Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem - Vayyera 5775

I am a big fan of Israeli pop music, particularly the way it tells the story of Israel. Not necessarily the explicit story, the history-book story, but the implicit story of who Israelis are, where they came from, what they value, and what life is like in Israel. Back in the ‘80s, when I spent a few summers at Camp Ramah in New England, and participated in USY, Israeli pop tunes saturated my life, particularly the Eurovision festival entries (Halleluyah, Abanibi, Hai, etc.) and the “Hasidic” song festivals (Adon Olam, etc.). As an American Jewish teenager who loved Israel, these songs created something of a background soundtrack to my life. And there was no song more resonant than Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, the song by Naomi Shemer that told the story of loss and reunification of the holiest place in Israel, the city that occupies such a special place in the hearts of so many of us. To this day, it seems that this song is the best-known and best-loved of the entire Israeli pop canon, at least in this hemisphere.

On Wednesday morning I heard about the Palestinian man with links to Hamas who plowed his car into a group of innocent Israelis waiting for a train at the Shim’on HaTzaddiq station on the new light rail line, killing one and injuring a dozen more people. This follows a similar attack two weeks ago in which a three-month-old baby girl and an Ecuadorean tourist were killed, and another incident in which an American-born rabbi, Yehuda Glick, was shot and critically wounded for advocating to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount.

And I realized that I had no choice but to pause to grieve for Jerusalem, the city whose name may be derived from ‘Ir Shalom, the City of Peace.

Where is the Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, the Jerusalem of Gold that we all know and love? Does that song merely capture a fleeting dream, a candle of hope and unity that only flickered briefly before being snuffed out by the intractable reality on the ground? Is the zahav, the gold, merely that of a rising flame of tension, disunity, and instigation?

I lived in Jerusalem in the year 2000 for about seven months, for my first semester in Cantorial School at the Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies, just before the Second Intifada broke out. It was a relativly peaceful and even optimistic time in Israel. Just a few years after the Oslo Accords, peace was coming. Areas of the West Bank and Gaza had been turned over to the Palestinians. There was new development and cooperation on matters of security and trade. No part of Jerusalem seemed unsafe, and I walked the streets of East Jerusalem and the Arab quarters of the Old City without fear.

But oh, how things have changed. It was, you may recall, the failure of the Camp David summit in July of 2000 that ultimately led to the Intifada. I had just returned to New York to continue my studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary when the City of Peace became the city of bus and cafe bombings.

Things cooled down again after a few years. Israel built the separation fence (which in places is a wall), which worked quite well in keeping would-be attackers out of the Jewish population centers. Jerusalem’s brand new light rail line, which took years to build, opened in 2011, and the optics of a, thoroughly modern commuter train running alongside the Old City walls built by the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century are truly inspiring. I have been on the train a few times, and am always captivated by its tri-lingual scrolling sign, announcing the next station in Hebrew, Arabic and English. The cool thing is that, since English goes from left to right and the other languages from right to left, the info scrolls in both directions.

But it is this light rail system, originally built to serve both Arab and Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem (the population of which is 37% Arab), that has unfortunately been a focal point of some of the recent violence. It was the target of attacks in July by Palestinian youths, who sacked the stations in their areas. So the municipality stopped running the trains there. The two deadly car attacks of the last couple of weeks took place at rail stations, easy targets for terrorists. This symbol of old and new, of coexistence and cooperation and shared economy and destinations, of progress and promise, has devolved into a symbol of hatred and resentment, of failure and intransigence, of murder and riots.

To quell the angry mobs of Palestinian protesters last week, Israel ordered a full shutdown of the Temple Mount for a day, the first time since the summer of 2000, igniting even more tension within the city as well as angering Israel’s mostly-cordial Arab neighbors in Jordan, who are still somewhat in control of what goes on on top of the Temple Mount plaza. Jerusalem is at a rolling boil of hatred, anger, fear, and grief.

Among the many, many things I learned about in rabbinical school are the basic principles of “family therapy.” Family therapists see each family as a system of interconnected personalities, and that when a family system is not functioning in equilibrium, then one or more of the people in the system misbehave and cause emotional damage. Often, the way to fix such a family system is to make a significant change in the structure. The hard part is knowing what must be changed.

The parashah that we read today describes the residents of Jerusalem as being from the same family - Abraham’s sons Ishmael and Isaac are the patriarchs of the Jews and the Arabs, respectively, and the Torah presents both of them as having a certain role to play in the world, siring two great nations. Let’s face it - Muslim, Christian and Jew, Israeli and Arab, we are one big family system that is misfiring all over the place.

