Yom Kippur 5785/2024
What can I say to you tonight? After this year of unspeakable horrors?
October 7 was a brutal massacre, a pogrom. More Jews died that day — over one thousand two hundred — than on any day since the Nazi killing machines were stopped. At least 250 people, alive or dead, were kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
A year later, about 100 people remain in captivity — about two-thirds are estimated to be alive.
We are, I think, still in shock and still in mourning. Jews all over the world have been traumatized. The families of the people taken hostage have been protesting all year for the Israeli government to prioritize the release of the parents, children, siblings, spouses, friends. The war is no longer confined to Israel and Gaza, but is spreading.
I can hardly speak. What can I say?
When young men crashed through the border and murdered mercilessly, probably raping and torturing as well — because that’s what happens in war, when the ordinary rules of civilized behavior are deliberately transgressed.
When however many hostages remain alive — dozens, perhaps — have endured an entire year of their lives underground and in captivity.
When the young women “border watchers” in the Israeli Army were warning at least since July before the attack that something big was being planned; and they not only were ignored and told to keep quiet, but they were unarmed — apparently the male soldiers on the base were going to protect them. So most of them died. There is a detailed and tragic article in Hadassah Magazine about these young women and their fate.
When approximately 42,000 Gazan Palestinian people have been killed — that was the number earlier this week, it’s higher now — most in the intense bombing of the first months of the war, at an appalling pace. When almost every Gazan has been displaced, and almost none can get across the border to Egypt, and there are famine conditions, and disease is proliferating. When the infrastructure of Gaza has been destroyed so badly that, at previous rates of rebuilding, it will take most of the next century to rebuild this tiny enclave.
When Israeli settlers have rampaged across the West Bank, with the Army turning a blind eye and at other times helping.
When Israel’s Prime Minister refuses to prioritize the lives of his own people, and clearly the military leaders of Hamas refuse to prioritize the lives of their own people.
When wider war threatens.
When here in the US and around the world, we have seen a resurgence of antisemitism, both physical violence and hateful words, unlike anything that has happened before in my lifetime. Chants glorifying violence and disregarding the lives and well-being of Israelis — and sometimes Jews — have repeatedly come from the lips of people who are otherwise quick to protest on behalf of the physical and emotional well-being of all other humans on the planet.
When “Zion” — an ancient and poetic name for Jerusalem — has become a dirty word in the mouths of people who do not merely criticize Israel but howl for its destruction.
When in the US and other countries, individuals and groups with whom Jews have been allied for decades in the struggle for justice have been, at best, silent, in the face of calls for more violence against Israelis — meaning, Israeli Jews.
I have known for a year that this is what I must talk about tonight.
What I am going to try to say is this:
The things that I believe have not changed. While there are no guarantees, we have a better chance of a good life if we treat other people well.
The values that one continues to hold on to, when it’s not convenient or safe to do so, are the ones you really believe. We must not give up on our values even in this terrible situation. Justice and compassion are still foundational to Judaism.
We must not be afraid to criticize our body politic — meaning Israel — any more than our ancient prophets held back on criticizing the society of their day. Tomorrow morning’s haftarah is one such example!
Because it’s not either/or. We can have compassion for Israelis, and for Jews around the world and in our own community who have close connections with Israel. Most of the communities that were attacked on October 7 are in the “Gaza Envelope,” which includes the Eshkol region -- our partner region, through our local Jewish Federation. Most of us either know people who were killed or kidnapped, or know someone who does.
And we can have compassion for Palestinians in Gaza. Gaza is a landscape from hell. We’ve been in hell, and we know that it’s not right to put people there.
Not everyone will be able to extend their compassion beyond their own group. We know that experiencing trauma tends to make us think and feel in rigid categories: more “either/or,” less “both/and.” It makes our boundaries less permeable; it makes it harder for us to be flexible or open.
And that’s ok. Do your best. Try to make space for the people around you, who are also trying to do their best. It’s hard. For all of us.
For those of us who can, we must acknowledge the suffering of Palestinian people even as we push back on the characterization of Zionism as racism, colonialism, and imperialism.
The longing of Jews for the Land of Israel has been called for generations Ahavat Tziyon: “Love of Zion.”
The earliest mention of the word is in a story set 3,000 years ago, of King David conquering a fortress called Tziyon — Zion — in the city of Y’vus and establishing his capital there. The city was renamed Jerusalem, and the name Zion became a poetic name for the whole city, as well as the name of the hill on which the ancient Temple was built. It is mentioned in the Bible and referenced in our prayers.
♪ Ki mi-Tsiyon teytsey Torah (2x), u-d’var Adonai miY’rushalayim.
“For the Torah will go forth from Zion, and God’s word from Jerusalem”: We sing this when we take the Torah out of the Ark.
Our feeling of connection with it is not some 19th-century creation. Our liturgy, our foundational texts include the name Yisra’el -- Israel, Jacob’s other name -- and the place where our culture appeared, grew, and was dominant and at least semi-independent for a thousand years. It is our place of national origin. Canaan-Israel-Palestine is our homeland.
Well, was.
But when does the statute of limitations run out on remaining connected to one’s homeland?
Stick a shovel into the ground and you dig up Hebrew. The oldest written text of the Jewish Bible is a variation of the Priestly Blessing inscribed on two silver amulets from the 6th century BCE — amulets which were rediscovered in 1979.
In the 19th century the ancient longing gave birth to multiple forms of modern Zionism. One of them was POLITICAL ZIONISM, championed by Theodore Herzl (1960-1904), a Viennese journalist and playwrite. Herzl believed that the only solution to the rising persecution of Jews was Jewish sovereignty, a place of refuge.
