Category Archives: Yom Kippur

Living a Judaism Beyond Zionism: Sermon for Yom Kippur 5783

Last month, Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib spoke at an organizing seminar for Palestine solidarity activists. It was an in-house event, and it likely would not have garnered much attention except for one part of her speech:

It has become clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values, yet back Israel’s apartheid government. And we will continue to push back on and not accept this idea that you are “progressive except for Palestine.”

I’m opening with Rashida Tlaib’s words because I believe they’re deeply relevant to Yom Kippur. This is, after all, the day for facing up to hard truths, particularly the ones that affect our community. And I frankly cannot think of a more important, more critical moral challenge facing the Jewish community than the issue of Palestine-Israel.

As you might expect, after Rep. Tlaib made her remarks, the wrath of the titans rained down upon her. Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, berated her on Twitter and accused her of being an antisemite. So did Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Scores of her Democratic colleagues condemned her for slandering the “Jewish and Democratic state of Israel.”

Tellingly, however, none of her critics actually responded to the essential claim of her comment – namely, that Israel is an apartheid state. None of them mentioned that Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and B’tselem, the most prominent Israeli human rights organization, have all determined that Israel is an apartheid regime. B’tselem’s report concludes, in words that are powerfully appropriate for Yom Kippur:

As painful as it may be to look reality in the eye, it is more painful to live under a boot. The harsh reality described here may deteriorate further if new practices are introduced – with or without accompanying legislation. Nevertheless, people created this regime and people can make it worse – or work to replace it. That hope is the driving force behind this position paper. How can people fight injustice if it is unnamed? Apartheid is the organizing principle, yet recognizing this does not mean giving up. On the contrary: it is a call for change.

Fighting for a future based on human rights, liberty and justice is especially crucial now. There are various political paths to a just future here, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, but all of us must first choose to say no to apartheid.

But you really don’t need to pore through human rights reports to grasp this reality. The bottom line is this: Zionism promotes a Jewish majority state in historic Palestine. In order to keep that majority, Israel must pursue policies that are patently undemocratic. It must create and enforce laws that fundamentally privilege Jews over non-Jews. It must dispossess and disenfranchise Palestinians. It must maintain what B’tselem calls “a regime of Jewish supremacy” from the river to the sea.

So yes, as Rashida Tlaib put it, you can’t be progressive and support apartheid. Unless you define the term “progressive” in a way that is devoid of any meaning whatsoever, you cannot support a Jewish supremacist state and claim to be a progressive. It’s interesting to note that virtually every one of Rep. Tlaib’s critics slammed her for creating a “litmus test” for progressives. But in truth, I don’t believe she was interested in creating a test for her colleagues. She was simply arguing for moral consistency.

When I read about this dustup, I was reminded of Rev. Martin Luther King’s 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Whenever I hear so-called progressives defending injustice in the name of progressive values, I invariably think of King’s letter. It was written to liberal white clergy in Birmingham who had signed a public statement telling King to stay away and not make trouble in their city. At one point they wrote, “We feel that inflammatory and rebellious statements can lead only to violence, discord, confusion and disgrace for our beloved state.”

Now fast forward to 2022. This was Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s angry response to Rep. Tlaib:

Proud progressives do support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state. Suggesting otherwise is shameful and dangerous. Divisive rhetoric does not lead to peace.

In the end, it’s really just a distraction to make this a debate about what is or isn’t “progressive.” It’s an issue of basic morality. For the Jewish community it’s a challenge that goes to the very core of our spiritual and ethical tradition. I don’t believe you can identify as a Jew in the age of Zionism and dither on this issue. Every single day, Israel’s actions present us with this basic question: will we support apartheid, dispossession and militarism in our name or will we not?

I’m sure all of you know that the Tzedek Chicago membership voted last March to change our core values to articulate that we were an anti-Zionist congregation. Our decision followed a unanimous board vote and a month’s long series of congregational meetings. As those who attended will attest, these conversations were inspiring in their depth and thoughtfulness. No matter what their position, members who participated in this process shared their opinions openly, honestly, and with deep respect for one another.

In the end, 72% of our membership quorum voted in favor of the change. Yes, there were those who voted against, but I’m heartened that as far as I know, no members have left our congregation as a result of our decision. In fact, we actually gained several new members, many of whom said that this was the first time they had joined a synagogue – that they had wanted to be part of a Jewish congregation, but the issue of Zionism had consistently kept them at bay.

I can’t understate what a powerful statement we’ve made. Yes, we are one small congregation, but the bottom line is that as a result of our decision there is now a new fact on the ground. There is now a progressive (yes, progressive) Jewish synagogue that is openly and unabashedly promoting a Judaism beyond Zionism. Tzedek Chicago has taken a public, principled stand on the most important, most critical moral challenge facing the Jewish community today.

And by the way we don’t stand alone. At this very moment, the Mending Miyan, an anti-Zionist congregation in New Haven, is celebrating its first High Holidays with its new student rabbi, May Ye, who many of you will remember was Tzedek Chicago’s rabbinical intern in 2018. Just a few days ago, I was contacted by a friend who told me that a group of Jewish anti-Zionists, inspired by what we have done here in Chicago, had held their first Rosh Hashanah service together in Denver. And I have no doubt there are others – that this is only the beginning.

Our decision is also important because we are currently witnessing a very real and very dangerous campaign that seeks to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The Israeli government and the Jewish institutional establishment are clearly doubling down to stem the growing number of Jews in the US — particularly young Jews — who are openly identifying as non or anti-Zionist. This backlash has been fierce, and at times perverse, actually calling into question our very status as Jews. In a widely read essay last year, Natan Sharansky labeled anti-Zionist Jews as “un-Jews.” Last May, immediately following Israel’s military onslaught on Gaza, a Reform rabbi in the Chicago area gave a sermon in which she called anti-Zionist Jews “Jews in name only” who must be “kept out of the Jewish tent.”

Given the tenor of the current moment, I believe the need for public stances by principled Jewish anti-Zionists is more critical now than ever. Most importantly, Jewish anti-Zionists create cover for Palestinians, the ones who are most directly impacted by these accusations of antisemitism. Right now, public figures such as Rashida Tlaib, as well as scores of Palestinian activists on college campuses and communities across North America, are being subjected to withering attack. We know how devastating the accusation of antisemitism can be. It destroys careers and ruin lives. And right now, this accusation is being weaponized by Israel and its institutional supporters in profoundly harmful ways.

The most insidious thing about this accusation: when we equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, we effectively brand just about every Palestinian in the world as an anti-Semite. How could it be otherwise? The direct product of Zionism was the Nakba – the forced expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948, creating what is today the largest refugee population in the world. The creation of an exclusively Jewish nation state in historic Palestine has led to the ongoing dispossession and oppression of the Palestinian people that continues to this very day. How could we honestly expect Palestinians to be anything other than anti-Zionist? By this definition, Palestinians are guilty of being antisemites just for being Palestinian.

We can’t underestimate the power of this current backlash against anti-Zionism. After Tzedek Chicago made our announcement, we garnered, as you might expect, some “responses” from the Jewish institutional community. While we did get some positive and thoughtful press, there was the inevitable nastiness, particularly and inevitably on Twitter. I don’t have much to say about that, except for this: amidst all the horribleness and toxicity, I noticed an interesting common denominator. Over and over, our attackers made the claim that Zionism was essential to Judaism – and that our being anti-Zionist was tantamount to being anti-Jewish. This, I would like to address:

Of course, the claim that Eretz Yisrael is intrinsic to Jewish tradition is absolutely correct. It would be ignorant to claim otherwise. However – and this is a big however – the notion of creating a sovereign Jewish nation state was never part of the Jewish land tradition until the rise of political Zionism in 19th century Europe. And herein lies the central fallacy of the Zionism equals Judaism argument: for most of Jewish history, the yearning for Zion has been rooted in an idealized messianic vision. The very idea of a mass migration to the land in order to establish a 3rd Jewish commonwealth was commonly considered to be an anathema – a “forcing of God’s hand” – by traditional rabbinic authorities.

Those who say Zionism is central to Judaism consistently and conveniently neglect this point: political Zionism did not arise until relatively recently in Jewish history. Yes, Zionism is undeniably a Jewish movement, and a successful one at that. But it is also a quintessential movement of Jewish modernity that represented a conscious and radical break with traditional Judaism as it was understood and practiced until that time. While it has clearly been embraced by a majority of Jews in Israel and throughout the diaspora, the claim that Zionism is somehow intrinsic to Judaism is false and in fact, deeply disingenuous.

In the end, however, this struggle isn’t over what is or isn’t Judaism. Rather, it is over what kind of Judaism we want to affirm in the world. I don’t believe in essentializing Judaism – or any religion, for that matter. The fact that Zionism was “a modern movement that broke with traditional Judaism” is not in itself a bad thing. After all, modernity gave rise to a host of Jewish movements that broke with traditional Judaism. My own denomination, Reconstructionist Judaism is most certainly such a movement.

I often think of this when I hear liberal Christians respond to the hateful things said and done by white Christian nationalists by saying, “that is not Christianity.” No, in fact it is Christianity. The Christian church certainly has a great deal to live down from its history up until present day. But to the Christians who seek to promote humane Christianity, I would suggest that the answer is not to deny the more problematic or toxic manifestations of their tradition. The answer is to recognize that every religious tradition, every religious community has its good, its bad and yes, it’s ugly. And if we want the good to prevail, it seems to me, we must be ready to confront the all of our religious traditions.

The same goes for the Jewish community. Even if Zionists deny us our Jewishness, It’s not intellectually honest, nor is it particularly productive, to deny Zionists theirs’. The question before us is not who is the most “authentic” Jew? The real question is: what kind of Judaism do we want to lift up in the world, to live out, to bequeath to future generations?

This is why I feel so blessed to be a part of Jewish congregation that is ready to stand up and say we seek a Judaism beyond Zionism, beyond apartheid and settler colonialism. A Judaism that views the diaspora as the fertile ground for Jewish creativity, a Judaism that seeks the Divine wherever we may happen to live, that affirms the whole earth is filled with God’s glory. A Judaism that values spiritual power over physical power. A Judaism that makes its home in the margins, because that’s where our sacred sparks of creativity have always resided. A Judaism of solidarity, that knows our place is alongside all who are marginalized, demonized and oppressed for who they are.

