A Victim Becomes a Bully

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by Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton

A victim becomes a bully.

It is not a new story.  After years of teasing, abuse, intimidation and humiliation, something transforms the victim, puts him in a new situation, allows her to fight back, sometimes even more viciously.

And the cycle continues.

This is the story of a cycle of violence.

But sometimes the cycle is broken. Something allows the bully to see the humanity in his victim, in himself. Something triggers the neural pathway away from dehumanizing aggression towards compassion, towards seeing the hurt she is inflicting in herself with every insult, every blow, to the one being insulted, pummeled, beaten.

This paradigm applies between peoples, not just children, adolescents, or criminal perpetrators. Whole nations or populations have transformed themselves into bullies – terrorizing neighbors of another ilk, or size, or social standing. And sometimes, even a nation, a people, has been triggered to take a radically different path, to experience the shared humanity between victim and bully, and live in accordance with that realization.

What, though, about clans, even siblings? What is the story there? What happens when a pair of brothers, the descendants of long-ago ancestors, succeeding generations on a fabled family tree, maintain the feud, so long buried in retellings that they no longer even recognize that they are living into their shared family story. Hardly anyone else does either; the few who call out to the bullying or retaliating brothers are shoved aside, or, perhaps unwittingly, drawn into the brawl.

In this paradigm, where do the Jews of the Diaspora, the cousins of the bully who still love him and recognize him as a member of the clan, deal with their recognition of the behavior? And what about the rabbis?

This reflection comes as we are nearing the end of the Omer, the counting down towards the ultimate symbol of our peoplehood, the receiving of the gift of Torah at the base of Mt. Sinai. During this “countdown,” one date is celebrated by one brother’s clan as a day of Independence, of victory, liberation and self-determination, while the other brother’s clan mourns that same date as a day of Naqba, of mourning in loss.

I am of the clan that celebrates that date. I am of the clan that yearns to meaningfully mark the festival of Shavuot, to learn Torah in community, to reap through reading, celebrate the yield of the first fruits of spring.

I am also of the callers-out. I stand with my siblings in this clan who are also callers-out, who cry out “No More Bullying In My Name;” who whisper: bend towards compassion; who keen: people, my people, see yourselves in the one beside you.

There Were Three Trees in the Garden: A Midrash

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by Rabbinical Student Alana Alpert

In Al Arakhib, tree planted by JNF

And the Lord God caused to sprout from the ground every tree pleasant to see and good to eat, and the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:9)

There were three forbidden trees in the garden: the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge, and the Tree of Violence. The Tree of Violence is placed just behind the Tree of Knowledge, for it only takes effect after you become aware of right and wrong. When you eat of its fruit, what you have learned to be true will become false and what you have learned to love will turn against you. Were Adam and Eve to eat of this fruit they would not have been banished – remaining in the Garden of Eden, suddenly a scary place, would have been punishment enough.

It’s been hard year in Israel, when things that had once seemed benign, good, or even perfect, slowly become shadowy, even threatening: A Jewish star, a blue box, a flag…

There is a particular pain that comes when my religious and cultural symbols are being disfigured, when violence is being done to and issuing from them. But the sinisterization of the most basic human symbol, a tree, is a crime even harder to digest. The Jewish National Fund in Israel is using trees as tools of displacement, as facts on the ground, as soldiers in the quiet war against the Bedouin in the Negev. I will not easily forgive the JNF for making a tree something to fear.

But this is bigger than the JNF. Here are just a few examples of places around the country I have visited recently where theft is being perpetrated in the name of the environment:

West Bank: Wadi Kana has been declared a nature reserve by the Civil Administration and Palestinian farmers have been told to uproot 2000 trees from their own lands or pay for the cost of the bulldozers themselves. Of course, this designation has not affected over 100 buildings built within the “nature reserve” by Jewish settlements, which by the Civil Administration’s own law are illegal.

