Heritage Trumps Hatred

As we begin the book of Shemot / Exodus and recount once again our descent into Egypt as a family and our ascent from slavery as a people, I am reminded by current events of the enduring value of peoplehood, and how it is a source of comfort in dark times. Within the first few verses of this book, the Egyptian pharaoh describes us as "benei Yisrael," the people of Israel (Ex. 1:9), the definition serving to set us apart as the other, as distinct from the native Egyptian population.

With today's hostage-taking episode in a kosher grocery in Paris, resulting in at least four dead and five wounded, our "otherness" was once again served to us in a particularly cruel stew of terror and hatred. On the heels of the killings earlier in the week at the office of Charlie Hebdo, it is evident that bad actors in this world include both Jews and free speech in the same cross-hairs.

In moments like these, when our inclination might be to respond in anger, I look to our tradition for strength. We are not a vengeful people; we are not bloodthirsty. Rather, tragedies such as these should be met with the same response that Jews have always had to anti-Semitic acts: to rally around our heritage, our tradition; to return to our mitzvot, our Torah; to remain stubbornly proud of who we are and who our God is. Our pride is more powerful than their hatred.

We mourn for those fellow Jews who fell at the hands of terrorists; our hearts go out to their families, to those of the French Jewish community who are feeling ever more besieged, and to all lovers of peace and freedom throughout the world whose hearts ache over the events of the past week. And we reach once again for the story of our national foundation, invoking as we do every time we finish reading the Torah the words of Eikhah / Lamentations (5:22): Hashiveinu Adonai eilekha venashuva, hadesh yameinu keqedem. Return us to you, O God, and we shall return; renew our days as of old.

Let this be a Shabbat shalom, a Shabbat of peace, for benei Yisrael.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

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.

Responding Jewishly to Terror and Grief - Balaq 5774

It was about 9 PM in Israel when I heard the news. My 13-year-old son and I were on Highway 90, just north of Beit She'an, driving south to Ben Gurion Airport for our 12:45 AM flight to JFK. He heard it several minutes before it came over the radio, because he was in communication with his friends via his smartphone. He announced, almost too casually, “Abba, did you know about the three kidnapping victims?” “Yes,” I said. “They found their bodies.”

I gasped audibly. So loudly, in fact, that he jumped. “Why are you so shocked?” he asked.

Why indeed? I must confess that this was not the outcome that I had expected. A living Israeli is worth far more to Hamas than a dead one. Gil'ad Shalit was exchanged for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. I figured that somebody in the territories had masterminded a plan to get 3,000 or 5,000 more. But no – the original plan seemed to have backfired.  

My son further asked me, “Why do you care so much? You're not Israeli.”

“But I'm Jewish,” I replied. “I don't live in Israel, and about half of the Jews in the world do not live in Israel. But we are all one people. And when members of Am Yisrael, the nation of Israel, feel pain, whether they are citizens of the State of Israel or France or Canada or Argentina or India, we all feel that pain.”

“Oh,” he said, and that proceeded to think quietly about this revelation.

And while we continued to drive in silence and my thoughts went to the parents of Eyal, Naftali, and Gil’ad, I could feel the tears welling up behind my glasses, threatening to obscure my view of Highway 90, which is a voluptuous stretch of highway with an eternally gorgeous view of the Jordan valley. Even at night, the mountains just across the Jordan valley, referred to as the Gil’ad (an ironic view for the piece of news which had just arrived) were distant, haunting, calling to me across an ancient river and a modern and much-politicized border.

What can we do in times of loss like this? Are we helpless?  How should our faith help us in times like these both spiritually and practically?  What is the appropriate Jewish response?

One answer is to gather solemnly to recite words from our tradition. I think the experience that many of us had this past Tuesday evening, when members of this community came to Ma’ariv to memorialize the three slain young men, was cathartic.  We need to be among our own, we need community, to surround ourselves with those who understand our grief, who understand why we are so personally moved by a tragedy so far removed from us physically.

