ISRAEL – PART 1

A LAND FOR A PEOPLE

            I have just returned from Israel.  Although I have visited many times, this is the first time I brought a group from my synagogue.  Twenty-three of us toured the country for two weeks, and everybody came back supercharged.  Our trip was far more than a vacation; it was a spiritual pilgrimage.  Hopefully, I will repeat it every year.

            I came back and happened to tune into a local talk radio station.  There I listened to a local bigot pontificating about the evils of Israel.  “Jews stole the land.  They have no right to form a country there.  Besides, Judaism is a religion.  What does that have to do with land?  You don’t see Methodists forming a Methodist country, or Buddhists forming a Buddhist country.  Religion is about beliefs, not about land.”  It is words I have heard before.  Here is a stranger, probably an anti-Semite, telling the Jewish people what rights we have and what we ought to believe in.  Sadly, I have heard Jews, particularly those on the far left, say the same thing.  “Rabbi, what right does Israel have to exist?”

            I can answer, what right does any country have to exist?  But still, the question deserves an answer.  To begin, we have to go deep into Jewish history.  Judaism is built on the idea of covenant.  God made a covenant with the Jewish people.  And central to that covenant is the promise of a land.  “And the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, to your seed will I give this land; and there he built an altar to the Lord, who appeared to him.”  (Genesis 12:7)    The promise of a land was central to the Biblical vision from the very beginning. 

            One could say that the entire Bible is the story of the people Israel’s relationship to the land.  When we were worthy, we were able to dwell on the land.  However, when we proved not worthy we lost the land and had to go into exile.  Moses was supposed to lead the freed slaves into the land, but after the incident of the spies the Israelites proved unworthy.  They wondered the desert forty years, and only a new generation could go into the land. 

            The Israelites under Joshua conquered the land.  They settled there, but then the great literary prophets arose, with warnings that righteousness must reign in the land.  Without righteousness, the people will go into exile.  And of course, first the Assyrians, then the Babylonians sent the people into exile.  Even in exile, the people dreamed of a return to the land.   “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, we also wept, when we remembered Zion. . .  If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

If I do not remember you, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.’  (Psalms 137:1, 5-6)

            Under the Persians the Israelites came back into the land.  But the Romans sent them into exile again.  For two thousand years, wherever they lived, Jews dreamed of returning to the land.  Their entire liturgy is built around the dream of the land.  For example, Jews pray for rain in the fall to mention the rainy season in the land, and for dew in the spring to keep plants healthy during the hot summer months.  Throughout the years, small communities have returned to the land, particularly the holy cities of Safed, Tiberius, Jerusalem, and Hebron.  But again, as our liturgy taught, “Because of our sins we were exiled from our land.”  We could return to the land but first we had to become worthy.  Most Jews were willing to wait until the Messiah came to bring us into the land.

            Modern Zionism began with the vision of a Jewish secularist, Theodore Herzl, who witnessed first hand the anti-Semitism of Europe during the Dreyfus Affair.  He said that it was time for Jews to take matters into their own hands and form a Jewish state.  We can no longer afford to wait for the Messiah; we must do the work ourselves.  And of course the holocaust proved Herzl to be unbelievably prescient.    The founding of the modern state of Israel had support of the world powers, including the British Commonwealth and after World War II, the United Nations.  The Jewish people reclaimed the land, drained the swamps and built a thriving agricultural economy, resettled immigrants from all over the world, revived the Hebrew language as a modern spoken language, and fought off foreign armies out to destroy the Jewish state.  Israel is truly a modern miracle.

            However, ideas that reach all the way back to the Bible are still important.  We Jews have a right to the land as long as we prove worthy.  This raises difficult and challenging questions.  Can Israel be both a democracy and a Jewish state?  How should Israel deal with millions of Palestinian Arabs who live there?  Should Israel trade land (which God promised us) for peace (which God also promised us)?  How do we live as a modern, secular, Jewish state on a very ancient land that has seen far too much bloodshed?  I will deal with these questions over the coming weeks.

ISRAEL – PART 2

WHY LAND?

            Last week I spoke about the importance of the land in the entire Jewish self-image.  God made a covenant of mutual promises with the Jewish people.  Central to the covenant was the promise of a land.  If we are worthy, God promised us the land known historically by a number of names – Canaan, Judea, Palestine, and of course Israel.  To much of the world, it is simply the Holy Land.

            Why a land?  If Judaism is about a religious community, what does a piece of real estate have to do with it?  This question brings us to the center of God’s plan for the Jewish people.

            Many faiths see themselves as somewhat removed from the day to day realities of living.  Religion is about creating a spiritual community, perhaps even living in a monastery.  Jesus would say, “Render onto Caesar what is Caesar’s and onto God what is God’s.”  The realm of the spiritual is separate from the realm of the political or national.  Often when I speak with Christians, their major concern is making it into heaven.  Many Eastern religions also see this world as a place of suffering, with religious perfection or nirvana lying in some other spiritual realm.  Many religious seekers, including some Jews, believe that religion is lived on a plane separate from the reality of the world.

            I believe that such separation between the spirit and the physical is not the Torah’s vision.  God does not want us to live as a spiritual community aloft from day to day physical realities.  Rather, religion is about living in the day to day reality of life on earth.  Religion is not just about prayer and ritual.  Religion sometimes gets down and dirty; it is concerned with all the physical realities of living on a land.  How do we deal with questions of war and peace?  How do we pursue social justice?  How do we rid society of poverty, homelessness, hunger, disease, and suffering?  How do we relate to non-Jews who live in the land?  In other words, religion is not about escaping from this world but about living in the reality of this world.

