A Night of Vigil: Why We Need to Keep Our Eyes Open - Shabbat Hagadol, 5772

I will never forget a piece of advice that my childhood rabbi, Arthur Rulnick, gave at my Hebrew School graduation, before advancing to Hebrew High School.  He said that as we grow up and move through the teen years and into adulthood, to keep our eyes open, to watch for trends, things to pursue, things to avoid, and so forth.  Looking back, I don’t think I had any idea what he was talking about.

But hindsight, as they say, is not as astigmatic as I am, and I think I have a better sense today of what he meant.  Vigilance is a Jewish value, one that we invoke on Pesah in particular.  And Jewish history is filled with reasons to be vigilant.

There are few Jewish traditions that extend deep into the night; the Pesah seder is the most notable one.  Pesah is meant to be a night of vigil -- in Hebrew, “leil shimmurim”.  The Torah (Ex. 12:42) describes the night of the Israelites’ departure from Egypt, the first night Pesah, as follows:

לֵיל שִׁמֻּרִים הוּא לַה’, לְהוֹצִיאָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם, הוּא-הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה לַה’, שִׁמֻּרִים לְכָל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לְדֹרֹתָם.
That was for the Lord a night of vigil to bring them out of the land of Egypt; that same night is the Lord’s, one of vigil for all the children of Israel throughout the ages.

The Hebrew term, “leil shimmurim,” a night of vigil, is a curious construction, since the shoresh shin-mem-resh appears in this type of conjugation (Pi’el) in only one other place, and it’s not entirely clear what it means.  Lishmor, to guard or keep, is a common verb.  The form here is leshammer, which in modern Hebrew means to preserve or watch, suggests something more active, in accordance with our translation of “being vigilant”.  “Watching,” a fairly passive verb in English, does not quite cover it; “shimmur” suggests a component of action, or at least readiness to act.

But language aside, what is this “leil shimmurim,” this “night of vigil” about?  What did it mean in the context of the Exodus, and what does it mean to us?  

Rashi sees this night as an example of God’s vigilantly protecting us, both at that time and on an ongoing basis.  Ibn Ezra and Ramban say that this night was about the Jewish requirement to keep this night vigilantly throughout the ages to recall God’s works.  Some stay up all night on Pesah, says Ibn Ezra, to demonstrate this vigilance.  

The original night of vigil was about being ready to act, being ready to pick up and move, which is of course what the Israelites had to do when the signal came.  And Jews throughout history have drawn on this vigilance.  We are a watchful people, primarily due to our historically precarious position as strangers residing in strange lands.

And it is only in America, and particularly the last third of the 20th century, that Jews have begun to feel comfortable enough to lose their sense of watchfulness.  In the wake of the Shoah / Holocaust, there was heightened uncertainty among Jews worldwide - a palpable precariousness that infused Jewish life.  The goal was to blend in, not to call attention to ourselves.  Religious Jewish men rarely wore their kippot in public.  Anti-Semitism was present and visible.

Today, we are well-integrated, well-established, unafraid.  And with that we have grown, I think, less vigilant.  Hence the disengagement from Israel that some see among younger American Jews.  Hence the decline of the American synagogue, and the rise of post-Modern Orthodoxy, with its growing rejection of modernity and integration with the wider society.

Add to that the many distractions of pop culture, and you can see that there are myriad reasons why we have let our guard down.  But Pesah, the holiday that 80% of American Jews show up for -- is the one time of the year that most of us are paying attention.  For many, it is the ONLY opportunity of the year that we engage with Jewish life.  This is the time to talk about what we should be looking out for.  Pesah reminds us that we have to watch our step as we walk through the Sea of Reeds on the way to freedom on the other side.

Here are three examples of things to which we should be paying attention today:

First: the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, affectionately known as BDS.  I have mentioned this before as one of “existential threats” to the State of Israel, to use the language of Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren.  BDS has targeted Israel with economic actions for the purposes of (according to their website) ending the occupation of the West Bank, promoting the rights of Israeli Arabs, and allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.  