As if to draw a fine point on this picture, Israel’s new President, Reuven Rivlin, a right-wing politician who supports settlements and rejects the two-state solution, said in a speech two weeks ago (as quoted in an article in the current Jewish Week): “The tension between Jews and Arabs within the State of Israel has risen to record heights, and the relationship between all parties has reached a new low. We have all witnessed the shocking sequence of incidents and violence taking place by both sides… It is time to honestly admit that Israeli society is sick - and it is our duty to treat this disease.”

With every terrorist attack, we, the Jews, the Israeli public are driven further away from seeking a negotiated resolution to the current situation. And that is an understandable response. As has often been noted, whenever Israel has retreated, terrorist groups have been emboldened.

But this observation is always made from the position of defeatism. The message is, “Nothing should change, because change has never been good for us.” I cannot accept that message.

Returning to President Rivlin, I offer his words given at an amazing speech in Kafr Qasm, an Israeli Arab town, where he spoke at the annual commemoration of the 1956 massacre of 48 Arab residents of the town by Israeli troops. He acknowledged the discrimination that Israeli Arabs have faced at the hands of the Jewish majority, and exhorted Arabs and Jews to take a step forward together based on “mutual respect and commitment”:

“As a Jew, I expect from my coreligionists, to take responsibility for our lives here, so as President of Israel, as your President, I also expect you to take that same responsibility. The Arab population in Israel, and the Arab leaders in Israel, must take a clear stand against violence and terrorism.”

The current escalation threatens the very foundations of the City of Peace, and it will not go away until there are fundamental changes in the family system. Those changes will have to be that, for the sake of Jerusalem, the Palestinians renounce terrorism, that PA President Mahmoud Abbas stops making inflammatory statements that seem to sympathize with terrorists, that Israel ceases demolishing homes, even the illegal ones, in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, and at least temporarily stops issuing building tenders for new construction for Jewish homes in disputed areas, and that both sides return to the table. As a family, we have to talk to each other.

We have no other choice. The only other option is the status quo, and we see how well that is working. The family system is broken.

We read this morning one of the most well-known and controversial stories in the Torah, the Aqedat Yitzhaq, the Binding of Isaac. Tradition tells us that it takes place on Mt. Moriah, which we today know as the Temple Mount. It is the Torah’s way of telling us that Jerusalem is the holiest place in the world, the location where a paradigm shift in our relationship with God took place. And, of course, Christians and Muslims believe this city to be holy as well.

Prayer, ladies and gentlemen, is not just a request for things that we want, it is also a blueprint for a world that could be. We should pray for those killed and injured in this conflict. But we also have to pray for the holy city of Jerusalem, and hold out hope that this situation will change.

שַׁאֲלוּ שְׁלוֹם יְרוּשָׁלִָם; יִשְׁלָיוּ, אֹהֲבָיִךְ.  יְהִי-שָׁלוֹם בְּחֵילֵךְ, שַׁלְוָה, בְּאַרְמְנוֹתָיִךְ.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: “May those who love you be at peace. May there be well-being within your ramparts, peace in your citadels.”
(Psalm 122:6-7)

Giving up hope is not an option. We must continue to sing Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, but also to invoke Psalm 122, to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and to continue to place that before us as a goal. We must hope that change will come; if we give up that hope, then there will never be peace in the City of Peace.

Shabbat shalom.

No Time for Comfort - Shabbat Nahamu, 5774

We are now seven weeks away from Rosh Hashanah, and the theme of this period is rebuilding, of going from the sorrow of desolation and loss (Tish’ah Be’Av) to the joy of redemption and renewal.

Today is Shabbat Nahamu, the Shabbat of comfort, a name referring to the opening word of today’s first haftarah of consolation, repeated twice (Isaiah 40:1-2):

נַחֲמוּ נַחֲמוּ, עַמִּי--יֹאמַר, אֱ-לֹהֵיכֶם.  דַּבְּרוּ עַל-לֵב יְרוּשָׁלִַם, וְקִרְאוּ אֵלֶיהָ--כִּי מָלְאָה צְבָאָהּ, כִּי נִרְצָה עֲו‍ֹנָהּ:  כִּי לָקְחָה מִיַּד ה', כִּפְלַיִם בְּכָל-חַטֹּאתֶיהָ.

Comfort, oh comfort My people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and declare to her that her term of service is over, that her iniquity is expiated, for she has received at the hand of the Lord double for all her sins.

It is the first of the seven haftarot of consolation. Each of these is drawn from the book of Isaiah, and each seeks to provide comfort to Israel by reassuring that restoration is on the way.

This restoration is in the context of a remarkable historical turning point. Some scholars believe that he is writing around 538 BCE, about the time that the Persian king Cyrus conquered the Babylonian Empire, and issued an edict allowing exiled peoples, like the Jews, to return to their native lands. This was roughly 50 years after the Babylonians had taken Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple, and brought the Jews to Babylon, in what is today called Iraq.

