The Mitzvah of Diplomacy and the “2 Campaign of J Street”

24 Sunday Nov 2013

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President Obama and Secretary Kerry are to be congratulated, along with Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany, for this diplomatic success between Iran and the P5+1 on the road to eventually eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons capability in future agreements.

Contrary to naysayers and cynics who say, including Israeli PM Netanyahu, that this is somehow a “bad deal,” one need only read what the agreement actually requires to realize that that this deal effectively stops advancement of Iran’s nuclear progress for six months, leaves most of the sanctions in place pending continued progress, while a stronger agreement is developed.

The President and Secretary of State are also to be congratulated on their diplomatic efforts to rid Syria of chemical weapons.

Each of these successes, despite them being imperfect, is a mitzvah because each pursues and effects the fulfillment of our duty to save lives (pikuach nefesh).

President Obama and Secretary Kerry are also to be congratulated for devoting enormous time and political capital in bringing the Palestinians and Israel to the negotiating table with the goal of peacefully and diplomatically bringing about a two states for two people’s resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Their initial efforts are only a beginning. The road will be very tough because a viable and fair peace agreement will require Israel and the Palestinians to make difficult concessions and compromises on all the core issues of borders, settlements, land swaps, Jerusalem, water, and refugees.

The alternative to an agreement, however, for the Jewish people is unthinkable – namely, the end of the Zionist dream and the erosion of the Jewish democratic state of Israel.

J Street, a pro-Israel pro-peace political organization in Washington, D.C. that supports a two-states for two-peoples agreement, has answered Secretary Kerry’s challenge to America and to America’s Jews to be part of the “great constituency for peace.” J Street’s response is “The 2 Campaign”:

The 2 Campaign answers Secretary of State John Kerry’s challenge to rally a “great constituency for peace” behind the administration’s initiative to achieve a two-state solution.

In particular, Kerry turned to the Jewish community to enlist our support, because he recognizes “no one has a stronger voice” when it comes to Israel. Most in the organized Jewish community are now on record supporting a two-state solution and have applauded Secretary Kerry’s efforts. However, too many are then quick to list the reasons why an agreement isn’t possible.

The 2 Campaign is a concerted effort across the country to convey to Secretary Kerry that he has the support of the American Jewish community and beyond in pushing negotiations forward, especially in the most difficult moments. Achieving a two-state solution is in the American, Israeli and Palestinian national interest.

Together, we will demonstrate the resolve of pro-Israel Americans to see a two-state solution reached. We will show policymakers and political leaders that we support US leadership in helping the parties make the difficult, but necessary choices with regard to Jerusalem, borders, refugees and security.

The 2 Campaign will consist of a major multimedia effort that will unfold as the negotiations progress, a national petition, educational outreach across the country and major events in key American cities. Join Us!

Become part of the solution – sign the 2 Campaign petition here http://www.jstreetu.org/latest/2campaign

Note that I am a national co-chair of the 700 member J Street Rabbinic Cabinet.

On Life’s Beauty, Meaning and Joy – In Memorial to Michael Weiner

24 Sunday Nov 2013

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I did not know Michael Weiner personally, but I wish I had. Since his death on Thursday of brain cancer at the age of 51, the eulogies have poured in from around the country, and by all accounts Weiner was the embodiment of what it means to be mensch.

A happily married man and a loving father of three daughters, Michael Weiner served as the Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA) since 2009, and had been involved in the business of baseball for many years. He was most widely known, respected, admired, and loved as a professional of uncommon ability, skill, integrity, decency, compassion, empathy, and humility.

Michael Weiner loved baseball. He loved the players and recognized that without them there would be no game. The business of the game, though important, in his mind and heart was secondary to the integrity of the game and the well-being of its players. He was so effective at building consensus in labor issues and so deft at simplifying and making understandable to lay people (he was a Harvard Law grad) complex legal and contractual language, that of the four major sports in the United States only Major League Baseball has been successful in negotiating a collective bargaining agreement ensuring 21 consecutive years of labor peace, largely because of Michael Weiner.

As if all this weren’t enough, Weiner also taught Sunday School at the Jewish Center of Northwest Jersey, and, as one might assume, the children adored him.

