Monthly Archives: September 2023

Speaking the Unspeakable on Israel/Palestine: Sermon for Yom Kippur 5784

phot: Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

An op-ed version of this sermon was published in Truthout

Jewish tradition teaches that words have a sacred power. In the very beginning of the Torah, God creates the world itself through the power of the word. In the book of Exodus, the Israelites speak as one people at Sinai, thereby entering into a covenant with God. It is said that on Yom Kippur, the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple and utter the otherwise unspeakable name of God – and at that moment the fate of the very world would hang in the balance. On Yom Kippur, we ourselves stand as a community and say the words of our collective confessions together. As our liturgy would have it, we may not be written into the book of Life for the new year unless we speak these words out loud.

In their way, the power of words is akin to energy. Once they are spoken, they are out in the world – and from that point on there are a myriad of ways their impact might be manifest. Sometimes their power will remain dormant. Other times, our words can be the conduit for deep and powerful transformation.

I think a great deal about the impact of our words when it comes to the issue of Israel/Palestine. We have witnessed their power for instance, over the course of this past year, as thousands of Israelis have been holding regular demonstrations against the current Israeli administration and its plans to limit the power of the Israeli judiciary. Week after week, protesters have chanted words in the streets and carried them on signs, expressing their collective outrage over the government’s “threat to Israeli democracy.” More recently, many in the American Jewish community – including many rabbis – have voiced their support for these protests and have even been staging public protests of their own.

On one level, it could be said that these massive rallies have had a powerful impact. They are the largest and most sustained protests in Israeli history and the most massive mobilization of the Israeli left in years. The rhetoric of the rally has also empowered Zionists in general. Many who advocate for Israel will often refer to it as “the only democracy in the Middle East.” I would suggest that the use of this word is powerful for all the wrong reasons. It covers up the reality that while Israel may be a democracy for Jews, it is decidedly not one for Palestinians. Indeed, for many centrist and right wing Israelis these demonstrations are important because they bolster the illusion of democracy. In so doing, they serve to entrench Zionism and strengthen the Jewish state.

It is true that at many of these demonstrations, there have been some chants and signs condemning Israel’s “occupation.” However, this is an oft-invoked word that can mean different things to different people. For some it refers only to Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. For others it also includes annexed territories such as East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. For still others, the entire land between the river and the sea is considered to be occupied territory. Thus, when the word “occupation” is invoked during the demonstrations, there is little clarity on what it actually means – or what is actually being demanded.

There is yet another powerful word that has recently emerged in relation to Israel/Palestine, and that word is “apartheid.” Last year, three respected human rights organizations: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli group B’Tselem, all released well-researched reports concluding that Israel is an apartheid regime. Over the past year, many surprising figures have also been increasingly using this word in relation to Israel, including a retired Israeli general.

This past year, a letter was posted online by Israeli academics that openly criticized American Jews for “(paying) insufficient attention to the elephant in the room: Israel’s long-standing occupation.” The letter pointedly stated that “there cannot be democracy for Jews in Israel as long as Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid, as Israeli legal experts have described it.”  The so-called Elephant in the Room Letter was widely distributed and was eventually signed by Jewish leaders and figures – to date it has over 2,700 signatures.

With liberal Jewish leaders increasingly willing to use the “A” word in public, there is every indication that it is losing its stigmatized, transgressive status in the Jewish community. But even here, the meaning of the word “apartheid” depends on how it is used. The B’Tselem report, for instance, claims that Israeli apartheid extends “from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” The Israeli general, on the other hand, limited it to the West Bank alone.

There are also those who would say that the term “apartheid” itself doesn’t go far enough – that it is a technical term from international humanitarian law that has limited legal applications. Many would argue that the word “settler colonialism” is much more powerful and meaningful because it is related to decolonization – a concrete process of action that includes the return of refugees and reparations to the Palestinian people.

Yes, all of these words do indeed have a complex kind of power when it comes to Israel/Palestine, and I’m often fascinated by the strategic ways we utilize this power. Years ago, I used to avoid controversial and potentially incendiary words in connection with Israel, feeling that they might well alienate and push away the very people I was trying to reach. I would typically use words I thought were less triggering: “dispossession” instead of “ethnic cleansing,” “non-Zionist” instead of “anti-Zionist,” “occupation” instead of “settler colonialism.”

I feel differently about this now. I actually think it’s important to use words such as these. I believe it’s important to name oppression explicitly and not to soften it with euphemisms. If some words make people uncomfortable, that’s OK. Once a word is said, it can’t be unsaid. It’s now part of the discourse. While some may well recoil from that word, they may well come around to accept it in time.

