Divrei Torah/Torah Talks

In this morning's Torah reading, we encounter a confounding and painful set of stories. How could Abraham and Sarah banish Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness? How could Hagar abandon her son under a bush when she fears he is dying? How, in tomorrow's Torah reading, could Abraham believe that his God demanded the sacrifice of his remaining son? 

However we might wish it to be otherwise, the authors of the Torah seem intent on showing us not humanity as we wish it was, but human beings as we really are — imperfect, confused, sometimes cruel. There are no clear good guys or bad guys in these stories of our spiritual ancestors. Perhaps the Torah has lasted as long as it has, continues to teach us and inspire us, because it dares to embrace the fullness, the complexity, of the human species. 

All of this leads me to wonder how those who put together the Torah might approach this moment that we are in as a Jewish community. How might they tell the story of what is happening in Israel, in Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon, in this moment? What would they want to tell us about our own strengths, our own missteps, our wisdom and our folly?

I want to flash forward from this ancient text to nearly a year ago, the weeks following October 7. As Israel's bombardment of Gaza began, a colleague of mine posted a call to the Jewish community to promote an immediate cease-fire. This was, he declared, a moment of complete moral clarity. A week after that, I attended an event hosted by our local federation, at which a colleague spoke about his recent trip to Israel. In defending Israel's military response in Gaza, he declared that this was a moment of complete moral clarity. 

It gave me pause, as I attempted to absorb what it meant to hear two colleagues – both of whom are good people, both of whom I like – articulate two positions of "moral clarity" that were diametrically opposed to each other. While I like to think that I appreciate moral clarity, something bothered me about both of these declarations. They were indicators of what had happened in so much of the American Jewish community, and beyond, in the days following October 7: a hardening of positions, a settling into a combative stance in which those with whom we disagree are not merely wrong — they are actively immoral and/or dangerous. 

During this time, I was doing all I could to keep my heart and my mind open to the people around me whom I love and respect, people having vastly different experiences of and responses to events unfolding thousands of miles away. Sometimes I felt like I might rip in two, but I knew that this is what I was called to do, as a rabbi to this particular community, and as someone who tries to live the mitzvah of ahavat yoshvei ha'aretz, love for all the people who dwell in that land. I wanted to hear and be open to these vastly differing responses, even as I processed my own thoughts and emotions.

It's not that I wasn't clear about some things. It felt clear to me, from the beginning of this war, that there would be no winners. It felt clear to me that Hamas' attack would provoke an overwhelming Israeli response that would bring utter devastation to the people of Gaza while failing to bring safety or security to the Israeli people. It felt clear to me that the entire situation promised nothing but physical, emotional, and spiritual devastation for all involved. And in this moment, as the war escalates, this all feels more true than ever.

As I have sought out what I believe to be a moral response, I have been wondering about what it means to stay open to suffering, everyone's suffering, and to respond to events from that perspective.

In this, I am guided by the people on the ground, Israelis and Palestinians, who have refused to be dehumanized by these dehumanizing events. On October 11, I received an email from Combatants for Peace. This group of Israeli and Palestinian former combatants, peace activists committed to nonviolence and shared struggle against the occupation, had gathered on October 9. This is what they shared with their supporters a few days later: 

When we logged onto Zoom, Jamil, CfP's Palestinian General Coordinator, began the conversation. He looked around the Zoom room at his Israeli friends and shared that it was hard to find the words to express his sorrow, shock, and grief about what Hamas had done. [He said:]

"I can't believe this. I am seeing these images, and I don't want to believe they are real. I cannot hold back my tears. You are my friends, my family."

Other Palestinian activists echoed words of care to Israeli members:

"I am with you. I'm going to stay with you." 

"I wish I could see you and hold you."

The email continued:

When a member asked if we could meet on Zoom every few days for mutual support, the Israeli co-founder, Itamar, spoke to our Palestinian members through tears, "I know things are going to get much worse. After we witness what Israel will do to Gaza, I don't know if I will be able to look into your eyes." A Palestinian member replied, "What sets us apart is that we can see each other. We can see each other's pain. This is how we must stay."

That conversation became my guiding light, my source of moral clarity, in the ensuing months. "We can see each other's pain; this is how we must stay." This stance has been echoed by other incredible people on the ground, Israelis and Palestinians in groups like the Bereaved Family Forum, Roots/Shorashim/Judur, Standing Together — people who collectively model for me what moral clarity looks like in this moment. They model how to hold on to the humanity of all involved, even while actively protesting the leaders and the policies that led to this bloody eruption.

So I have been trying to follow the lead of these leaders, and to think about how we might approach this issue here in America in a different way. And what I want to offer today are some possible ways of holding the hurt that so many of us have been feeling for the past year — the grief, the anger, the fear, the despair. I wish I could offer comfort, but I don't know that I can even attempt that, while so many are still suffering so acutely. This is not a moment for comfort. It is, hopefully, a moment for teshuvah, for turning: turning towards our own spirits, turning towards things we don't want to look at, turning towards those with whom we disagree, turning, ultimately, towards the divine within each of us and within all those caught up in this devastating mess.

