Category Archives: Judaism

Four Questions for “Women of the Wall” On the 46th Anniversary of the Six Day War

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by Cantor Michael Davis

Every Israeli politician knows that, before attending election rallies from Nahariya to Nitzana, she will first have to fly to that other center of Israeli politics: New York. To win an election, the Israeli politician must win the hearts and financial backing of the Jews of New York and other major Jewish centers in North America. Israeli NGOs, too, travel the same American route, campaigning for credibility, viability and dollars in synagogue basements and the living rooms of Jewish supporters  across the United States.

Israeli left wing politician Anat Hoffman, knows this political truth well. Recently,  her organization, “Women of the Wall” achieved a major breakthrough when it was adopted by the mainstream American  Jewish community as its cause célèbre. Several times a week, I get a mass mailing from someone in my professional and personal networks on behalf of Women of the Wall. No other organization cuts through the vague barrage of mass mailings the way  the American campaign for “Women of the Wall” does. Outdoor solidarity prayer services in city centers across the U.S. and a rabbinic mission to support Women of the Wall are signs of the remarkable resonance this campaign enjoys in the American Jewish community.

As an Israeli, back when I was still living in Jerusalem, I supported “Women of the Wall.” I voted for Anat Hoffman’s Meretz party on the Jerusalem City Council. Today, as clergy in a liberal synagogue, of course I am an advocate for the full inclusion of women and girls in Jewish ritual life.  Yet, I have serious reservation about the American campaign for “Women of the Wall.”

Here are four questions for the “Women of the Wall” campaign:

1. “Women of the Wall” wants the Western Wall, the largest Orthodox synagogue in the world, to allow women’s participation in ritual, a deeply held American Jewish value that extends from Reform to the liberal wing of modern Orthodoxy in America. In Israel, this activism is upsetting to mainstream Israeli Orthodox (and irrelevant to the vast majority of non-Orthodox Israelis). But the tone of the campaign’s supports seems to relish taking the battle to the Orthodox. The energy for fighting this battle comes in no small part from a desire to defeat the Orthodox.

Confusingly, back in the U.S., the liberal Jewish community holds the Orthodox in high regard: they are true Jews. Donating money to Jewish Federation is a standard way of expressing one’s Jewish commitment. In my hometown of Chicago, the bulk of the monies that the JUF raises from the liberal Jewish community are given to local gender-segregated Orthodox synagogues and their associated institutions. To be a good Jew is to honor the Orthodox by supporting institutions that bar women from ritual.Why are the Orthodox our friends in the United States but our adversaries in Israel?

2. The official practice in the Jewish community has been to avoid criticizing Israel. This is dictated as the responsibility of non-Israeli Jews. Many – but not all – of the people who are signing on to the Women of the Wall campaign comply with (and therefore, at the very least, implicitly enforce through social approval) this policy. Now, through its advocacy for Women of the Wall, the Jewish community is advertising to the world that Israel discriminates against women. What a shanda!

Why grant this particular campaign the rare exemption from the Jewish imperative to always look out for Israel’s good name?

3. In the densely populated square mile of the Old City of Jerusalem, the Western Wall plaza is a new-fangled anomaly. This open space was created immediately after the Israeli army captured the Old City in the 1967 Six Day War, exactly 46 years ago.. Overnight, Israeli bulldozers demolished the Mughrabi Quarter, clearing the way for what we know as the Western Wall plaza. The Israeli army first evicted the (non-Jewish) residents of the Mughrabi Quarter. At least one man was killed when he did not get out of his home in time.

However important the cause of women’s prayer is, isn’t it unseemly to focus the campaign of women’s right to pray at the scene of death and expropriation?

4. Back in the 1970s, the organized American Jewish community provided the essential legal framework and key political backing to launch the State of Israel’s signature national project of the last four decades, namely, the colonization of the West Bank. We created this reality.

The organized Jewish community continues to provide financial support and political backing to Israel’s anti-Palestinian policies. The silent majority of American Jews, through its silence, endorses the community leadership’s backing of Israel’s well-publicized injustices on the West Bank. Through our continued silence, we enable Israel’s ongoing destructive (and, frankly, self-destructive) stance.

How can we own the issue of women at prayer when we ignore our responsibility for the far more serious, ongoing problems that we did help to create, namely, the State of Israel’s violent campaign against its Palestinian population?

Rabbi Liz Bolton on Values-Based Solidarity

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Statement delivered by Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton at the Kairos USA Press Conference in Support of the American Christian Leaders’ Call for an End to Unconditional US Military Aid to Israel, Washington, DC, November 29, 2012:

My name is Elizabeth Bolton. I am a rabbi from Baltimore and a member of the Rabbinical Council of Jewish Voice for Peace, and honored to be here.

Along with my Jewish clergy colleagues, I stand in support of the church leaders asking Congress for review of military aid to Israel so that it complies with its own laws and legislation.

A core value in my rabbinate is the passage in Genesis – that we are all created b’tzelem elohim/in God’s image.  The people of Israel are my people, yet I abhor the deliberate debasement of the divine image through systemic violations of human rights committed in the name of Israel the people in the land of Israel.

Some in our communities have been falsely stoking fears that decades of Jewish Christian dialogue would be destroyed as a result of the call by the fifteen church leaders. This is a false prophecy.  Jews and Christians and activists and humanists must all be able to speak truth to power, to call out as witnesses, and hold our civic leaders to account for their stewardship of our resources.

This is consonant with the principle found in the Talmud – dina d’malhuta dina – the law of the land is the law. Applied in this context, the principle is an extension of my citizenship here, and enhances my personal understanding if the complexities inherent in faith-based, particularly Christian-faith-based, calls for justice in Israel and Palestine.  I understand this interest in, and concern for, the holy land, and believe that the motivation for these actions is thoughtful, deeply considered, and values-based.

True interfaith cooperation and dialogue starts with a commonality of principles and ideals, and a willingness to engage with open eyes and open hearts, especially when looking at the painful and tragic intersections of faith and history.  Jews, humanists and activists who stand with these churches do so because we share respect for law, for dignity, and self-determination based on human rights.

In that spirit, JVP has created another opportunity to echo the church’s call. At obamaletter.org, you can find a petition asking President Obama to ensure that American aid to Israel is in compliance with current US laws. Our president has identified himself as a person of faith, and I call that to our attention at this moment precisely because some of us at this table do this work as people of faith. Jewish Voice for Peace is just that – a Jewish voice speaking and seeking peace, and taking this opportunity to raise the voices in chorus.

