The Gritty Hope of Hanukah

Hanukah in our moment may seem to be just another commercialized holiday, and certainly I know and love children who like it for the presents.  But the heart of Hanukah is not just a feel-good, superficial matter.  It’s gritty: a story of the small and righteous triumphing over the mighty and cruel, a story of rebellion, a story of recovery after catastrophe, and the hope in action that gave our ancestors the capacity to look at the mess of a desecrated Temple and light the lamp against all odds.

We tell these stories and light our candles every year as the moon wanes into nothingness in the winter sky closest to the solstice.  And even though our contemporary technologies make us forget what it’s like to endure long, dark winter nights, if we dare to open our eyes to the events of our world, we will know what it is to be overwhelmed by great darkness.  In these circumstances, our Hanukah menorahs invite us into a practice of resistance.  One candle at a time, through the darkest of dark.

Here is a tidbit from my journal:

In times of darkness
when the sacred temples are strewn with filth,
when corruption, greed, cruelty and vice,
pervade the halls of power,
when mad lawless con men
desecrate the most holy places
perverting and distorting,
moving fast and breaking things…

Would you have the courage, the chutzpah,
the vision, faith, trust, love
to light that fire?

When you know it won’t be enough,
when that light might draw attention
in winter’s night?

Would you keep making oil
even if you know it will take too long,
even if you can’t see how it could work
without a miracle?

This world now needs us
to say yes,
to light lights
and protect them,
to be in defiance –
yes, hoping for miracles –
but doing our part in the meantime,
believing that we can yet kindle
kindness, integrity, generosity, goodness,
remembering – it only takes one candle
to fill a room with light.

Hanukah asks us to practice
un-despair, un-passivity.
Don’t just cry in the dark –
dedicate, rededicate,
light your lamp
even in the rubble
of what monsters have destroyed –
especially then.

Every light matters.
So find what you can illuminate
and shine.

Text of Healing or Text of Violence? Interpretation is Everything

Years ago I was rabbi-ing in SF and preparing for a Bar Mitzvah service for a boy whose father was a dual Israeli American citizen.  The parashah was Chayei Sarah, Genesis 23:1-25:18.  The father was worried because he thought of this parashah as what he called, “the settler parashah,” and he didn’t know what I might make of it or what lessons his son might learn.  In his experience, the text had been used to justify the harsh Israeli occupation of lands in the West Bank, an occupation he saw as a moral stain, a threat to the viability of the State of Israel, and a distortion of the Jewish values he held dear. 

What made this the “settler portion”? 

Genesis 23:8-19 recounts Abraham purchasing land near Hebron to bury Sarah when she dies.  This is not some Divine promise. It’s an ancient real estate receipt.  Because of this text and others like it, the cave became a sacred site, holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians for thousands of years – a place of prayer and pilgrimage.  But this text, like any other scripture, does not exist independently in some pristine chamber of singular meaning.  It exists in the mouths and minds of generations of readers and teachers. 

Interpretation is everything.

In my lifetime, the holy cave of Machpelah was desecrated by tragedy and violence when, in 1994, Baruch Goldstein walked into the holy site, murdered 29 Muslim worshippers and injured 125 others.  It is a wound that will take generations to heal.

We cannot full understand what insanity led Goldstein to his horrific act, or if he understood Genesis 23:17-18 to give him permission, but one thing we do know is that he was influenced by the Kach movement, a far-right extremist, nationalist movement led by Meir Kahane.  The movement was once totally banned and shunned by mainstream Israeli politicians.  No longer.  Just last week, Knesset Deputy Speaker Nissim Vaturi from the Likud party publicly said, “Kahane was right about many things.”  A year ago, the US State Department sharply condemned Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, who controls the Israeli Police, for praying at the grave of Meir Kahane.

In recent weeks, Jewish settlers all over the West Bank have been conducting a campaign of violence that I can only name as pogroms, and while they may not all have explicit ties to Goldstein, Kahane or the Kach movement, they are the contemporary heirs of that legacy of hate and the dangerous distortion of scripture to justify terrible behavior.  As David Issacharoff titled his article for Haaretz on November 13, 2025, “This Week, Israel Would Have Made Jewish Supremacist Meir Kahane Proud.”  

This is all to say, if that Israeli American Dad was worried about this torah portion 15 years ago, those worries would be all the more intense in today’s climate of settler violence and extremism.

So what is a rabbi to say about this portion?  The “settler portion”?

It may surprise you (it shocked that Dad years ago!) that what I see in this parashah is not biblical justification for Jewish dominance or land ownership, but instead a story of inter-generational healing, peace-making and reconciliation.  As today’s violence in the West Bank explodes, I feel all the more need to lift up those threads in our story, threads which indicate: it is possible for peace to be made, even when trauma is real and deep and complex, it is possible for new generations to heal from the past and forge better relationships than their ancestors, it is possible for readers of sacred text to find lessons of peace and healing rather than justification for more cycles of violence.

Back to the torah:  First let’s just recap some of the wounds that need healing in this family.

We had the bitter rivalry between Sarah and Hagar and some kind of incident between Abraham’s two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.  Sarah then persuaded Abraham to cast Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness to their near deaths.  Then we had last week’s parashah, in which Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac. 

Which brings us to the beginning of today’s portion in which the first thing that happens is Sarah’s death.  Classical midrash (Leviticus Rabbah, Midrash Tanhuma and others), tell us that Sarah died of shock and heartbreak when she saw a vision of Isaac’s near-sacrifice.  As for Isaac, he never spoke to his father again.

So a lot of trauma here. 

But I would argue that after Sarah’s death, the rest of today’s parashah outlines a trajectory of healing and reconciliation.  Hints and traces are visible both in the text and in the rabbinic commentaries and midrash that come after.

As a congregational rabbi of 20 years, I can tell you, death can really change the dynamics in a family.  For good or for bad.  As the ultimate disrupter, death opens up possibilities for healing, conflict, power shifts, inheritance squabbles, new closeness or permanent estrangement. I would argue that Sarah’s death does the same. 

We know that Sarah’s death was hard for Isaac.  Genesis 24:67 comments that when he marries Rebekah, he finds comfort after the death of his mother.  Yet even as he grieved, her death seems to lead him on an unexpected path.  The first time we find him in this parashah, he is living near Be’er L’Chai Ro’i (Gen. 24:62), the settlement near the well that Hagar and Ishmael found when they were cast out into the wilderness. That’s right. Somehow, after Sarah dies, Isaac goes to the place where the other half of his troubled family have settled after their exile.  He goes to the place of their trauma. 

There is no explanation but it makes me wonder – did Isaac also suffer when his parents cast out Hagar and Ishmael?  What was his relationship with them like?  Was Sarah protecting him from an evil half-brother who mistreated him or was she blinded by her own jealousy and breaking apart healthy relationships? Did Isaac go to reconnect with a sibling and a step mother he loved? Was he feeling guilty for how they were treated?

Midrash Rabbah and Rashi both understand this verse to be a hint that after Sarah’s death, Isaac had gone to this place to find Hagar and bring her back to once again be a wife to Abraham.  Later on in Genesis 25:1, when the Torah tells us Abraham marries a new wife named, Keturah, Rabbinic sources understand this to actually be Hagar, (Bereshit Rabbah 61:4).

However we fill in the blanks about Isaac’s motivations, if we follow the rabbinic reading here, we emerge with the incredible story that Isaac became an agent of reconciliation and reconnection between Abraham and Hagar, who must have had their own mountain of “baggage” to work through as they proceeded to have many more children together (Gen. 25:2-4).

