Breaking the Silence…in the U.S.

Published by
Brad Brooks-Rubin
January 31, 2008 in All Posts. 0 Comments

Wow. Feels a bit strange to write here. Hard, and sad, to believe that almost 6 months have passed since my family and I spent the summer in Jerusalem, and I was able to write from time to time of the experience. Returning to Washington and “real life” has taken us back to the usual pressures and routine, though they have seemed a bit more stressful and time-consuming than before we left.

But the one thing other than family and work that I have been spending my time on (actually the last 15 months) is finally about to come to fruition. The “Breaking the Silence” photo exhibition, which created such a stir when it opened in 2004, and again when it to Europe in 2005 and 2006, is finally coming to the U.S. In fact, it’s more than the original exhibition, which focused exclusively on Hebron. This exhibition features photos and testimonies collected from soldiers who served throughout the Territories. It should be an unforgettable experience.

The exhibition will have 2 stops in the U.S. — Philadelphia and Cambridge/Boston. Two members of Breaking the Silence will be with the exhibition in both cities (different folks in each city) and also doing events around the regions (Yehuda Shaul, for example, will be in DC a few times while the exhibition is in Philadelphia).

In case your memory is hazy, stories about the original exhibition from the Washington Post and CNN.com
may help jog your memories from when this group first got going.

Since the exhibition first launched in Tel Aviv in 2004 (and ultimately hung in the Knesset itself for a time), the group has collected nearly 500 testimonies from IDF soldiers still doing, or just recently finished, their initial service. The group has also continued to work to change the situation in Hebron; indeed, my piece from the summer about my visit to Hebron, was about a trip I took with leaders from Breaking the Silence.

I have uploaded (I hope it worked) flyers for each of the cities, as well as a flyer for what should be a fascinating event at the DC Jewish Community Center. The event is entitled “What Makes an Army Jewish? Ethics and Tradition: The IDF in an Age of Checkpoints, Village Sweeps and Targeted Killings” and will feature Yehuda from Breaking the Silence, an American who volunteered for the IDF and wrote a book called “Lonely Soldier,” and an Orthodox educator.

There is much more I could write about this, but for now, I will only ask that those who see this and live within reach of Philadelphia and Boston do what they can to see the exhibition and to tell as many others as they can about it. These are Israeli soldiers revealing what they did, what they saw, what they became as occupiers. The impact on Palestinian and Israeli societies
is clear, is painful, and is something that screams for change. The question, then, is what will the impact be on American, and in particular American Jewish, society.

Please forward this, forward the flyers, etc. to anyone you can. Hate to make this such a plug-filled post, but I know the readers of semitism.net and their networks are the core of the people who must see this and encourage others to attend.

As the exhibition goes on, I hope to write more, and indeed hope that the exhibition helps me break my own silence of the past 6 months.

whatmakesanarmyjewish2.docbtsphillyflyer.jpgbtsbostonflyer.jpg

Rosh Hashanah Part I: Origins of the Theme of Guilt and Redemption

Published by
Andrew Schamess
September 14, 2007 in Judaism. 1 Comment

Yesterday was Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish New Year, which ends eight days from now with Yom Kippur. Between the two holidays, we focus our thoughts on repentance, and on returning to God.

An interesting thing about Judaism is that many of its essential themes were forged at a time of defeat and loss. The notion of a Covenant with a protective God certainly predated the sack of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. In fact, the idea of a patron God who resided in a temple and protected the kingdom was commonplace in the Bronze Age. I think the Judeans and Israelites endowed this with a bit more of a Utopian character than their neighbors, but the basic theology was not terribly different.

It was not until the destruction of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem and the exile of most Judeans to Babylonia that Judaism took on its distinctive character.

One must imagine people who had faced the individual fear, deprivation and loss of a long siege, had seen their agricultural land laid waste, their cities razed, and their God desecrated. Then they were shipped off to exile in Babylonia.

There, for some reason, rather than adopting the gods and customs of the Babylonians, they reconstructed their religion. Now, however, they had no place to carry out animal sacrifices and other rituals, no physical space for worship – no temple in which their God could live among them. They were forced to think about the non-ritual aspects of their religion.

More importantly, their experience challenged the fundamental concept of an inviolable sanctuary protected by an all-powerful deity who would provide eternal protection to the descendants of Abraham.

The religious thinkers of the Judeans reconciled the dilemma this way: They maintained the belief in an omnipotent God, but they incorporated the new idea of a people who could sin. The people could turn away from God, could incur God’s anger and punishment. By turning back to God, they could also earn God’s forgiveness.

The Prophetic writings, which most directly address the exilic situation, are full of expressions of this relationship between God and Israel. God is presented (in patriarchal fashion) as a jealous husband who punishes an unfaithful wife; as a farmer pruning away diseased vines; as a merchant sorting the good fruit from the bad.

In the process, and almost by accident, the nature of God’s existence is re-conceptualized. He is not just the most powerful among a pantheon of deities associated with various nations. Rather, he has power over all nations: he sends an army from afar to punish his unfaithful people. By the same construct, God can be present for the Judeans in Babylonia even though there is no temple. The temple in Jerusalem is thus proposed to have housed God’s Name – not God Himself, who is omnipresent and cannot reside in a physical structure.

In this way, I think, the notion of sin and redemption was forged. It has been of central importance to Judaism and to the religions derived from it, Christianity and Islam.

I will write a bit more in a future post about the resonance this has for me, especially in relation to biology and the medical arts.

Come Home with Me, Judge Winograd

Published by
Brad Brooks-Rubin
July 26, 2007 in All Posts. 4 Comments

A few months back, as I prepared to come to Israel with my family for 3 months, the interim Winograd Commission report came out. As you may recall, the report identified a range of apparent failures during the conduct of the war with Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

The final report is due out in a couple of months, but even the interim report managed to generate a lot of attention and discussion inside Israel. Even without a final report, people demanded the Prime Minister step down; indeed, over 100,000 demonstrated in Tel Aviv calling for his ouster. His approval ratings plummeted into the single digits. Although Olmert has managed to remain in office, the reactions to Winograd were the final blow suffered by former Defense Minister Amir Peretz that led to his defeat to Ehud Barak (and Ami Ayalon, who also beat him out in the first round) in the recent Labor Party primaries.

All of this attention resulted from the report’s initial findings that there were numerous mistakes made in the decision to go to war at all, in the carrying out of the war, and in the overall preparation and state of the Israel Defense Forces.

