Category Archives: Ethics

Confronting Radical Jihadist Islam

16 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Jewish-Christian Relations, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Social Justice

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The more things change the more they remain the same.

As Jews read the story of the Exodus in synagogue during these weeks, our people living in France, Britain, Turkey, Belgium, and elsewhere find themselves confronting rising anti-Semitic passions stoked by radical Islamists and classic under the radar Jew-haters.

How ought we Jews to respond?

I am not one who believes that there is an anti-Semite lurking under every bed, nor do I believe that the world wants all us Jews dead. We have lots of friends and I believe that we are ill-advised to over-react. France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls said last Saturday: “France without Jews is no longer France.”

Yes, there has been an increase in aliyah to Israel in the French Jewish community in the last two years, and it is likely that more will do so this next year, but most French Jews are staying put and have no intention of leaving.

European anti-Semitism, of course, is nothing new, though this year’s spike since the Gaza War and Israel’s growing isolation internationally is of increasing concern. At the same time, we can’t delude ourselves into thinking that anti-Semitism in Europe today is anything like it was in the 1930s when anti-Jewish riots were government sponsored and backed. They aren’t today.

What is new is the spread of Islamic fanaticism around the world. Here too we have to be careful not to over-react. The truth is this – the vast majority of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world are peaceful, non-violent and want what all people want: employment, a decent living, education for their young, healthcare, and safety.

I have heard it said that since Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have sacred texts justifying killing, we can’t judge Islam differently than we would judge Judaism and Christianity. Though there are indeed such texts in all three religions, to ignore each religion’s separate and distinct historical and religious development is not only willful ignorance but dishonest.

Judaism’s most violent era occurred between two and three thousand years ago (1200 BCE to 70 CE) during the conquest of Canaan, the period of the Judges and Israelite kings, and foreign rule over the land of Israel culminating in the destruction of the Temple by Rome. From then on, Jews were victims until the establishment of the state of Israel which has been forced to defend itself against those who have sought its destruction. Though many harshly criticize Israel, wars of self-defense are morally justifiable in Jewish tradition and everywhere in the world.

Christianity too has a long and violent history beginning in the time of Constantine (3rd-4th century CE) and stretching through the period of the Church Fathers, the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, medieval Europe, and into the twentieth century.

Islam after Mohammed (7th century CE) conquered with dizzying speed at the edge of the sword most of the peoples of the Middle East, North Africa and Spain killing anyone who didn’t convert. In the last half of the 20th century, some estimate that 10 million Muslims have been killed at the hands of other Muslims throughout the world.

Indeed, facts cannot be ignored. Since 9/11 more than 24,000 terrorist acts have been committed around the world in the name of Islam. In the past twenty years, there has arisen a fanatic, extremist, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that has inspired thousands of cult-like loyalists to kill anyone they regard as infidels and strive to undermine and crush western democracies that they consider morally corrupt.

Though the vast majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are themselves not violent, Tom Friedman of The New York Times wrote this week that there seems to be ambivalence among too many “moderate” Muslims who may be partially sympathetic with the jihadists thus accounting for their silence in the face of so much terrorism.

What is needed now, Friedman wrote, is not a million person march of French citizens in support of tolerance, free speech and basic freedoms, but a one billion Muslim person march in protest against Muslim jihadist murderers.

I don’t know much about Islam, but a world religion that spawns so much violence has to be questioned.

Whereas both Judaism and Christianity have undergone religious reformations, Islam has not, and that fact combined with despotic rule over Muslims by oppressive regimes, a preponderance of poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment in many Islamic nations, make for a dangerous cocktail.

Ahmed Vanya, a courageous American Muslim and a fellow with the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, has written:

“Classical Islamic law…is definitely not peaceful or benign, and …not suited for this age; neither are its violent and grotesque progeny … Islamism and jihadism … it is the duty of us Muslims, using reason and common sense, to reinterpret the scriptures to bring about an Islam that affirms and promotes universally accepted human rights and values. It is our duty to cleanse the traditional, literalist, classical Islam and purify it to make it an Islam that is worthy to be called a beautiful religion.”

This weekend we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy and we read our story of the Exodus in synagogue. I welcome Ahmed Vanya’s voice and those like him in the Muslim world who speak in the true spirit of the prophetic tradition that is basic to all three great religions, for Vanya is clear as a true moderate and unafraid to stand up to the jihadists while affirming that the future need not be like either the present or the past.

