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.

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.

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” by Rabbi Alissa Wise
• ‘Administrative detention’ the key to Palestinian hunger strikes in The Guardian
• Israel and the heart of a stranger by Emily L. Hauser
• Jewish Voice for Peace petition in support of the hunger strikers

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 77^th 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 77^th 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.

[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.

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

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!

I have come into this world to see this: the sword drop from men’s hands even at the height of their arc of rage because we have finally realized there is just one flesh we can wound.
- Hafiz

Tonight and tomorrow, in the Jewish calendar, could quite possibly be the most powerful day for inspiration toward realizing the justice, equality and self-determination we seek for all people. Purim–where we are invited to get so merry and drunken that we can’t tell the difference between “Blessed be Mordechai” and “Cursed be Haman”.

One of the many explanations and interpretations for why this is the instruction of the day, is from the great Hasidic teacher the Sefas Emes who taught it reminds us that the Jews were saved on Purim not out of merit or deed, but because of God’s love. This is why it is taught that even in the messianic era, when we no longer need to celebrate any other holiday, we will continue to celebrate Purim.

This place — beyond good and evil, blessed or cursed, wrong or the right, morality or immorality — this is the place of ethical power. This is the place of joy we taste on Purim and that we tirelessly work for daily.

Rumi, the 13th century Sufi poet knew the same when he wrote:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about language, ideas, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.

This is my blessing for us all this Purim — we can taste the sweet pleasure of the dissolution of “us and them” and be in the true unity of our world — the unity that when we taste it we know we can no longer occupy and oppress, hate or hurt – because there is just one flesh we can wound.

I was raised to be a settler. My family moved to Israel during the peace negotiations with Egypt. As a high school student in Jerusalem, I regularly took off school to attend demonstrations against the peace treaty with Egypt. My yeshiva high school bussed us – students and faculty – to these anti-peace rallies. Similarly, we supported our teachers when they went off to fight the PLO in Lebanon in 1982. At the Shabbat dinner table at the yeshiva, we sang an anthem celebrating the occupation in the West Bank, which we knew by its neo-Biblical name: “Judea and Samaria.” Most of my classmates went on to study in adult yeshivot on the West Bank.

We were the lucky ones. The Messiah may not yet have arrived in person, but we had the unique good fortune of living in the epoch of Atchalta d’G’eula, as foretold in the Talmud. We were partners in the Redemption of Eretz Yisrael, heralding the birth of a Messianic age.

I was a settler. I grew up on a suburb of Jerusalem that was a West Bank settlement. Later, I served as a soldier in the IDF, on the West Bank. As a teenager, there was no daylight between my Israeli identity and my settler ideology. We went on hikes – under armed guard – through the hills and by the villages of the West Bank. We bravely went where no Jews had settled before. The Palestinian territories were our Jewish frontier.

Settlers, so we were taught, embodied all that was good in Israel. We, the settlers, did not care about money. Unlike secular Israelis, we were not materialistic, not hedonistic. We gave our admiration and love not to the idols of Israeli and American pop culture but to the Land.

We loved the Land of Israel, or, more accurately, the part of it known as Greater Israel. Our love for Eretz Yisrael was given, not to Tel Aviv, but to Hebron; not to Haifa but to Sh’chem (Nablus); the Golan Heights, not sinful Eilat. As Jerusalemites, we turned our attention to the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. On Sukkot, we gathered there in a yeshiva, a settler outpost, on Bab el-Wad street, just a few minutes walk from the Western Wall. We heard our rabbis teach Talmudic and Kabbalistic discourses on the rebuilding of the Third Temple.

So what if settlements were illegal? Our mission as agents of the Messiah superseded the rule of law. To be a good Jew was to be an Israeli, and to be a good Israeli was to build new settlements.

Our older peers, the ones who built settlements all over the West Bank, were the spiritual heirs of the original Zionist settlers, only better. Those teenagers, who a hundred years before us, had spurned the creature comforts of Bialystok and Berlin and sailed off for Jaffa to reclaim the Land. The West Bank settlers were every bit as self-sacrificing. In addition, they were not religious rebels but yeshiva boys.

