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“Snapshots from an Interfaith Trip to Israel” Michael Oren is Israel’s new ambassador to the United States. Shortly before he was named to this post, he wrote an article in a thoughtful, scholarly periodical called Azure. Was it about the Six Day War, the subject of his 2002 best seller? Was it about the U.S.-Israeli strategic relationship, the subject of his latest book? No. It was a movie review. It was a review of an Adam Sandler film, called “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.” In case you managed to avoid seeing this over-the-top burlesque comedy, Sandler plays an Israeli commando who fakes his own death so that he can follow his dream of becoming a hairdresser in Brooklyn, NY. (There are some funny moments in that film, but please don’t see it on my account.) Ambassador Oren’s interest in the film doesn’t have to do with its antics; it has to do with its depiction of Israel as a place filled with violence and stress and war, a place from which one must flee—from which the hero does flee—to stay sane. As Oren and others point out, “Zohan,” like the 2005 Steven Spielberg film, “Munich,” is a “post-Zionist” film, a film that suggests that the Zionist dream is over. Well, for some that may be. But for others, the Zionist dream is alive and well. As many of you know, this past summer, I and my friend and colleague Rabbi Eric Gurvis co-chaired a JCRC-sponsored trip to Israel with a group of nineteen local Protestant clergy. Staffing the trip were two extraordinarily hard-working and capable leaders from the JCRC, Nancy Kaufman and Nahma Nadich. Now, I’ve been to Israel many times. The most recent trip before this one was in February 2008 with a group from our congregation. That was fabulous. But nothing quite prepared me for this trip. The objective was to give these Christian leaders an understanding of the Jewish connection to the Land and an exposure to the complexity of modern Israel, as seen through a Jewish lens. In the process, Rabbi Gurvis and I got to see Israel through their eyes as well. I had heard African-American spirituals before; I’d even sung them. I’d never sung them as I was literally crossing the Jordan with my companions. Speaking of the Jordan, I have taken many, many people to the mikveh; I’d never witnessed a baptism in the “mother” of all mikvehs, the Jordan River. One of our number, a Greek Orthodox priest—who happens to be pursuing a doctorate in early Judaism at Boston College—was able to arrange for us to meet the Greek Patriarch in Jerusalem, whom we addressed as “Your Beatitude” (How about that for a title!) and conducted services at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I had been to many Christian holy sites before, but I had never experienced them as I did this time: as places of profound spiritual depth. Why go on such a trip? Why does the JCRC go out of its way to organize such trips and why does CJP subsidize them? The answer is simple. Christian clergy care a lot about the Bible, and the land of the Bible. Yet, unless they’ve been to Israel, they may not have a good understanding of our connection to the Land. They may not fully understand the Zionist dream, much less the reality. Some of the clergy on our trip had been to the “Holy Land.” Almost none had been to Israel. What do I mean by that? You can go to Israel with a church group and visit the Christian sites, and never encounter what we would call the real Israel, never confront what it means for the Jewish people to have not just a refuge, but a homeland, a spiritual and political and cultural center where Hebrew is the native language, time is measured by the Jewish calendar, Jewish culture flourishes and we Jews are free to develop our national identity and ethos. We are used to thinking of Israel as a Jewish country, the place where (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) the Jewish People arose, and became a nation; the place from which we were exiled and the place to which we have returned. Our Christian brothers and sisters don’t necessarily have that perspective. There’s a tremendous amount of disinformation out there regarding Israel. Even if there weren’t any, a trip like this would be valuable in building bridges between our communities. Before we left on our trip, I shared with our group four different models for journeying to Israel. First, I said, there are those who go as scouts, like the scouts Moses sent forth to spy out the Land for the Israelites. Scouts generally have an agenda and are critical of what they see. They may have tunnel vision, and that might blind them to a larger truth. I was concerned that some of my colleagues were scouts. Some had written articles critical of Israel; others had participated in demonstrations protesting Israeli policies. Most were sympathetic to Palestinian suffering (as, I would hope, all of us are)—yet also cool to the Israeli side or sides of the story. Some go to the Holy Land as reverent