 

Why Shas’ Success in the March 17 Election Would Be Good for Israel

11 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by in Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Social Justice

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I am an American Reform Zionist and in this year’s World Zionist Congress elections (the polls open on January 14), I am a delegate of the Association for Reform Zionists of America (ARZA) Slate #6 about which I will write more in my next blog.

I mention my allegiance to ARZA (which among other things strongly supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) because, oddly enough, this blog is an expression of my hopes that Shas, the ultra-Orthodox Israeli party that represents hundreds of thousands of Mizrachi Jews, does well in the next Israeli election on March 17.

This endorsement coming from me is admittedly strange and seemingly contradictory to my Reform Zionist self-interest given Shas’ past hostile attitudes towards non-Orthodox Judaism in Israel, women’s rights and other liberal causes. I support Shas for the sake of Israel’s democracy, long-term security, and hopes for an eventual two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It is unclear at this time, however, how well Shas will do in the coming election following the death of Shas’ spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a year ago and the subsequent hostile split of Shas into two opposing factions, one led by Aryeh Deri and the other by Eli Yishai, who hate each other. I am rooting for Deri’s Shas faction because he could be a key coalition partner to Labor’s Yizhak Herzog and Tenua’s Tzipi Livni and their new “Zionist” Party.

Why am I so supportive of Deri’s Shas faction?

Two reasons:

First – 50% of Israelis are Mizrachi Jews (i.e. the word “mizrach” means east – or easterners/orientals – these refer to Jews from North African and other Middle Eastern countries). These Jews culturally have much in common with the Middle East as a whole. They understand the Arab world, speak Arabic, and if there is to be a bridge in a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, Mizrachi Jewish Israelis may be that bridge. Though Mizrachi Jews are current members of the Knesset, the judiciary and occupy other leadership roles in the Israeli government, still Israelis from European backgrounds are in control. Ari Shavit explained in his book “The Promised Land” concerning the traumas and disabilities suffered by the Mizrachi community at the hands of European Zionists when they first came to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s and, just as there is still racism in American society, so too is their prejudice against Mizrachim in Israeli society.

Second – Under the leadership of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Aryeh Deri, Shas was willing to cede land for peace in an end-of-conflict peace agreement with the Palestinians. Should Shas get enough seats in the March 17 election and be invited into a coalition led by the center-left partnership of Herzog and Livni, Shas could end up being an important partner in galvanizing the Mizrachi community of Israel in support of an eventual two-state solution.

Of course, nothing is so simple in Israeli politics, and it is uncertain whether either the Deri faction or the Yishai faction will earn enough mandates in the next Knesset to make a difference.

The 91 year-old veteran Israeli journalist Ury Avnery, who fought in the 1948 War of Independence, is a former member of the Knesset and  a prolific journalist, published this past week a piece he called “Half of Shas” in which he argued persuasively, in my view, why a strong Shas showing in the March 17 election would be good for Israel and an eventual peace deal with the Palestinians.

I receive Avnery’s articles directly from him even though they are published in a variety of journals and newspapers. I expected this article to have appeared in 972+ Magazine or in Haaretz.

But no! It appeared in the English News in the Arabic Media Internet Network (AMIN), an independent non-governmental organization serving the Palestinian community. I was intrigued and uplifted that the Palestinian community is reading Israelis like Avnery.

For your information, AMIN has offices in Ramallah, Jerusalem and Gaza, operates an annual $300,000 budget the bulk of which comes from grants. Its mission is to promote a free Palestinian media, free speech, human rights, the development of civil society, democracy and accountability. Its supporters include (in alphabetical order) the British Consulate, Canada Fund, Catholic Relief Services, the European Union, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), Open Society Institute (OSI), United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the US Consulate.

Go to the following link to read Uri Avnery’s “Half of Shas” – http://www.amin.org/articles.php?t=ENews&id=4627

“The Ineffable Flame of God” – D’var Torah Sh’mot

08 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in Divrei Torah, Ethics, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry

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“The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man; no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned rules of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet’s words.” (Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel)

This week’s and next week’s Torah portions (Shmot and Va-era – Exodus 1-9:35) describe Moses’ first and second revelations of God, the first out of the burning bush (Exodus 3:2+) and the second God’s call for Moses to liberate the Israelites from Egyptian bondage (Exodus 6:1+).

