Shabbat B’reishit – Not the New Beginning I Envisioned
We have come to the end of the fall cycle of Jewish holidays. Those of us “in the biz” always look at Cheshvan as a little extra SWEET – not a little extra bitter – because we have run the gauntlet of celebrations – and for those who sing service after service after service as the weather might be changing (and we might even have bonus allergies to the flora of sukkot), it may be more likely that one encountered physical and nasal and vocal challenges somewhere along the way than that one didn’t. (Cheshvan is known better as Marcheshvan – which could be understood to be “bitter Cheshvan” because poor little Cheshvan has NO holidays in it – unlike pretty much every other month of the year. Most understand the term Marcheshvan though as an ancient word that doesn’t have to do with bitterness.)
This year, I just ran the same gauntlet as all the other Jews in the pews. Almost a full year past my retirement, I attended services at Havurat Tel Aviv, at Kehillat Sinai and at K’hillat Yachad Tel Aviv over the course of the high holidays and festivals – and I led small segments of services at the Havurah.
There are many things I discovered along the way – and I’d like to write about them, but I must instead write about responding to the pogrom that settler Jews unleashed on West Bank Palestinians on a Jewish holy day. Dozens of young Jews, most of them masked, armed with batons and daggers, threw stones and wounded nine Palestinians, including a three-year-old boy, stabbed four sheep to death, overturned parked cars and smashed their windshields, overturned and smashed solar panels and broke windows, including those of a mosque. They entered homes in the villages of Khirbat al-Mufkara, al-Rakiz and al-Tuwani.
The mistreatment by Jews in this area has been going on for years. I actually visited on a trip several summers ago when visiting Israel for the Hartman Institute. Until the formation of the current government, there wasn’t a chance that anything decent would happen for the Palestinians – who have lived there for many years, and been frustrated in any and every attempt to better their situation. They are denied opportunities to build or have access to water – or anything else. If you can’t build and have water and electricity and roads into and out of where you are trying to live, it’s pretty impossible.
In the meantime, Jewish settlements expand and expand, and illegal outposts go up and instead of being demolished (even if ordered so by Israeli courts), eventually become permanent and receive all the services a human could want and need. (Palestinians need not apply.)
Edicts are issued by the Israeli court system to dismantle the illegal outposts, but they are ignored – and IDF members have even been seen (and filmed) helping the settlers build.
And among the settler youth, there are frequent attacks on the nearby Palestinians, and the army and IDF do little to fight it – and sometimes join in.
Yes, there is violence on the part of Palestinians – and plenty of attempted acts of terrorism that have, thankfully, been thwarted by Israeli security forces. But guess what? We Jews are so good at so many things (Start-up Nation! The World’s Most Moral Military (sometimes)! Leading Diaster Relief All Over the World! Jews in Sports! Jews in Entertainment! Jews in Medicine! Jews in . . . Pretty Much Everything!) that it seems like we’re outdoing the neighbors in being terrorists (with the considerable exception of Iran, which is a whole different conversation).
A lot to be proud of – but in this area it is a national disgrace to Israel and a disgrace to the Jewish people everywhere.
These young (religious Zionist?) hoodlums attacked the nearby Palestinians on the last day of the holidays – on Yom Tov. Unimaginable – but it turns out that, like our great writers, we need bigger imaginations.
If they did that on Yom Tov, I’m just going to have to give up much of this Shabbat – to get on a bus – to ride to their communities – to stand with hundreds of others in solidarity. There’s a lot of Kristallnacht afoot here – and what are the righteous going to do about it? What did “good Germans” do on November 10? Something to think about – but not a lot of time at the moment. At the moment, it’s time for me to go where a Jew ought to go and stand for and with others.
The Perek Yomi group of Tifereth Israel finished the Tanach some months ago – and decided, before starting again at the beginning of the Torah, to spend some time in Pirkei Avot. I feel like I’ve studied Pirkei Avot kind of over and over and over. . . so I haven’t “Zoomed in” with them for a while – but I’m wondering a bit about the passage in Perek 5. . .
אַרְבַּע מִדּוֹת בָּאָדָם: הָאוֹמֵר שֶׁלִּי
שֶׁלָּךְ וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלִּי, עַם הָאָֽרֶץ.
שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלִּי וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלָּךְ, זוֹ
מִדָּה בֵינוֹנִית, וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים זוֹ מִדַּת סְדוֹם.
.שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלָּךְ וְשֶׁלָּךְ
שֶׁלָּךְ, חָסִיד. שֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלִּי וְשֶׁלִּי שֶׁלִּי, רָשָׁע
There are four types of people:
One who says, “Mine is yours, and yours is
mine" is an am haaretz.
One who says "Mine is mine, and yours is
yours" — this is an average character; there are those who say that this
is the way of S’dom.
One who says, "Mine is yours, and yours is
yours" is a chassid (pious person).
And one who says "Mine
is mine, and what is yours is mine" is wicked.
It seems
that this is where we have arrived. In
fact, I think it’s a pretty good way of describing much of the “settler
enterprise.” One can reflect on whether
this tells us anything about the terrible rifts in American society, culture and
government – but that’s ANOTHER different conversation.
My hope – I mentioned the formation of the current government. This diverse collection includes important leaders who at least pay lip service to what is going on. I don’t expect the Prime Minister to take the lead in this matter – for political reasons. But I was heartened to see the statement of Foreign Minister Yair Lapid -- #2 and the NEXT Prime Minister – “This violent incident is horrific, and it is terror. This isn’t the Israeli way, and it isn’t the Jewish way. This is a violent and dangerous fringe, and we have a responsibility to bring them to justice."
I’m certain there will be MKs there tomorrow. I would be heartened to see the Foreign Minister – and other centrist leaders. I hope to see some of those who have risen into the Knesset or into Ministry positions from the Reform and Masorti world. This is a serious line that has been crossed.
Two more things to think about Torah-wise. Tomorrow we will read the story of Cain and Abel – two brothers who couldn’t live together successfully in a bountiful land. At the moment, I fear that we are much more like Cain than we would have ever imagined.
In coming weeks, we will read about Hagar and Ishmael being cast out by Avraham and Sarah – which we read recently on the First Day of Rosh Hashanah.
May I suggest that, as we go through the Torah again this year (hooray for that), we try to focus on the perspectives of the OTHERS in the narrative. Should we rationalize to ourselves that the story of Hagar just “had to be” in order for Isaac to come into his deserved inheritance? Or can we see – maybe even for a first time – HER pain, and recognize that all our inheritance comes with complexity and contradiction.
We must see each other every day. We don’t have to always take the part of the other – and we don’t have to function in a way that says What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is yours – for although we CALL that the way of the pious one, it’s really not practical. But we must guard ourselves from being its opposite and finding that we are the wicked ones.
Shabbat Shalom