Words can indeed push the line of what is considered acceptable. But they can also represent one step too far, or the crossing of a line. There is still, for instance, a hard line drawn on the word Zionism. For most Jews, it is still considered beyond the pale to refer to oneself as an anti-Zionist: to break not just with the Israeli government, not just with the 1967 occupation, but with the very concept of an exclusively Jewish nation-state.

Apropos of Yom Kippur, it seems to me that when we say these words and cross this particular line openly, we’re really making a kind of confession. It’s not merely a political opinion – it’s an ethical admission that our Jewish identity has been inextricably connected to the oppression of another people.

When I was growing up, I was routinely taught that Zionism was the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. But I was never taught that this “liberation” came at the expense of another people. Like many American Jews, I was raised to view the establishment of the state of Israel as the exclusive Jewish homeland; a Jewish refuge after centuries of persecution; a redemptive homecoming following the collective trauma of the Holocaust.

Our trauma has been compounded by the sense that the world was complicit in it – that the Jewish people were abandoned by the international community. To be sure, the allied nations should rightly bear deep shame for their inaction during the Holocaust and their refusal to accept Jewish refugees following the war. But even as collective Jewish trauma is all too real, it was tragic and profoundly wrong to justify it by inflicting trauma on another people: by establishing a Jewish state on their backs and creating what has now become the largest refugee population in the world.

When Jewish Zionists publicly confess and act on the truth of this history it can often shake their Jewish identity to the core. This phenomenon often reminds me of something James Baldwin wrote in his classic 1962 essay, “A Letter to My Nephew:”

As you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case the danger in the minds and hearts of most white Americans is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shivering and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality.

Though Baldwin was addressing white supremacy in the US, I think his words are equally applicable to Jewish supremacy in Israel. Zionism has become such an indelible part of Jewish identity that it has caused us to enable – or at the very least tolerate – the oppression of another people. The power of this mythic Zionist narrative manages to keep the truth of this ongoing oppression at bay, lest it causes everything we once held so dear to come crashing to the ground.

I experienced this upheaval personally in 2008, at my former congregation. During Israel’s military assault on Gaza, I experienced deep anguish – and I expressed those feelings in a blog post. While I had often been critical of Israel in the past, this was very different. Rather than using the usual words, calling for “balance” and a plea for “peace on both sides,” I used strong and angry language, explicitly naming Israel as the oppressor. I concluded my post with these words:

We good Jews are ready to protest oppression and human rights abuses anywhere in the world but are all too willing to give Israel a pass. It’s a fascinating double standard, and one I know all too well. I understand it, because I’ve been just as responsible as anyone else for perpetrating it.  

So no more rationalizations. What Israel has been doing to the people of Gaza is an outrage. It has brought neither safety nor security to the people of Israel and it has wrought nothing but misery and tragedy upon the Palestinian people.

There I said it. Now what do I do?

Now many years after later, I realize that post was a kind of confession. Though I didn’t know it at the time, when I wrote those words I was actually crossing a line that would eventually force me to leave my congregation. To use Baldwin’s words, it was upheaval so profound that it attacked my sense of my own reality. I was fairly sure I couldn’t continue as a congregational rabbi – and I wasn’t completely sure what kind of Jew I would be either.

But as I said earlier, once our words are out in the world, there are myriad ways their power might be manifested. I was eventually able to recover my Jewish identity along with my Jewish conscience. Speaking those words was unexpectedly liberating. I discovered there were other Jews like me – lots and lots of them. And together we became part of an emergent Jewish community that had the freedom to say out loud what must be said. I have no illusions that there is a distinct minority of Jews on this side of the line, but I also know that there are many who are now crossing over, breaking their silence on Israel/Palestine in unprecedented ways.

In its way, this new Jewish community is creating a new counter-narrative to the Zionist narrative that has been dominant for so long. One critical part of this counter-narrative is the understanding that standing in solidarity with Palestinians is a mitzvah – a sacred act. When it comes to solidarity in particular, words are enormously important. Those who engage in solidarity with disenfranchised people know that while words may have great power, words can quickly lose their power if they do not lead to action.

Indeed, history is littered with the betrayal of empty words, promises unkept and treaties broken. Staying true to one’s word can often be a challenge for those who are trying to practice solidarity in good faith. The growing popularity of land acknowledgements is a good example. Land acknowledgements are significant and important, but as many Native people have pointed out, they amount to empty words unless they contain accountability – unless they exist in a larger context of decolonization and reparation. As President Robert Larsen of the Lower Sioux Indian Community has put it, “An apology or an acknowledgment is one thing, but what are you going to do next?”