And then, I left all that behind. I “took off my kippa (yarmulke)”. I severed my ties to Israeli Orthodoxy and its settler ideology. I rejected the Messianic purity of thought and that cozy camaraderie of my peer group. I no longer marched through the Arab market on the eve of Yom Yerushalayim with thousands of fellow settler supporters, banging on the metal-shuttered stalls. I no longer went to the demonstrations supporting the Occupation. I did not travel to Hebron to dance the hora in a city under curfew. I gave up the dream of a suburban house with a garden in the middle of Palestine, dodging bullets and stones on the daily commute to work in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

However, even in my apartment in genteel West Jerusalem, it was impossible to escape the reality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank just a few miles down the road. In my 20s, my friends routinely, if reluctantly, served on guard duty at West Bank settlements. As a reservist in the Israeli army, I strategized how to dodge these annual call-up orders. I wasn’t quite ready to serve time in the stockade. Fortunately, for me, the Israeli army wasn’t interested in jailing large numbers of conscientious objectors either. I regularly managed to set up alternate service at my old military base in Tel Aviv and thus avoid ever being posted to the West Bank.

In other ways too, it became increasingly clear, that the Green Line, the border between the West Bank and the State of Israel could not insulate me from Israel’s settler ideology. As a university student in Jerusalem, I watched with concern the rapid rise of the so-called “Modern Orthodox” in the military. This segment of Israeli society is almost completely pro-settler.  It became common to see a knitted kippa on the heads of young officers carrying assault guns. The Israeli army famously plays an over sized role in Israeli public life. The influx of religious officers was a coming of age for Orthodox Zionism. The emergence of the  Orthodox officer corps was the final nail. The age of kibbutznikim and Labor Zionists is long gone.

Predictably, the rise of the pro-settler camp in the junior ranks eventually reached the senior officer corps too. Today, several generals are now Orthodox pro-settler. Other leadership positions in the State of Israel are now filled by settlers. A settler was recently appointed to serve as a justice on Israel’s Supreme Court.

In 1992, when Yizhak Rabin returned to power, replacing Yizhak Shamir as leader of Israel, my friends and I were jubilant. Yizhak Shamir had stonewalled any attempts at reconciliation with the Palestinians. For us moderate Israelis, Rabin’s rise to power as leader of Israel was our equivalent of the toppling of the Berlin Wall. Over a period of months, new and exciting horizons of hope for peace opened up.

During this time, as a reservist in the IDF, I participated in the first military withdrawal from Gaza in May 1994. I saw Palestinian officers working with IDF officers on Israeli military bases. I saw the first joint patrol jeep of Palestinian and Israeli soldiers. The Messianic promise of the wolf and the lamb laying down together was here. Who knew, perhaps Prime Minister Rabin would indeed be the one to undo Ariel Sharon’s legacy in the West Bank?

As we now know, the idyll lasted for a just few, short years.

At that fateful peace demonstration in central Tel Aviv one Saturday night in November 1995, I was one of the thousands who heard the three gunshots that ended Rabin’s life. We ran for cover into the side streets off the main square. I didn’t stop moving until I left Israel. The rise of Netanyahu sealed the deal. I left Israel and moved to the United States.

At some point, while I was still living in Israel, I came across an American dictionary. I was flipping through the back of the book when I came upon the opening lines of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. I was then still unfamiliar with the iconic lines: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

Such straightforward clarity!  Of course, I realized that the United States was not without its own problems, but, at least here was a theoretical framework that made sense. It gave me hope.

Over time, I came to understand that what was written in opposition to the rule of King George was also a rejection of an ethnic state. If all men are created equal, how can one justify a state that on principle favors one ethnic group over another? From the State of Israel’s own Declaration of Independence that declares the formation of a Jewish State, through the State’s Basic Laws (the building blocks of an Israeli Constitution) that favor Jews over non-Jews, to State institutions that limit land ownership for non-Jews, the State of Israel officially favors Jews and discriminates against non-Jews. The State of Israel was constituted as a Jewish state with limited democracy. The United States, on the other hand, gave the world the model of a democratic state. I knew which theoretical model I preferred.

For years, I placed myself in the Liberal Zionist camp. I wanted to believe, like Amos Oz and his camp, that a Jewish State was both necessary and could be fair. Today, I no longer believe either of those. I believe today that time has finally run out for the philosophy that upholds that Israel can both institutionally, legally and constitutionally favor Jews on the one hand and still deal justly with its non-Jewish, indigenous population, on the other. I also do not see how a Jewish State offers greater security for Jews, either now or in the event of some future threat.

My Israel/Palestine activism in the States was, initially, my way of staying connected to Israel. This is an area I knew well and could contribute my expertise to the political effort. Yet, over time, as I became integrated into American life, I came to understand Israel, not only as an Israeli ex-pat, but within the context of the U.S. and American Jewish life.

