Shanah Tovah—A Good New Year, Everyone and
Tzom Kal, an Easy Fast to All.
God’s
blessings pour down upon us daily, but the angels are not always satisfied with
the good Lord’s work. Around the time of
the founding of the State of Israel, the angels challenged God for what seemed
to them a terrible injustice. “Unfair,”
they protested, “for so much of the world You bless with ordinary blessings but
for the Jewish people you grant them a land flowing with milk and honey, rich
in dates and olives, wheat and barley.
You bless the people with genius and talent such that they will win many
Nobel prizes and excel in the arts, sciences and business. Is it right for the Lord to show such
favoritism to one people?” To which the
good Lord replied, “Just wait ‘till you see what I give them for neighbors.”
Thinking
back on how often the subject of Israel is discussed in synagogue, I realize
that the subject comes up a lot during the course of the year, but rarely on a
Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur, after all, is a
day of asking for forgiveness and granting forgiveness. It’s a day when we think of how we are to
repair our lives and live more fully, more ethically, more spiritually. These are themes that readily apply to our
personal lives, but do not necessarily or easily apply to modern day sovereign
states. But this year may be
different. After this horrible summer of
war in the MidEast, the time has come for us to reflect on what it means to be
a Jew in a world that so often spews hatred at us, and what it means to be a
supporter of a country that is among the most maligned nations in the world, at
least judging from the deliberations of the United Nations’ General Assembly.
I want
to begin by taking a trip to Rome. We’re
all going to visit the Vatican, the chief residence of the pope, where we will
walk into the brilliant Sistine Chapel.
We are all familiar with the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel existed long before the
great Italian Renaissance artist, Michelangelo, was commissioned to paint its
ceiling, but it really is his ceiling that steals the visual show of that
particular sacred space. The ceiling is
dramatic, and perhaps best known for its depiction of the Creation of Adam,
where the hand of God and that of Adam reach toward each other and just barely
touch. But that fresco does not contain
the largest figure in the room. There is
another, much larger figure. It is that
of a very muscular man, his head is thrown back and his legs dangle over an
edge. He looks heavenward as a large
fish nibbles at his thigh. And who has
Michelangelo blessed with the largest dimensions in the room but the prophet
Jonah, swallowed by a large fish in his attempt to escape the charge of the
Lord to bring news of imminent punishment to the wicked people of Nineveh.
I have heard two interpretations why
Michelangelo was so fascinated with Jonah.
One is that Jonahs’ story is parallel to that of Jesus’. Jonah spends three days and nights in the
belly of the fish and Jesus, following his death, spends three days and nights
in a tomb. Jonah is spat out by the
great fish and Jesus is resurrected so Jonah and Jesus’ lives are
parallel. But that interpretation,
compelling though it may be, is not the only one explaining Michelangelo’s
admiration of the prophet Jonah. The
other interpretation has more to do with Michelangelo’s subtle criticism of the
papacy. Rabbi Benjamin Blech,
professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University and co-author of “The Sistine
Secrets: Michelangelo’s Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican,” claims
that Michelangelo identified with Jonah.
Like Jonah, he was forced into a mission he did not desire, leaving his
beloved Florence to work in the Vatican.
Michelangelo disapproved of what he perceived was the hedonism and
excesses of the Church, and Jonah, more than any other Jewish prophet, was a
prophet sent to preach to the gentiles, not the Jews. Jonah is the prophet that bears a message to
all humankind—we are held accountable for our deeds to an authority higher than
ourselves and someday we will be brought to judgment for those deeds so prepare
for the tomorrow’s Day of Judgment by changing your ways today.
It’s
such an interesting theory. And if you
think about it, the story of Jonah, read in the afternoon of Yom Kippur, is
odd in its focus on the non-Jewish world.
Isn’t Rosh Hashanah a Day of Judgment for the Jews? Maybe not.