pilgrims. That’s ok as far as it goes. But a pilgrim focuses more on ancient stones than contemporary reality. Some might go as tourists: seeing the sights and taking it all in, but not having any particular investment in the place, not seeing it as holy to us. Maybe to others, but not to us. Then there are returnees. My clergy friends may not be in shul today, but they certainly are familiar with the prophecies of Jeremiah, such as the one we read today, that one day the children (of Israel) will return to Zion. They’re familiar with the lines in Psalm 126 about God returning the captives of Zion to their land with joy and laughter. [By the way, one of the ministers with whom I travelled can quote entire psalms by heart.] These texts are real to them. But many had never met any “Returnees to Zion” before. I suggested to our group that as we travelled through the land, we should try to keep in mind which lens was before our eyes on any given day. I can’t show you a movie this morning, or even photographs of our trip. But let me share with you several verbal snapshots, verbal images of our trip that I believe capture its spirit, and provide us with some inspiration to go forward. The first snapshot is of a lovely Israeli woman of Ethiopian background, surrounded by a group of curious, earnest, American clergy. The woman has a surprised half-smile on her face. That snapshot is from our first major stop on our trip, a community center in Haifa for Ethiopian Jews developed through Shiluvim, a JCRC program of the CJP Boston Haifa Connection. It’s hard to describe the impact: we had only been in Israel a few hours, and there we were, a group of 19 ministers, including 9 African-Americans, encountering a room full of Ethiopians telling us about Israel. It was disorienting, to say the least, for some of my colleagues, and instantly dispelled certain unspoken myths. There were three generations of Ethiopian Jews before us: the older generation, who looked and dressed and spoke like they were still back in the Old Country. Then there were the men and woman in their twenties and thirties, who were the transitional generation. They had made the trek from Ethiopia through Sudan as youngsters or teenagers, yet they had truly arrived. They looked, they dressed, and they spoke like they belonged in Israel. They were the translators for the elders, who neither spoke Hebrew nor were fully at home. Then there were the little ones who, born in Israel, were Israeli through and through. After learning about the harrowing journey from Ethiopia, we sat around in small groups and talked with the transitional generation, the men and women who work for the Center, about life in Israel. The African-American ministers were particularly interested in whether the Ethiopians experienced discrimination in Israel. The Ethiopian woman in our group was quite open about that and spoke with great passion of the need to overcome discrimination in housing, in job opportunities, etc. And then one of the ministers turned to her and asked, “Given all the difficulties you’ve described, have you ever considered going back?” At first she didn’t understand the question, it was that absurd to her. “Would I consider going back to the absorption center where I stayed before I moved into my present apartment?” When she finally grasped what he was asking, she realized the gulf of understanding between them. That’s when she relaxed, and that sensitive half-smile came across her face. She shook her head gently. “No,” she said. “Of course not. This is our home. It’s our job to help it become all that we expect it to be. And that’s just what we’re going to do.” A light bulb went on in that minister’s mind. In a sense, you could say that she is the “anti-Zohan”—the enthusiastic, passionate immigrant who is there to make a difference. It reminded me of that Ehud Manor song, “Ein Li Eretz Aheret,” which, loosely translated means, “This is the only place for me.” “Kan—hu beiti”—“Here is my home.” Even though Israel may not be perfect, this young woman wasn’t about to give up on her country. “Lo avater hehazkir la/ Veashir kan be’ozneha/ Ad shetiftach et eineha.” “I will not give up reminding her/And sing in her ears/Until she will open her eyes.” A second snapshot: on the rooftop of a home in an Israeli Arab village in the Galilee. It shows a man with his arms wide, gesturing to the land around him, and saying the word, “Yes.” There was, understandably, a lot of interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Ministers care a lot about injustice, and they hear a lot of reports of Israeli injustice. Long before the Goldstone report, which was just issued the other day, they have been sensitive to charges that Israel discriminates against Palestinians and treats them cruelly. As I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of disinformation out there. One of my colleagues asked me at breakfast one morning, “Why is Israel demolishing 500 church-owned buildings in Jerusalem?” I wasn’t