As Weiner’s cancer progressed (he was first diagnosed in August, 2012) he reflected about his life. It is this statement that led me to write this blog of memorial to a man I did not know personally. Its message is what all of us ought to emulate:

“As corny as this sounds I get up in the morning and I feel I’m going to live each day as it comes. I don’t take any day for granted. I don’t take the next morning for granted. What I look for each day is beauty, meaning and joy, and if I can find beauty, meaning and joy, that’s a good day.”

Zichrono livracha – May Michael Weiner’s memory be a blessing, and may his family and loved ones find comfort among all mourners in Zion and Jerusalem. Amen!

A Poem on Forgiveness – For Parashat Vayeshev

23 Saturday Nov 2013

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I can’t stop the dreams / That come in the night, / For even while awake / I’m gazing towards light.

My mother died, / My father sighed, / And he wondered / What might become of me / And my dreams?

Trusting a man along the way / I found my brothers lying in wait / To banish me from the clan, / And send me away.

They could not utter aloud / Even my name, / And, casting me into a pit / They spat me away / And broke my father’s heart.

My name had been written with stars – / But I became a slave  / And as flesh in a woman’s heart.

Her master, incensed / Sent me to Sheol, / But still a seer / I glimpsed a glow / And blessings bubbled / Into my dreams.

Alas, I was given reprieve, / Restored to the King, / And I served him faithfully / With shaven head, an Egyptian name, / Secure at his right hand.

There, alone, my heart hardened, / I trusted no one, / Neither man nor angel, / But I dreamed my dreams / And waited for redemption.

My brothers came, / Their faces forlorn, / Begging for bread / Before the throne, / Thinking me Viceroy, / With scepter in hand, / Not as Joseph / From their clan.

My heart had shut down / For twenty odd years / My love blown away / In cold desert tears.

As my father re-dug his father’s old wells, / Seeing my brothers / I recalled where I dwelt, / And water seeped up / Into my steeped-up heart, / To open me to love again.

I forgave them / And brought them near, / And saved them / from their fears, / As God intended / all these years.

Israel’s Chief Negotiator Slam’s Naftali Bennett as a Radical Minority on Settlements – Israel Journal Part XIII

21 Thursday Nov 2013

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Chief Israeli negotiator in the Israel-Palestinian talks, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, posted the following extraordinary statement about the settler movement and their representatives (Naftali Bennet’s Bayit Hayehudi party and the right wing of Likud) for trying to determine for the minority of the Israeli population what the majority of Israelis want, a two-states for two-peoples solution.

More and more former Israeli right-wing politicians (e.g. Tzipi Livni, Tzachi Hanegbi whose mother Geula Cohen founded the “Greater Israel Movement”, former Likud leader Meir Shitreet, and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, as well as all six living former heads of Israel’s security service, Shin Bet, as documented in the film “The Gatekeepers”) have come to the position that there is NO alternative to a two-state solution – NONE! A one-state solution is unsustainable and would end Israel’s democracy and Jewish character.

Minister Tzipi Livni wrote:

“Those who decide for the majority are in fact a radical minority which has taken control of our lives. …They call us ‘brother’ and ‘sister’, but the truth of the matter is that they don’t care about their ‘family’, they are motivated by narrow interest at the expense of our children’s future – with more and more announcements of settlement construction they attempt to prevent us from reaching an agreement which will secure the existence of a strong, Jewish and democratic Zionist state….Let’s stop for a moment and ask the people right now whether they are willing to pay the price for construction that might or might not happen, for building in places like Eli, we should ask whether we are ready to pay the price of serious damage to our strategic relations with the US, Israel’s isolation in the world, severe damage to our economy, a worsening boycott against us, ongoing damage to the legitimacy of the IDF to act, and the freedom of our soldiers to travel the world without fear of being arrested, and most importantly – the cost of losing our identity as a Jewish and democratic state….This is a direct, genuine question which is not related to whether we have a partner or not. What the impact is on security is a question that is related only to us: In what kind of country do we want to live, and what country do we want to leave our children.” I also want to make another thing clear: Violence will not bring political achievement. And we will fight against terrorism and extremists firmly and without compromise.”

-Chief Negotiator, Tzipi Livni on Settlement Building and Naftali Bennett’s Party Bayit Hayehudi, Ynet News, November 13, 2013 from Livni’s Facebook Page.

The leader of Meretz, Zahava Gal-on, said at the national conference of J Street in Washington D.C. at the end of September, “Bibi tells the world one thing and his policies are entirely different.”

