Rabbi Cohon’s Response to the Iranian Attack

As you all are likely quite aware, on Saturday Iran brazenly attacked Israel directly, sending over 350 missiles and drones at Israeli cities and other civilian population centers.  Anti-missile defenses—primarily Israel's, but also American, Jordanian, and other allied nations—shot down all of them, with no loss of life.  Iran also seized an Israeli-linked ship in the Straits of Hormuz, a vital artery for the oil trade.  

While Iran has long used "proxy" terrorist groups to attack Israel, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iran's Syrian clients, this marks the first direct attack on Israel by Iran ever.  It is a major escalation against Israel, a violation of all international law, and an act of war.  It is quite obviously a Casus Belli, a legal reason to go to war.

Israel has shown restraint in not immediately responding by attacking Iran directly.  To this point, much of the world's effort has been directed at restraining Israel from answering Iran's obvious provocation, rather than condemning Iran for acting against all responsible standards of civilization and being the outlaw theocratic state that it is.  This shows, yet again, the highly prejudicial double standard applied constantly to Israel.    

No one knows how this will all develop.  But it is clear that we must stand with our brothers and sisters in Israel who are being attacked yet again, this time in an unprecedented way by a regional power that has continually broadcast its fervent desire to destroy the only Jewish state on the planet and massacre all its Jews.  Israelis have had a sleepless night; it could have been much worse.  We can thank God, and Israel's defenses and allies, that it was not.

The international effort to delegitimize Israel has ratcheted up ever since the Palestinian Arab atrocities perpetrated by Hamas and other Palestinians on October 7th, an incredibly brutal and horrific attack that was sponsored and coordinated by Iran.  The Israeli hostages who still remain alive have now spent over six months in terrifying captivity in and under Gaza, and we will begin Passover a week from tonight with the knowledge that this year, in particular, we are not all free.

At this time of challenge and attack on our homeland of the heart, Israel, it is incumbent on every Jew in the world to support Israel in every way that we can.  We may not always agree with everything that Israel does; in fact, it would be positively un-Jewish to think that we would.  We may not approve of the current Israeli government; most Israelis don't either.   But it is a mitzvah of the highest order to support Israel as a primary Jewish act right now.  Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh Bazeh, the Talmud teaches us.  Every Israelite is responsible for every other; every Jew has a moral obligation to care about and help every other Jew.  

And all of us have just such a responsibility to Israel.  

My sermon, delivered last Friday night before this Iranian attack, addresses this question, too.

May Israel emerge from this latest dark chapter a stronger, better nation.  And we pray that peace returns to her speedily and soon.

Chazans and Israel

Sermon Parshat Tazria 5784

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ

A chazan, as you may know, is a cantor, the shliach tzibur, the person entrusted with leading the community in prayer.  I am, of course, both a rabbi and a chazan, a member of both the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Cantors Assembly, the two oldest existent professional organizations for rabbis and cantors, respectively, in America, and so I may have a unique perspective on the role of the chazan in the leadership of Jews. 

The role of the chazan actually may predate that of the rabbi, since in antiquity those who led prayers had to be expert in text and tune as well as articulation.  Most congregants probably did not have siddurim, prayerbooks to follow the prayers, or chumashim, Torah texts.  Books were handwritten, expensive and likely hard to come by, so the chazan’s chanting was the way that Jews could speak to God using the beautiful language of our liturgy, and could learn the text of Torah.  The word chazan likely is derived from the Hebrew word chazah, to show, as in the one who shows the way.  And of course, chazanim, cantors, were supposed to have pleasant voices, even excellent ones, in order to make the prayers soar up to God.

Which reminds me of a classic story.  It seems that one Shabbat Palestinian terrorists take over a synagogue, and then hold the rabbi, the chazan and the president hostage.  They tell the three, “We are going to kill you, you vile Zionists.  But before we execute you, we are going to grant each of you a final request.”

The Palestinian terrorists turn first to the rabbi and they say, “What’s your final request?”  And he says, “I have this amazing sermon I was going to preach, the best one I’ve ever written.  I’d like to deliver it before you kill me.”  The terrorists say, “How long will it take?” And the rabbi answers, “One hour.”  So they say, “OK, you can deliver your sermon and then we’ll shoot you.”

They next turn to the chazan and they ask him, “What’s your final request?”  And he says, “I have this incredible ma’ariv evening service I’ve always wanted to chant.  It’s the most extraordinary Jewish music ever, and I’d like to sing it.”  And the terrorists say, “How long will it take?” And the chazan answers, “Two hours.”  So they say, “OK, you can sing your service and then we’ll shoot you.” 

The terrorists then turn to the president of the synagogue and they ask him, “What’s your final request?”  And the president says, “Shoot me first.”

I realize this is particularly dark humor this year, when we have seen Israeli hostages held for more than six months now in and under Gaza, and we don’t even know how many of them remain alive, or if they will be freed during the coming Pesach, the Festival of Freedom.  Still, in good times and especially in bad times, we Jews have always responded to persecution, pogrom and tragedy with our own brand of sardonic humor. 

This extemporanea about chazanim is provoked by a little exploration I did concerning attitudes towards Israel today among world Jewry, both in America and in other parts of the Diaspora, and it comes from two articles written by people with the last name of Chazan.  And while these are not new articles—perhaps because they are not new articles—they have much to show us about how we can and should respond to questions about our support for Israel today.

Over twenty years ago Professor Barry Chazan, then Professor of Education at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem wrote a challenging article about the Diaspora’s relationship with Israel (Struggling for Israel in The Sovereign and Situated Self, 2003).   The context of his article was the rapid downturn of engagement with Israel in synagogues and Jewish communities worldwide that began with the Second Intifada of 2000 and which ended with the building of the separation barrier between the West Bank and Israel.

He began his article with this challenge: “We have lost the authentic narrative of Israel in the lives of the Jewish people.”  He said that in the melee of politics, opposition to the policies of a particular Israeli government, horror at the effects of the struggle between radical Palestinian terrorists and the State of Israel and the risk of disdain from our neighbors who are not connected to Israel, or who do not support Israeli actions or policies, we have failed to teach and pass on to our future generations the continuation of the centuries old link between Erets Yisrael, the land of Israel, and Jewish culture, Jewish civilization and Jewish religion.  Israel, Chazan said, is an indispensable element of being Jewish and of Jewish peoplehood.

Of course he was right, and ahead of his time.  Connection to Israel in the is as indispensable an element of being Jewish as is connection to Shabbat, to Jewish festivals, to our Jewish texts, to our responsibility for Tikkun Olam, the improvement of the world in our lifetime, to caring for others and all that we understand as the Mitzvot, our Jewish duties.  Caring about and supporting Israel is not optional.

This connection is not and cannot be conditional on how Israel acts at a particular time in history.  Our Bible, particularly our Haftarah portions, continually document how Israel under various kings acted dreadfully – in Elijah’s time it was King Ahab supporting the prophets of Baal to bring the Israelite people into idolotary; in Isaiah’s day he describes a society where the rights of the stranger, the widow and the orphan are trampled upon by a falsely pious wealthy few.  The prophet Amos says that people in power in Israel who would sell the needy for a pair of shoes.  Jeremiah lavishes some of the most beautiful poetic imagery in the history of literature to describe how thoroughly rotten the Israelites are acting both in embracing idolatry and cheating the poor and hungry.  None of these great prophets said “Since you disagree with some of Israel’s actions you should stop supporting the right of the Jewish people to live in the land.”  They all advocated a continuing connection with Israel and a profound duty to improve her.

Another Professor Chazan – Naomi Chazan, then President of the New Israel Fund—also weighed in.  At a conference of the European Union for Progressive Judaism she said that “the most patriotic thing you can do as a Jew is to fight for a decent and just Israel.”

Our link with Israel – cultural, religious, and peoplehood based, is so central to Jewish identity that it cannot be conditional on us fully approving how Israel acts.

The first Chazan here, Professor Barry Chazan set out six ways in which we can ensure that we here in the Diaspora and our children will build our span in the bridge to Israel for now and the future.  Mind you, he said all of this more than 20 years ago.  I only wish the world Jewish community had fully listened and acted on these principles with the full weight of its resources beginning two decades ago. 

First, he said, we should teach our core Jewish texts with Israel intertwined.  Part of our Torah portion today, Tazria, is about a house built in the Land of Israel which is rotting but can be fixed.  Our Torah texts will continue for most of the rest of this Jewish year with the introductory words “when you come into the land of Israel”  – they are here to establish values which will make the Jewish nation and our relationship to it sacred, unique, holy.

Second, we should not dumb down our engagement with Israel – rather in what we do in our Diaspora communities we should emphasize the realities of the contemporary State of Israel with all of its confusions.  As Naomi Chazan says, “We have to distinguish between dissenters and destroyers”.  In the debate over judicial reform last year in Israel hundreds of thousands of Israelis came out to peacefully protest the Netanyahu government’s attempt at a judicial coup, to defend democracy in Israel.  These, our brothers and sisters were not destroying Israel – they were seeking to preserve a central, nearly sacred aspect of our Jewish State for the present and the future.  But when Israel was attacked in the horrific atrocities of October 7th they all rallied to the support of the only Jewish nation on the planet, and did so with great energy, devotion and passion.

Most Israelis have no use for their Prime Minister now—but they support their nation and its right to exist.  So must we, too, and do so with passion but with intelligence, that supremely Jewish quality. 

Third, Barry Chazan recommends we must use the Hebrew language. This is our unique possession by which we best express Jewish ideas and, spoken, written in, sung in, it conveys the culture and civilization of our people better than you could ever do in English.

Fourth we must create multiple Israel experiences throughout the year – chances to celebrate, times to learn, opportunities to enjoy Israeli food, music, film, art – just woven into what it means to be a Jew anywhere in the world in 2024, as we seek to do at Beit Simcha in every way that we can.

Fifth, Barry Chazan says, make sure that there is plenty of access to Israelis as he writes “we should use real human beings.  One of the best texts we have in teaching Israel is real Israelis.  ….  By giving the Jewish people access to all kinds of Israelis, we are offering them an opportunity to view Israel as the diverse textbook of Jewishness that it is.”

Finally, we should go to Israel, even at times of great challenge—perhaps especially at times of its greatest challenges.  Israel changes rapidly and only by seeing with your own eyes can you experience the potential for our Jewish state, see its struggles, experience how it is to live just a few miles from a place where there are people who have continually tried to destroy your country, experience the determination of Israelis who campaign for co-existence, find yourself right in the middle of the debate about how Israel will be.

Mind you, these ideas are not new.  But at time of supreme difficulty for Israel, when the enemies of the existence of a Jewish state are emboldened everywhere, it is of utmost importance that we play our important part in affirming the central role that Israel plays in our own Jewish identities.

Even when we disagree with its government, or that government’s actions.  The modern State of Israel is the fulfillment of a dream, yes, im tirtzu ein zo Aggadah, if you will it, it is no dream; but it is also reality that must lie close to our hearts.  Our support for it should neither falter nor flag, even while we disagree with some of its actions.

And may the Land of Israel again soon know peace.

Strange Fire?

Sermon, Shabbat Shemini 5784

Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha

We have now officially begun our Passover preparations, which include finding the Haggadahs we so carefully put away last year, cleaning out the old stuff from our refrigerators and freezers, and gasping at the extremely high prices the local markets charge for Passover supplies.  And of course, dusting off Pesach jokes from recent years.

For example, there’s the question of just what you call someone who derives pleasure from the bread of affliction?  That’s right, a matzah-chist.

Now, just in time for Passover this year, and most unexpectedly, the number one streaming series on Netflix this week is not a reality TV show on finding love, nor a cooking show, nor a detective or murder show, nor even a teen drama with supernatural overtones.  No, the number one show on Netflix this week—actually, for a few weeks now—is called Testament: the Story of Moses.  Sophie and I tried to watch it one night last week, and found it to be pretty weak: it’s not exactly a drama, since it has “experts”, that is, talking heads opining about Moses and the Exodus story. But it’s also not quite a documentary, since it has dramatizations of the events of the truly greatest story ever told that are odd and stiffly staged, with mediocre CGI recreations of the high points of the story, then back to the expert commentary.  I’m not sure exactly what they were trying to convey here, but I do know that we didn’t make it through two full episodes before falling asleep, and we tried on two consecutive nights. 

Look, I’m glad it’s popular, especially this time of year.  We have had to depend on the rather hokey and profoundly outdated Cecil B. DeMille Biblical epic The Ten Commandments film with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner for almost 70 years—three score and ten, if you are keeping track in Biblical terms in your scorecard—or the animated Prince of Egypt movie that was made in 1998 by Dreamworks; that one is over 25 years old now.  There was a wretched version of the story called Exodus: Gods and Kings with Christian Bale that filmmaker Ridley Scott made 10 years ago which was, to be kind, unwatchably bad; and besides, it starred a guy as Moses who was named Christian.  With that limited repertoire of Pesach films to recommend, when this mini-series popped up on our Netflix menu as the number one show in the country I had to view it.

And this one?  Not great, nor even good.  We found it pretty hard to stay awake. Which is a shame, and, frankly, somewhat startling. 

I mean, it’s astonishing how many terrible films and TV shows are made from fantastic Biblical stories.  I find it puzzling that producers and directors, given great plots, terrific characters and memorable dialogue in the original sources somehow can’t make a decent movie or TV series out of these extraordinary stories that shaped all later literature, not to mention fostering three major religions and most of western civilization. 

Look, the Exodus story is terrific.  It has everything you could want in a dramatic epic, including even a bit of sex appeal in the Moses-Tzipporah romance.  It’s got the struggle for freedom from enslavement and oppression, the rise of an extremely reluctant and unexpected hero, a powerful, evil and deceitful king defeated by a resistance movement, a series of supernatural plagues, miraculous redemption, and finally a national covenant proclaimed and Jewish identity affirmed.  Everything you could want in a feature film or streaming series, if only they could manage to capture it. 

The Exodus story can be seen as the struggle between the ancient pantheon of corrupt gods and a new, unified moral God, and there are twists and turns in the plot enough to satisfy any great dramatist.  It’s a magnificent story… and the movies and tv shows they make from it are, generally speaking, pale imitations of the original.  This Netflix series is not an exception.  Testament: the Story of Moses’ popularity is rather shocking, in view of the fact that everyone seems to think that religion is fading away in America these days.  Yet many people are glued to their streaming devices watching a less-than-compelling telling of this extremely ancient tale in a not-very interesting way.  Somehow, viewers seem to still appreciate a rip-roaring Biblical classic even when it’s poorly made.  I guess you can’t always watch Vanderpump Rules or Kardashian re-runs.

Of course, the Exodus story doesn’t end with leaving Egypt and achieving freedom, nor does it finish at Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments.  It continues on the Israelites’ journey to commitment and holiness, with the creation of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, our people’s first temple.  And in order for God to be present in that Tabernacle priests must be ordained to fulfill the rites and rituals that connected our ancestors with God.

Which brings us to this week’s portion of Shemini, including as it does the beginning of the rituals of sacrifice that connect the Israelites to the divine Presence.  It all starts well, with the final ordination rituals, the anointing of Aaron and his sons as Kohanim, high priests, and Shechinah filling the Tabernacle immediately.  Adonai is in God’s temple; all is right with the world.

But then things take a terrible turn.  The story in this week’s Torah portion is challenging indeed.  Just after the ordination of the priests who are to serve in the Tabernacle in the Wilderness and the beginning of the rituals that are designed to bring God’s presence, the Shechinah, into the midst of the people of Israel, Aaron the High Priest’s eldest sons, Nadav and Avihu, make a ritual offering of something identified as eish zarah to God, something we are told that is “not commanded.”  And God is very much not pleased.  The two sons are immediately slain, apparently in such a way that they are instantly killed while their clothing remains intact.

This shocking incident impacts Aaron, the High Priest, brother of the leader Moses and central figure in the rituals of the Tabernacle.  Here he has just celebrated the eighth day of their inauguration into the Priesthood, and seemingly out of nowhere they are suddenly killed by God.

In our portion, Aaron is notified of the death of his children.  The Torah continues, "Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘This is what the Lord spoke saying, ‘Bikrovai ekadesh v’al pnai ha’am ekaveid,’ vayidom Aharon: Through those that are near to Me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified;’ and Aaron was silent."  (Leviticus 10:3)  It is a profoundly tragic and heartrending scene.  No one should have to experience the death of a child, let alone at a moment of great pride and celebration.  The comfort that Moses, and God, offer is small indeed.  Aaron’s only response is silence… perhaps the most profound way to experience loss.

Now this portion has long been explored to try to determine just what Nadav and Avihu did, how these two priestly sons erred and why they were destroyed for doing so. What constitutes “strange fire”, eish zarah?  Explanations have ranged from the possibility that they were drunk—there is a prohibition given shortly thereafter on priests drinking before performing rituals—to the idea that they were offering a pagan incense sacrifice to some other god to the possibility that they just exceeded their authority and took it upon themselves to make an unauthorized offering.  We don’t know exactly what they did wrong, except that it was an unsolicited act.  And the Torah does go to great pains to delineate all the rituals in incredible detail. 

It is intriguing to speculate what the Torah might mean here; are we to learn that every mitzvah in the Torah must be fulfilled super scrupulously or we, too, might be turned to ashes?  Are we to understand that those called to serve a priestly role must be held to much higher standards than mere ordinary Israelites?  Are we to wonder if perhaps these priests were simply too young to appreciate the gravity of their task of bringing holiness to the people, of almost literally bringing God to the earth? 