Ten thousand voices have already declared their support for the churches’ call, in this petition to Congress:

We are Jews, Christians, Muslims,  and other people of conscience who wish to thank you for your principled stand asking members of the United States Congress to hold Israel accountable in its use of U.S. military aid as required by U.S. law.

May our solidarity continue to be driven by values, not tribal allegiances, motivated by the prophetic vision that demands we stand with the powerless and call out the powerful.

May our shared work be for a blessing.

Where are we Headed? A Reflection on the 74th Anniversary of Kristallnacht

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by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb

In hindsight, Kristallnacht signaled what was to come: the rounding up and extermination of European Jewry. Most of the world did not intervene and worse, chose to block Jewish efforts to escape. As people either collaborated with or chose to ignore the implications of each step along the path toward genocide, the Germans carried out their plans with impunity and in public.  German civilians either explicitly or tacitly supported a regime of incredible brutality.  They stood by while Jewish neighbors and friends were rounded up and killed. Acts of collective nonviolent resistance like the one pursued by the village of Le Chambon (they saved 5000 Jews) were rare.

I grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a sixth generation North American Jew in the Reform tradition. I am still amazed by the wisdom of my rabbinic teachers in response to the Shoah. I learned from the rabbis of my youth not to barricade myself in layers of fear and distrust; rather, they taught me to protest racism in all its ugly manifestations in public because never again meant never again for anyone. They taught me that when one of us suffers, all of us suffer.  They taught me that silence in the face of injustice is complicity with injustice. They tied these lessons to their version of Jewish religion. I never imagined that I would have to apply these lessons to the actions of the Jewish community in relationship to Israel. I incorrectly assumed that the Shoah had somehow immunized us against harming others, that we had learned the Biblical lesson: do not oppress others, for you were once oppressed.

When I was seventeen I traveled to Israel as an exchange student where I confronted a deeply uncomfortable truth with which I have been wrestling ever since: the same racist patterns of segregation, discrimination and mass incarceration of people on the basis of their identity which I learned to resist in North America because of Jewish experience during the Shoah was, in fact, occurring in Israel. Only instead of white people oppressing blacks, Jews were oppressing Palestinians. The justification? Security.  But it looked and sounded like racist disdain to my ears.  In 1966 Atallah Mansour told me the story of the Nakba. The Nakba never ended.

For the past forty five years I have been deeply involved with all kinds of peacemaking efforts between Israelis and Palestinians including dialogue, education, delegations and direct action. As I prepare to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht, I am haunted by profound disquiet.

A recent poll of Jewish citizens of Israel (September 2012) based on a sample of 503 interviewees is the Israeli response to President Jimmy Carter’s question: Peace or Apartheid?  The majority of Jewish Israelis have answered: apartheid or, as Ehud Barak described it, “Us here, them there.”  Most Israelis believe that Israel should be a Jewish state that privileges Jews over “non-Jews” as a matter of law.  To uphold draconian laws that apply only to Palestinians to separate, marginalize and systematically discriminate an entire people based on their national, cultural and religious identity.

Many people are offended by the description of Israel as an apartheid state. What we should be offended by is the actual policies that Israel employs against Palestinians. People outraged by the South African-Israel comparison claim that Israel is nothing like South Africa during the apartheid era because the term apartheid is associated with racism. But they are wrong.

Race is a social, not a biological, construct. Use of the term “apartheid” applies whenever a state codifies into law a preferred identity status, then racializes that identity. The racialized identity group is systematically segregated from the rest of the population into discrete geographic areas (bantustans in South Africa; and areas A, B and C plus Gaza in Israel) in order to dominate and control them.  An apartheid state grants the preferred group access to resources and benefits and denies the same benefits to the denigrated group. Those in the underdog role are forcibly confined to their designated territories. Military repression, mass incarceration and unyielding bureaucracy are used to keep systems of apartheid in place.

No one voluntarily deports themselves from their family land or homes.  Israeli apartheid involves systematic and massive  land appropriation, settler brutality, Jewish only roads, the permit regime, the cutting down of trees, restrictions on family unity, arrest of children, administrative detention without legal recourse, constant military incursion, movement restrictions, severe limitations on export and import capacity, home demolition and the threat of demolition, denial of education and health care, unjust distribution of water, internal transfer and in the case of Gaza, a siege which is making the entire stripe “uninhabitable”.  These conditions makes Palestinians vulnerable to mass killing.

Denying this reality is tantamount to willful ignorance. Mountains of credible testimony collected by a variety of human rights groups such as B’tselem, Al Hak, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the Russell Tribunal, the Goldstone Report and thousands of eye witnesses over six decades including Palestinians, Jewish Israelis, internationals and human rights organizations leave no doubt that Israel is pursuing policies that are an insult to Jewish history. Israel’s apartheid regime is a disgrace to the values that I was once taught are the very heart of our tradition.

As Angela Davis recently told the American Public Health Association, you don’t get rid of racism with anti-racism workshops alone! Systematic and institutional change occurs when people engage in mass protest and noncooperation with policies that support a corrupt status quo. That is why Palestinians have called upon us to take up boycott, divestment and sanctions as a way to apply pressure until Israeli apartheid is dismantled.  The object of nonviolent struggle is not to defeat people, but to change the system. Apartheid is not good for the occupied or the occupier. It is a dehumanizing system that promotes endless tragedy for everyone.  We need a new paradigm.

Those deriving profit and benefit from apartheid do not easily surrender their power. The history of nonviolent struggle has taught us that people maintaining an unjust status quo will do as little as possible to prevent real, systematic change. They will obstruct, deflect or suppress with harmful force those who demand their freedom. Institutional change can only arise from movement building, grassroots organizing and steadfastness. Like all freedom struggles, the struggle for Palestinian human rights is a universal struggle. That is why people across nationality, gender and religion are joining together to shape political, economic and social realities that embrace universal standards of human rights.

Overcoming injustice is the first priority of our religious traditions.  This 74th anniversary of Kristallnacht, let us pick up the broken shards of history and fashion a mosaic of peace that honors the human dignity of everyone. This is the true meaning of the promised land.