East Jerusalem: growth of the Palestinian neighborhoods of Issawiya and A-Tur is being prevented by the designation of parts of their lands as a national park.

Negev: the village of Al Arakhib has been destroyed and is being forested, in an effort to force its residents to move to the recognized Bedouin village of Rahat.

I offer the words of naturalist Enos Mills:

The forests are the flags of nature. They appeal to all and awaken inspiring universal feelings. Enter the forest and the boundaries of nations are forgotten.  It may be that some time an immortal pine will be the flag of a united peaceful world.

Ken yehi ratzon – May it be God’s will.


To read more about the “forestation” Al Arakhib and take action, click here.

To read more about the “Nature Reserve” in Wadi Kana and take action, click here.

To read more about “National Parks” in East Jerusalem, click here.

Administrative Detention is Not Judaism

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by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

You will know that your father did not tolerate injustice and submission, and that he would never accept insult and compromise, and that he is going through a hunger strike to protest against the Jewish state that wants to turn us into humiliated slaves without any rights or patriotic dignity.

As I read this letter from a Palestinian man on his 75th day of hunger strike (written to his one-month-old daughter, Lamar), my heart roils with conflicting emotions. Sorrow at the thought of this man who does not know, may not live to know, his daughter (and the daughter who may lose her father; how capricious that will seem to her when she is old enough to understand.) Horror at the prospect of seventy-five days without food. Reluctant admiration for anyone who could choose that kind of suffering as a mode of nonviolent protest against injustice. And bristling defensiveness at seeing the word “Jewish” in this context, at the reminder that to this man and so many others “Jew” means oppressor, imprisoner.

Judaism is my tradition and my spiritual path. It is my way of connecting with God. It links me with endless generations. It is the source of some of my life’s most beautiful and transcendent moments. It is the ground of my spiritual being, it is the spiritual soil in which I flourish. It is Torah and Talmud and Hasidut and mussar, it is prayer and compassion and love. Judaism is contemplative practice, sacred chant, thousands of years of poetry written for and about God. Judaism is the injunction to “love the stranger, for [we] were strangers in the land of Mitzrayim.” Judaism is the commandment to provide for the widow and the orphan. Judaism is daily and weekly and monthly and annual and lifelong cycles of teshuvah, repentance / return, orienting ourselves toward God again and again and again.

And to this man, and the one thousand, five hundred Palestinians on hunger strike in Israeli prisons — demanding an end to administrative detention, a.k.a detention without trial, a practice which allows Israel to hold individuals for six months at a time without formally charging them or revealing evidence against them (and the six-month term can be renewed indefinitely, so some are held without charge for years) — none of that is relevant. None of it matters.

When I read anything which speaks ill of Israel and of Judaism, my heart aches. I do not want to hear these things about my coreligionists. But the answer is not to silence or ignore those who are speaking out. The answer is for my fellow Jews to live up to what is best in our tradition. Detaining people without trial, without informing them or their lawyers of the charges against them, is wrong. When the only Jewish government in the world makes those choices, we are all diminished.

My God and God of my ancestors: help us find a different path through the minefield of this long conflict. Help us create the openings through which transformation can unfold. Help us to build a world in which the dream of a home for Jews does not mean the mistreatment of Palestinians. Help us to live out our highest values and ideals, to turn and return to You. And help, please, the Palestinians who are suffering under Israeli control. Sustain them in their nonviolent struggle. God, grant both sides the willingness to forgive and the ability to move forward into a new paradigm of compassion and coexistence instead of terror and fear. Please, God. Speedily and soon.

Related reading:

On Palestinian Hunger Strikers and “Sacred Decisiveness”

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by Rabbi Alissa Wise

I participate in a mussar group, in which each week we focus on a different middah (ethical trait) and evaluate how we do or do not engage with that trait in our daily lives.  Inevitably, that particular middah shows up everywhere we look: i.e. in the way we evaluate interactions with our co-workers, what we see as we walk down the street, or how we read the newspaper.