The same applies to those of us who express solidarity with the Palestinian people. Yes, the words we say matter, but unless they lead to genuine transformation, they will remain little more than empty words. To return to my metaphor of energy, words represent the initial spark, but once kindled, it takes real effort to sustain and increase its power. We must take active responsibility to maintain that initial spark by acting on our words, lest it eventually sputter out.

Putting our words of solidarity with Palestinians can take many forms, but a core priority requested by Palestinian civil society groups is support for BDS – the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. In this regard, I encourage those who are able to attend our Yom Kippur afternoon program today. We will be hosting a conversation with Omar Barghouti, the co-founder of the BDS national committee, whose presentation is entitled, “Repentance, Reparation and Ethical Reconciliation: A Palestinian Vision for Common Liberation.” Omar was deeply honored to be asked to be our teacher for Yom Kippur – but as I told him, I could think of no more appropriate way for a congregation such as ours to observe this day.

I also want to remind our members that Tzedek Chicago was one of the first congregations to sign a pledge from the Apartheid-Free Communities initiative, a newly created interfaith coalition convened by the American Friends Service Committee. In that statement, signatories pledge “to join others in working to end all support to Israel’s apartheid regime, settler colonialism and military occupation.” Now that we have publicly made this pledge, it will be our challenge to live out these words as a community – and in the spirit of Yom Kippur, I want to encourage us to explore what this will mean for our congregation in the years ahead. By signing this public pledge, it is also our hope that it will give other Jewish congregations and organizations the courage to speak these previously unspeakable truths as well.

In the Shacharit service – the Jewish morning prayer – we say the words, “Baruch she’amar ve’haya ha’olam” – “Blessed is the one who spoke and the world became.” While this literally refers to God but it is also a statement about the potential within each and every one of us. Our words have the power to transform our lives and our world – indeed, to create whole new worlds anew.

So let this be our collective blessing this Yom Kippur: let us find the courage to speak the words that must be spoken. Let our words kindle sparks of possibility, and may they inspire us all to create the world we know is possible: a world of Tzedek/Justice, of Tikkun/Repair and of Shalom/Wholeness for all who dwell on earth. 

Confronting the New COVID Normal: Sermon for Erev Yom Kippur 5784

(photo: Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

The High Holidays we observed in 2020 were like none we’d ever experienced before. We were in the midst of the COVID lockdown – and like every other synagogue, we held our services entirely on Zoom. It all felt utterly unprecedented and surreal – apropos of a year in which pretty much everything felt unprecedented and surreal.

On Rosh Hashanah, I addressed the pandemic directly, suggesting that we were all in a collective state of grief – both for those had died and for the world we had lost:

Amidst all of this massive change, even as we adjust to this new world, there’s that nagging question lurking in the background: how long will we actually have to do this? When will we get our lives and our world back? When will things get back to “normal?”

I think it’s safe to say we’ve come a long way in the three years since then. Just a few months after I spoke those words, the first COVID vaccine was administered – and since that time, COVID related deaths and hospitalizations have decreased dramatically. Lockdown orders have been lifted, mask mandates have disappeared and social distancing requirements are now a thing of the past. While a large percentage of the workforce are still working from home, increasing numbers are returning to their workplaces. 

We’re also receiving a confident political message that things are getting “back to normal.” A year ago, President Biden publicly declared that the pandemic was over during an appearance in 60 Minutes. This past May, his administration ended the Public Health Emergency Declaration, dramatically reducing funding for COVID vaccines and treatments. In its announcement, the White House claimed that “(COVID-19) no longer meaningfully disrupts the way we live our lives.”

Is this actually true? Are things really getting back to normal? Technically speaking, the pandemic is not over, though we fervently wish it were. Thousands continue to die every week – in the US, nearly one hundred are dying every day. In recent weeks, a spike has caused a sharp increase in hospitalizations, a dramatic reminder that COVID is still very much a part of our lives and our world. 

What’s the reason for this normalization? On a purely human level, I think it’s pretty easy to understand. We want our lives back. We don’t want to live with uncertainty and upheaval any more. We crave the connection and community that we once knew. We want things to feel normal again. 

But no matter how fervently we might back our days of old, things are still not normal. On so many levels. 

In the first place, things are not certainly normal for the loved ones of the millions who have died of COVID. Almost 7,000,000 people have died from COVID globally since the pandemic began – including over 1,000,000 in the US. The mass grief caused by this pandemic is still very palpable and very real. For those who are just beginning to struggle with the loss of a parent, a partner, a child, the suggestion that it is time for things to “get back to normal” is quite simply, profane. 