Corners and Wings: A Prayer for Mori

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by Rabbinical Student Alana Alpert

I’m very lucky to be a part of a prayer group of people committed to and working towards liberation of all people from various systems of oppression. Together we are exploring how activists can use prayer as a space for healing and as a practice that expands our ability to imagine the world we are working towards. This past week, I asked my friend who would be leading the group if we could take a few minutes to pray for my friend Mori. That morning he would be reporting to the draft headquarters of the IDF, after being refused a hearing as a conscientious objector.

Moriel and I met last summer as we were both preparing to spend a year living in Jerusalem where he would be working with Rabbis for Human Rights. I watched in awe as he used his fluent Hebrew and Arabic, as well as his seemingly endless energy and courage, to throw himself into the work. We started organizing together and he became a dear friend and colleague, supporting each other to find balance, going to demonstrations, and passing notes during infuriating panels. I knew this week would come, and that he wouldn’t go quietly, even if that might have meant less time in jail.

When planning this week’s service, my friend tried hard to understand what it was that I needed, but I didn’t know myself. I told her, “I don’t know how to pray about it except cry about it, so I guess I just need some witnesses.” That morning we chanted the verse “v’havieyenu l’shalom m’arbah kanfot haaretz” – “bring us in peace from the four corners of the land.” I wrapped myself tightly in my tallit and wound the four sets of tzitzit, representing the four corners, around my fingers. I was reminded of how often those verses are sung to the melody of Hatikvah, that for many the State of Israel is the fulfillment of this prayer. I felt overwhelmed by a wave of heartbreak and disbelief:

Why should we gather from the four corners?

So that Jews can put each other in jail?

For the crime of not believing in violence?

Weeping, I read the last paragraph of the beautiful piece Mori wrote explaining his decision:

So I refuse. I refuse to serve in the army, to put on a uniform, to pick up a gun. I refuse to contribute to the cycle of violence and dehumanization that plagues this place that I love. I refuse because I love, and because I believe in the possibility of a better reality, and because I believe in God and in humanity and in nonviolence and because, as R. Heschel teaches, to despair is the most selfish thing one can do, to say “this is hard for me,” or “it seems to me that the situation will never change,” and to thus be unable to serve God by serving others. I believe that the situation can change. I believe that my refusal is a tiny, tiny, tiny contribution to a reality in which violence is less normal, less prevalent, less accepted. I seek to refuse with the most humility that I can muster, because I do not know, about this or about anything. I refuse in solidarity with Palestinians living under occupation, and in hope that the ripples of my action will reach the hearts of some members of my Israeli Jewish and American Jewish societies. I refuse to hate those who have chosen differently, and I hope that the refusal to hate will be reciprocated by those who disagree with my decision.

Between sobs, rocking back in forth in my tallit, I managed to tell the friends surrounding me that the root of the word for kanfot (corners) was the same as knafaiim (wings), and prayed something like this:

Please God, Source of Life, don’t let them clip Mori’s wings. Bring us into a new world where no person can tie another’s wings, where no person can hold another prisoner for wanting to serve You.

Ken yehi ratzon – May it be Your will.

(You can read the full piece on Moriel’s blog. Moriel’s story was also recently featured in Ha’aretz, here.)

Parsing the (Odious) New Term, “Jew-Washing”

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photo: Jewish Voice for Peace

Cross-posted in the “Forward Thinking” blog of the Jewish Daily Forward:

In his latest column, Philologos correctly parses the linguistic problems with Yitzhak Santis and Gerald M. Steinberg’s invented term, “Jew-washing.” His political analysis, alas, fails miserably.

Philologos has it completely wrong when he speaks of the “anti-Semitism in boycotts of Israel.” To begin with, Santis and Steinberg did not use the term “Jew-washing” in reference to a boycott of Israel as a whole, but rather to a resolution recently brought to the Pittsburgh General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) that called for divestment of their pension funds from three specific companies that profit from Israel’s brutal and illegal occupation of the West Bank.

Regardless, it is highly disingenuous for Philologos to accuse the Presbyterian Church of anti-Semitism. Our Christian friends’ response to the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), reflects their deeply held commitment to justice in a land their tradition also considers holy.

Philologos asks, “Have the Presbyterians considered boycotting China because of Tibet? India because of Kashmir? Russia because of Chechnya?” This, of course, is classic misdirection. The issue at hand is not global human rights, but a very specific call from Palestinian civil society for international support in ending their oppression. The real question before them (and us) is not “what about Tibet, Kashmir and Chechnya?”

The question, rather, is: “will we or won’t we respond to the Palestinian call?” To this question, many members of the Presbyterian Church are courageously responding “we will.” So too are increasing numbers of Jews who believe that our legacy of anti-Jewish oppression leads us to stand with Palestinians being denied basic human rights in our name.

No, we are not being used as pawns by Christian partners to further some nefarious “anti-Semitic plot”. Rather, we are standing in solidarity with the oppressed, as the most basic of our Jewish teachings demand that we do. What irony that other Jews should stand in the way of the Jewish imperative to end injustice. How heartbreaking that some in the Jewish community pervert this imperative by labeling the best intentions of our Christian friends as “anti-Semitism.”

We do, however, fully share Philogos’ distaste for the term “Jew-washing,” the coining of which is a sign of abject desperation that itself crosses the line of anti-Semitism, as blogger Jeremiah Haber pointed out last week. We predict that odious terms such as this will soon be relegated to the history books as part of a last, flailing effort by a fearful generation of Jewish leaders unwilling to recognize the moral urgency of the moment. It also reflects the short-sightedness of an establishment that continues to support war and occupation while deliberately alienating itself from the next generation of courageous Jewish leaders.

Affirming a Judaism and Jewish Identity Without Zionism

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by Rabbi Brian Walt

A month ago, I was invited by American Jews for a Just Peace to give a talk in Boston in memory of Hilda Silverman z”l, a friend, congregant and passionate advocate for justice for Palestinians. In honor of Hilda, I wrote a talk that described my journey from liberal Zionism to a belief in a Judaism and Jewish identity without Zionism. The talk is long but it describes the journey as well as paying tribute to one very courageous and visionary friend. I welcome comments and responses.

Introduction: Hilda z’l

Thank you so much for inviting me to give this lecture in memory of Hilda Silverman z”l, a dear friend, congregant, teacher and comrade. Hilda, as many of you know, was a very passionate, articulate and relentless advocate for justice, particularly for Palestinians. Passion for justice was the core of her Jewish identity. The Torah commands: “Justice, Justice, shall you pursue!” Hilda’s tireless pursuit of justice is reflected in the Torah’s repetition: “Justice, (Yes!) Justice shall you pursue!”