This week we are working on decisiveness — making a decision and acting without hesitating. And this week, my eyes are glued to Israeli prisons where some two thousand Palestinians are on hunger strike; a few are on their 77th day—truly just a few moments from death.

What a powerful demonstration of decisiveness!  I can not even begin to fathom the pain, the discomfort, the anguish of starving yourself to protest injustice. Their decision to take up this action surely was not taken up lightly, and neither, I imagine, is their decision each and every day to continue with the fast.

To try to understand a bit deeper this level of decisiveness, I read a letter from one of the hunger strikers, Thaer Halaleh who is as of today on his 77th day of the strike. The letter is written to his daughter Lamar, who was born one month after his arrest:

My Beloved Lamar, forgive me because the occupation took me away from you, and took away from me the pleasure of witnessing my firstborn child that I have always prayed to God to see, to kiss, to be happy with. It is not your fault; this is our destiny as Palestinian people to have our lives and the lives of our children taken away from us, to be apart from each other and to have a miserable life. Nothing is complete in our lives because of this unjust occupation that is lurking on every corner of our lives turning it into eeriness, a continuous pursuit and torture.

Despite the fact that I was deprived from holding you and hearing your voice, from watching you grow up and move around in the house and in your bed, and that I was deprived of my role as a human and a father with my daughter, your existence has given me all the power and hope, and when I saw your picture with your mother in the sit-in tent, you were so calm staring in wonder at people, as if you were looking for your father, looking at my pictures that are hung inside the tent asking in silence why is my father not coming back. I felt that you are with me, in my sentiment and inside my mind, as if you are a part of my heartbeats, steadfast and the blood that flows in my veins, opening all doors for me spreading clear skies around me, and unleashing your free childish voice after this long silence.

Lamar my love: I know that you are not to be blamed and that you don’t yet understand why your father is going through this battle of hunger strike for the 75th day, but when you grow up you will understand that the battle of freedom is the battle of going back to you, so that I can never be taken away from you again or to be deprived of your smile or seeing you, so that the occupier will never kidnap me again from you.

When you grow up you will understand how injustice was brought upon your father and upon thousands of Palestinians whom the occupation has put in prisons and jail cells, shattering their lives and future for no reason other then their pursuit of freedom, dignity and independence. You will know that your father did not tolerate injustice and submission, and that he would never accept insult and compromise, and that he is going through a hunger strike to protest against the Jewish state that wants to turn us into humiliated slaves without any rights or patriotic dignity.

My beloved Lamar keep your head up always and be proud of your father, and thank everyone who supported me, who supported the prisoners in their struggle, and don’t be afraid for God is with us always, and God never lets down people who have faith and patience. We are righteous, and right will always prevail against injustice and wrong doers.

Lamar my love: that day will come, and I will make it up to you for everything, and tell you the whole story, and your days that will follow will be more beautiful, so let your days pass now and wear your prettiest clothes, run and then run again in the gardens of your long life, go forward and forward for nothing is behind you but the past, and this is your voice I hear all the time as a melody of freedom.

From Thaer I learn powerful lessons for my mussar practice: the power of conviction and purpose, the commitment to beauty and love, and just how incredibly complicated and imperfect is every ethical decision we make.

I pray for Thaer and all the hunger strikers, that their demands be met swiftly, their non-violent struggle for dignity be supported worldwide in whatever ways we can, and that Lamar, and all other children, grow up not just without losing their fathers but with in a world made more whole by the powerful and horrible non-violent actions of those that came before.

Please consider signing Jewish Voice for Peace’s petition in solidarity with Palestinian Hunger Strikers.

We Did Not Get This One Wrong

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by Rabbinical Student Alana Alpert

[The Hebrew College community has a tradition of listening to the reflections of students studying in Israel during Yom HaZikaron/Yom HaAtzmaut commemorations. A version of this piece was shared this year]

As I left the alternative Yom HaZikaron (“Israeli Memorial Day”) ceremony organized by Combatants for Peace I knew there was only one thing I wanted to say to my community:

We did not get this one wrong.