But how did that restoration come about? How was the Second Temple built? Although Cyrus let the Jews return to Israel, not everybody was willing to pick up and move again. Fifty years is a long time - they had lives and businesses and were intermarried with the local population. Not many wanted to return; many Jews stayed in Babylon; some even moved instead to Persia, to the new imperial capital of the region. (It was in fact the events of the sixth century BCE that formed the basis of both the Iraqi and Iranian Jewish communities, both of which thrived into the 20th century.)

Rather, it was the initiative of a relatively small band (the book of Ezra says about 42,000) who returned to the Judean wasteland and braved Samaritan attacks to rebuild and rededicate the Temple, the Second Temple. It was a human endeavor.

On Thursday, I was preparing to speak about picking up the pieces of Operation Protective Edge, when I heard that Hamas had broken the cease-fire by firing rockets into Israel. On Friday morning, I read that Israel had responded with airstrikes. So, sadly, this chapter continues.

However, this will not go on forever, and when the (temporary) quiet returns, we will be faced once more with the challenge of, “Well, what’s next?”

I read this week that Amos Oz, the noted Israeli author and outspoken leftist, supported Operation Protective Edge to stop the rockets coming into Israel, calling it “justified, but excessive.” This sheds some light on the depth and complexity of the problem at hand. And he is not alone: elsewhere, I saw a Gallup poll that indicated that 93% of American Jews were supportive of Israel in the last month, and the figure is about the same in Israel. You can’t get 93% Jews to agree on much of anything, really, so that is quite a sobering  figure.

Whether we are at the end of this Gaza engagement or not, we have to consider the future now.

So here is the quandary that we are in today. Continued rocket-fire and reprisals notwithstanding, Israel has mostly completed Operation Protective Edge, entering Gaza and destroying terrorist infrastructure and killing enemy combatants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They mostly restored peace to Israel, so that nobody has to head down regularly into bomb shelters. They have rooted out and destroyed the 32 carefully-designed tunnels leading into Israel, thus foiling the apparent plan to infiltrate and attack Israel on Rosh Hashanah.

But what have they not done? They have not even considered any kind of negotiated settlement that will guarantee a long-term peace. And here is the problem.

Because, as I pointed out a few weeks ago, this will all happen again. And next time, there will be more rockets with a longer range, more tunnels, and greater danger to Israel. My son, who lives at Kibbutz Ein Gev up north, was not in range of Hamas’ rockets this time. Maybe next time he will be.

Unless.

Unless there is not a next time. And I am afraid that the only way that this can be is if the international powers, in cooperation with Israel, can create a successful, de-militarized Palestinian-controlled territory. And here is where Amos Oz and I agree once again.  (And some here will surely disagree with me.)

But I think that it is the lesser of two potentially bad futures.

Short of turning Gaza into a parking lot (which Israel is DEFINITELY not going to do; they are not genocidal barbarians, despite mob-driven protestations to the contrary), the only way that we have a chance for long-term peace is to create, if not a state, at least an independent, non-Hamas-ruled entity for Gaza.

Yes, I know that past events have suggested that trusting them will be fraught.

Yes, a major sticking point is that Hamas rules Gaza, and uses their own people as human shields and places rocket launchers in residential neighborhoods (BTW, did you see the video captured by the Indian television crew from NDTV of Hamas combatants building a makeshift rocket launcher next to their hotel, and then firing a rocket into Israel? Incredible!).

Yes, I know that multiple proposals for a two-state solution in the past two decades have failed for various reasons.

But remember: there is no other way out. The residents of Gaza, Hebron, Jenin, Nablus (Shekhem), and so forth are not going away. And they will not be absorbed into Egypt or Jordan.

(Aside: two years ago I was at a gas station in Ma'ale Adummim, the largest settlements on the outskirts of Jerusalem. I was having trouble with the self-service pump, so an attendant came over to help me. He was a Palestinian Arab, and, noticing that the car was a rental, he asked me where I was from. I explained that I was American, and then he complimented me on my Hebrew. I asked where he was from. He said, proudly, “From here!” “You mean, Ma'ale Adummim?” I asked, jokingly. He merely smiled in response as we completed the transaction.)

No, they are not going away. And the terrorist element among them is not going away either, unless all the powers at the table find a way to neutralize them. And that would require there to be a functioning government in Gaza that serves the people of Gaza rather than the idolatrous god of terror.

Ultimately, we have to reframe this conflict not as Israel vs. Gaza, or Jew vs. Muslim, but rather as moderates vs. fundamentalists. (Remember, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states are quietly rooting for Israel here, against the Muslim Brotherhood.) This is not naïveté.  It is, rather, the only sane way out of the current bottomless pit.

