The sermons I will be offering this High Holy Day season are the most difficult sermons I have ever written. They are difficult first of all because the situation in which we, Jews in America, find ourselves, is the most difficult I have experienced in my lifetime. We are faced with the massive moral dilemma of the conflict in Gaza, the dramatic rise of anti-Semitism to the left and the right, the deterioration of Israel’s image virtually everywhere on the world stage, the rise of authoritarianism here at home, and unprecedented dissension within the Jewish community itself, concerning not just the politics and morality of Gaza but also our very identity as Jews. Are we, for example, more concerned about a set of liberal values, which may or may not be consistent with Judaism, or with our Jewish identity and community which may demand our support regardless of the liberal values to which we aspire?
That all is bad enough. But it is made immeasurably worse by the systematically nurtured moral confusion, mendacity, and pure hogwash to which we have been subjected for nearly two years. Within this universe of deceit, virtually everything I have to say has to cut through a massive thicket of malignant fantasy before I can even begin to grapple with reality.
I will mention only one example at this point, simply because time does not permit a more exhaustive discussion. One of the most recent propaganda memes circulating in the anti-Israel media swamp is a side-by-side juxtaposition of the bombed out remains of a European city in the aftermath of WW2 and the shattered buildings of Gaza. The obvious implication is that there is some intimate link and moral parallel between the infamous carpet bombing of places like Dresden and the destruction of Gaza. Let me state firmly that this comparison, intended as emotionally evocative, relies on moral imbecility. On the one hand we have the result of intentional carpet bombing from 30,000 feet, done at night to protect Allied bombers, with the specific intention of killing tens of thousands of civilians at a time, and demoralizing the rest. And this is supposed to be somehow morally equivalent to a meticulous campaign to separate Hamas terrorists from the innocent Palestinian women and children behind whom they intentionally, illegally, and barbarically were hiding. Consider the Israeli calls and text warnings, humanitarian corridors, safe zones, and so forth unparalleled by any other army in the history of the world. Trust me when I say, they didn’t get those at Dresden. And while we must be profoundly saddened by the loss of civilian life, by any and all precious civilian life, in the fog of war, I would point out that the handful of civilians killed in any given attack by Israel cannot conceivably be compared, in number or intent, to the 30,000 dead in one night at Dresden, or the 45,000 dead in Hamburg, or the 100,000 or more dead in Tokyo.
As I said, such a comparison relies on moral imbecility, on minds that can’t function at a higher level than a tweet, and barely at that. Sadly enough we have been so inundated with such intellectual tripe that even some Jews, who if anybody should know better, even we Jews succumb to such mind numbing nonsense. And I can assure you that I could offer a similar critical analysis for literally every one of the endless stream of heinous accusations—Israel targets children, Israel targets doctors, Israel targets journalists, Israel is starving civilians, and, of course, the most despicable and immoral accusation—Israel is committing genocide. Not one of these blood libels stands up to exacting scrutiny.
So what I am asking of you during these High Holy Days is that we rise to our proper stature as Jews and use our moral reckoning and discernment to see past the lies and to the truth, so that we can make that truth known—to ourselves, if not to others as well.
When we do so, I warn you, we will not arrive at a place of comfort and complacency. At the end of the day, the situation in which we find ourselves will remain miserable, morally challenging, and fraught with danger. There are no elegant solutions. But we will at least have a basic clarity about the reality of the situation in which we find ourselves, and from there can consider what our next steps need to be. One last but important preliminary note: the 4 sermons I am giving over these holidays are meant to be taken as a whole. They reflect the classic, “On the one hand, on the other hand” Jewish deliberation. If you hear only one or two of them, you will miss the full integrated whole of my position. It’s bad enough, when rabbis give sermons, that people often hear only what they want to. But it’s even worse when they miss half of the argument—in this case a crucial half. So I implore you to be in the sanctuary to hear them; and if you can’t be here, at least be prepared in the coming weeks to go online and catch up so that the fullness and complexity of my argument will be crystal clear.
With all that being said, in this terrible conflict between us and Hamas, and to some extent with the world as a whole, I propose that we turn back to the most fundamental Jewish life wisdom, a maxim that we all know: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? and if not now, when?”
These will be our topics today, tomorrow, and on Yom Kippur.
In the confusion of the day, when we are witness to the suffering of others on a constant and indeed magnified and exaggerated basis, it is all too easy to lose our self-perspective and with it our self-esteem. We see hungry Palestinian children. We don’t see Jewish men and women starving in dark spaces unfit even for animals. So the first thing we need to do is a self-corrective. This became clear to me with powerful effect when I heard Ayelet Shmuel, director of the International Resilience Center in Sderot, at a recent JNF event. With reference to the presence of Hamas just over the border, she simply said, “I will not live like this.”
“I will not live like this.”
She meant, of course, I will not live with the awareness that a few hundred yards away there are thousands of genocidal savages publicly declaring that they will not stop attempting to submit me and everyone I love to acts of sadistic barbarity that make medieval pogroms pale in comparison.
“I will not live like this.”