Tradition regards Moses as the greatest of all the Biblical prophets, the only prophet to meet God “panim el panim – face to face” whereas the others encountered God in visions and dreams.

The prophets were solitary, lonely figures, often unpopular, hated and denounced by those whose lives they sought to change. They were all cast into a role they did not seek, often during times of great social and political crisis, and their mission was religious and ethical, this-worldly, bound in covenant and committed to the fulfillment of God’s will that human society be governed by high standards of justice, compassion and peace.

The “I” of the prophet, per Heschel, was God – never the prophet himself. The prophet was merely God’s mouthpiece, and when he spoke it was God who was speaking.

The prophet alternately, depending on circumstances, admonished the people for their ethical lapses and comforted the people in their suffering. He did not predict the future. Rather, he articulated the consequences of unrighteousness and evil practice.

The prophet placed the experience of the people in an historical and salvationary context thereby giving ultimate meaning to his/God’s words and hope to those who suffered despair.

Not every human being was destined for prophecy. God chose only those lonely figures who had primed themselves to be able to “hear” the divine voice. Moses, for example, had first to leave the opulent life of the Egyptian palace and witness first-hand the suffering of his people beneath Pharaoh’s yoke. Acting out of righteous anger and indignation at the injustices he saw, Moses killed an Egyptian taskmaster, fled Egypt and became a wandering refugee in the wilderness. Eventually, he settled into the humble life of a shepherd tending his flocks, a quiet life of solitude beneath open skies and star-lit nights.

The burning bush was, according to Rabbi Heschel, the paradigmatic scene of “God in search of man.”

The 13th century Spanish sage, Rabbi Bachya ben Asher, noted that God revealed the divine Self gradually to Moses:

“Since this was Moses’ first experience of prophecy the Almighty wished gradually to initiate him and raise him by stages until his spiritual perceptions were strengthened.” Thus, the narrative “underlines that Moses achieved the perception of three things: the fire, the angel and the Shechinah [the feminine presence of God].”

Moses first noticed the physical fire, then the angel appeared to him in a flame, and finally God called out to him from the bush. Moses “saw” God with his ears and he “heard” God’s voice with his eyes.

This singular experience characterizes a prophetic moment, all-encompassing, beyond the rational and imaginative faculties, a psychic intuition.

The following poem by Rabbi Heschel describes the life and experience of the prophet. When asked if he (Heschel) was a prophet, Rabbi Heschel rejected the idea entirely.

“God follows me everywhere / Spins a net of glances around me, / Shines upon my sightless back like a sun.

God follows me like a forest everywhere. / My lips, always amazed, are truly numb, dumb, / Like a child who blunders upon an ancient holy place.

God follows me like a shiver everywhere. / My desire is for rest; the demand within me is: Rise up, / See how prophetic visions are scattered in the streets.

I go with my reveries as with a secret / In a long corridor through the world – / And sometimes I glimpse high above me, the faceless face of God

…

God follows me in tramways, in cafes. / Oh, it is only with the backs of the pupils of one’s eyes that one can see / How secrets ripen, how visions come to be.

The Ineffable Flame of God – Man. Poems of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (in Yiddish and English). Translated from the Yiddish by Morton M. Leifman. Introduction by Edward K. Kaplan. Continuum. New York, London. 2005. pages 56-57. Originally published in 1933 in Warsaw.

Shame on HarperCollins Publishers

01 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in Ethics, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity

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Shame on HarperCollins for publishing an atlas of the Middle East and deliberately omitting Israel from the map. Tablet Magazine reported (December 31):

“Collins Bartholomew, the subsidiary of HarperCollins that specializes in maps, told The Tablet that including Israel would have been ‘unacceptable’ to their customers in the Gulf and the amendment incorporated ‘local preferences’.”

Tablet also reported:

“The publishers HarperCollins is withdrawing from sale an atlas that omitted Israel from its maps after the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales said it was harmful to peace efforts in the Middle East.

The Tablet’s story about the Middle East Atlas which shows Jordan and Syria extending all the way to the Mediterranean Sea was widely reported and caused an international outcry. Collins Middle East Atlases, were sold to English-speaking schools in the Muslim-majority Gulf and publicity about their existence has embarrassed the publishing giant.”