Or maybe we might look instead at just what constitutes eish zarah, strange fire, today.

There is a midrash from Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer on the relationship between “man,” which in Hebrew is ish, and “woman” which is ishah. In Hebrew, these terms share the letters alef and shin, which together form the word “eish” meaning “fire.” The difference between these two words is that “man” contains a yod and “woman” contains a hei. Put those two letters together and you form the word “yah” meaning God.  The midrash teaches us that God is saying “if you go and observe My commandments, My name will be with you and will save you from trouble; but if My name is not between you, then you will be like fire — and fire eats fire,” (Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer, “Horev” Chapter 11) meaning we will destroy one another.  Or perhaps—we will offer strange fire, and be destroyed.

I’ve been thinking about the true purpose of ritual—or prayer, of services, of meditation, even of orderly festivals like Passover.  Why do we have them?  Why do we need them at all?  God is everywhere, and we are busy people, right? Why do we need to sing the same words, and often the same melodies, read the same passages, do the same rituals?  Why is it important to do any of that?

I think that perhaps the answer lies in this disturbing story of Nadav and Avihu.  If we fail to ground ourselves spiritually, we put ourselves in danger of pursuing eish zarah, the kind of strange fires of passion and belief and insanity that seem to be perpetuating themselves in our society, and in our politics.  If we don’t turn to God regularly and respectfully, we run the risk of losing our way completely, of becoming strange fire ourselves, of believing the crazy conspiracy theories afoot everywhere these days, of chasing dangerous chimerical combustion. 

It is when we choose to seek God, and God’s way, with sincerity and consistency that we find the Shechinah is always present, and available to us. 

May we remember to do so on this Shabbat of Shemini, and always.

The Choice to Be Good

Sermon, Parshat Tzav 5784

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ 

This week someone emailed me a piece entitled “Acts of God” which lists a wide variety of natural disasters—plus some human ones, like fires and trampling incidents—in which many people have died over the last 2000 years or so.  The comment in the email was was “please discuss on your radio show.” 

I have rarely failed to rise to appropriately flavored ideological bait, and this was certainly a tasty morsel of theological challenge.  And it seemed wrong to wait to talk about it until Sunday morning’s Too Jewish Radio Show—because the question of the morality of God is certainly appropriate material for a sermon, and the synagogue is certainly one place where we ought to be able to talk about ethics and fairness.  After all, if not here, then where?

The implication in the article I received—which documented most major natural tragedies in human history, and seemed to credit them all to “acts of God”—was that if God is powerful, and God is good, what kind of God causes these horrific natural disasters—like the tsunamis last December---that kill so many people, including the elderly and small children?  As this article put it, “Here are some of the more spectacular acts of God since recorded time, and their toll in human lives…” and it then went through a list of earthquakes, epidemics, floods, hurricanes, volcanoes, and fires with a tabulation of their victims. 

Cheerful stuff.  Obviously, in that view, either God is all-powerful but none-too merciful, or God isn’t very powerful, and God’s mercy is therefore pretty irrelevant. Game, set, and match, right?

Well, without in any way diminishing the terrible trauma of the victims of such disasters, and their bereaved families, I have to say that the Jewish view of such events is rather different.  First, most of our own people’s traumas have occurred at the hands of other human beings and can’t precisely be ascribed to God’s direct acts.  I mean, God created us all free beings, with the ability to choose to act for good or evil.  When we have that choice we individually or collectively, have the capacity to act badly, to do things that cause serious harm to others.  If God intercedes and compels us to “do the right thing” then we are not really free, or independent, and our choices are not really moral.  So, in the Jewish understanding of the world God doesn’t dictate our choices for good or evil—we do.

Now, for better or worse, the natural world has its own rules and laws, and they don’t necessarily harmonize with the choices that we human beings are making.  An earthquake is no great tragedy if people don’t build cities next to large seismic faults.  A tidal wave rarely goes very far inland, so if you live in the highlands instead of on the attractive beaches you can avoid such events.  Volcanic eruptions don’t impact people living in non-volcanic areas.  But we human beings continually place ourselves in areas that are subject to such events.  That is our choice.

Of course, you can’t really avoid a natural disaster once it’s upon you, but you can choose not to live in areas that are subject to them. 

The other interesting fact about these so-called “Acts of God” is that they are usually the result of the natural processes and laws of the universe interacting.  There is nothing so remarkable about natural disasters: they have been taking place throughout all of human history.  Water and wind and the moving of tectonic plates and magma coming from the earth’s core: these forces abut each other, powerfully, and help shape our natural world.  God created these great forces and gave them a certain inanimate freedom to function. 

Sometimes we humans get caught up in those forces, and bad things happen to us.  It’s not the “malice of God at work”—it is just the result of larger forces than ourselves at play in our world.  

The macro forces—the really big, powerful ones—have a certain inanimate freedom to function.  God created them and let them go to work.  We don’t control them… they are just part of this amazing universe in which we live.

All of that means we simply must appreciate what we do have: life, in all its complexity and beauty and struggle, and our own ability to choose to act well, and so to bring blessing.

When such disasters occur our ability to bring succor and aid, and to act with decency, kindness, and generosity, is what we truly control, and what defines our own goodness and our humanity.  It also shows that we can act, in our own way, for God, by creating morality through our own actions.

Our Torah portion, Tzav, would seem not to have much to do with ethics.  After all, it is essentially about animal sacrifice and pure ritual, rather than morality.

But even here there is a subtle message about ethics.  You see, we typically talk about thanksgiving only in the fall, around the turkey day holiday.  But in truth we have a great deal to be thankful for all the time, and mostly we miss that.

In Tzav there are many different types of sacrifices commanded: burnt offerings, guilt offerings, sin offerings, and so on.  But one group of sacrificial offerings stands out: the offerings of peace, the zevach shlamim.  And among this higher category of offerings one in particular stands out even higher: the zevach haTodah, the thanksgiving offering. 

In Tractate Berachot, it reads:

אָמַר רַב יְהוּדָה אָמַר רַב: אַרְבָּעָה צְרִיכִין לְהוֹדוֹת: יוֹרְדֵי הַיָּם, הוֹלְכֵי מִדְבָּרוֹת, וּמִי שֶׁהָיָה חוֹלֶה וְנִתְרַפֵּא, וּמִי שֶׁהָיָה חָבוּשׁ בְּבֵית הָאֲסוּרִים וְיָצָא.

Rav Yehuda said that Rav said: Four must offer thanks to God with a thanks-offering and a special blessing. They are: Seafarers, those who walk in the desert, and one who was ill and recovered, and one who was incarcerated in prison and went out. All of these appear in the verses of a psalm (Psalms 107).

That is, anyone who has come through a dangerous travel, or a time of physical or practical imprisonment, must offer thanksgiving.  I’m certain that all of us here would qualify as people who “walk in the desert.”  This offering gives us a sense of just how important it is to cultivate gratitude.

The rabbis thought so highly of thanksgiving to God that they are quoted in the Talmud saying that when the Messiah comes all sacrifices will have completed their mission, and all will be discontinued, with one exception: the thanksgiving offering.  That sacrifice will last forever.  Because even in a perfect world we must remember to give thanks, to be grateful for what we have.

So, on this Shabbat of Tzav, just after the fun holiday of Purim and as we begin to prepare for Pesach, the festival of freedom, we give thanks for what we have: for health and happiness, for the freedom to worship, and for all the wonderful goodness that God has given to this world we share.  And most of all for the ability to choose to live ethically, and to imitate God by being truly good.

How to Defeat Anti-Semitism

Sermon Shabbat Zachor/Vayikra 5784

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ

There is an ancient joke that kept coming back to me this week:  An old Jewish man is sitting on a bench reading his newspaper when an anti-Semite approaches him and says angrily, "You know, all the world's problems are because of you damned Jews."

The Jewish man looks up and replies, "And the bicycle riders."

The anti-Semite replies, befuddled, "Why the bicycle riders?"

And the Jewish man responds, "Why the Jews?"

Since I am both a bicycle rider and a Jew, this joke works on several levels for me, but of course it points up the absurdity of any kind of random race hatred, particularly this one.  And this being Shabbat Zachor, the Sabbath of remembering anti-Jewish and anti-Israelite hatred in our history, it’s the right time to explore what it means and how we might best address it.

My friends, we Jews have been dealing with Anti-Semitism for a very long time, and perhaps the most innovative approach we’ve taken has been to celebrate our victories over it in innovative and delightful ways.  Perhaps the three most enjoyable Jewish holidays of all are Chanukah, Purim and Passover, which fall on our calendar from December through April.  These festivals can best be described in a nine-word sentence: “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat!”  And tomorrow night and Sunday and Sunday night we will celebrate Purim, the most purely fun Jewish holiday of all. Only Jews could take our first experience of attempted genocide and turn it into a time of unbridled revelry, joyously observing our ability to survive attempted mass murder in Persia—that is Iran—2500 years ago.  Even in a year when we have experienced the greatest surge of Antisemitic violence and antisemitic rhetoric since the Holocaust, still we are commanded to celebrate our ultimate victory over this eternally recurring attempt to destroy our people. 

Look, is Anti-Semitism substantially different in character from the vicious racism and anti-anything that causes otherwise normal human beings to attack and slaughter those who are different from them in Sudan or Haiti or Ukraine?  No.  But it has been around longer, and it manages to come back from the dead, like an evil Lazarus-like zombie, just when you think it has finally disappeared for good.

Anti-Semitism is the world’s oldest and most persistent form of race hatred, an irrational and virulent hostility to Jews based on a foundation of lies, embraced by generations of people who all should know better.  It has shown a cockroach-like ability to thrive in dark corners and under all sorts of rocks, and a weed-like ability to grow in the least favorable conditions imaginable. 

It has been proven that you don’t even need to have Jews around for Anti-Semitism to exist and spread; international surveys of Anti-Semitism show that South Korea has a high level of Anti-Semitism, even though Jews have more or less never lived there.  Throughout history Anti-Semitism was fostered by major religious institutions, important nations and empires, and resulted in horrible persecutions ranging from massacres of Jews in Roman times to Crusaders slaughtering entire communities of Jews to expulsions from England, France and Spain to the torture chambers of the Inquisition to brutal, government-sponsored pogroms throughout the old Russian Empire to the Holocaust to Communist purges against Jews to Arab nations expelling hundreds of thousands of Jews in the 1950s to horrific Arab terror attacks on Jews in Israel, Europe and South America to recent events like Charlottesville and Pittsburgh here in America—to October 7th, and the hostility and violence world-wide, including on college campuses all across North America, and in major US cities and in city council meetings, where chants calling for “Jewish genocide” and the destruction of the only Jewish state on the planet in the name of Palestinians ruling “from the river to the sea” ring out.  Like a cancer on the body of the human race, Anti-Semitism simply refuses to disappear.   

But you know, back when we began the Too Jewish Radio Show in the year 2002 there was a consensus among scholars of Anti-Semitism that it was on the wane both here and around the world, and might even disappear soon, at least in America.  One of my very first guests on the show was Professor Leonard Dinnerstein of blessed memory, who passed away recently, author of the book Anti-Semitism in America, then the authoritative text on the subject.  He was the founder of the Judaic Studies Program at the University of Arizona.  Back in 2002, Dinnerstein said that the pernicious and irrational hatred of Jews that has been such a terrible burden for our people throughout history had been fading in America for decades and was no longer socially acceptable.  Jews had broken through the glass ceiling that kept us from many important roles in society, we were influential and accepted nearly everywhere, from Ivy League schools to formerly Jew-free industries to once-restricted country clubs to high government office. 

And then, well, bad things happened.  The Anti-Israel, Anti-Zionist virus in the Muslim world spread, and was nurtured and flourished among aspects of the left in Europe, and also in Canada and the US.  It took root deeply on college campuses and among so-called progressives, and went from reasoned discussions of a Palestinian state to the desire to destroy Israel, and then morphed into deliberately Anti-Semitic tropes and slanders, becoming ever-more virulent and prevalent.  In Great Britain the Labour Party became the home of openly Anti-Semitic politicians led by Jeremy Corbyn, who hosted Hamas representatives, and that form of liberal Anti-Semitism has come to the US Congress too, where Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar plays in an ugly way on long discredited claims of Jewish dual loyalty and influential Jewish money, and where the so-called Squad seeks to destroy American support for Israel using anti-Semitic tropes.

Along with this left-wing Anti-Semitism there has been an awful revival of old-fashioned right-wing, racist Anti-Semitism in Europe and America.  That vicious Anti-Jewish hatred has manifested in extreme right-wing movements and political parties in Eastern, Central and Western Europe.  We even see revived neo-Nazi parties embracing the disastrously failed ideology of race-hatred and autocracy.  While the vast majority of physical attacks on Jews in Europe have been perpetrated by Muslim terrorists in recent years, fascists are now doing their share, committing publicly Anti-Semitic acts and violence against Jews.  In France, the first nation on earth to give Jews full and equal civil rights, third largest Jewish population of any country in the world, in France Anti-Semitic acts are up 100% in the past year, with a combination of far-right Anti-Semites making common cause with far-left protestors and angry Arab immigrants to deface Jewish tombstones, paint swastikas, and make Holocaust-flavored jokes about ovens.  Some say that central London has become a no-go zone for Jews because of the violent pro-Palestinian protests each weekend.

Here in America revived far-right hate groups and radical fringe websites of white supremacists encourage anti-semitic actions online, have resulted in awful attacks like the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh and the fatal attack in Poway, California a couple of years ago.

Somehow, a quarter of the way into the 21st century, almost 80 years after the end of the Shoah, elements both far left and far right have embraced an insanely irrational ancient racism based on an entire library of conspiracy theories, lies and forged texts, Anti-Semitism.  Angry people on the fringes of society, far left and far right both, have chosen to blame the problems of huge, complex societies and regional and international issues on our tiny minority population that makes up far less than one percent of the world’s people.  This is in spite of the fact that we Jews and Jewish concepts and scholarship have advanced the progress of civilization and improved humanity in countless positive ways, ranging from medicine to music, from physics to filmmaking to finance, from art to architecture to advanced technology.  If you look at what Jews have contributed to the world you logically cannot possibly believe the propaganda put out by these lunatic fringes.  For pity’s sake, without our Torah and Tanakh there would be no New Testament or Koran, no Christianity or Islam or Western Civilization.

Why do people embrace Anti-Semitism?  Well, it’s far easier to blame the Jews than it is to actually try to fix the brokenness of the world.  Small-minded people prefer villains to heroes, and demonizing the Jews has always been the easy way out for demagogues, cowards, and frauds.  And when you have had so many important people advocating it for so long, well, you are bound to feel justified in accessing your very own bigoted bone.

So, rabbi you ask, what is the solution?  Why bring up a problem if you don’t have the answer?  Sadly, no one has quite figured that out in the past two thousand years.  But generally, the most effective response to Anti-Semitism requires three things: direct, strong actions that demonstrate that this is not going to be tolerated.  We must stand up to Anti-Semitism in every manifestation, whether the people demonstrating it are on our side in other matters or not.  It is pernicious, evil, wrong and very dangerous.  In fact, we are most effective combating Anti-Semitism in our friends, convincing people we know well and with whom we mostly agree to fix their own Anti-Semitic tendencies.

Secondly, we have to educate, others and ourselves.  A little learning and actual experience of interacting with Jews goes a long way towards exposing the falsehoods and illogic of Anti-Semitism and dispelling the insanity of irrational, racist hatred.  Learning about Judaism, coming to synagogue, participating in Jewish adult education and teaching your children about Jews and Judaism and Israel are all outstanding ways to counteract the ignorance and bias that perpetuate racist hatred.  Affirming our pride in our incredible heritage, passing it on with joy and integrity, celebrating our Jewish identity, these are the best ways to overcome Anti-Semitism. 

There is a third thing we can do, beyond speaking up against Anti-Semitism and educating ourselves.  And it is very likely the most important way to counteract this evil in our world.

The best allies we can have in the effort to eradicate this archaic evil are not actually other Jews.  They are smart, caring people of different traditions.  They are Christians and Muslims and Sikhs and secularists and other decent, grounded, humane people who care about making the world better.  The better they know us, and the more they see us support them when they are suffering and in time of need, the more certain it is that they will come to our support and fight Anti-Semitism when it arises.  Common cause with good people of all backgrounds is the surest way to defeat hatred.  It means making certain that people know that Jews care about the whole community’s needs, and work to heal and help it.

It’s fascinating: working against Anti-Semitism means that we have to demonstrate some of our Jewish ability to grow beyond our own limitations and embrace people we might secretly harbor some biases against ourselves.  But if we do, I promise we will be richly rewarded, and not only in paradise.

This week we read Vayikra, which addresses how we are to become close to God.  I think the lesson we may take from all of this is that perhaps we must first become closer to the good people around us, and then, and only then, will we be able to bring this troubled world closer to God.

May this be God’s will, but first of all, ours.

Highly Illogical: God or Reason?

Sermon Pekudei 5784

Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha

You may have seen online that there is a new documentary coming out next week on the life of William Shatner, the actor, in time for his 93rd birthday, called “You Can Call Me Bill.”  Shatner is still around, still writing books and doing interviews and has become a kind of iconic figure these days.  The movie, directed by documentary filmmaker Alexandre O. Phillipe, is garnering good reviews, in large part for Shatner’s openness and contemplative, thoughtful observations and hopes.  Who knew that was possible?

