Lend Your Voice in Song - Rosh Hashanah 5775

Take a deep breath. In. Hold. Now let it go. Out. Release.

Let’s face it. 5774 was a rough year, particularly for the Jews.

This summer, as Rabbi Stecker was in Jerusalem and in and out of bomb shelters, the Israel Defense Forces entered Gaza with the stated objective of stopping the barrage of rockets by Hamas. While Israelis ran for cover, most of us here in America were struggling with the following question: How do we respond? How do we show our support? (Some things we did here at TIGN: We held a fundraiser for our sister congregation in Ashkelon; we sent them a video greeting; we held an info session for our college students, many of whom will confront anti-Israel activism on campus.)

Those of us who use Facebook (if we’re not friends on Facebook, we should be. Friend me!) were subjected to a barrage of articles, analysis, blog posts, status updates, body counts, anti-Israel and sometimes even anti-Semitic postings by people we thought were friends. Or even worse, people who really are friends but are unaware of how they are propagating canards, stereotypes, and sometimes outright lies.  Social media became a battleground that was not as physically bloody as Gaza but very nearly as emotionally taxing.

But I think the worst of it was the anti-Semitic mobs that surfaced all over the world to protest Israel’s incursion in Gaza. The hooligans in France who held a Parisian synagogue under siege. The protesters in Boston and LA who attacked supporters of Israel. The mob in Germany heard chanting, “Gas the Jews.”

A sign displayed at an anti-Israel rally in Minneapolis in July.

As was mentioned in a very timely piece in the New York Times this week, just two weeks ago in Brussels, on the European Day of Jewish Culture, as Belgian Jews gathered to dedicate a Shoah memorial, youths threw stones and bottles at them; a few days later, a suspicious fire broke out at a synagogue in the same city. This follows the killing of four at the Jewish museum in Brussels earlier this summer, even before the Middle East erupted.

Take another deep breath.

I spoke this past summer about the current surge of anti-Semitism, and my message went something like this: It is shocking and disgusting and deeply troubling. But our obligation in the face of it is to look past the hatred, as our ancestors have always done, to hold onto our traditions and our heritage.

 

But that’s not so easy, right? Especially when that hatred is staring you in the face from your computer screen.

Some of you know that my wife, the daughter of two Hungarian Shoah survivors, still has relatives in Budapest, and that we have been to visit a few times. I was in Hungary last year, and at a Masorti (Conservative) minyan that meets in an apartment in Budapest, I met an attendee named Tamás whose parents had hidden from him that he was Jewish. Tamás grew up Christian, and it was not until he was in his 40s that he discovered he was Jewish, and committed himself to learning about Judaism and to living a Jewish life. He also told me that he is not alone; there are perhaps thousands like him. After World War II, many European Jews chose to hide their Jewish identity. That was an understandable response to the horror of the Shoah. For some, it guaranteed, if you will, the objective of, “Never again” - that is, it can’t happen to me and my family again if we just stop being Jewish.

A leading Hungarian politician from the Jobbik party, which is right-wing, nationalist, and openly anti-Semitic, Csanád Szegedi, discovered two years ago that he himself was a Jew. He has since sought out his Jewish heritage, and was even circumcised, just to prove that he is seriously repentant. This is a man who has done some serious teshuvah.

What led the parents of these Hungarians to conceal their Jewish roots was hatred and fear. But what has driven people like Tamás and Mr. Szegedi to learn about Judaism and commit themselves to a Jewish life? Is it the desire to stick together in the face of hatred? In Mr. Szegedi’s case, he did not have much of a choice - his political career was destroyed and none of his old nationalist buddies will speak to him any more.

But maybe these returnees to Judaism have a more positive motivation: an ancient yearning for the richness of Jewish life and tradition. A desire to be a part of their people, Am Yisrael. Perhaps their motivation is even more simple: curiosity about their heritage, leading to a desire to learn more. Like a paleontologist unearthing fossils, the more dust she removes, the more she reveals the form of the ancient creature. The more that is revealed, the more there is to learn.

In America, the Jews have lived for decades now in relative safety, largely removed from the anti-Jewish sentiments that permeate much of the world. The ADL, which keeps track of these things, has noted that while anti-Semitic activity in America has declined in recent years, it has been on the rise everywhere else. Our member Steve Markowitz, who is the Chairman of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, recently described this country as a “Jewish Disneyland” in comparison to the rest of the world.

