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SERMON BY RABBI michael berk
delivered on rosh hashanah day
september 13, 2007
Rosh Hashanah 5769: Israel and Hope
Last night I spoke of Rosh Hashanah as the holiday of hope, of new beginnings. This morning I want to speak to you about Israel.
At the CCAR convention in Atlanta we heard one of the most prominent thinkers in Israel, Rabbi Donniel Hartman, argue that Israel is in the midst of an unprecedented situation – the collapse of hope. For a couple of years, there has been no realistic hope for peace. The Palestinians are politically frozen and waging civil war, too many still willing to kill their children, to send them on missions as suicide-homicide bombers. There is no one to talk to about peace. For the first time ever in Israel's history parents cannot in good conscience say to their children, "Maybe when you grow up you won't have to fight."
The hopelessness in Israel has an echo in the endless debate that continues in this country. We all know the media is biased against Israel. Whether it's CNN, NPR, editorial boards of major newspapers… the story is almost always slanted against Israel. We also know how Israel and Israel supporters are battered on college campuses across America. Moving here recently from San Francisco, I know well that part of the left wing, including many Jews, that hate Israel. The Consul General of Israel once said to me, "I can take the Palestinian protesters and their shouts of hatred during demonstrations. But the most painful hate comes from the Jews I can hear protesting outside my window."
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This endless debate between supporters and detractors of Israel took place recently right on the pages of The San Diego Union Tribune – not for the first time, I'm sure. At the end of August, a doctor and nurse husband and wife team wrote of their experience in the West Bank. Not learning the ancient lesson, there are at least two sides to every story, they wrote only of the oppressive people and policies of Israel. Not a word about Palestinian terrorism or Jewish children blown to smithereens. If you didn't read it, you could predict what it said. I'm not going to try to refute them now. That story was followed a few days later by a cycle of letters that was also predictable: equal number of letters vilifying and defending Israel. I am grateful to Louise Miller, Jean-Jacques Surbeck, and Rita Benchimol for their eloquent letters on behalf of Israel.
This is Rosh Hashanah, the holiday of hope. So this morning I want to ask the question – What do you do when you lose hope? What do you do when the facts are grim? What do you do when you are a people who have specialized in hope and for the foreseeable future it looks as though there is no hope? What do you do when you experience an endless cycle of revenge and hatred? What do you do when truth is so distorted that it makes you give up all hope for the truth?
Do you realize what a crisis this is in Jewish life? Do you understand how hard it is for Jews not to hope? We are the children of hope! We brought hope into the world. We were trapped in Egypt. We were ruled by pagan power and pagan propaganda which proclaimed that there is only what the gods decree, what nature ordains. When we managed to leave Egypt, we discovered the God of possibility, the God of surprise, the God of hope. That's who we are! For two thousand years in exile we kept hope alive that some day we could return to our homeland. Every Passover we said, "next year in Jerusalem." Along came the Zionist movement to found a Jewish country in our homeland. The national anthem is called "Hatikvah" – the Hope. The first step in the modern, planned return to the land of Israel was to establish an agricultural school near Yafo in 1869 which was called "Mikvah Yisrael" – the hope of Israel. The first modern settlement in Israel was called "Petach Tikvah" – the opening of hope.
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As Jews we have a serious spiritual challenge on our hands–how do we live without hope for Israel? Up until now, for all of Israel's history, hope has been her watchword. When the whole world thought it was impossible, Ben Gurion had the courage to hope that maybe the Jews could survive. Once the state was formed, people had hope that Israel could survive and thrive. People lived on hope. Thousands of Jews lived in tents in the 1950's and hope was what sustained them. The economic situation was so bad in the fifties that more Jews left Israel than went to Israel, and still Israelis reveled in hope. They were so hopeful and optimistic they sent shlichim, representatives, to all parts of the world to help other Jews! Hope continued after the Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
This is how Israel has survived: by reaching deep inside to find its Jewish soul. Without a month of peace, with no secure borders, surrounded by nations which are totalitarian and hateful, what has been the Jewish, Israeli, response to this reality? Ye hay shmay rabba mevorach – may God's great name be blessed! We responded to meaningless suffering by creating meaning and holiness.
