Before Shabbat

No sooner did I submit last week’s Before Shabbat when I started worrying: what will I say next week? I assumed that nothing much would change, that, in fact, it would only get worse. I was right. No panacea presented itself. No Ghandi-esque figure arose in Gaza City or in Tel Aviv. And so, the beat goes on.

I am deeply troubled by so many things. With every passing day, my list of things to bemoan and decry grows larger. The latest issue that has me riled up, angry, and occasionally worried is the human remoras.

Remoras are those eely fish that adhere to sharks and dine on the scraps of their host’s meals. The human ones I’m talking about are adhering to the Israel-Gaza War. They’re having a field day, going along for the ride, picking up some juicy morsels. They take the scraps of suffering, hate, antisemitism, and Islamophobia and then feast on them. They post their menus online, on placards, and on poster board. They tear down pictures of hostages. They dox people with whom they disagree. They harass and belittle others, trying to understand the situation, but who may come at it from a different position.

The remoras are on the Left, charging Israel with genocide, blaming Israel for the savagery of Hamas, marching on college campuses chanting hateful slogans, and either 1) don’t understand that “Palestine free from the river to the sea!” is another way of saying “Death to the Jews!”, or, 2) DO understand and now have the chance to express raw antisemitism and Jew hatred and get away with it.

The remoras on the Right say that all progressive values are now proven to be false promises and that the world needs more authoritarian strongmen to beat the perceived enemy. Some suggest there are no innocent Gazan children and that everyone is culpable in a war for survival, which, ironically, is what Hamas says about the Jews.

The remoras that most upset me are Jewish people who march in demonstrations, waving Palestinian flags and chanting anti-Israel slogans. They feel very self-righteous and politically correct. They’ll show the world just how progressive they are, marching against the interests of Israel. They are surrounded by people with whom they’ve worked on many other significant causes: from George Floyd to BLM to LGBTQ+ rights to fixing the criminal justice system. The Jewish remoras fail to understand that they are surrounded by people who are, frankly, antisemitic or, at the very least, indifferent to Jewish history and our painful past, filled with violence, discrimination, and abandonment.

There’s not much we can do about the shameful folly on college campuses. We can’t police social media. Haters are going to hate. Remoras are going to feed. But we don’t have to join in. We can be resolute. We can keep up with the news. We will continue to wrestle with unspeakable tragedy and the costs of war.

If ever there was a time for caution and care with words, it’s now. If ever there were a time for Jews to support the Jewish people by supporting the people of Israel, it’s now. We can’t succumb to our own individual self-interests. Instead, we must keep an open heart and a sense of balance and self-respect.

Someday soon, I will joyfully write about the last irises blooming in my yard. There’s a lot to say about how Halloween is getting bigger and bigger and crazier and why. The best Genesis Torah portions are over the next several weeks. But that’s not for now. Alas, we are at war.

Shabbat Shalom,

rebhayim

I’ve been reading article after article, listening to multiple NPR broadcasts and podcasts, watching the news, and searching for a thread, a cogent narrative. I want to answer the question, What’s going to happen next? I want to know what to expect. But, as Amos, the 8^th century BCE prophet, famously said, “I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet.” [Amos 7:14] I get what he meant.

There’s so much flying at us, like a plague of locusts. I want to find redemption in the facts and the fury. But all I can see is sadness and grief. And more anger.

And so I worry—all the time. I worry so much about my friends in Israel, their children, and their grandchildren. Everything is upside down. Right now, many stores are closed because of security concerns as well as a shortage of workers. After all, over 300,000 Israelis have been called up to active duty. All kinds of jobs are currently vacated. Schools are closed. People are volunteering to assume positions that must be filled. For those of us who have been to Israel before, none of what’s happening computes. It’s so surreal and so scary.

Survivors of the kibbutz massacres, whole kibbutz communities, are holed up in hotels in Eilat and at the Dead Sea. They hang out and cry together. They try not to consider the past but press the Israeli government to get the hostages home.

I’m not sure they talk much about the future. For the folks whose homes were destroyed, looted, and burned to the ground, where the floors are stained with blood and the walls riddled with bullet holes, they must wonder if they have the fortitude to return. Can they ever feel safe again? Or will they knock down the existing properties, burned out or not, and build all new homes and structures?