For Hilda, as for most liberal Jews, this commitment to justice was based not only on Jewish text but also in Jewish history, in the experience of Jews as victims of injustice. We must never do to others what was done to us. In the words of the Torah: “You shall not oppress the stranger for you know the soul of the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” For Hilda, solidarity with the oppressed, with those who are treated unjustly, was what it meant to be a Jew.

Hilda saw the discrimination and oppression of Palestinians was the most urgent and pressing moral Jewish issue. Every day she challenged the high wall, a “Separation Barrier”, a “mechitza” that many progressive and liberal American Jews involved in many different justice issues build around the issue of Palestinian human rights. American Jews have a proud legacy of challenging discrimination in America in housing, education, voting rights and every form of human and civil rights, yet are often silent about the systematic denial of precisely these same rights to Palestinians by Israel. (I wonder how many synagogue and family seders were held ten days ago where rights for women, gays and lesbians, immigrants, the poor and many others were mentioned but not a word about the violation of Palestinian human rights.)

For Hilda, the issue of Palestine was the issue on which the integrity of the Jewish ethical tradition and the Jewish legacy rested. And it wasn’t just the silence that was so disturbing, but that the silence was accompanied by the massive and effective support of the American Jewish community for Israel and the profound influence of the American Jewish community in ensuring massive American military, political and diplomatic support for Israel that enables the oppression of the Palestinian people. As Hilda met Palestinians and encountered Palestinian suffering, the actions of her community, so committed on issues of justice in America while at the same time enabling of the oppression of Palestinians, pained her so deeply and inspired her to act fearlessly. She angered many with her relentless insistence that this issue must be confronted – and for this we are all so indebted to her.

Hilda and I met in Philadelphia in the 1980s, I think, in the Philadelphia chapter of New Jewish Agenda. Then I was a rabbinical student and Middle East Peace activist training to become a social justice rabbi anchored in the prophetic tradition of Judaism.

Hilda read everything she could put her hands on about the Palestinians. She would send me long handwritten notes suggesting I read photocopied articles that she enclosed on the history of the conflict and on the disturbing realities of the occupation. She invited Palestinian speakers and arranged educational events. She opened my eyes to realities that I wanted to deny. She was always ahead of me, understanding realities that took me years to acknowledge. She understood how important and painful it was for us to step beyond the comfort of denial.

In my first congregation, she helped me put together a unique adult education series on Israel: “Hearing Both Sides,” that included speakers such as Rashid Khalidi, Afif Sefieh, Meron Bevenisti and several prominent Israelis. At the time there was an Israeli ban on speaking to anyone associated with the P.L.O., and yet Afif Sefieh, who devoted his life to representing the P.L.O. was welcomed into our little synagogue.

In 1987, my Yom Kippur sermon, “A Generation of Occupation,” an address that highlighted the corrosive moral effects of twenty years of occupation on Jews and Judaism, cost me my first position as a congregational rabbi. When we founded Mishkan Shalom, an explicitly activist congregation with a commitment to support to justice and peace in Israel/Palestine, Hilda joined the congregation. I think it was the first time she became a member of a congregation. I will always remember the first Hanukkah service in our congregation that Hilda planned, honoring Human Rights Day and the first anniversary of the intifadeh.

Hilda moved to Boston but we kept in touch and later, when I helped found Rabbis for Human Rights North America, we reconnected. Hilda always was a devoted and passionate supporter of Rabbis for Human Rights, particularly the work of Rabbi Arik Ascherman with whom she had a close relationship. She always helped bring him to different communities.

Hilda was my teacher and friend and a very important part of my own spiritual/ethical journey that I want to share with you tonight. As I said, she was always ahead of me. My talk, “Affirming a Judaism and Jewish Identity without Zionism: A Personal Spiritual/Ethical Journey” is a way of honoring and thanking her. It is also a way of sharing publicly in a comprehensive way an important transformation that I have undergone in my understanding of the conflict and of my activism in the past two to three years.

My talk will be divided into three parts:

1. Zionism

2. Judaism

3. Privilege, Power and Solidarity

1. Zionism

I grew up in a fiercely and passionately Zionist family and community in South Africa and have been a progressive, liberal Zionist for most of my life. The schools I attended as a child were Weizmann and Herzlia, named after the two Zionist leaders. I was part of Habonim, a Zionist youth movement, and spent three months in Israel in 1967 following the 1967 War. I love Hebrew language and culture. In 1969 one of the highlights of my life was meeting David Ben Gurion, the founding father of Israel, and representing South Africa in the International Bible Quiz in Jerusalem on Israel Independence Day. I made aliyah after high school, and studied in the regular program with Israelis at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While I returned to South Africa in 1972, liberal Zionism and a deep connection to Israel remained a core part my Judaism and Jewish identity. (My great grandfather, Avraham Zeev, after whom I am named, is buried on Mount of Olives. According to family legend he made aliyah to Israel in 1926, a few days after his daughter asked if she could go to a store with a non-Jewish friend on Shabbat!)

Liberal Zionism

Liberal Zionism meant that I believed in the creation of a Jewish state that would provide a desperately needed safe haven for Jews around the world, a state that would be a cultural center for the Jewish People, and a state that would reflect the highest ideals of the Jewish tradition. After centuries of victimization, the creation of a Jewish state would afford Jews an opportunity to test our values: not do unto others as was done to us. The Jewish State would treat all with dignity, equality and respect. In the words of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the state will be “based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”

This was the Zionist vision that I learned as a child, that was the ethos of Habonim, my Zionist youth movement, that inspired me to make aliyah, and that inspired my involvement over the past three decades in Breira, New Jewish Agenda, Tikkun, Rabbis for Human Rights, Americans for Peace Now, the Shalom Center, and many related organizations. Although these organizations are to the left of the mainstream American Jewish community, they all share a progressive/liberal Zionist vision – they are deeply attached to the Jewish state, while viewing the oppression of Palestinians, the occupation and the settlement policy as deviations from the true intent of Zionism and a violation of the core values of Judaism.

Public Letter to Netanyahu

One of the very first public acts of Rabbis for Human Rights – North America was a public letter in 2004 to Prime Minister Netanyahu from over 400 rabbis protesting the arrest of Rabbi Arik Ascherman for blocking a bulldozer demolishing a Palestinian home. The letter articulated our Zionism.