This is the story we need to tell, a story about the soul of Israel: Throughout its history, Israel has been trying to build holiness–not on some mountaintop, not deep in some desert retreat center, but in the streets where every day life is lived. If you wanted to become an ophthalmologist in Israel you had to spend two years volunteering in Africa. There's a kibbutz in Israel, kibbutz Chatzora, where they built a road right down the middle of the kibbutz, where there should have been lawns and gardens, so that one paralyzed girl could travel by wheel chair and not have to leave the kibbutz. During the crisis of the Vietnamese Boat People, little tiny Israel took in more refugees than the entire country of Canada. During Operation Solomon, when Israel transported thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, they became the first people in human history to take Africans from slavery into freedom. And not only that, in the years before that stunning operation, the Israelis negotiated with the Ethiopians to stop their Civil War just long enough to allow the Jews to leave. This was at the same time the British were debating whether to allow 100,000 wealthy and healthy people from Hong Kong to immigrate to Britain before China resumed sovereignty there. How different was Israel; they plead with the Ethiopians: if you won't let us take all the Jews, let us at least have the old and sick.
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This story, a story imbued with the power of hope, helps us understand why, with hope collapsing all around her, Israel, Rabbi Hartman argued, is in a very dangerous time. When you lose hope you are likely to act like an animal. Israel could have easily gone down that path. With hope collapsing all around her Israel could have begun to act like any other Middle Eastern country. Israel's air force could level Gaza and the West Bank in a couple of hours, kill thirty or forty thousand people, and be done with it. Israel has not descended into that abyss. How is that? Israel is not perfect. But Israel somehow has internalized the Jewish genius for remaining hopeful when hope seems futile. So how do they do it?
The first thing you have to do when hope is lost, is, you just hang in there. You have to put one foot in front of the other. You don't surrender. You keep going. You don't have the stomach to hang in there? Then you just get your stomach ready for a long haul. My brother tells the story about his last night in Israel a couple of years ago when they had an eleven year old girl over for dinner. Her name is Ayelet, and she was one of my niece's Israeli friends. In the midst of the second intifada, my brother asked her how she gets to school each day. She answered, "Well, we don't own a car, so I take a cab to school each morning and I take the bus home in the afternoon." Bill was surprised about the bus and asked her about it. She said, "Well, my mom says most of the bombings have been on the #18 bus and I take the #14 bus, and besides there are only five stops between the school and my house." Five stops, of course, meant five opportunities for a suicide bomber to get on board. This delightful, bright little girl rather breezily whipped off the strategy her family developed. The point is – it's all so matter of fact. You just do it. Life goes on. You make some adjustments, but you do not give up.
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The second thing you have to do when hope is waning is you change your focus. You engage in small deeds, nothing glamorous or heroic, but deeds which none the less provide some respite from the trauma. Israel built a fence. In the beginning, when the idea was first proposed a few years ago, nobody liked the idea and nobody took it too seriously. The left didn't like it and the right despised it. But people in the middle began to think–maybe a fence would stop them from turning our children into body parts. Maybe the fence would give us a time out. They hate us so much – let's give them a chance to be by themselves. We'll be by ourselves. We'll have a little peace. You have to understand - I don't think Jews like walls. But people felt that the bombing had to stop. It's that simple! And you know what? It's working! It's not violent. It's not pretty. Nobody wants it. But it's helping. In one of its first months alone, with the help of that fence, the army was able to capture twenty-three suicide bombers. The fence is a fantastic success. You can just imagine how people in Israel felt when the international court in The Hague issued its ruling condemning the fence. The ruling was sixty pages long and there wasn't one single reference to terrorism, which is the whole reason the fence was built in the first place.
The third thing you do when hope is in trouble is, you hang on to your values. You don't sell out. Israel did not become another Middle Eastern country. Israel avoided the temptation to just level Palestinian cities. The doctor and nurse who visited Israel from San Diego write so hatefully of the security fence and the roadblocks that make Palestinian travel complicated and humiliating. They don't know the Israeli side, but let me tell you a little story. At a CCAR convention in Jerusalem I heard a minister in the government speak. He apologized for being late but he had to attend the funeral of a little girl, a friend of his daughter, killed by a suicide bomber the day before. He told us about being asked by the press about the roadblocks, which so many in the world criticized. He began his answer by referring to a Mishnah, a rabbinic teaching that described Yom Kippur rituals from the time when the Temple stood. The Mishnah teaches that a team of Pharisees would go to the High Priest before Yom Kippur. They would interrogate him about his preparations for Yom Kippur, a day so awesome the fate of the cosmos depended on the proper execution of the intricate rituals. Once the questions were asked and answered, the High Priest would go over to a corner of the room and cry. So too would the Pharisees. It was an embarrassing and humiliating experience. It was a terrible thing to have to sit through and to do, this questioning, but it had to be done. The government minister concluded: it may be necessary to conduct the road blocks for our safety and security, but we need to train our soldiers to cry. Contrast this, and what it says about Israeli humanity, with the shouts of joy and gleeful dancing that took place in Gaza a couple of days ago when they heard that a ketusha rocket managed to injure scores of Israeli soldiers. Have you ever heard Israelis dancing and reveling after a successful military operation?
