Tish'ah Be'Av and the Egyptian Connection

My summer travels have found me gallivanting through multiple airports, and while trying vainly to find a wi-fi signal in Ataturk International (i.e. Istanbul, where a violent anti-government protest was in progress, although thankfully nowhere near Gate G-11), it occurred to me that if Israel is ever at peace with all of her neighbors, Ben Gurion Airport could be an international hub that rivals the big European airports. Peace produces prosperity.

Meanwhile, the drama in Egypt has been working up for a few weeks now, and I must confess that I am following it with slightly more interest than I would the average Middle Eastern uprising. I suspect that instability in Israel’s largest and most powerful neighbor is, at least in the short term, good for the Jewish state. First, the Egyptian military is interested in maintaining peace, and honoring prior agreements is the best way to do so. Second, the leaders of this coup are mostly former allies of Hosni Mubarak, the deposed president, who (despite his many failings) did keep those agreements during his tenure. Third, we can be sure that just about any ruling party that will succeed the Muslim Brotherhood and now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi will be better for relations with Israel. But in the long term, stability will be far more valuable.

As we are now into the Nine Days of the month of Av, the somber lead-up to Tish’ah Be’Av, I am reminded that uprisings and their aftermath tend to come during the hot summer months (think the Fourth of July, or Bastille Day, July 14th, in France). True, the Jewish rebellion against the Romans had been raging for three years, only to be crushed on the ninth day of Av in the year 70 CE with the destruction of the Second Temple; the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple on the same day in 586 BCE followed a siege that may have lasted the better part of a year. But the dramatic conclusion in both cases on the same day suggests that Av is the season for rebellion.

As Israeli strategists try to divine what all of this might mean for border security and concerns for the viability of long-term peace in the region,* we should not forget the Egyptian people, with whom the people of Israel have a relationship that stretches back at least 3000 years. Let us hope that whatever stumbling blocks they face as a more-ideal democracy unfolds on the Nile River valley will be minimal, so that Egyptians can soon go about their worldly pursuits with some modicum of safety and security. In the long run, a stable democratic government that empowers the Egyptian people will afford them better lives and greater satisfaction, and satisfied citizens do not wage reckless wars against their neighbors.

After the destruction of the Second Temple, Judaism was fundamentally changed, and for the better. Scholars of ancient Judaism tell us that it took several hundred years of commentary and learning and debate for normative rabbinic Judaism to emerge as the standard of Jewish practice, but it is worth noting that this model is far more democratic with respect to our individual relationships to God than the sacrificial Temple cult that preceded it. May the Qadosh Barukh Hu help raise the democracy quotient in Egypt, speedily and in our days.

 

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally published in the Temple Israel Voice, July 11, 2013.)

* An update from this column as it appeared in the Voice: The Wall Street Journal reported on July 11, 2013 that

Israel's military plans to downsize its conventional firepower such as tanks and artillery to focus on countering threats from guerrilla warfare and to boost its technological prowess, in a recognition that the Middle East turmoil has virtually halted the ability of neighbors to invade for years to come.

  It seems that Israel's borders are safer now than they have been for a long time. Good news!

Darwin and the Future of Religion - Vayehi 5773

When I was in Israel a few weeks back, I was shopping for Hebrew-language children’s books for my kids, and I found something curious: a book about Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. The level seemed a bit too high for my five-year-old daughter, but I couldn’t resist. I bought it.

After thinking about this a little more deeply, buyer’s remorse set in: I realized that this book might create an unintended consequence. As a proud alumna of our Beth HaGan nursery school and, well, the daughter of a rabbi who likes to read Hebrew Bible stories to his kids, my daughter not only wears her faith proudly, but will also talk your ear off about all of the wonderful things that God does for us. She is certain that God created the world and all of its creatures in six days and rested on the seventh. Will introducing her to another, potentially conflicting idea at such a tender age confuse her? Will she merely accept this as another story that can comfortably live alongside the opening chapters of Bereshit? Will she reject one or the other, and will this jeopardize her chances of getting into Harvard, or worse, JTS?

In any case, we have not yet read it. But I am nonetheless cautiously looking forward to the conversation that we will one day have.