I love American Jews for their proud, social consciousness: their stand for civil rights, their fight to keep church and state separate, their visceral support for immigrants, and their overall, vigorous civic engagement.

I was therefore dismayed to see all these values firmly set aside when it came to Israel: the organized Jewish community’s stand with Israel in bombing Gaza, the unquestioning support of a Jewish state with limited democracy, vilifying those who work for full democracy, including Jews and even Israelis, ostracizing those within the community who cross the approved line. Some days I feel that, since I did not grow up in the American Jewish community, I will never understand the emotional context for, what I see as, a bifurcated values system. My commitment is to work at getting closer to these Jews whom I love. I try to follow the path of listening, and not judging. Being present and not preaching. I have evidence that this approach works. The many different and conflicting ways that Jews love Israel need not be a cause for strife.  Instead, it can be a powerful way of connecting Jews to each other. I have seen Jews with opposing beliefs on Israel sit at the same table and listen to each others’ opinions. Each one felt validated in being heard.

For myself, I feel that I am heard in the context Jewish Voice for Peace. I am proud to be a founding member of its Rabbinical Council. JVP is the place where I can speak my truth without fear. My colleagues on the Rabbinic Cabinet speak the same language I do. At times we disagree, but we share a deep connection to Israel and to our values, and the commitment to bring those two sentiments together.

There is much exciting work to do. The separation barrier between Israelis and Palestinians is emblematic of mental barriers that we each carry within us. Our leadership is needed. We need safe places for Jews to work through their concerns about Israel. There is a need and an opportunity for a new model of interfaith dialog with Christians. They, too, share our deep love for the Holy Land rooted in their own religious tradition. We have the opportunity to make meaningful connections with Christians, not based on formal politeness or supporting Israel right-or-wrong, but through acknowledging our common love for Israel/Palestine and standing in solidarity with Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

As American Jews, we need not follow Israel into its self-imposed bunker of isolation. We, American Jews and Christians, can also play a role in helping Israelis to heal. American Jews can model for Israel a better way of engaging with their neighbors and the world. We can support the brave Jewish and Palestinian activists in Israel and the Occupied territories.

Zionism set up a new paradigm which held the Land of Israel to be the center of Jewish life and the rest of the world at the periphery, known as the Diaspora. Today, the time has come to claim our place as the dynamic heart of the Jewish tradition. We are leaders in engaging with our non-Jewish neighbors and expanding the scope of Jewish life to include those who had previously been excluded. Israeli leaders, including Orthodox Jews, are coming to America to learn from us how to be good Jews.

I support the call of Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). This non-violent strategy allows me to stand in solidarity with the oppressed. The debate around BDS has the potential to break through the passive support that mainstream America offers the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and the disenfranchisement of indigenous non-Jews in the State of Israel. My support of BDS is not intended to bring Israel to its knees – there is no chance that that will happen. BDS, for me, serves as a wake-up call to American Jews, to all Americans, and to the world community. Where the rest of the world goes, Israel will eventually follow.

Last month, I was in Jerusalem for a family celebration. At his invitation, I visited with Archbishop Theodosius, the senior Palestinian cleric, in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem. Archbishop Theodosius was a gracious host. He sees Palestinian Christians as the bridge between Jews and Moslems. His vision is to draw Israeli Jews into the conversation about full democracy for Israel/Palestine. He tasked me with translating the 2009 Christian statement of unity about Palestine (Kairos) into Hebrew. I was happy to accept this project.

My activism continues to bring me to new frontiers; I am making new friends in unlikely places. Archbishop Theodosius told me that I am only the second Jew he has befriended. I was a fellow Jerusalemite for many years and yet we never met before. Until recently, neither of us had met anybody in the others’ religious group.

I continue to be an activist in order stay connected to the issues and to my own sense of what is right. Activism makes me hopeful. For me, activism means moving beyond
dissatisfaction to a place where what is wrong does not affect my spirit. My community of activists is a safe place. Activism allows me to confront the reality of Israel/Palestine without loss of spirit.

I see the old tropes of Holocaust and Israel-right-or-wrong becoming increasingly irrelevant to young Jews. Its is these Jews, in their 20s, who give me hope for the future. By staying true to their beliefs, they will increasingly make their parents and grandparents aware that Zionism is not the only way of being Jewish. I believe the Jewish community will transform and come back to its core values.

As a Jew, a rabbi and a person of conscience, I am voicing my support of the divestment resolution being brought to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) this June.