But that wasn’t the only kind of Zionism at the time. CULTURAL ZIONISM, championed by Achad Ha-Am, the pen name of writer and publisher Asher Ginsberg (1856-1927), focussed on the need to revive the spiritual and cultural treasures of Judaism among the Jewish people.
Perhaps surprisingly, Theodore Herzl also hoped for the creation of “a firm Jewish consiousness,” a strong Jewish character and perspective. In this he could also be considered a cultural Zionist.
But Herzl advocated for and worked toward a sovereign Jewish state recognized by the other countries of the world, while Ginsberg understood that the people currently living in Palestine would not simply step aside and let Jews take their place. In the 1920s a third movement joined these two: The Revisionist-Zionists, led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky. He also grappled with the question of how to establish a Jewish state in a land filled with Arabs, and came to different conclusions at different times.
What is important to remember is that the Jews who were instrumental in establishing the modern Jewish country knew that Palestine already had an established population, and recognized that the creation of a Jewish State would also result in the creation of a big problem.
It’s ok for us to acknowledge that there’s a problem at the heart of Israel. Even the founders of the modern country of Israel understood that problem.
Because in the generations and centuries in which Jewish life was centered elsewhere, other people continued to live in the Land. The Romans renamed it Palestina in honor of the Philistines, one of King David’s main adversaries. Many of its citizens became Christian, then Muslim. It was ruled by Muslims, Christians, then Muslims again.
And whether they identified as such at the beginning of the 20th century, by its end, the Palesinian people existed.
From a Palestinian perspective, the establishement of Israel, and the subsequent war, was the Nakba, the catastrophe. Many Arab families fled; others were expelled; the Arab leadership encouraged some to evacuate. Those who remain within the Green Line live as guests in what had formerly been their home. Gaza and the West Bank are far from independent; and Gaza, in this war, has become a death trap.
It’s ok to acknowledge this. It is necessary to acknowledge this.
And yet — this has given rise to a new form of antisemitism. Now, many people who believe that Israel has no right to exist maintain that they are not antisemitic.
But this relies on an understanding of who Jews are that does not fit the facts.
We have been defined, by others, as “White people whose religion is Judaism.” This erases Jews of Color, and ignores that while we have lived all over the world, our ancestry is Middle Eastern.
Our own understanding of ourselves as an am — a people, which means an extended kinship network, a huge family, a tribe — has been denied.
This refusal to recognize Jews as a multi-ethnic, multiracial kinship group is not accidental. The casting of Jews as “white” and “European” has a purpose. It is a necessary prerequisite to claiming that our love and longing for our ancient homeland is nothing more than another example of colonialist imperialism, where White people grab land that isn’t theirs and never was.
If you want to see a country colonized by Europeans who never had a connection to the land, you’re living in it. But where are the furious calls for the US to stop existing?
And there is a subtle but, I believe, very real racism in the fury being directed at Israel. If one accepts the (incorrect and antisemitic) premises that Jews are white/of European background, and “only” members of a religious group, rather than being a “people,” a kinship group with a place of national origin, then Israel being planted into the Middle East fits very nicely into the colonialist imperialist narrative: Yet another case of white people oppressing People of Color, moving in where they have no right to be.
What I want to know is: where have the violent and passionate protests been about the killing in South Sudan? According to the website of the US Holocaust Museum,
Between 2013 and 2018, almost 400,000 people were killed as a result of the conflict.
That’s more than 65,000 a year.
Since then, civilians have continued to be killed in intercommunal clashes and attacks from government forces and rebel groups. Sexual violence has been rampant, with very few perpetrators being held accountable.
But this violence doesn’t fit into the colonialist narrative.
And I have to ask: Do people only matter as a percentage of a population? Or is every human life precious, created b’tselem Elohim, in the image of God?
This is the great disappointment of the Progressive Left: The negation of valuing human beings, of valuing human life, when it comes to Jewish or Israeli lives. The celebration of violence as victory; the idea that some people deserve to die, or at the mildest are acceptable collateral damage in the struggle against oppression and oppressors. Defining Israeli Jews as non-civilians — just by virtue of being Israelis.
In the face of all this, my values haven’t changed.
We must not allow ourselves to be coarsened. B’makom sheh-eyn anashim, histadel lih’yot ish, Hillel said: “In a place where no one is acting like a human being, try to be a human.” Strive to be a mensch. Do your best. Never give up. No matter what is happening around you.
And we can continue to believe in humanity. The violence and hatred that has made the news does not represent the majority of students, nor is it happening on the majority of campuses.
You’ve already been told, human beings, what is good, and what the Eternal seeks from you: Namely, doing justice, loving tenderly, and walking through this world in humility. (Micah 6:8)
הִגִּ֥יד לְךָ֛ אָדָ֖ם מַה־טּ֑וֹב וּמָֽה־יְהוָ֞ה דּוֹרֵ֣שׁ מִמְּךָ֗ כִּ֣י אִם־עֲשׂ֤וֹת מִשְׁפָּט֙ וְאַ֣הֲבַת חֶ֔סֶד וְהַצְנֵ֥עַ לֶ֖כֶת עִם־אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃
And: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the essence of Torah. The rest is commentary: Now go and learn more.” (Talmud Shabbat 31a)
That’s what I know to say to you this year. Ground yourself in your values, and try to live them. Be gentle with yourself and others; this is a tough time. And may we push ourselves just a little bit more to uphold both compassion and justice in this new year.
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