Consider the words from the famous Unetaneh tokef prayer:
This
day all who walk the earth pass before You as a flock of sheep
And
You determine the life and decree the destiny of every creature…
So actually, Yom Kippur is not a Day of Judgment for Jews
alone, but a Day of Judgment for all humankind, a day for all humanity to pause
and listen to the prophecy of Jonah.
Nineveh,
the city God commands Jonah to go to, was an Assyrian city full of
wickedness. Nineveh no longer exists but
its modern day replacement, Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, does. For many years, Christians and Moslems would
make pilgrimage to Mosul, to a place just outside of where the gates of Nineveh
once stood, to a mosque purported to be the burial place of Jonah. On July 25th of this year, ISIS
blew it up. They claimed it to be a
place that was un-Islamic. This was a
direct affront to Christians. ISIS knows
how Christians understand the prophet Jonah within the context of their own
sacred mythologies. But given Rabbi
Blech’s thesis, that Jonah is a message to all humankind to divorce themselves
from hatred and sin, it is curious and frightening all at once that ISIS would
blow up the very symbol of that universal message. As with anyone one or any group that
arrogates to itself direct knowledge of God, ISIS is going to do whatever it
wants to do, and no one is going to tell them otherwise, and that includes God.
After
James Foley, the American journalist and video reporter was brutally murdered
by ISIS this past August, President Obama waxed theological as he spoke before
the nation and said:
So ISIL speaks for no
religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people
to massacre innocents. No just god would stand for what they did yesterday and
what they do every single day. ISIL has no ideology of any value to human
beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they
are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize
their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty
vision and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior.
What the president failed to say is that not only are their
victims overwhelmingly Muslim, but the perpetrators themselves are
overwhelmingly Muslim. The western
world, the United States included, has been reluctant to call the enemy by
name. And this is in part for fear of
labeling all Muslims as the enemy or terrorists, which they are not. But the fact that there may be many Muslims who
wish to live in peace with the rest of the world does not reverse the fact that
the terrorism we face today is a product of a virulent mixture of politics and
Islamic jihad. The target of their wrath
is the western world, the United States, Christians to some extent, and the one
group for whom it reserves its deepest loathing is, of course, the Jews.
One of
the subjects I hate to talk about is anti-Semitism. First of all, I don’t like giving it a lot of
play on a festival or a Shabbat when we should be focused on the positive and
the beauty within the world. Secondly, I
think that anti-semitism is too often used as a means for rallying the Jewish
people to a deeper sense of identity.
That strikes me as wrong. Our
tradition and our heritage are far more compelling than the words of
anti-semites. And yet, it would be
foolish to ignore the resurgence of anti-semitism around the world for we have
seen it throughout the MidEast and Europe.
Protestors in Dortmund and Frankfurt Germany were heard chanting,
“Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas!” A group
of Parisian Jews were trapped in a synagogue by pro-Palestinian demonstrators
and had to be rescued by police. In
central London, an anti-Israel group descended on a grocery store, thus
triggering the manager to remove all kosher products from its shelves. The grocery store, part of a supermarket
chain, later apologized.
That’s Europe. What about here in the United States? We have had our share of anti-semitic
incidents but it hurts most when it comes from people who ought to know better. Perhaps you have heard that here in New York
City, the Met has decided to stage an opera known as “The Death of
Klinghoffer.” Do you remember Leon Klinghoffer? Mr. Klinghoffer was a disabled Jewish
American who had the misfortune of being on a cruise when the ship, the Achille
Lauro, was taken over by Palestinian terrorists back in 1985. The hijackers demanded the release of 50
Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
During this terrifying ordeal, Mr. Klinghoffer, wheelchair-bound, was
murdered by the terrorists and his body thrown overboard into the sea. The Met is scheduled to stage this opera beginning
Monday, October 20.