A few weeks ago, a wise person asked me what God might say in answer to my anguished questions about how to approach this topic. As I sat with that question, what arose in my mind was this Biblical verse, from the prophet Micah:

הִגִּ֥יד לְךָ֛ אָדָ֖ם מַה־טּ֑וֹב וּמָֽה־יְיָ֞ דּוֹרֵ֣שׁ מִמְּךָ֗ כִּ֣י אִם־עֲשׂ֤וֹת מִשְׁפָּט֙ וְאַ֣הֲבַת חֶ֔סֶד וְהַצְנֵ֥עַ לֶ֖כֶת עִם־אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ

It has been told to you, human being, what is good, and what Adonai seeks from you — just this: to do justice, and love chesed, lovingkindness, and walk humbly with your God.

So, the prophet says, it has been told to us what God "doresh mimecha" — what God seeks or inquires of us. That word "doresh" is related to the word midrash, the rabbinic literary technique for drawing deeper meaning out of Biblical texts. The prophet is saying that God needs our help in this endeavor — God is asking us to make midrash, to make meaning.

Lidrosh – seeking; implies a process, movement – it is not about arriving at a position and then digging in. And the prophet Micah implies that this inquiry can't be done alone. If God seeks something from us, then presumably God couldn't figure it out by Godself — and so neither can we. 

What is it that God seeks of us, asks of us? These three things: doing justice, loving lovingkindness, and "walking humbly."

I want to work backwards through these three. Tzne'a lechet – walking humbly, or walking with humility – also implies, like the word doresh, a process, a kind of movement. Acting with and for justice and love is not a place we arrive at. It is a way of being, of walking, in the world. Walking implies making adjustments along the way, recalibrating, going step by step. And not just walking — but doing so humbly. Being able to admit that, even with the best of intentions, I might be wrong. 

This is one piece, for me, of what it means to "walk humbly" in this moment. I have my convictions and my commitments, and they are real and they are strong. And at the same time, I can make room for the convictions and commitments of others. I can challenge them, and they can challenge me. And hopefully, if I can keep my mind and heart open, I can learn, and others can as well.

The second instruction from the prophet is ahavat chesed, "loving chesed, loving lovingkindness." What does it mean to "love lovingkindness"? Perhaps to embody it in some way. To be completely open to the possibility of lovingkindness. To make it part of ourselves.

One of the most difficult outgrowths of this year has been the shutting down of hearts and minds in response to the cascade of violence and devastation in Israel, in Gaza, and beyond. The inability of some to have any compassion for the Israelis who were killed, assaulted, abused, taken captive on October 7. The inability of others to have compassion for the hundreds of thousands of Gazans who have been displaced, starved, wounded, killed, in the ensuing months. The refusal in some quarters to even speak the word "Israeli," in others to even speak the word "Palestinian."

This, to me, is the opposite of ahavat chesed. And when our hearts shut down like this, we suffer. It does damage to us, profound spiritual and moral damage. It is natural that we might feel for the suffering of some more than others, depending on our personal connections, depending on those with whom we identify most closely. That is to be expected. But when we deny, minimize, or justify the violence done to one group of people, this causes moral injury to ourselves.

If we deny, minimize, or justify the violence done to a group of people, we are doing harm to ourselves. I fear that the Jewish community is suffering this harm. It is damage that we need to attend to. The prophet's instruction to love chesed is an instruction to expand our circles of compassion. It is a demand that we do better at seeing the humanity of those with whom we do not identify, those Palestinians, those Israelis, of whom we are suspicious, whom we view as "other," as terrorist, as oppressor. It does not mean jettisoning our commitments or our analysis; it does not mean condoning injustice. It is a demand that we open our hearts a bit wider, and investigate the ways in which our commitments may have led us to dehumanize those whom we see as on the other "side." 

And this brings us to asot mishpat, "do justice," make justice, enact justice. It is here, in the realm of justice, that opinions diverge most radically when it comes to October 7 and its aftermath. There are those who believe that the Israeli military response is completely justified, is itself a form of justice, in response to violent, criminal assaults by Hamas and by Hezbollah, dangerous enemies of Israel. 

And there are those who understand the entire situation in the context of decades of profound injustice against Palestinians. In this view, it is impossible to confront what is happening today without acknowledging the decades-long siege of Gaza before October 7, the ongoing injustice of Palestinian life under occupation, and the violation of international norms of warfare in the Israeli military response.

This is not a debate that I want to engage in this morning, although these are topics worthy of our study and discussion in the months to come. What I would like to do is bring a different lens to what "enacting justice" might mean, when it comes to our own processing of these events. 