So, this Yom Kippur and for every day forward, let this be our prayer:

May the dream of a world complete become reality soon, in our own day, that every land may be a Zion, every city a Jerusalem, every home a sanctuary offering welcome to all. May the world be rebuilt upon a foundation of compassion, equity and justice, as it is written, compassion and truth will meet; justice and peace will kiss. Baruch atah adonai, boneh ha’olam b’tzedek v’rachamim – Blessed are you, who rebuilds the world in justice and compassion.

Amen.

Shabbat as Revolution: Sermon for Erev Yom Kippur 5783

If asked to pick one aspect of Jewish spiritual tradition that was the most important, the most valuable, the most genuinely impactful, it would be no contest. I’d answer without hesitation: it’s Shabbat.

Shabbat just looms so large and is so basic to the Jewish experience, I don’t think we stop enough to consider how revolutionary it truly is. Once a week, Shabbat arrives to overturn the status quo. While the High Holidays represents our annual spiritual shake-up, Shabbat provides us with this radical reboot opportunity every single week.

Jewish tradition gives us multiple rationales for keeping Shabbat: it’s a day of rest and renewal, a day to refrain from the creative work of the week, a day for drawing a distinction between the sacred and mundane. It’s also been called a weekly taste of Olam Haba – or “the World to Come.” The Talmud, for instance, teaches that Shabbat is one sixtieth of Olam Haba. A classic midrash relates that at the moment God gave the Torah to the Israelites, they asked, “Sovereign of the Universe, show us an example of the World to Come,” and God replied, “It is Shabbat.”

So, what exactly is this World to Come that we get to taste every Shabbat? The rabbis don’t give us any definite answers to this question. In classical Jewish sources, it’s a general term for the hereafter, a place where the souls of the righteous go after they die. In other instances, the World to Come is synonymous with the messianic age: a future time in which the dead will be resurrected and the world will be united under the rule of God.

But we do know this: whatever Olam Haba might look like, it will definitely be better than the world we’re living in now. In the Talmud, for instance, we read this classic description:

The World to Come is not like this world. In the World to Come there is no eating, no drinking, no procreation, no business negotiations, no jealousy, no hatred, and no competition. Rather, the righteous sit with their crowns upon their heads, enjoying the splendor of the Divine Presence.
(Berachot 17a)

In recent years there’s been an emergent new reframing of Olam Haba, particularly in leftist and radical corners of the Jewish community. According to this new approach, the World to Come is viewed in the context of social and political transformation: a vision of a world in which systems of oppression have been dismantled and replaced by systems that work for the well- being of all.

I personally view this vision of Shabbat as being deeply informed by the contemporary abolitionist movement. Those who are active in this movement will immediately understand this. When abolitionist activists call for defunding the police and dismantling the prison industrial complex, we’re not merely advocating for specific political goals: we’re ultimately promoting a larger vision of the world as it should be. The great abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba, describes it this way:

Abolition is a vision of a restructured society in a world where we have everything we need: food, shelter, education, health, art, beauty, clean water and more things that are foundational to our personal and community safety.
from “We Do This ‘Til They Free Us”, by Mariame Kaba, p. 2.

Like the traditional Olam Haba, abolitionist Olam Haba isn’t just an ethereal, aspirational concept: it’s meant quite literally. It doesn’t mean “the world we dream might be possible” or “the world we know is not possible but in the meantime maybe we can reform the world to make it a little less horrible.” When contemporary abolitionists talk about transforming oppressive systems, we are advocating for a vision that is practical and real. It’s rooted in the belief that we have the wherewithal to build a world that will work for all, not just a privileged few.

For those who view Shabbat this way, every seventh day is nothing short of a weekly revolution – a regular opportunity to live in the world we know is possible. Ana Levy-Lyons, describes it this way in her essay, “Sabbath Practice as Political Resistance:”

The goal of a Sabbath practice is not to patch us up and send us back out to the violent secular world, but to represent in the now what redemption looks like, what justice looks like, what a compassionate social order looks like. It is to reconstruct the rest of time from the viewpoint of the Sabbath as unjust and untenable.

While this is a compelling new understanding of Shabbat, it’s worth asking: what would such a Shabbat practice actually look like? What would it mean to observe it? Can we observe Shabbat in a way that honors these values of political resistance? I think it’s altogether appropriate to explore these questions tonight, on Yom Kippur – the day when we vow together that a better world is possible; a world free of injustice, oppression and violence. What better time than Yom Kippur to think seriously about what we must do to make the World to Come a reality?

I’ll start here: Shabbat challenges us to rethink the way we commodify time itself. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, famously wrote in his classic book, “The Sabbath,” on Shabbat we become attuned to the holiness of time rather than space. During the six days of the week, we find meaning in the creative endeavors of the material world – but when Shabbat arrives, we affirm the sanctity inherent in the rhythms of time.

But we can only do this if we are prepared to give up our futile attempts to dominate time. This is particularly challenging in a capitalist society, in which time itself has become monetized – in which our worth is literally determined by the amount of time we spend at work. Rabbi Zalman Schacter Shalomi refers to the six days of the week as “commodity time.” “Commodity time,” he writes, “is the price we pay for organic time. In order to earn a living, this is the bargain you strike: you give your employer work, in return for which he gives you money. While you are working, your time belongs to your employer, and it’s used to create commodities of one sort or another.”

But on Shabbat, we’re commanded to resist the commodification of time. It’s a weekly reminder that when we attempt to control or profit from time, we will inevitably become enslaved by it. In the World to Come, time may not be sold, spent, measured or exploited. On the contrary, it must be valued and cherished and savored. On Shabbat we stop punching the time clock and live according to the organic rhythms of time, from sundown to sundown.

Is it even possible to imagine non-commodified work? Over the past two decades, there’s been increased social and economic theorizing about a world without jobs. As machines and robotics are able to do more jobs previously done by human beings, there’s been renewed advocacy of a future in which a universal basic income is guaranteed, a future in which people are free to spend their time doing what they find purposeful and meaningful. This vision has become even more relevant and critical in the age of COVID, as record numbers of Americans are working at low wage jobs and the cost of living continues to rise. The pandemic has given rise to a new and unprecedented discourse on the meaning of work – and we should welcome this conversation.

The Shabbat prohibition on commerce and transactions suggests another way to observe Shabbat as a form of revolution. When we engage in transactions with others, we do so with the expectation that we’re entitled to receive something in return. Shabbat, however, rejects the transactional in favor of the relational. These are the most sacred relationships: the ones that are based on the building of trust – that favor long-term fulfillment over immediate gain. This is why on Shabbat, the traditional focus is on the most basic forms of human interaction: on communal meals, prayer and study, on physical intimacy between lovers. In the World to Come, relationships will not be exploitative or negotiable – they will, rather, model devekut – sacred at one-ness and coming together.

A third suggestion: It’s been suggested that there are profound connections between Shabbat and the values of the disability justice movement. One of the central Principles of Disability Justice, affirms that the labor of disabled people is too often invisible to a system that defines labor by able-bodied standards. The disability justice movement makes this point very clearly and unabashedly: “our worth is not dependent on what and how much we can produce.”

This principle is rooted in one of the most basic values in Jewish tradition: that every human being is created in the image of God – b’stelem elohim. As Rabbi Julia Watts Belser, a prominent Jewish disability justice activist has written,

Jewish tradition affirms that the measure of a person’s worth does not rest upon what they can do, how much they produce, or how quickly they think. For all that our tradition praises right action, our fundamental value as people does not depend on our accomplishments or achievements; it is rooted in our very being. We all of us mirror the image of God.

Another one of the Principles of Disability Justice has a direct connection to the values of Shabbat: the principle of sustainability:

We learn to pace ourselves, individually and collectively, to be sustained long-term. We value the teachings of our bodies and experiences, and use them as a critical guide and reference point to help us move away from urgency and into a deep, slow, transformative, unstoppable wave of justice and liberation.

This is Shabbat wisdom through and through. On Shabbat, we, all of us, learn to pace ourselves, to be sustained for the long term. And what better definition of the World to Come could there be than a “deep, slow, transformative, unstoppable wave of justice and liberation?”

A fourth and final suggestion: the traditional laws of Shabbat require us to cease our exploitation of the earth’s natural resources. There are many categories of forbidden work on Shabbat, for instance, that involve changing, transforming and extracting. In the World to Come, of course, the resources of the natural world will be nurtured to enhance life, not exploited for profit.

Jewish scholar Jonathan Schorsch, who has founded an initiative called the “Green Sabbath Project, has written extensively about this idea. As Schorsch puts it:

Shabbat can and must be a radical ritual within which we can digest anew the biblical prophets’ warnings against the corruption of the rich and powerful, the oppression of the poor and the self-centered pursuit of short-sighted pleasures, understanding how relevant such warnings are to the ecological devastation wrought by hypercapitalism. Sabbath properly practiced offers a weekly interruption of the suicidal econometric fantasy of infinite growth, a weekly divestment from fossil fuels, a weekly investment in local community.

These are but a few suggestions of where we might start to explore a new form of Shabbat observance – and I’m excited by the prospect of discovering more. At the same time, I realize that these approaches have inherent challenges. When we talk about the World to Come in this manner, we’re essentially talking about structural change – and I have no illusions that personal disciplines alone will themselves effect the wholesale changes we seek.

At the same time, however, I strongly believe that Shabbat has the genuine potential to motivate us to keep the struggle going – to inspire us to continue building the movement for the long haul. As I like to put it, when Shabbat arrives every Friday evening, these rituals invite us to cease the struggle and experience together the world we are ultimately struggling for. Shabbat can renew and replenish us so that ideally, when it ends on Saturday evening, we are that much more inspired to go out and make that world a reality.

I’m also aware that not everyone will have the ability to observe Shabbat in the ways that I have outlined here. I know full well that there are those who cannot afford to take every Saturday off to resist the commodification of their labor. There are those who do not have the luxury of weekends, who must work sometimes multiple jobs just to get by. And I also know how challenging it is in the digital age to leave work at work, in an era where our work mail follows us electronically 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But to my mind, this reality drives home the sacred importance of Shabbat all the more. Shabbat reminds us that we must continue to struggle for jobs that pay livable wages, for saner working hours, for the ability to live lives of purpose, for the right to spend our time in more meaningful and fulfilling ways.

I like to think of Tzedek Chicago as a spiritual laboratory where we can explore new ways of celebrating Shabbat as a revolution, where we can, on a regular basis, live in the world we know is possible. Those of you who have come to our Friday evening online services and candle lightings will know what I’m talking about. I’m fairly sure that not a Shabbat goes by when we don’t mention the World to Come – and try to make it real for one another. And I’m sure we’re not the only ones.