As a kid I liked the Star Trek TV series, the original one with William Shatner overacting as Captain James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy underplaying Science Officer Spock.  There have been many iterations of the show subsequently: many movies, subsequent TV series—Star Trek Next Generation, Star Trek Voyager, Star Trek Law & Order, Star Trek CSI, Survivor Star Trek, Star Trek with the Kardashians, the Star Trek Bachelor and—many video games and so on, but the original show was always my personal favorite.  Leonard Nimoy ended up playing Spock on and off for nearly 60 years until his death. The fact that both Shatner and Nimoy were Jewish, and that Spock’s famous Vulcan salute was borrowed from the priestly blessing, the Birkat Kohanim that Nimoy remembered from his Orthodox upbringing in Boston, certainly contributed to my appreciation of Star Trek.  I found out later Leonard Nimoy was quite a fine singer as a kid, sang in his shul choir, and as a 13 year-old chanted so well at his bar mitzvah that he was asked to lead services the very next week at a different synagogue.  As his long-time co-star and occasionally director William Shatner said, "He is still the only man I know whose voice was two bar mitzvahs good!"

In any case, on the Star Trek show Spock, of course, was the voice of pure reason, coming from a planet, Vulcan, where no emotion was ever demonstrated or perhaps even experienced.  Shatner’s Captain Kirk was much more emotional, while the ship’s doctor, McCoy, was completely emotional, sometimes insanely so.  Regularly, you would see the tension involved in solving the plot problems they encountered out there in space using emotion and reason played out over an episode.  Spock would famously say of some situation, “I find that highly illogical.”  And McCoy would blow up at him, and Kirk would have to mediate.  The general implication, however, was that most of the time Spock was right.  To be honest, McCoy always reminded me of the Jewish mother on the show, even though he was clearly not actually Jewish, or a mother, or female for that matter; but he was definitely highly emotional.

In any case, the show highlighted the simple fact that there has always been a certain level of tension between emotion and reason in our world, and that tension has had a profound impact on how we think about God and even whether or not we believe that God even exists. 

I’ve been thinking lately about the concept of God, and the complex ways we relate to our Deity, however conceived.  What provoked this was two things: first, a section of the weekly Torah portion a couple of weeks ago that included the shlosh esray midot, the thirteen attributes of God, which offer God’s own definition of God’s intrinsic nature.  And the second was a book I’ve been re-reading by the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.  The Exodus section, according to the Torah text, is God’s own self-revelation about what qualities God possesses, while in his book Haidt, who is Jewish, analyzes how human beings think, what reason and rationality really are, and how this impacts the way we think about crucial issues, including God.  And there is a fascinating interplay in these two.

The Torah passage in question reads, “I, the Lord, am a compassionate God of grace, long-suffering filled with kindness and truth, conferring kindness to the thousandth generation, removing iniquity, transgression and sin and purifying.” 

If you look closely at that section in Exodus—it is repeated several times in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible—it focuses on two aspects of divine power.  First, the compassion or kindness that God shows us; and then, equally importantly, the fact that God forgives our sins.  That combination certainly has its attractions for those who believe in God, or any higher power: the promise of divine kindness married to forgiveness for the mistakes we make. That is, in a small but important bundle, the essence of all religion: God has given us a good and generous world and offers relief from the burden of the bad actions we take.

Of course, true rationalists would say that such a belief in a kind and forgiving deity is not reasonable.  Our minds should be clear, analytical tools that aren’t confused by archaic notions of a supreme being or higher power.  We might seek kindness and forgiveness from other humans, but we cannot expect to receive these from God, if God even exists.  Reason should rule. 

Jonathan Haidt takes a different tack about personal reason.  Basing his argument on empirical scientific studies of the way human beings really think and act, he explains that rather than rationally analyzing and understanding the world, what we think of as “rational thought” or “the faculty of reason” is typically a kind of post-facto attempt to justify what we have already intuitively decided.  That is, we choose to do what we want to do, or choose to think what we want to think, then justify it by forging a rational defense for our own actions.  Many of our “rational” choices about good and evil or how to conduct ourselves are really not rational at all.  According to the social psychologist Haidt, they are simply things we choose to do because we like to do them, or our own innate biases lead us to act, and we then carefully explain our choice as rational using our reasoning to prove it, to ourselves and to others.

Which means that our values and ethics have at least as good a chance to flourish positively by being rooted in a received religious tradition—such as Judaism—as they do if we try to cultivate meaningful morality from our own faculties of reason.  Personal reason apparently has very little to do with pristine objective choice and much more to do with our own cultural and personal biases and our blinded effort to prove that we did it all ourselves, with no help from God, or any God-like creature.

If Haidt’s extensive research into the concept of the “righteous mind” is correct—and many smart people think he is—we humans have emotional desires and needs first, and then we justify them by calling them rational and constructing reasons and even systems around them.  But most of those decisions aren’t truly “rational at all” and have nothing to do with what is really right.   

There isn’t really a dichotomy between cognition and emotion, between thinking and feeling, with thinking being the higher-order function.  The research in fact demonstrates that in studies you can’t actually differentiate between what people are thinking and how they are feeling; feelings color the “rational” choices that everyone makes.  There are no Spocks among us mere humans after all.

Maybe the ancient Greeks had it right: they trained smart, articulate young people in the art of rhetoric.  Masters of rhetoric could argue one side of a question, using a wonderful, reasoned approach; and then immediately switch sides and argue the other side of the same question with equal success.  I know this because two of my children were state debate champions; they could out-argue me for years on either side of an issue.  Today’s high school and college debate contests use the same format for their competitions; the team or individuals who win do so because of their successful use of appropriate, well-reasoned arguments in a structured format, and can be, and are, called upon to argue either side of a question. 

Lawyers follow this as well; they are advocates, and it is far from unusual for, say, a public prosecutor to become a private defense attorney later in his or her career, or even the other way around.  Spock aside, reason is, in effect, just one tool that can be employed for any purpose, on either side of an ethical question.

So, what is the solution to the dilemma of our possessing quite imperfect reasoning abilities, mixed liberally with our own emotional needs and desires without our even being cognizant of that fact?  How are we to decide how to act, and live, and be patient with other views than our own if our own rational minds are so compromised?

Perhaps the answer lies in simply accepting that there is a higher level of thought and meaning than the merely personal biases we exercise as “rational,” and allowing those ideals and concepts—such as God’s gift of a generous world, and God’s ever-present forgiveness for those who atone—to influence our own actions and choices, and so improve our conduct, and perhaps even our world. 

And that may not prove to be so “highly illogical” at all.

Caring for the Earth and Each Other

Celebration of Prayer 3 14 2024

Prayer by Rabbi Sam Cohon

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם יוֹצֵר אוֹר וּבוֹרֵא חֽשֶׁךְ עֹשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם וּבוֹרֵא אֶת־הַכֹּל:

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, Maker of light, Creator of darkness, Maker of peace, Creator of all things.

What is our responsibility, as human beings, to the planet on which we find ourselves?  And how are we to act in ways that demonstrate our moral appreciation, and the ethical imperative, to treat a shared space that is home not only to our unique species, but to every other unique species on the earth?

In Genesis in the Torah we are told that God, who according to Jewish tradition created everything, gave Adam, the first, primordial human, the responsibility to care for the earth.

וַיִּקַּ֛ח יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֑ם וַיַּנִּחֵ֣הוּ בְגַן־עֵ֔דֶן לְעׇבְדָ֖הּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָֽהּ׃

“The LORD God took the human being, Adam, and placed him in the garden of Eden, to till it and tend it” the Jewish Publication Society English edition of the Torah reads that.  Now that phrase can be translated various ways: literally, in the original Hebrew, it means “to serve it and to guard it.”  Everett Fox, in his poetic translation, has, “to work it and to watch it,” which is also close to the original Hebrew.  The Schocken Bible has “To work it and to preserve it,” which is quite nice, if less alliterative.

In other words, our role in this creation in which we have been placed by God is both to work the earth and use its production for benefit—and also to protect it.

These two verbs, לְעׇבְדָ֖הּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָֽהּ can be said to represent rather different functions we must fulfill, which may sometimes, perhaps often, be in conflict.  We are commanded by God to utilize the earth we have been given to produce what we require: the traditional food, water, shelter, and clothing, but also heat, power, transportation, communication, connection, and healing in today’s world.  We know how to do this and we are good at it.

Note that we are also equally commanded to guard, protect, watch, preserve and be good stewards of the same natural world we might otherwise seek to exploit solely for our benefit.  You see, in Jewish tradition, we are required to consider not only whether we can derive benefit from the world in which we live but to decide whether we can do so while maintaining its full viability and vitality for the future. 

It is that tension that lies at the heart of our dilemma today.  We know that we must both provide for ourselves, and for all the people living now, and simultaneously protect future generations forever on this magnificent, but somewhat fragile planet with which God has blessed us.

For many years we have been living in an era that some scientists call the Anthropocene: a time when human behavior has transformed and profoundly affected our home, the earth.  Many of these changes are permanent, and some are decidedly dangerous to the future of many species, including ours, on this planet.  The phenomenon of global warming has impacted every part of the world, and after a great deal of denial about it for a long time here in America and elsewhere, we are finally coming to terms with some of the ways we must seek to alleviate some of the causes and consequences of that transformation.  

We know that if we do not change the direction of the damage we are doing to the earth through this process, and through other deformations of our natural environment by pollution and waste production—that is, nondegradable garbage—that we will reach a point at which it becomes impossible to truly preserve a healthy planet.

It is, frankly, a shared necessity that we protect the earth, the only one we have—Mars is not yet a viable alternative, no matter what some billionaires believe.  It is also a shared necessity that we do so while preserving our ability to provide for the true needs of people living now on the planet, to seek to do the other commandments that Genesis includes here: to feed, provide water, clothe, and care for the human beings, and the other beings, currently living.

It is that tension between those two words in the short Genesis sentence that lie at the heart of our challenge today.  It has been said that in America, we have rights, while in Judaism we have responsibilities.

In truth, our caring mission today must embrace our responsibilities to do both of these things, לְעׇבְדָ֖הּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָֽהּ, to preserve and protect, to work and to watch, to till and to tend. It is in that intrinsic tension, that creative frisson that our true task lies, our moral and practical purpose: to be true stewards of this precious earth.  May this be God’s will; but more importantly, may it be ours.      

You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone — But What Part of Me is Me?

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, Arizona

Sermon, Vayakhel 5784

A few years back on a sabbatical trip I took around the world, I visited with a high-ranking member of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul, Turkey.  A significant prelate and an important assistant to the Patriarch himself, he grew up in suburban Chicago and spoke English fluently—or as well as they speak it in Chicago—and we had a wonderful, long conversation about theology and ritual.  As I endeavored to understand the intricacies of the Greek Church, he explained carefully to me how central the concept of the rewards of eternal life are for Orthodox Christians.  The goal for every believing person, in his faith, was to achieve eternal reward in a much better world than this one.  And then he said, “I don’t understand something about Judaism: how you can get people to be good if they aren’t trying to get to heaven, and afraid of going to hell if they are bad.” 

I did my best to explain that in Judaism we seek to inspire people to live ethical lives through observing mitzvot, fulfilling commandments designed to make life moral and holy.  And I told him what I always say, respectfully: we Jews are much more interested in the quality of life before death than in theoretical rewards or punishments after death. 

But that’s not really the whole story.

This week in two different classes, “Zohar, Crown of Kabbalah” and our “Passion and Prudence” course on Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, we touched on just what constitutes a soul, and what Jews believe about life after death. It’s a very interesting subject, and one that Jews, particularly Reform and Conservative Jews, don’t spend much time talking or thinking about. 

In fact, non-Orthodox Jews spend less time thinking about the afterlife than pretty much any other religious tradition.  It is difficult to imagine Christianity or Islam having developed without a strong belief in heaven and hell, and the same applies to Hinduism and Buddhism.  Virtually every religion has a highly developed conception of life after death, including for many reincarnation, and for almost all of other religions the rewards and punishments of the afterlife are central to their belief system. 

But for most Jews, the life after death isn’t a particularly significant part of our own foundational religious convictions.  We figure we have a good deal of control over our own actions here in this world, and not much control over what happens after we die.  And so we focus on what we can control, our own character and conduct.

Having said that, it would be incorrect to say that we Jews don’t believe in life after death, or heaven and hell; it’s just that it’s not nearly as important for us as it is for many other religions.  As the Talmud puts it neatly, those who don’t believe in the world to come have no share in it, which seems completely fair to me.  Don’t believe in it, don’t get it.  Fair enough.  A done deal. 

But when you study the question it turns out that Jewish ideas about life after death are extensive and varied.  While the Torah, our central and most ancient text, does not mention life after death at all, over time two central aspects of belief took hold in Judaism about the hereafter.  One was the notion that our bodies would be resurrected, brought back to life in some way or another at some future time.  The second was the idea that our souls, that part within each us that is intrinsically and uniquely us, will continue on after our physical deaths.

Over time, these two ideas became linked into one system for what happens after we die.  By the time the Book of Daniel in the last part of the Bible, the Ketuvim, was written, there was also a concept of a judgment day. The whole scenario was that we die, our bodies are buried, and at some future date our souls will be returned to our bodies, they will be restored with flesh and blood, we will rise from the grave and be judged, and then go on to either a good future or some kind of oblivion. 

You might recognize most of this as what was later enshrined into Christian belief, and those guys really ran with it: it became central to Christianity in an enhanced form—new and improved!—with very vivid depictions of hell and much more fleshed-out editions of heaven.  Islam came along and amped up the heaven part a good deal, at least for men, while Christianity continued to elaborate the hellfire and brimstone parts of things. 

But Judaism, which originated these ideas, never took to them as completely as these daughter religions did.  While most Jews probably believed in these basic tenets, others did not.  And varying interpretations of what it all meant and how it all worked—imagine that in Judaism, differences of opinion!—developed.  Rationalists, like Maimonides, believed that the true heavenly ideal consisted of being in perfect connection with the great divine active intellect; that is, our minds continue on forever, in communion with the Greatest Mind of all, God’s.  Mystics believed our souls ascended to connect with the indwelling female presence of God, the Shechinah, in a kind of blissful connectedness to holiness.  Later Kabbalists came to believe that if our souls hadn’t completed their journeys during our lives, we were reincarnated after death, our souls implanted in new bodies to live again and seek to have our souls ascend to higher levels.

In modern times, Orthodox Jews have continued to believe, at least officially, in the standard Jewish views of life after death, and to pray for bodily resurrection and the eternal soul.  Chasidim have embraced reincarnation as well.  But most liberal Jews, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, organizational, secular, and so on, are much less likely to embrace the concept of bodily resurrection.  But many believe that they have a soul.  And there is a great deal of interest these days in spirituality in the form of the soul and its eternality.

In the course of my rabbinate, I’ve met several people who have had contact with relatives who are gone, and who have experienced a sense of connection with children, spouses, and siblings who’ve passed away.  They tell fascinating stories of experiencing animals who seemed to carry a lost relative’s message, or of sensing the presence of a child or spouse who has died in natural or unusual events.  These are moving, and often beautiful, narratives that have great meaning for the people who experience them.

After exploring life after death in Jewish belief, the greatest insight may be the understanding that what we believe about life after death helps us understand what part of ourselves which we truly believe is essential.  Judaism doesn’t believe that there is only one way to think about what happens after we die.  And that openness to the possibilities of what may exist after we go can give added meaning to our lives now. 

What we think happens after we die says a great deal about who we believe we really are.  There are three words for soul in Hebrew, Ru’ach, Nefesh, and Neshamah.  Each has a somewhat different meaning, but each is used to identify the intrinsic quality of the individual. 

If you think that the most important part of you is your mind, your intellect, your education and thinking, then you are most likely to think that that is your soul.  If you believe your feelings, your emotions, your intuitive connection to special people or places make you unique, you will tend to identify your soul more mystically.  If you are proudest of your connection to your people, you might identify yourself with that as part of your soul.  And so on: that which you value most, you are likely to think as the part of you that will go on forever, or that you wish would do so.

That is, thinking about what part of you is really you can help understand what you feel is truly important about your own life now, here, in this world. 

Remarkably, if you clarify your thinking about life after death, and what you feel happens in the afterlife, you gain clarity about what is most important about you, and what you want your life to be like here, in this world.  How you wish to exist forever helps you know how you wish to be today and tomorrow.

And that is a goal every Jew can embrace, now, in this world.

Spectacle and Human Need

Sermon Parshat Ki Tissa 5784

Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ 

We had a nice Super Bowl party here at Congregation Beit Simcha a couple of Sundays ago.  It reminded me of the party we held two years ago, when my hometown team, the LA Rams, finally won the Super Bowl over my dad’s hometown team, the Cincinnati Bengals, after many years of disappointments.

As you may not know, in my high school years my close friend Alan—with whom I went skiing last week for a couple of days—got me a gig on Sunday afternoons in the fall ushering for the Rams in the old Los Angeles Colosseum.  We would take tickets for the first quarter and then go in to watch our team play, and usually beat, whoever was up that week for the rest of the game.  I was a big sports fan—still am—and when that team made it to the playoffs I got to attend the first playoff game, in which the Rams whipped the old St. Louis Cardinals, long before they moved to Arizona and the Rams moved to St. Louis, of all places.  After that victory, and a shocking upset in the other NFC playoff game, I was thrilled that my team might make it to the Super Bowl.  Being 14 years old, I waited in line for more than four hours to buy tickets to the game that would send the LA Rams, a good franchise and team that had never quite been able to make it to the biggest of big games. 