I wrote about East Jerusalem settlements in former blogs, and the following article published by Al-Monitor, confirms those blogs and Geveret Gal-on’s observation of the discrepancy of rhetoric and actions of the Prime Minister and the government of Israel.

Netanyahu government ‘Israelizes’ east Jerusalem Al-Monitor – http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/11/jerusalem-two-state-solution-building-plans-netanyahu.html

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert – The Search for Peace and the Arab Spring

18 Monday Nov 2013

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I took the time to listen to all 90 minutes of Former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert’s speech about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Arab Spring, and American-Israel relations, and it was well worth my time – every minute of it! I recommend that you do the same (see link below).

Olmert met with Palestinian President Machmud Abbas 36 times to negotiate a peace deal, but had to resign before they could finalize an agreement. Olmert is clear thinking and direct, at times blunt in this talk! He admits, despite the complexity of the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to being “an optimist” and says that nothing ever improves unless “optimists” are behind it and who refuse to take “No” for an answer.

He believes “without a doubt in my mind” that the possibility for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is possible, but that it will take “leadership” to make it happen. To date, he says, Israel has demonstrated a lack of leadership.

The following introductory comment to Olmert’s talk was posted by Bernard Avishai on his blog, where I first learned of this speech.

Bernie Avishai is Adjunct Professor of Business at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Visiting Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, where Olmert spoke on November 12, 2013.

Avishai wrote:

“It’s hard to remember a blunter defense of John Kerry’s peace process, or statement of impatience with the Netanyahu government, than Olmert’s talk, …. [He] reiterated to me that he is determined to challenge Netanyahu the next time around; he is waiting for the Israeli courts to clear him of charges in outstanding cases against him. … Olmert listed, in private, an impressive array of people who’d be with him if things do fall into place. So if you’ve been skeptical of him in the past–and who hasn’t?–this lecture will be of particular interest.” 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqHFRxL6bb0

 

 

Secular Israelis are Studying Judaism by the Thousands – Israel Report XII

17 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by in Ethics, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Social Justice, Uncategorized, Women's Rights

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A new kind of Judaism is developing in Israel. Thousands of secular Israelis are turning to the classic sources of Judaism (e.g. Torah, Midrash, Mishnah, Talmud, Codes, Jewish philosophy, ethics, and mysticism) to gain deeper insight, wisdom and knowledge about our people’s essence and roots, and they are learning these texts not from Orthodox rabbis but from secular teachers.

What is emerging is a way of being a modern Israeli Jew that is more than the secular Zionism that emphasized the centrality of the land, the Hebrew language and political sovereignty, and which has nothing to do with the religious Orthodoxy that has alienated the vast majority of Israelis. It is a return, in part, to the Cultural Zionism of Ahad Ha-am that sought to inspire the flourishing of the soul of Judaism and Jewish peoplehood, but with a modern contemporary emphasis.

My synagogue group visited one of the centers of secular Jewish learning called BINA, also known as “The Secular Yeshiva,” located in the Neve Sha’anan district of Tel Aviv. As we entered we saw bookshelves filled with rows of beautifully bound religious books. That, however, is where the similarity with an orthodox yeshiva ends.

Most BINA students don’t believe in God, don’t wear kippot, tallitot, tzitzit, nor keep kosher. Women and men learn together, dress in shorts, jeans, tee-shirts, halter-tops, and sandals, and come from every segment of Israeli society and world Jewish communities.

BINA was founded by scholars from the kibbutz movement in the wake of PM Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. They pondered how a “religious” yeshiva student could murder the Prime Minister of Israel, and they determined to provide an alternative Jewish environment to attract young Israelis to learn about Judaism, counteract the extremism of the religious right, and close the gap between Israeli Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews.

BINA volunteers spend many hours weekly helping the poor, children, the elderly, infirm, disabled, foreign workers, and migrants. The center is deliberately located in a depressed area of Tel Aviv so its students can work towards tikun olam (“restoration of the world”) as an integrated component of their learning.

A week before coming to Israel, I attended the annual conference of J Street in Washington, D.C., (J Street is a pro-Israel pro-peace American political movement supporting a two-states for two-peoples end-of-conflict agreement between Israel and the Palestinians) and was fortunate to join a small group of J Street leaders for dinner with Ruth Calderon, a new Yesh Atid MK, who had addressed our conference.