After all, we have made it. Jews are accepted throughout American life and society. About a year ago, the Pew Research Center released a study on American Jews that found 58% of self-identified Jews who got married in the last decade or so are married to non-Jews. (The figure is much lower for those identified with Orthodoxy and the Conservative movement.) A couple of generations ago, few gentiles would marry us. Now we are desirable life partners; the daughter of a president married a Jew. We have arrived. (Not that this is a measuring-stick of which we are proud, but it is an indicator of our acceptance. It is also a challenge to Conservative rabbis and communities, but that’s a discussion for another day.)

Some in this room might remember a time when anti-Semitism was much more visible in America. But while American Jews in the middle of the 20th century were more likely to be subtle about their Judaism, today I have no fear about walking down the street wearing a kippah. (Despite the recent incident in Manhattan where a visibly-Jewish couple was attacked by thugs displaying Palestinian flags.)

And yet, here is the irony: as Jews have come to be more accepted in wider American culture, as we have been welcomed into formerly exclusive clubs, and intermarried with non-Jewish Americans, our commitment to Judaism per se has waned. And all the polling data backs up that assessment. Free entry into the wider society has bred a lessening devotion to Jewish life.

Once again, another deep breath.

Rosh Hashanah is a time of transition. This is a liminal moment - that is, one that marks a separation. Like lighting the Shabbat candles on Friday night or the havdalah candle on Saturday night, separating the mundanity, the ordinariness of the week from the holiness of Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah is perched on a fault line between the year that was and the year that will be. On this day, we look back to 5774, and all the ways that we succeeded or failed to meet our goals, and we look forward to 5775, a blank slate on which we hope to write a better story.

But leaving our own deeds aside, whether we all treated each other well or did what God expects of us or otherwise met our own expectations for ourselves, this past year has left a foul taste in my mouth. Commercial airplanes shot down and disappeared. Russian rebels in Ukraine. A bloody civil war in Syria. Ebola in Africa. ISIS. The death of Joan Rivers and Robin Williams, who have left us a much-less-funny planet. And, of course, there is that troubling worldwide rise in anti-Semitism.

The good news: we have a new year in front of us, and we can hope that this year will be better. And that is exactly what Rosh Hashanah is all about.

And really, it’s not just about hope. It has long been observed that Judaism is not about belief; it is about action. What we do matters. We have the potential to change our lives and the lives of others. That is why we keep coming back here every year, to these Ten Days of Repentance, when we scour our souls to bring out the shine, and recommit ourselves to making this world a better place. I might even argue that this is the central message of Judaism; each of us has the ability to effect real change. Each of us is called to tiqqun olam, repairing this very broken world.

We will invoke this same principle when we sing, deeper into the Musaf service, the great Aleinu. Yes, it is the same Aleinu that we all know and love, the one that indicates that services are coming to an end and we can go eat, but this is its original location. It is somewhat more glorified on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when the custom is to actually prostrate ourselves, signifying our bodily commitment to being God’s hands on Earth.

But the call to action is buried in the second paragraph, which is almost never sung out loud; rather, we usually mumble through it at breakneck speed. If you want to see it, open your mahzor to p. 156, top of the page. This is the beginning of the Malkhuyot section of verses about God’s kingship/sovereignty, one of the three themed sections of the RH Musaf service:

עַל כֵּן נְקַוֶּה לְּךָ ה' אֱלהֵינוּ לִרְאות מְהֵרָה בְּתִפְאֶרֶת עֻזֶּךָ. לְהַעֲבִיר גִּלּוּלִים מִן הָאָרֶץ. וְהָאֱלִילִים כָּרות יִכָּרֵתוּן. לְתַקֵּן עולָם בְּמַלְכוּת שַׁדַּי.

And so, Adonai our God, we await You, that soon we may behold Your strength revealed in full glory, sweeping away the abominations of the earth, obliterating idols, establishing in the world the sovereignty of the Almighty.

It is our duty, says the ancient composer of this prayer, to act in building a world in which our actions echo the holiness to which God calls us. In ancient language, that meant sweeping away idolatry, but to us today it means to work hard, to put actual elbow grease into making this world a better place, free of hatred, free of oppression, free of suffering and war and all types of destruction.

To that end, I would like to propose a call to action, a response to the anti-Semites of this world: We will not let you drive us further away from Judaism. Rather, we will embrace wholeheartedly our tradition, our community. We will maintain our pride in who we are, in our values, in our heritage of learning and practice.  

While the aftermath of the Holocaust may have driven the hatred of Jews underground for a time, it has emerged once again. This is an unfortunate reality that we will have to accept. But that does not mean that we should retreat, or be any less Jewish. Hiding will only embolden those who hate us.