Whatever their actual goals are, the most infamous and outspoken Jewish critic of Israel, Prof. Norman Finkelstein, recently blasted BDS for being deceptive, in a video interview that went viral.  Their ultimate goal is not peaceful co-existence, said Dr. Finkelstein, but rather destruction of the Jewish state, and they should say so.

We need to be vigilant, because there is a segment of the world that is hearing the BDS message and responding to it.  It is a seductive humanitarian message that appeals to our most fundamental Jewish values:  freeing the bound, feeding the hungry, and so forth, the very themes that we invoke on Pesah.  They have successfully wooed pro-Israel leftists like the well-intentioned, if misguided, City University professor Peter Beinart to promote boycotts, as he did in the pages of the New York Times last week.

But it seems that we have turned a corner here.  Last week, the largest urban food co-operative in America, the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn, voted against considering a boycott of Israeli products, by a tally of 1005 to 653.  John Ruskay, head of UJA - Federation, released the following statement about this yesterday:

“[T]he diverse community of the co-op — Jews and non-Jews, young and not so young, liberals and not so liberal — came together to reject the de-legitimization of Israel taking place on its turf. I take this as but the latest indication that despite the hyped rhetoric, Americans affirm the right of the Jewish people to a Jewish state. The victory in Park Slope follows many others, for notwithstanding years of organized efforts, the so-called BDS movement... has consistently been defeated. Not one university, corporation, or community has voted to sanction, divest, or boycott Israeli products or the Jewish state. Not one.”

BDS has not succeeded this time, but its voice is still ringing in Brooklyn and elsewhere.  We need to be vigilant.  Tell our children on college campuses to watch and listen carefully.  Be wary of those who seek to exploit our devotion to Jewish values to turn our fellow Jews against each other.  We cannot let this happen.  There are signs that this movement may have passed its peak of influence; nonetheless, let’s keep watching.

The second point of vigilance is of concern to us both as Jews and as Americans, and that is the Iranian nuclear threat.  I reported in this space a few weeks back about the AIPAC Policy Conference that I attended in Washington, along with a select group of members of this community.  The message from AIPAC, and indeed from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and all the other politicians who addressed the conference was, “Be vigilant regarding Iran.  They are almost nuclear, and we need to keep all options on the table.”  By “all options,” they meant, we reserve the right to bomb; some speakers stated this more clearly than others.

If Rashi were here to interpret this, I would like to think that he would tell us that “all options” should really mean, let’s exhaust all other options before we resort to war.  And I have a powerful ally in Rashi’s corner: His Imperial Highness, Crown Prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah and heir to the Peacock Throne, who spoke here at Temple Israel on Tuesday night as the keynote speaker for the 20th anniversary gala of the Sephardic Heritage Alliance, Inc., also known as SHAI.  Mr. Pahlavi spoke passionately and eloquently on behalf of the people of Iran, for whom he cares deeply.  And, by the way, he is not positioning himself to be reinstated as Shah; he is working to help establish a secular democracy in Iran.

The Main Ballroom was packed wall-to-wall, standing room only, with members of this community, Jews who mostly emigrated from Iran in the wake of the 1979 Revolution.  To this adoring crowd of ardent Zionists, Reza Pahlavi said, unequivocally, please don’t bomb Iran.  Try every other avenue first -- diplomacy, sanctions, and so forth -- and let’s give the Iranian people the support they need to throw off the yoke of their oppression.  Bombing will alienate the Iranian people, strengthen the regime, and make Israel’s neighborhood that much more hostile.

(And, by the way, I encountered something fascinating this week.  You should check this out: israelovesiran.com.  It’s a website where ordinary Israelis, Iranians in Iran and in their diaspora, and other supportive people from around the world are placing friendly messages to each other.  It’s genuine, and it’s beautiful.  After Shabbat, take a look.)