By the time we near the end of the parashah, Isaac and Ishmael come together in peace to bury Abraham when he dies (Genesis 25:9). I wonder what conversations they might have had, trying to understand the actions of Abraham — his exile of one son and near sacrifice of the other.  Perhaps the two had more in common than we might have thought.  I imagine them awkwardly talking, sharing details, lending one another understanding and comfort, finding unexpected kinship as they struggled to make sense of the man who was their father.

In the final verses of the portion, Ishmael also dies (Gen. 25:17).  The way his death is described may seem unworthy of comment to the average reader, “These were the years of the life of Ishmael: one hundred and thirty seven years; then he breathed his last and died and was gathered to his kin.”  The rabbis come along again and find something of note here.  The language, “breathed his last” – vayigva in Hebrew – they say is a phrase reserved only for the righteous. 

If you didn’t know what the rabbis had said about Ishmael when Sarah was still alive you might not be so shocked.  But as you may remember, she saw him “metzachek – playing” with Isaac in some way that alarmed her.  The rabbinic commentaries for that verse accuse him of the most terrible things – instead of the plain meaning of the verb, metzaheck, playing, they say it was a euphemism for child abuse, idolatry or attempted murder. 

What I want to suggest here is that the transformation is not just one happening within the story.  It’s not just that Ishmael was once a child abuser and now he has done teshuvah as the rabbis would say.  Instead, what I see here is a transformation of the rabbis themselves.  The interpreters. 

When the rabbis read the story of Sarah and Abraham casting out Hagar and Ishmael, they can’t bear the thought of their heroes doing such a terrible thing.  They justify immoral actions by casting blame on the victims – Ishmael must have been a villain, otherwise we must conclude that Sarah and Abraham did something very wrong. 

But then Sarah dies.  Isaac gets to be a real person and not just an object bound to an altar.  He falls in love.  The rabbis start to see that in this next generation healing is possible.  They find hints of reconciliation buried in details of the text.  They imagine Isaac, Hagar, Abraham, all coming back into relationship.  And by the time they find the torah recounting the generations of Ishmael, they are ready to allow him to be more than a terrible bad guy.  They are finally ready to consider him among the righteous.

I wish this line of teaching was as well known as the ones that cast Ishmael as a villain!  I wish that our brothers and sisters in the West Bank could work as hard finding teachings of peace and kindness in our torah as they do lifting up a torah of hate and domination!  I don’t imagine it to be easy, but I do want to argue that it is possible. 

I leave you with questions … What ingredients make it possible for Isaac and Ishmael to bury their father together in peace? What made it possible for the rabbis interpreting these texts to see Ishmael in a new light?  How might we apply these insights to heal the tremendous traumas of our time?

From Tishrei To Mar Cheshvan: Holy Disruption vs. Steady Practice

There are certain kinds of change that happen through disruption.  I thought about this a lot during the pandemic, as big political events unfolded and many people made significant life shifts.  I have been thinking a lot about it as cancer turns my life upside down and I attempt to use this disruption to establish new, better way of being in the world – more prayer, less rushing, more time outside, less time doomscrolling and much more.  I hope that some of these better ways of being will persist long past this chapter of intense cancer treatment.

But even if you are not personally going through a major life disruption, the holidays just gave you a taste.  In some ways, the entire month of Tishrei from Rosh Hashanah to Simchat Torah is a series of disruptive practices that aim to shake us awake, help us break out of bad habits and start fresh. 

We repented.  We confessed.  We prayed and danced and wailed for saving.  We released our sins in many symbolic ways.  We contemplated our mortality and purpose.  We forgave and apologized.  We turned away and turned towards and wrapped ourselves in song and sincere good intentions. 

And now?  Now we exit the high sacred season and give ourselves and one another a chance to go back to just living it.  Practicing.  Integrating what insight we may have received in this holy time out of time.  Now we try again with hope in our hearts that we can stay on track and live as we glimpsed was possible.

I write just a few days before the beginning of the new Hebrew month, Mar Cheshvah.  Our ancestors detected some bitterness in this stretch, which always occurs in the Northern Hemisphere as days shorten, temperatures drop, and winter looms.  They called the month “mar” or bitter in Hebrew, because of its contrast with the month before full of so many holidays.  Cheshvan has none.  Just shabbat.  And it will be almost till the end of Kislev, the following month, before Hannukah offers its light. 

Bitter as our ancestors may have been to face the quiet of a festival-free month, every congregational rabbi and synagogue professional I know greets Mar Cheshvan with relief.  Whew! We made it! Finally a stretch where we can just get into a rhythm and build what we build when life is not a constant string of special special big disruptive gatherings and office closures.  Yes, there is grief in knowing it will be a year before we sounds the shofar again.  But there are gifts and opportunities in this less-holy time too.  Some things take a slower steadier pace to establish after a great disruption. 

My intuition and experience tells me that peace may be one of those things.

When I think about the relief of coming to the end of the holidays, I cannot untangle it this year from the relief of hearing the news about the hostages’ return and the ceasefire right as we reached the two year anniversary of Simchat Torah 2023.  I pray that by the time you read this, the truce is holding and the weary people of Israel and Gaza have successfully and decisively disrupted the war and begun to take their first steps towards a steady process of healing.

I want to end by sharing what I wrote in my journal as the holiday season drew to its close and world events overlaid our sacred calendar.

Two years ago, a defiant joy allowed us to dance even as we were just learning of the attacks.  This year, the hostages are home.  The bombs have stopped.  I exhale and find I’m letting out air that has been caught within me these two years since the gasp of Simchat Torah 2023. 

This year there is genuine joy, but it is not a pure joy, not a lightness.  It is a tearful joy of relief and grief all mixed together.  It is a joy that knows fragility and vulnerability, that dances and sings without imagining that we have arrived at our happily ever after. 

But I say, take it.  Rejoice if we can as much as we can.

Remember life and light and let the heart open, even if we know it can be wounded, even if there is still so much darkness, even if this joy cannot restore what has been lost.  Let the joy we can yet touch begin the healing.

Blessings, Curses, Cancer and Faith

See this day I set before you blessing and curse; blessing if you obey the commandments of Adonai, your God that I command you today, and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of Adonai your God…

(Deuteronomy 11:26-28)

Deuteronomy makes it seem so simple.  So fair.  I would love to live in a world governed by such a promise from some all-knowing, all-powerful, fair and humanly understandable God; to know that if we’re good to others, if we follow the rules, good things will come to us.  Only good things. Ultimate, instant justice.

But here comes real life. 

Real life where the bad guys sometimes prosper even when they know they are violating all that is good and wholesome.  Real life where children starve in Gaza and there are still those on earth who remember Auschwitz. 

Here comes real life where I have cancer.

And I know I’m far from perfect.  I know I’ve made mistakes.  But I just can’t believe in a God who sent this to me as a punishment.

Ask Job.

There are times that we suffer and no human explanation will satisfy.  No human story can make it fair or sensible or welcome. 

It wasn’t Job’s fault.

And much though it would be strangely comforting to think I caused this disease with some behaviors I can now control, that would be arrogance – to believe I’m SO powerful.

No.  Suffering just is.

But that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless.  Doesn’t mean I’m lost and helpless in some God-less, amoral universe.  It just means I have to go deeper than the reward and punishment theology in Deuteronomy. 

For who is to say when the storm comes if it is a blessing or a curse?  As the whirlwind strips away tender shoots and delicate blossoms while it churns rich nutrients for the coming season?  Who can discern, as chaos descends, the greater cycles within which we wander?

The flood that ruined my basement and my Kentucky Blue Grass yard was a curse for a while, a good long while, till we planted native flowers and picked new tiles.  Does my joy at this year’s bloom outweigh the hassle and the mess?  Can we quantify some absolute blessing or curse value for any single event?  Aren’t so many of our experiences too complex for such a reckoning?  And isn’t the point to make the most of whatever blessings or curses come, whether or not we think we deserve them?

