Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur Sermons
Israel and the Self
by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein
I really did not think I would speak on Israel this year. I really didn't want to speak on Israel this year. Last year the disengagement was truly significant, and I even had a cute opening to my sermon when I wore orange and blue shirts. But there's nothing cute to open with this year; nothing really upbeat like last year, full of optimism after the disengagement. We were talking to Tunisia and making pacts with Jordan. Pakistan was praising us. We were heady with hope. Hey, we were even POPULAR! Israel was momentarily a good guy, and the media forgave us, and even the UN had nice things to say.
So I didn't think there would be any reason to speak about Israel this Yom Kippur. But then the war in Lebanon happened, and once again there was something to talk about. At first there was a sense of relief because the world was suddenly in support of Israel defending herself. The logic got through to even the most staunch Arab States. You fire missiles at a people they get to fire back.
Perhaps bouyed on by the applause, perhaps because it was absolutely necessary, perhaps because the terrorist Hizbollah movement set it up and used their own people as shields, whatever the reason the other shoe dropped and things got hot really fast. The familiar scene of war came rushing back like a freight train flying along the track; each stop a painful reminder of death and destruction of infrastructure and human beings. Israel went from being viewed as the defender to being viewed, once again, as the aggressor.
Every so often some smart soul from the press would manage to add as an afterthought that Haifa had 200 missiles a day landing on its doorstep and that Palestinians too were being killed by Hizbollah. But this time let's not analyse the war. Let's not discuss its faults or its strengths; its justifications or its implications.
Instead, let's talk about what it feels like to have Israel viewed as a war criminal in your own land. Right here in Toronto the Good. The same Toronto that doesn't break a sweat when a thousand strong demonstration parades down the street carrying pictures of Nasralla and our own politicians march along with it.
Let's talk for a change again about feeling like strangers in a strange land and the strange way that feels when you’re usually so comfortable, so much a part of the landscape, so much “us” there’s not really ever a “them”. Let's talk about ourselves, our hearts, in light of this last and thankfully short war. The war didn't hurt us in any way physically, sitting here comfortable in Toronto, but I am sure it hurt us spiritually. Why? Because we were barraged with an onslaught of criticism; op-ed pieces and CNN and BBC analyses concentrated sometimes venomously on how we target civilians, how we indiscriminately bomb civilian areas; how we are aggressors and invaders; how we stand in the way of the peace process; how we are “the biggest threat to world peace.” It has to affect you when the world turns on you and demands justifications for your very being.
But wait a minute, is it really us they're talking about? It's Israel, the army, the Israeli establishment, it’s the right wingers. Hey- I'm a leftie, they can't mean me. I support a two-state solution. I want there to be a stable Palestinian democracy, a nice middle class Palestinian state with a strong economy and a thriving government. No, the painful lesson I think we learned this summer is that those emotional distances are luxuries for Diaspora Jews. Let's remember its fashionable now to separate anti-Israel from anti-Semitic: “some of my best friends are Jews, it's just the Jewish homeland I abhor.” But if we are a people at all (forget our religious differences- plumb into the depth of what really holds us together, and it's peoplehood) if we are a people at all then it was me and it was you whom London Mayor Ken Livingstone called Nazi collaborators. It was me and it was you accused of war crimes by Amnesty International. How can I feel good about myself when faced with these charges? Listen to Jonathan Cook, a British journalist reporting from Nazareth, describing the Palestinians among whom he lives: “All have faced Zionism's appetite for territory and domination, as well as repeated attempts at ethnic cleansing.” Woah- ethnic cleansing. Mr. Cook also mentioned that he had the pleasure of debating David Horowitz of Campus Watch, and called him a “Semitic supremacist. “Now that's the first time I've heard that term, but I fear it won't be the last. I grew up in the era of Zionism=Racism. My kids will grow up hearing they are “Semitic supremacists.”
How should I feel about myself when Ralph Nader, one of my childhood iconoclastic and anti-establishment heroes, publicly declared, “it's obvious that the United States is the second state of Israel ...the Israeli puppeteer meets with the puppet in the White House...and then takes back billions of taxpayer dollars...”
This summer many of us discovered that it's hard to find your voice and be proud of it when everyone tells you to be quiet. I know , because I've spent my life fighting the urge to put my eyes down as a woman, put my voice down as a Jew. I've fought the urge all my life not to buy into the definitions of myself put upon me by others, definitions which require a self-denigration even if just in jest. I know what it means to be bullied by an unseen bully, by conventions or prejudices or assumptions. This summer I felt bullied by the UN, bullied by the newspapers, bullied by Amnesty International. Israel is “pushy” they told me. Hey, I’m a pushy New Yorker. (Montrealers in the crowd you can just substitute “Montrealer” here.) In the male-dominated Rabbinical school I went to I was a pushy woman. When I first moved to Canada I was a pushy American. My best friend is a pushy lesbian. Yeah I'm pushy if pushy means proud. I discovered when I was younger that when others are threatened by your success, by your spunk, by your attitude and by your refusal to bend or bow...you’re told you’re being pushy. And that is a form of bullying to get you to stop being successful.
