29 Sunday Apr 2018
Everything I wrote this morning is true, but there is much more to the equation. This isn’t only a matter about the current tensions and the Friday demonstrations, it’s about the horrible conditions of life in Gaza and how it came to be that way.
Peter Beinart writes in his must-read article in The Forward about all of this – “American Jews Have Abandoned Gaza – And the Truth”.
Read it here – https://forward.com/opinion/399738/american-jews-have-abandoned-gaza-and-the-truth/
29 Sunday Apr 2018
Posted in Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Jewish History
Notes: When the shootings of Gazans by IDF forces began several weeks ago, I wrote a blog calling into question the deaths of unarmed Palestinians. Since that day several more attempts by Gazans to breech the fence on Israel’s border on successive Fridays have occurred and, as Haaretz’s Amos Harel reports below, 44 Palestinians have been killed so far with many hundreds injured.
Since many of you do not subscribe to Haaretz (which I recommend) I am reprinting Harel’s most recent report below.
Before you read it, I want to say the following:
First – These demonstrations are controlled by Hamas. They are not peaceful. Many of those breeching the fence are Hamas fighters/terrorists and are armed. Unarmed Palestinians are being used as human shields, a war crime.
Second – Israelis are legitimately terrified that thousands of Gazans will enter Israel and attack Israelis. They want the IDF to protect them even as many Israelis regret the loss of innocent Palestinian lives.
Third – Israel is being portrayed in the international media as over-reacting. I do not believe this is true. Given what Harel reports, Israel has a security challenge and is behaving as responsibly as possible.
Fourth – Gaza shares a border with Egypt, but Hamas is not attacking that border. Why? Because Hamas wants to destroy Israel – not Egypt – and strategically uses every Friday to draw Israeli fire and thereby deliberately cause Palestinian causalities for all the world to see and to draw conclusions based on partial truths.
Fifth – As I said in my first blog on these recent events, we sitting here in America cannot second guess Israeli soldiers in the field in the midst of combat. The IDF has a clear ethical code in war known as “Tohar Haneshek” (lit. “Purity of Arms”) and according to Harel’s report, soldiers have been ordered to shoot at the legs and not with the intent to kill. That so many Palestinians have been killed is a tragic unintended consequence of war.
Sixth – Much of the blame for what is taking place on the Gaza border has to be laid at the feet of Hamas that has spent a fortune of money it receives from the UNRWA over the years to build a network of tunnels to attack Israel while not spending that relief money to build schools and hospitals and to rebuild apartment buildings destroyed in past Gaza wars.
Seventh – Israel has for years sent hundreds of trucks daily into Gaza filled with food and medical supplies. That truth has been ignored by most media and is unknown to most people in the west. I do not know whether these trucks are still driving into Gaza since the fighting began, but the world ought to know that Israeli trucks have provided badly needed provisions to Gazans who are suffering under a brutal Hamas regime. It also needs to be known that Israel has for some time established emergency medical camps just inside the Israeli border near Gaza and near Syria to give emergency treatment to Palestinians and Syrians in need.
And eighth – We Diaspora Jews need to give Israel the benefit of the doubt. Blaming Israel for the situation in Gaza is unfair and not truthful.
Here is Harel’s report today in Haaretz – a link to the article is at the conclusion:
He says legs are being targeted, but in some cases the protester bent over, a sniper missed or a bullet ricocheted ■ Friday’s attempt to breach fence was most violent yet, the officer adds
Apr 29, 2018 2:17 PM
Most of the Israeli army’s killings of Palestinians during the Gaza-border protests have resulted from snipers aiming at demonstrators’ legs, with the killings an unintentional outcome after a protester bent down, a sniper missed, a bullet ricocheted or a similar phenomenon, a senior officer in the Southern Command said.
The Israeli army has killed 44 protesters since March 30; it cites its efforts to prevent a breach of the border fence as Gazans demonstrate in their “March of Return” each Friday.
