Dear Friends,
This has been both an inspiring and continuously heartbreaking week; the latter word—heartbreaking—I’ve been using so often lately as to put it in danger of becoming trite, and yet that is the effect of the images we see pouring out of Israel and Gaza week after week.
I say inspiring because of the release of over 100 hostages over the last week, from children to the elderly, being reunited with family members who feared they’d never see them again. I, too, had this fear, and maybe even expectation. To see this reunification is inspiring.
On the other hand, the families they are returning to are in many cases broken, holes blasted through them: children returning from Gaza orphaned, spouses widowed, others still waiting for their loved ones to be released from captivity.
War yields immense suffering on all sides, and the experience of the hostages has been a reminder of the personal toll the war has taken. Each individual life is reflective of an entire world, as reflected in the famous Talmudic passage that:
כל המקיים נפש אחת מישראל מעלה עליו הכתוב כאילו קיים עולם מלא
“Anyone who sustains one soul from the people of Israel, is considered by scripture as though they sustained an entire world” (Sanhedrin 73a). (While the literal translation reflects the context that it is written for a Jewish audience, the implications for a more universal message are present as well).
To witness the saga of the hostages, and to recognize the humanity of all who are subject to the ravages of war, on all sides, is an important act in remembering all of our respective humanity, and the linkage we have to all fellow human beings, who are all created in the same Divine image.
We pray that the next phase of this war, which is resuming, yields a return of more hostages, provides more humanitarian support for all who need it, and yields conditions which allow for two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, to live side-by-side in peace, each respecting the other’s national aspirations.
Unfortunately, Hamas does not recognize the legitimacy of Israel, and therefore Hamas’ stated modus operandi is a permanent state of war against Jews and against Israel, and it is hard to imagine long-term prospects of peace in the region, and safety and security for the Jewish people in Israel, with Hamas at the helm. Therefore, devastating as war is, and as much as we pray for the safety of other Palestinians over the course of this war, I recognize the legitimacy of the task of Israel, a sovereign state, seeking to limit the capacity for violence against it on the part of Hamas, and recognize its efforts to uproot Hamas, praying also that the capacity for alternative Palestinian leadership is built up.
There are also those within Israel’s government who seek to squash the Palestinian movement for dignity and self-government, and while it may take a long time to get to a place where the two sides can imagine living side-by-side in peace and with mutual recognition, we need Israeli leadership that makes space for those aspirations, and does not cut off that pathway. It’s under those conditions, where Palestinians are not able to envision an alternative to Hamas, that Hamas thrives.
Meanwhile, protest movements around the world continue to wave the Palestinian flag while considering the Israeli flag illegitimate. They reject the idea of a nation state for a Jewish-majority population, even one that has already been in existence for 75 years and which has over 9 million residents, many of whom have never known a different home country, even while waving the flag for a different national movement, predicated on a different ethnic base for the population. They claim antisemitism has nothing to do with it, and while I might believe the sincerity of that claim, I also question, given that we all have subtle, implicit biases that work their way into our psyches and our ways of thinking if they are not examined, whether they have examined whether the effects of antisemitism, a centuries-old prejudice, has not made its way from the predominant culture into their own psyches.
By the way, it’s possible for Jews to internalize that antisemitism and self-perception as well. We all receive messaging about different groups of people—including Jews and Arabs and Muslims—from the predominant culture in which we find ourselves, and it takes work to uproot those negative perspectives, and remind ourselves where we started—that we were all created in the image of the Divine. We can both lift up our respective cultures, and want to foster them in nation states that can help ensure our safety and freedom, while recognizing the full, Godly humanity in those of other cultures and populations. Diversity and mutual recognition can go hand-in-hand.
With prayers for full hearts upon entering Shabbat,
Rabbi K.