Sometimes what seems to be a blessing turns out to be a curse, and sometimes a curse can lead to unexpected blessings.  Knowing this helps me hope that my challenges will eventually make me a better person.  It helps me aspire to transform the pain into something useful.  But that’s different from calling it a blessing.  I have some fierce inner protector warning that it would be unkind and even sadistic to ask myself to call my cancer a blessing, even if it eventually makes me into a better person. 

So I won’t call it a blessing. 

But that doesn’t mean I am immersed in nothing but a curse.  Blessings are no less real in the midst of a storm, even if they are only in memory, only in fleeting moments.  One of the powers I find I still have in this time of so little control is to appreciate my blessings.  Gratitude. It’s a practice available to us even if we find ourselves swimming in that looks like a hell of a curse.

I will leave the question of motivation for another time. That worry – which seems to animate whole religions and many doctrines including the theology in Deuteronomy – Why be good?

If there is not some rewarding, punishing God up there blessing and cursing us fairly and predictably? Why be good?

That question points to the substance of my faith as much as some inevitably inadequate concept of God.  My faith is the faith that goodness matters, that the powerful love in my heart is true and real, that God may not give me a lollipop every time I do a good deed, but it’s worth doing anyway and it’s what I’m here for.  

Because in the end, I believe, blessings are not just something we earn. Blessings are what we are meant to be.

Can I “Celebrate” Israel Right Now?

As we approach Israel’s 77th birthday, I don’t know what it could mean right now to celebrate Israel.  While the hostages and their families endure their agonies, how can I celebrate?  While the State of Israel conducts a war that has no believable military or moral purpose, that many people call a genocide, how can I celebrate?  As corrupt extremists run the Israeli government and use their power to steal land and abuse human beings in the name of a Jewish State, how can I celebrate?

I can’t. 

The best I can do right now is to support the people in Israel of all backgrounds and religious persuasions who are striving for democracy, human rights, justice and peace.  Thank God there are many.  Some have been working in organizations on these goals for decades.  Some have been out on the streets protesting for months and months.  Some are the reservists from every sector of the military and intelligence services in Israel who recently wrote a letter calling for an end to the war – more than 10,000 of them. 

I may not feel ready to “celebrate”, but I don’t think they are “celebrating” either.  And I don’t think they need our “celebration.”  In fact, it is the simplistic “celebrate and validate Israel right or wrong” attitude of Jewish Americans over decades that has strengthened, defended (and funded) the wrong policies in Israel for far too long. 

So maybe not celebrate.  But support?  Care about? Appreciate?  

The people I appreciate in Israel right now are the peace activists, the inspiring ordinary people who have managed to keep their hearts free of hate, the leaders who refuse to gain power through appealing to fear, hate, and vengeance. 

The people I care in about in Israel are not just the ones I agree with, but even those who fill me with rage and shame. I want them to be safe. I want them to be well. In fact, it is my sense of connection that causes me to feel profound pain when I see them speaking and behaving in ways that I consider to be a violation of what Judaism and Israel should be about.

The Israel I can support may not be the current government, but is instead the ideal and the vision of a safe and secure homeland for the Jewish people that wields its power according to the highest ideals of Jewish civilization – the rule of law, the sanctity of each and every human being. This vision is one our people have cherished through centuries of exile.  I once believed I would live to see it manifest in my lifetime.  Now I am not so sure. 

But like the American dream, the Zionist dream is not something defined solely by the actions of one particular politician, administration or political chapter in the history of a nation.

Just as there are Americans horrified by the corruption and erosion of democracy here, there are Israelis horrified at the same things in their nation.  In both cases, this moment may represent a profound betrayal of the founding vision and values, but the gap between the aspiration and the reality does not automatically cancel the validity of the whole project. 

I can understand why some committed Jews have decided they cannot call themselves “Zionist” anymore. I can understand why others feel a Jewish State is the only guarantee of Jewish survival and safety. I know many people who cannot even consider the matter in abstract terms because they have family and friends in Israel and Gaza who are under constant physical threat.

In the midst of such complexity, it is profoundly unhelpful to frame these considerations as a question of “are you with us or against us.” A more helpful question might be – how can we make things better? How can we best ensure the safety and dignity and well being of our people and all peoples who live in these nations who claim to stand for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law? I notice it hasn’t worked well to villainize entire nations, fighting hate with yet more hate, violence with yet more violence.

IF we can allow ourselves to LOVE the people and believe in a better possibility while being HONEST about the ways we are NOT living up to our own ideals, only then can we move either America or Israel to better behavior. And isn’t that the most important thing?

This year, I may not be celebrating, but I’m not giving up either.

One of the most moving ways that this kind of complexity has been recently expressed is in Amanda Gorman’s masterpiece, The Hill We Climb, which courageously loves the potential of America’s future while refusing to turn away from the real flaws and harms that stain our past.  

She writes:

And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose…

being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it …

We will rebuild, reconcile and recover…

 our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

The light.  Yes.  That I can celebrate.  Wherever it manifests.  In whatever kind of soul, however wounded, however weary.  A light that can illuminate the humanity of the Other even in the midst of great suffering. I pray that such light will soon guide the leaders and the citizens of my beloved America and my beloved Israel to pathways of peace, justice and healing.  And in the meantime, I celebrate those souls who manifest that light even in times of great darkness. I pray every day to be such a light.

A Ceasefire, a Wildfire, an Inauguration, a Hero’s Holiday and a Plan

Monday, January 20th 2025 was too much.  So I wrote in pieces.  But the pieces are not entirely unconnected. 

Ceasefire

Today the ceasefire so many have been praying for finally began.  After too long. Too late for too many.  In so many ways not enough. But a beginning.  A chance.

To change direction, first you have to stop going down the wrong path, the worst path, before you can get on the right one.

And in this pause…

Relief, yes, and tears of spontaneous prayer bursting out in the middle of the sales office where I read the first headline on the Israeli newspaper app.

But the ecstasy I had wished for?  Too much worry for that.  Too much fragility. 

What grief and rage may come when the extent of what is lost and broken becomes known?  What agony continues for families whose loved ones still languish in hostage prisons?  Can Gaza ever heal?  Can Israel ever cleanse its soul?  Will this disruption be enough to let us feel our weariness of war and be ready to stop our futile vengeance? 

I cry out with gratitude but still I wonder – how will we heal, oh Lord?  How will we ever heal?

Wildfire

The headlines have started to move on.  Fires still rage but now our attention is drawn to new emergencies, new meme-worthy comments, Melania’s hat. 

For those suddenly homeless, there is no way to change the channel. The adrenaline of survival fades and families begin to comprehend the enormity of loss.

What grief and change may come when the extent of what is lost and broken becomes known?  Who will find themselves called in the hour of need to acts of kindness, courage, and grim determination?  What will we learn when neighborhoods find – the enemy is not another person, the enemy is fire, and we have to work together to survive? 

Inauguration

When I first realized that the inauguration would fall on the day honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I considered it a desecration.  I was filled with rage and despair. This day, set aside to remember a legacy of love, non-violence, justice, and social transformation – hijacked by a tyrant and his groveling enablers?!?!  How could This Day be The Day that our country hands the power over to Pharaoh? 

And then I remembered the early chapters of Exodus.  How Moses at first thought it would be easy, with God on his side.  How defeated he felt, when things at first got worse.  How God reassured him – this is only the beginning. 

In this moment, yes, cruelty can win.  The arrogant can glory in fantasies, spraying unmentionable filth on the altars of Democracy and Morality, moving fast and breaking precious things.

But corruption cannot touch every holy sanctum and no man will live forever.

There are lights in the human soul so luminous that darkness falls away before them.  There is a power in love and life – a wholesome goodness that persists through deep winter and flowers again in spring. 