The officer told Haaretz that open-fire directives on the border only let snipers shoot at the legs of people approaching the border, and that a person’s chest may be targeted only amid the other side’s apparent intent to use weapons and threaten Israelis’ lives.
The officer, who was with Israeli forces at the fence Friday, said the demonstrators’ attempt to breach the barrier marked the most violent action by the Gaza Palestinians since their fence protests began.
Four Palestinians were killed by crowd-control methods and sniper fire, including a 15-year-old boy, and hundreds were wounded. Most of the casualties occurred in one incident near the Karni crossing toward the end of the day, when hundreds of Palestinians breached the barbed-wire fence that the army had installed inside the Gaza Strip. Dozens of protesters reached the border itself.
The officer said it seemed the protesters were acting according to a decently organized plan. The crowd bypassed the Karni crossing from the south and moved toward the border, led by young men using pieces of barbed wire and makeshift winches to try to dismantle the barbed-wire fence blocking their way to the border.
Those who managed to cross the barbed-wire fence attacked the border fence itself with firebombs and explosives.
The army says that its crowd-control methods don’t do well in large open areas, and that the commanders had no alternative but live sniper fire to stop the incursions.
According to the officer, the latest protest shows that Hamas’ leaders completely control the scene and that the clashes are planned and managed from above. He said the Palestinians were intentionally sending children, women, disabled people and the mentally ill toward the fence.
Two 15-year-olds and two journalists have been killed so far. Most of the other fatalities are young men, some of them affiliated with Hamas.
26 Thursday Apr 2018
Rabbi Akiva called the central verse in this week’s Torah portion Kedoshim: “Klal gadol baTorah – a great rule of the Torah.”
This verse is among the most famous in the Hebrew Bible and the most misunderstood – “V’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha… You shall love your fellow/neighbor as yourself….” (Leviticus 19:18)
The verse raises at least three questions.
First – how can we be commanded to feel love or, for that matter, anything else? We can’t, which means that the mitzvah to “love” must involve something other than feelings.
The spiritual teacher David Steindl-Rast writes that there’s one thing that characterizes “love” in all its forms – erotic, romantic, familial, tribal, national, spiritual, religious, and even love we feel for our pets. That one thing is found in our yearning to belong to and be connected with something greater than ourselves.
“Love,” he says “is a wholehearted [and willful] ‘yes’ to belonging” (Essential Writings, p. 73) with all the implications that attachment to, responsibility for and accountability with others bring.
Our yearning to belong inspires greater understanding of who we are and what is our role in the world. That yearning links us heart to heart and soul to soul with others, with creatures large and small, with nature, the universe, the cosmos, and God.
Jewish mystics taught a central truth; that we are physically and spiritually part of a vast Oneness. We share common origins and a common destiny with each other and with every people and nation. Consequently, we’re responsible for one another and accountable for how we behave with family, friend, foe, and stranger.
Too often our idea of “self” (as suggested in “You shall love your fellow as yourself”) is limited to our little egos. If that verse, however, is to mean something then we need to think about “love” differently; not as a feeling but as an attitude of the heart.
V’ahavta understood this way enables us to fulfill the commandment “to love our fellows” because our response to them isn’t based in a feeling but as an act of will when we take responsibility for others because we belong to each other as part of the great Oneness of humankind.
Second – What does it mean to “love” someone as we love ourselves?
Maimonides taught that if it’s ever a toss-up between saving our own lives and saving another, we’re obligated to save our own lives first.
Nachmanides added that what we wish for ourselves we must wish for others whether we know them or not, like them or hate them.
Third – Does this commandment demand that we “love” our enemies in some way?
No. Indeed, there are some people we can’t wish well as we wish for ourselves because their deeds are too heinous to tolerate or forgive.
That being said, I’ll never forget Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s words on the White House lawn at the signing of the Camp David Peace Accords with Egypt in 1978.
Begin told the world that the Jewish people considers it amongst the greatest of mitzvot to make of a “ra” ( an “evil” person – an enemy) into a “rea” (“a fellow” – a friend).
