Happy Purim?! 2023

 Happy Purim?!

Here comes Purim.

It’s Thursday night in Tel Aviv (the holiday begins Monday night).  The moon is getting full.  Purim and Pesach are full moon holidays – occurring in the middle of the Hebrew month – as opposed to new moon holidays (Rosh Chodesh, Rosh Hashanah).  Jupiter and Venus are lined up like a couple of drones closely observing us – a particularly Israeli feeling, since we gather at least weekly by the tens and/or hundreds of thousands to protest the maybe insane or just unhinged for other reasons government, and are accustomed to looking up to see drones taking those fabulous pictures of us gathered together AND spreading around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and many other cities here.

Purim has never really been a favorite holiday of mine, although it has been very much part of my life.  The mitzvah is to hear the megillah.  It was my professional obligation for almost 40 years to bring merriment to my congregation and community – and I did it with a full heart (including dozens of Purimspiels written and performed with many others, including a blessed contingent of Tifereth Israel loyalists still at it!) , but there are ways that I always had to force myself.

I needed to arrange for Megillah readers – reading some myself and parceling out parts to others.  The chanting of Megillah is truthfully one of our ugliest musical behaviors.  A huge irony in our Ashkenazic musical heritage is that the cantillation of Megillat Esther and Eichah – the lamentations of Tisha B’Av – are both related and entirely opposed to each other.  There are aspects of the ta’amim (tropes) that are shared.  Yet at the same time, we manage totally opposite feelings:  The destruction of the Temple recounted in Eichah has the melody that is the most affecting and beautiful of our tropal cantillations, providing salve on the wounds of our defeat and devastation.  By contrast, the jokey story of Esther is the ugliest of our musics, to be told/sung quickly.  Why?  Choose or mix together:  1) We need to get through this quickly because there are lots of children around and nobody has patience for this story carefully told.  2) It’s a raucous night with lots of alcohol flowing.  3) We’re uncomfortable with the feeling of a story where we’re the victors; not sure what to make of it:  so much of our history has been about suffering and challenge.   4) We’re hoping that you won’t pay attention to the late chapters of the story where we take vengeance on our enemies and kill tens of thousands of them.  (Please don’t mention this to the children.)

This year more than ever before, I think we need to be honest about the ugliness of that vengeance.

We are less than a week from an almost unimaginable pogrom visited on the residents of a Palestinian town – Hawara – by nearby “settlers.”  What’s worse is that it is in NO way surprising.  It is the logical outcome of our current constellation of hateful, self-righteous, violent arsonists who have been brought deeply within the obscene cloak that is Benjamin Netanyahu.  He is a remarkable phenomenon.  Every time you see him, he descends to a lower rung of depravity and dishonesty.  Just when you think he (or anyone) couldn’t get any worse, he amazes you.

This is in part because although HE brought THEM into his governing circle (and it didn’t seem to be necessary), they are really his masters now.  The Smotriches and the Ben G’virs who shouldn’t even have been allowed into the Knesset – even to run for office – are the masters of our destiny – unless we are able to shake free of them.

Back to Hawara. . . What happened there?  On Sunday, 2 Israeli brothers were murdered on the road that passes through there.  Although many roads have been built and many provisions have been made to “keep the settlers safe” as they pass from their (often stolen) lands from one place to another and in and out of the West Bank (what they call Judea and Samaria), there are places where they need to travel on public roads. 

Given the number of incursions into Palestinian areas during the current administration as well as during the previous government to attempt to root out accused terrorists, it was completely predictable that violence would befall Israeli Jews at the hands of Palestinians.  I’m not justifying it – but I AM placing blame on Netanyahu and especially Smotrich and Ben G’vir who do everything possible to stir up confrontations so that they can justify taking further dramatic and violent actions against Palestinians anywhere and everywhere.  (Unfortunately for them, the Palestinians are so week now that there has been little response from Gaza – a few rockets “well responded to” by the IDF.  Ben G’vir would be much happier to start a full-scale war that would justify wiping out the Palestinians.  Never mind the human cost to us.  Nothing beats humiliating and killing Palestinians for the likes of him.)

So the murder of these 2 young Israelis (Hillel and Yaakov Yaniv, may their memories be for blessing) was followed by a large group of settlers – over a hundred --  invading the town, burning homes, cars, injuring almost 100 Palestinians.  How did they get past the members of the IDF who are supposed to protect both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs?  They pretty much ALWAYS get past the IDF.  This tends to work one way:  settlers break through.  The Army reacts slowly or not at all.  The number of times that this has happened is beyond the capacity to count or report – especially because the “system” makes it virtually impossible for Palestinians to be heard and protected.

But THAT wasn’t enough.  “Finance Minister” Smotrich said Wednesday that “the village of Hawara needs to be wiped out.  I think that the State of Israel needs to do that – not, God forbid, private individuals.”  Of course, the second part of that statement is just a pathetic smokescreen for the fact that he has already set so many violent acts into motion (notwithstanding the fact that the idea of wiping out the village by the Government is a ridiculous and despicable notion).