Meanwhile, in this storm, how can I pay the right kind of attention to the spectacle? How much energy do I spend remarking on each new shocking stunt?

There are times for rapid response when the news is coming to get you – when the fires are burning and your life depends on knowing the granular detail of every dangerous development.  But there are also times when rushing and raging and reacting to every fresh violation may serve to distract from more consequential moves beneath the surface. 

Pharaoh’s playbook: Distract. Deflect. Overwhelm. Exhaust. And while your enemy is flailing with outrage, move your pieces into place for checkmate. We will not win with anger or hatred.  We will not win by watching and screaming to friends as horrified as we are.  But there is another way.

Hero’s Holiday

Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior did not hate his enemies.  He did not teach his followers to fight violence with violence.  They trained with a discipline since lost to decades of activists; the discipline of non-violence, a discipline that demonstrates the moral difference between the two sides of the struggle without dehumanizing the bad guys.

Losing King was a blow to humanity.  But the ideas he stood for are so so much larger than one man’s vision or lifetime.  The arc doesn’t inevitably bend in the right direction.  Sometimes bad people can grab one end and force it to bend the other way for a time.  But the ideals and the vision of justice, peace, and freedom are as ancient as the book of Exodus, and cannot be defeated when one mortal human being dies or another rises to power. We too can bend the arc together.

I wonder again, in our moment – who will find themselves called to acts of kindness, courage, and grim determination?  When will we learn – the enemy is not another person, the enemy is hate, and in our burning world, we will have to work together to survive?  Can this darkness lead us to a time when we finally see – to heal ourselves we must heal one another, learning to love each other’s children?

A Plan

We need to win.  Humanity needs us to win.  The Earth needs us to win.  God wants us to win.  And to win we need to be more than angry.  We need to be strategic and disciplined and inspiring.  We need to bring care and curiosity rather than judgment and self-righteousness.  In the words of Reverend Ben McBride, a national leader in faith based community organizing, in times like these, it’s not just about what you do, it’s about who you become.  

The goal is not even just saving or promoting particular policies but saving and promoting a culture of morality – a culture that cultivates human integrity, honesty, and kindness.  To do that we cannot resort to any means.  The means must be moral if our end is to preserve morality. 

This time, we know that protest will not be enough.  Some mistake today’s relative quiet for passivity or acquiescence.  But what if that quiet is strategic?  We have learned that marching has its limits. There may be times we need to get out and repudiate some new horror, but to win we will need to do more than react to every outrage.  

To win, we need to inspire more people to be a part of our WE. 

There is a template for this kind of work called community organizing.  It is slow loving work that strengthens our relationships and communities. In substantial conversations, we build connections that lead us to sustain one another through difficulty.   Through listening for our common distress, we come to understand our highest shared priorities and find solutions none of us could implement alone.  

So that’s my plan for now.  To ask, through organized, conscious conversations, not just what to do, but who we want to become – together.  To believe and to practice in community that being good matters and that we don’t have to give up our moral center to win the most important fights.  In other words, my plan for this dark time is no more or less than this; believe in the light, find and protect and spread it. 

Become the light, wherever we are, as much as we can – together.

Teshuvat Yisrael – Yom Kippur 2024

There is no doubt that in my daily life, in interactions with family, friends and community, I have made plenty of mistakes.  I’ve lost my patience, I’ve spoken hurtful words, I’ve prioritized the wrong things – on and on.  All of us have struggles like these. If I were to write about the interpersonal level of teshuvah, repentance, on this Yom Kippur, it would surely be helpful and relevant.  But it wouldn’t touch the one thing that weighs the heaviest on my heart right now.  That has been weighing on my heart all year long. 

The truth is that this year, the most agonizing pain in my heart has been coming from the war in Gaza and Israel.   I feel like I’ve been watching the failure of my soul’s dearest dreams unfolding in slow motion.  The dream of a safe place for Jews.  Disintegrated.  The dream of a sacred society in the Holy Land built on the best moral principles of Jewish tradition.  Shattered.

This year our people have been wounded more deeply than we thought possible.  My souls still cries for October 7^th.  For the hostages and their families.  For those displaced and mourning.  For my son’s camp counselor and hundreds of others murdered that day. And in the year since then, I have felt grief harden into anger and fear as antisemitism has flared and close loved ones in Israel have lived in danger.  It’s been a hard year to be part of the “We” called the Jewish people.

And … In moments when I can hear beyond the wail of my soul for my own peoples’ pain, I also become aware of the overwhelming weight of the teshuvah we are called to after a year of warfare. The weight of so many deaths is crushing. As painful as it is to be present to our own suffering, it is even more challenging to stay present to the harms we have caused. Yet this is the sacred task for us today. 

On Yom Kippur, we come together, not to comfort ourselves for the ways we have been wronged by others, not to explain all of the good reasons that we did the harmful things we did.  We come together to let down that armor and feel regret and remorse.  It may be that some accusations are false.  It may be that there was no other good choice.  But the task of Yom Kippur is not to defend ourselves.  The task is to consider, with an attitude of contrition, how we – personally and collectively – have caused harm. 

Going to war against a military who massacred and kidnapped and committed atrocities against civilians is morally acceptable to most. But that war has not just been impacting that military entity, and even if Hamas has been guilty of hiding behind civilians, we have still been the ones dropping the bombs. Today is a day to reckon with what that means.

I recently heard a heartbreaking radio piece about a three year old girl who had just been vaccinated against the plague of polio in Gaza.  After her vaccination, her family was in their home, which somehow got bombed.  Her mother was killed.  Her own legs had been amputated.  She was three. She was crying.

What will happen to this girl?  Will she even live?  Who will take care of her?  Who will cry for her? How will she understand what happened to her and her family?  If she one day raises children of her own, what will she teach them?

When I can actually face a story like this, to let myself feel compassion for this little girl, it’s devastating.  I can hardly bear to HEAR these kinds of stories, knowing that thousands of people are LIVING through these stories with no choice to turn away.  Somehow, on Yom Kippur, I think part of my job is to just let myself cry about that girl and so many others like her.  And to do that is not political, it’s not anti-Israel,  it’s pro-humanity.  Hers and ours. 

In Tractate Sanhedrin of the Talmud (39b), we are told that at the moment the armies of Pharaoh were drowning in the sea “the ministering angels wished to utter song before the Holy One, but He rebuked them, saying, ‘The works of My hands are drowning in the sea, and you would utter song in My presence!'”  We should not harden our hearts to suffering, not even the suffering of our enemies.  Not even if they would celebrate our suffering.

And I wonder – what would be possible if we could actually let ourselves cry instead? 

And I know some of us have been Not looking away all year, and have looked at and taken in these stories and traumatized ourselves and felt, not just that sadness but great rage. And today I just want to invite us wherever we are, whether it’s hard to open our hearts to feel the sadness, or whether it’s hard not to just bypass the sadness and go to anger, which is much easier. I invite you to just cry with me about this girl.

I want to tell you about another moment I really cried a few months ago. I was going through a box and uncovered a slip of paper I had never expected to see again.  It was worn and folded into a pile of articles.  It was written by someone whose hand was clearly unaccustomed to writing in English.  It said, “I love you.” 

I wasn’t ready to find that piece of paper. 

I think I scared my son as I burst into loud sobbing.  I wouldn’t have thought that such an artifact could rip open my heart like that.  I want to tell you about where that paper came from.

In 1999, during the peak of the peace process, and before the second intifada, I was living in Israel, working for Rabbis for Human Rights. I witnessed a fatal shooting at a house demolition in a small Arab village in East Jerusalem. 