Now, to top it off, the Winograd Commission has indicated it will investigate whether or not war crimes were committed by Israel during the war. That is, those on the Commission have actually looked at the reports of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and others about the use of cluster munitions against civilians and have decided they need to investigate. An internal investigation that admits its possible war crimes were committed (with American-made weaponry, of course).

Who know what they will find? Frankly, it’s near to impossible to imagine the Commission finding that war crimes occurred. The impact and implications would be innumerable. Especially in light of the potential investigation (depending on how the State of Israel responds to the High Court’s recent ruling asking for their opinion on a commission) into the July 2002 targeted killing of Salah Shehadeh in Gaza with a one-ton bomb that left 14 innocent civilians dead.

As Ha’aretz reported, the move to investigate came from both the parents of soldiers and human rights groups:

Gal-On wrote to the Winograd panel several weeks ago to urge such an inquiry. She said she made the request after soldiers’ parents - who had earlier approached Winograd independently - asked her to push for an investigation into whether there was ethical misconduct during the war.

Gal-On said that grave allegations made by human rights organizations, who accused the IDF of committing war crimes and harming Lebanese civilians, strengthened her conviction that these claims must be probed.

But what Winograd ultimately finds on the war crime question doesn’t really matter to me. What matters is that they are looking at it all and actually facing the question of “could we have committed war crimes?” Admitting that such things are even theoretically possible.

Now, I will leave it to others to comment on the implications for the kind of investigations and introspection currently underway (or not) in the United States vis-à-vis Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

What I am concerned about is the absolute silence from those incredibly loud and vocal supporters of Israel’s decision to go to war and to forego cease fire talks in the first weeks.

The whole point of Winograd is to insure, if such insurance is possible, that the mistakes made last summer don’t happen again. But the mistakes they are concerned about are primarily tactical and logistical, as well they should be. As recently reported, the IDF is facing problems of morale and reputation and retention and professionalism of a kind never before seen in its history.

And this is indeed a huge problem. For those who love and believe in the State of Israel, the army is a necessity. Repairing its ability not only to perform in battle, but also to have the people believe it can and will perform to the levels previously expected, is a must. Of course, we may also work to insure that it does so with even higher standards for its rules of engagement and overall conduct, but it is clear that the IDF must be healed. Thus I believe Winograd, regardless of its findings on war crimes, will be an important piece of the puzzle of progress here.

What I fear is the lack of progress in the U.S., whether in the government or in the mainstream Jewish community. And for that, Judge Winograd, you have to come home with me. Because we need your help.

Last year, as you will recall, the rush to support Israel’s decisions, and to fend off all criticism and questioning as near blasphemy, by the Administration, in Congress, and most of all within the mainstream of the American Jewish community could not have been quicker.

In a piece I have quoted before, the Forward quoted leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and Jewish Committee for Public Affairs at the end of July as saying there was “absolute unanimity” and “zero dissent” in the Jewish community that Israel was doing the right thing and should not pursue a cease fire until it was ready. We told our students that Israel was justified in all it was doing, and that they needed to get out there on campus and convince everyone they could that this was the case.

In Congress, “pro-Israel” leaders like Rep. Brad Sherman of California (a Democrat and former member of the House Human Rights Subcommittee, no less) not only backed Israel (and voted almost unanimously), they called for Israel to do more. Inflict – and suffer — more violence and death. As Rep. Sherman wrote in the Jewish Journal in late July of 2006:

Congress rightly has condemned Hezbollah for “engaging in unprovoked and reprehensible armed attacks against Israel on undisputed Israeli territory.” The House passed a resolution by a vote of 410 to 8 supporting “Israel’s right to defend itself, including the right to conduct operations in Israel and in the territory of nations which pose a threat to it.”
…

There are some who say the Israeli reaction has been “disproportionate.” It cannot be overstated that the recent outbreak of warfare was not simply a reaction to one event. The truth is that there have been five kidnapping raids and hundreds of missiles fired during six years of attacks. If anyone is going to say that Israel’s reaction is disproportionate, let them say that Israel is doing too little.

That’s right. Using cluster munitions and leveling so much of Beirut and southern Lebanon, while Hizballah continued to target innocent Israelis and inflict casualties on its forces, was “doing too little.”

After the war, when Human Rights Watch released its report on use of cluster munitions, the rush to condemnation in the mainstream was again quick. As he often is, first out of the gate to cry “anti Israel!” was Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League.

Once again, Human Rights Watch has reached a skewed conclusion in its review of Israel’s actions in an armed conflict with its neighbors. In an irrational rush to judgment, Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of indiscriminately attacking Lebanese civilians.

The report looks at Israel’s military activity in a vacuum, ignoring the threats to Israel’s security and existence, ignoring the intentions and growing capabilities of its enemies, and ignoring the cynical actions of those who seek to hurt Israel and its citizens on the ground, or to make Israel look bad in the eyes of the world.

Israel, like any country, has a right to defend itself, and does so with every effort to prevent civilian casualties that, while tragic, are unavoidable during war. It is especially difficult to minimize the harm to civilians against an enemy who purposely operates from within the midst of a civilian population in callous disregard of the consequences to those civilians.

What say you now, Mr. Foxman? Will you condemn the Winograd commission for giving validity to these reports? For listening to the Israeli parents of Israeli soldiers, who wonder whether ethical lines were crossed? Will you present “absolute unanimity” in supporting Winograd’s efforts to understand what went wrong in this war you so loudly applauded? Or, instead, should there be “zero dissent” from the notion that Israel could ever do such things?

What about you, Mr. Sherman? Will you write another article in the Jewish Journal, or give a statement on the floor of the House, and ask yourself whether you were wrong? Will you question your urge and those of your colleagues to rush to the podia of Congress and rallies around town to say you “stand with” Israel, whatever you think that may mean? What does it mean? And how does blind support for a war, and refusal to consider its end, meet your definition?

Most importantly, will you consider apologizing to the parents of those Israeli soldiers who now have to ask whether their children engaged in war crimes? Will you apologize to the families of those Israeli soldiers who were killed or injured as a result of your insistence that Israel fight on? To the families of the innocent civilians killed in Israel and Lebanon? To the people of Lebanon as a whole?

Or do you still think Israel did “too little” last summer?