As Oryah and I drove through the center of Israel Monday night, Israelis interviewed on the radio said things like, let’s let Tzahal / the IDF do what we know they can do - i.e. root out all the Hamas terrorists hiding in the territories and kill them as enemy combatants or round them up and imprison them.

Unfortunately, over the course of the week, the situation worsened. Ladies and gentlemen, we are entering very dark times. As of yesterday, the Israeli police had not declared who killed Muhammed Abu Khdeir, the 16-year-old resident of Shuafat who was murdered and whose body was desecrated following the revelation about the three Israelis, and I am really, really hoping that it was not one of us.

We are not a bloodthirsty people. We are not hooligans. We are not terrorists.

The response, ladies and gentlemen, should be to draw on key Jewish values. We cannot allow the purveyors of terror to pull us down into the swamp with them. We must abide by the law and our morals.  We should not ignore or forgive, but we should respond as Jews.   

On Thursday, I was on a conference call organized by the Rabbinical Assembly, the international organization of Conservative rabbis. Rabbi Brad Artson, who teaches at American Jewish University in Los Angeles, shared some thoughts about how we should respond to the tragic slaying of Naftali, Gil’ad, and Eyal. His position is that we need to reiterate our commitment to four general principles highlighted in the Torah. They are:

1. Ahavat Tziyyon, love of Zion and Israel.

2. Kevod HaBeriyyot, maintaining human dignity.

3. Tzedeq, Tzedeq Tirdof, valiantly pursuing justice.

4. Rodef Shalom, pursuing peace.

Ahavat Tziyyon. We are one nation, and we share a destiny with the State of Israel, built on the Land of Israel. We all agree that we have a natural, historical right as Jews to our own self-determination, and therefore our own state, which the world must acknowledge and support.

Kevod HaBeriyyot. The first time that the word “Torah” appears in the Torah (Ex. 12:49) is a statement that you shall have one Torah for you and for the non-Israelites in your midst. That is, everybody is subject to the same laws, the same equal treatment, the same rights, the same ability to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, and that goes for all people between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

Tzedeq Tzedeq Tirdof. We have an obligation to seek justice in all its forms. On a micro level, that means that murderers should be prosecuted. On a macro level, that means that we are obligated to protect ourselves when necessary, including taking out terrorist infrastructure. When we must go to war, the Torah is clear: we must go to war. But ultimately our goal is to arrive at peace, which brings us to…

Rodef Shalom. It is our obligation to seek peace, and we should work hard to bring it about. Working toward peace - treaties, security arrangements, trade, international borders, all of the thorny issues that this implies - is a positive mitzvah in our tradition. That does not imply that we merely have to roll over and be passive and give away huge chunks of land and security for peace. But it does mean that we are commanded to work towards peace tirelessly and wisely.

Peace must be just, must reflect our values, must include safety and security for all citizens, and must maintain human dignity for all.

Those are the four principles. But how can we put them into practice?

There are some in the Jewish world who feel that the only way to ensure that justice is served is through military engagement. Certainly, when there are rockets being launched from Gaza into Israel, the Jewish state has no choice. As I wrote this, the New York Times reported that Israel was massing troops on the border of Gaza, perhaps for some kind of “operation.”  This should not, of course, be understood as revenge, as some reports implied, but as security. Israel needs to make sure her citizens are safe.

We should be extremely careful not to allow our grief to cascade into angry calls for revenge. Regarding the use of force, we should always be on the defense, not on the offense. Great military minds may disagree; there are legitimate times when you must strike first. But the complicated nature of this situation calls for caution. At the negotiating table, however, we should leap into battle and not wait for something to happen. In my mind, that would strike the correct balance between the four values that Rabbi Artson raised.

We are a people that prays for peace daily. Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’aseh shalom. And more “operations” will not bring us more peace. On the contrary, we need not only to pray for peace, but to work at it with all of our being. Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, an Israeli Chabad rabbi generally recognized as the greatest living Jewish scholar, suggested the following response:

It is true that we do have the right to fight in order to protect our lives, and to kill in a war of self-defense, as well as to punish the perpetrators.