These are impossible questions to answer right now. And it’s all filtered through the central lens of the war. Who moves next? When does the ground offensive begin? Will Hezbollah out of Lebanon get more involved? Will the West Bank go unhinged? As Thomas Friedman wrote in today’s New York Times, If this is the season of war, it also has to be a season for answers about what happens the morning after.

It feels dangerous to hope. What, if anything, can keep hope alive in this moment? The smoke has not cleared from the battlefield. The tears are still flowing. Israeli children have been brutally murdered and taken hostage. Gazan children have been crushed by rubble and killed by shrapnel. In the haze of grief and anger, all we can do is hang on and wait. I am not a prophet. I’m not gifted with a crystal ball. All I have is a breaking heart and a prayer for every parent who has lost a child. I wish I had more to give.

I’ve been walking around in a fog. I feel a numbness of the senses. I am moving slowly, tentative, unsure where exactly I am in space. Nothing is in sharp focus. It’s all feeding through a diffraction. Light is bending towards the darkness.

אֶשָּׂ֣א עֵ֭ינַי אֶל־הֶהָרִ֑ים מֵ֝אַ֗יִן יָ֘בֹ֥א עֶזְרִֽי

“I lift my eyes to the mountains. Where will my help come from?”

I watch the news, switching between CNN and MSNBC when I get bored or when a particular speaker makes me angry. Images appear, often the same ones, over and over again. Blurred bodies. Hostages being dragged away. Two trucks filled with murderous Hamas terrorists who dismount and then look for innocent people to kill. Extraordinary stories of Israelis who survived. Heartbreaking stories of slaughtered babies.

And yes, I look at the rubble of Gaza, piles of stone and twisted steel. I see the anguish of mothers and the abject fear of children. I see the weariness of rescue workers moving pieces of concrete in search of survivors. None of those images diminish my resolve to support Israel. This Palestinian misery is created with the calculated slaughter of Israelis by Hamas, the ruling power of Gaza. Hamas can construct elaborate tunnels and underground structures beneath Gaza, but who will not build a single bomb shelter for their people. Because they want to parade the suffering of their people as a kind of twisted banner of righteousness and liberation. It is the long game of war that the innocent will suffer. It has always been thus. And my heart aches for these innocent Gazan children.

At a certain point, I want to – I long to – turn it off. But I can’t. I am a grieving bug stuck in the amber of a million tears. In some ways, this reminds me of how I felt on 9/11, and 9/12, and… Reading everything, watching it over and over, discussing it ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

After 9/11, I knew people who were directly touched and devastated by the actions of cruel terrorists. People who lost loved ones in a breathtaking act of violence perpetrated by nihilists with no regard for life.

After 9/11, I felt destabilized. I wondered what would happen and what the world would look like. I walked around a bit like a zombie, my arms outstretched, looking for balance, looking for life.

On those beautiful September days, I wondered if anything would be the same. Could I snap out of it? Would I be comfortable laughing and playing with the kids? Enjoy a meal? Listen to jazz? Or was I sentenced to a permanent shivah period?

The thing is, as Jeff Goldblum once famously said, life finds a way. Babies are borne. There’s B’nai mitzvah and weddings and brises. There is love. There is family. There is light. There is shabbat.

I don’t think that’s naïve. I think it’s simply the truth about our existence. Dwelling only in the darkness causes blindness. Dwelling only in the light also causes blindness. So, we must find our way:

וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר י֥וֹ אֶחָֽד

There is darkness, there is light, a first day, a new day.

Like sherpas, we carry the provisions as we search for the next safe plateau. Eventually, the fog thins, and we can see again. The vista does not look the same, and we will often think of that Shabbat morning, looking at the headlines, not believing how vulnerable Israel is and, by extension, just how vulnerable we are.

So, we gather and remember. We gather to embrace each other, assuring ourselves that we are not alone, that we are a proud, connected community, a temple with a history of banding together. We don’t need to walk like zombies when we are together. We give each other the gift of empathy, strength, and courage.

The war will be long, and there will be moments of deep darkness and pain. We are in this for the long haul, committed to our Israeli brothers and sisters. And we are committed to each other.