In the end, as far as I can tell, there has been silence from the mainstream Jewish community about Winograd’s meaning for our own relationship to and support of Israel. This report from the American Jewish Committee summed up well the many aspects of the interim report but left out any discussion of AJC’s own vocal support of Israel’s conduct.

Don’t get me wrong. The American Jewish community and American government needed to be there last summer to help the people of Israel through its crisis. One of the main things, however, that we needed to do was to look at the reality, from the luxury of distance and safety that we enjoy. To see the real problems with the war, to focus on the impact on the Lebanese population as well, and to push for a swift and meaningful resolution for all sides.

Instead, we sat on the sidelines and cheered. And held rallies and raised money. And now that those rallies have been shown – by an official Israeli commission – to have been in support of a questionable war, a war that did not achieve its stated ends, where is our introspection? Where is our search for a way to respond to such crises in the future? Where is our insurance that we truly support the people of Israel, to help them find as true a peace as possible, rather than simply backing any and all of its decisions, wise or not?

My 5th summer here has, as they always do, taught me a lot about Israel. Like with any place, I have seen and experienced plenty of good and bad. And when you’re an outsider, it’s often all too easy to focus on the bad parts (as it helps you avoid your own failings). But among the best parts of Israel is its willingness to consider (to a degree, anyway) its flaws. As I was reminded in a comment to a previous post on dailykos, some people choose to live here, rather than be outside preachers like those of us who float in and out for a few months at a time.

And those who live here are aware they are not perfect. Along with that is the notion that they need help from friends and family.

The question is what that help should be. Sadly, I don’t think we Americans, particularly mainstream American Jews, are capable of understanding that right now. We understand only “absolute unanimity” and “zero dissent.”

That is not help. That is not support. That is, in the end, a recipe for more pain and suffering. And, as the polls show, it’s a perfect way to create more distance between American Jews and the mainstream Jewish community.

And so, Judge Winograd, when your work is done here, please come to my home. To America. To Washington. And help us look at ourselves.

Otherwise, I fear you may correct your country’s mistakes but we will not correct ours.

Adishut Chinam, or Baseless Complacency

Published by
Brad Brooks-Rubin
July 23, 2007 in All Posts. 1 Comment

Much has been made in the past several years about the many linkages and comparisons of the United States — indeed the 21st century West in general — and the Roman Empire. In general, these comparisons focus on the lessons of what brought down the Roman Empire, and how we may be repeating or reinventing them.

And indeed, such comparisons can surely be made. But as the Jewish people prepare to commemorate the solemn day of Tisha B’Av (9th day of the Hebrew month of Av), marking the destruction of the First and Second Temples and a host of other calamities, I thought one of the primary lessons from this day, albeit somewhat revised, may actually provide a better guide for understanding the elites and even the middle classes of our world (and I include myself in this category). And I am thinking primarily about those in the United States and Israel, the two places I have experience living in recent times.

That is, we learn on Tisha B’Av that the Second Temple was destroyed because of “sinat chinam,” or “baseless hatred” among the Jewish people. Today, although you will find plenty of baseless hatred among Americans and Israelis, I see the bigger issue facing both societies — the one that I see as much more likely to result in future tragedy — as that of a concept I will call “adishut chinam,” or “baseless complacency.”

First, a quick bit of background. As I mentioned, Tisha B’Av is a day commemorating a series of tragic events in the history of the Jewish people. The first such event derives from the Book of Numbers in the Old Testament and is one of the roots of, not only of the length of the Exodus, but of all of the tragedies that have followed on Tisha B’Av. As summarized in Wikipedia:

On this day, the Twelve spies sent by Moses to observe the land of Canaan returned from their mission. Two of the spies (Joshua and Caleb) brought a positive report, but 10 of the spies brought an “evil report” about the land that caused the Children of Israel to cry, panic and despair of ever entering the “Promised land”. For this, they were punished by God that they would not enter, and that for all generations the day would become one of crying and misfortune for the descendants of the Children of Israel, the Jewish people.

Eventually, though, the Jewish people entered the Land of Canaan and began the process of creating the Land of Israel. King Solomon built the First Temple, which was destroyed in 586 BCE by King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. The Jewish people subsequently returned to the Land of Israel, and building of the Second Temple began in 516 (then massively expanded by Herod). The Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE.

And what we learn from rabbinic teaching is that the destruction of the Temples did not solely derive from military defeats at the hands of enemies; rather, they were manifestations of failings within the Jewish community itself: sins and sinat chinam. As this lovely lesson puts it (n.b.: “mikdash” is the Hebrew word for “Temple”), these are not separate concepts, but two sides of the same root problem:

The gemara tells us that the first Mikdash was destroyed because the people were involved in three major sins - idolatry, murder, and immorality. The second Mikdash was destroyed because of ’sinat chinam’ - pointless hate. The gemara concludes that we must therefore understand that sinat chinam is equal in its severity to those three cardinal sins.

Similarly, sinat chinam that was predominant at the time of the second Mikdash, reflects the same basic fault in society. Sinat chinam is a direct consequence of selfishness, a direct result of man being totally involved in himself, his interests, his needs, his life.

I would like to suggest that the gemara in Yoma is not simply doing a symmetrical equation between the three cardinal sins and sinat chinam; it is informing us that even though externally the causes of destruction of the first and second Batai Mikdash appear to be different, they are in fact one and the same. The flaw that eventually leads to the three cardinal sins is the exact same flaw that leads to sinat chinam. When man is in the center, when man can see no further than himself, then man is in fact god - when this is the reality of society, there can be no Mikdash, because implicit in the definition of Mikdash is that Hashem is G-d, that Hashem is the center of everything, that we all look to Hashem, and that is what guides our lives.

For those unfamiliar with the day of Tisha B’Av, it may sound like another version of Yom Kippur, as observant Jews fast for 25 hours and consider the concept of sin throughout the day. But this post from Jewlicious contrasts the two quite nicely, as well as answers the key question of how we solve the problem of sinat chinam:

However, whereas Yom Kippur focuses on individual sin, Tisha B’Av focuses more on collective sin
….

Sinat chinam is an interesting concept. It encompasses things like envy, greed and self-glorification. It encompasses treating others with contempt. It implies a lack of reason in a religion that almost always demands and insists upon reason. …

According to Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Israel’s first chief Rabbi, the second Temple, destroyed by sinat chinam, senseless hatred, will only be rebuilt by ahavat chinam, love without reason.