The path to rebuilding will be to return to the table. Remember that table? The one that is as forlorn right now as Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile, as described in the book of Lamentations, which we read on Monday evening for Tish’ah Be’Av. We will have to negotiate with Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, and nobody will like it.

But let’s face it. If you compare Gaza under Hamas with the West Bank under the PA, with whom Israel has been cooperating on certain things for a long time now, the difference is stark. Why, when there are terrorists based in Gaza, has the West Bank remained largely quiet? Why did it not erupt in fury over Protective Edge? Because Israel and America have been training Palestinian police forces in the West Bank. Because trade and investment in the West Bank is quietly increasing. Unemployment in the West Bank, while not small at about 20%, is much better than the 40% in Gaza. With more people working, with priorities placed on public safety and security, with greater emphasis on cooperation, we have a chance.

Without those things, there will be more anger, more frustration, more anti-Semitic mobs, and more rockets. Guaranteed. Think about it.

You know, as a rabbi I spend a lot of time speaking about comfort, offering comfort, helping others to comfort. I must confess that the events of the last month and a half have been not just uncomfortable, but downright painful: Israelis in and out of bomb shelters, the tunnels, the body count in Gaza, the utterly cynical media manipulation of Hamas, the angry mobs chanting anti-Semitic slogans all over the world. And through all of that, I have had to offer comfort to bereaved families who have lost a loved one, comfort to my son, who was rightfully scared to fly back into a war zone, and comfort to members of this community, who are wrought over the situation in Israel and unsure how to help and support, and comfort to my wife, who has taken it upon herself to valiantly respond to her friends’ anti-Israel and vaguely anti-Semitic postings on Facebook.

Well, I am just about used up. And I am sure that all of us are as well.

But as with the brave returnees from Babylon and the building of the Second Temple, it will take a great human initiative to begin this restoration.

We are going to have to steel ourselves either for more fighting, or to return to that deserted table. That is the choice before us.

Shabbat shalom.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 8/8/14.)

Tent City TLV - The revolution will not be on Facebook

Much of what you might read on this blog about Israel is perhaps overly complacent - fawning over the concept and culture of the Jewish state, with only occasional light criticism of the current Israeli government's seeming reluctance to engage with the Palestinians or the two-state solution. Having lived here for more than a year, now nearly a decade ago, I have some sense of the complexity of Israeli society and politics, and long ago lost the uncritical, honeymoon-ish devotion that often afflicts tourists and new immigrants (briefly, until they have to spend a day at Misrad Ha-Penim / Ministry of the Interior office). Perhaps that has not been so obvious in this forum.

Today as I walked through Tel Aviv, I made it a point to stroll through the "tent city" demonstration on Rothschild Street. This is a protest that began just last week, beginning with a Facebook call to action, largely in opposition to high housing prices, but also an assault on what the protesters see as the government's devotion to special interests (corporate buddies, new immigrants, right-wing religious groups, even foreign visitors like me). What precipitated this protest is a real estate bill before the Kenesset that many believe to favor wealthy developers with strong government ties over average Israelis. There are now similar tent cities all over Israel.

Israeli politics is quite complex, so much so that I cannot possibly describe it adequately here. But this particular protest is notable for two reasons. First, it follows a recent nationwide protest, also initiated on Facebook, over the increase in the price of cottage cheese. Second, it has captured the attention of the nation. News outlets have heavily featured the protests, and a large rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday night attracted tens of thousands of people, and Prime Minister Netanyahu canceled a trip to Poland to address the issue at home.

As I walked through the tent city, reading the signs of protest, the political slogans, the quotes from biblical and rabbinic sources about fair treatment for all, I was struck by the tremendous resentment that these "average Israelis" feel, and the strong sentiment of neglect felt by the central demographic pillar of Israeli society. Housing, education, health care, and more - their message is that these items are being passed over in favor of helping everybody else.

(Faux ad: "A find! Tent divided into four wonderful residential units, not renovated, 5 minutes from the beach. 2800 sheqel per month [equals about US$820])

I took a detour and headed off to the shuk, but the following slogan from one of the signs in the tent city echoed in my head:

המהפכה לא יפוסבק
Ha-mahapekhah lo tefusbak
The revolution will not be on Facebook

This is striking not only because of the clever hebraization of the name of a popular Internet site, nor the cultural reference to the 1970 song by Gil Scott-Heron (ז"ל), but because of the presence of mind of the anonymous wag who penned it. Real people in the streets, full of venom for their government - this is the way that revolutions happen. Not in digital form, or on paper, or even by telephone.

Leaving aside the imminent debacle that will erupt when the Palestinians ask the UN for statehood in September, I am not concerned about the stability of Israel or its government. Nonetheless, this is a movement with legs.