This resolution, which has been a point of divisive contention between the PC (USA) and some American Jewish organizations for many years, recommends the Church divest its funds from Caterpillar, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard. It was put forth by the church’s committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment – an appointed body that recommended church divestment of companies engaged in “non-peaceful pursuits in Israel/Palestine.”

There is a long and tumultuous history to this resolution – here’s a basic outline:

- In 1971 and 1976 the Presbyterian Church stated that it had a responsibility to ensure that its funds be invested responsibly and consistent with the church’s mission.

- In 1986, the PC (USA) formed the Committee for Mission Responsibility Through Investing (MRTI) in 1986. The MRTI Committee carried out the General Assembly’s wish to engage in shareholder activism and as a last resort, divest itself of companies which contravened the GA’s position. Divestment would follow a phased process starting with attempted dialogue and shareholder resolutions and ultimately the total sale of and future ban on the church’s holdings in a company.

- In June 2004, the PC (USA) General Assembly adopted by a vote of 431-62 a resolution that called on the MRTI Committee “to initiate a process of phased, selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel.” The resolution expressed the church’s support of the Geneva Accord, said that “the occupation . . . has proven to be at the root of evil acts committed against innocent people on both sides of the conflict,” that “the security of Israel and the Israeli people is inexorably dependent on making peace with their Palestinian neighbors”, that “horrific acts of violence and deadly attacks on innocent people, whether carried out by Palestinian suicide bombers or by the Israeli military, are abhorrent and inexcusable by all measures, and are a dead-end alternative to a negotiated settlement,” and that the United States government needed to be “honest, even-handed broker for peace.”

- In 2005, MRTI Committee named five US-based companies – Caterpillar Inc., Citigroup, ITT Industries, Motorola and United Technologies – for initial focus and that it would engage in “progressive engagement” with the companies’ management.

- In 2006, following an uproar of criticism from American Jewish organizations, the PC (USA) General Assembly overwhelmingly (483-28) replaced language adopted in 2004 that focused the “phased, selective divestment” specifically on companies working in Israel.  It now called for investment in Israel, the Gaza Strip, eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank “in only peaceful pursuits.” The new resolution also required the consideration of “practical realities,” a “commitment to positive outcomes” and an awareness of the potential impact of strategies on “both the Israeli and Palestinian economies.”  The 2006 resolution also recognized Israel’s right to build a security barrier along its pre-1967 boundaries. The GA acknowledged the “hurt and misunderstanding among many members of the Jewish community and within our Presbyterian communion” that resulted from the 2004 resolution and stated that the Assembly was “grieved by the pain that this has caused, accept responsibility for the flaws in our process, and ask for a new season of mutual understanding and dialogue.”

The most recent resolution is the result of this new process and now focuses on three of the original six companies under consideration.  From the PC (USA) website:

The General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC) is recommending that the upcoming 220^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) divest the church of its stock in three companies “until they have ceased profiting from non-peaceful activities in Israel-Palestine.”

The three companies are Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett-Packard.

At issue are their participation in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the construction of the “security barrier” between Israel and Palestinian territory, and the destruction of Palestinian homes, roads and fields to make way for the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which have been declared illegal under international law.

“We have run out of hope that these companies are willing to change their corporate practices [in Israel-Palestine],” said the Rev. Brian Ellison, a Kansas City pastor and chair of the denomination’s Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI). “We have made diligent effort to engage in conversation. We’d like to do more, to make progress, but substantial change does not seem possible.”

As stated above, I support this resolution without reservation and urge other Jewish leaders and community members to do so as well. I am deeply dismayed that along every step of this process, Jewish community organizations (among them, the Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs) that purport to speak for the consensus of a diverse constituency have been intimidating and emotionally blackmailing the Presbyterian Church as they attempt to forge their ethical investment strategy in good faith.

It is extremely important to be clear about what is at stake here. First of all, this is not a resolution that seeks to boycott or single out Israel. Divestment does not target countries – it targets companies.  In this regard speaking, the PC (USA)’s ethical investment process seeks to divest from specific “military-related companies” it deems are engaged in “non-peaceful” pursuits.

We’d be hard-pressed indeed to make the case that the Israeli government is engaged in “non-peaceful pursuits” in the Occupied Territories and East Jerusalem.  I won’t go into detail here because I’ve been writing about this tragic issue for many years: the increasing of illegal Jewish settlements with impunity, the forced evictions and home demolitions, the uprooting of Palestinian orchards, the separation wall that chokes off Palestinians from their lands, the arbitrary administrative detentions, the brutal crushing of non-violent protest, etc, etc.