Of course, the discourse about the role of religion in modern life is not only ongoing, but perhaps getting louder. We are all in some sense still struggling to respond to modernity, a process that began (at least in Jewish life) two and a half centuries ago, when Moses Mendelssohn succeeded in joining the intellectual elite of Berlin while maintaining his Jewish identity and practice. Meanwhile, there has been what amounts to an inadvertent series of op-ed pieces in the New York Times about religion and modernity, perhaps featured because December is the time of the year that Americans are most likely to be thinking about religious involvement. Each of them merits individual discussion, but I wanted to address them in the context of this morning’s Torah reading.

Today in Parashat Vayehi, we read about Jacob’s deathbed blessings and curses given to his twelve sons (we’ll talk another day about why his daughter Dinah is not mentioned). As is typical of end-of-life scenes in the Tanakh (like that of Moses at the end of Devarim, or our haftarah today, which took place at the end of King David’s life), Jacob’s pronouncements look backward and forward, referencing stories elsewhere in the Torah (even to events that have not yet taken place according to the Torah’s chronology) and making what seem to be predictions about the future for each son’s tribe. (Biblical scholars actually see this passage as having been written in a different place and time, probably much older than the surrounding text, and co-opted here as Jacob’s words. Hence Jacob’s seeming foreknowledge of where the tribes dwell in Israel and who is scattered among whom.)

But here is the curious thing. Jacob is the only patriarch to die in Egypt, in what we today refer to as the diaspora. He himself has been in Egypt for seventeen years, and he does not know for how long his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be there. He makes his sons promise that they will bury him with Abraham and Isaac in the Cave of Makhpelah in Hebron, but does not insist that they stay there. He seems to be quietly comfortable with the knowledge that someday they will return to the land that was promised to all three patriarchs, that someday their exile will end, and his descendants will take up residence in a land that is now occupied by Canaanites and Philistines and Hivites and Jebusites and so forth. He is not worried that his son Joseph is married to the daughter of an Egyptian priest; all the more so, he adopts Joseph’s Egyptian-born children Menashe and Ephraim as his own, declaring that (Genesis 48:20):

בְּךָ יְבָרֵךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר, יְשִׂמְךָ אֱלֹהִים כְּאֶפְרַיִם וְכִמְנַשֶּׁה

By you shall Israel invoke invoke blessings, saying, God make you like Ephraim and Menashe.

These are, of course, the words we still invoke each Friday night when we bless our own children today.  Jacob, taking the long view, is not concerned about his family’s future, their identity as members of his clan or issues of intermarriage and assimilation.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are times when it is very easy to worry about the future of Judaism, or indeed religious practice in general. As you have heard me say many times in this space, the fastest growing religion in America is “None.” There are those in the more “fundamentalist” sphere (of all of the Western religious traditions) that believe that this is merely a symptom of the gradual tearing down of religious authority to which Spinoza and Darwin and Marx and many others have arguably contributed. We are now reaping what we have sown, they say. 

But my concern is not the decline of religion due to active denial or apparent contradiction between the principles of religion in modern life. My concern is indifference - the vast numbers of people who pass through these doors every year and are not only untouched by the richness of their own tradition, but are also gradually finding themselves alienated by Judaism through their own non-involvement. The threat is not Darwin, ladies and gentlemen, but a dearth of inspiring moments: words, prayer, feelings, music, and communal togetherness.

But these recent pieces in the Times have struck a hopeful chord. The first, one that I discussed last week when I substituted for Rabbi Stecker at his bi-weekly “Jews and the News” class, is by an evangelical pastor, John Dickerson, about the decline of evangelical Christianity. While reading Rev. Dickerson’s piece, I experienced a strong sense of what psychologists call counter-transference: the phenomena that he describes (declining membership, fewer young people involved, decreased political power of their adherents due to smaller numbers) mimic patterns in non-Orthodox Judaism. His conclusion is that evangelicals must focus on their core principles, and that a movement in disarray has hope for building.

The second op-ed of interest was written by University of North Carolina history professor Molly Worthen about the apparent growth and power of secularism. She points to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center showing that the “nones” of America are now 20% of the population, up from 16% just five years ago. Dr. Worthen cites religious Christian activists who pointed to this study as evidence that the foundations of our society are crumbling.

But Dr. Worthen also gives us a historical reality check, noting that despite the apparently declining interest in religion, that there have always been a fair share of what we today call the “unaffiliated”. Even in traditional America, where the French sociological tourist Alexis de Tocqueville found in the 18th century an open market of religious ideas that led to greater religious commitment than in Europe, regular church attendance before the Civil War “probably never exceeded 30 percent.”