Ruth is an Israeli academic turned politician with a Hebrew University PhD in Talmud. In 1989, she established the first Israeli secular, pluralistic and egalitarian Beit Midrash for women and men. In 1996, she founded ALMA which brings secular Israelis to study Hebrew culture. She became famous when she hosted a television program on Channel 2 that discussed classic Jewish texts.

Ruth’s first appearance in the Knesset (January, 2013) where she introduced herself to her colleagues took Israel by storm. It is considered the most unusual speech ever delivered by a new MK. Her 14 minute address went viral on Youtube with hundreds of thousands of views (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8nNpTf7tNo).

In that talk Ruth told her story, how she fell in love with Talmud, and that it is impossible to know one’s future without knowing one’s roots. She spoke about the importance in Jewish tradition of open and honest debate, of nurturing the values of inclusivity, diversity and tolerance in Israeli life, and that the state of Israel ought to provide equally of its resources to all religious streams and educational endeavors; not just the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities.

Ruth’s party, Yesh Atid, is committed to the principle of shivyon ba-netel (“sharing the burden”), that all citizens of the state have an obligation to serve in the military, work for a living, pay taxes, and that the here-to-for privileged status of the ultra-Orthodox has to end in order for both Judaism and democracy to flourish in the State of Israel.

In addition to BINA and ALMA, the Israeli Reform movement (i.e. “Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism – IMPJ”) has grown in recent years attracting thousands of Israelis from secular backgrounds to practice liberal religious Judaism.

The IMPJ includes nearly 50 synagogue centers throughout the country, with adult learning led by Israeli Reform rabbis and scholars, a system of schools and a youth movement, summer camps, pre-army mechinot, kibbutzim, and social justice projects addressing poverty, hunger, immigration, foreign workers, women’s rights, homosexual rights, racism, the environment, and religious pluralism.

According to recent polls 34% of Israelis now identify with the Reform movement, whereas only 23% identify as Orthodox.

BINA, Ruth Calderon and ALMA, the Israeli Reform Movement (IMPJ and IRAC), and other grass-roots efforts are transforming Israeli Jewish identity thus bringing hope for an enriched, open, pluralistic, and democratic Jewish State.

IN THE BLACK NIGHT – A Poem for Parashat Vayishlach

15 Friday Nov 2013

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In the black night / the river runs cold / slowly passing me by / over formerly sharp-edged stones / worn smooth by centuries of churning, / as if through earthy veins – / and I Jacob, alone, / shiver and wait / to meet my brother / and daylight.

Will there be war? / And will the angels carry my soul / up the rungs of the ladder / leaving my blood / to soak the earthy crust?

A presence!? / And I struggle yet again / as if in my mother’s womb / and in my dreams.

We played together as children once, / my brother Esau and me / as innocents, / and I confess tonight / how I wronged him / and wrenched from him his birthright / as this Being has done to me / between my thighs.

I was so young / driven by ego and need, / blinded by ambition, / my mother’s dreams / and my father’s silence.

I so craved to be first born / adored by my father, / to assume his place when he died / that my name be remembered / and define a people.

How Esau suffered and wailed / and I didn’t care. / Whatever his dreams / they were nothing to me – / my heart was hard – / his life be damned!

But, after all these years / I’ve learned that Esau and I / each alone is / a palga gufa – a half soul / without the other – / torn away / as two souls separated at creation / seeking reunification / in a sea of souls – / the yin missing the yang – / the dark and light never to touch – / the mind divorced from body – / the soul in exile – / without a beating bleating heart / to witness – / and no access to the thirty-two paths / to carry us together / up the ladder / and through the spheres. 

It’s come to this! / To struggle again – / To live or die.

Tonight / I’m ready for death / or submission.

Compassionate One: / protect Esau and your servant – / my brother and me / as one – / and return us to each other. 

El na r’fa na lanu! / Grant us peace and rest! / I’m very tired!

 

Originally published in the CCAR Journal: Reform Jewish Quarterly, Spring, 2010, pages 113-115

 

East Jerusalem Jewish Settlement and “National Parks” Make a Two-State Solution Impossible – Israel Report XI

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

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My synagogue group stood on a hill near the Mount Scopus Campus of the Hebrew University looking east towards the Dead Sea. To the far right, about 7 km away, stood the Jewish settlement-city of Ma’ale Adumim (population, 40,000 Jews). To the north and adjacent to it was the last open area in the circular ring around Jerusalem called E-1 (about 12 square km – 4.6 square miles) that falls between Jerusalem and Jericho.