All Americans – Jews and non-Jews alike – have cause for deep moral concern over these issues.  Moreover, we have cause for dismay that own government tacitly supports these actions. At the very least, we certainly have the right to make sure that our own investments do not support companies that profit from what we believe to be immoral acts committed in furtherance of Israel’s occupation.

As the co-chair of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council, I am proud that JVP has initiated its own divestment campaign which targets the TIAA-CREF pension fund, urging it to divest from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation. Among these are two of the three companies currently under consideration by PC (USA): Motorola and Caterpillar.

Why the concern over these specific companies? Because they are indisputably and directing aiding and profiting the oppression of Palestinians on the ground. Caterpillar profits from the destruction of Palestinian homes and the uprooting of Palestinian orchards by supplying the armor-plated and weaponized bulldozers that are used for such demolition work.  Motorola profits from Israel’s control of the Palestinian population by providing surveillance systems around Israeli settlements, checkpoints, and military camps in the West Bank, as well as communication systems to the Israeli army and West Bank settlers.

And why is Hewlett-Packard under consideration for divestment by the PC (USA)? HP owns Electronic Data Systems, which heads a consortium providing monitoring of checkpoints, including several built inside the West Bank in violation of international law.  The Israeli Navy, which regularly attacks Gaza’s fishermen within Gaza’s own territorial waters and has often shelled civilian areas in the Gaza Strip, has chosen HP Israel to implement the outsourcing of its IT infrastructure.  In addition, Hewlett Packard subsidiary HP Invent outsources IT services to a company called Matrix, which employs settlers in the illegal settlement of Modi’in Illit to do much of its IT work at low wages.

I repeat: by seeking to divest from these companies the PC (USA) is not singling out Israel as a nation.  The Presbyterian Church has every right to – and in fact does – divest its funds from any number of companies that enable non-peaceful pursuits around the world.  In this case specifically, the PC (USA) has reasonably determined that these particular “pursuits” aid a highly militarized, brutal and oppressive occupation – and it simply does not want to be complicit in supporting companies that enable it.

I am fully aware that there are several organizations in the Jewish community that are already gearing up a full court press to intimidate the PC (USA) from passing this resolution in June.  JCPA President Rabbi Steve Gutow recently accused national Presbyterian leaders of “making the delegitimization of Israel a public witness of their church.” The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called the resolution “poisonous,” and that by considering it the PC (USA) is “showing its moral bankruptcy.”

These sorts of statements do not speak for me nor, I am sure, do they speak for the wide, diverse spectrum of opinion on the issue in the American Jewish community.  There is no place for public bullying in interfaith relations – it is, needless to say, decidedly counter to principles of honest, good faith dialogue.  To our Presbyterian friends: please know there are many Jewish leaders who stand with you as you support the cause of peace and justice in Israel/Palestine.

In a recent open letter to the PC (USA), Rabbi Margaret Holub, my colleague on the JVP Rabbinical Council expressed this sentiment eloquently with the following words:

Your Church has long been active in pursuing justice and peace by nonviolent means, including divestment, in many places around the world.  As Christians, you have your own particular stake in the land to which both our traditions have long attachments of faith and history.  We particularly acknowledge the oppression of Palestinian Christians under Israeli occupation and the justice of your efforts to relieve the oppression directed against your fellows.

To advocate for an end to an unjust policy is not anti-Semitic.  To criticize Israel is not anti-Semitic.  To invest your own resources in corporations which pursue your vision of a just and peaceful world, and to withdraw your resources from those which contradict this vision, is not anti-Semitic.  There is a terrible history of actual anti-Semitism perpetrated by Christians at different times throughout the millennia and conscientious Christians today do bear a burden of conscience on that account.  We can understand that, with your commitment to paths of peace and justice, it must be terribly painful and inhibiting to be accused of anti-Semitism.

In fact, many of us in the Jewish community recognize that the continuing occupation of Palestine itself presents a great danger to the safety of the Jewish people, not to mention oppressing our spirits and diminishing our honor in the world community.  We appreciate the solidarity of people of conscience in pursuing conscientious nonviolent strategies, such as phased selective divestment, to end the occupation.

I am proud my name is under this letter, alongside many other members of our Rabbinical Council. If you stand with us, please join us in supporting the PC (USA) divestment resolution at their GA in Pittsburgh this summer.