I hid from the gunfire with a group of Palestinian girls – possibly the first Jewish American woman they had ever seen.  A few years later I finally wrote about that experience in the form of a letter to one of the girls I was with and I’m going to share part of that letter with you now. She was the one who wrote that piece of paper that I found last spring.

Letter to a Girl From Issawiya:

We met in strange circumstances.  That day my people came to your people and shook a piece of paper and yelled about the land and the rules.  The teenagers of my people carried guns and fear and sad vague memories of exile and persecution.  The teenagers of your people carried rocks and anger and the bitterness of poverty.

I don’t know who started it.  Did someone from your village throw a rock?  Did one of the soldiers get nervous?  Or maybe it started when the family built an illegal third room to accommodate the eleventh child.  Or maybe it was the British, who zoned the village “green” for no expansion.  Or maybe it was the Nazis whose cruelty led the world to support a Jewish state.  It never does much good to ask who started it.  The question starts to unravel the fabric of our tangled narratives, until they lie unstrung in messy piles, senseless as the litany of our suffering and our vengeance. 

The truth is, I don’t know how to tell our story without unraveling somebody’s narrative. 

My people tells a story that locates my terror in crowded markets, exploding from zealous brainwashed youths, striking without warning.  I suppose that your people tells a story of terror wearing Israeli Defense Force uniforms, driving bulldozers. 

The day we met I walked out of my story and into yours, but I wonder, does your people’s story have a place for a young Jewish woman standing with you on that side of the bullets?  It seems very hard for my people to imagine.

Once I tried to explain it to a teacher of mine in Israel, but he would not hear it.  He said our soldiers were defending themselves.  He said, incorrectly and without any knowledge, that the house belonged to a terrorist.  He did not look into my face and say, concerned, how terrible it must have been.  He did not want to imagine his own son in the army shooting people to protect bulldozers.  That would not fit his story. 

While the teenagers traded projectiles, we huddled together, frantically searching for gifts in the absence of a common language.  Saying through exchanged plastic bracelets, a watch, a tape: I am human.  I love.  I see you.  You are human.  You love.

Do you remember me?  I am the woman who drew the picture of a gun and crossed it out.  A Jewish star and a Muslim moon together in a heart – childish ineffective amulet.  I must have drawn them before the woman screamed and they carried her husband away.  I don’t think I could have drawn them after that. 

That was the first and only time I have ever witnessed a human being shot to death.  The gravity of it slowed the pace of time itself so that each moment could engrave itself deeper into my mind.  Do you remember it like that?  Or do you have too many similar memories?  I hope not, but I fear as much. 

Did anybody ever tell you that the Israeli government made an official apology?  They agreed.  They had violated their rules of engagement.  No one should have aimed above the waist.  No one should have shot that rubber bullet into that man’s brain.  We were right about that. 

But being right was never enough.  Not that day, and not now.  Rubber bullets are untraceable, and so the responsible shooter is as untraceable as the history of who has rights to the land beneath the house.

I wonder, could you have understood, that day we met, how I love the land of Israel?  Have you ever learned about why my people holds onto this place so fiercely?  How we have held the dream of our return to this land in our daily prayers, our holy teachings, generation after generation for 2,000 years?  Have you ever learned of how Jews have been chased from one end of the earth to the other – never safe, never home – since our exile?  Did you ever hear, how just 60 years ago, the Nazis murdered six million of us?  How the enlightened countries of the world sent boats of us back to their death camps?  Our claim is a claim of ancient love, and plain, practical self-preservation.

Why do I tell you this?  Because I want to make an agreement with you, and perhaps it will help you to be willing, if you know my stake in the matter.  I want to make a promise to each other — that we will not forget our mis-fitted story.  Please do not forget me. 

When you raise your children and tell them about Jews and about Israel, do not forget to tell them about me, and that, however feebly, I tried. 

And I will not forget you, girl from Issawiya.  Even as I learn to fear your brethren and their bombs.  I will not forget you and your village.  I will not forget to look honestly at how we wield our power. 

I will not forget that you gave me your bracelet and said in English, “I love you.”  I will not forget that even in the midst of this dark memory – a memory I have held in shame and sorrow, helplessness and despair – you and I stood in that blackness and saw each other as human beings.  I promise I will not forget that.  Even as Jerusalem becomes ever more tangled in violence and despair, I will not forget that where we stood that day, however faint, there was light.

          **************

All through his year, that memory has been calling out to me.  That piece of paper I found last spring – I had forgotten she wrote it down. I love you. And what made me so devastated was not just remembering that trauma.  It was that I have not kept my promise to her. 

I haven’t done enough to use my life to make things better.  I’ve been living a comfortable life in the US all these 25 years, donating to good organizations, visiting Jerusalem, taking classes on conflict resolution, teaching about how Judaism has a beautiful strong tradition of seeing the humanity of our enemies, I’ve done interviews and blog posts … and meanwhile, the occupation has continued and extremists have taken over key posts in the government and even hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the streets have not managed to stop it. 

Meanwhile, my story of one fatal shooting in 1999 looks like a really good day in 2024. 

I don’t quite know what else I should be doing, but I know that today I feel a need to say it out loud.  I feel I have failed.  We have failed.  Failed to be worthy of the power we wield.  Failed to live up to the dream of our ancestors.  Failed to remember core Jewish values as we fight our enemies. 

As we move through the Day of Atonement, I know from direct experience – Israel has sins to atone for.  But I say this as a person who loves Israel, who loves the Jewish people, who has given my life to those loves.  As uncomfortable as it is, I love us enough to want us to face those sins and what they are doing to our physical safety and to our collective soul. 

If your brother is making self-destructive choices, you don’t just sit back and tell him he’s right no matter what.  You say something.  You say it with love and you try to say it in a way that you hope can be heard, but you say something.  That’s what it means to really love someone.  That’s what I think it means right now to be my brother’s keeper.

I want Israel to do more than just survive—I want it to thrive.  I want Israel to be the embodiment of all that is best in Jewish law and history – traditions of social justice and creativity, celebration and kindness.  I have not yet abandoned the hope for a just and peaceful Jewish state.  But I fear we may be squandering our historic opportunity.  If we can’t find a way to peace very soon, I fear we may be back to another 2,000 years of longing, regret and exile. 

Peace is not a luxury to pursue only after we somehow secure our borders by any means possible.  Peace is the only way we will get those borders secure in the first place.  And we won’t get to peace through denial and defensiveness.  We won’t get to peace through blocking up our ears to those who say we have done them harm, accusing any critic of antisemitism.  We cannot count on changing the behavior of anyone else but ourselves. 

Blaming others is just another way to sustain the cycle of violence.

I promised the girl from Issawiya that I would not forget to look honestly at how we wield our power.  I want to try again to keep that promise. And I hope that Israel and the world-wide Jewish community will one day have the courage to join me in that.

I also told her that I would not forget the light in that memory. 

It’s such a dark memory.  One in which I could see no reason to hope for years and years.  But that’s because there was no other light around us to see.  We were the light that day.  Like a lonely candle in a dark room, not seeing other candles, but illuminating the space nonetheless. 

I want to remember that light and the light of all of those now working for peace, who are standing together, who are resisting hate.  Here. In Israel. There are many.  I feel I owe it to them not to give up on my faith that peace can yet come.  Peace will yet come. I pray, I pray to the Holiest One to help us turn, to help us feel, to help us cry, to help us heal. God make this the year we finally, finally make peace.

Lament in a Time of War

Cry – if you can
for hostages and starving babies.
Yours.
Mine.

When we shed tears only
for our own,
we condemn ourselves
to cry again.

They say the sin was
senseless hatred.
As if sensible hatred would be no sin.

But who thinks his hatred is senseless?

Everyone has a reason.
Dig back far enough
and somewhere your ancestor
survived some horror.

There is always and never
reason to hate.