(The above photos are mine; you can see more pictures via this virtual tour.)

Rainy Relief

Friday night rain always reminds me of summers at Camp Ramah in New England, when a good portion of Qabbalat Shabbat services outside were rained out, and we had to daven in the Hadar Okhel or Beit Am Bet.

The nostalgia that comes with this evening’s rain has taken my mind off the disaster narrowly averted in the eastern Mediterranean, where the government of Greece prevented a new flotilla of boats from sailing to Gaza. Sure, it may have been for their own cynically political reasons – Greece has not been a friend to Israel, perhaps primarily due to Israel’s until-recently strong alliance with Turkey.

I want the people of Gaza to get a fair shake. The Palestinian people have always been cynically used by their leaders and their brethren across the Arab region. However, this is not the way to do it. We all remember the scene that happened last year with the first flotilla, featuring the Turkish boat Mavi Marmara, how the Israelis killed activists in self-defense.

Mine is an apprehensive relief, because there will be more flotillas, and even greater attempts to delegitimize Israel. I’m relieved for now, but concerned about the next action.

Enjoy the cleansing rain tonight. I’ll be awash with memories of camp.

Beha'alotekha 5771 - Finding a New Narrative For Peace in the Middle East

When I was living in Israel in 1999, pursuing my own version of the Zionist dream, I spent a couple of weeks as a volunteer at a kibbutz, namely Qevutzat Kinneret. I worked several different jobs there: bagging and harvesting bananas, working the dishwasher with a Russian immigrant named Sasha who could barely speak Hebrew, much less English, and beekeeping. That's right, I spent two days working with the beekeeper, harvesting honey.

The beekeeper’s name was Noga Ben-Tziyyon, and her family was among the founding members of the kibbutz. Noga had been taking care of the beehives for many years, and she was fearless. We were all wrapped up in protective gear, completely sealed off, but Noga would occasionally take off her gloves and reach into an open hive to see if she could locate the queen. She told me that she was frequently stung, and she did not really notice. Sometimes, however, there were scorpions hiding in the hives. “Once,” she said, “I was stung by a scorpion. And that hurt.”

Anyway, we chatted quite a bit in Hebrew while we were driving around from hive to hive. She told me that her parents had immigrated from Russia to Palestine in the 1920s. “And do you know why they came?” she asked me. I did not. “Biglal ha-tziyyonut.” Because of Zionism, she said, soft and proud.

What she was saying was that her family did not come here because they were fleeing pogroms, Nazis, oppressive Arab regimes, poverty, or anything else. They came to fulfill an ideological dream, the dream that Theodor Herzl urged us to realize: Im tirtzu, ein zo agadah. If you will it, it is not a dream. They were pioneers who built the Jewish homeland, by coming to work the land.

This tale might have once been called a story. Nowadays, you might label it a “narrative.” This is a word that pops up a lot lately regarding Israel, in the context of the conflicting narratives of Israel and the Palestinians. We’ll come back to that.

The narrative that Noga Ben-Tziyyon shared with the ½ million Jews who were in Israel prior to World War II is slightly different from Herzl’s. As a journalist covering the Dreyfus affair, Herzl crafted a vision of political Zionism which sought a Jewish homeland that would solve the problem of anti-Semitism.

Noga’s narrative, however, was that of Ahad Ha’am, who sought to solve a different problem of European Jewry, that of assimilation. Ahad Ha’am’s vision was to forge a new culture in Palestine, one that focused on national Jewish consciousness, the Hebrew language, and Jewish creativity and would therefore serve as a merkaz ruhani, a spiritual center of world Jewry.

The experience of Noga's generation of olim (immigrants to Israel) was quite different from that of my father-in-law, Ervin Hoenig. Ervin survived Auschwitz and arrived in Israel during the War of Independence, where he was handed a gun and sent off to fight with the Palmach. His experience in Israel was that those who had made aliyah before the Holocaust often looked down their noses at the generation of survivors, and asked them, “What’s wrong with you? Why didn't you fight back? Why did you go like lambs to the slaughter?”

And yet, that has become the dominant narrative about the building the State of Israel: that the Jewish State rose from the ashes of Auschwitz. People have told me about how back in the day in Israel, you could get on a public bus and see numbers tattooed on many arms.

Yes, it is true that many Shoah survivors came to Israel after the war. But just as many came from Iraq, Morocco, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Tunisia, Libya, and so forth; many of those Jews were refugees who were forced out of their countries. This is yet a third Israeli narrative.

Nonetheless, we reinforce the Sho'ah-based narrative over and over, and I do not think that this is ideal; the rebuilding of Israel in our time was already well in progress before World War II. While the Sho'ah certainly contributed to the establishment of the State of Israel, and in particular the UN vote on the partition plan of 1947, the wheels of statehood were in motion far before this. It is all too easy to forget this part of the story.