Vigilance is called for here because although a nuclear bomb in the hands of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a very real and a very serious threat, the long-term price that Israel and America would pay is much higher if we chase after war before giving all of the alternatives time to work.  Let’s keep our eyes open, and pursue that middle path.

There is one final area in which I want to urge vigilance, and this one is closer to home.  Rabbi Stecker and I taught an evening class this week that touched on the question of helping our children maintain a Jewish identity in a world that is increasingly secular and increasingly polarized between fundamentalists and everybody else.

We all want our children to be happy, well-adjusted, integrated, engaged, and of course successful.  We also want them to be Jewish -- committed to Jewish values and Jewish tradition and willing to impart those things to THEIR children.  So how do we accomplish all of these things, especially given that everybody’s free time to devote to Jewish pursuits seems to be on the wane?

There are no easy answers here.  One approach that we discussed is to make Judaism part of the conversation at home -- Jewish learning, Jewish values, the desire to raise Jewishly-knowledgeable grandchildren.  Our willingness as Jewish adults to commit to participation in Jewish life and model that involvement for our children and talk about it at home will pay off in subsequent generations.  

And here is the thing to watch: there is a slippery slope here.  On the one hand, we in the Conservative world in particular want to be engaged with secular America, but we need to balance that with deeper commitment to Judaism.  If we do not, our children will learn that it is not important, and each following generation will be less anchored in the Jewish values that we endorse.  

To circle back around to Pesah, this night of vigilance is prime time to talk about being Jewish -- our relationships with tradition, with community, with history, with Israel, and with the future.  Don’t let this leil shimmurim pass without addressing why we need to watch carefully!  Ask more questions, enjoy the meal, and keep your eyes open.

Shabbat shalom, and hag kasher ve-sameah.  




~
Rabbi Seth Adelson


(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 3/31/2012.)

Qorah 5770 - Standing with Israel Now

(Originally delivered on June 12, 2010.)

A story is told of the Texan who visits Israel, and is underwhelmed by the size of a kibbutz. "Let me tell you something, my friend," he says to his Israeli host. "On my ranch back in Texas, I can get in my car at dawn, start driving west, and not reach the end of the property before sundown."

"Oh," says the Israeli. "I used to have a car like that."

This is a perspective on the Israeli character that is best appreciated if you have been to Israel and are familiar with the land and its people. There are plenty of other perspectives regarding Israel, and some that have come to the fore in the past few weeks are especially troubling.

I confess to being a zealous Israel-phile and supporter of the Jewish state. Many of you know that I travel there about twice yearly (more if I can get away with it), and not just because my older son lives there. I love the state of Israel - the land, the people, the culture, the cities, the food, the climate; I love hiking the varied terrain of Israel; I love resonating with the holy sites and the archaeological wonders; I admire the entrepreneurial spirit; I embrace the prickly outside and the sweet inside of the Israeli persona. If I were an engineer and not a Conservative rabbi, I might be living there now. (One irony of the Jewish state: no work for Conservative rabbis or cantors.)

But more than all of that, I know that we need Israel - not the land, mind you, but the political entity. There are good, solid reasons for there to be a place that the Jewish people can call home, good reasons why Brooklyn is not the Promised Land. Some of these reasons are theological, but some have more to do with the words of Hatikva, Israel's national anthem: Lihyot am hofshi be-artzeinu - to be a free people in our own land.

Occasionally, it helps to remember that we live in diaspora, in somebody else's land. The events of the past couple of weeks have reminded me that threats are looming. Some of my colleagues and others in the pro-Israel camp tend to highlight threats, and I am often suspicious of their motives, and therefore suspect the validity of the threats. After all, fear is a strong motivator; it causes people to, among other things, write checks and call their representatives.