Meanwhile, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the largest Jewish organization of the British Commonwealth, wrote a wonderful essay about the continuing value of religion today. He cites similar statistics about declining religious involvement in Britain and the U.S., and then observes the following:

“The irony is that many of the new atheists are followers of Charles Darwin. We are what we are, they say, because it has allowed us to survive and pass on our genes to the next generation. Our biological and cultural makeup constitutes our “adaptive fitness.” Yet religion is the greatest survivor of them all. Superpowers tend to last a century; the great faiths last millenniums [sic].”

Like Dr. Worthen, Rabbi Sacks also points to the invaluable research of sociologist Robert Putnam, author of the essential works Bowling Alone and American Grace. Putnam concludes that while “social capital,” the glue that binds us all together in society, is on the decline, religious communities are still supplying social capital in spades.

“Mr. Putnam’s research showed that frequent church- or synagogue-goers were more likely to give money to charity, do volunteer work, help the homeless, donate blood, help a neighbor with housework, spend time with someone who was feeling depressed, offer a seat to a stranger or help someone find a job. Religiosity as measured by church or synagogue attendance is, he found, a better predictor of altruism than education, age, income, gender or race.”

Rabbi Sacks offers this as proof that not only will religion survive the Darwinian forces of natural selection, but that it will serve as a bulwark against the creeping individualism that the information age seems to have hastened. Rituals, prayer, study of traditional texts, and so forth build trust, empathy, and foundations of a healthy, cooperative society.

What these articles all point to, and particularly that of Rabbi Sacks, is that religious tradition will always have a certain appeal, and that the mere fact that we are still here a century and a half after Darwin published On the Origin of Species testifies to this. Of course we have to work hard to do what we do better, and there may in fact be even leaner years on the horizon. But, like Jacob, we know that not only will we continue to offer inspiration in the future, we will do so in all the resplendent complexity that the modern Jewish world offers: many choices, many approaches, many points of view. And that’s a good thing.

I recall a trenchant discussion from when I was in rabbinical school. I was in Talmud class with Dr. David Kraemer, who is also the librarian of the JTS Library, one of the finest collections of Jewish books and documents in the world. We had taken a slight diversion from discussing some of the finer points of hilkhot Sukkah, the laws related to fulfilling the mitzvot of the festival of Sukkot, to talk about why it was OK for Jewish kids to collect candy on Halloween. Judaism has never lived in a vacuum, he reminded us, borrowing ideas and holidays and rituals and music from surrounding cultures. Halloween, or for that matter Christmas, are no more threats to Judaism and Jewish culture than Israeli supermarkets that sell pork products. We will continue regardless; we will continue to be, as was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as “numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore” (Genesis 22:17). Our concern should only be to continue to try to reach people through all of the means at our disposal, traditional and not-so. 

In short, the message of the day (with a nod to science fiction writer and staunch atheist Douglas Adams) is this: Don’t panic. Judaism, including liberal variants such as ours, will soldier on and continue to offer inspiration to those who seek it. Our task is to, just as Rev. Dickerson suggests, focus on the essentials of our faith, and let the forces of natural selection do the rest.
Shabbat shalom.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, December 29, 2012.)

Getting Back to the Table by Letting Out the Goat - Shabbat Thanksgiving 5773

On this "Shabbat Thanksgiving," there are many things for which we should be thankful.

First, that we survived the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. Many of us were inconvenienced by the storm, and some of us had major damage to our homes. But by and large this community was spared the devastation that parts of the South Shore of Long Island, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and New Jersey suffered. We should not forget, even as we celebrate two benei mitzvah today, that there are now many in our region who lost everything.

Second, many members of this community have been forthcoming in helping others in need in the wake of the storm. That is what makes us a qehillah qedoshah, a holy congregation, and I applaud those of us who have taken the initiative to contribute in every way possible to relief efforts.

Third, that the Iron Dome defense system in Israel was quite successful in shooting down rockets that were headed to residential areas. Some reports said that the success rate was near 90%.

