“Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu ….May peace eventually come upon us …”

I can’t seem to get that melody out of my head. On the Friday night immediately after the war began, the woman leading Kabbalat Shabbat at Shirah Hadashah (a modern Orthodox community on Emek Refaim Street) chose that melody as the setting for L’cha Dodi. What an apt choice that was! It’s a dream that underlies so much of what has been built here, and so much of what keeps so many of us hopeful.

Today is Day 15 of the war. What does it all mean? I continue to live in a relatively calm, quiet city—the capital of a nation at war. The devastation in southern Lebanon—and in Beirut—is appalling, as is the massive shelling of northern Israel and the fact that millions of Israelis are either sleeping in shelters or have fled their homes. (Meanwhile, as I write, preliminary reports are being published in the Arab press suggesting that, in a fierce battle on the front, over a dozen Israeli soldiers have been killed. This has yet to be confirmed in the Israeli press—next of kin are generally first informed before news of casualties is released—but if true, it portends a serious escalation in the conflict.) Nonetheless, unless you look for it, in Jerusalem you could easily forget that a war is going on.

The signs are there, but they are subtle. People are starting to disappear. The guard on Boston’s “Follow Me to Israel” bus was mobilized, so he had to be replaced. Others are receiving notices that they could be called up at any time. One of my teachers at the Hartman Institute, an energetic young man in his early ‘30s, told us that he might not be showing up this week. “Of course,” he said, seemingly unaware that most of us in the room were old enough to be his father or mother, “as an old geezer, the army has no interest in putting me on the front lines. They’ll put me on the Golan Heights to replace soldiers in the regular army, freeing them to go to Lebanon.”

The other night, Glenn Levine, Elana and I got together at a coffee shop near Emek Refaim Street here in Jerusalem. A street fair was taking place. Our adorable and charming waitress wore a T-shirt reading, “What boyfriend?” (When we asked her about it, she told us that she broke up with the guy two days ago.) The streets were teeming with passersby and the mood was buoyant.

I’m reminded of how puzzled I was when I first learned that, after the reign of King Solomon, the ancient land of Israel became two kingdoms: the northern kingdom of Israel (in the Galilee), and the southern kingdom of Judah (from Jerusalem to Beer Sheva). I remember thinking: Israel is so small! How is there room for two countries? Now I know. The Galilee, which is under siege, feels like another country, even though it’s no further than New Hampshire is from Boston.

Haifa, or so I’ve been told, has become an "ir refaim"—a "ghost town." The other day, I spoke with Alison Adler, our Ritual Educator (who will once again be working with bar/bat mitzvah students at Temple Aliyah, on a part-time basis, in the fall.) She had been enrolled, together with about a dozen other students at the Hebrew College Rabbinical School, in an ulpan (an intensive Hebrew language course) at the University of Haifa until about a week ago, when the entire group packed their bags and moved to Jerusalem. She has moved into an apartment here in Jerusalem and is enrolled in another program. I recently spoke with Rabbi Mauricio Balter of our sister congregation in Kiryat Bialik. Seventy families in his community alone have left town.

The other day, I saw an old friend who’d traveled from Haifa to Jerusalem to attend a family bar mitzvah. She’s doing fine, she said, but she’s unable to concentrate. She spends a lot of time in her kitchen, she told me, cooking up a storm. Her kitchen has never been cleaner. When the sirens go off, she is never sure where to go. The kitchen is an interior room of her house, so it’s actually considered a safe place to remain. Sometimes she and her husband descend to the “miklat” (the shelter) —in the basement of her building. But not always, for her building’s shelter is now occupied. A family on the top floor of her building “freaked out.” They became too frightened to stay in their apartment, but they didn’t want to leave Haifa, so they moved down to the shelter. Unfortunately, according to my friend, they’re heavy smokers. They know enough not to smoke in the shelter, which is a close, confined space, but that doesn’t stop them from smoking in the hallway outside the shelter. Every time my friend enters or leaves her apartment, she feels she needs a gas mask—but she isn’t about to complain.

Yesterday, Elana went to an agency that helps victims of terror. While she was there, a pregnant woman (in her seventh month) in tears came in with her two year old child. Profusely apologetic, she spoke about how ashamed she was to be asking for help, but how she just couldn't stop herself. She and her baby had been forced to flee from Haifa: she just couldn't keep her child confined in her building's shelter. But they had no place to go. Correction: someone had found them a place to stay: a tiny and filthy closet. She had found it intolerable and so had come, weeping, to the agency for help. She knew about the agency because she was herself, in fact, a victim of terror: she'd been injured in a bomb blast several years ago. She had been traumatized, and remains fragile.

Within a few hours, the agency found her a place to stay. The woman's misery disappeared, and ecstasy took its place. The only problem was that there was only one mattress in the apartment. Could she try to get a mattress from the place (the closet) where she'd been staying? She headed off, leaving her two year old in Elana's care. The child (who had himself also clearly been traumatized by the daily sirens in Haifa) remained stoic and stony-faced. He refused to eat, he withdrew into his own skin, ... he "refused to be comforted." But time and caring eventually broke through his resistance. By the end of the day, he and Elana were joking. When his mother finally returned, it hardly mattered to her that she had been unable to get a mattress. She was perfectly willing, she said, to sleep on the floor. Her hope (and that of her child) had been restored.

Why is so much suffering taking place here right now? Why did Hezbollah arm itself to the teeth during the past six years? Why wasn't the world, why wasn't Israel, sufficiently outraged to protest this, and to thwart it? Why did the Israeli army decide that it needed to punish not just Hezbollah but all of Lebanon, causing the deaths of hundreds, including many civilians, and creating hundreds of thousands of refugees? Has that helped its cause—or has Israel simply thereby spent its credit of international goodwill with which it began this war?