We wrote:

We are concerned about the decision to prosecute our colleague who has devoted his life to Israel and to the Zionist vision of building and sustaining a Jewish State that exemplifies the values of compassion and justice. Rabbi Ascherman has dedicated his career to protecting the human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians and his Zionist and Jewish commitments inspire thousands of Jews in Israel and abroad.  For us and for many Jews in our communities the work of Rabbi for Human Rights represents the Jewish moral conscience. We express our love and commitment for Israel by supporting that work. To silence it is to push us away from the Israel we love.

For many years I expressed my love and commitment to Israel by supporting the work of Rabbis for Human Rights and other Israeli human rights and peace organizations as they embodied the Israel that I believed in and loved.

Over time, my engagement with these organizations also led to a transformation in my own relationship to Zionism and my understanding of the relationship between Zionism and Judaism. This transformation came to a head in 2008.

Home Demolition

As part of my involvement with these organizations, particularly Rabbis for Human Rights in the 1990s and first decade of this century, I got to see some very disturbing realities that most Jews and Israelis choose not to see.

As Rabbis for Human Rights worked very closely with the Israel Committee against Home Demolition, in the 1990s I witnessed or visited several demolished Palestinian homes. The memory and visual images of these experiences live within me, in my body and soul.

I remember standing on the site of a recently demolished Palestinian home seeing the children’s toys lying in the rubble and a small one person tent next to the demolished home where the father of the family now lived. The experience shook me to my core. What does it mean for me to believe in a Jewish state that demolishes Palestinian homes using bulldozers to destroy everything including the toys of children, while it builds and subsidizes thousands of homes for Jews, homes that house among others, friends of mine who make aliyah from America? How can I understand this reality as a Jew? Is this the Jewish state I believe in and support? As a supporter of Israel, a Zionist, am I implicated in this evil act? What is the appropriate response?

These questions haunted me every time. On one visit to Israel a small group of rabbis participated in rebuilding a demolished home. While we were there, some of us slept in a home threatened with imminent demolition. Later in the day as we watched the demolition trucks, police and ambulance make their rounds demolishing various Palestinian “illegal” structures, we actually saw the home being demolished. First, dozens of Israeli soldiers and police cut off access to the village, then we saw the bulldozers do their dirty work while the homeowners were wailing, the neighbors standing in shock and awe. It is is a scene that I will never forget. I was proud that Rabbi Arik Ascherman wearing a kippah was present protesting the demolition but the questions remained. Do I still believe in Zionism? Can I still be a Zionist? A Jew?

As a person who had grown up in South Africa under apartheid, these acts of discrimination were very evocative of scenes from my childhood. Home evictions were among the brutal realities of apartheid, part of my reality as a child.

Over the years, I saw more and more horrifying basic violations of human rights: massive tracts of stolen Palestinian land on which settlements were built, trees uprooted and burned by settlers, homes in Silwan taken over by settlers in the middle of the night who were then protected by the Israeli army. Each time the question of Zionism came up. These demolitions, settlements, violent dispossession of Palestinian homes were not “rogue” acts – the Israeli state with all its military might enabled and supported these actions. Still, because of my deep connection to Israel, to my friends, to Israeli culture, to what Israel meant to me and the Jewish people, it was hard for me to even think of relinquishing my Zionism. It was so much part of me and my connection to my community.

Then in 2008 it came to a head.

In honor of Israel’s 60th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of Rabbis for Human Rights, I planned and led a Rabbis for Human Rights trip to Israel and the West Bank we called “Planting Justice.” This solidarity mission to Israel and the West Bank was part of a campaign to support the efforts of Rabbis for Human Rights and all those in Israel working to fulfill the dream of an Israel that upholds equality and justice for all – Jews and Arabs alike.

On the trip we visited an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev where Palestinians have lived since 1948 without any services, while over the same period of time countless Jewish towns, and villages have been created. There are over 150 such unrecognized villages in Israel of Palestinians displaced in the 1948 war. While the Bedouin village was still unrecognized 60 years after the founding of the Israel, the government was advancing plans to ”Judaize” the Negev.

We witnessed the humiliation of Palestinians waiting for hours early in the morning at a checkpoint and then processed like a group of animals.

We replanted olive trees on Palestinian land, uprooted by Jewish settlers with the full protection of the Israeli army. The trees were undoubtedly uprooted again within days after our visit. The tract of land adjacent to where we planted the trees had been stolen from a Palestinian who took the case to the Supreme Court with the aid of Israeli human rights organizations. Despite a ruling in his favor several years ago, the land had still not been returned to him.

Hebron

For me, this was the clincher: a deserted street restricted to Jews, in the middle of Hebron, passing by Palestinian homes where the residents are not allowed to walk on the street in front of their own homes. When Michael Manikin, our guide, mentioned that this was a Jews-only street and showed us the apartments where Palestinians climb over the roof and then down a ladder to go to the store, the supermarket, the hospital, something in me had changed. Sadness and rage overwhelmed me. I realized that this was in some ways worse than what I had witnessed as a child in South Africa. Whenever I would compare my experience on the West Bank with my experience during apartheid, Jews would get very angry. For many years I knew I should never use the “A word.” At that moment I broke down crying and made a pledge that I would never again censor myself. I didn’t know it then, but that was the moment when I crossed over.

There was no term that accurately describes what we had experienced on this twelve day trip on both sides of Green Line other than systemic racism. I finally had to admit to myself what I had known for a long time but was too scared to acknowledge: political Zionism, at its core, is a discriminatory ethno-nationalism that privileges the rights of Jews over non-Jews. As such political Zionism violates everything I believe about Judaism. While there was desperate need in the 1940s to provide a safe haven for Jews, and this need won over most of the Jewish world and the Western world to support the Zionist movement, the Holocaust can in in no way justify or excuse the systemic racism that was and remains an integral part of Zionism.

In the past I believed that the discrimination I saw – the demolished homes, the uprooted trees, the stolen land – were an aberration of the Zionist vision. I came to understand that all of these were not mistakes nor a blemishes on a dream – they were all the logical outcome of Zionism.

As a Jew, I believe in the inherent dignity of every human being. As a Jew, I believe that justice is the core commandment of our tradition. As a Jew, I believe that we are commanded to be advocates for the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized. Zionism and the daily reality in Israel violated each of these core values. And I could no longer be a Zionist. I will always be a person with deep and profound connection to Israel and my friends and family there, but I was no longer a Zionist.