For example, a few weeks ago, five of our graduating seniors returned from the March of the Living. This is, in fact, a wonderful annual program that has been taking place since 1988. Right after Pesah, nearly 10,000 high school juniors and seniors spent one week in Poland (including Yom Hasho'ah / Holocaust Remembrance Day) and one week in Israel (including Yom Ha-atzma'ut / Israel’s Independence Day). The young adults who participated spoke at the Youth House two weeks ago about their strengthened Jewish identity and their deep connection with Israel. Any program that does this so successfully is tremendously valuable.

But the overarching theme of March of the Living is that the destruction of European Jewry led to the establishment of the State of Israel, when the reality is much more complex. No teen program spends a week in Morocco or Iraq or even Odessa and then a week in Israel.

The difference between a story and a narrative is that narratives usually come with agendas, and they can be dangerous. One narrative usually excludes another.

When President Obama addressed the Muslim world at Cairo University two years ago, what did he invoke as the primary Jewish claim to the land of Israel?

“Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust... Six million Jews were killed -- more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.”

Although I credit Mr. Obama for asking the Arab world to lay off the Holocaust denial and the spreading of malicious lies about Jews, he did the State of Israel a disservice by pointing only to the history of anti-Semitism and not to the centuries of attachment to our ancestral homeland, the millennia of longing, Hatiqvah bat shenot alpayim, the hope of 2000 years. We have been yearning to return to Israel since the year 70 CE, when the Romans destroyed the Beit HaMiqdash, the Temple in Jerusalem.

Nowadays, we are hearing more about the Palestinian narrative. For example, here’s Mr. Obama again in Cairo, immediately after he invoked the Shoah:

“On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people -- Muslims and Christians -- have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they've endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations -- large and small -- that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.”

You might have heard about Palestinian commemorations of the Nakba (“catastrophe”) that they have publicized as the flip-side of Yom Ha-Atzma'ut, Israel's Independence Day. I had not heard of it before 7 or 8 years ago. And a new term entered the fray this week, one that I had never heard before this year: Naksa, or “setback,” which is now being used to describe the Arab take on the Six-Day War. June 5, 1967 was the day of the setback.

Last Sunday, June 5th, the same day that 200 of us from Temple Israel were proudly marching along Fifth Avenue in celebration of Israel, the Syrian government allowed hundreds of protesters to try to breach the Israeli border in the Golan. The IDF warned them in Arabic not to do so, then shot in the air, then shot at their feet when they continued to advance. Now, we all know this to be a cynical attempt by the Assad government to distract from the fact that they are killing their own people who are engaged in active rebellion. Regardless, this was how they commemorated the Naksa, the setback. The number of casualties is disputed, of course; also disputed is whether or not protesters were armed. Nonetheless, people died, and Israel looks like the bad guy once again.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are engaged in a war of narratives, a verbal war which has real casualties on both sides.

Here is the problem: if we are going to get anywhere in resolving the ongoing conflict within and around Israel, we must change the narrative. Because as it stands now, we are not winning this war of words.

The overarching message of the Arab Spring is this: that the status quo of the 20th century has changed. What has enabled the Tunisian people, the Egyptian people, and the Yemeni people to throw off the yokes of their tyrannical rulers? The prevailing narrative has changed. The word on the street no longer reflected the words of the ruling parties.

And there is now a sense of urgency. The Palestinian unity government has pledged to unilaterally declare statehood through a UN resolution in September. Ladies and gentlemen, they have the votes in the UN. And if it comes to that, it will only further isolate Israel.

We need to change the narrative. Theirs and ours. The time has come. And better to be pro-active, like Ahad Ha’am’s response to assimilation, then re-active, like Herzl’s response to anti-Semitism.

We read today in Parashat Beha’alotekha the line that we sing every time we take the Torah out (Numbers 10:35):

וַיְהִי בִּנְסֹעַ הָאָרֹן, וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה: קוּמָה יְהוָה, וְיָפֻצוּ אֹיְבֶיךָ
Vayhi binsoa’ ha-aron, vayomer Moshe:
Qumah Adonai, veyafutzu oyevekha

When the ark traveled, Moses would say,
“Rise up, God, and let Your enemies be scattered.”

The ancient rabbis asked, “who are God’s enemies?” Midrash Sifre tells us that those who hate Israel, who hate the Jews, are the enemies of God. And we know that there are people who hate us, who want to kill us.

But there is more to the story. The enemies of God and Israel, in my mind, are the rejectionists on both sides; they reject peace because they are committed to their own narratives. Hamas and their supporters deny the right of Israel to exist, and therefore reject peace. Those within Israel and without who claim that we have no partners for peace are also rejectionists. One need only consider the Saudi-sponsored Arab Peace Initiative, put forward in 2002 and 2009, to see that there are potential partners for peace.