Rather, now is the time to take pride in our culture, our history, and our heritage. Now is the time to renew our covenant with God, to refresh our communal ties, to strengthen our identity. Just as the best response to anti-Israel activists is to arm ourselves with knowledge about the complexity of Israel’s position, the best response to anti-Semitism is to be not merely comfortable, but downright exultant in knowing who we are and what we stand for.  The best response to anti-Semitism is to arm ourselves with knowledge: where we came from, what our sages have shared with us across the ages, how and why we maintain our traditions and pursue our spirituality, what we have given to the world.

You may ask, “How might I do that, Rabbi?” I’ll tell you:  

1. Learn something new about Judaism. Most of us have not considered terribly deeply all of the richness of Jewish tradition since our benei Mitzvah. It’s not just about matzah and apples and honey and potato latkes. Now might be the time to get back into the game: Read a book, take a class, come learn with me. I will offer to lead a discussion for you and any group of friends you can assemble. Just call my office (or email, or find me on Facebook or Twitter).

2. Re-connect to Jewish life. You have a great opportunity in the Great Neck Shabbat Project, Oct. 23-25:

But of course we are here with plenty of Jewish offerings every day of the year.

You can start small - merely by typing a few keywords into a search engine. Here is a list of reliable online resources:

For taking a break on the seventh day: sabbathmanifesto.org

For learning about all aspects of Judaism: myjewishlearning.com

For issues about Jewish parenting: kveller.com

For current events and analysis: forward.com and tabletmag.com

For figuring out what time services are at Temple Israel: tign.org

But the final suggestion is as follows: Lend your voice in song.

I recall one of my first Hebrew School teachers, maybe when I was in first or second grade, Mrs. Bashevkin, explaining to us that when in hot water, Jews stick together. OK, so I was like, 7 years old, and this was a very confusing image. I figured out a few years later what she meant: We stand together, we support each other, we think and act as a community.

As a teenager, my family attended Shabbat morning services every weekend. Occasionally, when my mind would wander in synagogue (nothing has changed!), I used to think about all the Jews that were in other synagogues at the same time, all up and down the Eastern time zone. Were they all on the same page in the siddur? Could it be possible that we are all singing “Aleinu” at exactly the same time?

The image is a powerful one. One of the ways that we stand together as a people is that we literally stand in prayer together, all around the world. And we sing together.

And we need your voice. The voice of every single person in this room. Not necessarily to be in synagogue every Shabbat, or to take upon yourself all 613 mitzvot at once, but to contribute to the great Jewish chorus any way you can.

My friend Michael Goldwasser, a music producer, R&B songwriter and performer, pointed out to me recently that he was invited to join an organization called Creative Community for Peace, which features members of the performing arts community who are supporters of Israel. Among the boldface-names who have signed on to their ads are Paul MacCartney, Madonna, Elton John, Lady Gaga, and Justin Bieber; there are many more. Many of the celebrities who have lent their names to the campaign are not Jewish. Most are probably not too familiar with all the political complexity surrounding Israel, Gaza, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and so forth, or for that matter the long and complicated history of anti-Semitism. But all are willing to figuratively lend their voices in support of Israel.

And you can too - not just in support of Israel, but in support of Jews, Judaism, Jewish life, and Jewish identity. Find a way to lend your voice - by learning (the highest mitzvah of all of the 613!), by showing up and committing time to your community, by seeking to understand Jewish values and implement them in your own life, by traveling to Israel (if not outright making aliyah), by representing your people well in the public sphere.

The true response to anti-Semitism is not to retreat. The true response is rally together as a community and lend your voice. Our ancestors survived two millennia of persecution, of oppression, of dispersion, of moving from one place to another as they were alternately welcomed and then kicked out of places all over the world. Did they give up on being Jewish? A few did, here and there. But the vast majority of us did not, and that there are so many of us gathered in synagogues on this day around the world is a testament to our historic victory over anti-Semitism.

The greatest threat to Judaism is not hatred. It’s not Hamas or ISIS or al-Qaeda. The greatest threat to Judaism is apathy.

So take another deep breath, and lend your voice, so that we may work together in repairing this world. Your people need you now.

Shanah tovah. A healthy, satisfying, and peaceful 5775.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Rosh Hashanah 5775, September 25, 2014.)