aware, I told him, that there were 500 church-owned buildings in Jerusalem, much less that many due to be demolished, and said that I found that report highly improbable. Yet he had recalled seeing that story in a denomintional newsletter. (We later looked at the article together, whereupon he realized that he had misread it. It speaks of four homes due to be demolished in an area serving 500 families. See: http://tiny.cc/r8WsY.) As I said earlier, several of my colleagues had demonstrated against Israel on a number of occasions. I shouldn’t put it that way, because they wouldn’t have interpreted their actions that way. To them they were demonstrating on behalf of the Palestinians. They didn’t understand themselves to be undermining Israel’s security or legitimacy. They simply saw themselves as standing up for the persecuted underdog. And it was clear in their minds who that is. Throughout our trip, we spoke with several men and women (Jewish, Christian and Moslem) who are working for peace; men and women who haven’t given up hope, who believe that a solution can and must be found to address the legitimate needs of the people who live in Israel as well as those who live in the occupied territories and Gaza. Among the people we spoke to in Israel was Mohammad Darawashe, who works for the Abraham Fund. He spoke of the discrimination which Israel’s Arab citizens have endured. Incidentally, he preferred to refer to Israeli Arabs as “Palestinian citizens of Israel,” who should be viewed as stakeholders, deserving their fair share rather than outsiders in need of handouts. He brought us up to his roof, proudly describing the neighborhood where his family has lived for many years. He was quite critical of some of Israel’s policies, but he was unequivocally committed to co-existence. At one point, we started talking about a future Palestinian state in the West Bank, which was not far from where we were standing. “Would you want the borders drawn so that this village, which is entirely Arab, would become part of such a state?” he was asked by an earnest member of our group. He looked at his questioner, again at first not entirely understanding the question. Then he got it, and he said, “Oh, no. I’m quite happy to remain within Israel. I just want to hold Israel accountable to its promise, as stated in its Declaration of Independence and its Basic Laws, to be democratic.” A third snapshot was taken at Yad Vashem, the Israeli museum and memorial to the Holocaust. I had questioned whether our trip should stop at Yad Vashem. After all, there are so many places to see and so little time. And Yad Vashem is a memorial to something that happened elsewhere. Why not use your valuable time exploring sites in Israel? I believe—I have long believed—that we often fall into the trap of over-emphasizing the Holocaust as the justification, the moral justification, for the establishment of the State of Israel. Zionism arose fifty years before the Holocaust. Jews returned to Zion—and they had every right to return there—in the 1880’s and 1890’s and throughout the years before World War II, and built villages and collective farms and cities. They revived the Hebrew language and revitalized Jewish culture. Even if the Holocaust had never happened, Jews would have had the right to return to the Land and re-establish our homeland. Now it’s true that the Holocaust made some of the claims of Zionism abundantly clear, and heightened the urgency to act quickly. But over-emphasizing the Holocaust supports the argument that the Palestinians are paying the cost of Europe’s mistreatment of the Jews. I’m glad I overcame my hesitations. First, Holocaust denial is alive and well. Just yesterday, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust “a lie;” not a “myth,” but a “lie.” Second, the museum is a very effective educational experience. Third, sometimes, we who are Jewish take for granted that everybody knows about the Holocaust. After all, most of us who are Jewish have been learning about and thinking about the Holocaust for years, if not decades. I grew up in a home where all my mother’s friends had accents: one was from Hungary, one from Czechoslovakia, one from Germany. To me, it was not such a big leap when I learned why these lively, cheerful women had come to America. Almost all of them, I later learned, had spent their teenage years in concentration camps. But many educated Americans, even religious leaders, don’t have a clue—or they don’t quite get it. In the first part of that museum, the exhibits describe the racial theories of the Nazis, the way that they divided up all of humanity into different groups based on physiognomy, and other characteristics, including skin color. There was a big picture of Jesse Owens, the African-American track star who represented the United States at the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936—and who was known to have been snubbed by Hitler. It was not difficult at all for the ministers, particularly the