Last year on Yom HaZikaron, after a deep and thoughtful process, we offered the following framing: our kavanah (“intention”) is to open up our communal remembrance to include losses on all sides of the conflict in Israel/Palestine. We encountered resistance from inside and outside the community. Inside the community, we encountered mostly “this is challenging for me”, which is more than fair. What came from the outside was of a much different nature.

There are those who want us to feel ashamed for opening our hearts, widening our circle of compassion. They want us to feel we are so irresponsibly out of touch with Israeli society that we better just shut-up and do what we’re told.

But when I left more than 1000 people at the port in Tel Aviv tonight, who spent the evening hearing stories of tremendous suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians, I knew with my whole being what I had known in my heart to be true:

We did not get this one wrong.

When I say that we did not get this one wrong, I am not saying that we got it right – that this is the only way to mark this day. What I’m saying is that last year we mirrored the courage of many of our brothers and sisters in Israel.

On the bus back to Jerusalem I ran into Yael, an Israeli Hebrew Union College student I study with this year. She has been coming to this ceremony for a few years. She explained that after going to a Yom HaZikaron like this you can never go back, and that it grows each year. I asked her if it was treyf, if she was afraid to mention to friends or family that she was going. She said not at all. When I told her we got in trouble for our kavanah last year she was surprised. She said, “that’s what Jewish communities like ours do: reinvent, renew, reclaim.”

I spent tonight with the best of Israeli society. We are in good company, and we can be a part of this movement…

And so here I am, thinking about mourning and peoplehood, war and peace, cycles of violence and how to break free, typing away at 2:00 am while Jerusalem sleeps. Chava Alberstein’s Chad Gadya, performed tonight by the women’s choir of the Arab/Jewish Center in Jaffa, plays hauntingly in my head:

Why suddenly do you sing Chad Gadya
When spring hasn’t yet arrived and Passover hasn’t come?
How have you changed, how are you different?
I changed this year.

That on all nights, all other nights I asked only Four Questions
This night I have another question:
“How long will the cycle of violence continue?”
Chase and be chased, beat and be beaten,
When will this madness end?

How have you changed, how are you different?
I changed this year.
I was once a sheep and a tranquil kid
Today I’m a tiger and a ravening wolf
I was once a dove and I was a deer.

Today I don’t know who I am.

Unlike Alberstein’s dark unknowing, a darkness I have felt so often this year, tonight I know better who I am because I know with whom I stand. I stand with Yael, the families of the Bereaved Families Forum who shared their stories tonight, 1000 other Israelis and Palestinians and the countless others who couldn’t be there tonight:

Reinventing.

Renewing.

Reclaiming.

Remembering.

JVP Rabbinical Council Says No to an Attack on Iran!

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We, the undersigned American Jewish clergy, are deeply concerned about reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu will demand of President Obama, at their meeting at the White House today, that either the United States attack Iran, or else, Israel will.

We do not welcome the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. We call on all the military forces in the region – including Israel’s – to divest themselves of their nuclear armaments and renounce any belligerent nuclear aspirations.

The State of Israel refuses to acknowledge its own nuclear arsenal or to submit to international monitoring. We believe it is hypocritical of Israel to demand of Iran what it refuses to agree to itself.

Most of the people of the State of Israel oppose Prime Minister Netanyahu’s military threats against Iran. They fear the consequences of an attack on Iran. As Jewish leaders, we too believe that the path of wisdom towards achieving peace and stability in the region is through dialog and engagement and not through acts of war. We call on the United States government to safeguard the interests of the people of Israel and Iran.

Nine years after the United States launched a war against Iraq that is widely recognized as having been badly executed and unjustified, Israel would have the U.S. implicate itself in a new war in the region, this time against Iran. We believe that Jews, and other Americans, will not support more reckless adventurism in the Middle East.