It turned out that the NFC championship game that would send the LA Rams to the Super Bowl was played on my 15th birthday, many years ago, and since I had waited all those hours and bought the maximum number of tickets, I invited my dad and brother and sisters to go with me.  As I recall, only my oldest sister was available, and she was no football fan, but we all drove down and this time I didn’t have to usher but I just got to attend this momentous game as a pure fan.  My Rams were favored and finally, they would get to go to the greatest spectacle of all, the Super Bowl.

And then the game started, against the hated but underdog Dallas Cowboys.  The Rams were the far better team, favored by 7 points.  Early on, the Cowboys drove down and scored a quick touchdown.  I wasn’t worried. Surely the Rams would come back and crush them, and fulfill their destiny in the Super Bowl.

And then the Rams’ quarterback threw an interception, and Dallas scored another touchdown.  And then Dallas scored again, and at halftime the Rams were behind 21-0.  My sister Rachel had begun to chant “Go Rams,” in a somewhat satirical manner.  That got worse as the second half began with another Cowboys touchdown and another Rams interception.  We stayed to the bitter end, a 37-7 Dallas victory, my dear sister continuing to intone “Go Rams” as a kind of dirge over the last quarter or so.

I had waited four hours to buy tickets for this? 

I thought about that day again on Super Bowl Sunday, when after finally returning to Los Angeles, reaching and then losing a Super Bowl, my professional team of preference finally reached the pinnacle and won this great spectacle just two years ago.  It was a pleasure to experience, of course.  But I don’t think it had quite the same resonance that a victory would have had in my childhood or adolescence.  Those illusions may die hard, but die they do.

I must admit that this year it was hard to watch the overblown hype of the Super Bowl telecast, the movie-star-laden commercials, the halftime extravaganza, oceans of confetti pouring from the sky at the end, and not understand that there is something amazing about the pure spectacle such events encompass.  Few societies in the entire history of the world have managed to pour so much energy, talent, and technology into the creation of public drama as ours.  Perhaps ancient Rome, with its excesses of months of public gladiatorial games and parades matched the demonstrations of the Super Bowl.  These enormous pageants create a kind of shared experience that turns an ordinary day into, “Super Bowl Sunday,” third most important holiday annually in America now. 130 million people watched it on TV or a streaming device, one third of America.

But you know something interesting?  When the game ended, and the confetti fell and everyone turned off their TVs or screens, life went on.  And the only people whose lives were really changed by those events were the guys who played in the game—some of them, anyway—and perhaps the coaches and owners.  For the rest of us, when the Super Bowl was over it was on to the next thing.

Which, oddly perhaps, reminds me of this week’s Torah portion.  This week we read the traumatic sedrah of Ki Tissa, the story of the Golden Calf.  It reads like this: while Moses is up on Mt. Sinai receiving the 10 commandments the Israelites start to worry that he’s not coming back.  And so, while God is carving the words “You shall have no other gods besides Me, nor make any image of them” into a stone tablet, the faithless people persuade his brother Aaron to make them an idol of gold, a calf, that they can call their new god.  Pleased with the result, they worship it and then throw a big party, a bacchanal, a carnival, Rodeo, Mardi Gras in the Sinai.

Coming down the mountain, Joshua and Moses hear noise from the camp below.  Joshua is astonished, and thinks it must be the sound of battle, but Moses knows what a party sounds like.  And when Moses sees all the cavorting, and the newly Chosen People worshipping a golden idol, he throws down the sacred stone tablets of the commandments, shattering them.  The music and dancing stop suddenly.  It is a shocking scene.

For the rabbis this is one of most dramatic and distressing portions in the entire Torah.  The problem is acute: according to the text, our people witnessed the divine power of the Ten Plagues, were personally saved at the shore of the Sea of Reeds by God, received the direct revelation of God’s presence at Sinai—in short, experienced God more directly than any other group in history ever has—and almost immediately afterwards turned around and rejected God in order to worship a cow made out of their own jewelry.

In rabbinic midrash this week’s events are called the Ma’asei Ha’eigel, the awful story of the calf.  How can a people given such a clear set of signs and wonders, including direct revelation and verbal commands, only follow the true God for 40 days before pursuing such a ridiculous, bovine substitute?

The answer lies in our own makeup.  We enjoy spectacle, are impressed by it, even awed by it—you know, like the fabulous but overblown Super Bowl—but as soon as it is gone its effects linger a very short time indeed.  What makes us tick as human beings, what keeps us in line, is the very dailiness of regular rules and schedules, the kinds of human laws and rituals of worship that are very much a part of practical Judaism.  We need both societal structure and the rhythms of devotion, and until these are provided in a coherent way we tend to flounder—even disastrously so, as we did at the time of the Golden Calf.

Without a way to connect to God regularly, without both prayer services and a personal commitment to do mitzvot each day, we quickly lose our ability to be holy.  Instead of goodness we chase gold, in place of God we place false deities.  We become obsessed with our own trivial pursuits, chase our own idols of gold.

We need more than grand ideas or sweeping spirituality: we need religion and a Jewish grounding in practice and experience, or we won’t be able to remain ethical.  Without these we begin to worship Golden Calves of every kind.

The Torah is filled with references to idolatry, to all the ways we can worship idols and deny God and why we shouldn’t do that, and the awful consequences of such terrible behavior.  And of course, in our own lives, it’s easy to see the ways that we end up worshipping idols of our own making, objects, items, money itself, personal promotion and honors and so on.  It’s easy, too easy, to become absorbed in desires and pastimes and obsessions that become idols in and of themselves.

And none of those bring us closer to real holiness, or to living lives of meaning and purpose and sanctity.  The path to those far more meaningful things requires regular practice and a dedication to the good.

At the end of Ki Tissa there is a denouement to this painful story of spiritual failure, providing a kind of limited redemption.  Moses goes back up Mt. Sinai and brings down another set of tablets.  And then he asks God to reveal God’s essence to him.  Moses doesn’t get exactly what he wants, but he is provided the privilege of experiencing God’s passing presence.  And then Moses, too, must continue to try to sense the presence every day thereafter.

In other words, even Moses, the best of us, the person closest to God, must continually seek God’s presence.  

How much more so is that true for the rest of us Jews today, we modern-day Israelites?  In spite of our failures of faith and action, in the face of our frequent focus on the inconsequential and the trivial, if we nonetheless choose to continue to seek God, we too will be blessed with a touch of that sacred divine presence. We, too, will find holiness. Whether or not our teams win the Super Bowl.

Springtime Hope on Rodeo Shabbat

Sermon, Parshat Tetzaveh 5784  Rabbi Sam Cohon 

It’s Rodeo Shabbat, so naturally we must begin with some Jewish cowboy jokes.  Three guys are sitting next to each other on a plane flying out of Texas: two big guys with big cowboy hats and a little old Jewish man with a little cowboy hat. They get to talking and one of the big fellas says, “Boys, I own a spread. Thousand acres, thousand head of cattle. My name is Hoot, and I call it the Big H.”

The other big fella says, “That’s nothin’. I’ve got a spread, too. Ten thousand acres. Ten thousand head of cattle. My name is Luke. I call it the Big L.”

The little old Jewish man says, “That’s very nice. I only own a hundred acres, and I got no cattle. My name is Yitz.”

Both big guys scoff, and Luke says, “Oh yeah, Yitz? So just what do you call your spread?”

And Yitz answers, “Downtown Dallas.”

Or this one:  Outlaws attack a stagecoach and kill everyone but one terrified Jewish guy.  They say, “Look we got the strongbox, but we’re not going to kill you because we need you to be the lookout while we drive the stagecoach.  This is Apache territory, and there are Indians here.  So, you sit up top on the coach, take this rifle, and if you see an Indian, you tell us and when we tell you, you shoot the Indian!”  The Jewish guy says, “Oy, vey” but what choice does he have?  So, he takes the rifle and sits on the stagecoach as it bounces along and the outlaws call out, “Do you see any Indians?” and he says no, no Indians. 

A little while later they call out again and say, “Do you see any Indians?” and he says, “Yes, way up ahead, I see an Indian up on that ridge, he’s this big.”  And the outlaws say, “OK, wait, when we tell you, you shoot the Indian.”

A while later they call out again and say, “Do you see the Indian?” and he says, “Yes, up ahead, I see the Indian, he’s this big now.”  And the outlaws say, “OK, wait, when we tell you, you shoot the Indian.”

A bit later they call out again and say, “Do you see the Indian?” and he says, “Yes, I see the Indian, now he’s this big.”  And the outlaws say, “OK, wait, when we tell you, you shoot the Indian.”

Finally, they come around a corner and there he is, the Indian, he’s big as life, he’s huge!  And the outlaws say, “OK, NOW, NOW! Shoot the Indian?”

And the Jewish guys says, “How can I shoot him, I’ve known him since he was this big!”

OK, so while sometimes here in the southwest we can get a little testy about the stereotypes of deserts and cowboys, of cactus and overgrown cowtowns that are foisted upon us, occasionally we actually seek out and embrace those stereotypes.  And this is one of those times.  How do you say Yipee ki yay in Yiddish?  Yipee oy vey?

Look, when you live in the heart of the west, not far from Tombstone in what was Apache country not much over a century ago, rodeo weekend is still, at least superficially, a pretty big deal.

In fact, the last act of the famous shootout at the OK Corral took place right here in the Tucson railyards when legendary OK Corral gunslinger and lawman Wyatt Earp gunned down the last of the gang that killed his brother. 

Wyatt Earp’s common-law wife—well, his last one, anyway—was a Jewish woman named Josephine Marcus, who was originally from San Francisco, and whom he met in Tombstone; she was called Sadie and she was quite a looker.  They ended up being together for 46 years.  And although you might not immediately associate Jews and cowboys, there were quite a number of prominent Jews in the old west. There were many peddlers and merchants, but there were Jewish mayors of Tucson; Charles Moses Strauss, who was a prominent merchant in Memphis—he opposed Ulysses Grant for President because of Grant’s Order expelling the Jews from his district during the Civil War.  Strauss moved to Tucson in 1880 for his health—a year before the shootout at the OK Corral—and was elected mayor in 1883.  He built the City Hall, and was part of a council that met with and negotiated with Geronimo in 1886.  He also helped found the University of Arizona in 1887.

And there were even Jewish sheriffs and Jewish outlaws.  If you aren’t sure of that, go and visit Boot Hill’s Jewish cemetery in Tombstone itself; it’s not far from the main Boot Hill in Tombstone, where the victims of the OK Corral shootout are theoretically buried among other outlaws, and it has its own unique Jewish character and both prominent Tombstone Jewish citizens and some clearly Jewish outlaws buried there, too.  

And of course, in addition to the west’s more colorful characters, there were Jewish merchants, including some of my own ancestors, the Reinharts, who had a store in the Gold Country near Auburn, California.  They sold various items including dungaree trousers there, especially the newly invented ones produced by a German Jewish entrepreneur named Levi Strauss.  I’m pretty sure some people still wear that brand.

Levi Strauss, a Jewish immigrant from Bavaria first came to the gold country in 1850.  He didn’t succeed in prospecting for gold, but he did succeed in co-inventing the denims that sat on all those saddles that blazed through the Wild West.  He and his partner, another Jewish tailor named Jacob Davis, who patented the rivets that hold on the pockets, made Levi’s the preferred pants of cowboy set.

In any case, I hope you are all enjoying this Rodeo Shabbat celebration of our superficial western-ness.  To me, Rodeo is a sign that spring has sprung here in Tucson, that we are ready to embrace a season of pleasant warmth and natural growth.  And I must note that this year we are going to enjoy our usual excellent spring weather.

It reminds of our first Rodeo Shabbat as a congregation when we had our Rodeo Shabbat horseback ride and service, as we did for several years.  It actually snowed the day before, and we had a magnificent panorama of white spread out around us as we rode along.  That made the Fireball Cinnamon whiskey at the kiddush after the Minchah service and ride all the more pleasurable…

Spring is, of course, the time when life seems new, fresh, dreamlike; in short, washed in the pastel shades of hope.  Now, while Rodeo is one signal of the arrival of hope-filled spring, there was another crucial one this very day.  Baseball spring training has officially begun, and with spring training comes the eternal rebirth of hope that is always associated with that blessed arrival. 

Baseball spring training camps are filled with 21 year old lefthanders dreaming of the big time and 40 year old relievers coming off arm surgery and hoping for one more shot.  Spring is the time when, for a few brief shining weeks, every youngster is a prospect, and every veteran is a star.  They say the marriage is the triumph of hope over experience, but I think it’s really spring training baseball that matches that description.

At the beginning of spring everyone is healthy and happy and poised to flourish.  And of course, every team has an excellent chance to win the World Series.  We know that over the long course of the season some of these predictions will vanish in the heat of summer, but hope springs eternal in the human being in this season, and that’s something we all need.  And baseball’s spring training is hope wrapped up in sunshine and flowers.

And we need hope.  We live, in a way, for hope: the hope and promise of joyous occasions, of simchas like the birth of new babies, like the pleasant notion that life will get only better, that things are improving.  Hope gets us through days of trial and pain, of which we Jews have had too many the last four months, and makes us accept that here in our own world there is the promise of blessing and goodness even when they are invisible.

And springtime hope is more than just the dreams and prayers of well-paid and semi-amateur athletes. 

Now on the subject of hope, I have to share an important message from this week’s Torah portion of Tetzaveh. It comes when God, through Moses, instructs the Israelites to light a ner tamid, an eternal light that will be kept burning in the Tabernacle, the first temple of our people, at all times.  As long as the people of Israel continue to keep that light burning God will be present, the Shechinah will dwell among us.

If you have ever kept a fire burning around the clock—say, a campfire or bonfire, or for heat on a cold winter’s night—you know just how much fuel you need to do it.  You are always either stoking it or bringing in more wood for it to burn. If neglected for any length of time it will burn out.

The Ner Tamid was not just a symbol, but a process, requiring regular care and feeding to flourish. 

That is, that if we could—can—keep that light burning, that light of hope, and if work and cherish that dream and not only preserve it but nurture it with love and support and care, well, we can in fact accomplish anything.    

What is that famous Kevin Costner movie phrase, set in Iowa, embodied in the baseball midsummer classic held each year now?  If you build it, He will come?  Well, you could actually say, if you keep that fire burning, if you make sure that Ner Tamid is truly continual and eternal, well, God will be with you.It’s a promise of hope. 

That’s truly hopeful, of course, not just a field of dreams, but a temple of them.  Remember, this wild west was once a wilderness, too.  And it was hope, and hard work, and dedication and commitment that transformed it into a place of growth and goodness where all flourish today.

On this springtime Shabbat of Rodeo and Tetzaveh, may we all find ways to keep our light burning brightly, to renew our own hopes, and bring about our dreams.

What Makes a Holy Place?

Sermon Parshat Terumah 5784, Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha

In a mitzvah that is at the heart of Jewish religious experience today, in our portion of Terumah this week God commands the Israelites “Asu li mikdash, v’shachanti b’tocham—make for Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among you.”

With this statement, the book of Exodus moves from practical laws to ritual ones.  The plans for the creation of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, first site of national worship, and the directions for building of the ark of the covenant are explained and detailed.  In order to create the new central shrine for prayer, the place which God’s presence will actually inhabit, Moses calls on the people of Israel to donate materials from the best of what they have—what comes to be called a Terumah offering.

And a remarkable thing happens: when the people are asked to donate gifts to build the holy structures needed to worship God they come forward immediately and give much more than is required.  Moses actually has to ask the Israelites to stop bringing so much gold and silver and so many precious fabrics.

This marks the first and only time in history when a temple building campaign brought in more than was asked for or required.  May it happen again sometime soon… right here, perhaps…

In any case, the word for this experience is Terumah, a freewill offering, a gift to God out of the goodness of the heart.  This generous freewill offering is a powerful thing indeed.  For when it is constructed the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, built from such free generosity, immediately is filled with God’s presence. 

When we give freely of ourselves to our temples today—in time, love, care, or funds—we seek to recreate that freewill offering, the full gift of heart and hand of our ancestors in Moses’ time.  And when we succeed in doing so, we, too, bring God’s presence, and love, into our lives. 

Now an important question: what was the true purpose of the original sanctuary decreed in Terumah?

You might think that it was a place for the people of Israel to gather.  The name of it in Hebrew, the Ohel Mo’eid, the Tent of Meeting could lead you to that conclusion.  But that turns out not to be correct.  For the Tabernacle was in fact the place to meet God, not to meet other Israelites, and while individual, normal Israelites could bring their sacrificial offerings to the front part of the tent, they were not permitted to enter it.  That privilege was reserved for the Levi’im, the Levites, and to a greater degree, the Kohanim, the higher level of priests, the descendants of Aaron.  That is, only a special tribe was allowed into the heart of the sanctuary. 

If you are Kohein today—named Cohen or Kagan or Kahane or Cohn or, well, Cohon—you are descended from these priests.  In the time of the Tabernacle and later the Temple that meant you also received a portion of the sacred offerings brought, the holy food offered in the Temple.  Sadly, there is no such specific residual benefit accruing today, although we do get to eat at the same Oneg Shabbat table as all Jews…

Now, along the same lines of limited access, the very holiest section of the sacred tent, the Kodesh Kodashim, the Holy of Holies within the Tabernacle and of course later the Temple, was reserved for the Kohein Gadol, the High Priest who was allowed to enter it just once a year, on Yom Kippur. 

The Tabernacle was for the worship of God, alright, but not for the purpose of gathering together as a community.  The Shechinah, the female divine presence of God, resided within the Tabernacle.  We assembled elsewhere, in front of the building, sometimes, or in front of a mountain or in some other public space.