Those of you who join us for Shabbat services also know that I like to write contemporary Shabbat liturgy that evoke the spiritual reframing that I’ve described to you tonight. I’d like to end with one of them: a prayer for Havdalah – the service that ends Shabbat on Saturday evening. I offer it in honor of this Yom Kippur, the day in which we vision of the world that might yet be – and vow to do what we must to make it a reality:

Savor this eternal moment
and hold it close,
before you leave the world to come
and re-enter the world as it is,
before your sweet dream
reverts back to hard truth.

For this much we know:
long after the day is done
the melody of this song will
reverberate through our souls,
driving us forward until the day
that liberation is finally won.

One day very soon,
the song will lead us
to a dream fulfilled, to a place
where light and gladness,
joy and wonder, justice and salvation
flow without cease.

But for now we’ll prepare ourselves
for the work ahead –
let’s light the fire, raise the cup
and breathe in the sweetness
of this moment.
With strength renewed
and spirit re-inspired it’s time
to rejoin the struggle.

Blessed is the One who separates
between inspiration and fulfillment,
exile and return,
struggle and liberation,
hard work and sweet victory,
between the world we know
and the world we know is possible.

Amen.

“Israeli Apartheid and the Path to Teshuvah” – A Statement by the JVP Rabbinical Council

An Open Letter to the Jewish Community from the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council

We, the Rabbinical Council of Jewish Voice for Peace, stand by the recent reports which use the term ‘apartheid’ to describe Israeli rule over Palestinians. The past year’s reports by B’tselem, Human Rights Watch and now Amnesty International contain well-documented evidence describing how the State of Israel maintains a system of identity-baseddomination over Palestinians. This detailed evidence demonstrates the systemic and shocking human rights violations and extreme violence and cruelty unleashed upon Palestinians living both under Israeli military and civil jurisdiction.

Rabbi Brian Walt, one of the signers of this letter, grew up in South Africa under Apartheid. He writes: “The finding that Israel is an Apartheid state is shocking to me – and it should be to every Jew and person of conscience. Instead of demonizing these human rights organizations, we who care about our Jewish ethical and spiritual heritage must grapple with the harsh and deadly reality documented in these three reports.”

As people deeply committed to Jewish life and culture, we believe Jews should read these reports in the spirit of prophetic witness and atonement, like the texts we read on Yom Kippur, which challenge us to turn from violence and break the bonds of oppression so a new dawn can burst forth. Many of us have witnessed these realities on the ground for decades. The reports confirm what Palestinians have been telling us all along: Israel’s system of control is based on the idea of Jewish supremacy.

It is with deep sorrow that we once again witness leadership in Jewish institutional life ignore, dismiss or condemn the reports as antisemitic. On the day of the public release of Amnesty International’s report, leaders of the Reform movement issued an email calling on Reform rabbis and member congregations to condemn the report, claiming the decades-long research was “replete with discredited and inaccurate allegations, including a deeply wrong accusation of apartheid.”

Denial is a common response that surfaces when we are asked to face difficult realities that upend deeply held views. However, B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International detail at length how Israel’s systemic policies, rooted in racism, have brought suffering to millions of Palestinian lives. Shouldn’t these claims cause us to at least read the reports and hear the direct testimony of thousands upon thousands of Palestinians?

We believe that we must face the moral challenge that these reports present to us. As Hillel said, “Go study!” We call on all people of conscience, including Jewish people in our communities, to read the reports carefully. Secondly, we call on the leaders of the Jewish community, rabbinic and lay, to facilitate open discussion on the reports, including inviting representatives of the organizations to talk about the report in your community and to answer questions. We also encourage rabbis and leaders to facilitate open and respectful dialogue and debate in our communities about the issues raised in these reports. We cannot work for healing justice if we live in denial of the reality Palestinians have been facing every day since 1948.

As Jews of conscience, Israel’s system of apartheid has created a moral emergency for us. We cannot turn away. Instead, we long for the kinds of conversation which accurately reflect the reality on the ground, a reality that B’Tselem calls Jewish Supremacy. The conclusion reached by these three well-respected human rights organizations that Israeli governance fits within the international definition of apartheid is a renewed calls to people of conscience. We must examine how the claims of these reports reveal the ways we are complicit in sustaining Israeli apartheid, and commit to repair for the systemic injustice choking Palestinian lives. May our study lead to active repair of the harms of apartheid. This is the only path to teshuvah.

– The Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council

There’s More of Us Than There are of Them: Sermon for Yom Kippur 5782

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

I’d like to begin my remarks this Yom Kippur with a sacred refrain that has surely been uttered aloud by many of us over the past several weeks:

Texas, what the hell?

That’s right Texas, what the hell? Just when we thought we’d heard it all from you, there was the news on September 1. In just one day the Texas state legislature all but banned abortions in their state, passed the most restrictive voting laws in the US, and allowed Texans to carry handguns openly without a license. And if that was not nearly enough, this past June, Texas’ governor signed a bill limiting the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools.

Now, I mention all of this very advisedly because I know we have members who live in Texas – and I’m sure some of them are attending our service at this very moment. And I must also note that these trends are not at all unique to that state. If truth be told, Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina and South Dakota, are currently preparing abortion bills identical to the Texas legislation, there are twenty other states other than Texas that allow permitless handgun carry, and as of August 26, twenty seven states have introduced bills or have otherwise taken steps to restrict Critical Race Theory.

So while it might feel satisfying for progressives to pile on Texas, it’s probably more accurate to say that this particular state represents a larger phenomenon that has been part of our national culture for some time. For lack of a better term, let’s call it the rage of the white American man.

White rage is, of course, nothing new, but it might be argued that it’s currently entering an era of renewed ferocity. Last month we learned from the Census Bureau that the percentage of white people in the US has actually decreased for the very first time. Since the last report ten years ago, the overall white population in the US has declined by almost 10%. In that same amount of time, the Latinx population grew by 23%, the Asian population increased by over 35% and the Black population grew by almost 6%.

When you consider that the United States was built on a foundation of white supremacy – that is, by white men, for white men – it’s not difficult to grasp the impact of news such as this. While the ranks of white supremacists may be shrinking, we can be sure that they won’t go away quietly. We know from history that a dying beast can still do a considerable amount of damage on the way down. Indeed, this is precisely what we’re seeing unfold in Texas and around the country: the anger of white supremacist, misogynist Americans increasingly galled by what their country is becoming.

And they are galled. They’re galled by the fact that the US actually had a black president for eight years. They’re galled that there’s a new national reckoning going on over the legacy of slavery and structural racism in our country. They’re galled by the increased national attention being paid to police violence against black people and by a Black Lives Matter movement that mobilized the largest mass protests in US history last summer. They are galled every time another statue of a Confederate is toppled in a Southern state, as was the case at the Virginia statehouse last week.

And it doesn’t stop there. They’re also galled when women, non-binary and trans people seek power over their own bodies – and really, when they just seek more power in general. They’re galled that there are now a record number of women serving in Congress, including a Palestinian-American and a hijab-wearing former refugee from Somalia. They’re galled by the #MeToo movement, which is literally removing sexually violent men from positions of power. Last November, they were particularly galled when a powerful voting rights organizing effort largely led by black women helped turn Georgia blue in both the Presidential and Congressional elections.

Of course, white anger over voting rights in this country didn’t begin last year. It surged in 1870, when the 15th Amendment technically gave black men the right to vote. It surged again in 1920, when the 19th Amendment technically gave women the right to vote. And it surged again in 1965, when the Voting Rights Act went into effect. Even as we celebrate these landmark legislative events, we can’t look away from the immense resentment and rage they engendered – and continue to engender – throughout the US, which makes it all the more crucial that we keep fighting for real universal enfranchisement.

As we contemplate how to respond to the events transpiring in Texas and around the country, it’s immensely important for us to understand the historical power of white rage. This phenomenon has been part of US national culture since this country’s founding on stolen land, and its dependance upon the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The current brand of self-righteous white rage is reminiscent of the racist backlash that played out during Reconstruction. So we shouldn’t be surprised by the current devastating setbacks to public policy; on the contrary, should expect them.

The staying power of white supremacist anger in this country sometimes reminds me of a certain Biblical trope. We’re all, of course, familiar with the story of creation in Genesis 1, in which an omnipotent God creates light out of darkness and separates the primordial waters of chaos. It’s a satisfying, deeply aspirational myth that expresses the vision of the world as it should be: a neat and tidy process by which the world moves from chaos to greater order and progress.

However, scholars have pointed out that there is another creation story embedded in the Bible, influenced by the epic myths of the Ancient Near East that portray a battle between the gods and powerful sea monsters that represent the primordial forces of chaos. Biblical books such as the Psalms, Job and Isaiah describe God’s battle with a mighty sea monster named Leviathan, among others. Unlike the orderly movement toward progress that we read about in Genesis 1, this other myth portrays creation as an ongoing and even desperate struggle. And while God generally gets the upper hand, it’s not at all clear in the Bible that the primordial sea monster is ever completely vanquished.

It sometimes occurs to me that our conventional, liberal view of history reflects a “Genesis 1 mindset,” i.e., an orderly movement toward greater progress, proceeding neatly from victory to victory. And while these landmark moments certainly represent political progress, they do not fundamentally change the foundational truth of this country. To put it differently, we too often forget that the sea monster is never fully vanquished. Yes, victories should be celebrated. But even more than that, they must also be protected.

If we were ever sanguine about the threat of white supremacist resentment in this country, we should have no doubt about it after the past four years of Trump, which literally culminated in an armed insurrection on the US Capitol. This rage is real and it’s mobilizing in truly frightening ways. It’s no coincidence that among the bills passed in Texas earlier this month was legislation loosening restrictions on gun carry laws. Indeed, the dramatic spike in gun ownership and the erosion of gun control measures around the country should make it clear to us that the threat of white nationalism is deadly serious.

So where do we go from here? How do we possibly resist such fierce and unrelenting rage? Perhaps the first step is to remember that more than anything else, white resentment is fueled by fear – and in truth, white supremacists have genuine cause to be fearful. They’re afraid because they know full well that there are more of us than there are of them – and that our numbers are growing. We should never forget that while fear may be their primary motivation, it’s also a sign of their fundamental weakness.