But THAT wasn’t enough.  As the demonstrations against the judicial coup being attempted by Netanyahu and Yariv Levin and Simcha Rothman continue – now in their 8^th or 9^th week and having risen from an original 20,000 in Tel Aviv to hundreds of thousands throughout the country – the “how low can you go” Prime Minister managed yesterday to equate the demonstrators in the center of Tel Aviv seeking to stop traffic in and through the city with the violent settlers, the Jewish terrorists who carried out the pogrom in Hawara.  In fact, he has been outrageously critical of those demonstrating against his coup, calling us anarchists and traitors funded by foreign entities and, with the constant fire-setting actions and words of Ben G’vir, has created violent confrontations by the police against protesters.  Yesterday’s encounters included violent police responses to claimed violence by protesters that really didn’t occur, but some police leaders may have been seeking to decrease the pressure they feel from Ben G’vir.  Generally, the police get very high marks – so far – in understanding that they are here to protect all of us – including demonstrators exercising their right – a difficult and complicated task that really irritates Ben G’vir and Netanyahu – who has said quite publicly that he wants to give lawmakers “a fist to strike” the protesters.”

The good news – maybe – is that the country itself is so far holding together despite the attempts of the Prime Minister and his henchmen/handlers to burn it all down.

Tens and hundreds of thousands of Israelis are coming out weekly – sometimes more often – and we are (so far) peaceful and hopeful to save what is most important to the nation that is but 74 years old.  It is far from a perfect place – and there are many trying issues – especially relating to the Palestinians and their place here – that need to go even behind the “back burner” while we try to deal with the attempted dismantling of the judicial system by people who are all too happy to burn EVERYTHING down from inside the Knesset.

All this because Benjamin Netanyahu will do ANYTHING to try to save himself from the trials that will probably never finish.  He was once an admired and seemingly respectable leader – but that was so long ago, and his litany of self-serving and state-destroying behaviors is so comprehensive that it is at best a distant memory.

Any hope that I had that he would moderate himself or the forces around him because he had an eye to what history would say has been swept far from reality or imagination.

Ah well. . . . remember. . . . Purim?!  Remember what I said about us being uncomfortable with the later chapters of Megillat Esther?  Here’s the thing (or A thing): Since the destruction of the Temple, we’ve had about 2000 years of practice being subject to the whims of others.  And we have 1) 74 years of practice at being in charge in our own place – and  2) 50+ years of practice being in charge of others (after the Six Day War of 1967).  And those challenges have been exacerbated by the cancer of the Occupation, wherein we hoped “the Palestinians would come to their senses” and we offered them everything they needed to move forward to create the Palestinian State we weren’t sure we could manage to live with, and they walked away from it.  In the meantime, while we twiddled our thumbs, the settlers hatched a plan that has now come to such fruition that it might just destroy the whole State:  Remember how we said “we just can’t deal with these Palestinians (some of) who(m) say that “the river to the sea all belong to me?”  Well, GUESS WHO BELIEVES THAT NOW?!

Something that eats away deeply at my soul:  Who ALWAYS believed we would take it all?  Or when did that come to be something they began to believe in?  Why didn’t we stop them?  Why did we allow the zealots to take over?  How many years did we go along saying, regarding violence by settlers against Palestinians, “it’s just a few bad apples?”  Was it the plan all along? 

Beginning of the miracle – Beginning of the debacle. 

In the Megillah, it is understood (although God’s name doesn’t APPEAR in the Megillah – so we write Megillot with “Hamelech” as the first word in every page so that “Hamelech – The King – God” is looking over the story, though Hamelech in the Megillah is of course Ahasuerus) that the miracle (of God’s intervention?) begins “balailah hahu” – in the night when Ahasuerus can’t sleep.  And the Chronicles of Paras are brought to him and he hears about the good act of Mordecai. . . chooses to honor him and make Haman do it, and then things get much worse for Haman.

The beginning of the debacle we’re experiencing here was in some ways on Purim in 1994 when Baruch Goldstein SOUGHT TO BRING ABOUT THE “TRUTH” OF THE LATE CHAPTERS OF MEGILLAT ESTHER when he killed 29 and injured 125 Palestinians in a mosque in Hebron.  He was killed by those who apprehended him – but some – INCLUDING SMOTRICH AND BEN G’VIR and too many others – considered him a HERO.  And his grave was a PILGRIMAGE place until saner minds intervened.  But there are many  places where he is loved for his murderous acts to this day.  THAT is perhaps the “original sin” – and our failure to keep these people out of civic life and the Knesset and the Ministries of our Government – that has brought us to this pretty horrible day in this pretty great place – if we can save it.

So what will happen “balailah hahu” – in those nights between now and Purim?  Between this Purim and next Purim?  Next Purim will be 30 years from the hillul hashem – desecration of God’s name – that was Baruch Goldstein – and is Smotrich and Ben G’vir and too many others – and that is, to a great extent Benjamin Netanyahu, who has blood on his hands for the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and has the temerity to complain about how he and his family are endangered by people in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and Modiin and Haifa and Ra’anana and even Gush Etzion – peaceful people seeking to save their country from him and his shrinking minority of misguided ministers.

Balailah hahu – I can’t sleep so well at night either these days – although some of it is jetlag because we just returned from a week plus visit to California Sunday night.  I sort of hope that Benjamin Netanyahu can’t sleep – but he already seems sleep-deprived. 

The governing cabal gives me despair.  But the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and many other places give me hope.  David Ben-Gurion said that “A Jew who does not believe in miracles is not a realist.”  But miracles come when we assist them.  So I am hopeful that my brothers and sisters here in Israel will make these miracles happen – and that my long-time friends in the US will do their part – contacting their House and Senate representatives and the White House and leaders of Jewish organizations entreating them to help to save Israel from itself.  WITH itself.

Chag Purim Sameiach.