But while revenge responds to a human need (however natural and normal the impulse), it is not in our hands: "Vengeance is Mine, and recompense," says the Lord (Deuteronomy 32:35)...

What, then, can and should we do?

We should do Kaddish.

In saying Kaddish over the dead, we promise to fill the gaps created by their passing, and to continue doing whatever we can so that "His great Name may grow exalted and sanctified."

But saying that is not enough: each and every one of us should also act as best he or she can in order to do Kaddish – by studying more Torah, by fulfilling one more mitzvah, by our physical actions or by giving of our time and money to those in need. Our acts do not serve to elevate the souls of these boys – for they are in a supreme spiritual level that needs no further elevation. Our acts elevate our own souls, curing all the lacks that were and still are in our world.

Rabbi Steinsaltz says that we should focus our energies not on revenge, but on returning to tradition, on improving ourselves, on elevating our souls. I would add that we should return to the negotiating table.

Furthermore, I would also add that we should draw inspiration from the prophet Micah, whose staggeringly-beautiful words we heard chanted this morning. The haftarah concluded with (6:8):

הִגִּיד לְךָ אָדָם, מַה-טּוֹב; וּמָה-יְהוָה דּוֹרֵשׁ מִמְּךָ, כִּי אִם-עֲשׂוֹת מִשְׁפָּט וְאַהֲבַת חֶסֶד, וְהַצְנֵעַ לֶכֶת עִם-אֱלֹהֶיךָ

He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you:Only to do justice, and to love goodness, and to walk modestly with your God.

We have to walk modestly with God, and not speak arrogantly of violence. We have to maintain our principles: Jewish nationhood, human dignity, justice and peace. And we have to seek to elevate our souls. As painful as this episode has been, we cannot call out for revenge. We need to take care of our people, to bring the guilty to justice, and seek a solution for all the young men and women of this world.

Am Yisrael Hai. The nation of Israel lives.

~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, July 5, 2014.)

Friday morning in a bomb shelter

Rockets fell last night in several places in southern Israel. Two Facebook posts from my friend and colleague, Rabbi Leor Sinai, were especially unnervingץ He is currently in Beersheva:

"Sirens at 5:51am. Grab kids and run into bomb shelter, again. Hear two booms."

"We are fine. & your prayers are felt here in Be'er Sheva. Just haven't figured out how to explain to Akiva (almost 6) when he asks: aba why are we in the closet room?"

What can you possibly say to a six-year-old? I have not yet even found away to talk about something like this with my son, who is ten and also lives in Israel.

Shabbat has already descended upon Israel; let's hope that this day of rest brings some peace and quiet to those within range of rocket fire.

Eqev - Seven Symbols of Security

As my late summer haul of tomatoes ripens on the vine, I can't help but reflect my backyard bounty through the lens of the "seven species" identified in Parashat Eqev this week as symbols of the land of Israel (Deuteronomy 8:8):

אֶרֶץ חִטָּה וּשְׂעֹרָה, וְגֶפֶן וּתְאֵנָה וְרִמּוֹן; אֶרֶץ-זֵית שֶׁמֶן, וּדְבָשׁ.
Eretz hittah us'orah, vegefen ut'enah verimon, eretz zeit shemen udvash.
A land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs, and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey.

From the vantage point of my window, I can watch my tomatoes grow in peace, a peace that we in the Diaspora often take for granted. The attacks on Israeli civilians near Eilat yesterday, on the very road that I traveled during my visit there last December, remind me that the figs and pomegranates cannot ripen on the vine if Israel does not have secure borders.

Let's hope for an olive branch soon.

Shemini 5771 - No Time for Silence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

וַיִּדֹּם אַהֲרֹן.

Vayidom Aharon. Aaron was silent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coren goes on:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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