I came to understand that the democratic Jewish state is an illusion. There is no democratic Jewish state, nor will there ever be. Israel will either be a Jewish state or a democratic state. A Jewish state by definition privileges Jews and cannot be democratic. Israel is a democratic state for Jews and a Jewish state for Arabs. It is true that Palestinians who live within Israel have the franchise, but they are do not have equal rights in many different ways, nor could they ever be full and equal citizens of a Jewish state.

And there was another profound change in my thinking. I also came to understand that there was a direct line between the formation of Israel in 1948 and the occupation. Just as I thought that the human rights violations were blemishes on an otherwise inspiring vision, I, like many liberal Zionists saw the occupation as the issue. The problem were the right-wing settlers and the settlements. Like most liberal Zionists, I ignored the Nakhba and the direct connection between the Nakhba and the occupation. Without knowing it at the time, this confrontation with the Nakhba began at that meeting with Ben Gurion when I was in high school.

Ben Gurion in South Africa

When Ben Gurion visited South Africa in 1979, he was asked at a meeting of the counselors of the Zionist youth movements about charges that in 1948, Palestinians were expelled from their homes. Red in his face, banging on the table, he adamantly asserted that not one Palestinian was expelled. The opposite: we pleaded with the Arabs to stay and promised them security but they followed the Mufti of Jerusalem who encouraged them to drive the Jews into the sea. This story is still told to explain the exodus of over 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.

For a few years I believed this standard and still prevalent untruth. We now know conclusively that this story is simply not true. Not only were Palestinians expelled from many villages and towns, often with great brutality, but Ben Gurion himself gave the order for some of these expulsions. He was one of the architects of the policy of transfer. The debate still rages about exactly what happened in each village but there is overwhelming evidence that most of the Palestinians left because of the actions of the Israeli forces.

The expulsion of over 600,000 Palestinians, some of whom left out of fear and most because they were expelled, and the refusal to allow them to return to their homes as required by United Nations Resolution 194 was also a logical outcome of Zionism. Removing or transferring them was essential to create a “democratic” Jewish state. Ben Gurion understood this and he was one of the architects of this policy. The Jewish state could claim to be democratic if it had a minority of citizens that were not Jewish. Demography, not democracy was and is the driver. Zionism has always had the goal of control over the maximum amount of land with the minimum number of Arabs. Demography has always been the main rationale for Israeli policy. It was the policy in 1948 and it has been the same policy on the West Bank since 1967. The occupation is simply the continuation of the same Zionist goals that led to the Nakhba.

As a liberal Zionist, we never talked much about the Nakhba. We never paid attention to the over 400 Palestinian villages that were razed to the ground, their names erased and replaced by Jewish towns, villages and kibbutzim with Hebrew names. When I made aliyah to a kibbutz in 1970, I simply had no idea that most kibbutzim were built on the ruins of Palestinian villages. Last year as I was thinking about this I looked up my kibbutz and with the aid of Google in a few minutes I found a photo of the Palestinian village on which it was built.

In 2010, my family spent five months in Israel in Katamon, a neighborhood with many Anglo immigrants to Israel. As I walked around the neighborhood I wondered who lived in all these beautiful Arab homes before 1948 and where were they now. In 2009, I was in Bethlehem, and when some Palestinian friends and I made our way back to Jerusalem, one of them told me that her home was in Katamon!  No, there can be no reconciliation without an acknowledgement of the dispossession of the Palestinians.

It is true that what happened in Israel was no different from what the colonialists did in North America and Africa and around the world. What is different is that the Nakhba is ongoing. The occupation, the stealing of Palestinian land, the creation of settlements, the demolition of Arab villages in the Jordan Valley and elsewhere are a continuation of the Nakhba. It is a systematic policy by which Israel creates facts on the ground that will make life difficult for Palestinians thereby encouraging or precipitating a voluntary “transfer” of Palestinians from the West Bank. And the policy has met with success. According to the civil administration about a quarter million Palestinians voluntarily left the West Bank between 2000 and 2007.

Palestinian Residency

Another dramatic example of this policy are the regulations that revoke Palestinian residency for Palestinians who leave the country for a few years. By the time of the Oslo accords, Israel had revoked the residency of 140,000 Palestinians from the West Bank.

In Ha’aretz, Gideon Levy writes:

In other words 14% of West Bank residents who dared to go abroad had their right to return to Israel and live here denied forever. In other words, they were expelled from their land and their homes. In other words: ethnic cleansing…

Anyone who says “it’s not apartheid” is invited to reply: Why is an Israeli allowed to leave his country for the rest of his life, and nobody suggests that his citizenship be revoked, while a Palestinian, a native son, is not allowed to do so? Why is an Israeli allowed to marry a foreigner and receive a residency permit for her, while a Palestinian is not allowed to marry his former neighbor who lives in Jordan? Isn’t that apartheid? Over the years I have documented endless pitiful tragedies of families that were torn apart, whose sons and daughters were not permitted to live in the West Bank or Gaza due to draconian rules – for Palestinians only.

Israel recognizes that many Palestinians will not leave, but it hopes to contain them in four disconnected Palestinian cantons over which it will exert maximum control and have minimal responsibility. This is the situation Israel has created in Gaza and this is the intention for the West Bank. This is exactly what was called a Bantustan in South Africa – an area where blacks seemingly had independence and autonomy, but in fact were totally controlled by the white South African government.

Zionism has become a movement that displaces Palestinians and privileges Jews. The problem here is much deeper than demography; it is a problem of ethics. Political Zionism contradicts what we hold as the sacred values of Judaism and the lessons of Jewish history. Judaism has been fused with Zionism and we need a Judaism and Jewish identity without political Zionism.

2. Judaism and Zionism

Prior to the 1940s there was a vigorous debate about Zionism and Judaism. Within the Zionist movement there was a small but influential group of very prominent leaders – Martin Buber, Judah Magnes and others – that understood that imposing our will on the Palestinians would create an unending cycle of violence and violate our deepest values as Jews. There were vigorous debates about Zionism and a division between political Zionists and cultural Zionists. Most Jews were not Zionists. The Holocaust transformed the Jewish world and Zionism won the sympathy of the world.

Today, 60 years later, there is almost no distinction made between Zionism and Judaism. Zionism has become the religion of American Jews. Even the Reform movement, the most liberal of the Jewish movements with a proud commitment to social justice and which prior to 1948 was opposed to Zionism, has made Zionism a core tenet of Judaism.