We spent the summer being chastized by a UN that has judged Israel once again as too pushy. This, by the way, is the same UN which doesn't seem to worry all that much about its other members who harbour terrorists, oppress minorities and repress basic freedoms. And we've been reproached by the media who love to analyze Israel and always have it come up short; making sure to pinpoint and demand indepth reporting of every tank and every turn.
As a painful example, consider that it was widely reported—and thus assumed as true— that Israel deliberately targeted civilians at a UN post in Lebanon. That is so outrageous as to be laughable. The Israeli army has not only rabbis who accompany them to the battlefield but also lawyers to be sure of the legality of every move. I heard Alan Dershowitz joke that only a Jewish army would take lawyers onto the battlefield! But the scary part is that I almost believed the charge of targeting civilians. The way I almost believed a few years ago that there was a massacre in Jenin because the press said so; until a nonpartisan inquiry proved there never was a massacre— but there was no front page reporting of that finding. This summer, a few days after the media had prounced its verdict of guilty, UN observers themselves reported— in the Israeli press on the front page and in the world press on page 33— that Hezbollah had stationed itself with missiles pointing at Israel just meters behind that observation post, turning the post into a kind of human shield that Israel would have to strike and then, of course, be censured.
And just when I was feeling my lowest point of Jewish self-esteem this summer, I got a slew of mailings from Israeli self-critical organizations-B'tzelem, Rabbis for Human Rights, and a score of others. Why do we need Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to beat us up when we beat ourselves up daily? Israel as a nation soul searches and asks itself over and over again if it is living up to its own standard of being or lagoyim- a light unto the nations. Even if the world would let it be just a nation like other nations, it wouldn't let itself be.
So how does a people not begin to self-loathe when the world is so obsessed with loathing them?
In a piece called "The Mystery of Hate", Yair Lapid writes incredibly movingly from Israel, asking, “Why do they hate us so much? I am not talking about the Palestinians this time. Their dispute with us is intimate, focused, and it has a direct effect on their lives...It is the others. Those I cannot understand. Why does Hassan Nasralla, along with tens of thousands of his supporters, dedicate his life, his visible talents, his country's destiny, to fight a country he has never even seen, people he has never really met and an army that he has no reason to fight? Why do children in Iran, who can not even locate Israel on the map... burn its flag in the city center and offer to commit suicide for its elimination?...Why do they hate us so much in Saudi-Arabia? In Iraq? In Sudan?... How are we even relevant to their lives? ...This question has so many answers and yet it is a mystery...Is it something that we do? Fifteen hundreds years of anti-Semitism taught us - in the most painful way possible - that there is something about us that irritates the world. So, we did the thing everyone wanted: we got up and left. We have established our own tiny little country, where we can irritate ourselves without interrupting others...I am trying to remember and cannot: have we ever done something to them? When? How? They suffer from hunger, poverty, ignorance, bloodshed that spreads from Kashmir to Kurdistan, from dying Darfur to injured Bangladesh. How come we are the main problem?”
It is so frustrating to hear this and nod and say yes, I know that feeling. Why is the right of my existence not taken for granted?
Last week I googled Middle East conflict. Here's what I found on the website of Relief International: “Nearly one million people were displaced by the conflict in the Middle East. Now, many are returning home to find they have no water, electricity or sanitation supplies. Thousands more are living in makeshift shelters without the necessities for daily life. Relief International's teams are in Lebanon and Palestine providing immediate emergency assistance...” There were nearly one million people in the north of Israel displaced, living in temporary shelters without daily necessities. Maybe they don't exist-or aren't as deserving? If you look at Save The Children's Middle East programme, Israel is simply not listed as being in the Middle East- they fund programmes in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, The West Bank and Gaza. I guess there are no children in Israel who need to be saved from poverty, the ravages and trauma of war, or illiteracy. Of course if Israel just doesn't exist, then there are no children there to save.
For a country that doesn't exist, however, or one whose right of existence is not a given, condemnation of Israel occupies more psychic space than any other social problem in our world. Because it deflects attention from the Arab world's own inner turmoil, lack of leadership, and need for self-aggrandizement, Israel even takes up most of the Arab press' attention. If you were an alien from another planet and came down to listen in at the UN, you'd leave thinking Israel and its army is the sole perpetrater of human rights abuses; that Israel must be some huge country taking up inordinate amounts of space on the planet given the amount of time the major super powers spend on either protecting it or vilifying it. You'd never know of the atrocities of Moslems killing Moslems in the Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria; of the human slave market that still exists in Africa; you'd hear little about Darfur and the genocide there; maybe a smidgen about the wholesale trafficking of women; perhaps a mention of child poverty, illiteracy, and encouraged drug use and sweatshops in every third world country that produces the West's clothing. Would you hear much about the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the oppression of the people of Chechniya; the forced sexual genital mutilation of women across the Arabian desert? But you'd know plenty about Israel and its horrors. How absurd this double standard is; how self-righteous. I am not only angered by it but fearful that it may destroy my community's spiritual health. That's why I'm not talking about the war in Lebanon, I'm talking about a war on Jewish self-esteem.