Beneath us down the hill and towards the two East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhoods of Isawiyya and A-Tur is another open area that Jewish settler organizations are working to declare “Mount Scopus Slopes National Park.”

Whenever the Israeli government has designated an area as a National Park, there is usually some archeological, historical or nature significance to it. This area, however, has no significance in any of these ways.

Jerusalem expert Daniel Seidemann explained that the primary goal in designating this area a national park is

“…to link between the inner encirclement of the Old City and its visual basin, as designated by the governmental Old City Basin Project, and the outer encirclement in Greater Jerusalem, as disclosed by the E-1 plan between Ma’ale Adumim and East Jerusalem. The new national park will be a bridge, creating [and] forging a geographical link between the Old City basin and E-1.”

Daniel Seidemann is the founder of “Terrestrial Jerusalem,” an Israeli non-governmental organization that works to identify and track the developments in Jerusalem that could impact either the political process or permanent status options, destabilize the city or spark violence, or create humanitarian crises. His organization says that

“Israel has already expropriated more than 35% of the privately owned land of East Jerusalem for the purpose of building settlement neighborhoods (in excess of 50,000 residential units for Israelis). Now, additional lands owned by the residents of Issawiya and A Tur will be, to all intents, expropriated by Israel. While declaring the site a national park does not nullify the owners’ property rights, it inevitably deprives them of the ability to exercise these rights in any meaningful way by denying them the ability to develop or sell their land. The declaration of the park will, in effect empty ownership of virtually all practical significance.”

The larger goal of the settlement groups and the Israeli right-wing is to effectively surround the city of Jerusalem with Jewish settlements and national parks and cut off direct access to the east that would allow contiguity for a future state of Palestine, thus making the achievement of two-states for two-peoples impossible.

The following short video (7 minutes) features Israeli experts in Jerusalem who show exactly how this will occur http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tuGALhavoc.

Polls indicate that the majority of Israelis accept that the city of Jerusalem will have to be shared as the capital for both Israel and Palestine. The Palestinians have stated consistently that there can be no agreement without their capital in Jerusalem. The challenge, of course, will be security, which is what negotiations are for.

Given that the sharing of Jerusalem is among the most important and central issues on the negotiating table, anything that deliberately changes Jerusalem’s status-quo until an agreement can be achieved is ill-advised. Those Israelis, aided and abetted by the settler movement and Israel’s right wing, that insist that Jerusalem cannot and should not be shared are doing everything possible to create facts on the ground that will condemn negotiations to failure and assure continuing violence and war.

See a map of the area: http://www.t-j.org.il/Portals/26/featured_maps_2011/TJ_ScopusPark_B.jpg

East Jerusalem and Sheikh Jarrah – A Study in Bad Policy and Injustice – Israel Report X

11 Monday Nov 2013

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In 1968, then Attorney General Meir Shamgar (who would become President of Israel’s High Court from 1983-1995), determined that the “Absentee Property Law” may not be used in East Jerusalem. All Israeli governments complied, until now.

The “Absentee Property Law,” passed during the fledgling years of Israel (1950), allows the state to seize and assume ownership of lands abandoned by Palestinians after November 29, 1947 who left to live in Arab states, the West Bank or Gaza. In their absence their forfeited property could be taken over by the Absentee Property Custodian and title could be transferred to the State of Israel.

To accommodate East Jerusalem Palestinians after the 1967 War, the Knesset passed a law (1970) excluding them from exposure to the Absentee Property Law. [Note: East Jerusalem Arabs are not “citizens” of the state of Israel, though they are entitled to vote in municipal elections.]

Ir Amim (lit. “City of Peoples/Nations”) is an Israeli non-profit and non-partisan organization that has monitored East Jerusalem neighborhoods since 2004. Its mission is “to … engage in those issues impacting on Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem and on the political future of the city.” Among its chief concerns is the status of East Jerusalem Palestinian land.

My synagogue group toured one of East Jerusalem’s neighborhoods, Sheikh Jarrah, which is wedged between formerly Jordanian held-East Jerusalem and Israeli-held West Jerusalem (1948 to 1967) on the slopes of Mount Scopus very near to the American Colony Hotel and Old City.