Now, later, when the permanent Temple was built in Jerusalem, a series of large courtyards were constructed to allow the people to assemble, and perhaps to hold some public events, such as the annual Yom Kippur wait on the Day of Atonement to see if the High Priest emerged unscathed from his entry into the Holy of Holies.  But generally speaking, while the First and Second Temples were busy places, they were not considered to be places of general assembly.

Asu Li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham, the passage reads: make me a holy place and I, God, will dwell in their midst.  But not, they will come into my holy place in the name of community.

There are many quotations in the Tanakh, the Bible, that refer to people coming to God’s holy mountain—usually understood to be the Temple Mount in Jerusalem—but again, they were to come to make offerings and fulfill their obligations to offer sacrifices to God, not to gather for some sort of communal connection. 

What is particularly interesting is that the need for such communal connection, that is, a place to gather to affirm Jewish community and fulfill the non-ritual functions that are so essential to Jewish identity and, in fact, to Judaism itself developed when the 2nd Temple still stood in Jerusalem. The earliest synagogue in the world, we believe, was located out in the Aegean Ocean, in the Diaspora, on the island of Delos, just off of Mykonos.  It was a humble structure, just a large room really with benches built into the sides of the walls, with some sort of central bimah.  It was most likely a Beit Knesset, a house of assembly—that is also what we call synagogues today—by the way, synagogue is a Greek-origin word—that allowed the Jews living there or visiting there to gather to learn the news that impacted Jews and to meet others and to arrange the affairs of the community.  It was also a Beit Sefer, a place of learning, to allow Jews to study Torah and Jewish law and understand the meaning of our classic texts in their own lives; it was likely also a place to teach Judaism to children, so that they could carry on the tradition.  It may or may not have been a Beit Tefilah, a house of prayer, although eventually, of course, that became a central function of the synagogue.  And it probably functioned as a place for Jews to connect to other Jews for business purposes, and for to offer and receive charity.

In other words, it was what we think of today as a temple, a synagogue, a shul, a congregation.  A place for true Jewish community.  The essential place that guarantees that Judaism can and will flourish in the next generation.  

Now, I don’t believe that Terumah envisioned all of that when it commanded the creation of a Tabernacle.  But I do believe that is what is required today, as it has been for two thousand years, for the perpetuation of a vibrant Judaism now and in the future. 

But I also think that the love that was poured into that first creation of a holy place has a strong place in the life of any meaningful congregation today.

The great Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai wrote beautifully and sensuously on the subject of the synagogue in his final book, Open Closed Open:

I studied love in the sanctuary of my childhood,

I sang, “Come, Sabbath bride” on Friday nights

With a bridegroom’s fever, I practiced longing for the days of the Messiah,

I conducted yearning drills for the days of yore that will not return.

The cantor serenades his love out of the depths,

Kaddish is recited over lovers who stay together,

The male bird dresses up in a blaze of color.

And we dress the rolled-up Torah scrolls in silken petticoats

And gowns of embroidered velvet

Held up by narrow shoulder straps.

And we kiss them as they are passed around the synagogue,

Stroking them as they pass, as they pass,

As we pass.

May we find love of God, and holiness, in our own sanctuaries today.  And may the communities we build in our own temple flourish through that love.

Hope in a Time of Trauma

Sermon Shabbat Mishpatim 5784: Israel Report, Rabbi Sam Cohon

I learned a Hebrew poem last week, written by a new friend, Rabbi Amnon Riback, whose Passover poem I have used in my own sedarim on Pesach each year for the past ten years or so.  It was filled with the dream of hope, and he sang it for our rabbinic group at a center for Jewish-Arab cooperation in Haifa.  After it was done, our guide told the group, “Since October 7th, that is the first time I have heard the word hope expressed so often.”

My friends, I returned a week ago or so from a rabbinic solidarity mission to Israel, and it was a powerful and valuable experience, if not exactly a pleasure trip.  For context, I’ve been to Israel 17 or 18 times, led four congregational trips to Israel, co-led an interfaith pilgrimage trip to Israel, lived in Jerusalem for a year and for a summer in the north of Israel long before that, and have found every Israel experience I’ve ever had to be unique and typically quite wonderful.  This was a different kind of journey, going to Israel during wartime to offer support and to see what I could learn that I didn’t already know from obsessively following the news and talking to friends, relatives, colleagues, and professionals in Israel every week since the October 7th atrocities took place. 

To begin with, this was the first time I’ve gone to Israel when I didn’t anticipate it with a sense of great personal excitement.  I knew beforehand that being in Israel during wartime would be different.  I was in Israel during some of the worst days of the 2nd Intifada in the early 2000s, and I can tell you that it was rough back then.  But at no point during that run of terrorist bombings and suicide/homicide attacks by Palestinians did it feel like a threat to Israel’s very existence. 

This time, the perception throughout the country is very much that what Hamas perpetrated on October 7th, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust combined with torture and rape and the brutal mass kidnapping of hostages into the hellish tunnels of Gaza, made it explicit that Hamas must be destroyed now, or it will remain an existential threat to Israel and its civilian population.  And, in fact, the sense in Israel when I was there was clearly that this was different from anything that had preceded it since the war of independence in 1948; different from the 1980s war in Lebanon had been, different from the several wars with Hezbollah in the north that saw rocket attacks as far as Haifa, different from the First or Second Intifadas, different even from the Yom Kippur War, for those old enough to remember 1973.  Those wars—and really, you can’t simply call them conflicts—each impacted Israel greatly.  But they had not changed the overall mentality of the nation in the ways that this horrific attack had.

Israel on October 6th, just before this atrocity was perpetrated by Hamas’ Palestinian terrorists, was a divided nation.  The judicial coup that the government of Bibi Netanyahu was attempting led to massive protests for ten months, and created a level of social disruption and tension that was unprecedented.  But when the awful events of October 7th exploded all of that was essentially forgotten.  The entire nation came together in unity, with the knowledge of a common threat.  The horrors of October 7th brought people of extremely different political perspectives and quite different Jewish observance identities together.  That unity has seen tremendous voluntarism across all aspects of Israeli society, and that was evident throughout my time in Israel. 

The examples of this unity and voluntarism are legion: city people from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, including my retired computer programmer cousin Ken, who is Modern Orthodox, take busses weekly down to the south of Israel to harvest crops, replacing the farmworkers from Asia who returned home on October 8th, replacing the many Palestinian Arab workers from Gaza who no longer are able—or are likely ever to be permitted again—to enter Israel to work.  Fancy hotel chains, like the Dan group, have opened their doors free of charge to evacuated families from the south of Israel near Gaza and from the north of Israel near Lebanon, without knowing whether the government will reimburse them for the rooms and food they are providing to so many Israelis.  Individuals, families and non-governmental agencies of all kinds have rushed forward to help the displaced Israelis, many of whom had to evacuate without any supplies, and to offer support services for the many traumatized victims.  Our rabbinic solidarity even visited an innovative center for PTSD treatment in Tel Aviv that uses giant decompression chambers to successfully treat the large number of soldiers and civilians who are trying to recover from the trauma of the terror attacks.

So there is exceptional unity in Israel now.  No one expects that to continue much past the end of this war, whenever that takes place.  But it is true for the present.

Notably, on this trip put together by the Central Conference of American Rabbis I was meeting with many progressive and left-wing Israelis. In the week that I was in Israel, traveling from Tel Aviv to Haifa to Jerusalem to Kibbutzim to small towns north and south and, well, all over, I never heard anyone, with one upsetting exception, express a strong desire for an immediate cease-fire with Hamas.  These progressive and very liberal people with whom we met are the same Israelis who employed Palestinian workers, who drove Palestinians from Gaza to Israeli hospitals, who had friends in Gaza, who believed that they had forged bonds of respect and cooperation.  Their trust in the good-will of ordinary Palestinians, and their compassion for the fate of Palestinian Gaza civilians, has been not only undermined by the vicious atrocities of October 7th.  It has essentially been destroyed. It will be a long time before Israelis, who have been attending funerals, memorials and the hospital beds of their relatives and friends for four months now, can feel compassion or, certainly, trust for Palestinians.  Some told me that they felt badly that they couldn’t summon any sympathy for the Palestinians in Gaza; some said that they simply had no room in their hearts because of the enormous pain all Israelis are feeling now.  Others on the left expressed more explicitly the betrayal that they felt because Palestinians from Gaza who had had coffee in their homes were likely the same ones who drew maps for the Hamas terrorists of their kibbutzim, and who knew enough to tell them which houses the heads of kibbutz defense lived in and where the weapons were stored so that the Hamas Palestinian terrorists could shoot rpg’s at those buildings first.

In addition—and this is incredibly important—the profound faith that nearly every Israeli feels for the military, the IDF, has been shaken.  Look, trust in the government is never particularly strong in most countries, and certainly not in a vibrant democracy like Israel.  I mean, how much do you trust our government to do the right thing and to be efficient about it?  So it is in Israel.  And certainly now virtually no one supports Prime Minister Netanyahu, widely blamed for this horrifying disaster and the appeasement of Hamas that led to it. 

But in Israel, where nearly every non-ultra-Orthodox man serves in the Israel Defense Force for almost three years, and where most women do as well, and where reserve duty continues for an additional 15 and more years, a belief in the military and its effectiveness and good judgment is central.  The fact that the IDF was unprepared for the severity of the horrifically brutal Hamas attack on October 7th, that the army took 6 to 8 hours to reach the scene of the massacres, and in some cases took 20 hours to relieve embattled and trapped civilians, shocked all Israelis.  While the IDF has conducted the Gaza campaign with remarkable effectiveness overall, and has taken serious losses nonetheless, the Israeli public’s faith in the military is still shaken.     

I was told by many people “This entire country has PTSD.”  That is not wrong.  There are family members who know that there are relatives have been held under Gaza, in tunnels as prisoners of brutal Palestinian terrorists, for 120 days now.  There are families that don’t feel they can ever return to their homes because they were locked in their safe rooms, terrified, for 12 hours and more.  There are families who have no homes to return to, whose neighbors and relatives were murdered.  And there are families whose husbands, sons, and fathers have died fighting in Gaza, or whose daughters, mothers or wives were murdered on October 7th.  It will be a long time indeed before these people recover.

And yet: in many ways, Israeli life goes on. Cafes were busy.  Stores are open.  In wartime, businesses are managing, even with many important employees out on reserve duty in Gaza and the north.  Everyone knows that this war is necessary for Israel’s survival, and the sense of normality is still there.

An example or two: I stopped at a bookshop to get a couple of Israeli kids’ books for Ayelet.  I was about to buy two of them when the owner—or perhaps simply the manager—told me, “Don’t get those; look in the back, there’s better, cheaper ones on the kids table there.”  It was such a totally Israeli thing to do… I thanked her, and found two much better books—one features a little red-headed girl named Ayelet, by the way; it’s a charming and wonderful series—for half the price.  I also stopped at a Judaica store in Tel Aviv run by an elderly Iranian Jew who had come over from Teheran forty years ago.  He told me his life story, lowered the prices continually since business now is terrible, I spoke to him in Hebrew, my own father is older than he is, and he found out I was a rabbi, and then he convinced me to buy two things I did not need.  His grandson is fighting in Gaza now, while his own brother has never left Teheran, which he finds baffling.  Only in Israel.  I found a lovely necklace in Jerusalem for Sophie at a jewelry shop run by a Moroccan Jewish woman whose husband made it and whose three children are all fighting in Gaza now, and who told me that part of the problem was that too many Israelis are not Orthodox.  I did not argue with anyone, which is, I suppose, not very Israeli.

And of course, the synagogues I attended for Shabbat services were full, active, energetic, positive.   

Israel is surviving, and in spite of the hundreds of posters and installations about the hostages everywhere, in spite of the obvious pain that its people feel, in spite of the challenges of a nation at war, it remains an amazing country deeply dedicated to its Jewish and democratic identity.  It may not have been fun being there this time, but it was powerful and meaningful.

One more thought, when I suppose I could continue for a great deal longer. The greatest impression I have had since returning exactly a week ago is the profound disconnect between the perception of the situation in Israel and here in the United States.  Israelis across the entire political spectrum, from extremely progressive to extremely conservative, are under no illusions about the necessity for this war in Gaza, and the need to carry it forward to its completion.  There is no ambiguity about the need to destroy Hamas’ capacity to perpetrate more such atrocities, which these Palestinian terrorists have sworn to try to do.  There is surely controversy over just how committed to saving the surviving hostages the current government of Israel is, and how this can best be accomplished in the context of a terrible war.  But there are no doubts about the necessity of the war being conducted now. 

Here in America, where we are all at least 5,000 miles from Gaza—nearly 8,000 miles here in Arizona—that moral clarity is clouded by distance and propaganda.  Virtually from the moment Israeli citizens were brutally attacked on October 7th—murdered, raped, tortured, stolen from their lives and carried off into imprisonment as hostages in the gigantic tunnel network that Hamas Palestinian terrorists built under Gaza—world opinion turned against Israel.  Israelis don’t understand how anyone can glorify brutal Islamist terrorists who burn people alive and celebrate their atrocities on social media.  They don’t understand why there are such vigorous calls for cease fire when their children, women and men, civilian captives of these Palestinian terrorists, are being held hostage against all international law, and when there was a cease fire in place on October 6th that Hamas chose to destroy.  They certainly don’t understand why they are accused of genocide when they have taken nearly obsessive care to warn civilians to leave areas where they are planning to attack Hamas terrorists—something nearly unprecedented in wartime in human history—by all means possible, including dropping flyers, sending texts and emails and using audible warnings in Arabic.

Gaza is urban warfare, initiated by an intrenched enemy that has constructed military-grade tunnel systems with electricity, communications, rations, water, full electronics in underground chambers that are half the size of the New York City subway system.  There are 2.3 million people in Gaza, crammed into an area about twice the size of Manhattan, with about the same population density as Boston.  The current belief is that about 27,000 Gaza Palestinians have died.  The IDF, the Israeli military, says that about 9,000 of them were armed terrorists.  If that’s the case, then 18,000 civilians have died in the fighting. 

That is tragic, incredibly sad and painful, and the humanitarian crisis in this war begun by Hamas is certainly real and terrible.  For that it’s worth, and to put it into perspective, in the Gulf War in Iraq estimates put the number of Iraqi civilian deaths at the hands of the US, its foreign allies and Iraqi allies at somewhere around 300,000.  In Afghanistan the number of civilian deaths at the hands of the US military are calculated at over 70,000.  The total number of civilians killed in the post 9/11 wars as the direct result of US military action is about 432,000.

In Gaza the civilian deaths are calculated now at 18,000.  I spoke extensively to a rabbi who witnessed the three-part verification system Israeli units use now before eliminating terrorists.  I’m sure that it is imperfect; but it is a remarkable exercise in restraint in a brutal war against a vicious opponent.

To state what should be obvious: It is extremely difficult to fight a determined enemy that hides behind its own civilians, using them for human shields, and which has failed to construct a single bomb shelter for any Gaza Palestinians, while simultaneously building an underground network of extraordinary sophistication to protect its own leadership and its terrorist army.  In these circumstances, when humanitarian aid is very likely to be stolen by the same Hamas terrorists who have squirreled away so much aid already, civilians are going to suffer no matter how careful the Israeli military is.  And remember: the Israeli soldiers are fighting a war, trying to limit their own casualties while they strive to liberate hostages taken and cruelly held by Hamas.     

No one truly knows when this war will end.  The Hamas Palestinian terorrists have now been forced into the southern end of Gaza almost completely.  The elaborate network of tunnels will not be easily destroyed, or perhaps cannot be completely destroyed at all, depending on which engineers you listen to.  Israel will not go back to normal any time soon.

But, ultimately, in every crisis there is opportunity.  While Hamas remains in control of Gaza nothing good can be accomplished.  Frankly, so long as Netanyahu remains Prime Minister nothing much can be accomplished towards a durable solution.  I believe both realities will change soon, perhaps within two months.  Then we will see if a new day will indeed dawn in the Middle East, in which a Palestinian people can turn from reactive hate to embrace a more positive reality, and in which Israelis will be able to live in a secure peace.

A final, hopeful thought: Our daughter Ayelet is just a year old.  When I was her age, Israel was a tiny country, poor, hanging onto its security by the skin of its teeth.  So much has changed, and will continue to change.  But the hope that is built into the national anthem, Hatikvah, is at the heart of the Zionist enterprise.  A hope for a country that is strong, healthy, and at peace.  A final note of hope: That dream will come; and may it come sooner than any of us now expect.  Ken Yehi Ratson.  May this be God’s will, and ours.    

Initial Impressions from Israel Having Just Landed Back Home

Initial Impressions of Israel, Having Just Landed Back Home

Sermon Parshat Yitro 5784

As you know I’ve just returned from a week in Israel, mostly on a rabbinic solidarity mission, although I had a Jerusalem Shabbat and a Sunday in Tel Aviv before the formal program began.  Since I have now been traveling nonstop for the past 30 hours or so—I got on my shuttle to Ben Gurion Airport the equivalent of noon Thursday in Tucson, and have been flying or driving ever since—I think it best to reserve my serious reflections for next Shabbat’s Israel Sabbath when we are planning to invite the community to hear more about the experience of being in Israel during this terrible war.  It will take some time to assimilate and reflect on all that we saw, heard, learned, and felt during this brief but intense trip.  But I want to capture at least a few of the most urgent observations while they are still fresh in my mind.

