Before Shabbat

A day before Thanksgiving, I had some last-minute purchases to make (I always forget something – this time, it was shallots…). It was a chilly morning, so when I got in the car, I sat back for a few moments to let the heat circulate and the seat warm up (yes – heated seats are a New England thrill).

I love sitting in my car sometimes. I’ve been known to nap while my car is parked in my driveway. It’s cozy and quiet and intimate.  

As I sat there, comfy and warm, I picked up on a feeling of anticipation. A certain stillness outside matched the tranquility in my quiet automobile. But what was it? What was I waiting for in my car, and what was brewing outdoors? There were no clouds in the sky. No sign of a tornado…

And then, suddenly, came a gust of wind—just a single, gentle puff.

That was the signal. All at once, leaves began to fall – so many leaves! I sat there mesmerized, watching the glorious cascade. Some leaves danced on air currents. Others just dropped straight down from their branches. I could hear them hit the roof of the car and the hood. The browned leaves and stiff stems made clicking noises on the metal and glass. It was a leaf storm, a spontaneous moment when Nature dictated that their lease was up.

I was blessed to witness the profound beauty of it all. And the truth is that I’m not a nature boy. I don’t go out of my way to enter the natural world. It’s not that I’m lazy (well, maybe a little). It’s just that hiking doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t enjoy sleeping in a sleeping bag. And things like gnats and chiggers and ants feast on my body. So, no thanks. If I want a fix of Nature, I can watch David Attenborough documentaries and listen to his glorious voice.

But the leaf storm was something different. It was a reminder that there are forces at work in the Universe, potencies so granular and yet so cloaked in mystery, how wind and temperature affect trees and their limbs. Why do leaves change from green to deep green to red to brown? Not to mention the power of dark energy, which we know is present even though we have no direct evidence. Or the origin of black holes. Or the likelihood of an infinite Universe…

There is so much… more than we will ever see, know, or understand. Forces at work that dwarf our sense of existence. This is all so compelling. It reminds me, even as I watch the Israel-Hamas war resume, with all its attendant fear and suffering, that all of it is dwarfed by a reality we can’t even imagine.

If only, for a split second, we could all engage in a 5 second simultaneous round of empathy for each other and then look up to experience the transcendence of the Universe and see our infinitesimal presence via the James Webb Space Telescope, we could laugh and embrace and share a good meal and an appreciation for the absurd and the fleeting nature of life and for the leaves that die and fall, only to be followed by more of the same.

October 7^th, 2023, is a date that will remain a part of Jewish consciousness for the next generations, perhaps forever. The trauma following in the wake of the violent and brutal attacks in Israel at the hands of Hamas terrorists continues to haunt us. Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been murdered in one day. In 75 years, Israelis were never stranded by the IDF. But on October 7^th, they were defenseless. The army let them down. Their leaders let them down. On October 7^th, 2023, the most dangerous place in the world for Jews was Israel.

Many of us felt untethered from reality in those first days, glued to the news, trying to understand the enormity of the Hamas act of terror. The statements of concern from many nations and organizations heartened me. I was surprised by the sincere support and empathy for Israel in the wake of such ruthless inhumanity. 

When the war began in earnest, when Israel started to bombard Gaza, I knew the goodwill would evaporate. I knew that thousands of innocent Gazans would die. I knew this because Hamas has stated quite clearly that they see the citizens of Gaza as a sacrificial offering. Hamas doesn’t pretend to protect their people. Storing weapons and ammo in a hospital, building a command center beneath hospitals and mosques, and risking the lives of patients and professionals are all part of a cynical, nihilistic plan to isolate and then destroy Israel. I’m not making this up. I’m not exaggerating. This isn’t an opinion; it’s a fact.

And yes, it’s a fact that Israel has pounded parts of Gaza to rubble. So many innocents have died or been widowed or orphaned. I don’t know how we take this truth in. There has to be a better way to fight this war. There have to be some humane options to alleviate some of the agony. This must be done for the sake of the suffering Gazans. It must also be done for the Israeli soldiers who are pulling the trigger, dropping the bombs, and firing the missiles.

But the thing that has most shocked me, that has inspired me to write to you, is the explosion of antisemitism all over the world. The latest statistic is that there’s been a 388 percent increase in antisemitism in America since October 7^th. That precipitous a rise is frightening. That so many of the antisemitic incidents are occurring on college campuses is deeply disturbing.

Some of you have directly corresponded with me. Others have spoken to their parents. We’ve had weekly conversations at the temple. Many of you are concerned. You’re wondering what to do and what you should say. Some of you have asked how we can turn back antisemitism.

