Dear TBZ community:
Now, more than ever, my heart is in the east, and it is breaking as I follow the news in Israel and Gaza. I know many of you are feeling the same way.
My heart is breaking for the people in so many cities in Israel. It is breaking for my family and friends, who are spending their nights in bomb shelters, fleeing from non-stop rocket attacks fired by Hamas.
My heart is breaking for the young men, Israeli soldiers, some of them the children of my friends, who are being drafted into this war as Israel prepares for what seems like an imminent entrance of the IDF into Gaza.
My heart is breaking for the hundreds of women -- many dear friends and colleagues in Israel whose faces fill my Facebook feed as they call out, in protest: "Not in My Name.” They are calling out for a de-escalation, a cessation of violence, and an end to this war.
My heart is breaking for the Palestinian families -- innocent men, women and children- -- killed in Gaza by Israel's retaliatory attacks.
And my heart is breaking at something else that is happening across the country -- something that feels new and beyond awful: synagogues burned, Jews beating an Arab man with an Israeli flag, Jews and Arabs being lynched by nationalist mobs, those same mobs burning down houses and places of business, and many more horrible acts.
Leah Salomon, Chief Education Officer of Encounter writes: “I feel like each mob, staring at the people they are about to attack, sees not human beings but simply monsters, animals, creatures that deserve pain and even death. It makes me so sad to write that the willful blindness and dehumanization is not shocking to me - but it is horrifying,"
Sadly, we know the road ahead is a long one and not an easy one. Below I offer the ways that I am responding and will continue to respond to this conflict. I know that some of you disagree, perhaps even vehemently with my views regarding Israel politics. I hope that wherever we stand in the struggle to make sense of what is happening we can continue to search for a way forward.
As we prepare to stand together at Sinai again, on this Shavuot, I pray that we will be able to hold the complexity of this moment together, that we find ways to turn toward each other with our aching and breaking hearts.
In the words of Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, Senior Rabbi of CBST in New York:
“Palestinians and Israeli Jews, Muslims, Christians. There is no choice but to reject the extremism, to reject the terror -- the terror that comes from the government, from Hamas, from individuals, and say only together will we be able to move to a different way. There is no choice, really. We will only get there together, or we will all collapse in the bor/pit. There is history, there is so much pain we carry. We must learn from the pain and the history to carve a new way forward”
On Sunday night, as we begin the holiday of Shavuot, celebrating the giving of Torah, I wish to open my heart to hear Torah, receive Torah as the guide to a life of values. I wish to open my heart to receive a Torah that guides me in the complexities of life, rather than clinging tightly to opposing narratives that leave no room for each other.
I am reminded about the poem of Yehuda Amichai- אדם בחייו, which reminds us to hold life and its complexities.
A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.
A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.
And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.
He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.
I pray for peace, I pray for the end of bloodshed. I pray that our humanity prevails.
May this Shabbat bring renewal and blessings to all of you and your loved ones.
May we find strength, courage, and patience, and open our hearts with generosity.
May all those who are ill find healing of spirit
May we have a joyful and restful Shabbat!
Shabbat Shalom