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Israel has had to exercise power, but I know of no other country that has been as self critical of how it has used and abused power. Israeli soldiers have told me they spend a huge amount of time in the military studying the ethics of war. I befriended a soldier, from the famed Golani Brigade. This is an Israeli with the youthful Jewish face of any 20 year old in this room, but whose body looked as though it were carved out of a mountain. He was one of the Israelis who arrested Yassir Arafat. I told him he made me feel like a sissy. He replied, "I wish I could be a sissy." I'd hold up Israel's values against any nation in human history.
Israeli law has also made an incredible contribution to helping Israel hold on to its principles. Israel could have ignored its legal traditions and institutions which protect human rights. Instead the opposite occurred. The Israeli Supreme Court, during this era of suicide bombers, has issued two rulings that are unbelievable in their humanity and compassion for Palestinians. One ruling stated that Israel can no longer torture a suspected terrorist, not even a terrorist labeled a "ticking bomb." And, the court ruled that some sections of the security fence had to come down and be re-built so as not to cause hardship to Palestinians. The day after that ruling the Prime Minister announced that the government would implement immediately exactly what the court ordered. Israel's Supreme Court has become one of the most courageous and independent courts in the world.
My friends, there is not much we can do to change the reality on the ground in Israel. But we can be inspired by Israel's tenacity. In the face of declining hope, vulnerable to despair and cynicism, there are signs of hope still coming out of the Land. There are a record number of recruits volunteering for combat units, and serious efforts are going on to change the way Jewish education is done in Israel to emphasize values, wisdom, possibilities of transformation and pluralism. There is a pragmatism emerging from Israeli think tanks; some of the old hard lines of left and right are blurring as these thinkers consider what will really work. Israel continues to be a leader in many technological industries. Little Israel, battered and despised by so many, clings to its values and continues to move forward. My brother, a recent immigrant to Israel told me yesterday, "Israel is clinging to hope, despite all the bad news."
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On this Rosh Hashanah the whole world, except for the United States of America, is hostile to Israel. And I want to tell you I have never been prouder of Israel. Don't you give up on Israel. Don't you give in to despair. Population studies tell us that Reform Jews have the worst record of all other Jews in their support of Israel, their connection to Israel, and visiting Israel. Let's change that here in San Diego. Visit Israel. Give to Israel. Speak of Israel to your friends. Write letters to politicians on behalf of Israel. Keep writing letters to the papers. There is much we can do. And keeping with her, standing with Israel, not giving in to hopelessness, are things we must do.
These holy days remind us that Jews have always had to struggle to maintain hope. The Torah tells us that there was no reason for our ancestors to be enslaved, brutalized, and murdered in Egypt. Their suffering was totally meaningless. Yet, when they got out of Egypt they made their way to a small mountain called Sinai. There they dream a dream of holiness. They transformed their suffering into compassion, commitment, and strength. At that crucial moment standing at Sinai they heard God say – kedoshim tihu, you shall be holy. The best way we Jews know to respond to hopelessness is: make a commitment to life.
On Rosh Hashanah we say, zochreinu adonai eloheinu bo letovah, u-fak-deinu vo livrachah, ve-hoshe-einu vo lechaim, remember us, O Lord our God, for goodness, take note of us for blessing, and save us for life. The word that repeats itself more than any other on the High Holidays is lechaim, for life. We choose life! We remain hopeful! We express our yearning for the blessing of life. We celebrate life even though we know that the world is sometimes a terrible place.
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The Dolphinarium on Tel Aviv's shoreline is one of the happening nightspots for Israeli young people. This is where twenty-one teenagers were murdered by a suicide bomber. Next to the Dolphinarium there now stands a simple, makeshift, caste iron memorial decked in wreaths which were put up by teenagers. The memorial reads – lo nafsik lirkode – we will not stop dancing. It is not always easy to find our way to the dance floor. But we must always be hopeful and celebrate life fully. In this new year may we give each other and our Israeli brothers and sisters the strength we all need so that we too can say, along with our teenagers, lo nafsik lirkode, we will not stop dancing. We can't know how long it will take for things to improve. We still don't see the light at the end of the tunnel in Israel's quest for peace. But we remain hopeful. And we stand with Israel. And this day and every day we will show the human spirit to be what it is – enduring, sacred, ever hopeful, planted by a mighty God, capable of any transformation required. Lo nafsik lirkode, we will not stop dancing.
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