Rabbi 360

With the news of the impending ceasefire and hostage deal announced Wednesday, the tragedy that has befallen Israel and Palestine since October 7, 2023 has hopefully come to an end. As the Israeli cabinet has most recently approved the deal, many have confidence that we are on the path to ending this war. I know for some that confidence won’t become apparent until the hostages start returning home on Sunday, so we will wait with bated breath for the next few days.

It has been a most difficult 15 months. Throughout that time we have imagined the terror and fear of captivity, watched in horror at the ongoing destruction of rockets and airstrikes, mourned the death of children and the fracturing of whole communities. We have prayed for safety, advocated for a just peace, contributed to humanitarian aid, and promoted the notion of our shared humanity.

And the conflict has challenged Jewish communities—the tendency to “take sides” has pitted people against each other, terms have been weaponized, judgment has been prioritized over inquiry, relationship and belonging has become conditional.

Like with any moment like this, we celebrate and recognize the work that lay ahead. There is much healing to be done. We must reckon with the incredible amount of destruction and pain and trauma. After this mutually negotiated settlement comes the ongoing work of what it means to be in relationship and dialogue with each other. With the laying down of arms comes the grieving of the dead and the healing of the (physically and emotionally) wounded. With the withdrawal of aggression comes the need to rebuild and reconstruct. This ceasefire is both an end and a beginning.

As with the practice of the hostage families counting the days their loved ones have been in captivity, I have most recently been generally taking all things going on in our world day-by-day. This terrible conflict, combined with the imminent ascension of a new US administration, the wildfires continuing to rage in California, and a host of other challenges, has made life overwhelming. So while there is much speculation over what will happen at any given time, I have been tending to take it slow and absorb what develops rather than imagine what may or may not.

And as we move forward, I personally hold on to a number of ideas and thoughts that will continue to inform me as I engage with these issues (in no particular order):

• Israel is a historical and political reality, the result of an expression of Jewish desire and survival, the home to family and friends, a place of refuge, and a contemporary center of Jewish culture.
• The futures of Israel and Palestine are inextricably linked, and one people can not be made free at the expense of another. We should desire the liberation and security of all.
• As someone who feels deeply the desire and need for peace, I truly believe it is damaging to the Jewish soul to continue to occupy and maintain control over another population. I pray for it to end soon.
• As a member of and leader within the Jewish people, I can not turn away from Jewish history or half of the world’s Jewish population.
• Anti-Jewish sentiment has been and is real, and runs the gamut from outright hostility and terror, to ignorance, to the denial of Jewish history and experience, to appropriation, to forcing Judaism into a lens or framework not its own. (And, as a corollary, insofar as anti-Jewish sentiment is an inherent part of Christianity, and Christianity is a dominant force in American and European history, we need to examine the structural anti-Judaism that is a part of our society.)
• While the term has been twisted about in many ways, Zionism is a modern Jewish movement and ideology of survival and self-determination, and attempts to exclude it from the spectrum of Jewish identities and expressions, or to isolate it from other similar movements, or to conflate an ideology with the manifestations of that ideology (political or governmental, etc.) I believe are problematic.
• Jewish identity and tradition is not a monolith, it can not be reduced to any one thing. As Jews and as humans we tend to live in the “both/and” and not the “either/or.”
• Jewish existence and continuity is and will always be a priority for me, and I’m sustained by the fact that Jews have persevered for millennia in the face of many who would actively or passively seek to destroy us. (Why I love Tot Shabbat so much.)
• History informs but does not dictate the future, whether that history is 2000 years old or 75 years old or one year old. It also can’t be undone, just reckoned with.
• And all human beings are created in the image of God, and thus worthy of honor and respect. It also means we all have the capacity for love, compassion, justice and teshuvah.

I, of course, do not have the answer to the big questions. I also can not be responsible for the soul of the entire Jewish people. I can be, and remain, responsible for the souls of the Jewish community I serve. It is a blessing to me to serve my congregation, to comfort sufferings, to travel life’s path alongside, to cry and laugh together, to pray together in song or silence, to help find meaning in identity and a spiritual framework for the chaos that is life. And to the extent that Israel is a part of that, I want to help those I serve find an avenue and vehicle through which they can give voice to that in a way that fits with their needs, while maintaining the larger vision of a diverse, inclusive, mutually responsible Jewish community.

And as I often do, I will offer poetry, this an offering from Yehuda Amichai z”l:

An Appendix to the Vision of Peace

Don’t stop after beating the swords

into plowshares, don’t stop! Go on beating

and make musical instruments out of them.

Whoever wants to make war again

will have to turn them into plowshares first.

May it be so. Let us pray for peace, and let us be the peacemakers.