In his book The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School describes how people who have lived under siege are likely to internalize the hatred. "Peace-famished" Israeli civilians falsely believe that "anti-Jewish sentiment was grounded in a fair and truthful assessment of the Jews". It's like that old joke, an anti-Semite is one who hates Jews only more than is absolutely necessary. Throughout history, Levin teaches, we Jews have believed that, through "submission", the Jewish community could pave the way to its eventual "acceptance." In the long history of Jewish wishful thinking, we have often resorted to justifying appeasement of our enemies to keep ourselves from sliding into total self-defeat and catastrophic national depression. We are, simply put, famished for peace, and we will do almost anything to achieve it. We stave away self-loathing by an eternal and often unjustified optimism.
But this year I think we need to take a different tactic to stave off self-despair and self-denial. We’ve had optimism, and we’ll continue to hope. But it will take anger—yes, anger—and righteous indignation to shout down the horrible misconceptions and canards that are being perpetrated in the name of world opinion. Without that righteous indignation and anger, i am afraid the Jewish people- and Israelis in particular- will begin to self-identify with the world’s condemnations. “You call us aggressor? Then so be it- we’ll be the aggressor.”
We must let our anger and our passion and our righteous indignation—no matter if you are left or right, centrist or hawkish or dovish on Israel and its policies—animate us not to cast ourselves as villainous “Semitic supremacists.” Not to stop believing that our historical self-definition of “rodef shalom”— pursuers of peace—is wrong. Not to stop working for peace because we perceive ourselves to prefer war.
That is why it is so critical that we speak out for Israel, that Israel knows it is not alone. If there is no dissenting voice to my critics, then my critics must be right. Thank God for all those Christians and Christian organizations who stand up for Israel. I know many of them have an agenda. I know many of them are pro-conversion; that the ingathering of the Jews to Israel is part of their Messianic prophecies. I don't care at this moment in history. Does a starving person care if the Salvation Army worker who gives him coffee also has an agenda to get him to believe? And thank G-d for the Alan Dershowitzes and Irwin Cotlers who write innumerable op-ed pieces and say more articulately than any of us can what we wish we could say to our neighbours and co-workers when they question us about Israel's very right to exist. Cut out their op-eds and send them to those folks, with a little post-it- “thought you might find this helpful.”
And that's why it is critical that we go there and be with Israelis and speak to them and participate in their daily lives and experience their normalcy of being there. That is why I'm leading groups not once, not twice, but three times this year; and I hope this is the year you join me. I invite you to take the flyers for our Israel trips; to join me as soon as this October 8 for a fabulous culinary tour with Bonnie Stern; or later this year on January 21st for a specially designed trip for those who have not yet been or those who have stayed away for a long time. Or you can be really adventurous and say kaddish with me at the pyramids in Egypt and then cross on foot from Egypt to Israel on Erev Pesach for an Exodus Seder in a desert tent. Come to Israel this year with me and Adrienne Rosenwhite and our families, and meet the perfectly decent people who live there and have been daily told this summer that they are monsters.
So I'm not going to talk about the war in Lebanon. Those of you who have heard me speak on Israel before know I'm not normally a doom and gloom kind of preacher. I'm not normally paranoid about anti-Semitism, seeing it round every corner. I'm not prone to dire prediction and grave pronouncements; I'm not easily taken in by the scare tactics used for effective fundraising. But on this one I am afraid that history will judge us one day. I'm afraid it will judge us as stupid and blind, after September 11th, after a Hamas victory in Gaza and Iran's president declaring Israel has no right to exist and suicide bombers in places like Madrid to London. We still don't seem to get it; but when we do get it we will not be afraid to say it loud and even pushy: Islamic fundamentalism- note that I say Islamic fundamentalism and NOT Islam or Moslems- but Islamic jihad nationalistic fundamentalism hates Israel because it hates what Israel stands for: modernity in the Middle East, equal rights for women and homosexuals and children and the poor; democracy; capitalism and a middle class economy; oh- and the end of Jewish rootlessness and homelessness which leads to Jewish victimhood. It is those very things—which Israel stands for in the Middle East— that we must continue to champion as part of our public and proactive programme of Jewish self-esteem.
That is what Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are ultimately about. Jewish pride and self-determination and self-respect; I think that's why many of you are here today. But this year it’s about a little bit of Jewish anger and righteous indignation. So as a rabbi, I'm declaring: Be angry. Heads up, eyes forward, voice heard. This year, give ourselves a break. Love ourselves as Jews more. Confess our sins but don’t over-beat our national breasts. Pride, self-determination, self-respect, anger, and righteous indignation. If that will help that beleaguered little dot on the map which continues to take in every impoverished Jew from Ethiopia, every oppressed Jew from Russia, every frightened Jew from France, every displaced Jew from Argentina, every comfortable Jew from North America, then I for one from my comfortable seat in Toronto am willing this year to say one less “al chet” for Israel to the world and one more yesher koach.
Shanah Tova