This opera is designed to show both sides of
the story, the horrible nature of terrorism and the plight of the Palestinians,
but it really doesn’t. The opera begins
with a chorus of exiled Palestinians singing, “My father’s house was razed—In
nineteen forty-eight—When the Israelis passed—Over our street.” So the first thing we hear in the opera is
the Israelis being compared to the Angel of Death who destroyed the firstborn
of Egypt. One of the hijackers who is
nicknamed Rambo has these words to say of Jews:
“Wherever poor men—Are gathered they can---Find Jews getting fat—you
know how to cheat—The simple, exploit—the virgin, pollute—Where you have
exploited—Defame those you cheated—And break your own law—with idolatry.”
Are you
kidding? This is what passes for high
culture worthy of a performance at the Met?
This is the kind of stereotyped, anti-semitic rant that has been in the
mouths of ignorant thugs for centuries, and it was this kind of virulent
anti-semitism, repeated decade after decade for centuries, that culminated in
the Holocaust. This opera may be about
the death of Klinghoffer but the historical event was about the murder of
Klinghoffer, the cold-blooded murder of Mr. Klinghoffer—so why not call it exactly
what it was? Unless the librettist was
confused as to exactly what it was. Wait—I’ll
make it worse. The librettist is a woman
by the name of Alice Goodman. She is an
Anglican priest serving in England, but that’s not how she was raised. She was raised a Reform Jew (in Minnesota).
I dislike
censorship and the Met is going to make its decisions about its seasonal
repertoire based on the artistic merit of the pieces, but that doesn’t mean we
shouldn’t let them know how deeply disappointed we are in an opera that seeks
to humanize the inhuman. If you are
asked to sign any letters of protest to Peter Gelb, general manager of the Met,
to let him know how revolting you find this particular choice in operas, sign
the letter and send it off. Hijackers
have no claim to the moral high ground.
Terrorists have no ethical objective they are striving to achieve. At the time of their violence, they
themselves become legitimate targets on the basis of self-defense. The motives behind their actions become
irrelevant, the justification for their violence is immaterial, the
rationalization of their methods is inconsequent, and the attempt to humanize
what they do, to try to understand it, to be open-minded about it is a license
for them to do it again, and again, and again, and again. The only moral response to terrorism and
hatred is a policy of zero tolerance for those actions, and when terrorists
find support for their tactics in the unwitting open-mindedness of so-called
cultured people, it only encourages them to murder others.
I told you
that I was going to talk about Israel, and I am, but I haven’t gotten there
yet. First, I want to talk about
Palestinians. I am not speaking about
them as members of a political party or members of this or that organization. I am speaking only of people who are mothers
and fathers, sons and daughters, young and old, healthy and ill—I am speaking
about people who happen to identify themselves as Palestinians. The Torah has something to teach us about
people who are our enemies. Beyond the
fact that the Torah teaches us that we are all created in God’s image, and
beyond the fact that the Torah teaches us to never hate an Egyptian, our
oppressors, because we were once guests in the land of Egypt, the Torah teaches
us this:
When you
see the donkey of your enemy lying under its burden
and would
refrain from raising it,
you must
nevertheless raise it with him (Exodus 23:5)
The Torah teaches us to never pass an opportunity to reconcile
with an enemy. Your enemy is in a
difficult situation, your enemy’s donkey is stuck—it’s like saying his car is
backed into a snow bank or otherwise trapped—you cannot pass up that
opportunity to assist. And if that is
what you must do for the enemy’s donkey, how much more so for the rest of your
enemy’s life.
I feel badly
for most Palestinians and I think we all should. Their lives are dictated by a leadership that
is misguided in its objectives, violent in their tactics, and impervious to
what most people want in life which is a job and a home and a family and a
future. I have tremendous sympathy for
the Palestinian people; I have far less sympathy for the Palestinian
leadership, and for Hamas, I have none. I
need feel no sympathy for a political or military group whose charter calls for
the destruction of my people and my state.