So taking off on all of these ideas, what I would like to propose is that, although sinat chinam may be rampant in our societies, what we suffer more from is adishut chinam, or baseless complacency. That is, we have no reason to be complacent about our existences, about our societies, or about the conflicts that they are engaged in. But for the large majority of the mainstream of both Israeli and American societies, we are turned inwards, concerned essentially with our own existences and security, unwilling to engage in the larger issues that face us and even moreso that face our neighbors. Thanks to technology and legal systems and economic systems and governments that enable us, invite us, all but command us to stay within our individual orbits, we feel no need to engage with or understand those around us.

In the United States, this is not hard to discern. Consider how often people really engage with the near-existential issues that our society faces. How often do people move beyond listening to or reading a news story (if they even get that far) about Iraq to attempt to engage with any of the possible solutions? How often do people move beyond the loud fracases on either side of the immigration debate to understand the real, individual lives that are at stake? Or the “what do we do about terrorism” debates? How many times do people move beyond basic assumptions about poverty to comprehend the existence of those who remain poor in our affluent country? How often do we remove ourselves from the center of our lives?

And, lest I be considered too preachy, let me be the first to put myself in the “just about never” categories of the above questions. Family, work, kids, friends, hobbies, house maintenance, etc. It’s all too much sometimes. The problems of the world are out there somewhere, away from me and my family. And, for better or for worse, given the options, I essentially prefer it that way.

Like me, I believe most Americans do not avoid the problems of our day out of hatred or spite. We do so out of fatigue, out of scheduling concerns, and, ultimately, out of complacency. We believe that these problems need to be solved somehow, by someone. But that we just don’t have the time to engage in solving them, and in the end, because the problems are just “out there,” they won’t come to our door any time soon. So we can let someone else worry about it because, well, my house needs to be cleaned, I have some work to, my kids need to go to the park, and we haven’t had a babysitter in over a month. It may not be true that I can let someone else deal with the bigger problems we face, that may be baseless, but unless something forces me to, will I do so myself?

Then my family came to Israel for 3 months, and my complacency became so apparent when reflected in what I have experienced here. What has been remarkable to me about this summer in Israel is the complacency that “security” has brought. Like in the U.S., there is so much to be non-complacent about here, even leaving aside the Palestinian conflict.

Consider this. At present, on the grounds of the Knesset and Supreme Court in the past week, you can find a tent protest (and signs around town) from some the settlers disengaged from Gaza in 2005, a similar protest by Bedouin complaining of home demolitions and a variety of conditions, and some of the refugees from Darfur who have been alternately jailed, released with unclear conditions, or sent back to Egypt.

(If you have not been following this last story of the Darfur refugees in Israel, you should be – the notion of Israel imprisoning or turning away refugees from a genocide is something hard to fathom.)

Those are just the problems that have risen to such degrees that people have organized around them to this level. The list of societal issues certainly goes on and on.

Then consider the Palestinians. In 1997 and 1998, when last I spent significant time here, the conflict was on people’s minds in Jerusalem and throughout Israel all of the time. Obviously, the primary concern of Israelis even then was terror, and an overarching sense of fear and dread about the next suicide bombing. But the immediacy of that violence also led to, I would argue, a greater awareness and understanding of what was happening in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Perhaps it was only because people wanted to know why the security measures weren’t working, but ultimately they wanted to know what was happening over there because it impacted what was happening over here so directly and tragically.

Now, fewer Israelis are engaged because they simply don’t feel like they need to know or care anymore. At least, as with Americans and Iraq and Afghanistan, not more than keeping up with the news. The long-term impact of the occupation – settlement construction, road construction, the Separation Wall, military activity, near-total separation of Israelis from Palestinians and of many Palestinians from other Palestinians — and the many failures of the Palestinian leadership and factions have come close to dividing the Palestinian people from themselves. As a result, with their division, with their decreased impact on Israeli society, Israelis enjoy the simple luxury of being able to not think about them very much.

The construction of the Separation Wall is a perfect example. When you live in Jerusalem, it is all around you. You catch glimpses from so many spots in the center of town. But relatively few have gone to Abu Dis or any of the other neighborhoods to see it up close. So few have worried about the long-term impact of this kind of separation, have engaged to try to minimize the impact on daily life. The notion of solidarity with those impacted by the Wall or occupation as a necessity because of the understanding that they will someday impact Israeli life one way or the other is, for the most part, gone.

And it makes sense. The problems are somewhere else, the economy is humming, and, for now, for once in such a long time, they don’t need to think about the conflict all that much. I can understand that kind of reaction; after all, I have benefited from and experienced it all summer with my family.

But ultimately this is simple complacency. Because, in the end, we know the problems still exist and that the current “solutions” are merely temporary. Yet because we don’t need to deal with them now, we can hope someone else will, and pray that they will just go away altogether. And all the while, we can turn inwards and try to forget the rest.

And in those hopes may well lie the seeds of our future crises.

To help me tie this back to sinat chinam, here is a fascinating passage from a 2001 Jerusalem Post article on sinat chinam:

What they [the Jews on the Exodus who believed the spies] doubted was their own worthiness. They realized that even after entering the Land they would be dependent on G-d’s beneficence. Feeling unworthy of His love, they concluded that G-d sought to kill them at the hands of the Caananite nations.

All sinat chinam derives from similar feelings of unworthiness. Those who lack any confidence in themselves live their lives in constant comparison to others. They cast a critical eye on others so that they might feel better about themselves. The impulse to speak derogatorily of others reflects low self-esteem, which finds salve only in putting others down.

Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, founder of the Mussar Movement, once witnessed a boy pushing a playmate down in order to make himself taller. Reb Yisrael predicted that nothing would ever come of that boy. Had he tried instead to make himself taller instead by jumping up, said Reb Yisrael, there would have been hope.

Today we are all little boys pushing down our playmates.
….

Sensing our own failures, we console ourselves that everybody else is doing worse. Our entire society is made up of people lacking a sense of positive achievement, who can sustain themselves only by cataloguing the failures of others.
…

The Torah cure for sinat chinam is to stop judging ourselves in comparison to others. For viewing others we need a benevolent eye that accentuates the positive. The critical, judgmental eye is best reserved for ourselves.

So, too, do we remain little boys today. Perhaps we may not all be little boys pushing down our playmates. What I see is that Americans and Israelis are societies of people who do not notice that our playmates have been pushed down. We do not pick them up off the ground and help rub out their clothes, maybe see if we can find an adult to help mediate.