Finally, that the cease-fire in Israel is (mostly) holding for the third day. This is very good news for the members of our partner Conservative congregation in Ashkelon, Kehillat Netzah Yisrael, where life had more or less come to a standstill for eight days. It is also personally good news for me, since my son lives in Nes Tziyyonah, out of range of the Qassam rockets which make up the bulk of those coming from Gaza, but within range of the larger rockets like the Fajr-5 rockets supplied by Iran. (During the eight days of rockets, there was only one air-raid siren in Nes Tziyyonah; my son and his neighbors gathered in the stairwell, the safest part of their apartment building, until it passed, thankfully uneventfully.)

It is worth noting, by the way, that this is, in fact, the second cease-fire in 2012 brokered by the Egyptians. Back in March, after four days of less-intense rocket attacks and Israeli airstrikes, a similar deal was struck. And here we are, eight months later, in the same place. And so, while we might be grateful for this lull, we should also fear the next shower of rockets and what will come from it. Because there will be more rockets, more sirens, more lives lost and disrupted; the only question is when.

Or maybe there is a way to break this pattern.

There is a well-known folktale from Jewish tradition that goes like this: A man goes to his rabbi. He says, “Rabbi, my house is too small! My wife and I and our four children are barely able to live, because we are constantly in each others’ way. What should I do?”

The rabbi thinks for a moment, then says, “Do you have a goat?”

“Yes,” says the man cautiously.

“Bring the goat inside the house,” suggests the rabbi.

“But...”

“Just do it,” says the rabbi.

So the man brings in the goat, which takes up more space and wreaks havoc within the tiny house. He goes back to the rabbi.

“Do you have a cow?” asks the rabbi.

“But rabbi, it’s already crowded and miserable! If I bring in the cow, it will just get worse!”

“Bring in the cow.”

The man reluctantly does so. The animals are now eating their food, sitting on their tiny couch, keeping them up at night. He goes back to the rabbi.

“Bring in your chickens,” says the rabbi.

“But rabbi...”

“Just do it.”

So he does. He’s now at his wits’ end, tearing his hair out from the stress of a small house filled to the brim with people and animals. He goes back to the rabbi.

“Now take all the animals out,” says the rabbi.

The man sprints home and gets rid of all the animals. A day later, he returns to the rabbi.

“Rabbi, I want to thank you so much! Our house is now so roomy!”

*****

Did the house change? No. But the man’s perspective changed.

In the summer of 2000, when I was working in Jerusalem as a music specialist for the Conservative movement’s Ramah day camp, talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority broke down.  Fatah Chairman Yasir Arafat rejected PM Ehud Barak’s offer of a state that would include almost all of the West Bank and Gaza, plus control over Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Immediately after, Arafat ordered the violent Intifada, and years of suicide bombings hardened Israeli resolve against peace talks. Israel decided that the PA was no partner for peace, and has not engaged seriously with them since.

In 2005, Israel pulled out of Gaza unilaterally.

In 2006, the Palestinian territories held free elections. Hamas won a majority of seats in Gaza, and soon after seized control over the Strip.

In 2008, after thousands of Qassam rockets had fallen on Sderot and other communities near Gaza, Israel launched a ground offensive, Operation Cast Lead, to demolish terrorist infrastructure in Gaza. There was a heavy toll of civilian and combatant lives.  Rockets have continued to fall sporadically in the south of Israel, but in the intervening years Hamas has grown more powerful and more deadly.  

And then came the events of the past week and a half. Meanwhile, PA President Mahmoud Abbas watches on the sidelines from the West Bank.

Over the past 12 years, our perspective has changed. Everybody has grown more and more pessimistic about the chances for peace. Current PM Netanyahu is far more interested in saber-rattling over Iran than talking with anybody on the other side of the Green Line.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one possible way out of this, and it’s not a sure thing, but it is better than the current situation.

The only possible solution is the two-state solution. Israel and the PA, supported by all the major international players, must swallow their pride and sit down at the table and talk. All other outcomes are unsustainable; let me explain:

1. Maintaining the status quo. Every few years, Israelis are shelled heavily, and then retaliate until the next cease-fire. Obviously, this cannot continue forever, because each time the rockets fly, they are more accurate, more intense, with bigger payloads and longer ranges.

2. The one-state solution. Israel annexes all the territories and grants citizenship to everybody in the territories. This is suicide - Israel will not be able to maintain itself as a democracy with a Jewish character when the largest political group is Palestinian.