Though Egypt and Israel are hardly “friends” as we understand friendship between nations, since that day (September 17, 1978) there has not been one day of war between Israel and Egypt.
Though Judaism doesn’t command us to “love” our enemies, tradition requires us to give a penitent person a chance at reconciliation.
As a people we’re required always to act ethically towards everyone, including our enemies. In doing so we leave open the possibility of transformation should circumstances warrant (see Exodus 23:4).
It’s difficult to imagine peace given the hatred and mistrust that animates the current relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, but we ought to remember that once Germany was our people’s greatest enemy. Today Germany is the least anti-Semitic country in Europe.
Germany and Japan were America’s bitter foes seventy-five years ago. Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland were once killing each other. Today, these former enemies have laid down their guns and established peace.
The mitzvah of loving one’s fellows requires at the very least that we keep open our hearts to the possibilities of change in our relationships with our enemies for in the end, we are all related and we share a common destiny.
Shabbat shalom!
24 Tuesday Apr 2018
Posted in Ethics, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Social Justice
‘The Syrians are on the fences’ is a phrase used in Israel to describe the threat from Syria to Israel when the two countries were in an active state of war. Today this same phrase is being used to describe the Syrian tragedy, just beyond the Israeli border.
Kehilat Kodesh V’Chol, a Reform synagogue in Holon, Israel (near Tel Aviv) (and my own synagogue’s sister-Israeli Reform synagogue) is helping an Israeli organization called “Just Beyond Our Border” to raise money through a congregation-wide bake sale to help Syrian children traumatized by the seven-year Syrian civil War.
Click onto this video. I have posted a translation of the narrator’s words below.
https://www.justbeyondourborder.com/english
“Since 2011 there has been a bloody war, right here, beyond the Israeli border. In these years, 470,000 people were killed, nearly two million were injured, and 6 million people were exiled or fled their homes. We must see the truth as it stands before our eyes.
The Syrians are on the fences, homeless, starving for bread,freezing on the cold nights,getting up every morning to their own personal disaster.
We have to keep the children out of this tragedy. They need food, medicine and clothing for the harsh winter in the area. These children need us, all of us. They need good people to lend a hand.
It is our Jewish, human and moral obligation not to stand by and reach out to them.
“Forever is mercy built.” (Psalms 89)
Look for the ‘Syrians on fences’ and contribute.
Together, we will be on the right side of history.
22 Sunday Apr 2018
Posted in Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity
Author David Grossman, whose son Uri was killed in the 2006 Lebanon War and who on Thursday will be awarded the 2018 Israel Prize for Literature, addressed bereaved Israelis and Palestinians at an alternative Memorial Day event on April 17, 2018. Below is the full text of his speech.
“Dear friends, good evening.
There is a lot of noise and commotion around our ceremony, but we do not forget that above all, this is a ceremony of remembrance and communion. The noise, even if it is present, is beyond us now, because at the heart of this evening there is a deep silence — the silence of the void created by loss.
My family and I lost Uri in the war, a young, sweet, smart and funny man. Almost twelve years later it is still hard for me to talk about him publicly.
The death of a loved one is actually also the death of a private, whole, personal and unique culture, with its own special language and its own secret, and it will never be again, nor will there be another like it.
It is indescribably painful to face that decisive ‘no.’ There are moments when it almost sucks into it all the ‘have’ and all the ‘yes.’ It is difficult and exhausting to constantly fight against the gravity of loss.
It is difficult to separate the memory from the pain. It hurts to remember, but it is even more frightening to forget. And how easy it is, in this situation, to give in to hate, rage, and the will to avenge.
But I find that every time I am tempted by rage and hate, I immediately feel that I am losing the living contact with my son. Something there is sealed. And I came to my decision, I made my choice. And I think that those who are here this evening — made that same choice.