Let's NOT see this movie again. Ever. - Pinehas 5774

At the beginning of Parashat Pinehas, which we read this morning, there is a curious, unique phenomenon. In the very third verse (Numbers 25:12), we read the following:

לָכֵן אֱמֹר:  הִנְנִי נֹתֵן לוֹ אֶת-בְּרִיתִי שָׁלוֹם

Say, therefore, “I grant [Pinehas] my covenant of peace.”

The curiosity here is that the letter vav in the word “shalom,” as it appears in the Torah scroll (although it does not appear that way in our humash) is broken in half. The context is that the zealot Pinehas has just stabbed to death an Israelite man and his Midianite paramour, a flagrant act of violence that seems to be in line with God’s command. However, the broken vav, and the broken shalom / peace, suggests that peace achieved through violence is flawed. It is not the kind of peace that we desire, or that the world needs.

I think that it is impossible not to read these words divorced from the current situation in Israel, where the citizens of the Jewish state want peace, security, and safety, and Hamas continues to send indiscriminate rockets into Israel, over 500 in the last several days. 

There is a saying in modern Hebrew:

את הסרט הזה כבר ראינו

Et haseret hazeh, kvar ra'inu.

We’ve seen this movie before.

Every time this expression creeps back into the daily lexicon, I am reminded that it is getting harder for me to maintain my youthful idealism. Because not only have we seen this film, but we already know that there will be a sequel.

Amidst the onslaught of information pouring out of Israel this week regarding the current situation, a surprising article caught my eye. It was surprising not because there was information in it that was new to me, but rather because of the forum. It was the New York Times, and my sense of the way that the Times reports on Israel is that they usually lead with the Palestinian body count, and bury the explanation of why Israel was attacking in the first place. The result is that Israel generally appears to be the primary aggressor, although this of course not always the case. (Some of us would surely argue that this is never the case.)

But in this case, the article was about Israel’s approach to bombing terrorist sites in Gaza. Now, as you may know, Hamas has installed its rocket launchers and terrorist infrastructure in the alleys of residential neighborhoods, adjacent to schools and hospitals, in courtyards of mosques, and so forth. As you may also know, the IDF goes out of its way to warn residents before bombing these places: by placing phone calls in Arabic with instructions to vacate, by dropping leaflets, and by “knocking on the roof” - that is, firing a non-explosive missile at the building to scare out those who have not yet evacuated.

If you have been following the news carefully about the last two Gaza incursions since Israel disengaged in 2005, you know about these warnings. The army’s goal, of course, is to destroy the ability to terrorize rather than lives. Of course, nobody wants to lose their home to an Israeli shell, but better the building than the lives of the people therein.

As quoted in an article published by Honest Reporting, former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, Col. Richard Kemp said of Israel’s previous operations in Gaza: “the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

But while this pattern of warning is not only curious and surprisingly considerate (what other army warns its targets in advance to get out of the way?), it has also been largely underreported in the mainstream press, perhaps because it does not fit the Israel-as-aggressor storyline. (BTW, a follow-up analysis in the online magazine Slate revealed the Times’ bias even in an article that was at least superficially friendly to Israel, as did the Honest Reporting article mentioned above.) The Times somehow missed the fact that Hamas is deliberately telling Gazan civilians to ignore the warnings, and instructing them to act as human shields.

Israel is in a very delicate position here. Every couple of years, Gaza erupts into a show of force by Hamas and Islamic Jihad and perhaps other factions. Israel shows restraint (note that the first few hundred rockets of this installment were fired into Israel with no response - over 650 rockets were launched into Israel since the beginning of the year till the start of this operation - and only when the situation is truly unbearable for the Israeli populace, then come the airstrikes and the ground war. Furthermore, we all know that it is only a matter of time until the next round of rockets, which will have an even greater range, and the next Israeli incursion. And while the warnings do in fact reduce civilian casualties, Israel still comes off in the mainstream media looking like the aggressor.

But Israel is far more savvy regarding public opinion than ever before, and hence the warnings. Not that anybody in the international court of public opinion wants to give Israel any credit for doing so.

