

Rather, we afflict our souls on Tish’ah BeAv because occasionally we need to be humbled, so that we know what it is like to be hungry and miserable. We need to remember that there are people for whom every day is a fast day, who have no luxurious leather shoes, who have no comfortable furniture on which to sit, who have no climate-controlled home in which to live. 

Over our month of sabbatical, Judy and I saw many homeless people in the cities we visited along the Eastern seaboard. I do not know if there has been an uptick in homelessness due to the pandemic, but I certainly would not be surprised if that were the case; the number of people living on the streets is heartbreakingly large.

ט֣וֹב שְׁפַל־ר֭וּחַ אֶת־עֲנָוִ֑ים מֵחַלֵּ֥ק שָׁ֝לָ֗ל אֶת־גֵּאִֽים׃

Better to be humble and among the lowly than to share spoils with the proud. (Mishlei / Proverbs 16:19)

We fast on Tish’ah BeAv to remind ourselves of the most fundamental responsibilities we have as Jews: to take care of the others around us, to remember their suffering, to recall that even as we aim for the stars, we must work hard to provide comfort for those who have none on Earth.

We have to remember the pain. If we do not, we’ll all be in space, and we will lose sight of what is really going on here on the ground.

By the Waters of Babylon, by Evelyn De Morgan, 1855-1919

I mentioned earlier that this is Shabbat Ḥazon, the Shabbat of the vision of Yeshayahu (known in English as Isaiah). Yeshayahu’s vision is one of suffering, of invasion by the Assyrian empire, brought about by the faithlessness of his audience. Echoing the opening of Eikhah, he says (Yeshayahu / Isaiah 1:21-22):

אֵיכָה֙ הָיְתָ֣ה לְזוֹנָ֔ה קִרְיָ֖ה נֶאֱמָנָ֑ה מְלֵֽאֲתִ֣י מִשְׁפָּ֗ט צֶ֛דֶק יָלִ֥ין בָּ֖הּ וְעַתָּ֥ה מְרַצְּחִֽים׃ כַּסְפֵּ֖ךְ הָיָ֣ה לְסִיגִ֑ים סׇבְאֵ֖ךְ מָה֥וּל בַּמָּֽיִם׃

Alas, she has become a harlot, the faithful city that was filled with justice, where righteousness dwelt— but now murderers. Your silver has turned to dross; your wine is cut with water.

Faith has turned to faithlessness; luxuries have been reduced to waste. But, says Yeshayahu, whose very name means “God will save,” we can change that. We return to our holy obligations, and there is redemption. As with the conclusion of Eikhah (5:21),

הֲשִׁיבֵ֨נוּ ה ׀ אֵלֶ֙יךָ֙ וְֽנָשׁ֔וּבָה חַדֵּ֥שׁ יָמֵ֖ינוּ כְּקֶֽדֶם׃

Take us back, O LORD, to Yourself, and let us come back; renew our days as of old! 

If we use this fast to spur us to action, to return to Torah and mitzvot, to remember the needy among us, God will save us from future suffering.

God will surely not, however, save us from our own vanity. That is up to us as individuals, and as a society.

Shabbat shalom, and have a meaningful fast.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Shabbat morning, 7/17/2021.)

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Wisdom of the Journey – Mattot/Mas’ei 5781

I was fortunate to have been in Philadelphia over the last week, including for July 4th. Judy and I went to watch the fireworks display over the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and sat in the street with thousands of other folks. It was the first time that we had been at a gathering of that size for more than a year and a half, and it was, as you can imagine, a good, patriotic feeling.

July 4th, 2021, Philadelphia. Photo credit: me

As we sat and watched the crowds milling about, angling for a good location to stand or sit, having ice cream, schmoozing with the strangers around them, we noticed the fantastic diversity around us. Americans of every color, Americans speaking multiple languages, some of which we could only guess at, Americans in various types of ethnic and religious clothing. It was absolutely heartwarming to see so many people, and so many different sorts of people, hanging out together in the city, celebrating our nation’s 245 years of independence.

Judy remarked, “If the founding fathers, who signed the Declaration of Independence a stone’s throw from this spot, were here today to see this crowd, would they recognize it as the nation they created?”

It was indeed a healthy ponderable. While a few of the signers were born in the British Isles, most were born on this side of the pond, but all of them were, up until that moment of independence, subjects of the English King. All men. All white. Some were plantation owners, where they owned enslaved Black people. 

Could they have possibly surveyed this crowd and made sense of the picture before them? Would they understand that equality, that citizenship, that certain unalienable rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, could be extended by our Creator to the mixed multitudes on the streets of Philadelphia in 2021?

And could they have possibly foreseen a group of aggrieved American citizens, whipped into a violent frenzy by an outgoing president, storm the building that houses the legislative heart of America, threaten the democratically-elected people who represent us, cause damage, kill a police officer, and capture the whole thing on video, as happened six months ago?

I would like to think that the founders of this nation might have expected both. I would like to think that they anticipated a range of events, from unity to schism and from homogeneity to the entire smorgasbord of humanity and for a whole gradient of possibilities in-between. I would like to think that they knew, as they set out on this journey that would last centuries, that they felt that what they were building in the New World was at least as resilient as the English monarchy, which was already 900 years old in their time. I would like to think that, as optimistic and idealistic as they were, they were confident that what they were setting up would be able to handle what would undeniably be a challenging journey for a new nation.

