The Drash

So, first thing is first.  I know that parents are told never to lie to their kids.  I want to apologize to Zev and Haley, and maybe to some of you too, by saying I was going to New York when I was really going to Israel.  But I want to assure you that I had a good reason.  Not only did I not want my kids to be scared, but I didn’t want my kids' first memory of Israel to be worrying about their dad.

We are here because we know that Israel is a special place: the place where our family lives, where we get to eat at Kosher McDonald's, the place where eventually at a gift shop, someday, I’ll finally be able to find a key chain with Zev’s name on it.  Israel is so special that it brings all kinds of people from all over the world to support it…including as I was getting in line for check-in at JFK, these strange and now famous guys from Montana going to Israel to help farm the West Bank.  Yes, all those photos almost blew my cover. I’ve never met four nicer guys who love Jews and the State of Israel.  

So now, on a more serious note, I want to tell you why I went, and what I saw, in a way that I hope makes sense.  Although I have to say that as sleep-deprived as I am, I am still making sense of so many of the soul-crushing things that I saw.

As I walked through Kfar Aza, the site of a massacre where 58 people were murdered in Southern Israel, and where dozens of people were taken hostage, I couldn’t help but think of the poet Chaim Nachman Bialik.  In the spring of 1903, following the pogrom at Kishinev, he wrote a poem called Al HaShchita, “Upon the Slaughter.”  Walking through the horrors 120 years ago, as I did this week, he declared: Veim yesh tzedek hofiya miyad. “If there is justice in the world, let it appear immediately!”  It didn’t.  Not in Kishinev.

85 years ago, the pogrom of Kristalnacht took place in Germany.  Veim yesh tzedek hofiya miyad.  There too, there was no justice.  Throughout our history, entire Jewish communities were attacked over and over again.  Still, no justice.  Massacre after massacre, Holocaust after Holocaust, we see the same thing: the world does not cry out for justice for Jews.

Yet, friends, after going on this trip, I came to an important realization:  The world doesn’t care about us as much as we hoped, and that is why we must care about each other more than we should.  Justice for Jews only exists in our world because we have a State of Israel that cares when Jewish lives are lost.  

Today, the phrase on posters and flags throughout Israel is: ביחד ננצח “We win when come together.”  That is what Israel is doing right now.  Israel teaches us that we no longer have to be a people denied justice.  Israel allows rabbis and ordinary Jews to put on tactical helmets and bulletproof vests and walk into the site of a pogrom not in a faraway place…but in a Jewish state...to bear witness, and to say “this is not justice!” and know that in Israel, justice will be done.

I am not going to lie to you.  When I was invited to go to Israel, I didn’t want to go.  Who runs toward an active war zone?  But here’s the thing.  So much of the unjust world wants to present what is happening in Israel as business as usual.  Only now I can tell you with absolute certainty that having walked through the site of a pogrom, this is anything but business as usual.

I keep hearing from people, from our inept Cobb County Commission to the media that this conflict needs “to be seen in a context.”  “Both sides.”  It’s only fair.

But guess what?  I don’t think any of them are looking at the right context.  When I step on bullet casings, see giant holes made in homes with RPGs shot from point blank range; when I see people’s stuff piled outside their homes because after they were killed from Gaza ran in to loot them; I keep thinking, what context are you thinking about? Other than terrorism? Folks, I will no longer refer to Hamas using the terms barbarian or animals, because it is an insult to barbarians and animals.

When I am at a meeting in Jerusalem, and someone jokingly tells us they need to leave before Rush Hour, because Hamas fires missiles during Rush Hour to kill as many people as possible, is the right context to look at the 1993 Oslo Accords?

When the UNICEF calls out to the children of Gaza, and says Israel is committing war crimes, but only on Friday for the first time acknowledged the 40+ children held hostage in Gaza who are scared and haven’t talked to their parents in over a month, is the context we need to look at the history of a two-state solution? Or is the context one pure unadulterated anti-Semitism at the United Nations?  We have lots of real estate developers in our shul.  They should buy that NYC property and put up condos.

I keep hearing the media say: “give peace a chance.” “Call a ceasefire.” That’s their context.  But when you see an entire parking lot with hundreds of cars, windows smashed in, bullet holes, baby strollers still in the trunk, all from people attending a music festival who will no longer be able to pick up their cars because they are dead or are being held hostage…is this business as usual?  “Veim yesh tzedek hofiya miyad.”  Or is this really a story about historical injustice done to Jews?  

Around our bus of thirty rabbis and lay leaders, there was a widely circulated meme going around Israel of a man holding up a sign that said, “Here’s an idea, let’s trade a hundred pro-Hamas college students for each hostage, good for Hamas, good for Israel, good for America, educational for college students.”  Sounds great.  But then, we all realized the problem. If that happened, Israel would have to go rescue those morons.  Then, when they were rescued at the expense of Israeli lives they would still scream for a Free Gaza.