While HarperCollins deserves a huge helping of New Year’s shame for its unconscionable deed, the Bishop’s Conference of England and Wales deserves our gratitude, though the omission was far more than simply being “harmful to peace efforts in the Middle East.”

This omission constitutes a denial of the historical record, the delegitimization of the state of Israel and the creating of an alliance of the book publisher with those who would deny the right of the Jewish people to a state of our own. This constitutes anti-Semitism, pure and simple, or at the most it indicates the catering to classic anti-Semitism. The omission was also a denial of the United Nation’s charter and Israel’s membership in that august body representing the family of nations.

See http://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/1579/0/publisher-harpercollins-omits-israel-from-school-atlas-to-meet-local-preferences-

See http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/12/living-in-a-world-gone-mad-2.php

The Difference Between an Optimist and a Pessimist – D’var Torah Vayechi

01 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Jewish Identity, Jewish-Christian Relations, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Tributes

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The optimist says, “This is the best of all worlds.”

The pessimist says, “You’re right!”

As we enter 2015 there is much for which we can be thankful: our lives, our health (hopefully), our families, friends, and community, the people of Israel, and our friendships with peoples of all faith, ethnic and national traditions.

Of course, there’s much about which to worry as well: hard-heartedness, selfishness, alienation, polarization, poverty, inequality, injustice, violence, and war.

A thousand mourners  filled the Sanctuary of Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles last Sunday to memorialize the congregation’s founding Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman, which they did with uncommon love and respect for his brilliance, wisdom, kindness, love for Jews, the state of Israel, all people, and a higher moral order.

Throughout his life, Leonard’s dogged determination to keep the fires of love, compassion and justice burning elevated the rest of us by virtue of the nobility of his spirit. So many people from a variety of religious communities depended upon Leonard to help them set the direction of their moral compass. He was a spiritual and moral “north star” that pointed his community in the direction he thought it ought to be traveling.

Surely, Rabbi Leonard Beerman was a unique human being and an exceptional rabbi, and I for one feel lonelier in our world now that he is gone. As I indicated in my remembrance last week, I didn’t see Leonard all that frequently (much more in recent years than before), but I knew he was there holding a moral and spiritual torch high for so many of his chassidim, who may not always have agreed with him on this position or that, or who thought about ethics a bit differently than he did, but who took him and what he once called his “notions” very seriously indeed.

Leonard was laid to rest during this week in which we are reading Parashat Vayechi, the final portion in the book of Genesis when Jacob blessed his sons and grandsons.

The portion opens while Jacob’s family is in Egypt, a constricted place defined by injustice, slavery, brutality, insensitivity, and exile. Among the darkest of Torah portions, it begins unlike any other portion in all of Torah.

Rashi asked, “Why is this section completely closed? Why isn’t there a space of nine letters between the end of the preceding parashah and the beginning of this one, as it is in every other Torah portion?”

Rashi says: “When Jacob our father died, the eyes and hearts of Israel were closed because of the affliction of the bondage with which the Egyptians began to enslave them.”

The Midrash explains that “Jacob desired to reveal the end (i.e. the time of the final redemption) to his sons, but it was closed from him.” (B’reishit Rabba)

This suggests that the hardship, distress and violence of Egypt (or any constricted life) blind the eye, harden the heart and oppress the soul. Torah reminds us that we can never become resigned to a world of dog-eat-dog. Rather, because we were created “b’tzelem Elohim – in the divine image” every human being is infused with infinite value and worth. As such, we are meant to dream big dreams, to climb Jacob’s stairway to heaven, to reclaim our best angels, and to remember who we are and what is our purpose on earth as Jews – namely, to sanctify life, to walk humbly before God, and to care with compassion for all of God’s creatures.

Parshat Veyechi is a story about opposites – impending hardship vs blessing, despair vs hope, hard-heartedness vs elevated dreams. Tradition teaches us Jews to embrace both extremes, but to reach higher than what circumstances seem to allow.

Such was the nature of Jacob’s times. Such is the nature of our times. Such was the nature of Rabbi Leonard Beerman’s life.

Jacob wanted so badly to reveal the end of days to his children, but “nistam mimenu – it was closed to him.” Sadly, It remains closed to us as well.

“Lamrot hakol – despite everything” Leonard sought the light as we Jews seek the light, and he prayed for the peace of Jerusalem and for justice and security for Israel and the Palestinians, for common decency for all humankind, as we Jews must also pray.