After the 1948 war, Jews fled the neighborhood while many Arabs remained. In 1957, the Jordanian government moved 28 Palestinian families to houses in Sheikh Jarrah who had fled their homes in West Jerusalem during the 1948 War.

Founded in 1865, Sheikh Jarrah was once home to Jerusalem’s Muslim elite. At the turn of the 20th century, 30 large homes housed 167 Muslim families (about 1250 people), 97 Jewish families, and six Christian families.

In 1972, the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesset Yisrael Committee went to court to justify Jewish claims of property ownership in Sheikh Jarrah using documents from the days of the Ottoman Empire. Based on a supportive Israeli court ruling, Palestinian Arab residents could remain as tenants as long as they paid rent to the Jewish community.

The Palestinians, however, also produced Ottoman Empire documents showing their ownership. Though the Absentee Property Law superseded Palestinian claims, there were no efforts to evict them from their homes based on Shamgar’s 1968 decision.

Beginning in 2008, Palestinians began receiving eviction notices initiated by Jewish settler groups. In August 2009, an Israeli court evicted two Palestinian families from two homes in Sheikh Jarrah, followed almost immediately by Jewish settler families moving in.

In applying the Absentee Property Law, Palestinians have no rights, no redress, no appeals, and receive no compensation. In contrast, relative to the same contested land, Jews have certain legal rights based on their Israeli citizenship.

In Sheikh Jarrah we met with Sara Beninga, a 30 year-old Israeli Jewish activist, and Salach Diab, a Palestinian resident, who told us the story of this small neighborhood. Sara has been the inspiration of the “Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement” (now called simply “Solidarity”) formed in 2010. She is a bright, principled and passionate Israeli who believes that gross injustice is being done to the Palestinian Arabs living in this neighborhood.

From 2010-2012 every Friday afternoon, hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians gathered on the main street of Sheikh Jarrah to protest the government’s unfair policies and the Jewish settler land grab.

As we arrived, Sara pointed out settlers returning to the house they occupy yards from Salah’s house, and Salah showed us photographs of settler violence against him and his neighbors.

Daniel Seidemann, a founder of Ir Amim and an attorney who has advocated on behalf of the Arab residents of East Jerusalem neighborhoods for the past nine years, explains the nature and importance of this property conflict:

“After 45 years, you now have 2300 Jewish settlers [living] in existing Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, [and while] that’s negligible numerically, symbolically it’s nuclear fusion, because you take the two radioactive subjects of the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, which are Jerusalem and refugees, and you fuse them…By insisting on a Jewish right of return to Sheikh Jarrah, Israel is opening the 1948 file and strengthening the Palestinian claim of a right of return to Israel.” (Reported by Sarah Wildman, visiting scholar at the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University).

Jewish settlers are clear about their larger goal; to prevent, through the establishment of facts on the ground in East Jerusalem and throughout the West Bank, an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement resulting in two states for two peoples with Jerusalem as the shared capital of each state.

I will continue this discussion of East Jerusalem neighborhoods and Israeli land policy in my next blog.

High Holiday Sermons – 2013/5774 – Ayeka? Where are You?

10 Sunday Nov 2013

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This past High Holiday season (2013-5774) I asked myself and my congregation one central question in three different ways: Ayeka? (Lit. – “Where are you?”).

The question, of course, is not about one’s location. Rather, it asks about our identity, how we think and what believe, who we are and what values are central in our lives.

Ayeka is the first question to appear in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 3:9). It was asked by God of the first humans in the Garden of Eden immediately after they ate from the forbidden tree.

Ayeka – Where are You?  Part I – American Jews

Ayeka – Where are You?  Part II – The Jewish People and State of Israel

Ayeka – Where are You?  Part III – God

I include here as well my Yizkor sermon on “The Death of Moses” based on a compilation of midrashim (rabbinic legends and commentaries).

In the context of my synagogue mission’s to Israel and the West Bank in October (2013) about which I am still writing in a series of Reports from Israel, the second sermon, in particular, informs my thinking.  All three sermons, however, ought to be considered together.

The sermons are posted on the Temple Israel of Hollywood web-site at http://www.tioh.org/worship/clergy/clergystudy