Of course, we the Jews have been around much longer. We have been witnesses to events that go back thousands of years. And who knows if our ancestors anticipated the travails that we have survived? We mark on Tish’ah BeAv, a week from tonight, the destructions of both First and Second Temples; dispersions, exiles, the Inquisition, the Shoah, and so forth. That we are still here, whether in Philadelphia, London, Buenos Aires, Tehran, Tel Aviv, or Pittsburgh, is nothing short of miraculous. Our tradition is that powerful.

Parashat Mas’ei, from which we read this morning, opens with the following verse (Bemidbar / Numbers 33:1):

אֵ֜לֶּה מַסְעֵ֣י בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל אֲשֶׁ֥ר יָצְא֛וּ מֵאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרַ֖יִם לְצִבְאֹתָ֑ם בְּיַד־מֹשֶׁ֖ה וְאַהֲרֹֽן׃

Elleh mas’ei venei yisrael asher yatze-u me-eretz mitzrayim letziv-otam beyad Moshe veAharon.

These were the marches of the Israelites who started out from the land of Egypt, troop by troop, in the charge of Moses and Aaron.

And what follows, of course, is a litany of the places in which the Israelites camped during their masa’im, their journeys. Rambam, in his Moreh Nevukhim, the Guide for the Perplexed, explains that this record of the 20-odd places in which the Israelites camped in their journey through the wilderness was absolutely necessary, because future generations may not believe that it was possible. The record of places, suggests Rambam, are there because otherwise, the miracle of 2 million people living for 40 years in the wilderness simply may not be believed.

And maybe you would not believe the things that have happened in these United States, either. Maybe you would not believe that, a mere 85 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia, that the Southern states would secede from the Union over the issue of slavery. Maybe you would not believe that the remaining states would have to go to war to bring them back into the Union. Maybe you would not believe that women were not allowed to vote until 1920, and that it would require an act of Congress in 1965 to ensure voting rights for Black Americans. Maybe you would not believe that presidents would be assassinated, that our nation would fight in distant wars overseas, that an American could walk on the moon, and many other features along the journey that we have not yet encountered.

Maybe.

But just as we the Jews are resilient, having outlasted many of our historical enemies, the democracy in which we live is in fact resilient. Flawed, yes. But still holding up under pressure.

On Wednesday evening, Judy and I were walking through the historic district of Philadelphia, and as we were strolling past brick townhouses from the 18th century, we spotted many mezuzot. I imagined that some of them may have been from the Colonial period, although one might hope that the kelafim contained therein have since been replaced. Certainly, Congregation Mikveh Israel, which dates to 1740, is still there (although not in its original building).

The rabbi of Mikveh Israel through a hefty chunk of the 19th century was Sabato Morais. Born in Italy and of Sephardic extraction, Morais was not only a hazzan and rabbi, but also was the founding president of the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1886. (JTS was initially located at Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, the Spanish-Portuguese congregation which is the oldest in America and the sister congregation to Mikveh Israel.)

Rabbi Hazzan Sabato Morais

Morais was a rationalist, rejecting kabbalah, as many of those associated with JTS did in its early years, and he also highlighted the flourishing of Jewish literature and poetry in Andalusia in the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry, a subtle bias which exists to this day at the Seminary. Although it was surely not his intent to create the Conservative movement, it was certainly an objective of the early Seminary to unify the rational center of Jewish life, far from the theological extremes.

In the context of the American Civil War, during a sermon in Philadelphia in 1863, he spoke of unity not only in Judaism, but in public life as well. Referencing the country of his birth, he applauded the need to fight for unity:

The aspirations of Dante, the inspiring songs of Petrarch, the longing of every good and true Italian, have they not ever been for the unity of the Italian peninsula . . . Why have the dungeon and the gibbet proved fruitless, and the brothers Bandiera run to martyrdom as to a festive board, but because the idea of a united Italy kindled the hearts of her children?

(Attilio and Emilio Bandiera were Milanese nationalists killed during the revolution of 1848, fighting for a unified Italy.)

Morais stood for unity: unity of Italy, unity of the United States, and he was also a pivotal figure in seeking unity in the ranks of American Jewry.

Our resilience in Judaism relies on the idea, however tenuous in today’s Jewish world, that even though we disagree on some theological issues, we are still one people. Let us hope that we as Americans can see our way through to a unity that will guarantee our resilience for centuries to come.

Let us pray that the American journey does not end in chaos and dysfunction; that we can find a way to cast aside the extremism in our midst, to focus on the greater good, and to move forward as a society.

Philadelphia is a city that today is still marked by the presence of Benjamin Franklin, whose pithy quotes adorn many a statue and building around the city. One that we encountered read, “The doors of wisdom are never shut.”

These words strike me as being so Jewish. What is the source of our resilience throughout history? It is Torah – our ancient wisdom, which we continue to revisit and re-learn and re-interpret. 

I would like to think that Franklin might take contemporary America’s pulse and as his prescription for our contemporary ills, simply repeat those words. Those doors are not shut. The wisdom is there – the wisdom of unity in the face of division. We know where we have been; we remember the journey. 

Let us put that wisdom to work.

Shabbat shalom.