That simple statement led me to ask some fundamental questions. Why should she have to live like this? Why should any Jew have to live like this? Why should the International Resilience Center have to be in Sderot Israel? We know that for two decades, the city has been bombarded by tens of thousands of rockets, leading to a situation where the entire town is suffering from PTSD. Which in turn begs the question: when did it become okay for Israeli civilians to be subjected to this? Why is it that Israelis have to live with the knowledge that a single intelligence failure will open the door to an attack that not only is the largest single attack on Jews since the Holocaust, but an attack of such cruelty and grotesque barbarism that it could bring Israel’s most battle-hardened soldiers to their knees in waves of nausea? Who made the decision that Israel should accept being hit by missiles on a daily basis, because, after all, they are “small” missiles. How, I would ask, would the US respond if barrages of “small” missiles were fired into Texas from Mexico every single day? Who determined that it was somehow just par for the course that every new Israeli apartment has to have a built-in bomb shelter? Why is it acceptable that people to Israel’s north and south have to live in fear that in the middle of the night genocidal maniacs will burst out of tunnels that violate an international border, tunnels dug under the noses of supposedly neutral UN inspectors; and paid for by “humanitarian aid” sent on behalf of “the world,” no less? And why in heaven’s name are some of the cruelest and most bestial regressive forces on the planet the political darlings of the intellectual elite that, G-d help us, dominates the academic world? Not, I hasten to mention, in spite of their anti-Semitism, but precisely because of their anti-Semitism. Who determined that it is somehow acceptable—and utterly ignored—that Israelis by the tens and hundreds of thousands should be displaced from their homes and careers for months on end because they have become targets for the largest ballistic missile attacks in history? Needless to say, illegal attacks in direct violation of the UN charter, not that that ever matters where Israel is concerned.
When did any of this become okay?
The answer is that it is not okay, was never okay, will never be okay. And regardless of the heartbreaking images coming out of Gaza, and we will address them at length tomorrow, the utterly abnormal and unacceptable status of Israel as a victim of endless attacks is the issue we must address first. Not, I hasten to add, simply out of self-interest—not that that would be a bad thing. When, after all, was it decided that we Jews have to put the needs of others first, before our own needs? But I am convinced, with emunah shelemah, with complete faith, that a failure to address our fundamental needs will sustain a perverse situation that can only fester and deteriorate further to the detriment of all, Jews and Palestinians alike. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the reason we find ourselves where we—and the citizens of Gaza—are today is precisely because we have, for decades, accepted the utterly unacceptable. When Israeli six-year old’s have to learn the difference between incoming and outgoing artillery, rather than the difference between an oboe and a flute, the world has become twisted in a fashion that we have allowed to stand but which must simply not be allowed to stand.
What does this mean in practical terms? In means that we must learn to use our self- interest as a “magen david” a shield of David, against the assaults against us. Number one: no discussion of Gaza that doesn’t mention hostages in the first sentence is worth having. Let me say that again: no discussion of Gaza that doesn’t mention hostages in the first sentence is worth having. Not because hungry Gazans don’t matter, not because we don’t care about innocent blood, not because we are dehumanizing anybody. But because by G-d our lives matter just as much as anyone else’s. This outrage all began with hostages. It must end with hostages. Anything else is an invitation to continued bloodshed.
Second, we must base ourselves on the perfectly reasonable and perfectly justifiable and perfectly demonstrable presumption that virtually everything we hear about the conflict is a lie. Those heartbreaking pictures of dying malnourished children in Gaza?—nearly all have been revealed to have had devastating preexisting diseases like rickets and cystic fibrosis. Those targeted journalists?— turn out to be active members of Hamas, filmed embracing Sinwar and Haniyeh, present at the atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7, even holding hostages in their own family homes. Israelis luring Palestinians to food distribution sites in order to attack them?—as if it were necessary for the Israelis to involve themselves in such an elaborate charade in order to kill a few dozen Palestinians. And as an aside, let me point out the absurdity in claiming that Israel supposedly kills people at the distribution sites of aid that Israel supposedly is not providing.
Obviously, when attacking Jews, logic no longer matters.
Now let me be clear: there are some painful truths about Israel, excruciating truths, truths that we don’t want to hear about—but truths I will make sure we will hear about tomorrow. But we must be forgiven for beginning any discussion about Gaza with the assumption that we are being lied to—and have been subjected to blatant gaslighting—for the past two years. So forgive me for being initially skeptical when I hear something negative that then turns out to be true. The fact that something negative may be true doesn’t mean that everything negative must be true. And as my Alex has pointed out to me, the fact that something is true does not mean that the narrative being spun about it is also true. A child can be hungry in Gaza, for example, without the Israelis systematically starving civilians.
Third, we must redouble our support for Israel—not for this or that policy, certainly not for this or that government, but for the state that proudly declares that its purpose is to help us be “a free people in our land.” Let us recall, and keep foremost in our minds, that everything evil that has happened over the past two years—in fact everything evil that has happened for the past three quarters of a century—has happened because there are millions of people dedicating their lives to subverting that holy purpose, to prevent us from being a free people in our land.
And finally, lest we forget, “who will be for me?” Over the past two years, we have seen a steady deterioration—not just in Israel support, but in the fundamental bulwarks of the post WW 2 world in which anti-Semitism was to be relegated to some looney tunes in Montana, David Duke, and Louis Farakhan. Today? Congress? Media? Academia? “It depends upon the context”? Betrayal. Perfidy. Abandonment. Consider the fact that there are today more Jews attending Southern Methodist University than Harvard. What does that tell you? It is not as if we have no allies. We do, and we should embrace them. But at the end of the day, we must not base our stand on the support of others. We must take our stand based on who we are, and what we demand as a matter of our human dignity. We bow to no one.
During the Second World War, when France had fallen and England was left to fight the Nazis without allies, David Low published a newspaper cartoon of a British soldier standing on the island shore, facing oncoming Nazi planes with fist raised. The caption was “Very well, alone.”
So too, for us. Very well, alone. If alone it must be, so be it. That must be our sacred, holy, profoundly moral pledge on this sacred day, the start of a profound moral and spiritual reorientation, a true turning, a teshuvah, back to who we are, back to our human dignity, back to ourselves, back to the integrity of Jewish life, the inviolability of Jewish life, back to the courage to live, if necessary, as a people who dwells alone: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”