3. Unilateral withdrawals from parts of the West Bank. As many have pointed out, Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza may have yielded an economic benefit for Israel by no longer requiring heavy military protection from the settlements in Gush Qatif, within the Gaza Strip. But whatever benefits reaped have been negated by the thousands of rockets that have been launched by Gaza-based terrorists.

But the reason that the Gaza withdrawal did not have a positive effect on the region is because of its unilateral nature. Israel did not consult with anybody; no peacekeeping forces were installed; no structure was in place to make a smooth transition; no other governmental powers were there to support either side. This vacuum led to the rise of Hamas, and we all know how that has turned out.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think about this a lot. And as far as I can tell, the only other possible path is the two-state solution. Those of us that balk at the idea of sitting down at the table with any Palestinian group should recall that we do not make peace with friends; we make peace with enemies. We don’t have to like each other, but we do need to talk.

If Israel sits with Mahmoud Abbas and hammers out a peace agreement such that a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank, soon enough the economy will improve, employment will improve, Palestinians will be able to have some kind of normal life, and they will (as they have done in the past) go about their business and focus less energy on hating the Jews.

And what about Gaza, you ask? This is the important part. Hamas not, at least right now, a partner for peace, because from where we sit right now it is unlikely that they will acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.  As Israel’s ambassador the US and military historian Michael Oren stated in an op-ed piece in the New York Times a few days ago:

“Negotiations leading to peace can be realistic with an adversary who shares that goal. But Hamas, whose covenant calls for the slaughter of Jews worldwide, is striving not to join peace talks, but to prevent them. It rejects Israel’s existence, refuses to eschew terror, and disavows all previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements.”

Ambassador Oren goes on to speak optimistically about the chances for peace with the PA:

“Egypt and Jordan tried more than once to defeat Israel militarily, only to recognize the permanence of the Jewish state and to sign peace accords with it. Similarly, the Palestine Liberation Organization, guided by nationalism rather than militant theology, realized it could gain more by talking with Israel than by battling us. The result was the 1993 Oslo Accords, the foundation for what we still hope will be a two-state solution. By establishing deterrence, Israel led these rational actors toward peace.”

What Oren fails to say is that while deterring Hamas, Israel can at the same time reach out to the PA and build that Palestinian state. Once that state is built in the West Bank, then the people of Gaza will see the benefits of peace that their cousins are reaping, and throw of the yoke of Hamas and the curse of eternal war.

We have to set aside the fear. We have to look above the comfort zone of “no” to get to “yes.” We need to take bold steps. Cooperation right now between Israel and America and the PA on economic and security matters is at an all-time high. Now is the time, during this cease-fire, for Israel to look east to the West Bank, rather than south to Gaza, and reach out. It is time to take out the goat and the cow and the chickens, and work from a new perspective.

Otherwise, it will all happen again, sooner and stronger and more deadly.

Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu ve’al kol Yisrael, ve-imru Amen.
May the One who makes peace on high bring piece upon us and upon all Israel, and let us say Amen.

Shabbat Shalom, a Shabbat of peace.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, November 24, 2012.)

Redemption Time - Tuesday Kavvanah, 3/20/2012

When I heard the news yesterday of the killings at a Jewish school in France, I cried.  And then it occurred to me that one reason that Pesah still speaks to us is that despite our successes, despite our integration into the wider community, despite our widespread acceptance as citizens of the world, despite the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel, total redemption has eluded us.  We were redeemed from slavery and oppression in Egypt, but we still await the completion of God's work.

Twice a day, when we recite the Shema in its liturgical framework, we invoke the themes of creation, revelation, and redemption: the first theme refers to the creation of the universe; "revelation" to the gift of the Torah; and "redemption" recalls the Exodus from Egypt, which we will explore more extensively during the upcoming festival of Pesah.  

Reciting these berakhot every morning, we are reminded that God's work is ongoing.  The world continues to be re-fashioned every day.  Our understanding and relationship to the Torah continuously unfolds, as we use the lens of our ancient stories and laws to engage with modernity.  And even though the words of the Haggadah that we recite at the Passover seder assure us that we are no longer slaves, our redemption is far from complete.

Let us hope that this Hag haHerut, Festival of Freedom, will bring us just a bit closer to the time when the need for security guards in schools and synagogues, for bomb shelters and car searches, and for saber-rattling over any nation's nuclear program, will be a distant memory.

