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Survivors & Statistics
Israel
Oranges, Olives and Lemons
It feels like every year there is a new item to add to your Seder plate or a new reading to insert before the second cup or the eating of answering of the four questions or the telling of the story. This year its lemons. Lemons for their color; lemons for their taste; lemons for the hostages sitting still in darkness and wondering if they will ever see the light. I like how the tradition grows and how it adapts. I like that it is not frozen in time or place but that it is living and breathing.
Yes there is an order to the Seder. And I follow it more or less. And the words written centuries ago take on different meanings almost every year it seems. Like the word “enough” – in Dayenu – it would have been enough. Yes. the poem/song lists all the things we have historically experienced as a people from leaving Egypt to discovering Torah and Shabbat, from building the Temple to entering the Land. Any one of them would have been enough. But there’s another way to roughly translate Dayenu. (Hebrew scholars look away!) It is enough. Enough with war; enough with Hamas terrorism; enough days the Hostages have lived in tunnels; enough bombings and death of the innocent both Palestinian and Israeli; enough tariffs, enough ICE, enough presidential privelege and power grabbing; enough shirking of congressional responsibility in leading this country.
The trick in leading a Seder is to balance the ritual, text and free flowing discussion. People sometimes tell me that they went to a “real” Seder where they read the whole Haggadah and even went back after the meal. If I could rewrite the order of things I would put Elijah before hard boiled egg – Elijah is the harbinger of hope and promise – that opening of the door isn’t just to welcome a spirit to sip the wine. that opening of the door is an act of faith that we can make tomorrow better than today.
Of course we’re not doing so good with today. Hence the lemon. The piece I saw says put the lemon on the Seder plate and slice it right before Maror. Add it to your Hillel Sandwich – so the bitterness of slavery and sweetness of freedom are integrated with the sharpness of the hostages’ fates.
At LabShul, one of the out there congregations in our country has a heading on their Seder instructions which I love. SEYDER: Say More/Read Less. So here’s my take: This is all about a discussion. It is not about slavishly following the text. It is reacting and intereacting with the tradition. It is about interrupting the leader. it is about questioning the rituals. It is about lemons, oranges, and olives.
I Was Cautiously Hopeful
I’m not surprised; I am disappointed. I’m anxious and hopeful at the same time. I’m reticent to even write these words, after all I am living relatively securely in Florida and the things that worry me do not include missiles raining on my head from as close as Gaza and as far away as Yemen. The cease-fire news yesterday was a blessing. But even then, I feared optimism was somewhat premature.
Maybe we know too much; maybe we think what we know is really not the truth. As of this writing, Netanyahu is saying that Hamas is reneging on part of the deal and the Israeli cabinet meeting to discuss and hopefully ratify the agreement has been postponed. That was 14 minutes ago according to the Times. What will happen next is unknown to me although given President Biden’s announcement last night of the work that his administration has been constantly doing to achieve cessation of hostilities and a return of the hostages it is hard to imagine that it will fall apart again.
But there is Monday and the inauguration of President Elect Donald Trump. It so echoes Carter/Reagan and the freeing of the Americans from Iran in 1981. Who wants to give whom what? Who is afraid of whom? Is Netanyahu ready to give Trump the gift of making the deal? Is Hamas afraid of Trump’s threat to bomb the hell out of them?
Sad. Disheartening. I hope by the time you read these words, my fears, anxiety, disappointment will be something of the past and there will be a new day dawning with the hostages returning home and guns silencing as hints of a permanent peace rise out of the darkness. It’s probably going to take something the Bible would call a miracle. It’s immensely risky because the forces of evil are real in this world and everything I know says that its name is Hamas. It’s definitely going to take courage and faith. But I am not so sure there are any other good alternatives – so read these words as a prayer.
A prayer for peace; a silent petition to all that is good or God in the world for sanity; a petition for joy to come in the morning even though we all know it will be tinged with sadness for all those whose deaths we mourn.
Living Between the Cracks
As I was hiking the High Falls Loop in Dupont Forest this morning, I listened to one of my go-to podcasts about Israel. Produced by the Hartman Institute, it is called “For Heaven’s Sake” – Israel at War Day 284. The hosts were discussing what normalcy means at this time in Israel. Somewhere on the walk, they used the phrase “living between the cracks” and I thought this did not just apply to Israel. It is what we all are doing – living and making the most of what we have and who we are ignoring or skipping over the cracks in the sidewalk we call the world today.
