ISRAEL AND ZIONISM: FINDING OUR WAY TOGETHER
10/11/2024 10:00:43 PM
Kol Nidre 5785 | 2024
On Rosh Hashanah morning, I extended the theme that Rabbi Berg introduced the night before, on sacred listening and the importance of making room for more than one narrative. I spoke about our Jewish identity and connection to Judaism and Jewish peoplehood in light of this most difficult past year. And tonight, I’ll address our relationship with Israel and Zionism. Tonight’s message is part two of the sacred conversations I’m urging us to have with the important people in our lives.
To younger generations: This community thrives when there is a multitude of perspectives. There is no one dogma when it comes to Israel, Zionism, or military policy. I know from conversations with you, your parents, and grandparents, that there are many different views you hold. Throughout history, older and younger generations have not always seen eye to eye. In those times, it’s that much more important that the channels of meaningful conversation stay open. That’s a value of mine and of this synagogue community. You and your views are always welcome here.
I also have an ask to make. I promise to listen to you and commit to leading with curiosity. I ask you to do the same. This is such a hard time for all of us. In part, that’s because the world has packaged the war in the Middle East in binary terms, and people in this era need a better understanding of nuance. I’m encouraging all of us, wherever we stand on these issues, to entertain shades of gray and to reject the need to take an extreme position. In our family, it has worked well to speak of issues in terms of ands rather than buts.
For instance, over the years I have preached on the importance of Israel for diaspora Jews, and I also have called out the imperfections of Israel and our struggles as liberal Jews here in America to feel seen in Israel. Israel and our relationship to it is not binary in any way. It’s full of nuance—love and frustration—and it is hugely important to my Jewish identity.
One of the cruel ironies of this past year is that the idea of what it means to be a Zionist has been redefined by other people, and I don’t recognize that Zionism. To be a Zionist means that you believe that Israel has a right to exist on some portion of the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland. I’m not the only one who has felt the need this past year to want to clarify what being a Zionist means and doesn’t mean. Jewish Columbia University students wrote an open letter this past spring after being subjected to ongoing, vitriolic anti-Israel protests on their campus, and they wrote: “We proudly believe in the Jewish People’s right to self-determination in our historic homeland as a fundamental tenet of our Jewish identity. Contrary to what many have tried to sell you – no, Judaism cannot be separated from Israel. Zionism is, simply put, the manifestation of that belief. . . .”
“The land of Israel is filled with archaeological remnants of a Jewish presence spanning centuries. Yet, despite generations of living in exile and diaspora across the globe, the Jewish People never ceased dreaming of returning to our homeland—Judea, the very place from which we derive our name, ‘Jews. . . .’” they explained.
When the world around us tries to define what it means to be Jewish or a Zionist, equating Zionism with racism and colonialism, it is all the more important for us to have the clarity of mind to reject that which is untrue. And to do so does not mean that you are a mouthpiece for the Israeli government.
Put another way, Roger Feigelson, executive director of San Francisco Hillel, wrote this in a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle: “Being a Zionist does not mean you cannot criticize, publicly protest, dislike, be frustrated with, disagree with or be angry with Israeli leaders or actions of the Israeli government. So, when someone says they stand with Israel, hold a beat to understand if they just mean they support its right to exist but not necessarily the actions of the government. They may share the same frustrations you have.”
Another painful aspect of this moment in our people’s history is coming face-to-face with a virulent antisemitism that I hoped was a remnant of the past. To wrestle with antisemitism is to go to a very vulnerable place. What antisemites want is for us to feel embarrassed to be Jews, to feel small and weak. So even though it is uncomfortable, for the sake of future generations and for those who suffered before us, we have to talk about antisemitism and why we cling to the idea of a safe and secure Israel.
As the Columbia students wrote: “We have been kicked out of Russia, Libya, Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Poland, Egypt, Algeria, Germany, Iran, and the list goes on. We connect to Israel not only as our ancestral homeland but as the only place in the modern world where Jews can safely take ownership of their own destiny. Our experiences at Columbia in the last six months are a poignant reminder of just that. . . .”
“The evil irony of today’s antisemitism is a twisted reversal of our Holocaust legacy; protestors on campus have dehumanized us, imposing upon us the characterization of the ‘white colonizer.’ We have been told that we are ‘the oppressors of all brown people’ and that ‘the Holocaust wasn’t special.’ Students at Columbia have chanted ‘we don’t want no Zionists here,’ alongside ‘death to the Zionist State’ and to ‘go back to Poland,’ where our relatives lie in mass graves.”
