CyberTorah

After Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I listened to sermons from my friends and some of the most respected colleagues around the country. I heard stirring messages that shared themes of trauma and a need to double down on hope.  We are all feeling heart broken and searching for ways to heal. Yet I noticed something else.

Most of those sermons fell into one of two categories. There were the defenders of Israel, the people who catalogued all our brokenness and loss in this world and called for continued support of Israel. The defenders see it as the challenge of our time to win this military conflict and to emerge whole. Defenders are wrestling with what the day after looks like, but few of those talks offered tangible notions.

Second are the prophets, those empathizing with Palestinian suffering and calling Israelis to task for human rights abuses. Where the Defenders seem to see Palestinian suffering in only perfunctory ways, the Prophets similarly have a hard time seeing either Israeli suffering or military necessity in much of the loss of life.

From this I believe the Jewish world has split into two groups. There are Synagogues and institutions that identify as more progressive, who see ethical challenges in the behavior of Israel, who worry about the future of democracy and largely think human rights have been abandoned by Israel. Then there are those that identify as more “centrist,” who focus on the security threat to Israel and its implicit justification for continued military action and who believe Palestinians more or less deserve what they are getting.

Kol Emeth is doing something different and harder. It is a deep Biblical value to protect and love the Jewish people. The Torah and Bible are replete with examples of Jewish wars. The Talmud is filled with the need to protect physically the Jewish community and to place our needs above those of others. By the same token, the Bible teaches us again and again to love the stranger. The key distinction of being Jewish is to remember that we were once strangers in Egypt and that we learn a deep and abiding empathy for the other.

I believe the deep Jewish value is somehow to hold both these poles, to be both defenders and prophets. Being Jewish means somehow to care for the suffering of others, to be deeply invested in ethical behavior and to care for Jews in a deeper and different way; to see that defending the Jewish people and State is an ethical imperative of its own.

In trying to hold this pluralistic space, we are pushing against a wider cultural trend of people segmented out around political views. We are doing something difficult and important. It would be easy to give up. Yet I believe working towards honoring both of these poles creates a broader community more capable of real conversations. I believe it lets us pray with people whom we can know in a human way before we ever engage in political discussions. I believe it is one of our most key values.

When we fail to find the right balance, I urge you to believe in our larger hope. When you are tempted to retreat, remember that we need a diversity of views to help us hold onto what it  means to be Jewish. Somehow, despite all the external trends, I believe we can continue to sustain a genuinely pluralistic pro-Israel community, based on caring and respect. The stakes could not be higher because we are one of the few places even open to having this conversation.

Grant all of us patience, compassion, and curiosity.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi David Booth