I was recently preparing a Shabbat morning service for Tikkun v’Or the Reform congregation in Ithaca. As I reviewed the service in Mishkan T’filah, the new Reform prayerbook, I came across the prayer for light that precedes the recitation of the Shema.

“Shine a new light upon Zion, that we may all swiftly be privileged to bask in its radiance.

Blessed are You, God, Creator of the Light”

My eyes were drawn to a commentary on the bottom of the page by my colleague, Rabbi David Ellenson, the President of Hebrew Union College, the Rabbinical School of Reform rabbis.

He writes:

Classical Reform prayerbook authors in the Diaspora consistently omitted this line with its mention of Zion from the liturgy because of their opposition to Jewish nationalism (Zionism). With the restoration of this passage to our new prayerbook, the Reform movement consciously affirms its devotion to the modern State of Israel and signals its recognition of the religious significance of the reborn Jewish commonwealth.

In his brief comment, Rabbi Ellenson describes the transformation in the Reform movement’s relationship to Zionism in the mid 20th century. In the first half of the 20th century only a minority of the world’s Jews were supporters of Zionism. The Reform movement actively opposed Zionism as antithetical to the core values of Reform Judaism dedicated to a form of Judaism that would allow Jews to uphold our tradition while fully participating in American society. Since the Holocaust there has been a complete reversal – Reform Judaism not only affirms its devotion to Israel, but ascribes to the State of Israel religious significance.

What does it mean to ascribe to a political state that is predicated on privileging a particular ethnic group, religious significance? How can American Jews who firmly advocate separation of church and state ascribe religious significance to a Jewish State? Do we believe in a separation of religion and state in America but not in Israel?

The idea that the State of Israel has religious significance is shared by all the movements of Judaism except for some sectors of the ultra Orthodox. The formulation that is most widely accepted is that Israel is of the flowering of our redemption and the beginning of the messianic age (“Reishit tzmichat geulateynu”).

Last year there was some controversy in the Reform movement when Rabbi Rick Jacobs was chosen to replace Rabbi Eric Yoffie as the the head of the Reform movement. To allay the fears of those who were afraid of Rabbi Jacobs’ support for J Street and the New Israel Fund, my colleague Rabbi Peter Knobel defended Jacobs as a “staunch Zionist.”

He wrote in Haaretz:

This is not just a reflection of Rabbi Jacobs’ personal views, for this staunch Zionism and support for Israel are enshrined in Reform Judaism – and in the hearts of most of our more than 1.5 million Jews. For us Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) is not only a national celebration but a religious one as well.  We have enriched our ritual life with new observances and liturgy rooted in our commitment to Israel. The Israeli Reform siddur, “Avodah Shebalev,” has a special Amidah and Kiddush for Independence Day. The new North American Reform siddur, “Mishkan Tefillah,” has a special service for Yom Ha’atzmaut, which uses the Israeli Declaration of Independence as a sacred text.

We believe that the renewal and perpetuation of Jewish national life in Eretz Yisrael is a necessary condition for the realization of the physical and spiritual redemption of the Jewish people and of all humanity. While that day of redemption remains but a distant yearning, we express the fervent hope that Medinat Yisrael, living in peace with its neighbors, will hasten the redemption of Am Yisrael, and the fulfillment of our messianic dream of universal peace under the sovereignty of God.

What does he mean? Is the existence and perpetuation of a Jewish State, one that was created by dispossessing the Palestinian people, one that has imposed the longest military occupation in human history, a “necessary condition for the realization of the physical and spiritual redemption of the Jewish people and all humanity?” What is the relationship between these inspiring words and the Jewish soldiers who invaded a Palestinian home last night to arrest Palestinian children? Or to Palestinian children who are imprisoned in Israel? Or to the villagers of El Arakib whose village has been destroyed several times over the past year?

Tragically, Zionism has become the primary religious commitment for most liberal Jews, more important than any other commandment or ethical concern. As a rabbi, you can say almost anything you want about the most sacred traditions and rituals of the Jewish people, but if you criticize Israel, you could quite easily lose your job.

Birthright

In response to concern about Jewish continuity, the Jewish community has invested millions of dollars in Birthright – free trips to Israel. Instead of building a vibrant Jewish life here in America and/or creating programs in which our children could engage meaningfully in spiritually engaging/justice-related projects we take our children to Israel on “Birthright” What is their birthright? Do they, as Jewish children growing up in security and with much privilege here in America, have a right that comes to them because they were born Jewish of a free trip to a country where Palestinians who lived there for centuries were expelled and not allowed to return and where the process of dispossession of the Palestinians is an ongoing project day by day?

This fusion of Judaism with the interests of that nation state is a tragedy for Judaism. Judaism is a religion. Zionism is a political movement associated with a particular nation state. And we need to separate the two – to create daylight between Judaism and Zionism.

We are all indebted to Mark Ellis who coined the term “Constantinian Judaism” comparing the fusion of Judaism and Zionism to the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. By becoming the religion of the empire, Christianity assumed the role of legitimating the actions of the empire. A religion that is based on the teachings of a radical prophet who taught a message of love, justice and peace was now wedded to the needs and brutality of an empire. Similarly, Judaism with its profound commitment to the human dignity of all, to freedom and to justice, is now wedded of the actions of the Israeli government.

Diaspora Judaism

We need to return to the vibrant debates about the Jewish future that existed prior to 1940. We need to reclaim with pride the history of Diaspora Judaism, a Judaism that was attached to Spirit and community, not to political power. We need to affirm the value of life in Diaspora, living alongside and in relationship with people of other faiths and ethnicities. We need the wisdom of two thousand years of Jews living in Diaspora creating community and surviving despite victimization. The Zionists portray Jewish life in the Diaspora in shameful terms, as weak, effeminate, shameful. In truth, however, living in Diaspora offers us many blessings.

We need to envision an Israel that is a state for all it’s citizens, a true democracy. We need to reclaim Judaism as a source of ultimate values – not as the cheerleader for a nation state. Judaism is an ethical system that can and offer us wisdom about how to use power ethically.

“Cast a new light upon Zion and may we all be privileged to bask in that light.”

We truly need a new light with which to see Zion and it must be a light that all may bask in.

Part 3: Solidarity, Privilege and Transformation

In his recent book, The Crisis of Judaism, Peter Beinart pointed out the contradiction between the story of victimization that is told almost exclusively by mainstream Jewish leaders and the reality of Jewish privilege and power. Jews in America, Israel and around the world have significant power and privilege. We were victims and have been victimized, but thankfully in our world Jews are no longer victims. The challenge we face is how to live Jewishly with power and privilege.