We do not understand that our complacency, our contentment to turn away and play with our own things, enables the pushers to continue their pushing. Eventually, though, those who seek to push others down will get around to all of us who remain complacent. One way or the other, unless we work together, unless we decide that it’s time to engage, to act, to fix, then they will eventually push everyone down. And we will have another tragedy to add to the list on Tisha B’Av.

As we saw, the cure for baseless hatred is baseless love. So I believe the cure for baseless complacency must be baseless engagement. Not just engaging when it’s in your interest to do so, or when it involves an issue you happen to be connected to. But engaging on whatever possible, whenever possible. Even in very small ways. Anything to let those who would seek to push our societies down know that people do care, that we understand what they’re doing.

We must let them know that, although we will not simply fight them back with their methods and just try to push them down before they get to us, we will move beyond our complacency and work with those who have been pushed.

If we don’t, if we remain complacent, then we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

The Missing

Published by
Brad Brooks-Rubin
July 11, 2007 in Personal Reflections, The Settlements and Brad. 5 Comments

Probably the best way to start this is with a short bit of accidental wisdom from my older son. I should also probably stop there, too, but since it works so well with my thoughts on my recent trip to Hebron, that I thought I would add the two together. It has been quite hard for me to think about what to say about the essential elimination of life in the Old City of Hebron, or how to say it. Luckily I can always count on the brilliance of a 2.5 year old to help me out of a jam.

We have been trying to teach Eli a bit of Hebrew, or at least get him comfortable with it (he can actually count all the way to arba-im (40) quickly and without a mistake). One of the books we have been reading with him over time is a Hebrew translation of Shel Silverstein’s classic “The Missing Piece.” We always read the Hebrew first, then explain what it means in English, trying to instill at least a few words. But he knows the title primarily in English (it’s a mouthful in Hebrew).

Then, the other day, his class at the YMCA had their end of the year party. So we decided this would be a good occasion to break out a t-shirt of his that we picked up at home awhile back; it’s a red children’s shirt that simply has “Peace,” “Shalom” (in Hebrew) and “Salaam” (in Arabic) on it.

When I put the shirt on him, he looked down and saw the writing.

“What does the shirt say, Papa?”

“‘Peace’, Eli. It says ‘peace’ in English, Hebrew and Arabic.”

“Oh.” Pause. “Like ‘The Missing Piece’?”

I laugh. I then shake my head at how ingenious this is. Then I realize he is still waiting for an answer. “Well, not like the piece missing from the circle in the book. This peace means when people don’t fight with each other. But it’s kind of like the piece in the book, because this kind of peace is also missing.”

“Oh. That peace on my shirt is also missing?”

“Sadly, it is.”

By this time, he was more interested in the Lego blocks he had built into a small column and called his “saxophone,” which he then started to play, so that was that. But it was one of those moments with your kids that you never forget.

And, as I said, it helped me focus on a lot that has been on my mind. Of course, in any place in the world, it’s still a cute story and probably one that any parent would be proud to retell. But here, it comes with so much more.

Because, at any point in time, it’s important not just to know that peace is missing, but why it’s missing. And that changes over time, and is always somewhat different depending on whether you are talking about political/governmental peace or person-to-person/societal peace. Although the former type is what we spend far too much time talking about, it is the latter that really counts, in my mind.

And that peace, the peace between people, is missing because when you are in Israel, the Palestinians are missing. Almost entirely.

And when you’re in Palestine (Eastern Palestine, anyway), although Israel is everywhere – in the form of Jewish-only settlements, Jewish-only roads, the Army, the Air Force and the Wall — and although Israeli soldiers and settlers are all around, the Israeli people with whom the Palestinians must make peace are also missing.

I have remarked on this in other posts from here, but nowhere was this more evident than in Hebron. The Old City of Hebron, the area of the once vibrant souq/casbah, is, quite simply, gone. Military orders, settler violence, settler expansionism, soldiers changing policies from day to day, decimation of the Palestinian economy. Put them all together and you have what I saw in Hebron – shops welded shut, houses empty, streets barren, markets looted, bushes and vines growing in the middle of once-busy streets. (The activists I went with even had pictures from 1999 to prove it, but my memories from being in these bustling areas in 1997 and 1998 were pretty vivid).

(If you want more info, there’s a lot out there. But Meretz USA has a good archive of recent articles and some background pieces at its “Hebron Watch” page. But if you want the full story in one place, look no further than this, as-usual incredible report from B’tselem from this past May.)

I wandered around much of the day taking pictures of essentially the same thing: missing-ness and emptiness. Empty streets. Empty sidewalks. Empty shops (except for those which have been confiscated by settlers to use as new apartments). As B’tselem called it so aptly, it is a ghost town.

Or, at least, a town of Palestinian ghosts, as they exist only in memory. The number of settlers in the city itself is still small (approximately 600 or so, but it gets much larger if you include the ever-expanding Kiryat Arba and other area settlements), but not only are their numbers and their efforts to confiscate Palestinian property increasing, they are ever-present through graffiti that defiles probably 50% of the now-closed shops.

Graffiti like:

“There are Arabs, there are rats.” (Makes more sense as graffiti in the Hebrew, as it’s a bit of a play on words: “Yesh Aravim, yesh achbarim”)

“Arabs to the gas chambers.”

“Arabs are sand n—ers.” (the one I saw of this is signed by the JDL, or Jewish Defense League)

And perhaps most startling to me was that within a 2-minute walk of graffiti saying “Arabs out” was a sign showing the names of the Jewish congregations in the U.S. that had helped support the Hebron settlements with an ambulance. And who knows what else.

Settlers and right-wing American Jews present. Violently and terribly present. Nearly all Palestinians missing.

Such violence and hatred in a city so holy, within view of the reputed tomb of our ancestors Abraham and Sarah, who kept their tent open on all sides to welcome visitors. What would Abraham and Sarah think of a city that had been closed off to its former Palestinian residents, but done in their names?

I still have chills from hearing the muezzin’s call to prayer from the Machpelah/Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, which is now divided into a Jewish holy site and a mosque. What does it mean to hear the call to prayer when there is almost no one who can get there? After all, on one of the main streets that a Muslim could theoretically walk to in order to get to the mosque, I was stopped by a border policeman. And he asked me but one simple question.

“Are you Jewish?”