I hope that most of you have had the chance to read at least some of the seven daily reports I sent back from Israel and were able to view some of the images I posted on our Facebook page as well.  As always, no matter how much you read or watch about Israel from over here, and most of us have been somewhat obsessed with news from Israel since October 7th, actually being there is different, surprising, and enriching in ways you can’t possibly predict.  Some things about Israel seem utterly changed; others are not changed at all.  And there were many surprises over the past ten days or so that I could not have predicted. 

This was the first time I have been in Israel since COVID times, although not for lack of trying.  I have had three planned trips cancelled by Coronavirus issues—Israel’s, not mine particularly—and that makes it the longest I’ve been away from the country since the mid-1990s.  The first surprise was how totally empty Ben Gurion Airport was compared to any other time I’ve been there.  And while I had seen images of the hostage photos that greet you when you land, the ubiquity of the reminders about the hostages, that there are posters and paintings and bumper stickers and banners everywhere all around the country was a stark reminder of just how profoundly painful this is for all Israelis. 

What was not surprising, because I have spoken to many people in Israel over the past four months, is the overall mood of the country.  The shock and horror of the nearly inconceivable atrocities perpetrated by Hamas Palestinian terrorists on October 7th, the dislocation of hundreds of thousands of Israelis from kibbutzim, villages and towns in the south and a similar dislocation of a hundred and fifty thousand Israelis from kibbutzim, villages and towns in the north has had a profound impact on the state of mind of the ordinary Israeli.  When you ask people how they are doing these days they don’t respond with the typical “Kol B’seder, it’s all fine” but with “L’chulam”, meaning I’m like everybody—that is, not doing so well. 

Israel is at war, and it understands the effort to destroy or at least defang Hamas as an existential war.  There is a nearly universal belief among Israelis—young and old, rich and poor, right-wing and left-wing—that this fight must be prosecuted as far as it can be.  There is an incredible sense of unity on this subject in Tel Aviv, in Haifa, in Jerusalem, in the small towns and Kibbutzim we visited too.  This is all the more remarkable because on October 6th Israel was a visibly divided nation, severely split over the fight over the judiciary purge the government of Bibi Netanyahu was trying to conduct, going to the matt to protect democracy.  That conflict evaporated in the first hours of October 7th.  The religious-secular divide in Israeli society, always sharp but increasingly severe in recent years?  Also washed away in the bloodbath of Hamas’ Palestinian terror.  If there is an intense unity, though, it is a somber, intense form of unity.  Everyone wants the hostages freed.  No one believes that Hamas, or even the Gaza Palestinians more broadly, can be trusted.  And in spite of the fact that Israelis are some of the most compassionate people on the planet—they are Jews, after all—sympathy for the Gazan Palestinians is in short supply.   

Now, I was on a trip with a group of about 37 American Reform rabbis, typically a left-wing population of people.  I was genuinely surprised to learn that many of them, including two classmates of mine who are super left-wing, brought substantial donations—tens of thousands of dollars from smaller congregations—to purchase necessary equipment for IDF troops engaged in Gaza or the north.  These are flak jackets, protective helmets, drones, night-vision goggles, and other items that reserve units in particular lack when mobilized.  I asked them if they could have imagined raising money for IDF troops supplies back when we were in rabbinical school together, and both agreed they could not have imagined it in those days.

So what happened to all the peacenik Israelis, young and old?  The comments I heard from other left-wing Israelis is that many of them died at the Nova Music Festival or are imprisoned in Hamas tunnels under Gaza.  The people who lived near Gaza, who hired Palestinian workers in their fields and homes, and who drove them to Israeli hospitals when they were ill—these people were on the front lines, and were brutally attacked.  They don’t have room in their hearts right now for the Palestinians civilians: they are too busy attending funerals and memorials, getting temporary housing or providing it to others, being treated for PTSD themselves or assisting with food for homebound people who haven’t been able to be evacuated, helping out doing the jobs that reservists are unable to do right now.  As many people told me, the whole country has PTSD.

Still, there are profound contrasts in Israel now: I met with past Cohon Foundation Award Winners while I was there and the cafes in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem—the ones frequented by locals—were full, active, busy.  The hotels are pretty full for January and February—although that’s mostly because so many families have been evacuated from their homes in the north or south to hotel rooms, and their kids are all over the lobbies doing homework, playing soccer in these fancy hotels, which opened themselves up for free to the families.  The Israeli public has been amazing at supporting people; the government much less so, slow, bureaucratic, disorganized. 

Fortunately, Israel is a land of volunteers.  My cousins take the bus a couple of days a week—a bus service organized by Leket, whose founder Joseph Gittler received a Cohon Memorial Foundation Award a few years ago for his work on food security for needy Israelis using surplus food—they take the bus to the south to harvest bananas, pomelos, whatever crop needs to be brought in because Palestinian workers from Gaza certainly aren’t going to be let in now, and the east Asians workers all left with a day or so after October 7th.  People are active, busy, making do in a country at war.  I attended Shabbat services in Jerusalem last week, Friday night at a Modern Orthodox synagogue, Nitzanim, with a charismatic rabbi and a great deal of singing.  In many ways, their service is quite similar to ours; we even use some of the same melodies.  Saturday morning I attended a Syrian Orthodox synagogue, Ades, for the chanting of the Song of Moses at the Sea, the Shirat HaYam.  On a cold, rainy Shabbat both sanctuaries were crowded and energetic, a mix of old and young, including soldiers who were there on leave, weapons at their sides.  The mood at both shuls was enthusiastic and filled with the joy of Shabbat, even though relatives of members had been killed fighting in Gaza.  The contrasts are always here in Israel.

Everyone I met said that things in Israel are profoundly changed.  Not everyone agrees on exactly how, however.  But three things stand out.

First, nearly everyone, of every political position, believes that this government must go after the war is fully prosecuted, and no one thinks it can go on for more than a few additional months.  It is clear that the political leadership, embodied by Bibi Netanyahu, has failed dismally and allowed this disaster to occur, and Netanyahu himself is harshly criticized for failing to attend October 7th funerals and for failing to even meet with the families or even call them. I’ve heard this from religious and secular Jews, right wing, center and left wing; Bibi must go.  There is beginning to be a lot of talk in Israel about what happens the day after the war is over—but the government seems to have absolutely no ideas even about what its goals after the war should be.  It is a matter of time before it is out of office, and Netanyahu rides off into the sunset. 

Second, no matter what Israelis think about their government—and they are often harshly critical of it—the one institution that has always had universal respect has been the army, the Israel Defense Forces, the IDF.  And for the first time since the Yom Kippur War, that faith in the army has been challenged and is being questioned.  The army took anywhere from six to 20 hours to arrive at the homes of that brutalized communities of the south.  In a small country with a large military presence this was a shocking failure of military intelligence and preparedness.  Israelis still have some of their habitual faith in the military—which means faith in themselves, since all the men and most of the women serve in active duty and then in the reserves for years, and the reserves have all been called into active service the last four months.  But the bedrock faith that existed in the military before October 7th has been shaken.

And third, there is no trust of the Palestinians.  Left-wing Israelis who used to drive Palestinians to Israeli hospitals, like my new friend Rabbi Amnon Riback, no longer are open to that kind of cooperation.  Those who were building factories near the border with Gaza to employ 10,000 Palestinian workers aren’t building them anymore.  It will take time—maybe another generation—before the level of cooperation and trust that existed before October 7th can possibly be restored, if it can be restored even then.  Some of the same Palestinians who sat in the homes of Israelis and drank tea with them drew maps for the Hamas terrorists of which houses to attack with rpgs and in what order on October 7th. 

It is traditional to end a Haftarah, and even a Midrash, with a note of hope, a nechemta.  I must add such a note tonight, for it is impossible for Jews to live without hope, and hope for peace.  Nine years ago on this Shabbat I climbed Mt. Sinai, in the Sinai Peninsula near Sharm el Sheikh.  It was a memorable night and an amazing dawn.  And it was a reminder that for the first 30 years of Israel’s existence Israel had no more implacable foe than the nation of Egypt.  From before the founding of the State of Israel through wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 Egypt swore to drive the Jews into the sea and annihilate the Zionist entity.  Yet after all those years of warfare and overwhelming hatred peace was arranged—and that peace has lasted for 45 years and counting. 

I do not believe that the result of the current Gaza War, the true end of the October 7th atrocities, will prove to be a lasting peace with Palestinians and a demilitarized new Palestinian state that is somehow democratic and coherent.  But stranger, less probable things have happened right there.  As Ben Gurion famously said: to be a true Israeli you must believe in miracles. 

Israel itself remains a modern miracle.  We will talk more about it next Shabbat; but as nearly everyone in Israel said to me at the end of each meeting or talk: may we meet again in Israel in better, happier times.  And may those times come speedily and soon.

7th Israel Report: Survivors of October 7th

Israel Report #7 - Survivors of October 7th

This morning we visited Shaar Ha’Emek kibbutz, where the entire population of Kibbutz Nahal Oz was evacuated to after October 7.  There are many evacuees staying in hotels in Israel, including ours in Haifa and Tel Aviv.  At our Haifa Dan Panorama hotel there were evacuees from Tel Dan in the north; at our hotel in Tel Aviv I met families evacuated from the town of Sderot. 

This morning in the news three more names were released by the Israeli government after their deaths were confirmed.  One is a 45-year-old policeman, who had been believed to be a hostage, a father of 4, confirmed to have been killed on October 7.  His body had been taken to Gaza by the Hamas Palestinian terrorists.  In total, 43 Israeli police officers were killed October 7 and since then; that’s comparable to something like over 1000 police officers in the US if this had happened in comparable scale in America.  In other news today, 15 countries have pulled or paused their funding from the UNWRA organization because some of th UNWRA employees’ involvement in the October 7 atrocities.  Germany is now suggesting dismantling UNRWA completely.  The reported proposed hostage deal is now some 2000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for some portion of the hostages.  Some hostage families have gone down to the Kerem Shalom crossing to protest giving humanitarian aid to Palestinians while Israeli hostages, from a 1 year old baby to an 86 year old, are not receiving medications or adequate food.  There have been 223 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7. 

We met with three residents of Nahal Oz who survived October 7 and are now living in temporary housing on Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek in the Jezreel Valley in the north of Israel, about 170 kilometers from their homes.  In addition to the civilian residents brutally murdered, Nachal Oz also had a military base where more than 60 soldiers were killed on October 7.

Yael from Kibbutz Nahal Oz began the program.  The kibbutz was established on Simchat Torah 1953 and this fall was supposed to be celebrating 70th anniversary with a big show put on by th residents.  Of course, the October 7th attack took place on Simchat Torah.  The origin of the kibbutz, like many kibbutzim, was to put an agricultural settlement next to the border.  Soldiers were stationed near there and some of them would decide to stay and settle after their service was done.  Kibbutz Nahal Oz was located right at an army base at its start.  From 1956-1968, 6 soldiers were killed out of the kibbutz population.  1968-on was a good time for Nahal Oz.  It was a successful kibbutz, on the traditional socialist model for kibbutzim of that era.  T

Throughout the 80s and 90s Nachal Oz continued to do well, but began to have security needs.  Prior to the 1990s no fence existed between the Gaza Strip and the kibbutz, workers went back and forth freely, people drove over to Gaza to shop, interaction was simple and non-violent.  In the year 2000 the first rockets fell on Nahal Oz, but no one really took it seriously, neither the government nor the army nor even the residents.  By 2003 they started to understand that they needed to have some security.  Of course it has intensified steadily since then.

There have been three large IDF military operations in Gaza prior to this war, the last big one in 2014.  They lost a child in Nahal Oz in a Palestinian rocket attack on 8/22/2014.  Some families left then, and the kibbutz population went from 400 down to 300.  But by October 7 2023 it was back up to 467 people. 

Kibbutz Nahal Oz lost 15 people who died October 7 in the Hamas Palestinian terrorist attack.  7 kibbutz residents were taken hostage, 5 of whom have been released.  One person killed that day had his body taken into Gaza by Hamas. 

When the population of Kibbutz Nahal Oz had to evacuate they were left with nothing, no medicine, no extra clothes.  On that day the residents who survived spent many hours locked in their safe rooms with no water or bathroom facilities.  Everyone is traumatized, 70% of them are living now around Shaar Ha’Emek in temporary housing.  Others from the close Kibbutz Nahal Oz community are living scattered with family members around Israel.

We heard movingly from Naomi Adler, a survivor of 10/7.  Although born in Minneapolis she grew up in Jerusalem.  Her husband was a kibbutznik from a different kibbutz.  They joined Nahal Oz in 2017.  They had their final rehearsal for the big anniversary show the night before the attack; the kids were in the show, too.  This kibbutz was real community and gives her life meaning differently than growing up in Jerusalem.  She’s a nurse who works as the community activity planner, her husband is a farmer, they have 3 young sons. Their three boys are 7, 6, and 2 years old.  Her husband had 20 Palestinian workers from Gaza working for him in agriculture, and when October 7th happened he was concerned with how his workers were.  Their home was just one year old, they built it themselves 18 months ago, but now she’s not sure that she can go back to it ever.  Trauma is real for all of them and long-lasting.  She is now the event coordinator for a kibbutz in exile.  Their kids’ bedroom is the safe room.

On October 7th Naomi woke up at 6:29am to the loudest noise ever, nonstop, something that had never happened before.  She didn’t even hear the red color (Tzeva Adom, severe danger) notice.  The incredibly loud noises (rockets from Gaza) stopped after 10 minutes.  She opened the door of the house for air and saw cars driving through the field towards the Iron Dome base near them which protects them from rockets.  She saw strange cars driving through the fields, and saw her next-door neighbors, one of whom was later murdered by Hamas.

At that point Naomi saw the message on her phone to get into the safe room and lock the doors.  They were in there with some water, but no bathroom facilities, no diapers and the 2- year-old is not yet potty trained.  The terrorists shot their door but through luck one bullet lodged in the door and locked it shut.  Then the power went out, and they spent 12 hours with no power in a closed safe room, hot, stifling.  They saw on their phones’ WhatsApp group neighbors begging for help, asking “where’s the army?” and saying “they (the terrorists) are here…” they heard grenades, spoken and shouted Arabic, RPGs fired and exploding.  They were in their safe room, overall, for 19 hours.  Used a box as a toilet.  Smelled terrible.  Hot, not much air.  No idea what was going on.  Cell service dropped at noon.  Phones were used as flashlights so they weren’t totally in the dark throughout.  “I don’t know how we survived.”  Each person fell asleep at various times likely from low oxygen.  At 7pm the power came back on, then WiFi.  Her mom called crying and she told her mother we are still stuck in here, but we are fine so stop crying (now that’s an Israeli thing to do!).

Later in the evening they saw families being rescued by the army and shipped out.  They texted, “Hey, we Adlers are still here.”  The IDF, going house to house got there around 1:30am.  Kids woke up, were scared; they left with the kids barefoot, Naomi grabbed diapers and wipes, grabbed kids clothes but not their own.  Soldiers were all around them in full battle equipment.  There were 20 to 30 bodies of Hamas Palestinian terrorists behind their home but they didn’t see them.  It was a full-on warzone outside.  Both of their cars were torched by terrorists.

The IDF brought them to a garage until enough survivors had collected there to put them on a bus to an army base.  An IDF Officer told them, “You are safe now” and they all began to cry.  People in pajamas.  Friends telling them “They shot Maayan, and they took Tzachi.”  There was a social worker on the army base when they arrived to help the families.

She and the kids can’t go back home for a long time.  Her husband goes back 2 to 3 times a week to harvest bananas and other crops.  He will never again work with Palestinian workers from Gaza, he says.  All trust is gone.

The family was soon bused to Kibbutz Mishmar Ha’Emek in the Jezreel Valley the next morning, and have been here ever since.  They are now staying in dorms made for 16-17 year olds.  Kibbutzniks here supplied them with all essentials.  Their kids, who dearly love their grandparents in Jerusalem, are too scared to leave Mishmar HaEmek to visit them.

No one is OK.  The closest to being OK are those who say they are not OK.  She will stay in Israel.  Not sure about going back to her home.  Can’t be among people who are living a normal life right now.  Erev, Nir, Alon are her 3 boys.

Danny Rachamim spoke next.  He was an extraordinary speaker.  Born in Israel in Hadera, he has lived for 50 years in Kibbutz Nahal Oz.  Stayed after his army service.  He came in 1975, got married in 1983 to someone who came to visit.  They have three children, 2 who lived on Kibbutz Nahal Oz.  A 39 yr old son, two grandchildren, daughter with partner and a one year old.  His 30 year old daughter can’t stay in Nahal Oz because of PTSD.  On 10/7, Shabbat, there were rockets, he and his wife were alone in their apartment, went to the safe room-shelter.  After 20-30 minutes shooting started.  They went out a few times from their safe room during the day (this is not recommended by authorities during a terror attack; they were lucky).  At one point his wife was in the bathroom and saw Hamas terrorists on the path next to the house speaking Arabic.  She quickly came back to the shelter room.  They heard shooting behind their house, and a good friend was murdered there by Hamas terrorists who shot through the door of their safe room shelter and killed her, then shot her husband.  Hamas left through their back yard and went to a house 30 feet from them.  People called his cell to see what was happening but of course he couldn’t talk or make any noise—and he was in some shock as well.

They received WhatsApp messages from neighbors begging for help and felt helpless.  Danny phoned TV channel 13 and told them what was happening in Nahal Oz.  “Where is the army?” he said. “Tell them we need them to come help us, save us.”  Their daughter and her partner were in communication with him, but his son was just 500 meters away in his home but they couldn’t reach him and they didn’t know what happened to him. 