White nationalism is essentially a reactionary movement; that is to say, it has historically reacted to changes that genuinely threaten its power and hegemony in this country. But even though by definition, they’ve been playing defense, throughout American history, the liberal response to white supremacy has been to resist a strong offense as “too much,” “too radical,” or “too extreme.” White liberals often distance themselves from revolutionary people-of-color-led movements in this way. Those of us who are white must consciously resist this form of distancing, because this phenomenon is itself a form of white supremacy preservation.

During the years of the civil rights movement, many white liberal leaders would publicly criticize movement tactics they felt were too radical or extreme. This is precisely what Martin Luther King was addressing when he so memorably wrote from a Birmingham jail, “the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?” The black playwright Lorraine Hansberry put it even more succinctly; in a 1964 speech entitled “The Black Revolution and the White Backlash,” she said publicly, “we have to find some way to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical.”

In other words, as long as white supremacy is baked into the very systems that govern our country, we can ill afford to play defense. If anyone has any doubts, consider this: two months before the census reported the decrease in the white population in this country, the Reflective Democracy Campaign released a report that demonstrated how radically white minority rule pervades politics across the US. Despite the recent electoral gains for women and people of color, white men represent 30% of the population but 62% of state and national officeholders. By contrast, women and people of color constitute 51% and 40% of the US population respectively, but represent just 31% and 13% of officeholders.

When the Reflective Democracy Campaign released these findings, their director, Brenda Choresi Carter, said it very well: “We have a political system in general that is not built to include new voices and perspectives. It’s a system built to protect the people and the interests already represented in it. It’s like all systems. It’s built to protect the status quo.”

As I read those words, I can’t help but ask: 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.

I know that many of you are involved in organizing and activist work that intervenes in our racist, inequitable systems so that they may more accurately serve the interests of all who live in this country. Truly, your efforts are an inspiration to me. Because in the end, when we fight for voting rights, reproductive justice, racial justice, economic equity, or any other issue, we’re not only advocating for specific causes that have suffered setbacks – we’re fighting to transform systems that are fundamentally unjust.

So when we sound the shofar with a long blast at the end of Yom Kippur, let’s not only regard it as the conclusion to this season. Let’s consider it a call to action for transformation in the year ahead. And when the inevitable setbacks occur, let us not respond with surprise or dismay; rather, let’s remind each other that setbacks and backlashes are a sign of their fear, not their strength. Let us never forget that there are more of us than there are of them – and if we see fit to summon our strength, we can indeed recreate the world we know is possible.

Gmar Hatimah Tovah – May we all be sealed for a year of life, of justice, of transformation.

Interregnum: Sermon for Yom Kippur 5781

On Rosh Hashanah I addressed the powerful feeling of uncertainty that pervades our lives and our world at this unprecedented moment. I want to return to this theme for this Yom Kippur – to speak to a parallel level of uncertainty that I know has been weighing deeply on us all. More specifically, I’d like to address the current political moment in our country; one that is more fraught, dangerous – and frankly more terrifying – than any of us have ever seen in our lifetimes.

I know this isn’t a pleasant topic to talk about. Frankly, this was not a particularly pleasant sermon to write. I know that most of us feel beaten down by political events as they’ve unfolded over the past four years. I know it’s become something of a routine in our social gatherings to set a strict time limit on discussing the latest outrage committed by our President and his administration – or to even declare such talk off limits entirely. And I get this. I know how depleting the past four years have been on our own emotional and psychological well-being. I’m all too familiar with the ways we instinctively compartmentalize the news of the outside world for purposes of self-preservation.

But even so, painful though it may be, I believe we need to talk about it. Our avoidance, while understandable, has come with a cost. On a certain level, I think our denial and incredulity reflect an unwillingness to admit to ourselves that what is happening is really happening. In a very real way, I think this unwillingness has kept us from meeting the challenges of this unprecedented moment.

Jewish tradition teaches us that the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is an immensely critical period, spiritually and existentially speaking. It’s said that during the days between these two festivals the gates of heaven are at their widest; the time in which God is most open and receptive to our prayers. It is, if you will, “time out of time:” a liminal, marginal period during which we’re given the unique power to change the course of our lives and our world. There’s no other time on the Jewish calendar when it feels as if there is so much at stake.

I’d suggest that politically speaking, we’re in a very similar place. Indeed, there seems to be a kind of synchronicity between the ten days and the current political moment – as if the confluence of this High Holiday season and this particular election season is demanding us to take stock in a deeper and more fundamental way than ever before. And I believe we’d be remiss if we didn’t take this opportunity to step out of time and honestly face up to what is at stake in our country.

Now that the gates are open, there’s no time for denial. It’s time to say some painful things out loud. It’s time to name the hard fact that we are sliding steadily into an age of authoritarian rule in this country. It has become clearer and clearer with each passing day, even if it’s difficult for us to fully accept. And it’s even harder to contemplate what we must know in our hearts to be true: that if this president gets the opportunity to serve for another four years, authoritarian rule will take hold in our country in ways that will be truly frightening to behold.

From the moment our President first announced his candidacy, there actually were observers who warned us about precisely this. While most of them were dismissed as alarmists, their words now ring with chilling kind of prescience. Here’s one such warning, written by anthropologist and journalist Sarah Kenzidor just two weeks after the 2016 election:

It is increasingly clear, as Donald Trump appoints his cabinet of white supremacists and war mongers, as hate crimes rise, as the institutions that are supposed to protect us cower, as international norms are shattered, that his ascendancy to power is not normal.
This is an American authoritarian kleptocracy, backed by millionaire white nationalists both in the United States and abroad, meant to strip our country down for parts, often using ethnic violence to do so.
This is not a win for anyone except them. This is a moral loss and a dangerous threat for everyone in the United States, and by extension, everyone abroad.
I have been studying authoritarian states for over a decade, and I would never exaggerate the severity of this threat. Others who study or who live in authoritarian states have come to the same conclusion as me.
And the plight is beyond party politics: it is not a matter of having a president-elect whom many dislike, but having a president-elect whose explicit goal is to destroy the nation.

But for all of these warnings, I think the most compelling words came from the President himself. There are so many examples to choose from; I’ll quote a 2014 interview with Fox News, when he was asked how he would solve the problems with the US economy:

You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell, and everything is a disaster, then you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be, when we were great.

If we’re going to be completely honest, however, our current moment didn’t begin with the election of this particular President. It has been unfolding over a period of many years: the erosion of our voting rights, the creation of the surveillance state, the incarceration of human bodies for profit, the deporting of our immigrants, the rise of a kleptocratic billionaire class in our country. And it’s not incidental that this gutting of our democracy and civil rights has disproportionately harmed black and brown and poor people in our country. In truth, our descent into authoritarianism has actually been decades in the making. The election of this President has only accelerated the process much faster than any of us dared anticipate.

We should also note that this phenomenon isn’t unique to the United States – it is, in fact, a global reality. It’s no accident that our President routinely praises and curries favor with the strongmen leaders of countries like Russia, North Korea, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and yes, Israel. As American Jews, we should have no illusions about this.

So here we are. Our President has been systematically dismantling and plundering the institutions of our government in broad daylight and now he’s openly committing election fraud before our very eyes. We know what is happening: his dismantling of the US Postal service, his baseless claims of voter fraud, his clear intention to sow as much chaos as he can to cast doubt on the election. Most recently, he’s been announcing unabashedly that he has no intention to concede this election, no matter what the outcome.

In American political life, the period between the election on November 3 and the Presidential inauguration on January 20 is called the “interregnum.” This term originally referred to the period between the reign of monarchs. Longer, more complicated interregna have invariably been accompanied by widespread unrest, civil wars and succession battles. Historically, failed states would often fail during an interregnum.

In the US, we’ve taken for granted that there will be an orderly transition of power from one to the other whenever we elect a new President – but I wonder if we’ve ever understood how technically fraught this in-between period really always been. We’re currently on the verge of an interregnum like none other we’ve ever experienced in our lifetimes – and I fear we’re waking up to this reality too late.

But I also believe there is much we can still do. That we must do.

The medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides famously interpreted the call of the shofar as a wake-up call. The blast of the shofar, he wrote, is meant to say to us “Sleepers, wake up from your slumber! Examine your ways, return, and remember your Creator!” This new year, I’d suggest that this wake-up call is resonating for us with profound urgency: to awaken from our incredulity, our denial, our comforting belief that “it could never happen here.”

And it’s also calling us to wake up on a deeper level: to face up to the very real possibility that this President could be staying in the White House for another four years. And while we might say that prospect is too frightening to contemplate, we must contemplate it. No matter how unthinkable, we must accept in our hearts and our guts that God forbid, it might well happen. It’s calling us to accept that if this does happen, it will not be the end. It will mean the onset of a new fight. And we will need to be prepared to fight it.

So now that I’ve said this out loud, let me say this: we are not there and we don’t have to be there. There is a little over a month until the election – and while we may have been late in our awakening, it is not too late. There is still much we can do, and I know so many of you are doing these things already: registering voters, preparing get out the vote campaigns, fighting against voter suppression on every level.

Yes, we need to vote. We need to vote because it’s clearly the most potent force we have at our disposal at this particular moment. But at the same time, we cannot view politicians as our saviors. We shouldn’t forget that our current situation was caused in no small part by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Too often we assume that politicians are the only change agents in the world – and that political change only happens on the electoral level. Too often we underestimate the historic role of social movements and the power of people to move politics and politicians. In the end, elections are but one tactic among many. More often than not, voting serves more as a form of harm reduction than a means for progressive change. We are most certainly in one of those moments right now.

Even if we fight like we’ve never fought before during this election, we can’t be sanguine about the morning after. We must be prepared for the chaos that is sure to follow. Fomenting chaos is one thing this President knows well and it’s clearly his primary strategy in this election. If there was ever any doubt consider this: last June an organization called the “Transition Integrity Projec t” convened a group of more than 100 bipartisan experts to simulate what might happen the day after Election Day — a kind of electoral “war game.” They simulated four different scenarios, and each one but one – a Democratic landslide victory – indicated significant levels of post-election chaos, with both sides contesting the election until inauguration day.

What will we do if this happens? In all likelihood, we’ll need to do what citizens of every other authoritarian nation have done when their elections are stolen from them. We’ll have to be prepared to take to the streets and stay in the streets. While this is certainly daunting to contemplate, we would do well to learn from the history of popular protest. We’d also do well to learn from the history that is unfolding as we speak. Indeed, if there’s anything the Black Lives Matter movement has taught us these past several months it’s that sustained popular protest has the very real power to make real change.