This insistence on normalcy dismisses the massive, life-altering consequences of these losses. Many who died of COVID were the primary or sole wage earner in their household. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of children in the US – and over 10 million children worldwide – have lost a parent or caregiver to COVID. According to a report last December by the Covid Collaborative, more than 13,000 children have lost their sole caregiver; children who were already more socially and economically at risk. 

COVID normalization also amounts to an abject abandonment of elderly people in our communities. Hospital admissions, while dropping, are more than five times higher among people over 70 than those in their 50s. COVID also disproportionately affects immunocompromised, disabled and chronically ill people, whose humanity is routinely dismissed by US government and health officials that treat their conditions as expected, and thus somehow more acceptable. 

In a recent New York Times article about the latest COVID spike, I read one subtle paragraph that sums up the prevailing attitude toward those who are at higher risk of illness and death:

At the moment, the numbers suggest that Americans should tailor their behavior to their own risks, some experts said. Those who are the most vulnerable to COVID — older adults, pregnant women and those with weakened immune systems — might well choose to take the utmost precautions, such as masking most or all of the time and avoiding crowded indoor spaces.

In other words, those who are the most vulnerable people are essentially on their own. Their welfare is their individual responsibility – it is not the problem of the communities in which they live. 

The changes to our world wrought by the virus remain so profound. The increasing numbers of people who have developed the post-virus condition known as long COVID will attest to its debilitating and life-altering symptoms. Scores of children have lost years of their education. Teachers, health care workers and essential service workers continue to live with acute trauma and anxiety. We’ve witnessed the massive loss of small businesses and the devastation of whole economies. The list goes on and on. Truly, it would take a great deal of willful denial to regard any of this as normal. 

The political motives behind COVID normalization, of course, are clear – and it is causing very real harm. When the Biden administration terminated the Public Emergency Declaration in May, it was essentially capitulating to congressional Republicans, who months earlier had passed a bill they called “The Pandemic is Over Act.” In so doing, it ended a vital series of protections for millions of Americans, causing what the Nation Magazine referred to as “a public health disaster.”

In the meantime, the Biden administration is also preparing to transfer COVID vaccines to the private market. For their part, Pfizer and Moderna have announced that they plan to increase the price of their vaccines by 400%, which will cost uninsured Americans anywhere from $110 to $130 per dose. Such is the human price of the new normalcy. It is, in the end, really just the entrenchment of the old normalcy. 

This human price, of course, is symptomatic of a deeper dysfunction: a system that has always divided humanity into those who count and those who do not. In their important and powerful new book “Let This Radicalize You,” Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes put it perfectly:

(Capitalism) requires an ever-broadening disposable class of people in order to maintain itself, which in turn requires us to believe that there are people whose fates are not linked to our own: people who must be abandoned or eliminated. 

When the COVID pandemic first broke out, it occurred to me that this virus was presenting us with a fundamentally different way to live. It was challenging us to live according to an ethic of collectivity rather than radical individualism. COVID was a dramatic reminder that our neighbors’ fates were linked to our own. And that if we were to literally survive, we had to accept that our personal well-being was inextricably tied to the well-being of all.  

People in disenfranchised communities have long understood this truth. When you live in a system that doesn’t care about you, that regards you as disposable, you learn how to care for one another. Indeed, long before the pandemic descended, poor people, people of color, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people and Native people have been creating their own communities of care through powerful mutual aid projects. 

The term mutual aid refers to grassroots groups that organize collectively outside the mainstream and are not dependent on the largess of external charity. While mutual aid projects have long existed in various forms, they mobilized and proliferated during the pandemic in ways that were truly inspiring to behold. As Kaba and Hayes have described it:

In spring 2020, unprecedented numbers of people organized mutual aid efforts to help their neighbors survive. Using technology to overcome the physical barriers imposed by the pandemic, tens of thousands of people started new groups and built new mechanisms within existing organizations to meet the needs of people who were struggling. From delivering groceries and medicine to helping people access remote therapy after the loss of loved ones, people across the country devised ways to care for one another. Contrary to fictitious, popular depictions of people in dire straits, many people coping with the grief, uncertainty, and isolation of the pandemic longed to connect through acts of aid and care and they did. Grassroots groups redistributed millions of dollars to people who were struggling. Empty refrigerators were stocked. Countless people in crisis were met with compassion and assistance. In a society where we are taught to fear each other, many were moved by the realization that we were and are each other’s best hope amid catastrophe. 

To my mind, these words are a powerful description of what the new normal should be. Though we must always fight to hold them accountable, governments are not going to save us. Nor will philanthropic charities, crisis response or nonprofit organizations. Collective care will ultimately be created by communities of people honoring their interconnectedness. By those who understand that they are each other’s best hope. 