The student letter continues: “This sick distortion illuminates the nature of antisemitism: In every generation, the Jewish People are blamed and scapegoated as responsible for the societal evil of the time. In Iran and in the Arab world, we were ethnically cleansed for our presumed ties to the ‘Zionist entity.’ In Russia, we endured state-sponsored violence and were ultimately massacred for being capitalists. In Europe, we were the victims of genocide because we were communists and not European enough. And today, we face the accusation of being too European, painted as society’s worst evils—colonizers and oppressors. We are targeted for our belief that Israel, our ancestral and religious homeland, has a right to exist. We are targeted by those who misuse the word Zionist as a sanitized slur for Jew, synonymous with racist, oppressive, or genocidal. We know all too well that antisemitism is shapeshifting.”
We see that shapeshifting here in the Bay Area at school board meetings and at city council meetings when Jews are jeered at and gaslit. We are told that the truth of October 7th didn’t happen. I’ll tell you what I know, that every one of us has an obligation at some level, to bear witness to what happened in the south of Israel on that day. On Tuesday evening, PTS joined a nation-wide webinar to screen the documentary Screams Before Silence, the work of Sheryl Sandberg, and I’m telling you, I can’t ever unhear or unsee what I saw about the brutality and depravity of the terrorists on that day whose violence, particularly against women, must never be forgotten.
It's important that we talk about it, even though our hearts ache and it’s uncomfortable. But it’s not just that it’s personally painful. It’s just plain hard to talk about October 7th and its aftermath with people—both in the non-Jewish community and within the Jewish community. It’s fraught. I feel like I’m being judged from both sides. And as Rabbi Jill Maderer shared in a webinar for rabbis about how might talk about Israel this season, there’s a sense that we are constantly challenged to prove our loyalty to each binary. That I can’t call for a return of the hostages without hearing that I am ignoring the responsibility for Palestinian rights. That I cannot call for a ceasefire without hearing that I am unsupportive of Israel’s right to defend itself. I reject those binaries.
Empathy and compassion are not a zero-sum game. It’s about and not but. We can care about Israeli people, and we can care about Palestinian and Lebanese people. Not only can we, it’s very much in our Jewish tradition to do so.
In the Book of Judges, just after the military general Deborah defeats her enemy Sisera, she hears Sisera’s mother worried about her son’s delayed return, wailing, “Why is his chariot so long in coming?” Just after Deborah has protected and ensured the survival of her own people, she bears witness to, and the sacred text honors, the suffering of her enemies. Our sages are intrigued by this notion and explore it further in the Talmud, going so far as to associate the shofar’s calls with the pain of Sisera’s mother—the t’kiah for moaning, sh’varim for broken sighs, and t’ruah, for whimpers. In this moment, our text presents Sisera’s mother not as the enemy, but as a mother in mourning, and Deborah takes note.
This is foundational not just to our past but to our future. Mishael Zion in The Times of Israel on Israel’s Independence Day wrote, “I believe a life of dignity can be afforded to both Israelis and Palestinians between the river and the sea if our cultures and our leaders embrace each other’s existence. And I have spent my professional life dedicated to creating a richer and deeper Israeli culture, which I believe can be the crowning achievement of three thousand years of Jewish life. Israel has made many mistakes and performed actions I am ashamed of, but it has also done so much that I am proud of, most recently in the way we came together in the days after Hamas’s inhuman attacks, even as so many haters around the world hypocritically blamed us for Hamas’s behavior. But who we will be as Israelis when the dust of this war settles is the crucial question of this year’s Independence Day.”
And who will we be as a Jewish community when the dust settles? We must figure out how to walk through this forest in which we are all lost and try to find our way together. Tomorrow morning, we will read a dramatic passage from the Book of Deuteronomy. Chapter 29 describes the making of a covenant between God and the Israelites before they crossed the Jordan river to enter the land of Canaan. The text reads: “And not with you alone do I make this covenant and this oath, but with each one who stands here among us this day in the presence of Adonai our God, and with each one who is not here among us this day.” The entire Jewish people owns the journey through the wilderness. In a mystical sort of way, we were all there. Our sages shaped the way we internalized the impact of the covenant so that it impacts us equally in every new generation. So too, do we bear a responsibility to process the past twelve months and make meaning of not only what happened on October 7th, but also the anti-Zionism, the antisemitism, and the demonization of Jews and Israelis since then. It’s our sacred task to assign meaning to it, and how we do that will affect not just us and our children, but our children’s children and all those who come after us.
This moment reminds me of what it must have taken for the Jews to safely cross the Sea of Reeds on their flight from Egypt. An ancient Midrash teaches that they couldn’t do it alone but had to hold hands to give each other strength. I don’t know my way out of this sea of pain on my own, but maybe if we join heads and hearts, we can find a way, together.
Kein y’hi ratzon—So may this be God’s will. Amen.