The Palestinian leadership is forever crying about their miserable lot
in life because of Israel. They say they
have no resources for schools or hospitals or the simple amenities in
life. Israel has kept all this from
them. But they have money to dig over 30 tunnels,
and the tunnels required manpower to excavate, and cement to line its walls,
and electrical wiring for illumination, and they have money to fill those
tunnels with rocket propelled grenades, anti-tank armaments, motorcycles,
weapons and explosives in order to infiltrate Israel and either kill or kidnap
citizens for ransom. So it’s not as if
the Palestinian leadership is actually working in behalf of its citizens in
need of jobs and homes and family and futures, but it’s pursuing a hate-filled
agenda of getting rid of the wrong people who moved into the wrong
neighborhood. What the Hamas leadership
is really doing is robbing its own people, taking money given to them for
humanitarian purposes and using it for “inhumanitarian” purposes. That’s why I have great sympathy for the
Palestinian people and virtually none for its leadership.
There are
people in this country who would sooner criticize the Obama administration than
say a bad word about Hamas, as if that ingenious group were a bunch freedom
fighters. They are no freedom
fighters. They have encouraged martyrdom,
suicide, they are guilty of the murder of their own people when they use
innocent civilians, particularly babies as human shields, or when they use
schools and hospitals and mosques as the launching sites for their
missiles. As the prime minister of Israel,
Benjamin Netanyahu put it, and I paraphrase:
The problem is that we use weapons to protect our people, but they use
people to protect their weapons. It’s a
perverse logic, it’s a culture of hatred, it’s an ideology of death and the
only moral response to it is a policy of zero tolerance. And if the rest of the world doesn’t have the
guts to tell that to Hamas or tell it to Abbas who formed a coalition
government with them, then thank God for Israel who did.
I want you to
watch a movie. It’s on Netflicks. If you don’t see it, you can wait until I
show it at Monday Night at the Midway Movies, which by the way, is a free night
of movies understood and interpreted from a Jewish perspective and this past
year—we served free popcorn (sorry for the mention of a food item today). The movie is “The Butler.” The film is fiction but it’s based loosely on
the true story of Eugene Allen who was an African-American butler at the White
House for 34 years and saw eight administrations make historic decisions about
race relations in our country. It really
is a fascinating study of the evolution of black-white relations. It’s directed
by Lee Daniels. It stars Forest Whitaker
as the butler who gives an outstanding performance. Oprah Winfrey plays his wife—and she is really
a great actress. And beyond that, it’s
sort of an all-star cast which usually ends up as a hodge-podge in so many
films, but not in this case. It’s very
well done. Anyway, this sounds like I’m
giving a film review here, which is not my intent, but I want to quote from two
parts of the movie and I’m going to ask your forgiveness right now because I’m
going to quote from a very tough part of the movie, a very disturbing part of
the movie, but two parts of the movie which are incredibly powerful.
The scene is
the cotton fields of Macon, Georgia, maybe 80 or 90 years ago. The butler is portrayed as a little boy, maybe
eight or nine years old, his film name is Cecil Gaines, and he is out in the
fields working with his father. One of
the white owners of the plantation has just raped Cecil’s mother—he wouldn’t
know that, but he knows something bad has happened—and Cecile’s father,
beginning to protest, is shot dead right before the little boy. One of the white women of the plantation comes
over to Cecil with a certain degree of sympathy knowing what this kid just saw
and says, [and this is the offensive part because she is going to use the N
word which I won’t repeat but you’ll know where it is when I say “N”] “Stop
crying. I’m gonna have you in the house
now. I’m gonna teach you how to be a
house nigger.” And those are her
words. So this woman teaches him the art
of serving, of being a servant, the etiquette required. She teaches him an important skill which will
be of use to him professionally, but it’s also a position in which he has to
remain subservient, invisible, secondary, tamed, controlled, like some kind of
pet who has been well trained. When
Cecil grows to be a teenager, Cecil runs away from the plantation, and life deteriorates. He’s cold, he’s wet, he’s homeless, he’s
hungry, and eventually he breaks into a kind of Bake Shop just to eat some
pastry displayed in a window. A
kind-hearted black man who works in the store, Maynard by name, discovers him
and takes him in, and in the course of conversation, the young man describes
what he does. He says, “Back in Macon,
I’m a house nigger, a good one.” Maynard
hears this, slaps him across the face and says, “Don’t you ever use that word
son. That’s a white man’s word, it’s
filled with hate. Didn’t your father
ever teach you any better?