Even sensible hatred
does not protect,
as it strips away humanity.
Theirs.
Yours.
In cycles of vengeance and lament.

But to cry.
To really cry.
In that there may be healing.

To learn through grief and shame
how to care
for every suffering soul.
Mine.
Yours.

Until in cleansing tears
we finally see.
No one else’s suffering
can ever truly ease our pain.
Even sensible hatred
leads only back
to our own lamentation.

Wherever Law Ends…

Wherever law ends, tyranny begins – John Locke, Second Treatise of Government

Today is July 4^th, 2024, anniversary of the birth of our democracy.  This past week, as the Supreme Court of this land handed down its verdict on Presidential immunity, I wondered whether we had all just witnessed the death of it.

When people talk about Democracy and Freedom these days, there is a lot of confusion.  When we say “democracy” we mean many very different things. For a minority population like the Jews, the importance of democracy as we know it is not just about majority rule.  The reason that we find ourselves free to practice a different religion than most of our American brethren is NOT because of free and fair elections, though this is a sacred principle no doubt.  Even so, by itself, democracy can still lead to the “tyranny of the majority.” The reason we Jews have fared so well in the United States for the past several decades is because we live in a society which protects certain rights and freedoms through the rule of law, which, until this past week, was applied to even the highest officials in the land.

I will leave it to others to thoroughly demonstrate why the alleged concern over abuse of power to harass political opponents is a feeble excuse.  This possibility was unthinkable through centuries until we elected a criminal with obvious narcissistic personality disorder to office – something we should never ever do again.  Rather than accepting this kind of leadership and pretending that all politicians are this way, our Supreme Court Justices of all people should have insisted that even presidents must not break the law.  Instead, they normalized the behavior of a sociopath and undermined one of the principles upon which our democracy is founded.

In his Second Treatise on Government John Locke writes, “Freedom of men (sic) under government is, to have a standing rule to live by common to every one of that society.”  Every one.  Not just the common folk.  The idea that all of us, (even the leaders while they are acting in their official capacities), are subject to the rule of law is the foundation of our freedom according to Locke.  Otherwise, we fall into the very state of tyranny that this nation was created to defeat, where the leader, “makes not the law, but his will, the rule.” 

John Locke wasn’t the first to suggest that laws should apply even to the most powerful political leaders.  Deuteronomy chapter seventeen lays out a long list of rules and expectations that specifically apply to kings.  Some are intuitive and seem designed to discourage corruption – not too many horses or too much gold or too many wives.  But then there is a striking passage:

When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of this teaching written for him…and he shall read from it all the days of his life so that he will learn to revere Adonai his God, to keep all of the words of this Torah and these laws; to do them.  This way he will not elevate himself above his brothers or turn away from the law to the right or the left… (Deuteronomy 17:18-20)

The idea that law should apply equally to the high and the lowly alike is no recent innovation.  Thousands of years ago, our ancestors held sacred the idea that no human being should be above the law.  Not even a God-appointed king.  For a handful of justices to attack this principle on the birthday of our nation’s founding is a betrayal so profound, I fear we may not fully understand its implications in our lifetimes. 

Parashat Emor: The Logic and Ethics of Double Standards

It’s been about 2,000 years since the Jewish people have enacted the priestly system outlined in Parashat Emor, so it’s worth a short review.  According to this part of Leviticus, priests are “holy to God” (Lev. 21:7) and therefore must be more careful than other Israelites about contact with the dead, about female virginity, about discharges and so called “defects.”  In return priests and their families get a lifetime supply of fresh BBQ, first fruits, and special social status.   Not a bad deal.

Every time I study Leviticus I find myself internally objecting to its aristocratic vision.  And it’s not just the privileges, it’s the idea that some people are inherently holier than others.  I much prefer the sentiment at the end of the parashah, Leviticus 24:22: “There shall be one rule for you, for the stranger as for the citizen.” If only humanity had learned how to live according to this rule in the centuries since it was canonized…

It’s tempting to lift up this radically egalitarian and inspiring verse and ignore the rest, but this notion of certain people being more holy than others is just too pervasive to pretend it doesn’t exist.  In fact, the book of Exodus expands the special holiness to the whole of the Israelite people when God promises, “you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples…a kingdom of priests and a holy nation..” (Ex. 19:5-6).

This verse is but one expression of what Reconstructionist Jews might call, “the chosenness idea” – the notion that God has chosen Jews from among all other peoples and given them a special level of holiness. When you start paying attention you see this idea all over – in scripture, liturgy, and most of all in the hearts and minds of fellow Jews.

I have always felt, I confess, a tiny bit holier than thou in moments when I get to explain that the Reconstructionists have rejected the idea of being holier than thou.  Ironically, I find myself taking pride in being part of a movement bold enough to break with chosenness. 

But lately, I began to wonder if I was still internally buying in to the idea. 

As we witness the war in Gaza and international reactions, I find myself expecting more of Israel than other nation states.  As I interact with my fellow Jews and watch video clips of Israeli politicians and soldiers, campus protestors and counter protestors, I notice that I do have higher standards for the Jews than for other people.  It hurts so much more when we behave in ways I find morally repugnant. I don’t find it nearly as shocking when other people do bad things.  Just the Jews.

Does this mean I had secretly thought we were above such behavior?  Do I need to consider the possibility that in my heart of hearts I still cling to the idea that Jews are holier than other people?!  Am I – God forbid – a closet adherent of chosenness?!?

Then again, when pundits decry critiques of Israel as antisemitic because those who criticize are not holding any other State to such high standards, I wonder just the opposite.  Maybe I’m not unconsciously believing in Jewish superiority, maybe I’m actually guilty of internalized antisemitism?  Why DO I think Israel should be conducting its military actions according to the international standards that so many other countries have violated?

All of this has brought me to ask – Is it fair for me to have higher standards for Israel? For Jews?  To expect more from my people than other peoples?  Is it possible to hold these higher standards without buying in to a notion of Jewish superiority or some form of antisemitism?

I’ve given this a lot of thought and I want to tell you now why my answer is YES – it does make sense for me to have higher standards for Jews and for Israel.  In a nutshell – holding higher standards for ourselves and our people is morally appropriate and is part of how any person or group achieves greatness. 

Expecting ourselves and our people to behave in ways we do not expect of others is neither an expression of self hatred nor a delusion of superiority.  It is one of the consequences of the love and identification we feel for our own – not because we believe we are better than anyone else, but because we have a higher stake, and a greater capacity to impact our own behavior than anyone else’s. 

I just said a lot, so let me unpack this a bit…

First I want to tackle the chosenness thing.  How can I hold higher standards for myself and my people than other peoples?  Isn’t that just another way to say we are better or more holy than anyone else?   

When Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founding thinker of the Reconstructionist movement, rejected chosenness there were two prongs to his thinking.  First, it was about theology – Kaplan imagined God as a force within human beings, a power for goodness and so on.  God was not some kind of person-like Being who directed the details of history and could “choose” one tribe over another.  Such a notion of a choosing God made no sense to a Kaplanian theologian.

The other line thought for Kaplan was the deeply American, post enlightenment, universalistic idealism which bristled at the idea that one group of humans was inherently more valuable than any other.  Chosenness in the sense of superiority. 

However a person might conceptualize God, Kaplan also rejected the idea that Jews were better than any other ethnic or religious group.  This bold idea was radical in its time and still rubs a lot of Jews the wrong way today.

Letting go of chosenness can be painful.  Being chosen is meaningful.  Believing that God loves you more than others, or that your people are better than other groups can be a powerful inoculation against hatred and hardship.  It supplies a certain kind of self esteem when times are tough. 