I really don’t know where to begin – the former President who denies that he lost the election is running to become president again surviving an assassination attempt by inches; the sitting President who has a fifty-year record of public service is bowing out of the race to serve four more years and no one really knows the real story there. (Except I wouldn’t be fair or honest if I didn’t let you know that I am in awe of his willingness to let go of the reins of power and praise him for thinking of the country first. No matter what the motivation and forces that made this decision. I admire him and wish more politicians put country first. And yeah…. It wasn’t a quick or easy decision, and it did look like for a time that the trappings of power were too seductive to ever let go – but he did the right thing. And hopefully his legacy will reflect that.)
The current Vice-President, a woman of color, seems to be on track to cement the Democratic presidential nomination. If successfully winning the presidency she will become the first woman president and it is probably about time. It’s not like all the kings’ men have been consistently effective. From my perspective, it is probably also the right time to celebrate the multi-cultural demographics of our country. From my perspective, we are not a White Christian Country. And there of course is the rub and the challenge and the pitfalls. Change is hard for us all and change is necessary – without change there is no growth.
When I came home from my hike I sat on the porch and put on my Spotify liked songs. One of them is “Try to Remember.” The lyrics are so another generation and a different world. Can you imagine someone writing a contemporary song with the line: “Try to remember when life was so tender that no one wept except the willow…”
No one wept except the willow. I weep for the callousness; I weep for the vitriol and violence; I weep for lies and I weep that it is hard to know who or whom to trust and what we call the news on one station is opinion on another. And I pray we can collectively come out of this whole – a united states – with a new face looking forward. And out of the cracks will grow a new tomorrow.
What a World
I don’t know why or how I got hooked on Rufus Wainwright’s music. Maybe it’s because he covers a lot of Leonard Cohen. Yesterday morning on my almost daily walk, I really listened to the words of Wainwright’s “Oh What a World.” It fit my mood as I tried to keep my mind from wandering away from the beauty and serenity of the world I was walking through. But it didn’t really work. (My mind that is.)
“Oh, what a world it seems we live in. … Why am I always on a plane or a fast train. Oh, what a world my parents gave me …. Always traveling but not in love … Men reading fashion magazines … Wouldn’t it be a lovely headline? Life is beautiful on the New York Times….
We are home from Israel, and it is time to make a photo book that tries to capture the deeply touching experience of being there in these days and at this time. Everyone has put their favorite photos in a shared album and Sammy, and I are tasked with selecting those which will make it onto the pages of the book. There are all kinds of decisions to make: size; matte; glossy; lay flat; design by computerized algorithm or do it yourself or pay an extra fee to have a personalized live human consultant or even a hybrid where you use their templates. We are hybrid all the way although there is a great chat option where you can ask a real human how to …..
Which brings me back to “Oh What a World.” Sometimes I think we are on a fast train to destruction, and I wonder what kind of world we are giving to our children and grandchildren. Sometimes as I listen to the news or watch the network half hour, I say the last five minutes of “America Strong” isn’t enough. The plane we are on flies so high we can’t see that the grass is green and that green isn’t just one color. We call them shades cause I think we need to categorize everything. Trying to make sense of the beautiful chaos of nature.
And then this morning – “Four Hostages rescued alive in Gaza operation, Israel says.” (That’s The Washington Post.) Or “Israel’s Military Says It Rescued Four Hostages.” (That’s the NYT.) Maybe I am prejudiced (I am). I don’t see all the qualifiers when it comes to reporting how many died in an Israeli strike on Gaza. It is always a UN School but you have to read below the fold to find out that it was a haven for a Hamas unit.
I know I am rambling. I guess the theme is “Oh What a World.”
But right now, I am sticking with the rescue and return of the four hostages. That’s a photo for our book and another reason to love Israel.
Israel Diaries 4
Our security guard put on Tefillen.
We are on our way to the Gaza Envelope. That means we are visiting the sites that were directly attacked by Hamas on October 7th. They are within miles of the Gaza border. We have Rafael (our security guard) with us today; we have helmets with us today; we have had a security briefing on what happens if there is a red alert. (Siren that warns of incoming mortar or missles). Perhaps I am totally naive, but I am not overly anxious.