I know that given the pandemic, each of us will clearly need to make our own personal health decisions when we consider participating in any form of mass demonstration. And those who do must certainly be prepared for a violent response that will inevitably follow. Whether it comes from armed forces mobilized by the government, from white supremacist militias, or agent provocateurs, we know what will be coming. Even though the overwhelming majority of the recent racial justice protests have been non-violent, the backlash against them has been brutally violent. The unleashing of state violence against public protest is, of course, a hallmark of authoritarianism, and we’ve witnessed it ourselves throughout our country these past several months. We should have no illusions about this.

Beyond mass demonstrations, there are other forms of civil disobedience such as general strikes, boycotts and other acts of noncooperation large and small citizens have historically organized in moments such as this. We know that these kinds of tactics have the potential to succeed when carried out with unity, a clear strategy, and widespread participation. If campaigns of mass resistance are indeed mobilized, we’ll all need to be ready to help organize and participate in them, at whatever level is possible for us.

Whatever comes, the most basic form of resistance will be our readiness to show up for one another. To participate and support mutual aid initiatives in our communities. To learn about and support the areas of greatest need. To stand in particular with those who are most vulnerable, most at risk, those who have always been the first to be impacted by a government that views their lives as disposable. Such is as it’s always been in resistance movements throughout history: in ways large and small everyone has a part to play. There is still a great deal of love and freedom in our world and there is still a myriad of ways we can make a difference. And we must never forget this.

OK. If you haven’t turned off your computer by now, thank you for going to this place with me. I know, as I said earlier, that none of this is easy to hear out loud. This is an enormously frightening moment. Personally, I’m scared shitless. But when I went over the things I felt I should talk about this Yom Kippur, I frankly couldn’t imagine anything more critical to our current moment. And I wouldn’t have said any of this if I felt things were hopeless. As I said on Rosh Hashanah, true hope is in our readiness to act precisely when things feel hopeless. Not to passively hope for the best, but to find courage in each other to fight on, no matter what may happen.

At sundown tonight, they say, this sacred interregnum of the ten days will conclude – and soon enough, another will begin. But this time, it seems to me, we won’t passively ask to be saved. No, this time we’ll have to demand that the gates open and remain open. 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.

And so, in that spirit I’d like to end now with a prayer I wrote a few years ago. We’ll be saying it at the end of Yom Kippur, at our Neilah service later tonight. But I’d like to offer it now as a prayer for our upcoming interregnum – with the hope it might awaken us all to the possibility of new life in the year to come:

when the final tekiah sounds
anyone still sleeping will have to
rise up and join the strategizers
and schemers the marchers and
rabble rousers to chant that
final neilah prayer ki fana yom
there’s no time left it’s time
to storm the gates.
we’ll blow away the wasted years
the work undone the dreams denied
the lazy thinking and careless complicity
so that we may clearly see the road
leading to a world we always
knew was possible.
yes finally we’ll break the insatiable
unquenchable appetites threatening
to consume everything we’ve ever known
our hunger will turn into desire
our hollow emptiness into wide open spaces
that roll on without end.
when that final tekiah sounds
the barrier walls and security fences
will come crashing down
no one will be forced to wait in line
no one turned away at the border
no unseen hands opening and closing
the gates on a whim.
so let every shofar
send forth one unbroken call
quick while the sun is setting
we’ll gather together and march forward
under cover of darkness
in the halls of the most high
we’ll make sure there’s
room for all.

A Yom Kippur Martyrology Service for Gaza

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This Yom Kippur Martyrology ritual was written by Tzedek Chicago rabbinic intern May Ye and myself and was used in observance of our Yom Kippur service last week.

Reader: It is traditional at the end of the Yom Kippur morning service to read a Martyrology that describes the executions of ten leading rabbis, including Rabbi Akiba, Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel and Rabbi Yishmael, who were brutally executed by the Roman Empire. This liturgy is included to honor those who have paid the ultimate price for the cause of “Kiddush Hashem” – the sanctification of God’s name.

At Tzedek Chicago, we devote the Yom Kippur Martyrology to honor specific individuals throughout the world who have given their lives for the cause of liberation. As we do, we ask ourselves honestly: what have we done to prove ourselves worthy of their profound sacrifices? And what kinds of sacrifices will we be willing to make in the coming year to ensure they did not die in vain?

This year, we will dedicate our Martyrology service to the Palestinians in Gaza who have been killed by the Israeli military during the Great Return March. This nonviolent demonstration began last spring with a simple question: “What would happen if thousands of Gazans, most of them refugees, attempted to peacefully cross the fence that separated them from their ancestral lands?”

Since the first day of the march last spring, demonstrators have consistently been met by live fire from the Israeli military. To date, 170 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands wounded and maimed, most of them unarmed demonstrators, including children, medics and bystanders.

Reader: The words of Ahmed Abu Artemi, one of the organizers of the Great Return March:

“On that day in December, as I watched the birds fly over the border I could not cross, I found myself thinking how much smarter birds and animals are than people; they harmonize with nature instead of erecting walls. Later that day, I wondered on Facebook what would happen if a man acted like a bird and crossed that fence. ‘Why would Israeli soldiers shoot at him as if he is committing a crime?’ I wrote. My only thought was to reach the trees, sit there and then come back…

What has happened since we started the Great Return March is both what I hoped and expected — and not. It was not a surprise that Israel responded to our march with deadly violence. But I had not expected this level of cruelty. On the other hand, I was heartened by the commitment to nonviolence among most of my own people.

We have come together, chanting and singing a lullaby we’ve all longed for— ‘We will return’ bringing all that we have left to offer in an attempt to reclaim our right to live in freedom and justice.”

Reader: The words of Khuloud Suliman, a 23 year old woman who studies English language and literature at the Islamic University of Gaza:

“My hometown is Al-Jiyya, which means ‘delightful place full of flowers and trees.’ It is very near here, just 20 km from Gaza City. When I get close to the northern border of Gaza, I can see the village. Yet I cannot go there. I am not allowed to touch the sand and smell the fragrance of citrus fruit, figs and grapes. I cannot walk in the valley that separated my village into two halves, and that filled with rain in winter.

Can you imagine how I feel when this image comes to my mind? I feel hatred toward the Israeli occupation and the settlers who live in the land from which my ancestors were expelled. Every day, mum tells me about it and my yearning for the village begins to invade my heart. I do not have even one picture of my village, so I Googled its name, hoping to find some images. But, unfortunately, I found only pictures of the Israeli settlement that replaced it. When I see other countries where the residents live in peace and comfort, I think of the situation here and ask myself, ‘Will I even be alive when we can return to our cities? Will I ever be able to enjoy a homeland like everyone else?’”

Reader: We will now learn about four of the almost 170 Palestinians who have been killed by the Israeli military since the Great March of Return began last spring. After each of the readings, we invite you to join us in singing a niggun adapted from the South African Anti-Apartheid Movement. It was sung as protesters were being taken to jail and was also uses as a method by prisoners to learn the names of others in the cells.

After each reading, we will insert the name of that Palestinian martyr into the niggun.

Reader: Tahrir Mahmoud Wahba, 18 years old.

Tahrir, a deaf and mute teen, was shot and killed while participating in the Great March of Return. He died of his wounds on April 1 in a village east of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza strip.

After he died, Tahrir’s mother told the press,

“My son cannot speak or hear, and I frequently tried to prevent him from protesting near the border area. But he would get angry, and would shake his head, refusing to stay home, and insisting on being part of the struggle.”

We sing: Tahrir, my friend, you do not walk alone. We will walk with you and sing your spirit home.

Reader: Yasser Mortaja, 31 years old.

One of Gaza’s best known photo/video journalists, Yasser was killed on April 1 by Israeli Yaser Murtaja forces who shot him in his abdomen – below his ‘PRESS’ flack jacket – while he was out covering the border protest in East Khan Younis.

Shortly before he died, Yassar posted this tweet: “I wish I could take this picture from the air. My name is Yasser. I am 30 years old. I live in Gaza. I have never travelled.” Yassar’s mother said: ” I was sad he wanted to leave Gaza Strip. Now he’s left Gaza for the sky,”

We sing: Yasser, my friend, you do not walk alone. We will walk with you and sing your spirit home.

Reader: Razan al-Najjar, 21 years old.

Razan was a volunteer paramedic who was shot and killed on June 1 near Khan Younis razan_orjwan (1) while wearing her white medic’s uniform. She had been less than 100 yards from the fence bandaging a man who was struck by a tear gas canister.

Razan wanted to prove that women were able to play an active role in the struggle. During an interview last May, she said, “Being a medic is not only a job for a man. It’s for women, too. Women are often judged. But society has to accept us. If they don’t want to accept us by choice, they will be forced to accept us. Because we have more strength than any man.”

We sing: Razan, my friend, you do not walk alone. We will walk with you and sing your spirit home.

Reader: Mohammad Na’im Hamada, 30 years old.

HamadaA Mohammad was shot with live fire east of Gaza City. He was rushed to a Palestinian hospital and his condition apparently witnessed a brief partial recovery.

A few days before his death he celebrated his daughter’s sixth birthday from his hospital bed, but his condition deteriorated and he later died from his wounds.

We sing: Mohammad, my friend, you do not walk alone. We will walk with you and sing your spirit home.

Atoning for Gaza: A Sermon for Yom Kippur 5779

One year ago, on the morning after Yom Kippur, I traveled to Palestine in my capacity as a staff person for the American Friends Service Committee. Among other things, my trip included several days with our staff in Gaza.

AFSC has a particularly significant connection to Gaza. In 1949, at the onset of the Palestinian refugee crisis, the organization was asked by the UN to organize relief efforts for refugees in the Gaza Strip. The AFSC agreed, believing their service to the new refugees would be temporary. But when it became clear Israel had no desire or intention to let Palestinian refugees return to their homes, the organization’s General Secretary Clarence Pickett, told the UN that they could not in good conscience enable the situation, insisting that there must be a political solution to the crisis. Shortly after, the UN created UNRWA (The United Nations Relief Works Agency), the organization that has served the needs of Palestinian refugees ever since. AFSC has, however, retained its programmatic presence throughout Israel/Palestine to this very day.