I hesitated. First because I hadn’t quite understood, or expected, the question. Then I realized what he was asking. And I hesitated again because those few hours had again shaken my beliefs, my understanding of Judaism.

Indeed, I had to answer “yes, I am a Jew” in order to even walk on this road.

Now, in the pre-Civil rights era U.S., unless you were participating in an action, the issue of which restaurant or hotel or drinking fountain you used was pre-determined, in some way, by circumstances and factors beyond your immediate control. Whether you were white or “colored” did not really need to be asked.

But, because I was not wearing a kippah or dressed in black and white, the answer was in my hands. And in some way, I reazlied that an answer of “yes, I am a Jew” was an answer of:

“Yes, I believe in segregation and transfer.”

“Yes, I believe I have the right to walk on this street, and the Palestinians who used to live here do not, nor should any other non-Jews.”

“Yes, I equate Judaism with the gun in your hands, with the settlers whom you protect, and with their ideology which you help implement.”

And, mostly because I am not quick enough on my feet (literally or figuratively) and my car was at the other end of this street, I, in fact, answered “yes.” And I am still thinking about everything it meant. And everything I would like it to mean.

But more than anything, I am thinking about the Palestinians I did not see. Those who are missing. In fact, they were also missing from much of the drive to Hebron. I even read in Ha’aretz that the Jewish National Fund, Ministry of Tourism, and Mount Hebron Regional Council are publishing tourist guides that describe the beauty of the region and its attractiveness as a hiking and travel getaway, in no small part because you can now go as a Jew without really having to encounter a Palestinian. The article is worth reading for some of the quotes, but I’ll excerpt this from the article:

In these publications, there is no separation wall, no bypass roads. There are no roadblocks set up next to almost every Palestinian village, limiting the residents’ freedom of movement to the point of feeling suffocated. There are no ridges that have been harmed to make way for settlements that look like fortified and alienated suburbs. There are no cave dwellers who have been banished from their homes on Mount Hebron, and no pupils who cannot go to school because their settler neighbors constantly harass them. No Palestinian communities appear on the map published in the booklet about the Hebron region.
…

The daily Palestinian nightmare gives way and disappears for the benefit of publications that realize the dreams of the Israeli hiker. Now, in addition to the transportation and security infrastructure that allows the Israeli tourist to avoid encountering nearly any Palestinians and only see their communities from afar, there is a marketing and publishing infrastructure. Awaiting the hiker, for the most part, is good food, amazing scenery and spectacular sunrises. The only thing that remains for Israeli hikers is simply to come, to forget all their troubles - and particularly those of the Palestinians.

More and more, Palestinians have simply been removed from the narrative in Israel, from the reality. They are somewhere else, on the other side of a wall, missing. And so too are the Israelis missing from the lives of Palestinians, whose reality grows more and more to be of one where Jews simply exist as Israeli soldiers, as settlers, as the American Jews who send money to support both groups (Friends of the IDF being the military support side).

As political developments evolve in Ramallah and Jerusalem and Gaza, as these discussions between leaders of peoples who do not exist for one another except in the media and in images of the past, I will wonder back to Hebron, wonder back to everything that is missing from this holy place. Palestinians are missing, Judaism is missing, Israelis are missing.

God is missing.

And ultimately, that is why the peace on my son’s t-shirt is missing. But perhaps, one day, like the circle in the Silverstein story, we’ll all find the right piece of peace.

To do that, of course, we have to find each other first.

Chicklets, Psalms, and St. Anne’s Church

Published by
Brad Brooks-Rubin
June 27, 2007 in Personal Reflections, Brad and All Posts. 2 Comments

A few days ago, I found what I think is my new favorite place in all of Jerusalem. The Church of St. Anne in the Old City, next to the Pools of Bethesda (close to Lion’s (or St. Stephen’s) Gate). I had heard great things over the years but never managed to make it. Within 30 minutes, I was a convert (pun only slightly intended). Why would this be my new favorite place?

Because it is, and it inspires, what I have always believed to be the essence of Jerusalem: holiness, awe, uniqueness. A place where the most mundane experience becomes extraordinary solely because it happened to you in Jerusalem.

If you’ve been to St. Anne, you may have an idea of what I mean. Built in the 12th century, it’s a church renowned for its near-perfect acoustics. As such, people and groups from around the world come there not just to visit and look around and marvel at something so old, but to sing. Like they never have before. Because it’s Jerusalem.

It’s extraordinary, really: one group walks in, sits in the front pews. Then, with hardly a word, they start singing. Ave Maria. Amazing Grace. Or whatever hymn or song moves their group the most. They sing and sing, then stop, get up, walk down to see the tomb (or at least what some believe to be the tomb) of Anne (Mary’s mother) and location of Mary’s birth. In the meantime, another group takes their place in the pews and sings their own hearts and souls out. Maybe someone has a guitar, but no one needs a microphone, and mostly there are just human voices, inspired from the depths of their beliefs, whatever those may be.

I watched four groups in a row do this the other day, while my baby boy looked up at me in amazement and joy. (The down side is all of the singing makes for quite a distraction from his bottle). And while he was looking at me so intently, I wondered why.

Why would people from around the world (two of the groups I saw were American, one was Italian, and the other from somewhere in Eastern Europe; a Japanese group was on its way in when I left) come here to sing like this?

Why? Because the church is renowned for acoustics? Maybe. But there are plenty of places in the world with good acoustics; I think more so because it’s Jerusalem. It’s a city that inspires – at least the idea of the city inspires – people to believe a little bit more than they do anywhere else. Maybe because they think God, whichever version of God, can hear them a little more clearly here. Maybe because they feel inspired by the examples set by those who have come before, feel that they’ll start to hear and heed the words of Jesus a bit more when they walk on some of the same stones that he did.

Maybe because there is a little Jerusalem syndrome in all of us – a moment where all of us feel that we can be just a bit more than we are anywhere else. That we can leave real or normal life for a moment and be, well, holy. That we can indeed save this world that needs saving so badly.

Maybe because Psalm 122 still rings true for all of us.

A Song of Ascents; of David. I rejoiced when they said unto me: ‘Let us go unto the house of HaShem.’
Our feet are standing within thy gates, O Jerusalem;
Jerusalem, that art builded as a city that is compact together;
Whither the tribes went up, even the tribes of HaShem, as a testimony unto Israel, to give thanks unto the name of HaShem.
For there were set thrones for judgment, the thrones of the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; may they prosper that love thee.
Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.
For my brethren and companions’ sakes, I will now say: ‘Peace be within thee.’
For the sake of the house of HaShem our G-d I will seek thy good.