But it can also act as a set of blinders that prevent us from seeing or believing information that challenges the narrative of moral superiority.  I think of how one friend of mine living in Jerusalem in this moment refuses to believe reports of hunger in Gaza.  I think of a moment decades ago when one of my teachers shouted me down as I began to talk about my experience witnessing human rights abuses in East Jerusalem.  It didn’t fit what he wanted to believe. 

It’s a natural human tendency to protect ourselves from information that contradicts our world view.  Unfortunately, when we refuse to take in uncomfortable truths, it doesn’t make them go away.  And if the truth has to do with our own mistakes or moral failings, we can only hope to do better if we face them.  

But what about the other side?

Maybe I have higher standards for Israel and Jews, not because I believe we are superior but because I am actually a self-hating Jew…

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a pro-Israel event where a man wanted to convince me I was wrong to believe that Israel should end the war, wrong to think that Israel’s military campaign has been anything but morally pristine.  After seeing that he was not going to quickly change my mind, his face hardened, he shouted, “Well I think you are a self-hating Jew!” turned on his heel and stalked away.

It could be that when I expect Israel to conduct a military campaign in such a way as to protect civilians, I am guilty of some kind of internalized antisemitism.  It could be that when I pay more attention to Israel’s bad behavior than Sudan’s, I am a self-hating Jew.  But actually I see it quite differently. 

I hold higher expectations of Israel as a Jewish state BECAUSE I LOVE JEWS and because I want the Jewish State to represent the BEST of who we are.  I feel myself to be so deeply identified that I cannot dissociate myself even when I might like to. 

It is only human to care more for our own families and friends than for strangers.  Only saints and angels can be expected to shed as many tears for an unknown person than their own flesh and blood.  But this higher level of care should not become a reason to excuse the bad behavior of those we love, or to ignore the humanity of even those who may wish us harm. 

The closeness we have to our people should ideally mean that we help them to be the best they can be.  Not because we think we are better than anyone else but because we are a part of them and they are a part of us. As part of a group, we have a higher stake, and theoretically, a greater capacity to impact the behavior of our own people. 

Sometimes, that means we make sacrifices to help that others would never make.  We might hold out the benefit of the doubt or offer patience when others have given up.  Other times, our closeness and care can mean holding difficult boundaries, offering loving rebuke or refusing to be complicit in self destructive behavior. 

Loving someone, even on the scale of loving one’s own people, does not mean thinking they are always right.  It does not mean allowing them to believe every criticism is baseless.  It does not mean helping them to destroy their own well being and future when they are hurt and would prefer you to tell them anything they do is justified.

Loving someone, really loving them, means helping them to live up to their best potential.  But it also means that even when they don’t, you will not stop loving them or trying to help them. 

Now, there are also cases when a person holds higher standards for herself and her family or people in a way that is not fair or constructive.  I remember one particular coach who was always harder on his own daughter than any of the rest of us on the whole team.  And I am absolutely guilty of expecting more of myself than others in so many ways.  Sometimes, this tendency can lead to great achievements.  Sometimes, it becomes a dark perfectionism that prevents even the most accomplished person from feeling joy at their own success.

It’s particularly unhelpful when people expect a nation state like Israel or America to be perfect.  No nation is perfect, just like no person is perfect.  We have ideals.  We try to reach them.  We fail.  We make mistakes.  Sometimes we move forward.  Sometimes, we even go backward.  But to reject the whole project because we aren’t living up to the perfect founding vision is to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  The problem isn’t hypocrisy.  It’s the stubborn imperfection of mortal human beings.

In America, as in Israel, the ideals of the declaration of independence have not yet been fully actualized.  Saying so is not unpatriotic.  Quite the opposite.  In fact, looking honestly at the ways we have fallen short is a necessary step on the path to achieving those ideals.  But that is only true if we name the shortcomings while committing to do better.  Tearing it all down because we haven’t been perfect and trusting that some kind of revolution will get us anywhere better – that’s a HUGE gamble that history has shown is usually a road to authoritarianism and tremendous human suffering.  On the other hand, refusing to see the ways we have failed in our aspirations is a guarantee we will never achieve them.

That is why I still consider myself to be a Zionist.  Even when the government of Israel has been breaking my heart and filling me with rage and despair for most of the years I’ve been paying attention as a Jewish adult.  I still love Israel, the people, the place. I still believe that we can and should do better with this momentous historic opportunity of a Jewish state. 

And I think it’s more likely that my tiny life might be able to help achieve that goal if I stay engaged out of love instead of walking away in disgust or self righteousness. 

Israel has been the Jewish dream for millenia.  And the dream has never been for us to live there by the sword, hunkered in bomb shelters, resigned to periodic warfare with hostile neighbors.  The dream has been for us to dwell in Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, Ir Shalom, city of peace, in such a way as to make it a shining light to all nations, a city holy to all peoples where we rise up to the best of our human potential to create a sacred and just society, a society in which there is “one rule for citizens and strangers alike” (Lev. 24:22). 

Believing in this dream is not a form of Jewish supremacy.  It’s not colonialism.  Demanding that Israel and the Jewish people uphold the highest moral standards even in the midst of war is not a form of self hatred.  It flows from a deep faith in who we can be. In the end, when I call myself and my people to the best in us rather than excusing our worst, it is a double standard born out of love for Jews and for all of humanity. 

Parashat Emor 2024 – The Logic
and Ethics of Double Standards

Rabbi Katie Mizrahi

 

It’s been about 2,000 years since
the Jewish people have enacted the priestly system outlined in Parashat Emor,
so it’s worth a short review.  According
to this week’s torah portion, priests are “holy to God” (Lev. 21:7) and
therefore must be more careful than other Israelites about contact with the
dead, about female virginity, about discharges and so called “defects.”  In return priests and their families get a
lifetime supply of fresh BBQ, first fruits, and special social status.   Not a bad deal.

Every time I study Leviticus I find
myself internally objecting to its aristocratic vision.  And it’s not just the privileges, it’s the
idea that some people are inherently holier than others.  I much prefer the sentiment at the end of the
parashah, Leviticus 24:22: “There shall be one rule for you, for the stranger
as for the citizen.” 

It’s tempting to lift up this radically
egalitarian verse and ignore the rest of the parashah, but this notion of
certain people being more holy than others is just too pervasive to pretend it
doesn’t exist.  In fact, the book of
Exodus expands the special holiness to the whole of the Israelite people when
God promises, “you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples…a
kingdom of priests and a holy nation..” (Ex. 19:5-6).

This verse is but one expression of
what Reconstructionist Jews might call, “the chosenness idea” – the notion that
God has chosen Jews from among all other peoples and given them a special level
of holiness. When you start paying attention you see this idea all over – in scripture,
liturgy, and most of all in the hearts and minds of fellow Jews.

I have always felt, I confess, a
tiny bit holier than thou in moments when I get to explain that the
Reconstructionists have rejected the idea of being holier than thou.  Ironically, I find myself taking pride in being
part of a movement bold enough to break with chosenness. 

But lately, I began to wonder if I
was still internally buying in to the idea. 

As we witness the war in Gaza and
international reactions, I find myself expecting more of Israel than other
nation states.  As I interact with my
fellow Jews and watch video clips of Israeli politicians and soldiers, campus
protestors and counter protestors, I notice that I do have higher
standards for the Jews than for other people. 
It hurts so much more when they behave in ways I find morally repugnant.
I don’t find it nearly as shocking when other people do bad things.  Just the Jews.

Does this mean I had secretly thought
we were above such behavior?  Do I need
to consider the possibility that in my heart of hearts I still cling to the
idea that Jews are holier than other people?! 
Am I – God forbid – a closet adherent of chosenness?!?