And yet, I am surely beginning to see a confluence of existential threats, and a kind of alarm has begun to sound in my head. I have watched these events unfold in horror and disappointment and frustration.

So you can probably guess at least two of the three items that I am about to mention:

1. Mavi Marmara
2. Helen Thomas
3. Peter Beinart

1. I am certain that do not need to describe the first item to you - this has been widely reported for the past two weeks. I must say that when I first heard the news headline (Israeli commandos shot and killed 9 "peace activists"), I was shocked; as more information filtered out, the case appeared far more complex than the initial headlines let on. No matter, of course; the damage was done. Just as the world still associates the name of the northern West Bank city Jenin with "massacre," and the name Mohammed al-Dura with the photograph of the Palestinian boy cowering with his father in the line of Israeli fire, even though both of these stories have been debunked, "Mavi Marmara" will heretofore always suggest, "Israel killed innocent civilians."

Never mind that this was clearly an attempt to provoke Israel to violence and more bad PR. Never mind that the activists were members of a Turkish fringe Islamist group that has been linked to Al Qaeda. Never mind that one of them radioed the provocative statement, "Shut up! Go back to Auschwitz" to Israeli naval authorities. In the court of world opinion, Israel loses again.

There will surely be more of these flotilla operations, and Israel will most likely respond in the same way. So that is the first item.

2. Ms. Helen Thomas, the so-called "Dean of the White House Press Corps," self-destructed this week when video footage surfaced of her saying that the Jews should "Get the hell out of Palestine," and furthermore that they should "go back to Poland and Germany." (If you have not seen this, you really should. It's truly, incomprehensibly awful.) Ms. Thomas is 89, and was (until this week) still working for the Hearst news corporation in the White House; she has been doing that since the Kennedy administration, and was the only member of the White House Press Corps who had a chair with her name on it (rather than the name of her news organization).

As painful as it was to watch her destroy her remarkable life (she was a groundbreaking reporter for a number of reasons, known for her red dress and incisive tongue), the real pain is the evidence that she brought to light regarding the relationship between some journalists and Israel. While there are many in the pro-Israel camp who have accused some media outlets of anti-Israel bias, that was not something that I was ready to embrace until this week. To be sure, there are many folks out there right now, smugly reciting, "I told you so."

It is, of course, unfair to paint journalists with one brush, and I am not cancelling my subscription to the New York Times. However, there were only a few news organizations, that had picked up this story late last week, and it did not appear in the Times, generally recognized as the American paper of record, until Tuesday, the day after she resigned. It makes one wonder about the following possibilities:
(a) Did the Times (which has a significant Jewish readership) not deem this story newsworthy? or
(b) Were they trying to downplay anti-Israel bias among journalists?

How many other Helen Thomases are there out there, among the ranks of journalists, authors, teachers, TV producers, and so forth? How many others might, when they let down their guard, say such hateful things? Maybe I'd rather not know the answer to that. So that's the second item.

3. The third item is the article that appeared a couple of weeks ago in the New York Review of Books by Jewish-American author Peter Beinart, which Rabbi Stecker mentioned in this space last week. In the article, entitled, "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment," Beinart argues that major Jewish organizations in America are losing touch with the majority of younger American Jews over their Israel stance. Liberal Zionism, he claims, is slowly dying, while the children of secular zionists find it outrageous that their parents' generation does not see Israel's faults.

Perhaps more troubling, says Beinart, is the phenomenon of non-Orthodox Jews gradually disengaging from Israel. A physical manifestation of this is the observation that some have made in the Jewish Week regarding the Salute to Israel parade, which many of us attended three weeks ago. He says,

"[A study by the American Jewish Committee] found that while only 16 percent of non-Orthodox adult Jews under the age of forty feel “very close to Israel,” among the Orthodox the figure is 79 percent. As secular Jews drift away from America’s Zionist institutions, their Orthodox counterparts will likely step into the breach." The result may be, says Beinart, that soon enough, the only ones supporting Israel are the Orthodox. While one of our congregants has written a letter to the editor of the Jewish Week to point out that Temple Israel sent 170 members to the parade (look for it in next week's issue), the prevailing sentiment is that the majority of parade marchers were Orthodox, and I must confess that this has been my impression for a number of years.