As you might expect, I came away from this experience with a myriad of feelings and emotions, most of which continue to resonate powerfully for me even one year later. First and foremost, I’ve been transformed by the collegial and personal relationships I created with our staff and the Palestinian Gazans we met there. I remain moved by the efforts of so many people creating communities of dignity and purpose, doing their best to live their lives with something approaching normalcy while they are so utterly choked off from the world outside. While they cannot access the most basic necessities of life. While they are literally waiting for the next bomb to fall.

Since that time, of course, much has happened in Gaza. They’ve initiated the Great Return March, a popular protest action which has taken place weekly along their eastern border with Israel. Since the first day of the march last spring, the mostly nonviolent demonstrators have consistently been met by live fire from the Israeli military. To date, 170 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands wounded and maimed, most of them unarmed demonstrators, including children, medics and bystanders. Over the summer, Israel has also bombarded Gaza with its most sustained military assault since 2014, destroying numerous civilian targets, including the Said al-Mishal Cultural Center in Gaza City.

I’ve written a great deal about Gaza over the years, most of it in the form of commentary and political debate. As you know, I certainly have my own strong opinions – and I’ve engaged in my share of spitting matches on this issue over the years. And I will admit I’m tempted, given the events of this past year, to give an angry political sermon about Gaza. But I’m going to resist the temptation.

I do believe these debates are important as far as they go – but only up to a point. For one thing, it seems to me, these arguments too often end up fetishizing Gaza and Gazans, describing them either as murderous terrorists, helpless pawns of Hamas or poor, passive victims. Since most people only tend to think of Gaza when the bombs are falling and the bullets flying, this is generally about as far as its public image tends to go. Gaza becomes an objectified symbol of people’s fears, their political agendas and their own internalized prejudices.

So today, I’m going to try to do my best not to give that sermon. Instead, I’d like to offer you some thoughts and impressions based on my own experiences and on my growing personal relationship with Gazans. I’d also like share a little bit of Gaza’s culture and history with you. Information is virtually unknown to most of the world but is I believe, critical if we want to understand Gaza in a three dimensional, non-objectified way. And finally, apropos of this Yom Kippur, I’d like to explore what I believe is the moral and religious challenge Gaza presents to us Jews, as Americans and as people of conscience.

I’ll begin with a little geography. What we call the “Gaza strip” constitutes a 140 square mile piece of land on the southeastern Mediterranean coast. While we generally think of “Gaza” as this one little crowded land mass, is was historically actually part of a much larger Gazan territory that has been continuously inhabited for over 3,000 years. In ancient times it enjoyed extensive commerce and trade with the outside world – difficult to imagine given Gaza’s current state of economic and social isolation. But once upon a time, Gaza was a major port and an important stop along the Spice and Incense Route. As such, it was located at a significant cultural crossroad, connecting a wide variety of different civilizations over the centuries.

While this is literally ancient history now, it has left a cultural impact on Gaza that continues to this day. One example that was very obvious to me during my stay last year was the unique nature of Gazan cuisine. Anyone who knows Gaza knows that the food in this region is filled with distinctive flavors and spices that are dramatically different from other regional forms of Palestinian food. One common example is Gazan tahini, which is made from roasted sesame seeds, making it a dark shade of red. Gazan food is also typically made with chiles, eastern spices like cardamom, cloves and cinnamon and lots of dill.

For more on this subject, I strongly recommend reading “The Gaza Kitchen” by Laila El-Hadad and Maggie Schmitt – a cookbook that offers local recipes, placing them in the context of Gaza’s cultural history and politics. The authors point out that since the strong majority of Palestinians living in Gaza today are refugees from other parts of Palestine, other regional Palestinian foods have been introduced into their culinary mix. And the authors point out that many Gazan fast food joints serve Israeli-style food such as schnitzel, which was brought to the region by European Zionist immigrants.

As the authors write:

Now, with Gaza totally isolated, it is easy to forget that for decades thousands of Gazans went every day to work in Israel, that Israeli and Gazan entrepreneurs had partnerships, that both commerce and social relations existed, albeit on unequal footing. Adult Gazans remember this, and many speak admiringly of aspects of Israeli society or maintain contact with Israeli business partners, employers and friends. But for the enormous population of young people who were not old enough to work or travel before Israel sealed the borders in 2000, this is impossible. Because their lives are completely conditioned by Israeli political decisions, they have never laid eyes on a single Israeli person except the soldiers that have come in on tanks or bulldozers, wreaking destruction. And the generation of young Israelis to which those soldiers belong has likewise never met a single Gazan Palestinian in any other context. A terrible recipe for continued conflict.

When most people think of Gaza of course, they don’t think of trade routes or cuisine; if they associate Gaza with anything at all, it’s refugees and refugee camps. But it’s important to bear in mind that the creation of these camps is a very recent phenomenon in its history. As I mentioned earlier, Gaza was historically a much larger district in historic Palestine. Under Ottoman and the British mandate for instance, the Gaza District included what would later become the Israeli cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Sderot, Kiryat Gat and Kiryat Malachi, among others.

The so-called “Gaza strip” was created in 1949, when it became a repository for a flood of Palestinian refugees from cities and villages in the coastal plain and lower Galilee. Before the outset of war, the population of this small region numbered 60 to 80,000. By the end of the hostilities, at least 200,000 refugees were crowded into what we call today the Gaza Strip. The borders of the strip were drawn arbitrarily, determined by the position of Egyptian and Israeli forces when the ceasefire was announced. It ended up being smaller by at least a third than the entire area of the Gaza District during the mandate period.

At the time, most of the refugees fully expected to return home – some could even see their towns and villages through the fences. Those who crossed the border to gather their possessions or harvest their crops were considered “infiltrators” by Israel and shot on sight. Eventually, it became all too clear there would be no return. Over the years the tents turned into concrete buildings that grew ever higher in that narrow corridor. The numbers of that once sparse territory has grown to a population today of almost 2,000,000 people.

Given this context, it was natural that Gaza would become a center for the Palestinian resistance movement. We know from history that when a people are oppressed, they will inevitably resist their oppression. And yes, sometimes that resistance will be violent in nature. As early as the 1950s, groups of Palestinians known as “fedayeen” crossed over the border to stage violent attacks in the surrounding settlements.

One of these attacks offers an important insight into the course of Gaza’s history in ways that reverberate for us even today. In 1956, a group of fedayeen entered a field in Kibbutz Nahal Oz and killed a kibbutznik named Roi Rotenberg. The famed Israeli general Moshe Dayan spoke at his funeral – and during his eulogy he expressed himself with brutal and unexpected honesty:

Do not today besmirch the murderers with accusations. Who are we that we should bewail their mighty hatred of us? For eight years they sit in refugee camps in Gaza, and opposite their gaze we appropriate for ourselves as our own portion the land and the villages in which they and their fathers dwelled…

This we know: that in order that the hope to destroy us should die we have to be armed and ready, morning and night. We are a generation of settlement, and without a steel helmet and the barrel of a cannon we cannot plant a tree and build a house. Our children will not live if we do not build shelters, and without a barbed wire fence and a machine gun we cannot pave a road and channel water. The millions of Jews that were destroyed because they did not have a land look at us from the ashes of Israelite history and command us to take possession of and establish a land for our nation.

When I read Dayan’s comments today, I find them to be unbearably tragic – particularly when you consider how much time has elapsed since they were spoken. We have only to change the number of years in Dayan’s speech and the leave the rest intact: “For seventy years they’ve sat in refugee camps in Gaza, and opposite their gaze we appropriate for ourselves as our own portion the land and the villages in which they and their fathers dwelled.”

It’s clear that the descendants of the original Gazan refugees have lost none of their ancestors desire for return. Most of them know full well where their ancestral homes and fields are located, in some cases just a few miles from where currently live. As in other parts of Palestine, the memory of home and the desire for return are a palpable part of Gazan culture. I experienced this in a simple yet powerful way during my visit to Gaza last year. One afternoon, as we traveled north along the coast from Rafah to Gaza City, I noticed a series of colorful concrete benches along the beachfront. My colleague Ali translated the Arabic words on the backs of each bench, pointing out that each one bore the name of a Palestinian city or town where Gazans lived prior to 1948.

It’s not difficult to grasp the sacred significance of these simple seaside benches to the refugees of Gaza. Unlike most memorials, which commemorate what was lost and is never to be found, I’d wager that those who come to these beaches don’t believe their home cities and villages to be lost at all. On the contrary, I believe these benches testify that these places are still very real to them. And to their faith that they will one day return home.

In the end my trip to Gaza affected me in ways I could not predict at the time. Most importantly, for lack of a better term, I find I’m taking the issue much more personally. When Israel drops bombs on Gaza, I invariably get a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and immediately send emails to my colleagues and friends to check on their welfare. When a young Gazan is killed during the weekly Return March demonstrations, it’s not unusual for me to read a grief stricken testimony on social media by a friend, or friend of a friend. I increasingly hear their stories of their loved ones whose visas were denied or who cannot travel to access proper health care – and increasingly, I find myself taking their stories to heart.

Of course, I also take it personally when I hear so many in the Jewish community rationalizing this oppression away or worse – blaming Gazans for their own misery. When Israel was bombarding Gaza with bombs this past July, for instance, I recalled the fall of 2014 and how the American Jewish communal establishment characterized Israel’s war as a moral and religious imperative. In their view, the leadership in Gaza posed nothing short of an existential threat to Israel and the Jewish people – and in the wake of the Holocaust, ensuring Jewish survival is the most sacrosanct commandment of our time.

In early August of that year, Elie Wiesel wrote a public statement that was published as a paid ad in many prominent newspapers, including the New York Times. It was entitled “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn.” Wiesel’s words, I think, are a perfect representation of the ways the Jewish communal establishment framed the religious challenge of Gaza:

More than three thousand years ago, Abraham had two children. One son had been sent into the wilderness and was in danger of dying. God saved him with water from a spring. The other son was bound, his throat about to be cut by his own father. But God stayed the knife. Both sons – Ishmael and Isaac – received promises that they would father great nations.

With these narratives, monotheism and western civilization begin. And the Canaanite practices of child sacrifice to Moloch are forever left behind by the descendants of Abraham.

Except they are not.

In my own lifetime, I have seen Jewish children thrown into the fire. And now I have seen Muslim children used as human shields, in both cases, by worshippers of death cults indistinguishable from that of the Molochites.

What we are suffering through today is not a battle of Jew versus Arab or Israeli versus Palestinian. Rather, it is a battle between those who celebrate life and those who champion death. It is a battle of civilization versus barbarism.