I think we all pray – and sing — for the peace of Jerusalem, for peace within its walls because we believe that if there is peace here, then peace should reign everywhere. Conversely, the further from peace is Jerusalem, the further we are all from peace, from holiness, from ourselves. So we come here from all over to be a part of the city for a moment, to sing as loud as we can, in the hope that someone will hear.

It is all of this that is on my mind when I pull up to a traffic light in East Jerusalem, whether down the hill from the Regency near Hebrew U. or close to the A-Ram check point, and face 2-4 Palestinian kids trying to sell Chicklets or rub a cloth on my windshield for a few shekels. A few shekels I never seem to have on me, or that I sometimes admit to not wanting to give over. The kids are usually there, most hours of the day and night. Not in school. In need of new clothes, new shoes. Probably needing some nourishment.

Of course, you see kids like this, kids in need of money, of a future, in so many cities. But this is Jerusalem – it just doesn’t feel right. Kids like these shouldn’t exist here. They, too, should be singing, believing, becoming, just like those of us who stop through Jerusalem in the course of our lives. Those of who are privileged enough not to be born into their world – divided by walls, separated by their religion and ethnicity, discussed rhetorically by so many but understood practically by so few. They live here – so close, yet so far away from what Jerusalem is. And yet they are also its future.

The words of Psalm 122, the songs of St. Anne, and these ideas are also on my mind when I pull up to the light near the Malha Mall, near our new place. There, at least in the evenings, you will find Haredi men selling various items, most notably copies of Tehilim, the Book of Psalms.

(I thought I saw one of them selling bean pies and copies of the Final Call, a la members of the Nation of Islam, but then I realized I was daydreaming. Quite an image, though, if you think about it.)

Do they sell these items because, like the Palestinian kids across town, they and their families desperately need the money, need something to build hope for the future with? Maybe. I admit I haven’t asked. But they certainly look a lot less in need.

Perhaps, rather than them being in need, they stand on this corner because they believe the rest of us to be in need. They realize that too many of us have missed the words of Psalm 122, and so many others, reminding us of the glories of the city whose streets we drivers honk and crawl and gesticulate our way through all day and night. Perhaps they understand the glory of this city and want to remind those of us too busy with normal life that we are not in a normal city.

We are in Jerusalem: you don’t need gum, you need God.

A few weeks back in Haaretz, Sayed Kashua took a break from his normal weekly writing and published an interview with Hillel Cohen, author of the new book “The Market Square Is Empty: The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem, 1967-2007.” It’s a fascinating interview (especially to hear how Cohen spent years on his own roaming East Jerusalem and the Territories, learning from the streets), but this is what stuck out for me:

…official Israel can celebrate united Jerusalem’s fourth decade more comfortably than ever. What’s left of the future capital of the Palestinian state are heaps of ruins, a political phantom; a surrounded city, encircled by settlements and isolated from the rest of the West Bank, a city that had already been dying for 15 years before the separation fence came to finish it off.

Cohen speaks of how Jerusalem has become more theoretical, more spiritual for Palestinians, yet with the reality of Jerusalem existing as a capital, or even as a truly functioning and integrated part of Palestinian society, ever further away.

One need only look at the two sides of Jerusalem to see how true this is – Palestinian kids selling Chicklets and Orthodox Jews selling Psalms. The luxury to sell Psalms, to peddle food for the soul, for the heart, for Jerusalem is one that only half of this city has. That half has come much closer to realizing its own dreams, its own notions of what Jerusalem might be. Even if they are sharp divisions about the scope of religious influence, religious interpretation, or religious identification, there is no question that those are questions that do not require one to sell Chicklets to try to survive.

And while much of Palestinian Jerusalem is not at all impoverished, and indeed includes some of the wealthiest anywhere in Palestinian society, the truth is that their part of this city is “ruins.” Not just because their kids must sell Chicklets, but because the evolution of this city – its settlements, its walls, its permitting authorities - - has left them with a Jerusalem address, but not a Jerusalem reality or a Jerusalem dream.

That reality, that dream may only exist in the voices of the faithful at the Church of St. Anne. Those voices, no matter how ignorant to the realities of the people around them, still contain the essence of that dream that is so necessary for the future. And it is one that I hope everyone gets to hear some day: the dream of Jerusalem.

Choice and Life

Published by
Brad Brooks-Rubin
June 19, 2007 in Personal Reflections, Peace Process, Brad and All Posts. 3 Comments

Reading Secretary of State Rice’s remarks yesterday about the situation in Palestine brought to mind a few questions and thoughts about “choice” and “life” in Eastern and Western Palestine and Israel. Here is what she had to say about the issue:

A fundamental choice confronts the Palestinians, and all people in the Middle East, more clearly now, than ever. It is a choice between violent extremism on the one hand and tolerance and responsibility on the other. Hamas has made its choice. It has sought to attempt to extinguish democratic debate with violence and to impose its extremist agenda on the Palestinian people in Gaza. Now, responsible Palestinians are making their choice and it is the duty of the international community to support those Palestinians who wish to build a better life and a future of peace.

Aside from the fact that this sounds a whole lot like the quote I posted from the American Jewish Committee’s statement from last week, I am somewhat amazed to hear that the Palestinians are confronted with a choice, at least as of right now. No doubt the Secretary knows far more than I do about what’s happening on the ground, but from where I sit, behind (in front of?) the Wall, I am hard-pressed to comprehend this “choice” that so clearly faces Palestinians on June 19, 2007.

First there are the Palestinians in Gaza (or maybe we just don’t consider them Palestinians anymore?). What choices do they have? Some would like to leave, perhaps they would like to choose “tolerance and responsibility.” But if they can get through Hamas checkpoints and arrests, Israel won’t let them leave. They’re stuck. Now the Israeli government won’t even let in Magen David Adom ambulances into the Erez crossing area, for fear of infiltration. So I have trouble seeing the choice there.

They could choose to try to sneak into Egypt, as a few hundred have chosen to. But again, even if they can get in to Egypt, I’m not so sure that’s a destination brimming with “tolerance and responsibility” or where they can find “a better life and a future of peace.”