Your questions break my heart because these are not issues I ever imagined we’d be discussing. I can’t quite believe it’s come to this. You should not be worrying about being insulted, harassed, or worse. You should not be made to feel unsafe by your peers or by a professor. You should be enjoying an independent and glorious life on campus.

But here we are.

1. There are no easy answers to any of these questions. No dialog is possible when confronted by irrational people yelling irrational and hateful slogans. If demonstrators in groups large or small are on a public street, the First Amendment protects their right to do so, even if you find it vile and upsetting.
2. Don’t engage in colloquy when you’re out on the street. They’re just looking to draw you into an argument, not a discussion.
3. If you are harassed on campus, you MUST MUST report it. The university is responsible for your well-being. It is inexcusable for you as a tuition-paying student not to receive protection. Talk to your faculty advisor. Talk to a provost. If you fear reprisals, call the local ADL chapter. Call ME. No one deserves to get away with this behavior – students or professors.
4. If you try to alleviate hateful antisemitic rhetoric to no avail, call your local newspaper and tell them your story.
5. You don’t have to live with this in silence. You do have allies willing to help you.
6. It is possible to stand with Israel AND speak of your desire for a peaceful resolution. You can voice your despair about innocent Gazans dying even as you rage about innocent Israeli lives taken by Hamas terrorists.

When you come home for Thanksgiving, you’ll find time to recharge. The short break may partially defuse the situation on campus.

Please remember: the Jewish people have a long history of persecution. Some folks hate us because we’ve made it despite many obstacles. Because we are the Other, the minority that doesn’t quite fit in. Because people are ignorant of Jewish history and don’t understand our struggles to achieve safety and a home of our own. Because in the words of my Wesleyan history professor, Nathanael Green, “Antisemitism is the glue that held Europe together for 2000 years.”

People are angry and upset with the unequal treatment of Palestinians from 1948 to this day. Those feelings are real. They must be acknowledged. But the feelings of Israelis must also be respected. Their fears, their experiences with terrorism for decades, must be taken seriously.

We need to keep our eyes on the shared future Palestinians and Jewish Israelis deserve. That means working toward a sustainable end to violent conflict as soon as possible. This end to violence will require stopping the bombing of Gazan civilians and civilian infrastructure, stopping the rockets aimed at Israeli civilians, the hostages being released, and Hamas being rendered incapable of repeating the attacks of October 7th. 

It’s a long, hard road ahead. We’re with you at home and on campus. Do not suffer in silence.

The air we’re breathing is thick with war. We see videos of rocket fire explosions lighting up the sky. We hear the sounds of sirens, of weeping mothers holding dead children, of desperate men clawing through rubble with their bare hands as they look for survivors. It is too much to bear. I want to look away.

Two weeks ago, while listening to NPR, I heard the beginning of an interview with a very articulate and angry Gazan. She described what was going on for her, an innocent noncombatant. My first reflex as she spoke was to turn off the radio. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. Not because I thought it was a lie or propaganda. On the contrary, I couldn’t stand hearing her story because it was real. She was sharing her struggle to stay alive, to look out for her elderly grandparents, and to keep her young children safe in a world where there is no safe place.

I didn’t want to listen because I knew I would feel empathy. I knew allowing for her humanity would mean I had to open my heart and feel her struggle. In this current disastrous moment, the last thing I wanted to do was to complicate the narrative.

Keeping this war a binary, good guy-bad guy struggle is not difficult for me. Hamas is unequivocally the bad guy. Their charter of hate, violence, and nihilism expresses a determined desire to wipe out the Jews from the river to the sea.

And here, if I may digress… Let’s be clear. A poster or a social media post that says, Free Palestine, I can tolerate. It expresses the desire for a Palestinian state. But when it says from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, it is not implying – it is declaring that the land of Israel will be, in the words of the Nazis, Judenrein, without Jews. It is not, as Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib stated, “… an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.” It’s a dog whistle connoting the opposite of peaceful coexistence.

Hamas is a brutal, uncompromising foe, and they must be destroyed, or at the very least, rendered impotent. The part that is not simple, not binary, is recognizing that innocent Gazans are humans. Their grief, their terrible losses, are all real. To turn away from a grieving mother, to change the station lest my heart break for a Palestinian man who has lost 12 members of his family, is terrible. It’s unforgivable not to pay attention, not to absorb the appalling pain of innocents. That is not who we are. Jews cannot look the other way.

We cannot surrender our empathy. To do so is to abandon the foundation of Judaism’s take on the world, that we are all created in God’s image. So we walk around with these multiple truths: that our people were murdered in cold blood, that our enemy must be broken, that the Occupation has been cruel, and that innocent people are dying.