As the world increasingly looks to mutual aid groups as a model for living, it will be important for privileged folks not to tokenize disenfranchised people or co-opt their efforts. But having said this, I do believe that the idea of mutual aid models a way of living for all people. One that values a culture of care: interdependence over individualism. Thriving and not merely surviving. A way of creating community that centers innate altruism and a long-term commitment to one another.

In her book, “A Paradise Built in Hell,” Rebecca Solnit pointed out that contrary to the dominant narrative, the natural human response to disaster is not an apocalyptic, individualistic “everyone for themselves” mentality. Through examining the human response to several different catastrophes, Solnit concluded, “The image of the selfish, panicky or regressively savage human being in times of disaster has little truth to it.” Rather, “most people are altruistic, urgently engaged in caring for themselves and those around them, strangers and neighbors as well as friends and loved ones.” This, I would suggest, is the true normal: a more natural culture of mutuality, not self-interest and abandonment. 

As you know, last month, the Tzedek Chicago board passed a COVID safety policy for our High Holiday services requiring all in-person attendees to wear N95 masks and have up to date vaccinations. Our board’s decision was prompted by a request from chronically ill and disabled members of our congregation, which inspired our leadership to engage in honest process of discernment. It occurred to me that these conversations were utterly appropriate to our season – a time for interrogating how we can do better in our lives and in our communities.

Though mask mandates have become politicized to an absurd degree, two-way masking is still the most effective way to mitigate the spread of the COVID virus. When healthy, younger, abled people put the burden of masking on those at greater risk, whether they realize it or not they are sending the message that they health is not their problem. As one public health expert has written:

I get it—wearing a mask can suck. I don’t exactly enjoy it, and like most people, I’d rather be living life like it is 2019. That’s the final problem with one-way masking: If we can all relate to masking being uncomfortable, why would we suggest that the immunocompromised and disabled be relegated to wearing a mask in perpetuity? 

As I look out into our sanctuary now, to a room full of masked people gathering for Yom Kippur, I see a powerful visual of one community’s commitment to the health of all its members. This what the new normal should look like.

In my High Holiday sermon three years ago, I quoted the great activist poet Sonya Renee Taylor who wrote these words at the outset of the pandemic:

We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature. 

Today, three years after those words were written, powerful interests are trying to convince us that it is time to “go back to normal.” We must not let them. We must continue to hold on to Taylor’s beautiful vision of a new garment, even in the face of such daunting odds. We must cherish this vision and resist the cynical voices telling us that what they are giving us is the best we can hope for. 

Because we should hope for more. We should aspire to more. After all, isn’t this what Yom Kippur is ultimately all about? Every year, at this season, we’re commanded to take a hard, unflinching look at the status quo, openly admit what needs changing, and commit to the hard work it will take to transform it. It’s an inherently radical idea: to proclaim every year that the status quo is unacceptable and that nothing short of genuine intervention will do. If our Yom Kippur prayers are to mean anything at all, we must be prepared to act upon this radical idea. 

This is also the season in which we stand before the open gates of heaven, before the open books of life and death, and pray that we may be written in the book of life for the coming year. But we also affirm that repentance, prayer and acts of justice can “avert the decree.” To me that means that we cannot wait passively for that choice to be made for us. In the end, we’ll need to take responsibility for writing our own names and the names of our neighbors in the Book of Life. If we’re going to be sealed for life, it is we who must affix that seal.

So this new year, let us affix that seal by recommitting ourselves to the value of pikuach nefesh – the moral imperative that views the saving of life as sacrosanct. Let us resist a “return to a normalcy” that values some lives over others. Let’s enter this new year affirming not only in word, but in deed, that it must be all of us or none.

From Interfaith Dialogue to Interfaith Solidarity: Sermon for Rosh Hashanah 5784

(AP photo by Adam J. Dewey/NurPhoto)

During the course of my rabbinical career, I’ve participated in a good number of interfaith dialogues. These were facilitated conversations, usually involving the three so-called Abrahamic traditions – Christians, Muslims and Jews – in which we would explore our respective faith traditions together. The goal of the dialogues, generally speaking, was to achieve a deeper level of interfaith appreciation and understanding – to walk away with a respect for our differences as well as the underlying values we had in common. 

I haven’t participated in an interfaith dialogue in many years. If truth be told, I’m not sure I really believe in them anymore. It’s not that I don’t think it’s a good thing for people of different religions to learn from one another – I certainly do. It’s just that our dialogues never seemed to go much further than the talking. While our conversations were often substantive, we generally avoided more uncomfortable political topics. The underlying assumption seemed to be that religion and politics didn’t mix.