Next week begins the reading of the book of Exodus when we witness the beginnings of the spiritual nationhood of the Jewish people at Mount Sinai as we entered into a sacred covenant with God.

Because we see reflected sparks of divinity in the human condition, we Jews are essentially optimists who regard the half-full glass and seek to fill that which is empty.

May this secular New Year 2015 be a time when we continue the work to help facilitate greater kindness, compassion, justice, healing, and peace for us in our own lives, families and communities, for the Jewish people and for all of God’s children.

The Measure of Our Success – D’var Torah Vayigash

26 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Beauty in Nature, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Life Cycle, Quote of the Day

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As 2014 comes to a blessed close, our world continues to escalate in brutality, is more politically fragile, religiously challenged, and morally confused than ever before. In times such as these it is worthwhile to consider once again who we are and how we might measure our personal, societal and international well-being. In this I am reminded of Churchill’s words that a successful person will “be… able to go from one failure to the next without losing enthusiasm.”

This week’s Parashat Vayigash has something to teach us about the importance of our attitude. In these closing chapters of Genesis we come to the climax of the Joseph narratives. The crown prince meets his brothers after 20 years of exile and reveals himself. As they cower before him, he forgives them and makes peace. Then he settles his father Jacob in the land of Goshen.

Pharaoh meets Jacob and one old man asks another: “Jacob – How many are the years of your life?”

“The years of my sojourn on earth are one hundred and thirty. Few and hard have been the years of my life, nor do they come up to the life-spans of my fathers during their sojourns.” (Genesis 47:8-9)

This seems an odd response given Jacob’s manifold blessings. Recognizing Jacob as a kvetch, the Midrash (B’reishit Rabba 95) brings an incredulous God into the conversation:

“Jacob: ‘I saved you from Esau and Laban; I brought Dinah back to you, as well as Joseph, and you complain that your life has been short and evil?’ [If so] I’ll count the words of Pharaoh’s question to you and your response, add them together and shorten your life [by that number of years – 33] so you’ll not live as long as your father Isaac, who lived to 180.’ Jacob lived 147 years.”

What happened to Jacob that he should be so negative at this point in his life? After all, he had 4 wives, 13 children and many grandchildren. His son Joseph had become the second most powerful man in the world, and he himself had encountered God twice, in a dream and at a river, but Jacob could only complain!

Where was the gratitude? That this conversation with Pharaoh should come just after Jacob had been reunited with Joseph, his favorite son, is disheartening and disturbing.

Truth to tell, we all know people like this who see their lives through a negative prism – parents who fixate on their children’s weaknesses and failings; marriages that dissolve because one partner won’t let go of past slights; people who refuse to see the half-full glass and always negatively spin whatever happens to them; others who refuse to overcome disappointments and predict instead a negative future on the basis of past hardship repeating the familiar cynical refrain regardless of new opportunities that could be very different were they not so stuck in their approach and negative attitude to the world.

In his book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen Covey concludes that the most well-balanced, positive and proactive people, who live happily with others at work and home, are successful because they balance four dimensions of their natures: the physical, spiritual, mental, and social/emotional.

We may need to care more for our bodies, eat better food and less of it, drop excess weight, get sufficient rest, keep stress and negativity at bay, and exercise more.

Perhaps we have closed our hearts and souls to the experience of mystery, awe and wonder.

Maybe we are intellectually stagnant, our curiosity suppressed and our minds inactive.

Possibly, we’ve become jaded and numb to feeling, focused too much on ourselves without bothering to empathize with others.

The Midrash surmises that Jacob’s negativity and propensity to complain, despite his many blessings, shaved years from his life. Writing 1500 years ago, the rabbis anticipated what psychiatrists and scientists know today, that some illnesses and even some early deaths can be avoided if we take better care of ourselves in body, mind and soul, and paid more attention to those relationships of meaning and trust that we have with one another.

Robert Louis Stevenson described a successful life this way:

“A person is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent people and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his/her task; who leaves the world better than s/he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best s/he had.”

Wiser words have not been uttered.

Shabbat shalom and a happy, healthy, meaningful, balanced, loving, and peaceful New Year!

[Note: This is an edited d’var Torah that I posted here in December 2011 and in re-reading it, I realized that nothing substantially has changed in the world or in the lives of multitudes in that time – hence, its reprise.]