And I must say that in the day and a half, I’ve had to process this, and I have so much more still to do, this meme encapsulates the realization that I am both struggling with and presents the hope that I see after a very sobering trip: the hope that for every Hamas supporter on an American college campus or terrorist in Gaza who devalues human life that there is an Israeli, a Jew, or a person of conscience who is willing to fight for life.

Before I close, I want to share with you just a few examples where I saw this juxtaposition play out time and time again on my trip.

On the first day, I met a woman named Ayelet HaShachar.  Those of you who know Hebrew, you know her name is a little funny: it means the morning dawn.  Ayelet is the mother of Naomi Levy.  She is nineteen years old.  Ayelet is waiting, like 240+ sets of family members for Naomi to come home.  Naomi was a soldier on the southern border for two days when terrorists came and took her captive in her pajamas. The video was posted online.

But that’s not what I want you to know about Naomi. At 19 years old, Naomi already decided she was planning to major in diplomacy.  She had just spent her summer participating in a United States program with Palestinian youth trying to promote peaceful coexistence.  Today, Naomi is in a tunnel in Gaza. Ayelet is going through something no one in this room ever has to go through.  And yet her story of hope inspires thousands of people of all faith backgrounds to come together in a public square every night in Tel Aviv to pray for the hostages.  There is in fact an entire camp where people from all over Israel come to Tel Aviv meet those families on a daily basis and share their love.  I participated in that vigil with thirty other rabbis and lay leaders on Tuesday night and saw her courage gave all of us hope.

Where else is the hope?  Usually, on most trips to Israel, I pray at the Kotel and I find hope there. This time, I found hope when I prayed on the side of the Convention Expo Center in Tel Aviv.  This Center has now become a warehouse for displaced families to get what they need.  There are huge piles of everything from board games to full beds to clothing to the supplies you donated to the synagogue for soldiers.  Hamas took all hope away from these people, their lives, their homes, their security.   But today Israeli society is doing what it can to restore it.  By the way, the center is being run by an organization called Achim LaNeshek, brothers in arms.  Until the war, this organization was leading the protest movement against the Prime Minister’s highly unpopular judicial reform.  Yet, the second the war started, and entire communities started to flee, they dropped their protest signs and put all of their efforts toward helping displaced persons.  They make a point of not calling these people refugees, they are called displaced because, in the State of Israel, you always have a home.  That is the hope.

Where else is the hope?  All across the country, I drew inspiration from our mission by seeing the way that the Jewish people work to preserve life that Hamas has tried to destroy. When I arrived, I assumed our hotel in Jerusalem would be empty: who comes to a war zone?  But it was full of displaced Jews who were being provided for by the hotel staff, and the kids enrolled in local schools.  Therein lies hope.   We visited Hadassah Hospital.  I know many of you are lifetime members of Hadassah.  Well, Hadassah built an underground trauma wing in a parking garage under the hospital to handle the overflow.  Now, compare that to the death culture of Hamas, building headquarters, and who are holding hostages under its hospitals.  Today, the Sochnut, the Jewish Agency, the same organization that sends us our shinshinim, is helping 5500 families helped by the Jewish agency’s victims of terror fund.  Yes, Hamas has hurt that many families – 5500 – but see how many of them are now getting help!  There is the hope.  Together I gave out hundreds of cards and letters written to young soldiers written by so many of our kids in Atlanta. I will be the first to admit that I thought to myself, what a cheesy gesture.  You have no idea how you touched these 19-year-old soldiers were to know American Jewish kid cares about them.  The last soldier whom I gave a letter and some long underwear to, by the way, was my former camper, serving on the northern front in an artillery unit. They were blown away.  You gave them hope.  

I know I’ve been all over the place today.  I want to thank you for bearing with me.  I especially want to thank my wife Amy for letting me go on this trip.  When I asked her if it was okay to go, she only told me that she was jealous and that she wanted to go.  I can’t thank her enough.

And so, this morning, after a challenging trip, I want to conclude with a song after so much terror, about hope.  Rabbi Adler taught it to us over the holidays.  It’s called Lu Yehi.  It’s Naomi Shemer’s translation of the Beatles' Let it Be.  Fifty years ago, Lu Yehi was the song of the Yom Kippur War.  Today, I want to tell you that once again, this song of hope of Lu Yehi has become the song of hope in this war for Israelis.  It is on all the radio stations.

There is a lot we can despair about this morning if we try.  But what I took away from my mission in addition to what I saw, is that we can be proud that Am Yisrael is more resilient than ever.  Fifty years after the war on Yom Kippur we are coming together again.  Hope springs eternal. I have no doubt that we will eradicate this evil and darkness from the world and bring light.  Veim yesh tzedek hofiya miyad.  120 years after Kishinev, we can with the State of Israel bring justice once again to a world that for thousands of years, without an Israel, denied justice to the Jewish people.  Lu Yehi.  May justice reign again soon in our time.

https://www.brothersandsistersforisrael.org/