And I know that within the pain there is also breath, creation, doing good. That grief does not isolate but also connects and strengthens. Here, even old enemies — Israelis and Palestinians — can connect with each other out of grief, and even because of it.
I have met quite a few bereaved families over these past years. I told them, in my experience, that even when you are at the heart of the pain you should remember that every member of the family is allowed to grieve the way they want, the way they are, and the way their soul tells them to.
No one can instruct another person how to grieve. It’s true for a private family, and it’s true for the larger ‘bereaved family.’
There is a strong feeling that connects us, a feeling of a joint fate, and the pain that only we know, for which there are almost no words out there, in the light. That is why, if the definition of a ‘bereaved family’ is genuine and honest, please respect our way. It deserves respect. It is not an easy path, it is not obvious, and it is not without its internal contradictions. But it is our way to give meaning to the death of our loved ones, and to our lives after their death. And it is our way to act, to do — not to despair and not to desist — so that one day, in the future, the war will fade, and maybe cease completely, and we will start living, living a full life, and not just subsisting from war to war, from disaster to disaster.
We, Israelis and Palestinians, who in the wars between us have lost those dearer to us, perhaps, than our own lives — we are doomed to touch reality through an open wound. Those wounded like that can no longer foster illusions. Those wounded like that know how much life is made up of great concessions, of endless compromise.
I think that grief makes us, those who are here tonight into more realistic people. We are clear-eyed, for example, about things relating to the limits of power, relating to the illusions that always accompany the one with the power.
And we are warier, more than we were before the disaster, and are filled with loathing every time we recognize a display of empty pride, or slogans of arrogant nationalism, or leaders’ haughty statements. We are more than wary: we are practically allergic. This week, Israel is celebrating 70 years. I hope we will celebrate many more years and many more generations of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, who will live here alongside an independent Palestinian state, safely, peacefully and creatively, and — most importantly — in a serene daily routine, in good neighborliness; and they will feel at home here.
What is a home?
Home is a place whose walls — borders — are clear and accepted; whose existence is stable, solid, and relaxed; whose inhabitants know its intimate codes; whose relations with its neighbors have been settled. It projects a sense of the future.
And we Israelis, even after 70 years — no matter how many words dripping with patriotic honey will be uttered in the coming days — we are not yet there. We are not yet home. Israel was established so that the Jewish people, who have nearly never felt at-home-in-the-world, would finally have a home. And now, 70 years later, strong Israel may be a fortress, but it is not yet a home.
The solution to the great complexity of Israeli-Palestinian relations can be summed up in one short formula: if the Palestinians don’t have a home, the Israelis won’t have a home either.
The opposite is also true: if Israel will not be a home, then neither will Palestine.
I have two granddaughters, they are 6 and 3 years old. To them, Israel is self-evident. It is obvious to them that we have a state, that there are roads and schools and hospitals and a computer at kindergarten, and a living, rich Hebrew language.
I belong to a generation where none of these things are taken for granted, and that is the place from which I speak to you. From the fragile place that vividly remembers the existential fear, as well as the strong hope that now, finally, we have come home.
But when Israel occupies and oppresses another nation, for 51 years, and creates an apartheid reality in the occupied territories — it becomes a lot less of a home.
And when Minister of Defense Lieberman decides to prevent peace-loving Palestinians from attending a gathering like ours, Israel is less of a home.
When Israeli snipers kill dozens of Palestinian protesters, most of them civilians — Israel is less of a home.
And when the Israeli government attempts to improvise questionable deals with Uganda and Rwanda, and is willing to endanger the lives of thousands of asylum seekers and expel them to the unknown — to me, it is less of a home.
And when the prime minister defames and incites against human rights organizations, and when he is looking for ways to enact laws that bypass the High Court of Justice, and when democracy and the courts are constantly challenged, Israel becomes even a little less of a home —for everyone.