During Jewish – Christian conversations in particular, we rarely delved too deeply into issues such as Christian hegemony, white supremacy and antisemitism. When we did, we tended to treat such issues as part of the past. We seemed to be guided by the liberal assumption that such things belonged to a bygone, less enlightened age than our own. 

I can’t help but think such assumptions feel downright quaint today, in an age in which White Christian Nationalism is openly amassing political power. In which a mob wielding crosses and Christian banners literally stormed the Capitol in a coup attempt. In which Republican politicians have openly declared themselves to be Christian nationalists and a Republican candidate for president has called on his followers to “put on the full armor of God.” In the current political age, I think it’s safe to say the interfaith need of the moment goes far beyond liberal religious dialogue. The stakes are now far too serious – and far too consequential – for that.

Over the past two years, there’s been a great deal of analysis of the political threat posed by White Christian Nationalism: an ethno-nationalist movement that espouses a toxic combination of Christian exceptionalism and white supremacist ideology. White Christian Nationalists are guided by the belief that God has destined America, like Biblical Israel, for a special role in history – and that it will receive divine blessing or judgment depending on its obedience. It also promotes Replacement theory and actively demonizes Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and all others who do not fit into their white Christian ideal.

In the age of Trump, this movement has become entrenched in the Republican Party – and while they’re still a minority, their power has become critical to the GOP’s political strength. According to polls, most Republicans support declaring the US to be Christian nation, even if such a move would be unconstitutional. And among White Christian nationalists as a whole, 40% believe ​that “true patriots might have to resort to violence to save our country.”

Though this movement has emerged in a specific political moment, it is not uniquely of the moment. It actually dates as far back as the early days of European colonialism. Experts trace its roots back to the Doctrine of Discovery: a 15th century papal decree proclaiming European civilization and western Christianity to be superior to all other religions and cultures. The Doctrine of Discovery, of course, was an important driving force behind European colonial domination of the so-called New World and the conversion of the native peoples who lived there. 

This movement is also deeply rooted in white supremacist ideology. In his book, “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” Robert P. Jones wrote powerfully about this connection: how a wide spectrum of white Christians – from evangelicals in the South to mainline Protestants in the Midwest and Catholics in the Northeast – developed theologies that justified American slavery and Jim Crow. 

This legacy of white supremacy in American Christianity is alive and well in 2023. In 2015, a white supremacist entered Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina and murdered nine African American members of the congregation during a Bible study. Though there was extensive press at the time about his white supremacist beliefs, there was relatively little discussion of his Christian faith. In fact, his manifesto was filled with Christian imagery, including a drawing of a resurrected white Jesus rising from the tomb. He also wrote in his journal a call to action to white people to transform American Christianity from being “this weak cowardly religion” to “a warrior’s religion.”

Of course, Jews have every reason to be alarmed by such a movement as well. It was a brutal wake-up call indeed to watch torch carrying marchers in Charlottesville calling to “reclaim” America as a Christian nation while chanting “Jews will not replace us!” That wake-up call became downright deafening on a Shabbat in 2018, when a Bible quoting white supremacist murdered 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

At the same time, the Jewish community has been the recipient of genuine solidarity from Christian allies and friends. I’ve experienced this first hand more than once. This past February, for instance, when it was reported that Christian nationalists were planning to mobilize a “Day of Hate” against the Jewish community, my colleague and comrade, Reverend Tom Gaulke, wrote these beautiful words in a letter to our congregation:

As we hear of Christian Nationalists and Christian Supremacists calling for a “day of hate,” I would like to renew a promise on my own behalf and on behalf of the communities I’ve served:

For over a decade, we have marched side by side. And we’re not going to stop. As your family, we’ve got your back, come what may. Together, we’ve got a love that will conquer hate and a love that can only overcome.

To my mind, this gesture sums up the critical need of our new political moment: not so much interfaith dialogue, as interfaith solidarity. We must find a way to mobilize an interfaith movement that, in Tom’s words, ‘will conquer hate and can only overcome.”

If we are truly serious about this level of solidarity, however, each of our religious communities will need to engage in a great deal of deep discernment in our own backyards. I know there are many examples of white Christian communities who are doing this work in important ways; who understand that white solidarity must go hand in hand with justice and reparation. In his book, Robert Jones wrote about one white Baptist minister whose congregation has entered into an ongoing relationship with a black Baptist church. In describing that relationship, the minister said:

I’ve stopped using the word reconciliation…for what we’re doing. I’ve started using justice work more… When we throw around the word reconciliation, especially as white Christians, white people, we’re betraying our desire to just kind of move through all of the hard stuff to get to the happy stuff. So, when we’re talking about justice work, for me we’re getting into these much stickier questions of what has been lost, what is owed. 