            For generations Jews lived a kind of unnatural existence.  They were separated from the land.  They were not farmers or people who made things from the land.  They had no political power.  Jews lived at the mercy of various gentile communities.  The main focus of the community became prayer, ritual, dietary laws, and calendar.  The great questions of war and peace or social justice were studied but no longer on the forefront of Jewish consciousness.

            When the Zionist dream influenced the Jews to return to their land, they could live a full, natural existence.  Suddenly questions that seemed theoretical a few generations ago became central.  Can a modern, secular state observe the Sabbath?  Can an army be built that serves as a full defense but still lives by Jewish values?   Can democracy and Judaism be reconciled?  Can immigrants be settled in the land from diverse cultures and traditions?  Perhaps most difficult, can peace be made with other people who also live in the land, and have their own historical claims?

            These are questions at the center of the covenant.  The modern state of Israel must now struggle to answer those questions.  Living under a covenant means living in a real world, a world that is often dangerous and confusing.  But the Rabbis taught long ago, the Torah is not in heaven.  It was not given to angels to be applied in some mystical realm.  It is not in the World to Come.  Rather the Torah was given to Israel to teach us how to live in this world, on a real physical piece of land.  The hope is, if Jews can build a holy society on this piece of land, perhaps they can influence the entire world to bring holiness into the reality of living in the world.

            In my synagogue above the ark where we keep the Torahs, the words are written in Hebrew – “The Torah will come forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”  Holiness is to be achieved on a real physical piece of land.  That is the mission God gave the Jewish people.

ISRAEL – PART 3

THE PALESTINIANS

            This week Jews throughout the world commemorate Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year.  The destruction of the two great Temples in Jerusalem and the beginning of the exiles all occurred on this day.  According to Jewish tradition, on Tisha B’Av the Biblical story of the spies took place, when the Israelites starting weeping because they believed the land would be too difficult to conquer.  God said, “You weep on this day.  I will give you a reason to weep.”  It is the day when we Jews heard the message – we must be worthy before God will let us go into the land.

            Today, with Israel a flourishing modern nation, we can ask whether Tisha B’Av still has meaning.  The answer is that the question remains – how do we remain worthy of staying on the land?  Jewish liturgy teaches, “Because of our sins were we exiled from the land.”   Our presence on the land is conditional; we must be worthy.  And the key question today to prove our worthiness is - how do we deal with the Palestinians who live in the land?

            When the modern movement of Zionism began, there was a popular saying, “A people without a land for a land without a people.”   Unfortunately, it was false.  There were, and there are another people living on the land, a people who also have a long historic claim.  How can the Jewish state living in the land of Israel relate to them?  Ultimately Israelis will have to answer that question.  But, as an American Jew who loves Israel, let me share my own approach.

            I believe there are five ways Jews can relate to the Palestinians in the land.  Let us explore each on briefly.

            Approach #1 (still heard in the extreme right wing)  -  Encourage or force the Palestinians to leave the land west of the Jordan River and settle in other Arab countries, particularly Jordan which contains a Palestinian majority.  This was the approach of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whom the Israeli government condemned him as racist.  Some say that the Arab lands kicked out hundreds of thousands of Jews which Israel absorbed.  Let there be a true population exchange.

            This approach is unacceptable to the vast majority of Israelis and most of the rest of the world.  We Jews have not wondered for thousands of years in order to return to our own state and kick out another nation.

            Approach #2 (still heard in the extreme left wing) – Let Israel become a bi-national secular state, neither Jewish nor Arab, but open to all it residents.  Some Israelis have called for a post-Zionist state.  Such a state will no longer be a homeland to Jews throughout the world, nor will it be a refuge for any Jew.  The law of return would be repealed, and Hatikva would no longer be the national anthem.  This bi-national state would eventually lose its Jewish flavor as the majority of inhabitants in fifty years will be
Arabs.  With this idea, a Jewish dream of thousands of years will die.

            Approach #3 (the status quo) – There is no need for any change.  Israel should rule over lands and peoples captured in the Six Day War, while building Jewish settlements throughout the captured territories.  Perhaps some kind of autonomy can be given to Palestinian Arabs, but they would be living under Israeli rule.

            Unfortunately, this could quickly lead to the kind of apartheid which the world condemned in South Africa.  The majority of Israelis do not wish to rule forever over Palestinians.  Nor do they want to give them an equal vote, which will swiftly lead to the bi-national state described in approach number two.

            Approach #4 (the Oslo accords) – Let there be two separate states, Israel and Palestine, each with there own sovereignty and with a capitol in Jerusalem.  In theory, this sounds great.  But so far Israel has had no negotiating partner.  The two state solution will never fly as long as the Palestinians demand a full right of return for every Arab and their descendents who fled Israel.  Today when Palestinians speak of “the occupation”, they are referring not just to the Israeli presence in Ramallah and Hebron but in Haifa and Tel Aviv.  That is why negotiations with Arafat broke down, even as Israel offered him virtually everything he wanted.  And that is why, at least right now, Israel has no negotiating partner.  For the moment I see little hope for the two state solution.

            Approach #5 (unilateral disengagement) – Unfortunately, I see this as the only viable solution for Israel today.  Israel must choose where it borders will be and pull back from Palestinian areas.  This is what Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip and parts of Samaria this month.  And this is what Israel is setting up by building a wall through the length of the state to protect its citizens from terrorism.    Many in the Arab world will read Israel’s pullback as a surrender to terrorism.   Some experts say it will only encourage more terrorism, as Israel’s pullback from Lebanon brought more terrorism in its wake.

            Having said this, I believe unilateral disengagement is the best, perhaps the only solution.  Israel must make some painful moves.  But these moves are necessary if Israel wants to remain a nation that is Jewish, democratic, and moral.  And only by being Jewish, democratic, and moral, will we Jews be worthy of living in the land God promised us.