Why are we going? To learn; to bear witness; to show solidarity; to understand what was and what is; to experience a small piece of the nightmare of 10.7. As we were driving down from Tel Aviv, Rafael put on a Kippah and Tefillin. My guess is that Rafael is in his twenties; when Eileen was introduced to him, she said, “You’re too cute to be a security guard.” I am going to try and ask him how he identifies religiously.
It is many hours and many experiences and many tears, anger and laughter later. We are back at our hotel in Tel Aviv. I need time to process it all. Our first stop was Kibbitz Nir Oz and then the Nova Festival Site. Both were ground zero for the morning of October 7th and visiting them you mourn, remember, witness the pain and have too many unanswered questions.
At the end of the day, we visited an Army base, home of the engineer corps of the IDF. They asked us not to take pictures of their faces or parts of the base. They are responsible for exploring, discovering and clearing the tunnels in Gaza. We walked through one of their training facilities and provided and shared a barbecue dinner. The picture above is one of the volunteer cooks and me. Quite an experience and a better way to end our day – showing our appreciation and gratitude to these young men and women who are on the front line defending Israel and us.
There are signs all over Israel: We Are Stronger Together.
Hello Again
It’s the last day of Passover (for Reform Jews and Israeli Jews) and I am thinking about the ratio of strawberry jelly to whipped butter on my egg matzah. (By the way – I think it’s very strange that the NYT almost always spells it “matzo”. Now that I think of it, I have three different brands of matzah in my house (Streit’s, Manischewitz and Yehuda) and they all use the “matzo” spelling.) I am trying to perfect the amount of pressure to use when spreading butter on the matzah before it breaks. Although I think that it is smarter to break the matzah before taking it out of the box – less crumbs. And isn’t Gluten Free Matzah a game changer, especially if you get the onion flavor? Eileen wanted to know if we could use it at the Seder. But the side of the box says: not for Seder use and the blessing to be said over it isn’t even the Motzi. (The blessing we say over bread). The blessing is the one we use over things that have lots of different ingredients, especially if they didn’t grow from the ground or a tree or a bush.
But back to crumbs. I have no apology in me for six months of inactivity on this blog. Do I really want to say this? I just couldn’t write. Depression? Fear? Angst? Paralysis? Between Israel and worry; Antisemitism and anger; the political climate in Washington and frustration; the presidential polls and fear of what the election might bring; the hostages and hope; struggling to keep the faith; praying for peace and a cessation of suffering both in Israel, Gaza, the Ukraine and countless other places I confess I do not pay enough attention to.
That’s probably why it is easier to get out the dust buster to pick up the pieces. I can do something about the mess in the kitchen. I feel fairly powerless when it comes to everything else. I know, I know. This is a democracy, and every voice has a place, every voice is heard. Really – seems to me it is mostly the ones that are screaming the loudest and the most extreme. Genocide? Do they even know what that means? And West Palm Beach or probably to be exact Palm Beach County had more incidents of antisemitism than any other county in Florida? And our college campuses? Did I say I wonder if things will ever get back to what we use to call normal?
But enough – tonight it is Pizza. Although there was an article that Corey sent me recently that posits that the original matzah that the Rabbis were eating in the first century or so was soft and pliable more like pita than cardboard. Now that would be a real game changer. And what do you think of the Manischewitz rebranding? Maybe we need to rebrand the world.
Hoping to get back to you soon.
Do Something
There is so much swirling in my mind that I don’t know where to begin. I could begin with what is happening on too many of our finest colleges and universities. The other night Eileen and I were talking with two of our grandchildren – Corey was sharing people posting about the lockdown at the Kosher dining room at Cornell and Sammy was sharing about the competing demonstrations at Tulane which ended in violence as two demonstrators on a truck were burning an Israeli flag. Or go right to the pages of the newspapers or visuals on our multiple screens as we are bombarded with images of the sad and terrifying consequences of hatred and war.
But if I am really true to myself, I should begin simply. I am living with a pit in my stomach. Every time someone asks me how I am, I have to weigh my answer. Do they really want to know that I am angry, tearful, sad, feeling impotent, frustrated, and pretending to be fine. Do they really want to know that I am unsuccessfully trying to limit the amount of news I consume on a daily basis? Do they really want to know how worried I am about Israel and America on many fronts?
Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, Ph.D. is one of my teachers. He taught liturgy at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and was one of the founders of Synagogue 2000. He continues to teach through his blogs and newsletter called “An Open Letter To My Students.” In his latest letter, he opens:
“Here’s what I know about the war: Hamas is a radicalized terrorist group that would slaughter every Jew in Israel, if it could: think of it as “another six million.” Israel must try to eliminate it. Israel must also try to limit collateral damage to Gaza civilians. But war is hell and there is no way to avoid at least some such casualties, especially because of the way Hamas embeds itself among civilians and their institutions.
I know something else also: Jews are news; and the media are happily pandering to a public that cannot get enough of blood and gore, this time factual, not fictional, so all the more sensational and saleable – like those “True crime” series, but “True War” instead. I know also that except for ever-new examples of wartime horror, most of the pundits, analysts, and commentators don’t know anything more than I do. Anyone who knows the important stuff, like the Israelis’ actual military strategy, can’t talk about it.”
He’s right you know. There’s a lot we don’t know and the absolute right of Israel to defend itself is non-negotiable. Here’s things I don’t know. I don’t know what the end game is going to be. I don’t know as the war gets messier (as it has in the last few days) how long our friends are going to stick with us. I don’t know how to balance my sympathy for innocent deaths of civilians in Gaza with my belief that the IDF is waging a war against an enemy that has no regard for human life (Arab or Israeli) and would slaughter us all if it could. I don’t know why we even distinguish between American and Israeli hostages. They are all innocent and they all deserve to come home alive. I don’t know what to do next.
This much I think I know. It is not business as usual. And if you gave to the organization of your choice to support Israel – give again. And if you have given to help fight the rising tide of antisemitism – give again. And above all: whatever your relationship with this thing we call Judaism – wear it with pride – find a way to express what it means to you – and celebrate it.
Go to Synagogue; Buy Israeli wine; Be proud on social media; Light an extra candle for the 200 plus hostages; Wear a blue ribbon. blueribbonsforisrael.org Thank your senator or representative in congress for supporting Israel even if you are not in tune with the rest of their agenda. Ask the organization of your choice how you can help. Don’t hide your feelings – and if you are conflicted by all of this – know this: you are not alone. We need each other now more than ever. Find your community and be with it.
Simple Truths That Are Very Complicated
I don’t think I have ever reposted something on this Blog. But this needs to be said and read and reread and remembered and told time and time again. The attack on Israel yesterday is not business as usual. The attempt to blame a failure of Israeli intelligence may be fair but it is premature. The explanation that Hamas is using a perceived weakness in the fabric of Israeli society because of the demonstrations against the current government may be true but it is irrelevant. The pontification that this attack 50 years after the Yom Kippur war is linked to the nascent Saudi – Israel “deal” is speculation. We all want to make sense of the senseless. This is what is true. Hamas wants to destroy Israel. And that means kill Jews.
So I am reposting an article by Bari Weiss. This is from “The Free Press”, described by Bari herself as “A new media company built on the ideals that were once the bedrock of American journalism.” It is described by others as conservative and progressive, controversial and incendiary. It always gives you something to think about. I am a paid subscriber – just so you know where I am coming from.
An aside: On Friday night I was at Temple Israel. The Rabbis were unrolling the Torah Scroll in the Social Hall and we were all standing in a circle as the parchment reached around the room and came into our white gloved hands. We were celebrating the Torah’s unending gift of ancient stories and moral truths, poetry, exhortations, unpleasant facts, history and ritual that some call God’s truth. I was joking with the person next to me that we were going to run out of Torah or that here I am standing on the outside of the Scroll. We thought that either of these were good Blog titles.
And the next morning we woke up. And our enemies (yes – our) reminded us of one of the oldest truths. But not now – now – read this and know:
ISRAEL AT WAR.
“You are about to withstand a barrage of lies about the war that broke out today in Israel.
Some of those lies will be explicit. Some of them will be lies of omission. Others will be lies of obfuscation. Or lies of minimization. Lies told by people who are simply too afraid to look at such an ugly, barbarous reality. And lies told by people whose true beliefs are too ugly to quite say aloud. Turn on cable news and you can hear some of them right now.