In this election year, we call on President Obama not to give in to warmongering. As Jewish leaders we cannot endorse an Israeli act of war against the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Bible teaches us: “bakesh shalom v’rodfehu -  seek peace and pursue it.” We urge President Obama to stand firm and to use his power as Israel’s chief supporter to draw Israel to the path of peace and justice.

Cantor Michael Davis, Evanston, IL
Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, Re’ut, Israel
Rabbi Rebecca Lillian, Malmö, Sweden
Rabbi Rachel Barenblatt, Lanesboro, MA
Rabbi Brant Rosen, Evanston, IL
Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, Philadelphia, PA
Rabbi Julie Greenberg, Philadelphia, PA
Rabbi Margaret Holub, Albion, CA
Rabbi Shai Gluskin, Philadelphia, PA
Rabbi Zev-Hayyim Feyer, Claremont, CA
Michael Ramberg, Rabbinical Student, RRC, Philadelphia, PA
Rabbi Joseph Berman, Jamaica Plain, MA
Alana Alpert, Rabbinical Student, Hebrew College, Boston, MA
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Stony Point, NY
Rabbi Howard Cohen, Bennington, VT
Rabbi Brian Walt, West Tisbury, MA
Rabbi David Mivasair, Vancouver, BC
Rabbi Eyal Levinson, Israel, OT
Rabbi Alissa Wise, Oakland, CA
Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman, Madison, WI

Unwalling My Heart in the Walled City

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by Rabbinical Student Alana Alpert

Yesterday, at one of the many Batei Midrash (“Houses of Study”) in which I study, we looked at Talmud Masechet Brachot 30b. The text includes half a dozen stories of rabbis thinking that other rabbis seem too happy. Some quote biblical verses stressing sadness intended to dampen the rabbis’ joy. Others break expensive objects, to snap the merry rabbis out of their trance and remind them of brokenness.

If I didn’t identify with the parade-raining rabbis before my time living in Jerusalem, I do now. I don’t need to tell the readers of this blog about what is happening ten minutes from my house: the demolitions and evictions in Silwan, the choking of Wallaje by the Separation Barrier, and on and on. I live my life with a near constant awareness of the suffering in this place and punish myself accordingly. By now my friends know not to agree to movie night, because they’ll be subjected to “This is My Land: Hebron” or “The Law in these Parts”. I scowl at the happy people around me: do they not know what is going on? Or do they choose not to know?

I share this not because I am better than anyone else, davka the opposite, as a sort of vidui (“confession”) or maybe a cry for help. I am deeply out of balance, and I am well aware that if I don’t let my sense of urgency give way to a bigger picture, then my days as an activist are numbered. Readers, colleagues, comrades: post your joy practices! Your texts! Share the wisdom that allows you to face injustice with clear-eyes and a joyful heart.

In Jerusalem we celebrate Shushan Purim because it was a walled city. That means the revelry that most Jews indulged in last night will take place here this evening.  I am grateful for this extra day because it has given me more time to meditate on the meaning of joy and open myself up to it. You know how sometimes a weekly Torah reading, or a holiday, gets you right when you need it? Just matches up with your life and pushes you forward? Well, Purim is my holiday this year.

Perhaps my dwelling in such darkness allows me just the opportunity to experience turning things upside down. Rebbe Nachman teaches that true joy comes from sadness transformed. There will be no smashing glasses tonight — I am resisting the urge to dress up as some part of the occupation, as I have in years past (I know, I know). Tonight I am dressing up as an angel, a being with enough distance to know that we silly humans are doing our best. And that we’ll get there…

My dear friend Fedelma offered me her joy meditation from her and my favorite poet, Hafiz:

Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.

She likes to picture happiness in this case as a gangly, long armed Muppet with brightly colored fur. Tonight, I will go out to the streets to meet the Muppet.

And since I wrote this blog post instead of taking a disco nap, we’ll see how it goes… wish me luck!