When I listen
to the anti-semitism in this world, especially the anti-semitism of so-called
smart people, the sophisticated people, I don’t hear them saying—I wish you
Jews were dead. I hear them saying—O,
it’s fine that you’re Jewish. Just don’t
be too Jewish. Don’t be so visible. Don’t be so loud. And you know, stop weeping about the
Holocaust. You can be Jewish, that’s ok,
but do you really need Israel? Why don’t you move somewhere else where you
will be more welcomed, like France. And
stop defending yourselves—you have edge over the Palestinians anyway. Be good little Jews. Be subservient, be secondary,
be tamed, be invisible. And you know
what—for centuries we were just those things in a world with a deficit of love
but a surfeit of hatred until Theodor Herzl came along in the late 1890’s and
slapped us all in the face. And said in
so many words—don’t you dare adopt the stature of what a bigoted and hateful
world wants you to be. Their hatred is
their problem. We are a people chosen
for a mission on an earth that is horribly confused about the difference
between right and wrong.
The Zionist movement is the most exciting
historical development in 2000 years of Jewish history. It is a movement of Jews who dared to say
that we are a people in more than just name.
It is a movement of Jews who set out to reclaim the land that we were
kicked out of, and though it was a wasteland back then, they were determined to
turn it into a Garden of Eden tomorrow. We are part of that movement. To be a Jew today is to have some degree of
Zionist aspiration within our hearts.
And when so-called enlighten people claim only to be anti-Zionist but not
anti-semitic, it’s no different from what bigoted whites wanted of African Americans
when they were brought into the house and trained to be invisible.
Others do not define us. We define ourselves. We will not be subservient or secondary or
obsequious or weak or retiring or anything else that others may want us to
be. We will be proud. We will be a nation that is democratic. We have to be because we disagree with each
other so often. But when we disagree, we
will be in a safe space where we can disagree with one another in the evening and
still go to shul with each other the next morning. And we will be a nation of law and justice
which means that even when a president or a prime minister fails us, we will
prosecute them and punish them (which is the reason today there is a former
president and a former prime minister in jail in Israel). We believe that everyone is responsible for
their actions and no one is above the law.
We believe in an ethical and moral relationship with everyone, and even
if we fail as we will at times, that doesn’t mean we’ve abandoned the ethical,
but only that we need to try harder.
Our synagogue participates in the Celebrate
Israel Day parade in Manhattan. Our
involvement really is rather tepid and I wish more of us would march because it
really is a great event, a lot of fun, and you know—Israel could use a little
TLC from its North American family now and then. The times that I have walked the parade have
been the best mile I have ever walked except for one block. There is this one block lined with
protestors—the anti-Israel contingent. I
have always been struck by this one block of protestors who stand on the
sidelines decrying the State of Israel.
There are the Palestinian sympathizers with their outrageous irrational signs
equating Zionism with Nazism. And
standing together with them are ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Neturai Karta as they
are known, in their black garb and broad-brimmed hats, declaring the State of
Israel an embarrassment and a sacrilege before God. They all deserve to be slapped in the
face. I do believe that they are serving
a higher authority in their lives, but it can’t possibly be God. Since the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE,
we have lived under the thumb of others until Zionism showed us a way out of
the plantation. We should all be Zionists. We should proclaim our Zionism loudly before
all. We need ask no forgiveness for our Zionist
aspirations. May we all have the guts to
defend the Land of Israel and the State of Israel with all our hearts, with all
our souls, and with all our might. On
this night of asking for forgiveness and granting forgiveness, never, Ever, EVER
make any apology for your Zionistic feelings or your pride in the State of
Israel.
Gemar Hatimah Tovah—May we
all be blessed in finishing off this Tenth Day of Repentance sealed into the
Book of a Blessed Life.
