We Jews are like all people, only more so. Our talents are immense. Our hearts are huge. Our generosity as a people is probably the most pronounced of any people on earth. Our accomplishments are second to none. Our motivation to heal the world is not only a profound religious principle, but it becomes an obsessive fixation on the need for justice and compassion in the world. This is all to the good.

But, our stupidity is also legion; our fear, though justified by experience, leads us to say and do things that are self-defeating; our hatred and rage at the world as deep as any on earth; and of late our racism in Israel is a growing source of national shame.

The Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), based in Jerusalem, has taken the lead in calling out racist attacks on Arabs, misogynist policies against women, and irresponsible hate speech from ultra-Orthodox Rabbis against their perceived enemies.

Anat Hoffman (the Director of the IRAC) recently announced the publication “Love the Stranger as Yourself – Racism in Halacha’s Name” (http://www.irac.org/userfiles/racism-report.pdf) . The following is from the report’s preface:

“Love the Stranger as Yourself – Racism in Halacha’s Name is the first report of its kind collecting racist statements made by rabbis in general and by rabbis holding civil servants positions in particular. Rabbis making such statements are the minority in Israel. But their growing numbers and the legitimacy they enjoy must be a cause for concern and must be a spur to action. These rabbis undermine the foundations of Israeli democracy, incite hatred and fear, and besmirch Judaism as a whole with their message of Xenophobia.

It might be assumed that a person who devotes his life to sacred matters would be obligated to meet high standards of ethics and morality. In reality these rabbis are not called to account for actions that would be considered criminal offenses were they made by any other civil servant.

The Israel Religious Action Center is dedicated to fight against the government’s non-accountability with respect to racial incitement in the name of Halacha (Jewish religious law). Our commitment to this struggle stems from our profound commitment to Judaism and Israeli democracy.”

I applaud this work and the IRAC’s commitment to action, and I urge you to read the report in its entirety.

On Sunday, December 11 Alan Dershowitz appeared on Israeli television and called upon those critical of Israeli government policy and violations of human rights to “cool it.” Dershowitz was probably worried that even legitimate criticism of Israel feeds the global delegitimization campaign against her. I have written about that campaign in a substantial article in The CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly (Fall, 2011) and posted a link to the article both on this blog and on my synagogue’s web-site www.tioh.org.

Is Dershowitz right? I don’t believe he is. Since Jew-haters don’t need a reason for their anti-Semitism, our behavior should not be based on what they or anyone else thinks.  Ben-Gurion emphasized this point when he remarked that “It’s not what the Gentiles say that matters but what the Jews do that counts.”

As a progressive Reform Zionist it is my belief that in order for Israel to be a secure and great Jewish society reflecting authentic Jewish values there can be no dichotomy between Judaism’s prophetic and rabbinic strains of universalism and particularism. Jewish nationalism must emphasize the importance of each strain and envision our people’s national independence as a means of serving humanity as a whole; that is, to be “a light to the nations.” (Isaiah 42:6) Progressive Reform Zionism requires that social justice, egalitarianism, and equality be applied to all the major issues confronting Israeli society including Palestinian rights, minority rights, immigrant worker rights, women’s rights, poverty, education, and justice. The fundamental Jewish affirmation that every human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, means that each person, regardless of background, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and national identity is of infinite worth and value.

Like every great western democratic society, Israel is imperfect. Based on the above principles we Jews we can never settle for what is. Rather, it is our obligation to insist that our great Jewish society in Israel and Diaspora must live up to the highest standards of ethics and justice as articulated by the Biblical prophets and our rabbinic sages.

One of the leading advocacy organizations fighting on behalf of women, Bedouin, Palestinians, Muslims, foreign workers, and religious pluralism is the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC). It was created based on the above principles twenty years ago and has been a champion of human rights and civil rights ever since. The IRAC is joined by other critically important NGOs including The New Israel Fund, Rabbis for Human Rights, B’tzelem, and Hiddush.

Anat Hoffman is the IRAC’s Executive Director and one of my personal heroines. She spoke this past week at the Biennial Convention of the Reform Movement’s Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) in Washington, D.C. attended by more than 6000 Reform Jews from around North America, England, Europe, Latin America, South Africa, Australia, the former Soviet Union, and Israel. I am proud of the work Anat, the IRAC and Israel’s Reform movement are doing. Here is but a small sampling of their activity:

1. In response to gender-segregation generally, but specifically imposed on certain Israeli bus routes by ultra-Orthodox Hareidi rabbis (in violation of Israel’s 1992 “Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty”), the IRAC has taken groups of Israelis and American Jews to those bus routes, loaded the busses, women entering the front door of the bus and sitting where ever they pleased thus defying the Hareidi ban much as Rosa Parks did in the American south when she sparked the civil rights movement. While actively integrating those bus routes IRAC won a case in 2011 in which the Supreme Court ruled gender segregation on public buses illegal, a huge victory in IRAC’s goal to identify and end all forms of gender segregation in the public sphere in Israel, at the Western Wall and Western Wall tunnels, in funeral halls and cemeteries, in banquet hall elevators, grocery stores, and even pizza parlors;
2. In response to the presence of large numbers of Sudanese refugees who escaped Sudan and entered Israel across the Sinai desert and therefore have no rights in Israel, while the Israeli government wrestles with the issue of immigration generally, the IRAC and the Reform movement’s Rabbinic seminary, the Hebrew Union College, set up a child-care center for the children of these immigrants in the HUC building next to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem;
3. Jerusalem’s Reform Congregation Kol Haneshamah created an anti-tag corps to spray paint over the vicious anti-Arab graffiti painted by extremist Jewish groups throughout the holy city. Such graffiti includes “Death to all Arabs!”
4. Reform Israeli Jews, organized by IRAC, held solidarity candle light vigils at fire-bombed mosques (now 9) and contributed new copies of the Koran to replace those burned by right-wing vigilante Jews;
5. The IRAC is now pressing the government to charge 49 Hareidi Rabbis for extreme hate speech and racism. Of the 49 so identified by human rights groups, only 18 have been officially investigated by Israeli authorities. Of those 18 only 5 were charged with racist incitement. 4 of the 5 “apologized” and were released. One refused to apologize and was sentenced to 140 hours of community service in his own yeshivah;
6. IRAC initiated a case to file charges against Shmuel Eliyahu, Chief Rabbi of Sfat, for racist incitement, effectively ending his bid for Chief Rabbi of Israel and bringing awareness to and legal action against religious-motivated racism from rabbis receiving state salaries;
7. During Pesach every year, Reform Jews go searching for homeless Israelis in parks and invite them to community Seders and assist them to survive poverty.

These seven examples are the tip of the iceberg of what is happening daily in the State of Israel and in the West Bank. Alan Dershowitz’s advice to “cool it” to those who would criticize bad behavior cannot guide us in our fear of anti-Israel delegitimization and anti-Semitism. Rather, we need to heed Ben Gurion’s reminder that “it’s not what the Gentiles say that matters but what the Jews do that counts.” Israel’s human rights groups sustain not only Judaism’s values but also Israel’s good name.

For some time some West Bank Israeli settlers have been assaulting Palestinians and Israeli settlements have been incorporating Palestinian deeded land without resistance from the Israeli army. This official passivity contrasts sharply with the Israeli army’s vigilance in protecting these same Jewish settlers and their settlements from assault by Palestinians.

The Israeli human rights organization B’tzelem has published many reports on Israeli settler activities including the estimate that fully one-fifth of all settlements are built on deeded Palestinian land and that Israeli settlements control 42% of all West Bank land (http://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/201007_by_hook_and_by_crook).

I am heartened by this morning’s report (December 14, 2011) below from Media Line News Agency (https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/1343bce8895fcae7) that the Israeli government has, at last, decided to get tough with violent settlers now that these settlers are actually attacking the State of Israel!

A few nagging questions – What about the illegalities perpetrated by Jewish settlers that have not been addressed? What about the rights of Palestinians who have been subjected to settler hubris, hard-heartedness and criminal behavior for years without response from the Israeli army and Israeli justice system (arguably the only independent justice system in the Middle East)? And what about the moral values of Judaism and the Jewish people that have not been upheld?

Deuteronomy 16:20 (7^th century BCE) commands Tzedek tzedek tirdof! – “Justice, justice shalt thou pursue!”

The Mishnah (3^rd century CE) reminds us He-vei mi-tal’mi-dav shel Aharon, ohev shalom v’rodef shalom, ohev et ha-bri-yot u’m’karvan la-Torah – “Be a disciple of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing it, loving people and bringing them near to Torah.” (Pirkei Avot 1:12) 

[See my Sunday, December 7 blog – Reinvention of Hanukkah in the 20th Century: A Jewish Cultural Civil War to more fully appreciate that the forces at play battling for the heart and soul of the Jewish people, Judaism and the State of Israel are powerful, deep and ancient.]

“Netanyahu Vows to Get Tough on Vigilante Settlers”

“Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed to get tough with violent settlers in the West Bank, a day after groups of them attacked an army base and broke through a border fence. “I will fight this phenomenon with all my force until it is eliminated,” he said on Tuesday and instructed Defense Minister Ehud Barak to devise a “heavy-handed” plan to combat the “calamity.” The incidents were the latest in a growing number of assaults on the army, which extremists regard as an enemy for dismantling unauthorized settlements, and on Palestinian mosques and olive groves. But the extremists didn’t appear intimidated by Netanyahu. Hours after Netanyahu spoke, unknown attackers tried to torch to an unused mosque in Jerusalem and scrawled anti-Arab slogans on the walls. Meanwhile, a settler activist posted a message on a website calling on soldiers to sabotage equipment and block evacuations of settlements. (Media Line – December 14, 2011)”