When Israel neglects and discriminates against residents on the fringes of society; when it abandons and continuously weakens the residents of southern Tel Aviv; when it hardens its heart to the plight of the weak and voiceless — Holocaust survivors, the needy, single-parent families, the elderly, boarding houses for children removed from their homes, and crumbling hospitals — it is less of a home. It is a dysfunctional home.
And when it neglects and discriminates against 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel; when it practically forfeits the great potential they have for a shared life here — it is less of a home — both for the minority and the majority.
And when Israel strips away the Jewishness of millions of Reform and Conservative Jews — again it becomes less of a home. And every time artists and creators have to prove — in their creations — loyalty and obedience, not only to the state but to the ruling party — Israel is less of a home.
Israel is painful for us. Because it is not the home we want it to be. We acknowledge the great and wonderful thing that happened to us, by having a state, and we are proud of its accomplishments in many areas, in industry and agriculture, in culture and art, in I.T. and medicine and economics. But we also feel the pain of its distortion.
And the people and organizations who are here today, especially the Family Forum and Combatants For Peace, and many more like them, are perhaps the ones who contribute most to making Israel a home, in the fullest sense of the word.
And I want to say here, that half of the money from the Israel Prize that I will be receiving the day after tomorrow, I intend to donate and divide between the Family Forum and the Elifelet organization, which looks after the children of asylum seekers — those whose kindergartens are nicknamed “children’s warehouses”. To me, these are groups who do sacred work, or rather — do the simply human things that the government itself should be doing.
Home.
Where we will live a peace and safe life; a clear life; a life that will not be enslaved — by fanatics of all kinds — for the purposes of some total, messianic, and nationalist vision. Home, whose inhabitants will not be the material that ignites a principle greater than them, and supposedly beyond their comprehension. That life in it would be measured in its humanity. That suddenly a nation will wake up in the morning, and see that it is human. And that that human will feel that he is living in an uncorrupted, connected, truly egalitarian, non-aggressive and non-covetous place. In a state that runs simply on the concern for the person living within it, for every person living within it, out of compassion, and out of tolerance for all the many dialectics of ‘being Israeli’. Because ‘These are the living words of Israel’.
A state that will act, not on momentary impulses; not in endless convulsions of tricks and winks and manipulations; and police investigations, and zig-zags, and flip-flops backwards. In general — I wish our government to be less devious and wiser. One can dream. One can also admire achievements. Israel is worth fighting for. I also wish these things for our Palestinian friends: a life of independence, freedom and peace, and building a new, reformed nation. And I wish that in 70 years’ time our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, both Palestinian and Israeli, will stand here and each will sing their version of their national anthem.
But there is one line that they will be able to sing together, in Hebrew and Arabic: “To be a free nation in our land,” and then maybe, at last, it will be a realistic and accurate description, for both nations.”
19 Thursday Apr 2018
Posted in Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism
Palestinians are now marching with the intent to enter Israel through the Gaza fence every Friday until May 15 corresponding to the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel and to their “Naqba” (The Great Catastrophe). They have done this twice already.
The first week’s demonstration included about thirty thousand Palestinians. Despite the demonstrations being billed as non-violent protests, some Palestinians (stirred up by Hamas) threw rocks at Israeli soldiers and set fire to tires thereby obscuring the view with smoke for Israeli shooters to see the perpetrators of violence. Israeli commanders told their shooters to fire warning shots in the air, then shoot in the dirt, and finally at Palestinian legs. Israeli snipers killed between 15 and 20 Palestinians and injured close to 1400.
On the second Friday there were fewer protestors, perhaps between ten and twenty thousand. The Palestinians called it a “Day of Tires” (note the photo of the massive amount of smoke). Israeli shooters killed nine Palestinians, including one journalist wearing a journalist vest.
To date, about thirty Palestinians are dead.
What’s going on? Israel has a right to defend itself but the death of unarmed Palestinians ought to be of great concern to all Jews in Israel and around the world.
The Israeli human rights organization B’tzelem called upon Israeli soldiers to defy orders to shoot unarmed Palestinians. All Israeli political parties refrained from protesting Israel’s actions except the Arab list and the left-wing Zionist party Meretz. Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman charged that “Meretz has stopped representing the State of Israel and now represents Arab interests in the Knesset.”
