Rabbi's Message

I just returned from a week in Israel, where I got a deeper appreciation for the emotional roller coaster that the whole society is on. One moment, there is the joy of seeing hostages released, and then the sense of sorrow and pain from the release of murders, the loss of soldiers, and the general heaviness of the toll all of this has taken on Israelis. I felt this most acutely last Shabbat, where the shul I was at interrupted services to announce first that Yarden Bibas and Ofer Calderon, and then later Keith Siegel, were back in Israel.  In the same service, I also watched parents stand to say kaddish for children killed in this war and spoke with a friend who keeps getting called back to his reserve army service, leaving his wife and four children at home.  Israelis are a resilient people, but it is a lot to bear.  In addition to all this, the war has dulled a sense of hope for a peaceful future.  Though few believe this is possible in the short term, we must remember that Judaism is a religion of hope, and of course, Israel’s national anthem is even named “The Hope.” Without a belief in the possibility of a better, more peaceful future for Israel and its neighbors, no matter how far away it might seem, what are we?

I think that many of us also feel this sense of hopelessness, as we watch our Israeli family from afar struggle.  This week, in attempt to fix the terrible situation that is Gaza, President Trump, with Prime Minister Netanyahu sitting close by, made his proposal to move out the people of Gaza and build a “riviera of the Middle East.”  As tempting as this might feel at this moment, after 489 days of war, 79 hostages still in Gaza, and all of the death, pain and destruction Hamas has wrought, we must not lose sight of who we are, and what we stand for.  While conditions are not ripe for a two-state solution today, our history and our values compel us to reject any plan that forcibly uproots another people.  David Horowitz in the Times of Israel and Hen Mazzig in The Forward both write eloquently about how our sense of morality and our history argue against this type of plan.  Despite it all, we still must not give up on our most important blessing, the blessing of shalom.  Perhaps this proposal, though itself problematic, will reset the conversation and lead to new ideas for a more peaceful Middle East.  Though it seems impossible now, many things in our history once seemed impossible, like the state of Israel itself.  We like to quote what Theodore Herzl wrote about his vision for a modern state of Israel: “If you will it, it is no dream.”  He wrote that in 1902, 46 years and two world wars before Israel came into being.  Herzl’s dream seemed impossible to most people of his time, just as peace between Jews and Arabs seems today.  But as we learn in Pirke Avot, just because we can’t achieve something immediately doesn’t mean we are exempt from trying.  It is this wisdom that has guided one generation in laying the groundwork for the next to ultimately realize a thriving Jewish state. What is not achievable today may very well be achievable tomorrow.  That’s why we need to keep dreaming about the future we hope to live in and take the steps we can, in our moment, to help get us there.