How do we respond ethically to our power and privilege?

I believe the answer to this question lies in the concept of solidarity. Judaism calls us to be in solidarity with those who are the victims of injustice. The God of Judaism is the God who cares about the oppressed  - “Oseh mishpat la’ashukim.” Our God is the God who brings people out of slavery, poverty, injustice.

The Jewish response to privilege and power is to stand in solidarity with all who are seeking justice for all. In our time, this includes standing in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice and equal rights. As Americans we have a direct responsibility for the oppression of the Palestinian people – we make it possible.

Hilda followed a path of solidarity. As a Jew she was in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice just as she was in solidarity with the struggle of African Americans, Black South Africans, the people of Haiti and Central America. She understood far earlier than many that this issue, the Palestinian issue, was a Jewish issue, one for which she and we are accountable.

There is a growing movement of Jews who, as Jews, support the Palestinian struggle for justice. They can be found in American Jews for a Just Peace, in Jewish Voice for Peace, in J Street, in Students for Justice in Palestine, in the US Campaign to end the Occupation and in the B.D.S. movement. Every person, every Jew will have to make a choice about how we can best support the struggle for justice.

Every day, the Nakhba continues. Every day, land is expropriated, Palestinians are imprisoned, brutalized. Every day our precious Jewish tradition is used to justify this oppression.

Those of us who, like Hilda, believe Judaism is essentially about justice, who have deep love for Jewish culture, need to join in the task of reclaiming a new Judaism without Zionism. It will require vision, courage and the ability to endure many difficult and painful conversations. There are many who want to silence this new movement by name calling and intimidation.

Hilda was one person who continued despite the name calling. She developed a community of resistance – a community of Jews, Palestinians, and people of many faiths and ethnicities tied together in a shared commitment to justice. There is no better way for us to honor her memory than by traveling beyond our comfortable assumptions and choosing how we may be part of the growing movement for justice.

May her soul live on in us.

A Sheynem Dank/ Todah Rabba/Shukran/ Thank You

Censorship on Shavuot

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by Rabbi Alissa Wise

“Whoever has the ability to denounce [the sins of] his 
family members, but fails to denounce them, is held 
accountable for [the sins of] his family members; if 
[he has influence] over the residents of his city [but
 fails to denounce their sins], he is held accountable 
for [the sins of] the residents of his city; if [he
 has influence] over the entire world [but fails to 
denounce their sins], he is held accountable for [the
 sins of] the entire world.”

- Talmud Bavli, Tractate Shabbat, 54a

On Sunday, May 27, an event organized by Young, Jewish, and Proud (YJP) (the youth branch of Jewish Voice for Peace) was cancelled by the 14th Street Y—a Jewish community institution.  The irony is not lost on me that the event was to be a Shavuot study session, complete with blintzes.

Shavuot is the holiday, after all, that commemorates revelation — the receiving of the Torah at the foot of Mt. Sinai — and is commemorated partly by an all-night study session. The  Tikkyn Leyl Shavuot, is not just a night of Torah study, but is a night for learning of all kinds: Torah, Talmud, Hassidut, and beyond.

Why, then was the YJP event beyond the pale for the 14th Street Y?

Well, the Executive Director of the Y, Stephen Hazzan Arnoff would have you believe there was nothing wrong with the content, although he cancelled the event on 8:00 pm Friday evening (yes, on Shabbat!), less than 48 hours before the event. His stated reason was concern over attendance exceeding the 75 person limit in the room (for which YJP had already contracted and paid.) Of course, that claim holds no water -  the event had only 40 RSVPs as of Friday evening. Even so, there could have been a myriad remedies to the issue of over-attendance, such as limiting entry to 75 people.

The real issue, of course, was the event itself. Titled “Go & Learn,” this program was to be part of a series of educational workshops in Jewish communities across the US held to learn about and discuss the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law. So far events have taken place in San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, and Philadelphia, with Los Angeles and Chicago upcoming.

“Go and Learn” was designed by a group of young Jews across the country for all members of the Jewish community—those who have never heard about BDS, those who are opposed to BDS, those who are unsure how they feel about BDS, and those who are in full support of the Palestinian call. The workshop includes, for example, an activity where participants reflect on boycott and divestment campaigns throughout history (such as South Africa, California grapes, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Darfur). Participants indicate through color-coded stickers whether they support, oppose, have participated in, or still have concerns over each of those campaigns. The activity invites the participants to look at how they make their own ethical decisions around calls for boycott and divestment campaigns in general which are, at the end of the day, tried-and-true social movement tactics for shifting power and agitating toward change.

Participants also engage in a close reading of the actual text of the Palestinian call for BDS from 2005—a document that most people have never read. Throughout the entire program, space is made for questions and discussion. There is no end goal of the event other than for everyone to have had a chance to share their thoughts and hear from others.

How terribly disappointing – and frankly embarrassing – that the holiday of Shavuot, a festival based on Torah study and discussion did not inspire the Jewish community to keep its doors open to young Jews eager to discuss and learn. This incident raises the deeper question for me: what is the purpose of a Jewish holiday if its deeper lessons and purposes don’t inspire reflection on how we are or are not living out those values as Jews?

The state of the institutional Jewish world these days is truly a shameful one – and I am not afraid to say so. As a rabbi, a Jew, a young person, and someone invested in a dynamic and diverse Jewish community, I feel that must challenge the gatekeepers in the Jewish world to reflect on what they want their grandchildren and great-grandchildren to inherit. Do we want a fearful, closed community more concerned with silencing discussion then having challenging conversations? Do we really want to bequeath a deeply fractured set of communities unable to share space or holiday celebrations?

This Shavuot left me with a sour taste – not the sweet taste of Torah I typically experience. I left the mountain feeling profoundly disappointed in what Jews have have made from that ancient experience at Sinai and the gift of Torah.

The soul searching of Elul and the Yamim Noraim, the Jewish Days of Awe, are just around the corner.  It can’t come soon enough.

Please consider adding your name to this letter to the Executive Director of the 14th Street Y urging him to reconsider and allow the event to take place at the Y.

You can watch a short video of what happened with the Go & Learn participants gathered Sunday outside the Y and were barred from entry.

To organize a Go & Learn event in your community, send an email to: golearnATjewishvoiceforpeace.org.

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.

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