This week, I not only read just about everything I could about the situation, but I also listened in on three conference calls for rabbis on the current situation in Israel. The first featured Avihai Mandelblit, PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff; the second featured Israel’s consul general in New York, Ido Aharoni, and IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner. The third was with Israeli’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer. All of them said essentially the same thing: that the goal of the current IDF operation, Protective Edge, was to restore peace and quiet in the areas that are now being targeted by Hamas rockets. Among the additional points of interest were the following:

• The current escalation by Hamas actually preceded the kidnapping and murder of the three young Israeli men and the aftermath of the incident.
• Hamas is acting now out of desperation, having lost much of the support of two of its best patrons in terror, Syria and Iran, to their own internal issues..
• Of the nearly 600 rockets in the barrage of the last few days, only a small subset were actually headed to populated areas, and most of those were successfully shot down by the Iron Dome system (provided by Uncle Sam). The technology, by the way, is good but not foolproof - it has about a 90% success rate.
• Amb. Ron Dermer pointed out that the Iron Dome system is actually beneficial to the Palestinian cause as well. If there were more missiles falling in populated areas and more death and destruction within Israel, there would be greater calls on the IDF to move faster and retaliate more heavily in Gaza, resulting in more Palestinian deaths.

I must confess that in evaluating all of this, I am still troubled by the primary goal. Yes, it is important to restore peace and security, so that Israelis can go on about their lives and work and recreation as normal.

But the problem is that this is only a short-term goal. Who is thinking long-term here? And, recalling Pinehas and the broken vav, is there not a better way to achieve peace, and decades of quiet and stability rather than years, and the resulting economic benefit for both sides?

Let’s look at this another way: This is the third such major attack on terrorists and their infrastructure in Gaza since 2005  The military refer it to “trimming the grass”. Each time Hamas improves its technology; they are now manufacturing better-quality rockets in Gaza, and soon they will be able to blanket Israel with missiles. Each time, Israel quiets them for a a year or two. Then the barrage will resume. And hence the movie sequel.

In this round, there are now so-called M-302 missiles, which can reach Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel’s two largest population centers. There will be more M-302s, and maybe even the next missile up, with better accuracy. Soon, virtually all of the Israeli population, from Haifa to Eilat, will be subject to bombing.

Nobody wants to negotiate with terrorists. Let’s be clear - that’s what they are. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner pointed out that if Hamas had invested their resources in civilian infrastructure instead of terrorist infrastructure, they would be in a very different place. But that’s not where they are; that is not who they are.

The bad actors in the Arab world, whether it’s Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah, ISIS, or the next wave of Islamists, would rather put their energy into military, rather than economic development. And that yields even more movie sequels, and more fractured peace all over the region.

But what can Israel do? What can we do?

We are certainly not going to simply flatten Gaza, as many armchair military strategists have boldly suggested. We are not barbarians. We are not murderers. We do not kill civilians.

We are not going to invade and take back Gaza. Who wants that?  

(My own chief military advisor, my wife, suggests the following: invade Gaza, root out Hamas, hand it over to Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah, and get out. Tell them, “Elect whoever you want, but kindly remember that if you wage war on us we’ll be back.” I don’t think it’s quite so simple, given the complexity of the Palestinian street.)

We can only continue the current situation for so long.

Ladies and gentlemen, all the goals are short-term. We have to think long-term. We have to think past maintaining the temporary safety and security, and find a way to create a healthy, de-militarized Gaza. We don’t negotiate with terrorists, but we have to find a solution.

We’re the most clever people in the world. Even the most ardent Jew-haters will boldly concede that. We can figure this out. It will take international partners and cooperation and eventually we will have to trust them, and they will have to trust us, and trust, as you know, is in dreadfully short supply. But we can do this. We can find a complete peace, a shalom of sheleimut, of wholeness. We can repair that vav.

Meanwhile, what can we here in Great Neck do?

Call your Israeli friends and relatives and tell them that you are thinking of them. Email our elected officials about support of Israel in her time of need. Communicate through social media. Share personal stories. (If you are not on Facebook, you might want to sign up and go to the Temple Israel page to receive updates from our sister kehillah in Ashkelon, which is the largest population center close to Gaza. Our Facebook-master and Vice President Dan Goldberger is posting there regularly.)

Let’s not ever resort to name-calling or gross generalizations about the other side. The real criminal actors here are the terrorists of Hamas and their ilk; ultimately, we will have to find a way to work around them, to engage directly with reasonable Palestinians; and I pray every day that there will be more of them with whom to engage.

In Psalm 29, which we chant every Friday evening during Qabbalat Shabbat, and every Shabbat morning when we carry the Torah around, we say (v. 11):

ה' עֹז לְעַמּוֹ יִתֵּן; ה' יְבָרֵךְ אֶת-עַמּוֹ בַשָּׁלוֹם

Adonai oz le-amo yiten, Adonai yevarekh et amo vashalom. May God give strength to His people, and may God bless His people with peace.

Let us continue to be strong as we seek not only quiet, but real shalom, real lasting peace, so that we will never see this movie again.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 7/12/2014.)

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.)