Maintaining Hope in Difficult Times

Rosh Hashanah Day 2, 5763 (2002)

Once upon a time, there was a hopeful moment in Jewish history. Things were “looking up” for the Jewish people. It was a time when almost anyone would have to agree that, after a prolonged period of subjugation and conflict, our people had finally reached, if not the Promised Land, then at least a place where they felt safe and secure.
The period I’m describing is that time, right after Pharaoh had let the Jewish people go, when they were on their way out of Egypt. After four hundred years or so of slavery—that’s an awfully long time—the people were no longer under Pharaoh’s control, or so they thought. They were free. All that stood between them and their pathway to the Promised Land was the Red Sea.

Then, suddenly, as we all know, things changed. The people saw the clouds of dust thrown off by Pharaoh’s chariots. They saw soldiers approaching them on three sides, and the sea on the fourth. They realized immediately that they were in mortal danger.

And they didn’t know what to do. More accurately, they couldn’t agree on what to do. At this most challenging, most frightening moment, the people were beset by confusion.

According to the midrash, there were four wildly contrasting views on what to do, and each, in frustration, cried out to Moses.

One group said, “Nahzor l’Mitzraim!”—“It’s time to go back to Egypt. This has been a terrible mistake. Let’s just roll back the clock and pretend we never left.”

Another group said, “Nipol layam”—“We’re doomed! The Egyptians will never let us return to being slaves again, and we can’t get through the Red Sea with all our gear. Let’s just throw ourselves into the water and drown ourselves! Better we should die this way than at the hands of the Egyptians.”

A third group said, “No, that would be dishonorable! “Na-aseh milkhamah”—Let’s fight! True, we have no weapons. We have no army. We have no experience in combat, but at least we’ll go down fighting!”

Still a fourth group said, “Nitzaveah k’negdan!”—“Fighting is no use! We should get down on our hands and knees and pray to God. He got us into this mess; maybe He’ll get us out of it!”

What was the proper approach to take? Even in retrospect, could any of us say which, among those alternatives, was the best option? After all, in retrospect, they were all wrong!

We don’t have to work very hard to imagine what it was like back then. We know what it’s like, because that’s where we’re at right now.

When Israel was created in 1948, “hayinu k’kholmim,” it was like a miracle. And yet she had further battles ahead: wars in ’56, ’67, ’73; constant struggles with terrorism leading to the war in Lebanon in ’82 and other escalations before and since. During the past decade, there were times when it seemed as though a final settlement with Palestinian Arabs might be on the horizon, to complement the treaties with Egypt and Jordan. There was optimism in Israel in the mid 90’s—not among all, to be sure, but among some. Certainly not among members of the religious/nationalist camp, one of whom assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. (And certainly not, outside of Israel, among Islamic extremists.) But among the large majority of Israelis, there was, for the first time in years, hope.

After all, there were:

• Better relations with many countries.
• An economic boom.
• A relaxing of tension with Arab governments.

Almost all this, as we know, has come to an end. The achievements of the 90’s have been obliterated. The struggle has once more become primal. Hideous, murderous explosions have rocked Israeli cities, and anti-Semitic rhetoric is flourishing not only among the Palestinians but throughout the world. There is a fundamental existential angst in Israel today. And Israelis, for their part, and we, as American Jews, are left not knowing what to do.

That’s not exactly accurate. Different people have different ideas about what to do and are struggling with others to have their views heard and heeded. The bottom line is, there is much confusion.

In the midrash that I referred to above, Moses responded to each of the four groups of Israelites who had opinions about what to do. He told each of them what they needed to hear. The midrash is very clever. Picking up on a passage in Exodus (14:13-14) in which Moses gives a little speech to the Israelites, the midrash divides it into four parts, one part for each group. We need to listen to what Moses said, because there’s a bit of us in each one of those groups.

The Israelites who said, “Let’s go back to Egypt,” were told, “That’s impossible. The way you’ve seen the Egyptians today, you’re never going to see them again.” In other words, there’s no turning back. The Israelites can’t pretend that they never left Egypt; they can’t pretend that they’re still slaves or that they could once again become slaves.

As much as we might want to roll back the clock, when we look at the deterioration in relations between Israel and the Palestinians, we can’t. There are those who would like to pretend that Oslo never existed. There are others who would like to ignore the egregious way that the Palestinian Authority violated their obligations under the Oslo Agreements. Neither approach addresses the problem in the present tense.

There were those Israelites who said, “Let’s fight!” To them, Moses said, “No. God will do the fighting today.” These folks correspond to those who, in Israel today, have extreme and outlandish ideas for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all. There are those who, for example, would like to transfer all Palestinian Arabs east of the Jordan River. There are those who’d like to build a third Jewish temple on the site of the Temple Mount—on which happens to sit, the last time I checked, the Dome of the Rock.