 

Israelis Have to Choose

23 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Social Justice

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It is clear that with the coming Israeli elections on March 17 that Israelis have an opportunity to make an important choice. There are essentially two options and everyone knows what they are. Each carries risk. The question is, which will most likely secure Israel as a democracy and homeland for the Jewish people while restoring Israel’s credibility within the international community, and which will not.

Option 1 – A negotiated 2 states for 2 peoples end-of-conflict agreement with international and moderate Arab support that would create a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza alongside the State of Israel. The two states would have clear borders based on the 1967 lines with adjustments made to include within Israel the large Israeli settlement blocks thus embracing 80% of Israeli settlers into Israel. Land swaps of equivalent land would be included in the state of Palestine. East Jerusalem would become the capital of Palestine and the world would at last recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal capital. Security guarantees would be set for the holy city. The West Bank and Gaza would be demilitarized except for Palestinian police forces. All Palestinian refugees would have the right of return to Palestine and not to Israel with limited family reunification in Israel. Those Palestinians who wish to carry Palestinian citizenship and stay in Israel could do so, and the same could be said of Israelis who choose to live in the new State of Palestine. Each would be subject to the laws of the state in which they live. Israel would end its occupation of the West Bank and it would remove all restrictions from Gaza except for the importing of military weaponry. There would be no “Greater Israel” and no “Greater Palestine” in the future. Peace agreements would be forged between Israel and all moderate Arab and Muslim nations. There would be an end to the BDS movement against Israel as well as an end to all threats against Israel by the UN, the Hague and international criminal courts. UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) would be completely dismantled. The international community would assist the new state of Palestine in every way possible to survive economically. Gaza would be rebuilt. Gaza and the West Bank would be linked with a secure rail system thus enabling the Palestinians to move themselves and their goods freely between these two areas of the state of Palestine without having to pass through Israel.

Risks with Option 1 – There likely will continue to be sporadic terrorism against Israelis from Palestinian rejectionists and extremists that would have to be handled forcefully by both Israeli and Palestinian security forces working in tandem with each other, as they have been doing effectively in the West Bank. If the peace falls apart, there likely would be continued armed conflict. Israeli extremists who do not accept this agreement and act out violently against Palestinians or the IDF would have to be forcefully restrained, arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned.

Option 2 – The status quo continues with eventual Israeli annexation of the West Bank resulting in a one-state solution of the conflict embracing all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and including its 2.5 million hostile Palestinian Arab residents. Either these Palestinians would become voting citizens of the state of Israel in which case Israel will cease to be a Jewish state because the populations between Jews and Arabs will be equal, or they are denied Israeli citizenship and the right to vote in which case Israel will cease to be a democracy. Israel would continue to build more settlements everywhere with potential efforts to force or induce Palestinians living in the West Bank to leave their homes and live outside the state of Israel.

Risks with Option 2 – Increasingly, Israel will be internationally isolated and there will be permanent war. European parliaments are already voting to support a Palestinian state and that will continue. Strains between the United States and Israel will also continue with a clear possibility that the United States’ special relationship with Israel will diminish and evaporate. Should that happen, the pro-Israel American Jewish community will have an increasingly difficult time making Israel’s case before Congress and the President. Anti-Semitic attacks will likely multiply around the world against synagogues, Jewish community centers and institutions, and against individual Jews walking the streets. Israel will become a pariah nation and the Zionist dream of the Jewish state being the greatest experiment in the history of Jewish ethical living will be destroyed.

It should be obvious to anyone with his/her eyes open that time is not working in Israel’s favor. Despite recalcitrance by the Palestinian leadership and their abject failure to educate their children and societies for peaceful coexistence with Israelis, as well as many missed diplomatic opportunities to move forward towards a two-state solution, a new Israeli government that is committed to both Israel’s security and settling this conflict once and for all in a two-state solution (as the new party led by Labor’s Yitzhak Herzog and Tenua’s Tzipi Livni) may well open up new possibilities for partnership with Palestinian leaders who wish to live in peace side by side with the state of Israel in a state of Palestine. There are many such leaders but as the politics have become increasingly polarized, their voices have been stilled.

This is the time for the Israeli electorate to choose, and we ought to support those Israeli politicians who we believe are best capable of delivering a secure, Jewish and democratic future for the state of Israel.