African-Americans among us, to identify with the victims. We held a memorial service after our journey through the museum, and that is where this third snapshot was taken. Imagine all of us in a circle, and one of our number, a kind and gentle female pastor, saying very softly, barely able to get the words out, “I didn’t know they killed children.” That took place on a Friday. By the end of the day we had dressed in our finery, walked to synagogue together and gathered for a festive Shabbat dinner filled with singing and dancing at Beit Shmuel, the Reform movement’s center in Jerusalem. I pointed out to our group the astounding contrast: in the morning we had been at Yad Vashem, in one building designed by Moshe Safdie, the Boston architect. That evening, we were in another building designed by Moshe Safdie that was a gathering place for hundreds and hundreds of young people. In the morning, we had been weeping, in the evening we were dancing and singing, in essence moving through the transition from “sowing in tears” to “reaping in joy”. We were living out the words of today’s Haftarah (Jeremiah 31: 1-19). One might have thought that this trip wasn’t going to work out. Listen to these words by the Reverend Karla Miller, a minister at the Eliot Church in Newton: This group looked like a recipe for disaster, a train wreck ready to happen. … We were so different in our beliefs and theologies and worship practices. We were Latino, Jamaican, Southern, Yankee, gay, straight, married, single…. [But] The common thread of placing God in the Center of Life was beyond any difference. It was therefore the bond that brought us together in a deeply respectful and passionate group of faithful people. I’ll add two other factors: our love of one another; and our love of Zion. All of us love the Land of Zion. All of us empathize with those who are forced to fight to defend themselves. We grieve at their losses. We saw a land plagued by conflict, but also a land where at least some well-meaning people of various religious faiths and ethnicities were striving to live respectfully along side of one another. We saw a land in which some religious leaders were exacerbating the conflict, but others were trying desperately not to be irrelevant or worse, but rather to play a constructive role in bringing people together. We saw a land that embodied the age-old Jewish hope for fulfillment as a nation. We saw a place without which our lives as Jews—and my colleagues’ lives as Christians—remain incomplete. These trips are important. That’s why I’ve decided to co-lead another interfaith trip to Israel this coming February. This time, it’s not for clergy. It’s for members of our congregation and members of the Carter Memorial Methodist Church here in Needham. The Reverend Caroline Edge, a good friend of mine, and I will lead members from both our congregations for a one week trip to Israel during the February vacation week. If you’re interested, please email me after Yom Tov. Let me share with you one last image from our trip. It took place as we were leaving the Shiluvim center in Haifa. At the end of our visit, as we did wherever we went, we gathered into a circle and said a prayer together. We thanked God for our fellowship, and for the privilege of meeting these men and women who’d fled their native land and were building a new life in Israel. Then, as we were starting to walk out the door, one of the elders cried out “Stop!” in Amharic. We didn’t need a translator to understand what he was saying—he was pretty forceful—but we were still puzzled. The center’s director told us to come back; what did this elder want? He wanted to bless us. And so we once again formed another circle and this elder, dressed in traditional African clothing, offered a brachah (blessing) to us in Amharic. The younger people there translated it for us, but they didn’t really need to do that. We were being blessed by this elder “out of Zion” (see Psalm 128). That’s all that mattered. There was something unearthly, something elemental, something incredibly powerful about this elder, who had walked barefoot for miles to save his family, blessing this collection of American ministers who had come to visit. For some of us, it seemed as though he represented a mythic ancestor. When he concluded, he hugged and kissed us. We know Israel is not perfect. But it still is the land of our dreams, a land in which every day millions of people—many but not all of them Jewish—are striving to live lives of purpose and meaning. Let’s share our love for Israel. Let’s go there; let’s encourage our friends to go there, both our Jewish friends and our non-Jewish friends. Let’s send our children there. For a ten day trip, for sure. But also for longer ones as well. Let us pray that, in the coming year, the words of our High Holiday liturgy will be fulfilled and there will be simcha—joy—in the Land of the Holy One and sasson—gladness in the holy city of Jerusalem. Amen. |
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