What disturbs me is that Israelis and we American Jews have become so numbed to violence of this kind that we refrain from protesting the deaths of innocent Palestinians. We would not so refrain if the dead were Israelis.
Again, we don’t know if the shootings are wrong and we don’t know how difficult it is for the IDF to monitor the border, but B’tzelem isn’t wrong to encourage Israeli soldiers to refrain from firing on unarmed people even if they are ordered to do so. There are lots of other means of crowd control available to Israel than shooting with live ammunition.
Is Israel’s sense of the threat these Palestinian protests pose exaggerated? It may be that the shootings are meant to discourage future non-violent Palestinian demonstrations because the Israeli government doesn’t quite know how to handle them.
The Israeli Defense Forces have the duty to protect the State of Israel, but is the IDF doing it the right way? In Israel, there’s an ethical code that encourages soldiers not to follow unethical orders, and especially when orders are given to fire on unarmed Palestinians.
I would hope that every Palestinian killing is investigated by the IDF and if wrong-doing is discovered, those guilty are punished.
19 Thursday Apr 2018
April 18, 2018 – The statement below is issued by the organizations of the Reform Jewish Movement, the largest movement in Jewish life:
“We join with our Israeli brothers and sisters, the worldwide family of the Jewish people, and friends of Israel everywhere, to mark with joy the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel.
We take this moment to renew and reaffirm our Movement-wide commitment to ahavat Yisrael (love for the land and people of Israel), through our words, by personally studying and traveling in Israel, and by providing financial and political support to the State of Israel and our partners there. We work every day to defend Israel when she comes under attack, and we play a key role in advancing the crucial relationships between Israel and the countries in which we serve.
We know this to be true: The State of Israel represents the greatest achievement of modern Jewish history, reuniting millions with the land that gave birth to the faith and people of Israel. Following nearly 1900 years of exile – centuries of persecution and expulsion, that culminated in eras of both catastrophe and creative growth and innovation – the Jewish people are again sovereign on Jewish soil.
As the Declaration of Independence states, the establishment of the State of Israel “is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.” The Zionist dream has been fulfilled with the ingathering of Jews who sought refuge and fulfillment in a land holy to our people, and is continually renewed by ongoing technological, medical, and economic miracles. We are continually inspired by Israeli creativity and contributions to Jewish life and culture. We will not yield in our pledge to strengthen our ties to the Jewish state and to be strengthened by her.
Across her first seven decades, Israel frequently has been forced to defend herself against stronger and more numerous enemies that have sought her destruction. Israel has sacrificed for peace while maintaining the only democracy in the Middle East. At this critical milestone in Israel and Jewish history, we recommit to working for a secure and just Israel that exists side-by-side with a future state of Palestine. Additionally, we must work for the future, securing an Israel that fulfills the aspiration of its Declaration of Independence as Israel’s founders imagined when they wrote that the Jewish State will “uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of race, creed, or sex.” As tireless advocates for religious pluralism, we recognize that religious equality has been far too elusive for Israel’s growing Reform and Conservative Jewish movements and we remain committed to an Israeli society that recognizes the rights of all Jewish movements – and all Jews.
In the presence of both triumph and challenge, hope remains our compass. Today, we join with Jews throughout the world, celebrating joyously this milestone anniversary of Israel’s independence. We pray for the fulfillment of Israel’s promise as a thriving democracy, an exemplar of security and peace, a beacon of light and hope for all the world. “
American Conference of Cantors
Association of Reform Jewish Educators
Association of Reform Zionists of America
ARZA Canada
ARZENU – International Reform Zionist Movement
Central Conference of American Rabbis
Men of Reform Judaism
National Association for Temple Administration
NFTY – The Reform Jewish Youth Movement
Program and Engagement Professionals of Reform Judaism
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
Union for Reform Judaism
Women of Reform Judaism
World Union for Progressive Judaism
18 Wednesday Apr 2018
Posted in Holidays, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Poetry
Naomi Shemer’s beautiful song Al Kol Eleh (“For all these things”) was written after the Yom Kippur War. It remains one of my favorite Hebrew poems and Israeli songs.