I know that there are answers to these questions, but my heart cannot hear them right now: it grieves for the displaced, the wounded, and the bereaved—on both sides.

At the same time, the hypocrisy and the perniciousness of Israel's enemies is so overwhelming that it is like a splash of cold water that quickly brings one to one's senses. To castigate Israel, for example—as so many Europeans have—for her so-called "disproportionate response," without acknowledging—much less condemning—Hezbollah's racist, fascistic and nihilistic nature is, I think, shameful. In a particularly disturbing rhetorical flourish, I recently read that a British M.P. apparently compared Israel's bombardment of Beirut to the Nazi assault on the Warsaw ghetto. (I happen to know that that is not original: H.D.S. Greenway said the same thing in the Boston Globe in 1982 when the Israeli army, under the leadership of Ariel Sharon, laid siege to Beirut. I protested that inapt and offensive analogy in a letter to the Globe.)

This morning, I woke up to the news that four United Nations observers had been killed by a missile or an explosive device fired by an Israeli aircraft. Before I had the chance to grieve that loss of innocent life and its obvious negative ramifications for Israel, before I had the chance fully to contemplate the sadness of international peacekeepers (however problematic their mandate) losing their lives in this tragic, pointless way, I heard the news that Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, had condemned the "apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces."

Why in heaven's name would it ever be in Israel's interest to attack the U.N. militarily? How absurd a charge! How could any fair-minded person believe it? Even if they did, would it not be prudent to wait for the Israeli investigation of the incident to proceed before leveling such an inflammatory charge? How easy it is, in the wake of such irresponsibility, for Israelis to dismiss the U.N. It only reinforces the tendency here to believe that, at its core, the U.N. is anti-semitic and anti-Israel. (This is, of course, not new: the history of the U.N.'s failure to stand behind Israel is long and painful.)

It is enough to induce one to "circle the wagons:" to imagine that, whatever Israel does, she will always be condemned. This may be true, yet I personally think that it would be wrong and dangerous to conclude that the UN is useless or irrelevant. Repeatedly, Israel has stressed that it fully withdrew from Lebanon in accordance with a U.N. resolution and that this withdrawal was certified by the U.N. I still believe that in its pursuit of peace as well as security, Israel should seek all avenues to achieve that worthy goal. She should be a rodef shalom—pursuing peace wherever it may be found.

Al ta’amin b’atzm’cha ad yom mot’cha. “Don’t believe in yourself until the day of your death.” This saying kept popping into my head as I sat with a group of American rabbis at the Schechter Institute yesterday morning, listening to a briefing by a former government spokesperson. He was energetic, enthusiastic, … and also opinionated. He was confident and sure of himself—much more so than anyone who is talking about war has a right to be. I dread the next two weeks. There are several levels of uncertainty. What will happen in the theatre of combat? What mistakes will be made—by either side? Who else will be drawn into the conflict? On a more personal level, who shall live and who shall die?

The news has just been confirmed: eight Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fierce fighting in the Lebanese town of Beit Jbril. Barukh Dayan Ha-Emet. In addition to the enormous pain this will bring their families and the entire nation, this will undoubtedly mean that more and more soldiers will be called up to their reserve units.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Next Thursday is Tisha b’Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, the day on which we commemorate the destruction of the first Temple, the destruction of the second Temple, and many other catastrophes in Jewish history, including the expulsion from Spain in 1492. As bad as the current situation is, Israel remains strong. Tisha b’Av in 5766 (2006) does not compare to Tisha b’Av in 5707 (1947) or any Tisha b’Av during the previous 1,800 years of Jewish statelessness. Although Hezbollah and Hamas are insidious enemies, they are not currently threatening the existence of the state.

I am due to arrive in Boston on the eve of Tisha b’Av, in time to recite Eichah (the book of Lamentations) with our congregation. As I contemplate what that will feel like, it occurs to me that, as unsettling and as tense as it is to be here during a war, it feels “right” to be here. It will be sad to leave. It will mean leaving a land I hold very dear and people who are my extended family. How can one leave when the needs here are so great?

The book of Eichah—as recited in the synagogue—gives us a clue. The mood of Eichah is one of deep grief and despair, virtually unrelieved from beginning to end. Its last line is typical: Addressing God, it reads, “You have utterly rejected us, you are exceedingly angry at us!”

As much as that verse captures the spirit of Eichah, the rabbis forbade us to conclude our reading with that verse on the night of Tisha b’Av. For optimism is a Jewish religious principle. The rabbis wisely counseled us never to conclude the study of a Biblical text—any Biblical text, even Eichah on Tisha b’Av—on a negative note. And so, when Eichah is read in the synagogue on Tisha b’Av, we re-read the penultimate verse, and thus conclude the book on a more optimistic note. That verse (which is familiar to many of us, since we recite it every time we return a sefer torah to the ark) reads as follows:

Hashiveinu Adonai elecha v'nashuvah,
Hadesh yameinu k'kedem.

Return us to you, O God, and we shall return;
Renew our days as of old.

I find that verse exceedingly hopeful. No matter how grim the situation, we can always hope for better days. No matter how much trauma Israel is experiencing, we can always hope that it will be relieved—so long as we are willing to do our part. And although that verse speaks of returning to God, its original context suggests—and that’s how I choose to read it—that it is actually speaking of returning to the land of Israel. Though we may have built our homes and our communities abroad, as Jews have always done, we can always hope that we will have the privilege to return to the Land of Israel. As I contemplate leaving here, one small consolation is that I have hopes—and plans—to return. I hope you do, too.

Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu …. May peace eventually come upon us—and upon the entire Household of Israel!

B’vrachah,
Rabbi Carl M. Perkins