This is what it means to be a people. This is what makes us different.
I have to admit I'm very conflicted about all that is taking place in Israel and Lebanon these days. I have recently been reading a lot of William Sloane Coffin, who in many ways I see as a professional role model when it comes to embracing the role of a campus chaplain for the sake of advancing the human condition. And Coffin was clear: War and violence are categorically bad. Nonviolence is the answer. And whether it was in the Civil Rights Movement or the antiwar movement or the anti-nuclear movement, Coffin always preached the gospel of nonviolence. He of course would be condemning Israel right now for killing civilians.
There is a large part of me that finds Coffin's attitude admirable, just as there is much in me that finds admirable teachings in the Christian scriptures. As I put it in an earlier post, I believe we all must weep when a Tzelem Elokim, an Image of God, is wiped out. The idea that human beings are created in God's image is the foundation of Torah, of our idea and respect for and love of life. So to see life destroyed, to see violence done to human beings, to human bodies, to the minds and spirits of children--we must weep in the face of these things.
And yet one of the key differences between Judaism and Christianity is that we as Jews tend to pay more attention to the world as it is experienced. Our utopian, messianic vision awaits fulfillment. And while we strive for it every day, we also value the continued existence of our people and our Torah. There are those who would try to separate the two--who believe that the Torah of Judaism would never allow the kind of exercise of power by Jews that we are witnessing these days. And at one time in my life, I believed that too. But while I do believe that the maintenance and continued vitality of Torah is our paramount value and greatest task, I have also come to believe that the maintenance and continued vitality of the Jewish people is indepsensable to and inseparable from it. You can't have one without the other--you can't have Am Yisrael without Torat Yisrael, the people of Israel without the Torah of Israel; just as you can't have Torat Yisrael without Am Yisrael, the Torah of Israel without the people of Israel.
Jewish identity is therefore dialectical--between the experienced present and the longed-for future; between the Godly ideals of the Torah and the human reality of the Jewish People. And because of that, we wrestle, as our namesake Jacob-Israel did. We are destined to a life of occasional contentment, but more often struggle--because the world as it is requires so much mending. When to side with the messianic and when to side with the realistic--this is the difficult choice Jews constantly face. For Christians the answer is obvious: You side with the messiah, you side with Jesus, you turn the other cheek. Would that it were so simple for the people Israel, for the nation of Israel.
Just before Jacob wrestles with the angel in the book of Genesis, the Torah recounts that heard that his twin brother Esau was on his way to meet him with an army of men. The verse reads, "And Jacob feared, and it troubled him greatly." The great medieval commentator Rashi writes on the seeming redundancy of the verse that, "Jacob feared--that he would be killed; and it troubled him greatly--that he might come to kill." And so Jacob prepared himself for both war and peace, and he prayed.
This is our dilemma in a nutshell. Anyone who has watched the news must be struck by how physically similar the Israelis and the Lebanese (and the Palestinians) look. By virtue of their humanity they are our brothers. And yet the story of Genesis--the story of brothers striving to figure out how to live with one another--continues to ring true.
So for all those reasons, I believe that this a moment like few others when Israel needs our support, our solidarity, and our compassion--but not our critique. Critique can come later. Right now Israel, and the entire Jewish people, is confronting what it means to be a real state in the real world. We are wrestling with God and with man, and we pray that, like Jacob, we will prove ourselves worthy of the task.
There is a large part of me that finds Coffin's attitude admirable, just as there is much in me that finds admirable teachings in the Christian scriptures. As I put it in an earlier post, I believe we all must weep when a Tzelem Elokim, an Image of God, is wiped out. The idea that human beings are created in God's image is the foundation of Torah, of our idea and respect for and love of life. So to see life destroyed, to see violence done to human beings, to human bodies, to the minds and spirits of children--we must weep in the face of these things.
And yet one of the key differences between Judaism and Christianity is that we as Jews tend to pay more attention to the world as it is experienced. Our utopian, messianic vision awaits fulfillment. And while we strive for it every day, we also value the continued existence of our people and our Torah. There are those who would try to separate the two--who believe that the Torah of Judaism would never allow the kind of exercise of power by Jews that we are witnessing these days. And at one time in my life, I believed that too. But while I do believe that the maintenance and continued vitality of Torah is our paramount value and greatest task, I have also come to believe that the maintenance and continued vitality of the Jewish people is indepsensable to and inseparable from it. You can't have one without the other--you can't have Am Yisrael without Torat Yisrael, the people of Israel without the Torah of Israel; just as you can't have Torat Yisrael without Am Yisrael, the Torah of Israel without the people of Israel.
Jewish identity is therefore dialectical--between the experienced present and the longed-for future; between the Godly ideals of the Torah and the human reality of the Jewish People. And because of that, we wrestle, as our namesake Jacob-Israel did. We are destined to a life of occasional contentment, but more often struggle--because the world as it is requires so much mending. When to side with the messianic and when to side with the realistic--this is the difficult choice Jews constantly face. For Christians the answer is obvious: You side with the messiah, you side with Jesus, you turn the other cheek. Would that it were so simple for the people Israel, for the nation of Israel.
Just before Jacob wrestles with the angel in the book of Genesis, the Torah recounts that heard that his twin brother Esau was on his way to meet him with an army of men. The verse reads, "And Jacob feared, and it troubled him greatly." The great medieval commentator Rashi writes on the seeming redundancy of the verse that, "Jacob feared--that he would be killed; and it troubled him greatly--that he might come to kill." And so Jacob prepared himself for both war and peace, and he prayed.
This is our dilemma in a nutshell. Anyone who has watched the news must be struck by how physically similar the Israelis and the Lebanese (and the Palestinians) look. By virtue of their humanity they are our brothers. And yet the story of Genesis--the story of brothers striving to figure out how to live with one another--continues to ring true.
So for all those reasons, I believe that this a moment like few others when Israel needs our support, our solidarity, and our compassion--but not our critique. Critique can come later. Right now Israel, and the entire Jewish people, is confronting what it means to be a real state in the real world. We are wrestling with God and with man, and we pray that, like Jacob, we will prove ourselves worthy of the task.
posted by Rabbi Josh Feigelson | 9:32 AM
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