This past March, as my rabbinic convention, I went to a session led by a friend and colleague, Rabbi Donna Kirshbaum, whom we have hosted here at CDT a few times. Donna is a leader with the Israeli women's peace organization, Women Wage Peace. One of her best friends was Vivian Silver, the Israeli peace activist who was murdered on October 7. Donna organized a session at the convention to honor Vivian's memory. Vivian had been active in peace and justice work in Israel for many decades, and what Donna emphasized was, in her words, Vivian's "utter specificity" — how she got to know individuals and communities most impacted by discrimination and injustice in their specificity, and then responded to that inequity and injustice informed by that specific knowledge. 

When my friend Donna, at this session, described what had been done to her dear friend, this is how she described it: "Vivian was likely murdered by one, two or three enraged, humiliated, radicalized young men, against the misgivings of their grandmothers." She repeated this phrase a few times, as she shared the depths of her grief. I was deeply moved by how Donna had arrived at a way of sharing what had happened that in no way minimized the horror of her friend's murder, yet somehow managed to acknowledge the humanity of those who had perpetrated the crime.

I spoke with Donna recently, to learn how she had arrived at this way of describing Vivan's death. What Donna shared with me is that she needed a way to make the predicate of the sentence, "Vivian was murdered by" as specific as possible, to honor her friend, and to allow her to properly grieve. At first she used words that were media-driven — "Vivian was murdered by Hamas terrorists." But Vivian was someone who approached the work of justice with great specificity, and so too her death merited this specificity. And so, as Donna reflected on what she knew about people in Gaza, as she reflected on what might have happened, she came up with this formulation. Her intention was not so much to do right by those young men; it was to find words that would allow her to fully grieve her dear friend. 

In honoring the life and legacy of her friend Vivian, Donna revealed to me a deep way to understand what it means to "do justice," to enact mishpat in this world. It is to refuse to reduce anyone to the labels behind which actual human beings disappear. Labels like: Terrorist. Occupier. Monster. Settler colonialist. It is to honor those whom we most deeply grieve by making sure that they do not become an abstraction, a nameless victim, but remain full human beings who are not pawns in anyone's geopolitical game. It is to refuse to let one's own grief become an excuse for hatred or more violence. It is, most simply, to do what the great rabbi Hillel said was the essence of Judaism: Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself.

And beyond that, it is to realize, collectively, that there has to be another way forward. In this, I look to those Israelis and Palestinians who are invested in finding a solution, in making real a different future for all the people on the land, the Israelis and the Palestinians who are not going anywhere, whatever the dreams and fantasies of Hamas and the Netanyahu government.

The Palestinian writer and activist Iyad el-Baghdadi was quoted in a New York Times article this past February, in which he commented on current debates raging about Israel and Palestine. He said:

I don't care if they (Israelis) are settlers or not. The solution is not to constantly try to moralize. The solution is to fix the power imbalance. The future needs to be rooted in the truth that all human beings are equal and that Jewish life is equivalent to Palestinian life and that we can together work on a future in which nobody is oppressed and we can address the inequities of the past.

In a similar vein, here are words spoken by Vivian Silver's son Yonatan Ziegen at her funeral:

We all need to realize that the occupation, the 7th of October, the war in Gaza, Jewish and Arab terrorism, and any kind of political violence, are not inevitable. They are based on false and toxic ideas that bring and will continue to bring destruction on us all. Our effort is to create beneficent ideals of devotion to life, of fair and equitable resource distribution, of recognizing the other until he turns from stranger into someone familiar, until we are no longer willing to kill and be killed.

To realize the truth held in el-Baghdadi's words, in Ziegen's words, is to asot mishpat, to do the work of justice, while also loving chesed and walking humbly with the Source of Life and Liberation. 

I will be teaching a class, beginning in November, in which I hope to use these words of the prophet Micah as a guide to a deep inquiry into the questions that have so deeply unsettled the American Jewish community — questions about Zionism, about Israel and Palestine, about antisemitism, about what it means to hold to values of justice and love in this historical moment. I am calling the class "Walking a New Path," and my hope is that we can seek, we can doresh, we can make meaning together, beyond the labels and the slogans and the certainties that divide us, and figure out a way forward that will be of some use at the very least to ourselves, if not to the wider community. 

I'd like to end with a blessing, one which I began to write before October 7, and which feels more urgent now — a blessing to help fulfill the mitzvah of ahavat yoshvei ha'aretz, loving all those who dwell in the land:

May the One That blessed our ancestors, Source of Compassion, bless all those who dwell in the good land, Eretz Yisrael/Palestine — a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs and pomegranates, of olive oil and honey. May the descendants of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar drink from Be'er L'chai Ro'i, the wellspring of divine nourishment. May they, in their own ways and according to their own traditions, know You, and realize together a collective liberation from suffering, sorrow, and torment. May they experience together Your blessing: "I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down untroubled by anyone; I will give the land respite from vicious beasts, and no sword shall cross your land." May this land and its inhabitants become a blessing to all of humanity, a beacon of possibility in a time of trouble. 

And let us say — amen.
 

Rabbi Toba Spitzer
Rosh Hashanah 5785