Their son actually heard the shooting, locked his door and closed his house down.  His wife had left at 4am to go to Beersheba for her running group and was driving back to Nahal Oz that morning and saw bodies.  The kibbutz checkpoint stopped her (she called her husband crying “what about my children?”; he told her it was too dangerous to try to come home). Finally, she got a text through to her husband, he said kids are ok.  His wife didn’t believe it initially.  Believed they were hostages and Hamas was sending messages using his phone.  She asked him to spell her name in English to prove it, Siobhan (she’s Irish).  It took an hour but he proved they were ok.  Meanwhile, his father Danny couldn’t find the key to the safe room.  His wife said “ok, so if we die, we die.”

Then, in the evening, Danny went to the bathroom and heard and saw IDF soldiers speaking Hebrew.  He came out of his house to find an Israeli soldier aiming at him; he was able to convince them he was Israeli.  Soldiers went to rescue his son and grandkids.

Screaming followed then; a friend, Sharona,  had lost her husband to friendly fire.  Danny says, “we didn’t worry about our own lives, just our son and grandchildren.”

During the attack, their son closed doors and windows, had no power and didn’t know what was happening.  He gave his kids candy, and they had electronic tablets to play on.  Early on their son went out, and since he is a carpenter he cut some wood to brace the door and prevent anyone opening the door to the safe room. 

Evening came.  When it was time for his kids to shower he said, “look, I have good news.  You don’t have to shower tonight!”  The kids responded by cheering, ‘Yay!’”

By 9pm he figured the terrorists were all dead, and he and his children came out of the house.  At 1am the army came and told them they were safe.  Danny’s wife wouldn’t leave the Kibbutz until they knew their son and grandchildren were ok; his wife went with the army to see if family is ok.  It took what seemed to Danny quite a long time but finally they came back.  He shouted at her “what took you so long!”  Just a stress reaction…

Until today it’s hard for him to hear that everyone is the same, that Arabs are bad, that all the Palestinians are Hamas.  He doesn’t believe that.  People are good and bad regardless of whether they are Muslim or Jew or Christian.  He has a Muslim friend who cried with him after that Shabbat.  Another friend, a Muslim Arab, saved many young people at the Nova festival before Hamas killed him.

Danny is very active in the reform congregation, does divrei Torah regularly.

Kibbutz Mishmar haEmek has opened their hearts to them, far more than the government would do.  The Nahal Oz kids are in school here at this kibbutz.  Kids in Shnat Sheirut, the year of national service before entering the army, are teaching them.  It’s not, for them, like the community of Kibbutz Nahal Oz.  They haven’t had time to process and grieve.  Not all the victims are buried yet.  There is as yet no place to go and remember.

The people of Israel showed up big time; but the government failed badly to respond.  Big hotel chains opened up their hotels without any idea if they would be compensated for doing so.  Government took a month to respond and more. 

It was incredibly powerful and moving to hear these stories, this testimony of surviving terror and evacuation, of lost friends and relatives murdered by Hamas Palestinian terrorists. It is not hard to see how hard it is for people who have gone through this to find room to care about the casualties on the Arab side.

6th Israel Report: Can Co-existence Flourish in Israel Still?

Israel Trip Report #6 – Can Coexistence Flourish in Israel?  

It was pouring rain today in Haifa, mirroring much of the mood in the country.  This morning we visited Beit haGefen, an important center where Jewish and Arab citizens in Haifa have long worked together on respect, understanding and mutual cooperation, and it was a valuable and positive experience but with a challenging note at the conclusion.

There was a lot of news this morning: yesterday 11 rockets were fired at Tel Aviv from Gaza.  7 were intercepted by the Iron Dome and 4 fell in open areas.  The alarm sirens are localized to the extent that they know what Tel Aviv neighborhoods are targeted by the trajectory.  We heard the siren but the best thing for where we were in the bus of full of rabbis was to keep driving. 

Negotiating continues on the release of the Israeli hostages in exchange for 1000s of terrorists and a cease fire.  In Jenin in the West Bank three terrorists were killed by Shabak and Yamam (the Israeli security agencies who work in the territories) in a hospital the terrorists were using to plan a terror attack.  No one else was injured in a daring and effective operation.  In Haifa an Arab car and axe attack was foiled by soldiers who killed the terrorist.  One soldier was seriously wounded.  The terrorist was from the Israeli Galilee, a citizen of Israel. 

Beit HaGefen is an Arab-Jewish institution was founded in 1963, supported by the Municipality of Haifa.  It is the only officially supported such organization focused on living together.

There was an honest discussion of interfaith interactions in Haifa, which has long had the reputation of being the city in Israel with the best relations between Arabs and Jews.  Beit haGefen is focused on culture and art programs that aid the positive understanding and experience of human relationships among Jews and Arabs.  We heard from a Reform rabbi of Moroccan Iranian Orthodox background, Gaby Dagan, who first received orthodox smicha (ordination), attended yeshiva, and worked as an army chaplain for a combat unit for 20 years, then later went to Hebrew Union College for Reform ordination.  His colleague, Naama Dafni Kelen, is his co-rabbi at their Haifa congregation.  She comes from a secular Haifa background.  They explained their own work in Haifa, and the nature of the city. 

We had a fascinating meeting with an Arab Israeli Druze young woman.  She noted that as a Druze woman she is a minority within a minority.  The Geffen Center is called a Third Space— a place of meeting that is not the home of either but a safe and open place for both Jews and Arabs.  Haifa is known for its diversity.  But is diversity just variety or is it interaction and cooperation and sharing? 

The young Druze woman used the metaphor of being an iceberg, lots of different and unrevealed aspects of her identity.  “Ever since October 7 things are awful.  Beyond conception how bad the terror attack was, the people from the south who are now homeless.  But also everything in Gaza now is horrible.  It came out of the blue and changed everything… people are being displaced in the north, the south.  There has been and continues to be Irresponsible leadership on both sides.”  Lots of Arabs feel like they have to shrink themselves in Israeli society now.  She is 33 years old. 

Asaf, a cultural educator, sees the third space as an opportunity to connect between art and education. How to open conversation about identity and conflict.  Involvement and engagement is critical.  Must be proactive.  There is an interesting large mural in the courtyard at Beit HaGefen created by Haifa muralists called “broken fingaz” illustrating different ways of thinking about Haifa, and life, which encourages interpretation.  Their education department has people write different stories to the same pictures. Pluralism, to him, is the opposite of a standard museum that tells you what everything means and what you should see.  Here, you interpret and bring yourself to the experience.  In general, he said, it’s easy to find difference; it  takes effort and energy to find commonality. 

We also spoke with Rabbi Amnon Ribak, who composed a wonderful poem I have used for several years on Passover.  He has been in rabbis for human rights and until 10/7 drove Palestinians to Israeli hospitals for care.  Feeling very conflicted now.  Loss of trust not only with Israeli authorities and army, who failed so badly on October 7th, but also a profound loss of trust in the goodwill of Palestinians. 

The staff shared their tools for coexistence cards: by changing perspective you see others better, reflect and learn and gain respect. 

This place so dedicated to cooperation for so many years and so creative and beautiful in its work now is facing a restart of its work, as one Progressive rabbi says.  It’s a tough situation indeed…

Rabbi Amnon Ribak added “I will speak about hope.  Exhibition of two artists one Arab one Jew and holding a circle of listening.  The hope holds us, but we must hold onto hope too.  Tikvah includes kav, line, a thread, a rope to grasp and reweave the cord of relations.  Like Mikvah, the waters that gather together…”

We later met with the rabbis of and a number of members and volunteers at the Leo Baeck Center in Haifa.    Much gratitude expressed by everyone we have seen for our presence during this challenging time. 

The Leo Baeck school has some 2500 students, a Reform Jewish center of education and activity, but diverse population of students and families.  It’s K-12.  The students and families are active in school but also at Shabbat and Jewish festivals, as well as for bar and bat mitzvah.  The vision is to plant the seeds from preschool through high school.  3000 alumni now.  Building community for progressive Judaism in Israel. 

Rabbi Ariela of the congregation.  Lots of community activities.  Hani, Christian Arab Haifa resident and coordinator of programs, spoke about the joint Jewish Arab programs including the community garden (we were supposed to work in it today but it’s pouring out) and described the joint holiday programs they hold on all festivals of all 3 major religions in Israel, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  Visitors from all over Israel visit to see the model of cooperation.  International groups also visit and volunteer. 

They celebrated 13 years of the community garden last fall, bar mitzvah of the Gan.  Their Building Shared Communities program is one that communities all over Israel imitate. 

“You reap what you sow” is their slogan.  They are very proud and invested in what they have created here.

We heard from a Muslim Arab woman, mother of 3 children who are grown now.  One a doctor, one works for Microsoft, the youngest a computer engineer.  Works for shared communities, always wanted to work for that.  Worked various places around the country shared Jews and Arabs.  Jews, Christians, Muslims. 

Nir: has 2 daughters in elementary school here.  Was 40 and had never been to an Arab village.  Wanted to know the other people in his society.  Need to meet each other on a friendship basis.

Grief for October 7 but prayers for peace.  Arab woman speaking of her heartbreak over the terrible events. 

Moran: 3 kids.  Raised them on friendship, we are all the same.  Sends her kids to Jewish-Arab summer camp.  Get to know one another at the personal level.

17 communities have come to them so far to learn from and model on their community garden.

“It’s made what we are doing here even more important.”  The conversations always go on, just more intense since October 7.  They have something special here. 

Rabbi Oshrat Morag spoke about what a special community they have.  It seems to be true, here.  And October 7 has only intensified their feeling that what they have created is extremely valuable.

Later we met with Rabbi Miriam Klimova, reform rabbi from Ukraine.  She brought chocolate her mother sent from Ukraine by way of Poland, the only way to send it to Israel.  Ordained last November.  Her family couldn’t come from Ukraine for her ceremony.  Her friends here in Israel came and from her congregation and have become her family.  She grew up at reform congregation in western Ukraine.  At 18 she went to Moscow to study in Judaic program.  Moved to Poland got her BA and MA there, became a service leader in Warsaw and Gdańsk.  In 2018 made Aliyah.  When in 2020 she started at her Haifa congregation 2 people came to Kabbalat Shabbat.  Now 34 people.  20 for classes.  Community now includes new Olim from Byelorussia, Ukraine, Russia.  Nearing 2 years of war in Ukraine now.  Many members now from Odessa. 

They are connected to immigration integration center, she works there and gets referrals for potential congregants.

Community members wished to do something for people in Ukraine.  30% of Israelis in Haifa speak Russian.  Many are from Ukraine… there are some carefully managed tensions in the congregation between Russian Jews and Ukrainian Jews. 

We also heard from a lay leader of her community; he himself moved to Israel from Ukraine in 1991.  He’s a major in the reserves.  Fixes tech systems on Israeli tanks.  On October 7 he woke up at 9am, saw the news, headed to his military unit.  He started back in the military on 10/7, has been in ever since.  His young kids have been worried about him, but his wife didn’t tell him that so as not to worry him during his service.  Later his family went to Greece for 3 weeks.  He got leave after 4 weeks, washed his clothes, congregation sent dinner, bought him stuff he needed, day and a half leave; went back to his unit.  In the south it’s been rough, a little more controllable in the north but he has been out of his civilian job for four months, very tough for his wife and three kids. 

October 6, they did a community shachrit at a park 4 hours, 60 people. It was all lovely, peaceful.  Little did anyone know…

Satellite Beit Daniel congregation, young rabbi.  Rabbi Benni Minnich.  He is now in his 4th year at Kehillat Daniel in Jaffa.  Served in Haifa before that.  When he started it was COVID.  Only 7 active people when he started.  He’s from Crimea originally.  Meir Azari said do what you want to do in building community.  Took 2 months to figure out that the fact he was Russian speaking brought in Russian speakers even if that wasn’t the goal.  In 6 months Tri-lingual congregation: Hebrew, English, Russian.  Feb 2022 traumatic, Russian invasion of Ukraine.  He got flak for being too pro-Ukrainian.  Multi-lingual with Ukrainian—then French Jews came.  Complex community.  Now 30 households.  Berit for 2nd baby, 2 more coming.  Getting younger.  Wanted more than a place for Jews; that’s easy in Israel.  They have Parshat Hashavuah class in English, plus one in Russian.  LGBTQ group joining from Russia by Zoom.  Complicated rabbinate!

5th Israel Report: Hostages

Israel Report #5: Hostages

We began the day visiting hostage square, in front of the Tel Aviv modern art museum and across from the Israeli equivalent of the Pentagon.  It is moving and powerful and incredibly sad and distressingly. I’ve attached photos that capture some of the feeling of it.  It’s a complex of installations created by citizens to insist on remembering and seeking to free the hostages.  It was hard to see it all and not become overwhelmed by the emotion of these people, many of them young, stolen from their lives of potential and accomplishment, of family and community and creativity and music, and imprisoned brutally in torturous captivity. 

Perhaps the most stunning thing I’ve become aware of is the fact that so many American Reform rabbis, mostly left wing and with the reputation of being peaceniks, raising substantial funds to purchase military supplies for the IDF units fighting now in Gaza.  One colleague brought $100,000 to purchase helmets and goggles and armored vests for under-equipped units; another $25,000 from one donor.  I know that most of the group has done similar things.  That’s quite a sea change, in my view, brought about by October 7th.

The most powerful experience this morning was when we met with Lee Siegel, whose brother Keith Siegel is still held hostage in Gaza. Keith is an American citizen, held captive in Gaza for 115 days now. 

Lee himself made Aliyah to Israel in 1976 to kibbutz Gezer.  Kosher kitchen do all Jews could eat there…. He is from North Carolina, went to UNC, lived Northern California, then moved to Kibbutz Gezer.

The morning of October 7, his kids and grandchildren banged on the door to use their safe room, Mamad.  There were Sirens and lots of rockets at kibbutz Gezer, which is not all that close to Gaza.  They went to their mamad, their safe room.  He contacted using WhatsApp his brother and family, texting  “I really hope you are in the north” as they live in Kfar Aza.  After a couple of hours the responding messages stopped.  Usually that means dead phone batteries or the system becoming overloaded.  But not this time.

It took an agonizing 6 to 8 hours for the Israeli army to get to Kfar Aza.  There were battles for 5 days.  His brother and sister in law live 2 miles from Gaza.  When the army finally reached Kfar Aza they found that Keith and his wife were not in their home.  The army located his cellphone electronically in Gaza and the Israeli Army believed both of them were hostages.  While often this is not accurate since anyone could have taken his phone, it was true.  There was footage of Keith’s car being driven with them and another family driven into Gaza by Hamas terrorists.  Keith’s son, in his 40s, Shai survived in his safe room.  His story was that he heard gunshots, people speaking Arabic and then finally, hours later, Hebrew.  He had to decide if it was the IDF.  It was and he survived.  The army used his house as a command post for another 12 hours of fighting.  He’s now starting with a daughter in Afula.

The Friday after October 7 the families of the hostages met here in Tel Aviv.  It has become a family within a family, people meeting people they would never have met.  5 people from kibbutz gezer were murdered at the Nova music festival by Hamas. 

After 50 days, when the 100 hostages were released they kept hoping that Aviva would be released.  That didn’t happen for two days.  Then finally the Red Cross accepted the hostages and she was freed but Keith was not released.  She didn’t want to leave without her husband.  Aviva had been held hostage for 50 days, with very little food, wearing the same clothes she was kidnapped wearing early that terrible Saturday morning.  The Terrorists had been telling the hostages that “there is no more Israel, nothing to go back to.”  Finally, shockingly they were released.  Aviva lost more than 25 pounds.  After days without her meds, even weeks, she finally received some thyroid medication.  After treatment at Wolfson hospital in Israel she is doing ok.  Aviva has now been to DC, and has become iconic with the obit of her at the White House hugging President Biden.  Among the hostage families—indeed, everywhere in Israel—there is great appreciation for the Biden Administration and its unwavering support for Israel and its dedicated work to bring the hostages home. 

Keith has now been a hostage for 115 days.  There is a great and powerful urgency to get the living hostages home and the bodies of the dead back. 

Gilad Shalit was traded after 5 years for over 1000 prisoners including the butcher Sinwar.  It has taken 115 days for Netanyahu to agree that Jewish life is truly sacred and another trade must be arranged. 

Keith himself has done various jobs, he’s a pharmaceutical rep.  Aviva is a kindergarten teacher.  She Was holding the young girl Avigayil while leaving Gaza.  Both live in kibbutz gezer. 

It has been, for Lee, a surreal experience.  Tired, lots of talking.  It’s what we can do, advocate, protest.  PTSD for the whole country.

The Israeli government has had relatively little communication with the families.  Lots of ex-Mossad people as liaisons.  There is a guy who limits who gets to sit with Netanyahu.  The ones who see him are not representative of the hostage families.  Galant has spoken with many families but he’s a full war advocate.  Netanyahu has little credibility with the families but how do you change prime minister during a war?

“I hope that the day after we Israelis will hold onto the unity that is everywhere now.  But we will win means different things to different people.”

Hostage Square is across from the kiriyah, Israel’s pentagon.

There is a strong feeling that the war cabinet and government have not felt the urgency of the hostages and their families. 

The families are not military people.  They know that the short pause allowed 100 hostages to get out.  There is no release of hostages during military action, only during a pause in fighting.

The immediacy and struggle of the family of just one captive Israeli hostage held by the Hamas’ Palestinian terrorists was powerful and disturbing to hear and feel.  May all of our prayers and actions help bring these hostages home speedily and soon.

