Tzedakah saves from death. (Proverbs 10:2)

For religious Jews, Friday is typically devoted to spiritual and practical preparation for the Sabbath. Those who are traditionally observant will spend the morning and afternoon doing their shopping, housecleaning and cooking for Shabbat before sundown. Before Shabbat worship, there is a preliminary service known as Kabbalat Shabbat: a series of Psalms and prayers of welcome that serve as a spiritual precursor to the onset of the Jewish Sabbath. As any Shabbat observant Jew will attest, the sense of spiritual preparation and anticipation that takes place on Friday is deeply imbedded in the sacred rhythm of the Jewish week.

Speaking personally, this sacred rhythm has been disrupted – perhaps even profaned – for me for almost a year now. That is because every Friday afternoon, my news feed is regularly filled with reports of Palestinian civilians killed and maimed by the Israeli military during the protests taking place during the Great March of Return.

Every Erev Shabbat, as I prepare for the most sacred day of the week, I invariably learn that Gazans – including young adults and children – have been shot down by Israeli bullets as they protest hundreds of meters from the Gaza border fences. As of January 2019, Israeli soldiers have killed over 250 people and injured 23,000. Among the injured, many are grievously wounded; the Washington Post recently reported that doctors in Gaza are often unable to deal with such traumatic injuries because  Israel’s crushing blockade has left hospitals “overwhelmed and understaffed.”

Of course there is rarely a mention of these weekly events in the mainstream media – and when there is, news reports often treat the Palestinian demonstrators as the instigators of “violent clashes.” For its part, the Jewish communal establishment greets these crimes with silence at best and justification at worst – as if it is perfectly justifiable to regularly shoot down unarmed protesters with live gunfire.

I sometimes wonder if there are other Jews out there like me, whose personal preparation for Shabbat is regularly violated by the events transpiring every Friday afternoon along the Gaza border. Who approach Shabbat with an increasing sense of dread, often followed by anguish at the news of Gazans killed and injured by a military that acts in the name of the Jewish people. Who ask: how can we possibly prepare for this sacred weekly occasion as a Jewish army shoots down unarmed civilians for their “crime” of protesting for their human rights?

I have to believe there are other Jews for whom these weekly massacres at the Gaza border represent not only a human rights concern by an inherently spiritual violation and a profound moral/religious challenge. I would go as far as to say it is an aveirah – a religious transgression – for Jews to greet Shabbat without some kind of meaningful acknowledgement of what has been transpiring every week at the Gaza border.

What might this acknowledgement look like? A few thoughts occur to me: Since mourning rituals are traditionally lifted on Shabbat, we might pause before Shabbat candle lighting and mention the names of those who may have been killed or wounded in that week’s protest. Another idea: as it is traditional to give tzedekah before Friday night candle lighting by placing coins in a pushke – a tzedakah collection box – we could make giving tzedakah to a Gazan relief organization part of our weekly preparation for Shabbat. Such organizations might include the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), Doctors with Borders, or American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA).

In the Talmud, there is a famous rabbinic discussion of the line from Proverbs, “Tzedakah saves from death.” According to the plainest meaning of this verse, this means simply that charity has the very real potential to save lives. This kind of attitude, however, represents the noblesse oblige approach to giving: i.e., that those who have more have the responsibility to give to those who are less fortunate than they.

Such a view betrays the very meaning of the word “tzedakah,” which comes from the Hebrew root meaning “justice.” Indeed, if tzedakah has the force of justice behind it, then it cannot simply be left to the whims and choices of those who might be feeling “charitable.” It is rather, an obligation for all people to right the wrongs that abound in our world. All the more so in the case of Gaza, which is not so much humanitarian crisis as an injustice created by one powerful nation state that seeks to control a population by blockading it inside a virtual open air prison.

I have no illusions that giving tzedakah at the onset of Shabbat will on its own save the people of Gaza. And I do not want to endorse it as a kind of “indulgence” to assuage the guilt of those who don’t want to enter into Shabbat burdened by the thought of this terrible and ongoing human tragedy. Rather, I’m suggesting this new weekly practice as a way to do the work of justice as a regular discipline – and to make our final act of the week an act of solidarity with a people who are suffering from injustice committed by those purporting to be acting in our name.

So here’s my suggestion: let’s make justice for Gaza part of our weekly regimen as we prepare for Shabbat. May this act of conscience contribute all the more to Kedushat Hayom (“the holiness of the day”). And may we emerge from this day of renewal that much more inspired to fight for a world in which justice is extended to all who dwell upon it.