There were those Israelites who said, “Let’s pray!” To them, Moses said, “Hold your peace! Now is not the time to ask God to solve our problems.”

Similarly, there are those today who may feel that there is really nothing we can do—especially being here in America, so all we should do is to pray. Our answer to them must be: there’s a time for prayer, but there’s also a time for action.

Finally, there were those Israelites who said, “Let’s just throw ourselves into the sea.” They were told, “Stand still, open your eyes, and you’ll see the salvation of the Lord!” In other words, “There’s still hope! Just wait before you take desperate measures!”

Similarly, we need to have hope. We cannot despair. Even though the violence has been extraordinary, even though Israel feels much less safe than it has felt for many years, it is important to be clear-thinking and rational, and not to succumb to despair.

The midrash teaches us what we shouldn’t do—but what should we do? As American Jews, who aren’t living in Israel, who aren’t serving in the Israeli army, who aren’t either on the front lines or even in the rear, what is our role?

Our first responsibility may seem rather theoretical and intellectual, but it is vital. We have to learn by what right Israel was established in the first place and by what right she continues to exist. It’s not a surprise, I’m sure, to any of us that part of the strategy adopted by Israel’s enemies has been to call into question the legitimacy of Israel; the right of Jews to live in the Land of Israel. This is having a pernicious effect not only on others but on Jews as well. Recently, a group of Jews in England publicly renounced their rights under the Israeli Law of Return—that is, their right as Jews to automatically become Israeli citizens. They claimed that it wasn’t right that they should be able to immigrate to Israel, yet Palestinians who’d become refugees as a result of the 1948 War of Independence could not.

I respect this group’s passion and their sense of fundamental fairness. I would have had more respect for their action had they simultaneously renounced their British citizenship. Then they would truly understand why Israel came into being.

We may believe that, after two thousand years of exile, Jews have legitimately returned to our ancestral homeland—but there are serious challenges to that notion. Not only do many Palestinians deny the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel: they deny that a Jewish nation ever existed and thrived in the Land, with Jerusalem as its capital. They deny that Solomon’s Temple and Herod’s Temple existed. They deny that their ruins can be found on the hill known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to the Arabs as the Noble Sanctuary!

We have a duty to learn the history of the connection of Jews to our homeland and we have the duty to teach it to our children, and we have the duty to share it with our neighbors and friends. It’s well known that Americans are not fond of history, but it is history that gives us our legitimacy. We ignore it at our peril.

Second, we have to reclaim our cultural connection with Israel. Sentiment is not enough. We must be more than outsiders when it comes to Israel. We have to do our part to learn Hebrew, to teach our children Hebrew, and to develop the basic linguistic competence that unites us not only with Israelis but with Jews throughout the world. If we can’t read Hebrew, we should enroll in a Hebrew literacy course. If we don’t speak Hebrew, we should enroll in an Ulpan, an intensive Hebrew seminar for adults. It doesn’t take long to acquire a basic literacy that can do wonders.

An amusing thing happened to me this summer. I was standing in front of the Israel Book Store on Harvard Street, when a man came up to me. “Parlez vous français?” he asked. I answered with the one sentence of French I can pronounce perfectly well: “Je ne comprend pas!”—“I don’t understand!”
“Anglais?” I asked. “No,” he nodded. Then on a hunch, I asked, “Ivrit (Hebrew)?” And he said, “Ken!” We proceeded to talk in Hebrew. His question was simple: Were there any kosher restaurants in the vicinity? “Betach!”—“Of course!” I said, and I proceeded to direct him.

A few weeks later I found myself on vacation in Montreal picking up some treats in a kosher bakery. I wasn’t sure how to get to the highway, so I asked someone, in English, if he knew. He looked at me hesitantly and with some confusion. “Parlez vous francais?” he asked. “No,” I said, with my best French Canadian accent. “Anglais?” I asked. “No,” he said. But then it occured to me: “Ivrit?” I asked. “Ken,” he answered, and he proceeded to give me directions.

Third, we have to support our Israeli brothers and sisters. The situation is incredibly demoralizing. We must keep in touch, by telephoning and writing. We must buy Israeli products, we must assert our connection with the rest of our family. Do you know that, with less than one week’s notice, 70 dozen Israeli roses were purchased by members of our congregation? [Monday is the deadline to order roses for Sukkot. Consider it.] On October 13, consider participating in a walk for Israel in Newton. On October 20, go to the Israeli trade fair in Brookline. All of us should go. All of us should buy many things. On Yom Kippur, we will be having our annual Israel appeal. Richard Curtis will be speaking to us about several ways we can support our mishpachah, our family in Israel. I encourage you to listen well and to give generously. Our Kesher Committee has worked very hard to help us do our part. Consider joining the committee. Ronni and Amos Eisenberg, the chairs, are currently in Israel, visiting our sister congregation in Kiryat Bialik. When they return, they’ll be sharing a report on their trip, which we will distribute via e-mail.