The complexity of our reality is sobering. It’s morally and spiritually complicated. This is why the pro-Palestinian demonstrations happening all over the world concern me. There is no acknowledgment of the deep history of the Jewish people and our attachment to the land of Israel. To label us ‘colonizers’ or part of the white, hegemonic empire builders of the 19^th and 20^th centuries is absurd. There is no nuanced perception of what it means to have been a persecuted minority for 2000 years. The sheer lack of empathy in so many letters, demonstrations, and protests regarding Jews and our connection to Israel is staggering and dangerous.

I am standing for Israel proudly and without reservation. And as a Jew standing for Israel, I am raising up my empathy for innocent people dying in Gaza. I refuse to turn away as much as I may want to do so. I will not shrug my shoulders and say, “c’est la guerre”. This makes the road ahead dark and opaque. But I will not surrender my empathy for others. And I challenge those demonstrators who turn away from my narrative to put down the poster for a moment to accept the challenge to empathize. There is too much at stake.

With all the madness in the world, Halloween was a welcome diversion. Looking at the cute costumes is always fun. Marveling at the increasingly elaborate, macabre yard decorations is hysterical. Some are pretty scary, including the spooky tombstones and skeletons rising from the dead. Add the multicolored lights and some occasional screams and groans from hidden speakers (“Alexa. Play scary sounds!”), and you’ve got lots of ghostly amusement.

My street, just off Washington St in Newton Corner and a block away from an eastbound Mass Pike entrance ramp, has become, over the years, a true Halloween magnet. Hundreds of kids – and I mean, HUNDREDS, parade up and down the avenue. I estimate that I saw about 500 kids, which is down a bit from last year, very likely because of the chilly weather.

As I poured my candy into a large soup kettle, I anticipated the particular joy I experience passing out the sweets. I particularly love the nervous and slightly overwhelmed little ones, their parents coaching them on what to say. Then there’s the roving packs, usually slightly older kids, trick or treating without their parents. They can be wise guys, insolent, and sarcastic. I sass them back, and they love it. I was ready for the evening rush.

I looked at our walkway. Our “We Stand With Israel” placard was boldly planted right there. I paused for a moment and began to wonder. What does this sign mean to me? Why did I put it in our yard? The answer is apparent to me: now, more than ever, I need to publicly proclaim my love of Israel and the people who live there. I need to publicly reaffirm my connection to Israel, a connection that has been ineluctably tied to my soul since I was twelve.

I realized that the kids and their parents would all walk right past my sign on their way to my front door. This made me pause for a moment. A catalog of “what ifs” began to form in my mind. What if kids pull it down? What if some anti-Israel people rip it down and get nasty? What if one of those wiseguy gangs starts to dare each other to do or say something offensive? I mean, it could happen… So… should I move it just for Halloween night?

I stopped in mid-thought. And I got angry – with myself. There is no way in the world I will move that sign. I will not be afraid. I will not hide. I will not knuckle under to anyone who wants to scare me or my people. I refuse to give antisemites what they want: my pride, my faith, my history, my autonomy. My father escaped the Holocaust – just barely. The rest of his family died – in Berlin or at Auschwitz. Our continued existence in the world is something Jews NEVER take for granted. We are thankful for our freedom and our continued survival. And we won’t give it away. Hamas reminded us that right now, there are people bent on destroying us who will commit the most heinous, despicable acts of violence against us. And if that weren’t enough, some people have rallied in the streets of America to show support for Hamas. So hell no, I did not move the sign. I won’t hide.

I know some college kids are scared right now. Some Jewish kids are asking university registrars to change their names on class lists lest they are outed as Jews. They don’t want to be singled out by twisted professors or ignorant fellow students. I get it. I get their fear. Shame on the college administrations that have allowed Jewish children whose parents are paying a lot of money for their education to feel so marginalized, so threatened, that these students deny their Jewishness. This is what they call in Yiddish a Shanda, a dreadful, shameful act. I hope these Jewish students soon realize they are not alone and do not have to put their heads down and deny a legacy of wisdom and joy. Yes, the Israel-Hamas war begs a lot of questions, but it doesn’t change the fundamental truth of our tradition – it can’t.

Nothing happened on Halloween: no wise guy antisemitism, no epithets or insults. One of the kids in a middle school gang walked up to the porch and said, “Happy Halloween!” and then “Happy Birthday!” because, well, because he was a wise guy. Then he turned, saw the sign, and said, “Whoa. My mom will love this.” He took out his phone and took a picture. Then this kid, with an axe planted in the side of his head, turned to me and said, “Thank you.”

No trick. Just a treat.

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.