Should they take to the streets? Well, if they do so with guns, they’ll likely be labeled terrorists. Or, even if supported nominally by the West, they will likely end up where Fatah has: running for their lives. And if they choose to stand up and take to the streets without guns, they’ll likely face the wrath of Hamas and its “violent extremism.” And since the international community is leaving Hamas to its own devices, without any kind of negotiations or interaction other than basic aid, there will hardly be much leverage should more such carnage happen.

Or should they simply sit back and wait? Well, if they simply do what they can to survive physically and economically to make sure they and their families live until tomorrow, then we will probably label them as Hamas sympathizers because they stayed in Gaza and did not rise up.

In the end, not a lot of real choices. Next there are the Palestinians in the West Bank. Sure, the aid is coming, the tax revenues are finally flowing, and the support seems steadfast.

But, of course, that’s support for Fayyad and Abbas and, apparently, for Fatah, not necessarily the people. Now, Fayyad has managed over the years to maintain a solid record and profile, so I can understand the move in his direction. But this is quite clearly a Fatah and Abbas-led government.

Yet it is Fatah, after all, that was deemed so corrupt that the Palestinian people so overwhelmingly voted for Hamas, despite most not agreeing with its ideology. And in spite of millions of dollars of aid from the U.S. directly to Fatah to help it try to win those elections. As the Washington Post editorialized – in a piece appropriately called “Hamas’s Choice” – after the elections:

Many Palestinians who voted for Hamas don’t support the Islamists’ fundamentalist agenda: Polls show that large majorities want an end to violence and a resumption of peace talks with Israel. Wednesday’s vote was not an embrace of extremism, but — as President Bush suggested yesterday — a rejection of the corrupt and incompetent clique of leaders left behind by Yasser Arafat. Since Arafat’s death more than a year ago, his Fatah movement had been unable to reform itself or control its violent elements, despite the good intentions of Mr. Abbas. Now, perhaps, a new generation of secular leaders will be able to purge Fatah and prepare to offer Palestinians a better alternative, while crooks and armed thugs are cut from the government’s payroll.

But here we are again: Fayyad is new, but this is still Fatah and Fatah is still led by Abbas. Can we really be sure there will be no corruption? That the government will actually work for the people?

And although the Palestinian people, both in Gaza and the West Bank, so clearly did not choose them in the open and fairly-contested elections in 2006, they are now supposed to choose them? Now that…what? Now that they have been routed in Gaza but held on and propped up in the West Bank?

I don’t necessarily believe Abbas to be the problem, but how can he be seen as the only “choice” for a “better life and a future of peace,” two things he clearly has not brought to the Palestinian people, even when he was in complete control?

What if the Palestinians in the West Bank want to choose someone else now, some party other than Fatah, because, unlike the Bush Administration apparently, their memories go back before January 2006? Will they be allowed? Will this be a choice they can make? Can they choose Marwan Barghouthi?

What if they wait six months or a year, and nothing much has changed? Or are they allowed to “choose” only if it means choosing the one choice we might approve of?

What if Palestinians in the West Bank would like to choose a “better life and a future of peace” that involves, say, being able to get to school or work on a road of their choice? Or getting to school or work at all? Or trying to find work in and enter Israel? Or pray at al-Aqsa? If they would like to live a future of peace and “tolerance and responsibility” on land not surrounded by settlements and the IDF? How about if they would like to build a larger home on land adjacent to their house, but for which their only title document may date from the Ottoman era? Can they choose to build and not have their home demolished?

What say you, Madame Secretary, can they make those choices? Will you stand so clearly behind them then as you do when it is Hamas on the other side? Will you stand with the Palestinians when the choices are a little harder to make, to implement? When they involve pushing Israel a bit more than you have chosen to so far? Will you support their choices then?

Now, I do not mean to imply the Palestinians have no choices to make, or have not had choices to make over the past decades of Occupation and Oslo. Surely they have, and in so many cases, some Palestinians have made terrible choices that have resulted in only more pain and tragedy for them and for so many Israelis.

But perhaps it’s time for the Administration, for Israel, for the American Jewish community, for the West to own up to their own choices here. To stand behind the Palestinians, to support the choices that they believe will lead to this future of peace the Secretary speaks of. Not just asking them to choose the choices that Israel would choose for them. Call that whatever you want, but do not call it choice.

No matter what you believe about how or why we got here, no matter whose choices or mistakes or ideology you would place blame on, I pray that we all realize these choices are not really for the Palestinians to make alone. They are for all of us to make.

Two final notes – one from the Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh and one from Moses (quite a duo). Shehadeh, as many of you will know, has written several must-read books on the situation here, both from legal and personal perspectives. One of his older memoirs is entitled “The Third Way.” As he explains about halfway down in this piece, the title is actually based on a saying from Treblinka:

Raja himself demonstrated in choosing the title of his book, The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank. On the back cover, the origin of the phrase “the third way” is explained: “From the wisdom of the Treblinka concentration camp: ‘Faced with two alternatives-always choose the third.’ Between mute submission and blind hate-I choose the third way. I am Samid [the steadfast].

For his part, Moses, at the end of Deuteronomy, while ending his leadership of the Jewish people, announces a second covenant of sorts with the people. That is, the first covenant under Moses’ leadership took place at Sinai, but Abravanel teaches us that this covenant was only with those souls present at Sinai. But as the people stood ready to enter the Land, a second covenant – binding on the souls of all those present and all future generations – is initiated.

And within that covenant, we read the following verses in Deuteronomy 30:

15 See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil,

16 in that I command thee this day to love HaShem thy G-d, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His ordinances; then thou shalt live and multiply, and HaShem thy G-d shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest in to possess it.

17 But if thy heart turn away, and thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them;

18 I declare unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish; ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over the Jordan to go in to possess it.

19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed;

On the Shabbat following 9/11, I gave a d’var torah on this passage and those around it (you can see most of the text excerpted on the Shalom Center’s website here). And I essentially suggested there that we should, perhaps in a sort of post-9/11 covenant, read the end of this passage to say not just “choose life” for you and your seed, but for you and all seeds to live.

So, since it did not exactly play out that way post-9/11, let me ask this again, post-Gaza. Let us not see only two choices, involving two failed options, innumerable failed leaders, tragically failed realities. Let us use this moment, all of us, to be like Shehahdeh, to choose neither submission nor hate, but to be steadfast: steadfast in our pursuit of what Moses commanded, to choose life.

Choose all life: Israeli, Palestinian, American, Iraqi, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and those of every seed on earth.

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