Speaking of trips, consider going to Israel on the upcoming CJP mission in November. Please let me know if you’re interested. We are hoping to have a dozen or more members of our congregation attend.

Some people have suggested to me that they feel inhibited from supporting Israel wholeheartedly—that they have a certain amount of ambivalence toward specific Israeli policies, and that this gives them pause.

This is my response. First, I have yet to meet an Israeli who didn’t have some ambivalence toward Israeli governmental policy. How could one not? Since the founding of the State, the government has always been led by a coalition. There has always been some part of the governmental apparatus that has been in the hands of those whom one would never vote for! And so it is quite natural that we, as well as Israelis, might not feel entirely supportive of every action taken by the executive in Israel. (I wonder how supportive we are here in America of every action taken by our chief executives.)

Yet there are ways for us to express those concerns, and there are ways not to. We are not living in Israel. We are living in a very dangerous world. The level of anti-Semitism in the world today is such that even well-intentioned criticism can end up being exploited by Israel’s enemies. We simply have to recognize how our words might be mis-used by others and how high the stakes are. “Dai l’hachimah barmiza”—“A word to the wise is sufficient.”

We all know how that story in the Bible continued: As those different groups were trying to figure out what to do, having been chastened by Moses, God stepped in and split the Red Sea, allowing the Jewish people to escape to freedom and then, neatly, destroying their enemies.

Is something like that going to happen today, or tomorrow? Unlikely! Ein somchin al ha-nes!—We don’t, in any event, rely on miracles. Instead, we have to do the work ourselves.

So, let’s not try to roll the clock back, let’s not ineffectually strike out against our enemies. Let’s not shrei Gevalt! , let’s not cry out in panic or despair. Let’s instead assume our responsibility as Jews to reclaim our, and our people’s, connection with the Land of Israel and join in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the Land of Israel.

We read a beautiful haftarah this morning.

A people who survived the sword have found favor in the wilderness! ...
The One who scattered Israel will gather them in
and watch over them as a shepherd guards the flock.
There is hope for your future:
your children shall return to their own borders.”

What a hopeful haftarah! Are there grounds for hope in Israel today? Are things “looking up”?

The other day, there was a story in the paper about a treaty between Jordan and Israel: They’ve agreed to build a joint pipeline to bring fresh water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, in order to prevent it from disappearing. Its level has been falling for a number of years, and it has been threatening tourism and industry in both Jordan and Israel. On the other hand, on the same day, there were stories about further violence in Gaza.

On Thursday, there was a picture in the New York Times of a prominent Palestinian leader sharing a joke with an Israeli journalist, Nachum Barnea. On the other hand, in Haaretz there was a story—that didn’t even make the major American papers (though it was on the front page of the New York Post)—of an attack near Jerusalem that seriously injured an Israeli woman and her husband who were attending a wedding party.

It seems as though we can only catch glimpses of hope—in-between images of much pain and suffering. Perhaps that’s all we can ever see.

Here’s what Yehudah Amichai, the brilliant Israeli poet who recently passed away, said about hope in an interview that was published in the Boston Globe two years ago:

“Hopeful means nothing. Hopeful is too big a word. I have cut it down to little hopes. One peaceful day with a breeze.

I don’t look high; I look down: on a dish in a restaurant, buying vegetables from a woman in the Old City, at this bougainvillea plant. My hopes are not like big stones, but little stones ground up and made of cement that will support a whole house.

I [have] walked every little corner of Jerusalem, I [have] walked every little corner of hope.

And somewhere in there, that’s where peace will come from.”

I would like to conclude with the words of a beautiful song that was composed by Naomi Shemer, Al Kol Eleh: A Song about the Honey and the Bee sting:

Al hadvash v’al ha-oketz,
al ha-mar v’hamatok ...
Please, God, watch over and protect
the honey and the bee-sting,
the bitter and the sweet, our little daughter.
The flickering flame,
the pure water,
the man returning home from far away.
Please, God, protect all of these, all of these!
Do not uproot the planted,
Do not forget the hope
Return me to the good land,
and I shall return.
Protect this house,
the garden and the wall,
from pain, from sudden fear,
and from war,
Protect the little I have
The light, the little baby
The fruit that has been gathered
but hasn’t yet ripened.
Protect all of these, the bitter and the sweet.

Amen.