Yes, the situation is complicated and dangerous.

Yes, there is enormous mistrust between the two sides.

Yes, there are extremists in each community (Israeli and Palestinian) who are making progress very difficult.

But, ein breira – there is no alternative except to keep trying and then to keep trying some more. There is too much at stake for the state of Israel and the Jewish people not to give our support to those who favor Option #1 above.

The New Republic – Say Kaddish

09 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Jewish Identity

≈ 1 Comment

My friend and colleague, Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, has written a superb “eulogy” for an American institution, The New Republic in The Jewish Daily Forward, that everyone should read. http://forward.com/articles/210524/the-nu-republic-no-more/

As I try and wrap my mind and heart around what The New Republic’s young, arrogant owner Chris Hughes did is difficult to fathom.

For those not following this sad assault on an American intellectual institution, here is the piece in The Washington Post from a few days ago written by Dana Milbank, a former writer at The New Republic, that ought to be read along with Jeffrey’s superb eulogy above – http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-the-new-republic-is-dead-thanks-to-its-owner/2014/12/08/ae80da42-7ee0-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

The sheer arrogance of Hughes is what is most confounding to me – to buy something he clearly did not understand, change its mission unilaterally, fire Franklin Foer, the respected editor without even telling him personally that he was being replaced, and then to justify what he has done, still not understanding the impact of his deed, is the definition of both hubris and stupidity. This is a very sad moment in America’s journalistic history.

Kindnesses That Last Forever

08 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Jewish History, Quote of the Day, Tributes

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When I was in Central Europe last month with thirty of my congregants touring formerly great Jewish centers of life in Budapest, Prague and Berlin, the Holocaust was everywhere we went. Memories of the cruelty and brutality so oppressed members of our group that many of us reflected that, despite how worthwhile our tour was, we had never returned from travel feeling as demoralized, depressed and sad as we did from this trip.

Since our return I recalled an act of kindness once shown to me by one of my rabbinical school professors. It took place forty years ago, but his loving concern for me has never faded from my heart and memory. Juxtaposed to what we experienced in Central Europe, what he did for me is a stark contrast to what we witnessed in the cities of our recent travel.

One of my Talmud teachers at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles was Dr. Abraham Zygelboim (z’l). As a rabbinic student in my mid-20s, I had suffered a painful break-up with my then-girlfriend, and I was emotionally devastated. Between classes one day I needed to take a few minutes for myself, so I walked outside, sat against a wall and wept.

Out of nowhere Dr. Zygelboim approached me quietly and kissed my forehead without ever saying a word. His sweetness stays with me and will all the days of my life.

Dr. Zygelboim was a gentle man, a Polish Holocaust survivor whose brother, Szmul Zygelboim, was a political leader in the Jewish community of Warsaw before the Nazi occupation. Szmul managed to escape Poland and advocated on behalf of the persecuted Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe as powerfully as he could in the United States and Great Britain. Deeply frustrated that the allies were neglecting to stop the slaughter of the Jewish people, and as a public act of protest, Szmul set himself on fire in front of the Parliament in London on May 12, 1943.

Szmul’s brother, my teacher, never spoke to us, his students, of his experience in the Shoah or of his brother’s ultimate and courageous act of protest. But we knew of it.

Dr. Zygelboim knew Talmud, and I was lucky to learn with him. But frankly, I do not remember the specifics of any particular lesson he taught me forty years ago, though I remember the sections of Talmud we learned with him – but I do remember his kiss on my forehead.

We are, each of us, powerful beings, and we often underestimate our capacity to touch others. Indeed, how we treat others and the way we speak to them defines not only our relationships with them, but our nature and the measure of our character.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said towards the end of his life: “When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”

It is, of course, not always easy to be kind – especially when confronted by obstinate, difficult and offensive individuals. The moralist and essayist Joseph Joubert offered this in such circumstances, “Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.”

Leo Buscaglia offers this certain truth: “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”

An Open Letter to Young American Jewish Liberals About Israel

28 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Social Justice, Women's Rights

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This past month I exchanged emails with a bright, Jewish American rabbinical student living in Jerusalem who grew up in my congregation, whose family are life-long Zionists, and who has become disheartened by recent events and trends in the state.