23,646 Israelis have died defending the State of Israel, and many more injured. Trumpeldor put it poignantly before he was killed in the early 20th century – “Tov lamut b’ad Arzenu – It is good to die for our Land.” His courage, the courage of these Israeli martyrs, and the ultimate sacrifice that they gave to build and secure the State of Israel as a Jewish homeland will be forever impressed upon the memory of our people. Zichronam livracha – May they all be remembered for a blessing!
Yom Haatzmaut-Israel Independence Day is a time for massive Jewish celebration even with all the challenges internal and external that Israel and the Jewish people continue to face. Shemer’s words ring true and whenever I hear this song, my heart at once breaks and is fortified.
“Every bee that brings the honey / Needs a sting to be complete / And we all must learn to taste the bitter with the sweet.
Keep, oh Lord, the fire burning / Through the night and through the day / For the man who is returning / from so far away.
Don’t uproot what has been planted / So our bounty may increase / Let our dearest wish be granted: / Bring us peace, oh bring us peace.
For the sake of all these things, Lord, / Let your mercy be complete
Bless the sting and bless the honey / Bless the bitter and the sweet.
Save the houses that we live in / The small fences and the wall / From the sudden war-like thunder / May you save them all.
Guard what little I’ve been given / Guard the hill my child might climb / Let the fruit that’s yet to ripen / Not be plucked before its time.
As the wind makes rustling night sounds / And a star falls in its arc / All my dreams and my desires / Form crystal shapes out of the dark.
Guard for me, oh Lord, these treasures / All my friends keep safe and strong, Guard the stillness, guard the weeping, / And above all, guard this song.”
18 Wednesday Apr 2018
Posted in Holidays, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Poetry
As Yom Haatzmaut (Israel’s 70th Anniversary approaches) I offer this poem (and more to come throughout this week) to express both the beauty our people have brought to world Jewry as well as the moral and ethical challenges that come with sovereignty.
This poem written by the Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai expresses the aspirations of Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, and the political means by which Israel may enhance the dignity of all the people of the Land.
“Zionism was once a pretty young thing / like my cousin Tsila. / Boys caught sight of (her) – / and were ready to die. / Ahh, what days we spent among the cypresses / not far from Wadi Faleek! / What proud, honest mounds of manure I lifted / with Joseph Mintser at Kibbutz Merhavyah! / But political theses can turn into stinking corpses too, / And it’s better to leave them behind – / before we sink into an ethical mire – / In order to take up a new idea that might enlist / the stores of goodness within our hearts: / Namely, that equal rights be granted / to the children of this land as one, / That two cultures should flourish with dignity, / side by side, like beds in a single garden. / Let this be the girl whose beauty thrills us / And about whom we dream towards the summer’s end, / and through the months of winter.”
Aharon Shabtai (b. 1939)
17 Tuesday Apr 2018
Posted in Holidays, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Poetry
Last week the Jewish people commemorated Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), and this Thursday we Jews mourn those killed defending the people and State of Israel on Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day). On Friday, we turn our mourning into celebration on Yom Haatzmaut (Israel’s 70th Anniversary of Independence).
Throughout the week I will offer poetry that evokes the essence of these days. Here are words of the Russian Jewish poet Shaul Tschernichovsky (1875 – 1943):
“Laugh, smile upon the dreams / It is I, the dreamer, who is speaking / Laugh, for I still believe in humankind / for I still believe in you.
For my soul still yearns for freedom / I have not sold it to a golden calf / For I still believe in humankind / in his strong spirit.
I believe also in the future / even if the day will tarry / Yet, it will come and nation from nation / will carry peace and blessing.”