I remember when I first read these words. I remember how deeply, how viscerally, I reacted to them – particularly while I had been reading day after day about Gazan children like the four Bakr boys, who were shot down not as “human shields” but while they were playing soccer on the beach one morning. I remember how desperately I wished there were other Jews or Jewish communities ready to provide an alternative religious understanding of what was going on in Gaza.

There was only one religious response to Wiesel I recall reading at the time. It came from scholar and theologian Marc Ellis, who addressed Wiesel’s statement head on:

The problem is the news that keeps coming from Israel. Israel’s bombing of residential areas, hospitals and UN schools and shelters is international news. In Gaza, even after Israel’s proclaimed “withdrawal,” the death toll mounts. Among the dead are children sacrificed for Israel’s obvious goal – to deny Palestinians statehood, their political and human rights, which include the right to resist occupation.

The question for Elie Wiesel and the Jewish establishment is not about Abraham’s binding of Isaac – a treasure trove for interpreters of all types – but how many Palestinian children in Gaza will be sacrificed on the altar of Israel’s national security.

If God stayed Abraham’s knife, who will stay Israel’s?

“If God stayed Abraham’s knife, who will stay Israel’s?” This, to me is as profound an articulation of the moral and religious challenge presented to us by Gaza as we are likely to find. And I simply cannot understand how Jewish communities can gather for Yom Kippur every year without even thinking to consider this question. This is after all, the season of our cheshbon nefesh – our moral accountability. On Yom Kippur we are asked to come together and dig deep as a community to search our collective soul and confess our collective sins. How many synagogues will include confessions for what Israel is doing to Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere?

On Yom Kippur we chant over and over an annual liturgy that literally asks “who shall live and who shall die,” while the people of Gaza ask themselves that question every waking day. In a very real sense, Israel is playing God with the people of Gaza. Who shall live and who shall die? In the end, it is not God but Apache helicopters and sniper fire that will provide the answers to that question. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to change the Une’taneh Tokef prayer to read, “Who will we kill and who will we spare?”

On Yom Kippur we gather to confess our sins and vow to do teshuvah – to actively repair what we have broken in the past year. But if we do believe that Israel is oppressing Gazans and Palestinians in our name, how can this day have any meaning for us at all? How can it be anything but an empty ritual? If we do believe this day still has religious relevance for us, what are we ready to do to make this teshuvah we speak of real?

My friend and colleague Jehad Abusalim was born in Gaza and is now earning his Phd from NYU. This past year he joined the Chicago staff of AFSC to work on our campaign “Gaza Unlocked.” I’d like to end with his words, because like so many of the Gazans I’ve come to know, he presents us with a question that highlights what I believe is the current religious challenge of Yom Kippur:

Our message is that we are human beings. Despite 70 years of exile, 50 years of occupation, and 11 years of a blockade, we still can carry signs in Arabic, Hebrew, and English that say, “We are not coming to fight — we are coming to return to our lands!” Gazans who saw wars and blood, who lost relatives to graves and prisons, who have four hours of electricity, who are besieged and tired — these Gazans still have faith that the international community cares. Will the rest of humanity hear them?

On Yom Kippur we plead to God, “Shema Koleynu” – “Hear our voice!” The people of Gaza – indeed all Palestinians – are calling out to us “Shema Koleynu!” Are we ready to their prayer? And if we are, what will we do to ensure our Yom Kippur prayers have not been made in vain?

G’mar Hatimah Tovah – may this be the year we write the people of Gaza into the Book of Life.

Gaza and the High Holidays

great-return-march

My weekly message to congregants at Tzedek Chicago:

Yesterday I read a devastating blog post by Abdalrahim Alfarra, a Palestinian Gazan activist who wrote about his cousin Ali Firwana, who was recently was shot and paralyzed at the Great March of Return.

One passage in particular continues to haunt me:

At the protest, we found the usual: tear gas canisters falling thickly, leaving us barely able to breathe or talk; ambulances and paramedics fanning out everywhere; and the sound of live bullets whizzing past.

The sound of a bullet elicits contradictory feelings. All of us know that it will hit someone. But if we hear it, we are safe, just like when we hear shelling it means it has exploded but not on us.

It’s a powerful a description as we might find of what it must be like for unarmed demonstrators to experience an overwhelming military assault such as this. But it also made me think of something else.

We’ve just begun Elul – the month that precedes the Jewish New Year. Among other things, this the season in which we begin to contemplate the randomness and fragility of our world. We look ahead to a year to come and ask with uncertainty: “Who shall live and who shall die?” I can’t think of a more gut-wrenching expression of this question than the testimony of this young Palestinian man. And I can’t think of a more critical collective moral imperative for the Jewish people than the crimes Israel is committing against Palestinians in Gaza.

Alfarra concludes his post with these words:

Ali requires further surgery. He is still hoping to move his legs again. He is still hoping to defy the treacherous bullet fired by a heartless sniper, and a world that answers Israel’s crimes with shocking silence.

When Jewish congregation gather next month for the High Holidays, it is safe to say many will “answer Israel’s crimes with shocking silence.” Others will actually attempt to justify Israel’s criminal assaults on Palestinians in Gaza. I’m proud to be part of a congregation that will choose a different way:

For blockading 1.8 millon Gazans inside an open air prison; and for unleashing devastating firepower on a population trapped in a tiny strip of land.

For wedding sacred Jewish tradition to political nationalism and militarism; and for rationalizing away Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.

For all these, source of forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, receive our atonement.

May our prayers inspire us to hasten the day in which all Gazans and Palestinians are free.

Anti-Racism as a Sacred Jewish Value: A Sermon for Yom Kippur 5777

I’d like to begin my remarks today where I left off on Rosh Hashanah:

Because of our diverse, multi-racial nature, Jews must necessarily embrace anti-racism as a sacred value. The Jewish Diaspora is a microcosm of the world we seek to create. If the term Ahavat Yisrael means love of your fellow Jew, it must also affirm that love crosses all lines and borders and boundaries.

“Jews must embrace anti-racism as a sacred value” – it must be a mitzvah if you will. At Tzedek Chicago, we’ve actually articulated this as one of our congregation’s core values. If you go to our website, you will read: “We promote a Judaism rooted in anti-racist values and understand that anti-Semitism is not separate from the systems that perpetuate prejudice and discrimination.”

Like all of our other values this one has very practical implications. It will necessarily guide the choices we make as a community: the issues we work on, the groups we stand with, the public statements we make. And in general it will mean we must always foreground the question: “what does it mean, as a Jewish congregation observe anti-racism as a sacred value?”

I’m sure most liberal Jews wouldn’t find this question all that controversial. After all, American Jewry has a long and venerable history of standing up for racial equality, particularly when it comes to our participation in the civil rights movement. But I’d suggest this question presents an important challenge to the Jewish community of the 21st century. And it was actually put to the test this past summer, when a the Movement for Black Lives released their policy statement, “Vision for Black Lives.”

I’m sure many of you are very familiar with Movement for Black Lives. It’s a coalition of over 50 organizations from around that country that focus on issues of concern to the black community. One year ago, their Policy Table began an extensive process, convening national and local groups, and engaging with researchers and community members. This summer they published their Vision for Black Lives: a comprehensive policy platform that focuses on six main areas: Ending the War on Black People, Reparations, Invest/Divest, Economic Justice, Community Control and Political Power.

I will say unabashedly that I believe the Vision for Black Lives platform is one of the most important American policy statements of our time. It’s both an unflinching analysis of the institutional racism against black people in country as well as a smart policy statement about what can be done (and in some cases already being done) to dismantle it.

What makes Vision for Black Lives platform particularly unique is that it wasn’t produced by the usual method, namely by a think tank or special interest group. Rather, it was developed by a coalition of national and grassroots organizations that reflect the communities most directly affected by these particular issues. Moreover, it serves both as an ideological manifesto as well as a practical hard-nosed policy statement that lays out a path toward achieving very specific legislative goals. In so doing, as many have observed, it is moving Black Lives Matter from a structureless network of local organizations toward becoming a genuine political movement.

To quote from their introduction:

We want this platform to be both a visionary agenda for our people and a resource for us. We take as a departure-point the reality that by every metric – from the hue of its prison population to its investment choices – the U.S. is a country that does not support, protect or preserve Black life. And so we seek not reform but transformation…

Our hope is that this is both an articulation of our collective aspirations as well as a document that provides tangible resources for groups and individuals doing the work. We recognize that some of the demands in this document will not happen today. But we also recognize that they are necessary for our liberation.

This platform is also important because it doesn’t limit its concern to issues facing the black community alone. It understands that the systemic racism impacting people of color in this country is but a part of many interlocking systems of oppression that affect communities the world over. As the platform puts it: “We are a collective that centers and is rooted in Black communities, but we recognize we have a shared struggle with all oppressed people; collective liberation will be a product of all of our work.”

If you haven’t read Vision for Black Lives yet, I highly recommend it. I’ll warn you it’s not easy. It’s very long and heavily referenced, so really reading and integrating it will take commitment. I’ve read it three times now and every time I did, I discovered something new and challenging that I hadn’t considered before. But in the end, I found it profoundly inspiring – and that is not something you often say about policy platforms. I would go as far as to call it a prophetic document. As I quoted earlier, it seeks “not reform but transformation.”

Like me, I’m sure many of you have read innumerable books and articles that analyze the institutional racism inflicted on people of color in this country. Usually they leave us pent up with frustration or else just a sense of abject hopelessness. The problem is just so vast and pervasive – how on earth can we ever hope to dismantle it? But this is first time I’ve read such an analysis along with extensive prescriptions toward political solutions. It lays out the problems then it puts forth real solutions. But it has no illusions about the daunting task ahead. As the report says. “We recognize that some of the demands in this document will not happen today. But we also recognize that they are necessary for our liberation.” (When I read this, I can’t help but recall the famous ancient dictum by Rabbi Tarfon: “It is not up to you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”)

Is Jewish community ready to observe anti-racism as a sacred value? I think one important test would be to judge by its response to the release of the Vision for Black Lives platform. And in this regard, I’m sorry to say that the American Jewish establishment failed the test miserably.