Then again, when pundits decry
critiques of Israel as antisemitic because those who criticize are not holding
any other State to such high standards, I wonder just the opposite.  Maybe I’m not unconsciously believing in
Jewish superiority, maybe I’m actually guilty of internalized
antisemitism?  Why DO I think Israel
should be conducting its military actions according to the international
standards that so many other countries have violated?

All of this has brought me to ask –
Is it fair for me to have higher standards for Israel? For Jews?  To expect more from my people than other
peoples?  Is it possible to hold these
higher standards without buying in to a notion of Jewish superiority or some
form of antisemitism?

I’ve given this a lot of thought
and I want to tell you now why my answer is YES – it does make sense for
me to have higher standards for Jews and for Israel. 

In a nutshell… holding higher
standards for ourselves and our people is morally appropriate and is
part of how any person or group achieves greatness. 

Expecting ourselves and our people
to behave in ways we do not expect of others is neither an expression of self
hatred nor a delusion of superiority.  It
is one of the consequences of the love and identification we feel for our own –
not because we believe we are better than anyone else, but because we have a
higher stake, and a greater capacity to impact our own behavior than anyone
else’s. 

I just said a lot, so let me unpack
this a bit…

First I want to tackle the
chosenness thing.  How can I hold higher
standards for myself and my people than other peoples?  Isn’t that just another way to say we are
better or more holy than anyone else?   

When Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the
founding thinker of the Reconstructionist movement, rejected chosenness there
were two prongs to his thinking.  First,
it was about theology – Kaplan imagined God as a force within human beings, a
power for goodness and so on.  God was not
some kind of person-like Being who directed the details of history and could
“choose” one tribe over another.  Such a
notion of a choosing God made no sense to a Kaplanian theologian.

The other line thought for Kaplan
was the deeply American, post enlightenment, universalistic idealism which
bristled at the idea that one group of humans was inherently more valuable than
any other.  Chosenness in the sense of
superiority. 

However a person might
conceptualize God, Kaplan also rejected the idea that Jews were better than any
other ethnic or religious group.  This
bold idea was radical in its time and still rubs a lot of Jews the wrong way
today.

Letting go of chosenness can be
painful.  Being chosen is
meaningful.  Believing that God loves you
more than others, or that your people are better than other groups can be a
powerful inoculation against hatred and hardship.  It supplies a certain kind of self esteem
when times are tough. 

But it can also act as a set of
blinders that prevent us from seeing or believing information that challenges
the narrative of moral superiority.  I
think of how one friend of mine living in Jerusalem in this moment refuses to
believe reports of hunger in Gaza.  I
think of a moment decades ago when one of my teachers shouted me down as I
began to talk about my experience witnessing human rights abuses in East
Jerusalem.  It didn’t fit what he wanted
to believe. 

It’s a natural human tendency to
protect ourselves from information that contradicts our world view.  Unfortunately, when we refuse to take in
uncomfortable truths, it doesn’t make them go away.  And if the truth has to do with our own
mistakes or moral failings, we can only hope to do better if we face them.  

But what about the other side?

Maybe I have higher standards for
Israel and Jews, not because I believe we are superior but because I am
actually a self-hating Jew…

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a
pro-Israel event where a man wanted to convince me I was wrong to believe that
Israel should end the war, wrong to think that Israel’s military campaign has
been anything but morally pristine. 
After seeing that he was not going to quickly change my mind, his face
hardened, he shouted, “Well I think you are a self-hating Jew!” turned on his
heel and stalked away.

It could be that when I expect
Israel to conduct a military campaign in such a way as to protect civilians, I
am guilty of some kind of internalized antisemitism.  It could be that when I pay more attention to
Israel’s bad behavior than Sudan’s, I am a self-hating Jew.  But actually I see it quite differently. 

I hold higher expectations of
Israel as a Jewish state BECAUSE I LOVE JEWS and because I want the Jewish
State to represent the BEST of who we are. 
I feel myself to be so deeply identified that I cannot dissociate myself
even when I might like to. 

It is only human to care more for
our own families and friends than for strangers.  Only saints and angels can be expected to
shed as many tears for an unknown person than their own flesh and blood.  But this higher level of care should not
become a reason to excuse the bad behavior of those we love, or to ignore the
humanity of even those who may wish us harm. 

The closeness we have to our people
should ideally mean that we help them to be the best they can be.  Not because we think we are better than
anyone else but because we are a part of them and they are a part of us. As
part of a group, we have a higher stake, and theoretically, a greater capacity
to impact the behavior of our own people. 

Sometimes, that means we make
sacrifices to help that others would never make.  We might hold out the benefit of the doubt or
offer patience when others have given up. 
Other times, our closeness and care can mean holding difficult
boundaries, offering loving rebuke or refusing to be complicit in self
destructive behavior. 

Loving someone, even on the scale
of loving one’s own people, does not mean thinking they are always right.  It does not mean allowing them to believe
every criticism is baseless.  It does not
mean helping them to destroy their own well being and future when they are hurt
and would prefer you to tell them anything they do is justified.

Loving someone, really loving them,
means helping them to live up to their best potential.  But it also means that even when they don’t,
you will not stop loving them or trying to help them. 

Now, there are also cases when a
person holds higher standards for herself and her family or people in a way
that is not fair or constructive.  I
remember one particular coach who was always harder on his own daughter than
any of the rest of us on the whole team. 
And I am absolutely guilty of expecting more of myself than others in so
many ways.  Sometimes, this tendency can
lead to great achievements.  Sometimes,
it becomes a dark perfectionism that prevents even the most accomplished person
from feeling joy at their own success.

It’s particularly unhelpful when
people expect a nation state like Israel or America to be perfect.  No nation is perfect, just like no person is
perfect.  We have ideals.  We try to reach them.  We fail. 
We make mistakes.  Sometimes we
move forward.  Sometimes, we even go
backward.  But to reject the whole
project because we aren’t living up to the perfect founding vision is to let
the perfect be the enemy of the good. 
The problem isn’t hypocrisy.  It’s
the stubborn imperfection of mortal human beings.

In America, as in Israel, the
ideals of the declaration of independence have not yet been fully
actualized.  Saying so is not
unpatriotic.  Quite the opposite.  In fact, looking honestly at the ways we have
fallen short is a necessary step on the path to achieving those ideals.  But that is only true if we name the
shortcomings while committing to do better. 
Tearing it all down because we haven’t been perfect and trusting that
some kind of revolution will get us anywhere better – that’s a HUGE gamble that
history has shown is usually a road to authoritarianism and tremendous human
suffering.  On the other hand, refusing to
see the ways we have failed in our aspirations is a guarantee we will never
achieve them.

That is why I still consider myself
to be a Zionist.  Even when the
government of Israel has been breaking my heart and filling me with rage and
despair for most of the years I’ve been paying attention as a Jewish adult.  I still love Israel, the people, the place. I
still believe that we can and should do better with this momentous historic
opportunity of a Jewish state. 

And I think it’s more likely that
my tiny life might be able to help achieve that goal if I stay engaged out of
love instead of walking away in disgust or self righteousness. 

Israel has been the Jewish dream
for millenia.  And the dream has never
been for us to live there by the sword, hunkered in bomb shelters, resigned to
periodic warfare with hostile neighbors. 
The dream has been for us to dwell in Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, Ir
Shalom, city of peace, in such a way as to make it a shining light to all
nations, a city holy to all peoples where we rise up to the best of our human
potential to create a sacred and just society, a society in which there is “one
rule for citizens and strangers alike” (Lev. 24:22). 

Believing in this dream is not a
form of Jewish supremacy.  It’s not
colonialism.  Demanding that Israel and
the Jewish people uphold the highest moral standards even in the midst of war
is not a form of self hatred.  In the
end, when I call myself and my people to the best in us rather than excusing
our worst, it is a double standard born out of love for Jews and for all of
humanity.