Shemini 5771 - No Time for Silence

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel, Shabbat morning, 3/26/2011.)

Very early Wednesday morning, my son Zev and I were up eating breakfast, listening to WNYC, and we heard the news of the bus bombing in Jerusalem. This was the first attack of this kind in four years, and such news is always very disturbing to me, because I lived in Jerusalem 11 years ago, and I rode those very buses. I find it very easy to identify with those who were there, the victims, the bystanders.

Zev, who is nearly 2, did not seem to appreciate the depth of this tragedy. I had nobody with whom to process this news, and so I kept it to myself, for the moment.

There is a big weakness in the enterprise of terrorism, a flaw that those who commit or support acts of terrorism appear not to consider very carefully. Certainly, terrorism kills people, scares many more people, and draws international attention to your cause. And these are its primary purposes.

But what terrorism does not do is bring warring sides together for the sake of reaching a peace agreement, or even a cease fire. In the case of Israel in particular, terrorist activity only strengthens the will of survivors, and of the wider, injured society. Israelis know from having lived with it forever that the way to deal with terrorists is to ignore them - to bury your dead in tears, to repair your buildings and your lives, and then to move on, if only somewhat more bitter and defiant. And the killers never seem to understand that every violent act committed against civilians diminishes the chances of any kind of peace, or at least a fair deal for the supporters of your cause, by a measurable amount.

Are Israelis, in the wake of this bombing and the dreadful killings in the settlement of Itamar two weeks ago, suddenly more eager to negotiate? Probably not. And particularly after seeing the video footage of Palestinians in Gaza celebrating the gory killing of the Fogel family by eating sweets in public.

Now, do you really think that the guys in the upper echelons of the Islamic Jihad group are thinking, “We’ve really done it this time! Now the Israelis will surely see our side of the story and, as our ally journalist Helen Thomas suggested last year, move back to Poland and Germany”? Probably not.

Perhaps there is nothing to say. Perhaps the best thing to do is move on.

Leaving acts of terrorism aside for a moment, we read this morning in Parashat Shemini about the death of Nadav and Avihu, two sons of Aaron, the Kohen Gadol (High Priest). It is not entirely clear why God schmeisted them, although the Torah tells us that they offered “esh zarah,” “alien fire” on the altar of the mishkan (tabernacle). After doing so, they are consumed in a sudden, merciless flame.

Immediately following their deaths, the Torah states, in a terse, removed voice (Leviticus 10:3, Humash Etz Hayim p. 634):

וַיִּדֹּם אַהֲרֹן.

Vayidom Aharon. Aaron was silent.

There is something that simply does not ring true in this episode. Was Aaron speechless, beyond words? Was he silent in front of his brother Moses at that moment, and then did he cry later? Was he really convinced that God’s actions were justified, and kept silent out of respect?

Rashi, trying to defend Aaron, points to a Talmudic midrash from Massekhet Zevahim that sees Moshe comforting his brother, telling him that his sons Nadav and Avihu died only to sanctify the name of the Qadosh Barukh Hu (God), and that he received from God a reward for his silence in the face of tragedy.

Really, how does one respond to such a line? Oh, of course! It’s a reward! I get it. I lose two out of my four sons, and I’m rewarded for being silent. Makes perfect sense!

Rashi, my friend, how could you say that? Who can be silent in the face of death? Who can be silent in the face of such a horrible loss?

And likewise, we cannot be silent in the face of the recent tragedies in Israel.

And yet, the most stunning silence is that of the Western world regarding all that has transpired across the Middle East in recent months. Let’s take a look around the Arab world:

Col. Muammar Qaddafi is at work trying to put down an all-out rebellion. How does he do it? By killing his own people. The death toll is estimated to be in the thousands.

Syrian troops are busy, probably at this very moment, trying to put down protests; in recent days they have killed perhaps 100 of their own brethren by opening their rifles at crowds of protesters.

In Bahrain, at least 10 pro-democracy protesters were killed in the past month, by Bahraini and Saudi troops. Bahrain! Not the wealthiest Persian Gulf state, but it’s not Gaza, either.