Beinart also points out that this is part of a wider phenomenon - it is not merely disengagement from Israel but a general withdrawal from Jewish communal issues that plagues the non-Orthodox majority. We just do not seem to care as much about anything.

There have been no shortage of eloquent responses to Beinart's accusations. But I can tell you that from my perspective, he is right on. My siblings and peers are far less committed to Israel than our parents; their children will, most likely be even less so. So there is item three.

I am going to add one more to this list of threats, not because it is something that happened recently, but because I am hearing this organization's name pop up more and more frequently:

4. The Global BDS Movement

Boycott, divestment, sanctions.

This group seems to be the most successful in broadcasting a message that makes me squirm - that of isolation of and delegitimization of Israel.
Among other things, they say Israel's occupation of the West Bank meets the very definition of apartheid - that the law applies differently to different people.
They say the residents of Gaza are suffering.
They say the blockade against Gaza has accomplished nothing.

I do not have the time to argue these points individually, but there is always another side, and you get the picture.

Now it might be tempting to paint this group as a bunch of anti-Semites. In actuality, there are many Jews who support this idea. (Maybe some of you heard about the octogenarian Jewish Holocaust survivor Greta Berlin, founder of the Free Gaza movement and coordinator of the recent flotilla.) Their goal, however, is to continually hammer home the idea that Israel is illegitimate and deserves to be isolated from the rest of the world. And that message is now being broadcast far and wide.

These four threats call to mind the experience of Qorah in today's parashah. Qorah is a threat to the stability of Benei Yisrael; he accuses Moses and Aaron of taken advantage of their positions. (Num. 16:3) "Umadua titnase-u al qehal adonai" - Why do you raise yourselves above the Lord's congregation?" says Qorah.

Sometimes, threats are real, says the Torah. God evidently sees Qorah and his 250 followers as a true threat to the Mosaic hegemony; Ibn Ezra explains that the followers are piling on grievance - they are an assortment of grumblers and malcontents. The end of the episode seems, to our modern sensibilities, cruel - Qorah and his faction are swallowed up by the Earth, they go down to Sheol, and all is well and good again.

These existential threats to Israel, the external and the internal (i.e. within the Jewish community), seem to be multiplying, something like the Qorah rebellion. Unlike Moses, however, we cannot expect the earth to open up and swallow those advocating delegitimization. (And frankly, if that happened, I would be pretty freaked out.)

So how do we respond?

These threats must be countered. We at Temple Israel (and throughout American Jewry) need to work harder to promote Israel in our community and elsewhere. We need to go there.

To that end, one of the things that I will be doing in the coming year as the interim Director of the Youth House is leading a trip there with our teenagers during the February vacation. My intent is to raise enough money to subsidize Youth House members such that the price comes down from about $2700 to about $1500 for a nine-day trip. If we participate as a community, we can easily do this, and it will be a fantastic community-building and consciousness-raising experience for all involved.

Also, Rabbi Stecker and Cantor Frieder and I will soon be unveiling plans for a congregational trip to Israel, probably in August of 2011. This will be an opportunity for families to travel together and learn about and understand Israel as the multigenerational community that we are. Watch for that, and join us.

In addition to going there, we also need to invest our time and our money in pro-Israel activism here. Seek out organizations that suit you, and support them however you can (e.g. State of Israel Bonds dinner on Tuesday night; we will have a congregational trip to the AIPAC Policy Conference next May; then there's the Parade as well). But the worst thing that we can all do is to be silent, to be apathetic. You all understand the need for the continued existence of the State of Israel. Now is the time to stand up for her.