4th Israel Report: Tel Aviv at War

Israel Report #4 - Tel Aviv in Wartime

Tel Aviv seems, in many ways, the same busy city as always.  The front desk did give me extensive information about the locations of all the shelters in the hotel in the event of a rocket attack; the last siren was about two weeks ago, they said.  Jerusalem hasn’t had a siren in six weeks, my friends Rabbi Leon Morris of Pardes and his wife Dasee Berkowitz said at Shabbat lunch.  Their kids shared stories of the chaotic experience of heading for the bomb shelter as the sirens sounded, and being certain not to emerge too soon; they know of a young man who came out of a bomb shelter too soon, and was killed by shrapnel from the Iron Dome knocking out a Hamas rocket.  So, things are both normal and very much not. 

The posters of the hostages and the signs and stickers and displays demanding their return are everywhere.  Shops are open, and if business is low it seems not as slow as it was during the 2nd Intifada 20+ years ago.  The cafes of Tel Aviv were full, some with soldiers on leave, but in the middle of Dizengoff Square I found a display that was traumatic for me: not only the photos and names of the hostages, but photos and memorials to the many people, many of them young, murdered on October 7th by Hamas.  It continues to distress that theoretically neutral press accounts say “Israel claims that 1200 were killed” or “1200 were killed according to Israel” as though the facts, documented by the Hamas murderers as well as by Israel’s professionals and other countries, were in any doubt.  We have the names, photos, ages and all details of the many murdered Israelis, the lives brutally cut off, entire families annihilated.  Why, besides blatant antisemitism, is there any need to cast doubt on these horrifying verified facts? 

I’ve had several meetings today that have been both eye-opening and inspiring.  Shanna Fuld is a dynamic young journalist who has created the Israel Daily Podcast, which has quickly become wildly popular.  She was a guest on Too Jewish in October shortly after the atrocities, and is becoming a friend as well. She noted as we met in the lobby that many displaced Israelis are staying at the Dan Panorama hotel.  I has wondered about all the families with children, including dogs, who are staying at this oceanfront hotel in midwinter, but hadn’t quite figured out what was going on.  I did notice that the people were very friendly, unlike the average Tel Avivian, however; more typical of Israelis from the periphery than the big city. 

Shanna shared her observation that for all Israelis the sense of security they shared before October 7th is now destroyed.  I told her my historical perspective that in the long run, walls don’t work.  They create a false sense of security, and the societies that depend on them are always shocked when they are breached. The Great Wall of China, visible from space, didn’t stop the barbarians; the Maginot Line surely didn’t protect France from the Nazis in World War II; the Bar Lev line failed dismally in the Yom Kippur War.  Sooner or later walls don’t stop a determined enemy.  The only thing that really works long-term is turning neighboring enemies into allies, or at least neutrals.  But that seems far away right now.  Shanna spoke about her fear of the unity in Israel now turning into something else, jingoistic and unreflective of the reality; and she also talked about how when she goes to bed at night what keeps her up is thinking about the Palestinians without beds, without adequate food, electricity, water supplies, medical care. 

In the midst of all the war talk, she also shared that in the five years she has been living here there is a remarkable new energy to young observant Jews in Tel Aviv, whose practice might be described as somewhere between Conservative and Modern Orthodox, how the communal spirit is strong and active.  There is a vitality that wasn’t present in my past experience of Tel Aviv, to be honest, but is now. 

I also met with a representative of Leket, Deean Fiedler, an incredible organization that takes leftover food from food suppliers in Israel and feeds people in need.  I had hoped to meet with the founder and director, Joseph Gitler, a Cohon Award recipient in 2018, but tragically his 27 year old son-in-law was killed last week in fighting in Gaza.  Deena came in his place, and explained that an additional service of Leket now is providing food to homebound people who can’t leave the south near Gaza because they are immobile.  All the stores are closed, so Leket brings food to them.  In addition, in many situations, Leket has had to turn to buying produce instead of getting it donated because hotels and banquet facilities have emptied out during the war as tourism plummeted.  Leket has set up fruit stands for the hundreds of thousands of displaced Israelis from both the south and north, and is providing buses to drive volunteers to the fields of the south.  As soon as October 7th happened the farmworkers vanished: the Asian guest workers went home, and the Palestinians who provided perhaps 50% of the work force could of course no longer cross over from Gaza.  The south of Israel now produces 70-75% of Israel’s food; finding a way to harvest that food has become a communal volunteer effort for the whole country.

Our first formal meeting of the Rabbinic Solidarity Mission was with Rabbi Gilad Kariv, Member of Knesset and an old friend.  He described the consensus that that of course there was a catastrophic failure on 10/6,  failure of security authorities and political authorities.  But is Oct 7 like the Yom Kippur War?   No, in his opinion it is much more like 1948, as Israel then as now faced an array of enemies bent on its annihilation.  In 1973, as awful as things were for the army in the first days of the war, it was a war against Egypt and Syria alone, and did not include the massacre of civilians.  This is a war against both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in the north, even if it is limited to a degree in the north.  They have now evacuated 150,000 Israelis from the north, the first time that Israel has done this.  There are threats in the Golan from Syria, in the West Bank from Hamas, and and attempts by Yemen of course as well.  It is a war with Iran and its proxies, and in a variety of theaters.

It is clear that Israel, for all its military capabilities, cannot defeat the entire coalition by itself.  It needs the help of the US and other allies.  He also noted the gap between the ardent support of the Biden Administration for Israel and the less fervent support of much of the rest of the American public. 

In addition, there is gap between the coverage of Israeli media, which understandably doesn’t show the conditions of Palestinians in Gaza.  It is yet another gap between Israel and the rest of the world. 

So, Kariv asked, What is the ability to present a liberal moderate Jewish perspective on the current situation?  Israeli society doesn’t really grasp what’s happening in USA and Europe and Australia around this war.  In Israel there is really only room for one left-wing Zionist party with Benny Gantz’ party, Yair Lapid’s party, the Arab parties.  If the various left-wing Zionist parties unite they can likely gain 8-10 seats.  Meretz, Labor, etc. have room to work, in that they can advocate for a “day after” the war vision.  There seems to be nothing much coming from Gantz or Lapid on the day after the war. 

Currently, are Israelis caught up in a situation so draining that it is beyond their emotional capacity to feel for the Palestinian civilians.  He noted in particular that the only real Israeli desire for a cease fire with Hamas is to save the hostages.  Most crucially—and remember, he is a Labor Party Member of Knesset, a left-wing Zionist himself—he reminded us that if hamas remains in power in Gaza it’s the end of the 2-state solution and the end of the Palestinian Authority.  It is a left-wing goal to destroy Hamas and strengthen the Palestinian Authority.  It was   Netanyahu’s policy to weaken the PA and strengthen Hamas.

We have a full day of meetings and visits tomorrow, and it will be emotional an eye-opening.  I appreciate all the prayers for my safety that I have received.  Frankly, I feel very safe.  Please pray for the safety of those engaged the brutal fighting in Khan Younis now, and for the families who are suffering loss and trying to recover from trauma, and most of all perhaps, for the hostages brutally held in Gaza.

3rd Israel Report: Normalcy in Wartime

It’s cold and wet in Jerusalem, normal for this time of year, but when you have to walk everywhere on Shabbat in the wind and rain it reminds you that the sabbath of this amazing, unique city is not always easy. That hasn’t changed over the 30 years or so since I lived here and have been coming back in winter. Jerusalem is made out of stone, which retains cold wonderfully well—a much better trait in summertime.

As usual, spending time in Israel can change your perspective on hamatzav, the situation, often multiple times in a short period. Now that I have been here for Shabbat, and have spoken with a number of relatives, friends and strangers, I’m seeing things a little more deeply, and consequently also a bit differently.

As my cousin Ken says, “Israel was a deeply divided country before October 7th. The brutality of the assault unified the whole nation. It was completely clear that we had to go in and destroy this enemy that perpetrated those atrocities.” There is a desperate concern about the 130 hostages, evident all over Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. But there is also both a sense of determination to win this war, and an odd normalcy about the functioning of this ultra-pragmatic, modern, sophisticated country during wartime. There is traffic and people going to work, and full synagogues on Shabbat, with everyone going to someone’s home afterward for Shabbat dinner or lunch. There are returned soldiers in the seats at shul, some still carrying their weapons; but the talk is of visitors and the rabbi’s dvar Torah and the weather, with only some mention of friends or relatives who have people on the idf and the casualties there.

Israel is indeed engaged in what it fully believes is an existential fight against Hamas terrorism. That doesn’t necessarily mean an anti-Palestinian attitude from Israelis.

One of the surprising facts about the current situation is that many thousands of Gaza Palestinians worked the farms and factories of southern Israel prior to October 7, and had done so for generations, right through other Gaza fighting. That is no longer possible, bringing additional economic hardship to a war-damaged region. You cannot, of course blame Israelis for refusing now and in the future to allow Palestinian workers from Gaza into Israel to work when some of those workers were Hamas’ spies sent to plot out invasion routes and places to attack and bring rape and murder.

There was some hope after October 7 that the Palestinian people would see Hamas for the murderous, corrupt butchers they have demonstrated themselves to be. That was naive, at best. Some Palestinians, including those I’ve spoken with, believe that democratic elections in Gaza—Hamas has not held elections in 17 years; the Palestinian Authority hasn’t done so in even longer in the West Bank—and a new non-terrorist regime can bring both peace and prosperity to Gaza. I hope they are right, but like any observer of the Middle East, while I have hope I also am skeptical.

Real, functional democracy does not exist in any Arab nation. Only Israel in this region actually holds elections and has representative government. Will the Palestinians, under the thumb of Hamas in Gaza and the corrupt kleptocrats of the Palestinian Authority, supported by the Israel military, suddenly embrace true democracy and economic and social modernity?

It is Shabbat Shirah, a day of chanting the song of Moses, a triumphant ode to military victory over an enemy bent on genocide of the Israelites. I don’t see God stepping in and solving this war. And I’m not sure just what “victory” will look like. But perhaps praying for peace and elimination of Hamas at the same time is the best we can do right now.

Now, back to a long walk on the rainy, windy cold….

Shabbat Shalom and Shavua Tov from Yerushalayim!

2nd Israel Report: Losses

Israel Report #2

 Rabbi Sam Cohon

Israel suffered its worst one-day loss of life since the October 7th atrocities earlier this week when 24 Israelis died in fighting in Gaza.  Hamas managed to collapse a building by firing an RPG, a rocket propelled grenade with multiple explosives, at neighboring buildings in Khan Younis, causing the death of 21 Israelis.  Three more Israelis died that day fighting against Hamas’ Palestinian terrorists in central and southern Gaza.

While we somehow think the death of soldiers is normal in war, there is nothing normal about losing sons, brothers, fathers and husbands, mothers, sisters and wives in their teens, twenties, thirties, and forties.  Over 220 Israeli soldiers, men and women, have died fighting against Hamas Palestinian terrorists since October 7th.  Several hundred active duty and reserve soldiers were killed on October 7th itself, including those providing security and working in the police forces and as border guards.

Everyone in Israel has direct family members or relatives, friends, or certainly friends of friends who have died in the Gaza War.  Israel is a small country, tight, community-based.  Unlike the American military, nearly everyone in Israel serves in the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, and continues in a reserve role with the same unit for many years, doing milu’im, reserve duty annually for a month.  Those dead men and women are close to so many people.  The losses in this war will be felt for many years to come.  Each death is personal.  Everyone is impacted.

It is obvious here that there is ever-increasing pressure on the Israeli government to try to get the remaining hostages out.  Over 130 people have been held for nearly four months now in brutal captivity by Hamas’ Palestinian terrorists in the tunnel network of Gaza, miles and miles of it, but negotiations to free the Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails during a cease fire have stalled.  Hamas is insisting on a “permanent cease fire” that leaves the terrorists in control of Gaza.  Israel has agreed to a one-month cease-fire and exchange of all hostages for prisoners, with humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza in a much larger way than it has arrived at until now.  There is no apparent prospect of any deal soon.

Although Qatar and Egypt have led efforts to negotiate a deal, Hamas has remained intransigent.  As you might expect from terrorists who realize that the moment the last Israeli hostage is freed what remains of the gloves will be off, and their leadership in Gaza will be targeted and liquidated.  Israel has accused the absentee top terrorists of Hamas, who live in cushioned comfort in luxurious style in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, of using the Palestinian civilians of Gaza as brutalized pawns, putting them in the line of fire, forced migration, and disease, making them human shields are PR martyrs while they themselves enjoy the fruits of international aid funds in distant lands.  These absentee Hamas lords of terror have refused to compromise to free the remaining hostages, preferring to see their own civilians destroyed.  While Gaza burns they sit in the UAE and drink tea.

There are never easy answers in the Middle East, are there?

Meanwhile, it is extremely clear that the current leadership of Israel, definitely including Prime Minister Natanyahu, will face a day of reckoning for the horrible failures of October 7th.  That day has not yet come, and may not come for a few more months.  It is extremely hard for any nation to change leadership during a war.  It will be particularly difficult for Israel to do so, and I don’t think it will until some decision is reached in this battle against terrorism.

The latest information on the Hamas tunnel network is daunting.  It is now reckoned that it is as extensive as the London Underground system, and it is likely many tunnels are not yet discovered even after nearly four months of warfare.  The latest reports make it clear that destroying it would be an engineering feat beyond the capability of the IDF, or perhaps any world military now.   Only a fraction of the tunnels in the north of Gaza, under the full control of the IDF now, have been destroyed.

Israeli society has come together to support this war.  But it will be a great challenge for it to continue to remain on the current path for much longer.

May God give Israeli leadership not only strength but wisdom, which is a rare and precious commodity in wartime and always hard to come by.

1st Israel Report: Leaving for Israel with Concern

Dear Friends,

I’ve lived in Israel on two different occasions, once for a year, and have traveled to Israel 15 or 16 times.  This marks the very first time I’ve headed out on a trip to Eretz Yisrael with more foreboding than excitement.  When you follow the war from afar it sounds like Israel is profoundly struggling.  And that’s hard to hear about, but may be even harder to experience firsthand.

It’s not that I haven’t been in Israel in challenging times before.  The very first time I was in Israel for the summer of 1976 happened to coincide with the Entebbe hijacking, which ended triumphantly for Israel but surely did not start that way.  In the early 2000s I was on a rabbinic mission trip during the 2nd Intifada when we visiting rabbis were forcefully instructed to stay out of all cafes and off of public transportation, when stores normally crowded with shoppers were quite literally empty and all the news was of terrorist outrages and homicide bombers blowing themselves up in crowded malls and markets.  And in 2014 I led a congregational trip to Israel that was on its last days when the news suddenly was filled with the three students who were abducted and murdered by Palestinian terrorists, leading to the last Israeli war in Gaza prior to this one.

Even when things were fine and my time in Israel was blessed with peace and great experiences and memories, we were never far from Palestinian violence and the murder of innocent Israelis. I was installed in the Cantors Assembly in the summer of 1988, rented a car with friends and got thoroughly lost driving in the West Bank just a few months before the First Intifada changed everything in that part of the territories, with its horrible death toll.  In 1991 I arrived for a year of study in Israel just months after the end of the Gulf War, when the memory of SCUDS falling was fresh in everyone’s mind.  The following spring when we tried to go visit the Samaritan Passover near Shechem, the rental van I was driving was stoned by a Palestinian kid, shattering the passenger window and showering me with shards of glass.  Even jogging in the wrong Jerusalem neighborhood could lead to a hail of stones from Palestinians that year, a year in which most people were basically optimistic about the future.  On one of my last visits to Israel, a time when things also seemed calm and prosperous, I drove past forests burned by rockets fired from Lebanon in the recent war with Hezbollah, aiming to destroy Israel.

Still, I have never been in Israel during actual wartime before.  Of course, Israel has never experienced an atrocity like that perpetrated by the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas on October 7th.  The mass murder, rape and torture of civilians, the horrifying surprise of the atrocities that Hamas’ war crimes inflicted on an unsuspecting population, the huge number of innocent hostages brutally abducted by the criminal Palestinian Islamist terrorists, all were unique in the history of Israel.  How would it be to visit when hundreds of thousands of reservists are serving on active duty in Gaza or in the North? 

Nor have I been in Israel when soldiers were fighting, and dying, every day in hard fighting against a desperate enemy that hides behind civilians.

The flight to Israel was full, not surprising since El Al has been the sole carrier that didn’t cancel its flights to and from Israel.  Notable for me was how helpful the passengers were to one another.  The plane, like Israel itself, felt like a large extended family, making sure that everyone is OK and helping the flight attendants complete their tasks.  My seatmate was a youngish father of three children under the age of 6, flying back to do volunteer work wherever he is needed with his parents and siblings.  Tomer is a magician who performs at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles, an extremely nice and engaging guy who said, “People don’t realize what losing a soldier means in Israel; everyone knows everyone, really, and it’s like losing a family member each time one is killed.”   

Ben Gurion airport, always bustling and crowded, is very light on traffic now; the only planes I saw were El Al, plus one from Emirates Airlines, and one or two regional carriers, when the runways here are typically bustling with planes of all nationalities.  War time.

During the 13.5 hour flight some passengers managed to get the limited El Al WiFi to work, and news spread of the tragic loss of 21 Israeli soldiers in a Hamas RPG attack that causd a building to collapse in Khan Younis in Gaza. 

The other side of it is that so far as I can tell, in most other ways Israel is continuing to function just fine, with normal life proceeding even in the midst of war.  I will of course know much more as the trip goes on.