Almost immediately after its release, every mainstream Jewish organization responded with statements that ranged from critical to outright hostility. Why? Because in the Invest/Divest section there is one section that advocates diverting financial resources away from military expenditures and investing in “domestic infrastructure and community well being.” And in that section there were some brief references to Israel – one that referred to “the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people” and another that called Israel “an apartheid state.” And as you might expect from a section entitled Invest/Divest, there was a statement of solidarity with the nonviolent Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

The first official Jewish response to Vision for Black Lives came from the Boston Jewish Community Relations Committee, just two days after it was released. The Boston JCRC said it was “deeply dismayed” by the report and denounced the use of the word genocide and its support for BDS. It had nothing more to say about this voluminous, wide-ranging platform. It spent seven paragraphs on this one issue – and most of that was devoted to this one word.

Over the next few weeks, one Jewish organization after another denounced the platform for its statements about Israel with only a glancing nod to its analysis, its conclusions and its policy recommendations. Jonathan Greenblatt, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League called its reference to Israel “repellent” and added patronizingly, “let’s work to keep our eyes on the prize.” Even liberal Jewish organizations such as J St., the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and T’ruah, an American rabbinical organization devoted to human rights, responded with criticism and chastisement.

These responses tell us all we need to know about the Jewish communal establishment’s commitment to the value of anti-racism. But it really shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Jewish institutional community hasn’t been in real solidarity with black Americans and people of color for decades. Most of what we call solidarity is actually nostalgia. For far too long we’ve been championing the role of Jews in the American civil rights movement, invoking the memory of Jewish martyrs such as Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman and Jewish heroes such as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. But those days are over – and it is disingenuous of us to wield its memory as some kind of entitlement when it comes to issues of racism in the 21st century.

There was a time that being a Jew in America meant being part of a discriminated minority, but that has no longer been the case for generations. Today, white Jews are part of the white majority – and as I mentioned on Rosh Hashanah, since white Jews are racialized as part of the majority, we enjoy all of the privileges that come along with it.

I know for many American Jews, particularly young Jews, it might seem downright silly to ask whether or not white Jews are white. But it is actually a subject of debate – at least among white Jews. In fact it’s become a something of a cottage industry. (If you doubt me, just Google “are Jews white?” and see how many hits you get.)

There’s actually a very simple way to answer this question: ask a Jew of color. Let Lina Morales, a Mexican-American Jew, who recently wrote a powerful article on the subject explain it to you:

With all due respect to my white Jewish friends and colleagues, people of color in the United States don’t need to take a course on critical race theory to understand the nuances of race. Anti-Semitism exists, and I’ve received a fair amount of it from fellow people of color, but its impact and extent doesn’t compare to the systematic racism of American society. White Jews simply don’t face the criminalization that black and brown people in this country do. They are not locked up or deported in record numbers. Nor is their demographic growth or struggle to not be capriciously murdered by police considered a threat by a large and reactionary part of our population.

It should be mentioned that thankfully, there were some Jewish organizations that did in fact welcome and endorse the Visions for Black Lives. Not surprisingly, all of them came from outside the Jewish institutional establishment – organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and Jews for Economic and Racial Justice. For me, the most trenchant and powerful response came from the Jews of Color Caucus, which works in partnership with JVP. Among the many important points made in their statement was this one that was sent directly to the Jewish communal establishment:

Recent statements by the Boston JCRC, Truah: the Rabbinic Council for Human Rights, and The Union for Reform Judaism condemning the BLM Platform also send the message that the lives of Black Jews (along with Black gentiles) directly affected by US police brutality are less important than protecting Israel from scrutiny. We reject this message and call on these groups to commit themselves to honor the leadership of Jews of Color, including those critical of Israel…

We are appalled at the actions of the white US institutional Jewish community in detracting and distracting from such a vital platform at a time when Black lives are on the line, simply because the organizers chose to align their struggle with the plight of Palestinians. US Black relationships to Palestine and Israel have never been monolithic, but there are deep historical ties between Black and Palestinian struggle that go back to the Black Power Era. Any attempt to co-opt Black struggle while demeaning these connections, is an act of anti-Black erasure.

Their reference to the Black Power movement of the late 1960s is critically important. This marks the time in which white Jews were leaving cities for the suburbs to become part of the white majority. It also marks the time, following the Six Day War, in which Israel began to become central to American Jewish identity. For many white American Jews, this new relationship between Black and Palestinian liberation movements was experienced as a betrayal of former allies. Many American Jews looked to Zionism as the “liberation movement of the Jewish people” and considered it downright anti-Semitic to claim that Israel was actually a settler colonial project that militarily expelled and displaced indigenous people.

Of course, many American Jews still identify deeply with Israel. And that is why the Jewish institutional responses to the Vision for Black Lives resonate with a strong sense of betrayal. That is why the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt wrote we must “keep our eyes on the prize.” There is this yearning for a coalition that no longer exists – and a refusal to accept, as the Movement for Black Lives does, that Israel is part of this system of oppression.

So many otherwise liberal American Jews will insist: Israel is different. Don’t compare Israel to the racist system that oppresses blacks and people of color in this country. Don’t compare Israel to apartheid South Africa or any other state where one ethnic group wields power over another. It’s not the same thing.

Of course every nation is different in many ways from one another – but it’s time to admit that when it comes to systems of oppression, Israel is not different. And this is precisely the place that so many in the Jewish community, even those who are otherwise progressive in every other way, are simply unwilling to go. To admit that in the end, Israel is by its very nature an oppressor state: a system that privileges one ethnic group over another. And that this system is fundamentally connected to a larger system of oppression.

In fact it plays a very integral role in that system. The very same tear gas canisters that are used daily against Palestinians are the ones that were used against protesters in Ferguson. The same security apparatus that is used on the West Bank separation wall is the one that is used on the border wall that the US is building on our southern border with Mexico. The same stun grenades that Israeli soldiers use against demonstrators in Bil’in or Nabi Saleh are the very same ones used by American SWAT teams in Cincinnati and Oakland and St. Paul.

Here in Chicago, as in so many cities around the country, there is a new recognition of how the militarization of police departments is being used in ways that target communities of color. Those who say that we can’t compare this systemic racism to Israel should know that Chicago’s Jewish Federation regularly sponsors “police exchange programs” – trips that take the CPD to go to Israel to learn the latest military techniques from the IDF.

Regarding these exchange programs, the JUF’s Executive VP Jay Tcath has said this:

Helping connect and thereby improve the work of both Israeli and Chicago police is a natural role for JUF, committed as we are to the safety of the entire Chicago community and the Jewish State. From advising us on ways to enhance the physical security of our Jewish community’s institutions to helping us ensure the safety of JUF events – everything from dinners to pro-Israel rallies – we are grateful for the extraordinary commitment of CPD, Cook County’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management and our other public law enforcement partners. These missions to Israel both reflect and help deepen these valued relationships.

So we can’t have it both ways. The Jewish establishment cannot simultaneously empower the systems that oppress people of color in this country and at the same time say we stand in solidarity with them. If we are going to be anti-racist, we can’t make an exception for Israeli militarism or rationalize away its critical place in these systems.

Some of us have already made it clear where we stand. But sooner than later all of us in Jewish community will have stop dancing around this issue and make a decision. When it comes to Israel, we cannot continue to cling to a two state solution that Israel has already made impossible. As I’ve said before, the real choice we will have to face is a choice between two one-state solutions: one apartheid state in which a Jewish minority rules the non-Jewish majority or a state where all have equal rights and citizenship, regardless of their ethnicity or religion.

But on still deeper level, we must also reckon with the separatist assumptions behind the “two state solution.” What are we really doing when we advocate for a Jewish state that must have a demographic majority of Jews in order to exist? The same liberal Jews who cling to the notion of a two state solution would recoil at the suggestion of solving Jim Crow by separating black Americans from white Americans. That the only way two peoples living in the same country can co-exist is to physically segregate them from one another.

So to return once again to my original question: how can we, as Jews, embrace anti-racism as a sacred Jewish value? I’d like to offer a few suggestions in conclusion:

1. It would mean that the white Jewish establishment must embrace the concept of solidarity. Specifically, that means we cannot make it about us. The objects of oppression are the ones who must dictate the terms of their struggle. If we have issues with how they articulate their vision, we must raise these issues with them face to face in genuine relationship – not through public chastisement.

2. It would mean letting go of our reverence of a civil rights era that is long past and take an honest look at our complicity in the current reality in which white Jews are part of the privileged white majority. Anti-Semitism does exist in the US today, but it is not institutionally imposed upon us the way it is upon communities of color.

3. It would mean letting go of the old paradigm of “Black-Jewish relations” – a term that utterly erases the presence of black Jews from our community. Any new anti-racist paradigm we formulate must reject Jewish white supremacy and center the experience of Jews of color.

4. It would mean subjecting Israel to the same analysis we use when it comes to our own country. Israel is not separate from the systems that oppress people of color at home and abroad. We must be willing to identify these connections and call them out as we would any other aspect of institutional racism.

Finally, and perhaps most difficult, it would mean to letting go of a Zionist dream that never really was. To recognize that the Zionist dream was realized on the backs of Palestinians – just as the American Dream was realized on the backs of indigenous peoples and blacks who were brought to this country in chains. Yes, it painful to give up on dreams, but it is even more painful to hold onto them until they turn into a nightmare for all concerned.

After all, on Yom Kippur we vow to let go of the dreams of what might have been, but have led us down the wrong path. But it is also the day in which we can dream new dreams. We can dream of a world in which systems of exploitation and oppression are no more. As Sarah Thompson reminded us in her guest sermon last night, we must begin the year by focusing on the end – even if we know that by the end of the year we will not have arrived at the ultimate end we seek. To paraphrase the Vision for Black Lives, we recognize that some of these dreams will not happen today – or even in our lifetime. But we also recognize that they are necessary for our liberation.

May we realize this dream bimheyra beyameynu – speedily in our day.

Amen.

“Who will be Next?” Max Blumenthal’s Yom Kippur Presentation at Tzedek Chicago

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Max and Brant On Yom Kippur, journalist Max Blumenthal delivered this powerful presentation during the afternoon program at Tzedek Chicago, where he discussed what he witnessed in Gaza during Israel’s military onslaught last summer. He wrote about his experiences at length in his recent book, “The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza.”

Max attended our services for the duration of Yom Kippur and remarked to me on more than one occasion how important it was for him to be invited to speak in a Jewish congregation for the first time.

For my part, I could not think of a more appropriate presentation for the Jewish Day of Atonement.

Please watch and share…

Shalom Rav

A Blog by Rabbi Brant Rosen

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“Who will be Next?” Max Blumenthal’s Yom Kippur Presentation at Tzedek Chicago