Christian solidarity with non-Christians can also be hampered when well-meaning Christians fall back on a myth of innocence – when they distance themselves from White Christian Nationalism by saying “it’s not my religion.” I’ve witnessed this repeatedly – last year, for instance, the presiding Episcopal Bishop stated that White Christian Nationalism was “not Christianity.” Another progressive Christian activist has written it is a “political ideology rather than a religious one.” 

While I understand the good intentions behind these kinds of statements, I believe it’s deeply problematic when Christians disavow the more unsavory aspects of their religious tradition. In so doing, they avoid accountability for centuries of their own history and invisiblize its victims. As I’ve often commented, no religion is pure – all religions have their good, their bad and their ugly. In the end, I would submit that the proper way to confront the toxicity in our traditions is for people of faith to own the all of our religions – and to grapple with them seriously, honestly and openly. 

This will be a reckoning for the Jewish community as well. For one thing, in order to confront White Christian Nationalism, we will need to honestly interrogate persistent myths about Jews and whiteness. While white Jews understandably feel vulnerable at this particular moment, we still dwell under a shelter of white privilege. We must not assume that the threat of White Christian Nationalism poses a danger to all members of the Jewish community equally. White Jews will have to reckon with the fact that we are protected from this threat in ways that Jews of color are not. In other words, for the Jewish community, intra-communal racial solidarity will be just as critical as interfaith solidarity.

There is another issue facing the Jewish community that is perhaps even more challenging: if we are to truly stand down this movement – this toxic fusion of religion and nationalism – we’ll have to do so without exception. That means that Israel cannot get a pass. 

Though it may be troubling for many to consider, there are clear parallels between white Christian Nationalism and Zionism. Consider this: the Doctrine of Discovery holds that America was “discovered,” glorifying the noble innocence of the nation’s original “pioneers.” The ideology of Manifest Destiny is deeply connected to a vision of European Christian chosenness, viewing America as a “new Zion.” 

For its part, Zionism is rooted in a similar colonial view of a “land without a people for a people without a land.” It venerates the heroism of the chalutzim – the pioneers who “drained the swamps” and cultivated the land. And Zionism’s central narrative also comes from the Bible, utilizing texts that emphasize Jewish chosenness and exclusive entitlement to the land. 

Even more to the point, both White Christian nationalism and Zionism are forms of ethno-nationalism: movements that seek to establish and maintain nation-states predicated on the identity of one specific group of people. In its way, these two movements are religious nationalist mirror-images of each other, both seeking to create exclusive, homogeneous nation-states at the expense of their native inhabitants. 

Believe me, I know all too well that there are many in the Jewish community who will vociferously object to this kind of analysis. But painful as it may be, we can no longer cling to this myth of innocence when it comes to Israel. I think it’s absolutely critical that we find the strength to say these things out loud: to admit that after centuries of persecution at the hands of Christian empire, a modern Jewish movement is now actively following in its footsteps. 

All of this means that Jews, Christians – and all people of faith will need to reckon seriously with the issue of power – and in particular, the fusing of religion and state power. After all, don’t we know all too well from history where this road leads? We know what happens when religion is used by nations as a weapon of conquest. When God is invoked by the state to demonize others and exert their power over them. And make no mistake, religions that follow Biblical tradition will find ample justification for conquest and domination in that particular text.

But there is, however, another, decidedly different religious vision: it is a sacred act to resist oppressive state power. This path comes from the Bible as well; it is embodied by the Exodus narrative, the sacred story that lifts up the God of Liberation, and stands down the god of conquest. That puts the oppressed, not the oppressor at the center. That views the Promised Land not as a territory to be conquered by a chosen few but a land of equity and justice that is open to all.  We don’t have to look far to find contemporary examples of this sacred narrative in action. To name but two examples, it is exemplified by the Latin American liberation theology movement and the American black church: both of which lift up sacred visions of resistance that have leveraged genuine socio-political change.

This sacred narrative of liberation runs mightily through Jewish tradition as well. We are currently witnessing an emergent movement of radical, liberative Judaism that is truly exciting to behold. And I am so proud that Tzedek Chicago is an active and important participant in this movement. As we’ve done this work together, it’s been striking to me how integral and basic these values of solidarity and liberation are to Jewish tradition: from the weekly radical revolution that is Shabbat, to our deep-seated culture of study, questioning and Godwrestling, to our holidays, all of which contribute to a sacred drama that enact and re-enact the possibility of change and transformation in our world.