She rightly perceives a growing corruption of classic liberal Zionist principles, is shocked by growing racism in Israeli society, dismayed by the Israeli government’s conceptualization of the situation with the Palestinians, befuddled by ongoing settlement building and home demolition in East Jerusalem, and horrified that a liberal democracy can tell Israeli Arab citizens that they can no longer work in Israeli Jewish communities because they pose a “security threat.”

She is fearful that demagogic and oppressive forces are gaining popular currency in Israel and that the Israeli government is increasingly intransigent in dealing effectively with its many challenges.

She is disheartened, as well, that the chief rabbinate maintains coercive hegemonic control over religious life in the state, and she wonders whether it would be preferable to give up Israel’s Jewish character for the sake of preserving Israel’s progressive democracy.

All these trends have caused her to emotionally disengage from Israel, and she confides that she feels like a heretic and does not know what to do or how to think about Israel going forward.

In response I am writing this open letter not only to her, but to all American Jewish liberal young people who are feeling this disconnect with the state of Israel.

First, I want you to know that I am proud of you, of your critical thinking, of your commitment to live an enriched Jewish religious and ethical life, to be a learned Jew, and that you yearn to make sense of what Israel means to you.

Second, you are not alone. Shabtai Shavit, a former director general of Mossad, recently wrote about his similar concerns about the “future of the Zionist project” and the threats against it in the region and international community. Shavit harshly criticized Israel’s political leadership’s “…haughtiness and arrogance, together with more than a bit of the messianic thinking that rushes to turn the conflict [Israel-Palestinian] into a holy war.”

Shavit worries that “…large segments of the nation…have forgotten…the original vision of Zionism: to establish a Jewish and democratic state for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel…” and that “the current defiant policy [of settlement building] is working against [this vision].”

He called upon Israel to enter into conversation with moderate Arab nations (i.e. Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia) and negotiate, based on the Saudi Peace Plan of 2002, a two-states for two peoples resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that will augur, as promised in the plan, the complete normalization of relations between Israel and the moderate Arab and Muslim world.

Shavit concluded soberly: “I wrote the above statements because I feel that I owe them to my parents, who devoted their lives to the fulfillment of Zionism; to my children, my grandchildren and to the nation of Israel, which I served for decades.” (Former Mossad Chief: For the first time, I fear for the future of Zionism – Haaretz, November 24, 2014 – http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.628038)

As a rabbi who has served American congregants for 35 years and been an active Reform Zionist all that time, I wish to offer ten additional thoughts to our young liberal American Jewish community, as well as others, if this applies:

1. You are not alone in your worry about the dangers to the Zionist dream;

2. You are not alone in your concerns about the unequal treatment of Arab citizens of Israel;

3. You are not alone in your anger about the hegemony of the chief rabbinate over the lives of all Israelis;

4. Israel is far more than Jerusalem which is becoming increasingly more ultra-Orthodox and right-wing. It is also Tel Aviv, a society that represents modern Israel that can inspire you anew about Israel’s past, present and future;

5. Israel is not a “racist society” though there are Israeli racists, a distinction with a significant difference;

6. Remember to appreciate that Israel remains a vital democracy despite its flaws and its current (but resolvable) status as an occupying force in the West Bank;

7. Don’t be cavalier about Israel’s real security threats, but do not accept at face value that those threats necessarily legitimate every policy executed by this government as smart, right, democratic, and moral;

8. Don’t forget that many Israeli liberal organizations monitor and fight injustice in Israel and the West Bank;

9. You must be able to hold at once your conflicting thoughts and feelings about Israel while maintaining your active engagement with her;

10. Despite your disappointment, anger and frustration, we cannot afford for you to disengage from Israel. Though we are not Israelis and only Israelis can make the decisions vital to their lives and security, we liberal lovers of Israel need you to become our next generation’s leaders in American Zionist organizations that advocate for the democratic, pluralistic, nation state of the entire Jewish people.

Theodor Herzl’s famous statement is still true and instructive – “If you will it, it is no dream.”

We need you to keep the faith, and become the advocates that Israel deserves and we and the Jewish people need.

Note: There is something that you can do from the States to help make the change that we want to see in Israel. We are approaching elections for the World Zionist Congress which is Diaspora Jewry’s only democratic mouthpiece to directly affect what happens in Israel. These elections help fund our movement in Israel, and have significant political and institutional repercussions. This is one easy way to have our voices heard. Go to www.reformjews4israel.org