So let’s get some facts straight.
Israel was attacked last night. It was attacked by Hamas terrorists who streamed over the border from Gaza. They came on foot and on motorbikes. They came by truck and by car and by paraglider. They came to Israel to murder and maim and mutilate anyone they could find. And that is what they did.
It is impossible to know the numbers of the dead or the missing or the injured.
The official numbers as of this writing: 300 Israelis dead; 1,590 wounded. And dozens—maybe many more—taken hostage into Gaza. They include women, elders, and children.
But none of those words or numbers capture the evil of what unfolded today.
Young festival-goers running for their lives. Teenage girls dragged by their hair by terrorists. An old woman forced to pose with a Hamas rifle. A mother—a hostage—cradling two redheaded babies in her arms.
I have friends in Israel. Each one of them has a story of someone they know who is missing. Or injured. Or killed. This was not a tit-for-tat. This was not a justifiable military response, or just another day in a cycle of violence. This was the slaughter of innocent civilians.
New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America today announced a protest in honor of the attacks. It’s called All Out for Palestine: “In solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to resist 75 years of occupation and apartheid.” The anti-Zionist group IfNotNow explained the attacks as Israel’s fault and said of the dead Jews: “Their blood is on the hands of the Israeli government.”
You will see a lot like this in the coming days. Ancient lies told in new language whose end is always, strangely, the same: a justification for genocide.
Think about 9/11 and the kind of shock and terror we felt. That is what Israelis feel today. That is the level of devastation Israel is now experiencing.
We are left with so many questions:
How did this happen?
Who is to blame for this catastrophic security failure?
How will Israel respond? How will the country save the hostages in Gaza?
What was the extent of Iran’s involvement in this sophisticated operation?
Will this change the Biden administration’s policy toward the Islamic Republic?
And so many more.
Those are the questions that require answers. But for today, while others offer mealy-mouthed pablum, we want to do something simple: to tell the truth—plainly—about a catastrophic day.
Herzl Crying
It is Tisha B’Av – the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av and for many Jews it is a fast day; it is a day of mourning – remembering the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem and some say the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Maybe because of its placement in the middle of the summer this is not one of my top ten holidays. Maybe because I have that old Reform theology in my head that asks where would we be if we were still offering animal sacrifices on a centralized altar in Jerusalem. Would we have synagogues; would we have Rabbis; would we recognize ourselves?
But this year Tisha B’Av snuck up on me and said: pay attention. When the Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem laid waste, our national identity was destroyed. The second Jewish commonwealth disappeared and although not erased from history, we began our dispersion, our wandering, our dependence on the tolerance of emperors, monarchs, religious leaders, dictators, and political systems we were not a part of. And so began the slow and tortured march to the Inquisition and the Holocaust.
It took us almost 2000 years to regain Jewish sovereignty. When Theodore Herzl championed a national homeland for the Jewish people and created modern political Zionism, he envisioned an open society where Jews of all stripes and colors, all beliefs and cultures could feel at home. You can read about it in his utopian novel, “AltneuLand” (Old-New Land), published in 1902. If you are following the current Israeli political crisis, you know that many observers believe that the crisis concerning the “judicial overhaul” is about Israel’s national identity. Will it continue to be open and innovative, pluralistic, democratic? Will it be the Israel we are so proud of?
Tali texted me yesterday and asked – are we an ethnicity? I don’t know if she was filling out a form or where this came from. (Texts are limited in the amount of information they impart.) But I answered: “Yes, and more. Its complicated.” Well, it is and it isn’t. We are a people; we care about each other; we care what happens to Jews wherever they live. Do we care more than we care about non-Jews in Asia or Africa or Central America? Well language tells a little bit of the story. We divide the world into Jews and non-Jews. We care about people in need everywhere, but we begin by caring about our own.
And so Tisha B’Av. If nothing else, tells the heartbreaking story of Jewish powerlessness. It reminds me how much and why I care about the future of Israel society. I am so proud of the scope of the Israeli protesters who are writing a new chapter in Herzl’s novel. They are fighting for the soul of the nation. They give me hope and that’s not a small thing. I am proud of every step they take in their march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in their willingness to stand up for their ideals. I may be idealizing them and maybe a little naïve, but I think they could teach us a thing or two.
rabbiunplugged 