The list goes on. Yemen, where 50 anti-government protesters were gunned down last Friday. Egypt, where hundreds died for the departure of a single multi-billionaire president. And let’s not forget about the 20-year civil war in Somalia, where hundreds of thousands have died. And so forth.

Arab and Muslim states are murdering their citizens, yet outrage in the West is barely noticeable, while Israel’s detractors are in the streets after even one death caused by targeted military action against terrorist infrastructure.

Palestinian death tolls regardless, Israel continually takes a lot of heat: in the seemingly hostile world media (the BBC had difficulty merely reporting the killings in Itamar in an accurate way; yesterday’s New York Times article about the rockets that fell in Beersheva this week was underneath a picture NOT of the damage in Beersheva, but of a Gazan boy killed in an Israeli retaliation); there is also the ongoing effort of the BDS movement: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions; and of course there’s the Goldstone Report. (BTW: Libya was a member of the UN Human Rights Council, when it produced this report. Go figure.)

When the IDF entered the refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin in 2002 to root out terrorist activity, the world screamed “massacre!” Death tolls of up to 900 were claimed by Palestinian sources. There were anti-Israel protests in major cities around the world.

In the months that followed, even Human Rights Watch (no great ally of Israel) conceded that there was no such massacre, and that there were 27 militants killed and 22 civilians. Not those deaths were insignificant, mind you, but the figure was not quite on the scale of mass graves, as charged by some.

Returning to the present killings in the Arab world, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you, where are the international protests now? Who is out in the streets for the Libyan people? Sure, we’ve gone in with fighter jets and no endgame. And in Britain anti-war groups are protesting the Western intervention.

Canadian journalist Michael Coren, comparing the Jenin non-massacre of 2002 with the events of the past two months in an analysis for the Toronto Sun, observes,

“In the past few weeks we have seen genuine massacres and gruesome brutality. Thousands of people have now been murdered by Arab and Iranian governments and Arab and Iranian soldiers. In Libya, ordinary mourners attending the funerals of people shot dead in the streets were themselves targeted by snipers.”

Coren goes on:

“Yet where are the massive street protests in Europe’s large cities? Where are the calls to boycott countries? Where are the labour unions demanding action? Where are the student groups using words like “apartheid” and “Nazi”? Where are the moralistic editorials condemning Arab intolerance, Islamic barbarism and the need for Arab countries to be banned from international sporting, cultural and literary events?”

Elsewhere in the Torah, in the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy 25:14, Humash Etz Hayim p. 1135), we read the following negative commandment:

לֹא-יִהְיֶה לְךָ בְּבֵיתְךָ, אֵיפָה וְאֵיפָה: גְּדוֹלָה, וּקְטַנָּה
Lo yihyeh lekha beveitekha, eifah ve-eifah: gedolah uqtanah.
You shall not have in your house alternate measures: a larger and a smaller.

Do not weigh your produce, or perhaps your generosity, or your honesty, differently for different customers, says the Torah. In other words, no double standards. Allies or not, the authoritarian regimes of the Arab world have overstayed their tenures by a couple of decades. That their murderous attempts to maintain their grip on power goes on without the same kind of condemnation that the world heaps upon Israel is simply scandalous.

We are not permitted to be silent, like Aaron. There is no reward for complacency in the face of wanton murder by selfish dictators. There is certainly no qiddush Hashem (sanctification of God’s name) in either the terrorist murders in Israel or the martyred protesters in the Arab world. And likewise, we should not stand for two sets of measures of world attention or condemnation.

Let me sum up with the following statement from Psalm 29 (verse 11), the words that conclude the recitation of Birkat HaMazon, the blessings after meals:

יְהוָה--עֹז, לְעַמּוֹ יִתֵּן; יְהוָה, יְבָרֵךְ אֶת-עַמּוֹ בַשָּׁלוֹם.
Adonai oz le-amo yiten; Adonai yevarekh et amo bashalom
May God grant strength to His people; may God bless His people with peace.

Why in Birkat HaMazon? Because the wish for peace is everpresent, even surrounding such mundane activities as eating.

But wait! Go back to the first hemistich. Strength? We like to highlight peace, but not strength. One might read this as the slogan that marked the Reagan years of the Cold War, that is, “peace through strength.” But I prefer to read it as referring to strength of will, rather than military might. May God strengthen our resolve to overcome terrorist threats and bad actors to achieve peace. And may we have the strength not to remain silent.