We enact these sacred values, in fact, each and every Rosh Hashanah. One of the central themes of the New Year is malchuyot – “divine sovereignty.” As I’ve come to understand it, this concept doesn’t have to refer to a literal belief in an all-powerful supernatural God sitting on his Kingly throne. Another way of understanding malchuyot, is as an affirmation of a Force Yet Greater – greater than any human or institution in our world: a power greater than Pharaoh in Mitzrayim, greater than the mightiest empire – and yes, even greater than systems of colonialism and white supremacy. 

Rosh Hashanah is also the day in which we stand before the open gates of heaven and sound the shofar as a wake-up call for the new year. We declare Hayom Harat Olam – “today the world was created,”affirming the eternal potential for transformation in our world. Over the next ten days, we will dig deeply into our individual and collective souls and discern what needs changing. Then, at the close of Yom Kippur, we will sound the shofar once final time as a call to action to go forth and create the world we know is possible. 

I’d like to close now with the words of a contemporary religious leader who truly embodies these ideas and values of interfaith solidarity: the great Rev. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s campaign and president of Repairers of the Breach. May his words be our call to action this Rosh Hashanah:

The world doesn’t change when powerful people get new ideas. The world changes when people who’ve been rejected come together and realize that they are blessed to show their neighbors that another world is possible. Change happens when those who have been otherized decide we ain’t takin’ it no more…

There’s some stuff wrong in America and there’s no way to mend the flaws of this nation and be one nation under God with liberty and justice for all, unless the rejected people are at the center.

May this be the year we discover the true source of our collective power. May this be the year we transform the world that is into the world we know is possible. 

Widening the Crack: When Liberal Zionists Condemn Israeli Apartheid

In early August, a powerful letter with the title “The Elephant in the Room” was posted online. Signed by hundreds of academics, clergy, and other public figures from Israel/Palestine and abroad, the statement openly criticized American Jews for “(paying) insufficient attention to the elephant in the room: Israel’s long-standing occupation.” It went on to list a litany of Israeli crimes against Palestinians, including “constant violence,” “ethnic cleansing” and “Jewish supremacism. Then came the money quote:
 
Without equal rights for all, whether in one state, two states, or in some other political framework, there is always a danger of dictatorship. There cannot be democracy for Jews in Israel as long as Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid, as Israeli legal experts have described it.
 
Since its publication, the Elephant letter has garnered well over 2,000 signatures. It has also gained global media attention as something of a game changer, not least because of the large number of prominent public figures who have signed onto it. Indeed, when I scrolled through the list, I noticed the names of numerous liberal Zionists and rabbinic colleagues whom I never dreamed would ever publicly associate Israel with apartheid and Jewish supremacism.
 
The statement has, of course, been thoroughly excoriated by the usual suspects in the Israel advocacy world. There are also Palestinians and members of the Palestine solidarity community who believe the letter doesn’t go far enough. After all, it centers its concern on “democracy for Jews in Israel.” It emphasizes injustice in the Occupied Territories rather than Israel proper. It doesn’t mention the Nakba or the Palestinian Right of Return. And while it criticizes Israeli apartheid and Jewish Supremacy, none of its four goals explicitly call for the dismantling of these structural injustices.
 
While I share these criticisms, I chose to sign the letter nonetheless. In the end, beyond whatever issues I might have with the specific wording of the letter, I believed it was a watershed statement. When it comes to US support for Israel/Palestine, the voice of the American Jewish community is very important – and it was no small thing that such a large number of Jewish communal figures saw fit to sign a public statement condemning Israeli apartheid. For me, the calculus was simple: I could opt out, or I could add to their number.
 
I often like to say that when it comes to Jews working for justice in Israel/Palestine, there is both an “inside game” and an “outside game.” Naturally, as the rabbi of an anti-Zionist synagogue, I make no bones about the fact that I play the outside game. Among other things, that means that the concept of solidarity is central. As a Jewish ally in the struggle for Palestinian liberation, I know I must first and foremost be accountable to Palestinians.
 
But as someone who worked inside the organized Jewish community for many years, I respect the critical importance of the inside game as well. While I have thoroughly broken with the Zionist party line, I understand that it is extremely significant when more and more liberal Zionists take these kinds of public stands. By naming Israeli apartheid out loud, they put a deeper crack in the wall of Israeli impunity. They make the conventional Zionist narrative all the more untenable. And by so doing, I believe, it helps bring a future of real and genuine justice in Israel/Palestine that much closer to reality.
 
Movements are stronger and more successful when organizers and activists understand that everyone has a role to play. Even when we don’t ideologically agree on the specifics, our movements will only grow when more people see fit to participate in the struggle. We know from history that oppressive regimes cannot last long when broad based movements rise up to call out oppression for what it really and truly is.  
 
So may the movement continue to grow this coming new year. May the cracks in the wall continue to widen. And may we witness liberation and justice for all who live in the land, speedily in our day.