Now is the time for those in power to show true leadership; we need a new narrative, one that unifies. This will not be easy, as there are both bees and scorpions in these hives.

Noga Ben-Tziyyon’s parents did not immigrate to Israel to displace anybody, or at the behest of the colonial powers. They came because Israel is the home of the Jews, and the merkaz ruhani, the spiritual center of world Jewry. Let’s not forget that story. And we have the power to guarantee it forever. All we have to do is change the narrative, try to ignore the bee stings, and scatter the scorpions.

Shabbat shalom.

And thanks to Rabbi Kate Palley for the tamtzit.

Shabbat Shuvah 5771 - Returning to the Table

(Originally delivered on September 11, 2001.)

Today is Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of Return, a name that captures the spirit of the Ten Days of Repentance, in Hebrew, Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, which can also be translated more literally as the Ten Days of Return. The name Shabbat Shuvah refers more directly to the first word of today’s haftarah, from the prophet Hoshea:

Shuvah yisrael ad adonai elohekha ki khashalta ba-avonekha.

Return O Israel, to the Lord your God; for you have stumbled in your iniquity.

This is, of course, consistent with the overarching theme of the Yamim Nora-im, the High Holidays - that we have missed the mark, and we should return to God and right living.

Now, we could parse that latter phrase, “for you have stumbled in your iniquity,” because it is something of a challenge. Is it possible to be iniquitous and not stumble? Is it the iniquity or the stumbling that we must return for?

It is, in fact, a problem. But leaving that aside, the more interesting problem of the language occurs a few verses later, in verse 5 (which includes two more uses of the same root for return, shin-vav-bet, the leitwort or thematic word of this passage):

Erpah meshuvatam ohavem nedava; ki shav api mimenu.

I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely; for My anger is turned away from him.

The first part of the verse refers to a plural group of backsliders (their backsliding; love them freely), but the latter half of the verse refers to the return of one person (My anger is turned away from him). If the backsliders that Hoshea is referring to are all of us, who is the “him” that gets credit for turning away God’s anger?

In the Talmud, Masekhet Yoma, which is the tractate dedicated to Yom Kippur, we read the following:

Rabbi Meir used to say: Great is teshuvah, repentance, since the whole world is pardoned on account of the individual who has repented, as it is stated: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for My anger is turned away from him.” It is not stated, “from them,” but “from him.”

Rabbi Meir’s point is that we all get credit for the honest teshuvah of even one of us. That is how powerful teshuvah is. It is not so easy, of course. But it is powerful.

What we should be asking ourselves over the course of this week is this: how can I change my behavior so that I do not make the mistakes that I have made in the past? How can I make right what I have broken?

Now, of course I am preaching to the choir. Anybody who is here today, after two days of High Holiday introspection, is clearly up to speed on all of this. (It never hurts to flatter your audience!)

But I am going to take this discussion out of the realm of the personal and into the international. Let us consider the fresh round of Middle East peace talks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA President Mahmoud Abbas have pledged to meet every two weeks, including the coming week.

I have stated this clearly before in this space, and I will say it again: the status quo in Israel and the territories is not sustainable, and everybody around the table knows it. The only real solution is the two-state solution, and we all know how painful this is going to be.

What will make or break these peace talks is, of course, teshuvah. That Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Mahmoud Abbas have agreed to return to the negotiating table is only the first stage of their return, their teshuvah. The next stage will be much more difficult.

Optimism is not available in abundance these days. Most of the pundits who have weighed in on this round have stated that it is unlikely that these talks will achieve anything new. Israel will not give up on building settlements, let alone consider withdrawing from them; the PA will not give up on the right of return of refugees to Israel. It’s dead in the water. As they say in Texas, that dog don’t hunt.

This is a hot topic on Ravnet. As you might expect, my colleagues in the Conservative rabbinate run the gamut of opinions about Israel. Some are bullish on the prospects of and peace, some think that the other side will never honor their agreements, so why should we bother negotiating?

And the professional pundits have gone the same way, although perhaps in a more subtle and reflective way.

There was one particularly optimistic column that I read in the Times, by Martin Indyk, the former American ambassador to Israel, who wrote about how now is the most optimistic time in recent history, and the basis for peace is stronger than it has ever been.

Indyk makes the following four points:

1. Violence is down considerably, with the PA police force newly trained with American help and demonstrating its capability of preventing terrorist activity in the West Bank, and Hamas preventing the rockets from Gaza, perhaps out of fear. While 452 Israelis were killed at the height of the intifada in 2002, there have been only 6 this year. (Of course, that’s 6 too many, but the difference is dramatic and undeniable.)

Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren has been saying for some time now that the situation on the West Bank is better than it has ever been. Law and order has brought peace and quiet: there was a 9% growth rate in the territories last year, with skyscrapers going up in Ramallah and new subdivisions in Jenin and Nablus. A properly-trained police force produces economic growth, and jobs and security will, we all hope, help the Palestinians to understand that peace, even with what they used to call “the Zionist entity,” is a good thing.

2. Settlement building has been minimal for 10 months. This is key in having returned the Palestinians to the negotiating table, according to Ambassador Oren. It seems unlikely that Netanyahu will extend the moratorium, but there are other compromise options that Indyk suggests.

3. A majority of people on both sides now support the two-state solution. The public is tired of war, says Indyk. This is not necessarily true of those who vote Likud, Netanyahu’s party. In fact, there is a cover story in the current issue of Time magazine that suggests that Israelis have become complacent in their flourishing success, in spite of the untenable status quo. I am not going to attempt to debunk the article. Yes, a majority of people want peace, but there is, understandably, a generous helping of skepticism about peace talks in the Israeli public. I hope that such thinking does not obscure the long-term visionary goal, which is that everybody would benefit even more from peace.

On this point, it is nonetheless important for us in the Diaspora to respect Israel’s democratic process. We should remember that it is not just the leaders at the table and the hopes of American Jewry and the Obama administration that are in play here. The more formidable problem is this: Netanyahu’s own party and some of his coalition partners are not on board with him. If he makes what Likud sees as a rash decision (like, for example, extending the settlement moratorium), he’ll be out of a job.

And the same applies to Abbas and Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad as well. Perhaps you saw the news blurb online (curiously, the New York Times missed this) that on Monday, a few days after leaving Washington, Mr. Abbas stated clearly, for the record, that the PA will never recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” He knows that doing so is political suicide (or perhaps even actual suicide); for some of his constituents, even meeting Netanyahu raises the spectre of treason.

But let us hope that the majority opinion and cooler heads on both sides will prevail.

4. There are not many outstanding issues that require negotiation. Many of the details required by the Oslo accords of 17 years ago (can it really be that long?!) have already been worked out. All we are facing now is the set of tricky issues that I have already identified.

The moment is now, says Indyk; all that remains is the willpower and courage of Abbas and Netanyahu to make the politically complicated decisions.

I was listening to the NPR News Quiz Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me last Sunday afternoon, and the host remarked sarcastically that the stakes for the first meeting in Washington were so low, that it was considered successful merely because the two sides agreed to meet again. This may be funny, or perhaps pathetic, but it is also true. They agreed to meet every two weeks until this thing is resolved.

Furthermore, in the wake of the first meeting, both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Netanyahu expressed optimism that the entire negotiation can be resolved within a year. It makes me wonder, if all they can do is agree to further meetings, what will be accomplished within that year?

Still, the next meeting is this coming week, during, as luck would have it, Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the aforementioned Ten Days of Return. And so, in what we hope is good faith, Abbas and particularly Netanyahu will return once again to the table. And let us hope that this time, they are willing to approach the task at hand with the same demeanor with which we approach God and each other during Aseret Yemei Teshuvah.

Let us hope that they hear the sound of the metaphorical shofar, calling them to return. Let us hope that they draw on the theme of purity that permeates these days, entering these negotiations with pure souls and honest intentions. Let us hope that they gesture to each other in the cantorial mode of selihah, the hopeful, prayerful, and yet slightly mournful chant that is omnipresent during this season, humble in spirit and forthright about the past, with the intention of doing better in 5771.

Rabbi Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi, from 13th century Spain, said the following about teshuvah. “The repentant sinner should strive to do good with the same faculties with which he sinned. If, for instance, his tongue gave offence to others, he should study the Torah aloud. With whatever part of the body he sinned he should now engage in good deeds. If the feet had run to sin, let them now run to the performance of good. The mouth that had spoken falsehood should now be opened in wisdom. Violent hands should now open in charity. The haughty eye should now gaze downwards. The plotting heart should now meditate on the teachings of Torah. The trouble-maker should now become a peace-maker.”

And finally, as we commemorate on this day the horrible tragedy of nine years ago, we should remember that there are people in this world who will want to prevent through violence any form of forward movement. It is up to us to make sure that we do not negotiate with terrorists or embolden them in any way. And the only way to do this is to engage with the moderates. Then we can hope that if Israel reaches a peace deal with the leaders of Fatah, the West Bank PA authorities, the people of Gaza will see and understand the peace dividend and throw off the yoke of Hamas.

Call me naive, if you will. Call me a peacenik, if you want. I prefer to think that I am something of an optimist. But this is the week of return; now is the time to return to the table in good faith. Let us hope that the players who have returned do what is right.