What does it mean to you? 1/24/11
In the movie A Serious Man, directed by the Coen brothers, there is a wonderful scene. The main character of the story desperately wants to talk to the revered senior rabbi of his congregation, Rabbi Marshak, for some kind of help in dealing with the many crises he faces. The secretary opens the door to his office and he can be seen sitting at his desk. She tells our main character that the Rabbi cannot see him because he is busy. Our hero responds by asking what the Rabbi is busy with? She answers, “He’s busy thinking.”
Thinking does not seem to be much of an activity, yet without it, nothing worthwhile, deep or beautiful would ever occur. Without it, we could never respond successfully to the crises and challenges of life. So, today I’d like you to think about our Temple. I’d like you to think about why you associate with it; what it means to you; and what happens in our Temple community that you find interesting, exciting or meaningful. When you are finished thinking about these things, I’d like you to think about what you would like to see our Temple become. What you think our statement should be to the wider community, indeed to the world?
Thinking does not seem to be much of an activity, yet without it, nothing worthwhile, deep or beautiful would ever occur. Without it, we could never respond successfully to the crises and challenges of life. So, today I’d like you to think about our Temple. I’d like you to think about why you associate with it; what it means to you; and what happens in our Temple community that you find interesting, exciting or meaningful. When you are finished thinking about these things, I’d like you to think about what you would like to see our Temple become. What you think our statement should be to the wider community, indeed to the world?
12/22/2010
Dear Friends,
Before 1967, the Arab-Israeli conflict was seen in terms of David and Goliath. Israel was pictured as the brave little David fending off the brutish Goliath and his hordes. With time, this image began to change. At present, much of the world sees Israel in a kind of Goliath role. It, unfortunately, sees Israel as the oppressor of a Palestinian people resisting a cruel occupation. Israel is accused of war crimes in Gaza by a foe whose stated goal is the total elimination of the State of Israel. This attitude is widespread all around the world and is growing in the United States as well. It is prevalent in just those liberal political circles with which we Jews have found ourselves to be the most comfortable. Many Jews have also been influenced by this way of looking at things.
It’s important for us Jews to keep our focus on the basic facts around Israel and the worldwide Jewish community. First, there is the simple matter of numbers. The Arab countries have a combined population of 300 million. The Muslim population is 1.3 billion worldwide. The population of Israel is approximately slightly more than 7 million. The worldwide Jewish population is between 13 and 15 million.
The land of Israel is approximately eight thousand square miles; that of the Arab countries, over 5 million. Those countries which oppose Israel have the influence and wealth which comes with control of most of the world’s supply of oil. Who, then, is David and who is Goliath?
We Jews have a spiritual and historical connection to the land of Israel. We are not colonial occupiers. The Jews of Israel are the biological and cultural descendants of the ancient inhabitants of that land and need make no apologies for their presence.
The reason Israel gets so much bad press is because Israel is a democracy with a free press which is quick to expose its shortcomings and mistakes. There are few equivalents of Israeli human rights groups, such as B’tzelem or Rabbis for Human Rights, in any country. That the misdeeds of Israel are brought to the attention of the world is a sign of the vibrancy of its democracy.
We Jews are a great people, though we are very small in number. We have added immeasurably to the civilization and culture of the world in every way. Our history leaves us little of which to be ashamed. That there are so few of us means that each one of us has a responsibility towards the continued vibrancy of our faith and culture. We cannot say, “Let the next person take on responsibility for Israel and for our Jewish communities.” Our strength is dependent on each and every one of us. Each Jew has a role to play in the unfolding of our history, whether it is helping Israel or our own local community, every single one of us must do his or her part if we are to succeed.
Dear Friends,
Before 1967, the Arab-Israeli conflict was seen in terms of David and Goliath. Israel was pictured as the brave little David fending off the brutish Goliath and his hordes. With time, this image began to change. At present, much of the world sees Israel in a kind of Goliath role. It, unfortunately, sees Israel as the oppressor of a Palestinian people resisting a cruel occupation. Israel is accused of war crimes in Gaza by a foe whose stated goal is the total elimination of the State of Israel. This attitude is widespread all around the world and is growing in the United States as well. It is prevalent in just those liberal political circles with which we Jews have found ourselves to be the most comfortable. Many Jews have also been influenced by this way of looking at things.
It’s important for us Jews to keep our focus on the basic facts around Israel and the worldwide Jewish community. First, there is the simple matter of numbers. The Arab countries have a combined population of 300 million. The Muslim population is 1.3 billion worldwide. The population of Israel is approximately slightly more than 7 million. The worldwide Jewish population is between 13 and 15 million.
The land of Israel is approximately eight thousand square miles; that of the Arab countries, over 5 million. Those countries which oppose Israel have the influence and wealth which comes with control of most of the world’s supply of oil. Who, then, is David and who is Goliath?
We Jews have a spiritual and historical connection to the land of Israel. We are not colonial occupiers. The Jews of Israel are the biological and cultural descendants of the ancient inhabitants of that land and need make no apologies for their presence.
The reason Israel gets so much bad press is because Israel is a democracy with a free press which is quick to expose its shortcomings and mistakes. There are few equivalents of Israeli human rights groups, such as B’tzelem or Rabbis for Human Rights, in any country. That the misdeeds of Israel are brought to the attention of the world is a sign of the vibrancy of its democracy.
We Jews are a great people, though we are very small in number. We have added immeasurably to the civilization and culture of the world in every way. Our history leaves us little of which to be ashamed. That there are so few of us means that each one of us has a responsibility towards the continued vibrancy of our faith and culture. We cannot say, “Let the next person take on responsibility for Israel and for our Jewish communities.” Our strength is dependent on each and every one of us. Each Jew has a role to play in the unfolding of our history, whether it is helping Israel or our own local community, every single one of us must do his or her part if we are to succeed.
Israel Sermon given on Rosh Hashana 5771
“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” Jimi Hendrix
Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Are there any Rosh Hashanah Babies here? Some of you remember how 24 years ago on the second day of Rosh Hashanah I missed services because the birth if my daughter Odelia.
If you were born on Rosh Hashanah you were born on a very special day because there is an ancient tradition that the world was created on Rosh Hashanah. As we read in the Machzor “Hayom Harat Olam” “this is the day that the world was created” which makes Rosh Hashanah a kind of cosmic birthday party. On a birthday we often think about our lives up to that point and speculate about what the future might be. Perhaps that’s why self scrutiny and repentance are such important themes on Rosh Hashanah. Today however, I would like to focus on another aspect of birthday celebration. Blessings and the giving of good wishes. It is a Hasidic custom that at a birthday celebration everyone present gives a good wish or blessing to the one celebrating and also makes a Hachlata a decision to work on some specific kind of self improvement for the year to come.
If we were observing this Hasidic practice in proper style we would go around the room and everyone share a good wish for the world in the year to come. What do you think these wishes would be? I think that many of us would wish the world the same thing. “Inscribe us on the book of life, blessing and peace”.
Peace, the Torah tells us the importance of peace over and over again “Ilemaleh Hashalom lo nitkaimu shamayim vaaretz” If not for peace, heaven and earth” the cosmos itself “could not endure” We are asked to be disciples of Aaron who “loved peace, pursued peace and made peace between people” doing anything to bring reconciliation and end hatred.
I’m sure that most of you know the Hebrew word for peace if course its Shalom. I would guess however that only a few of us know that the word Shalom comes from the word Shalem, wholeness or completeness. This implies that in order for there to be Shalom, peace, you have to be shalem, whole. For real peace there can be no holding back, no saying one thing but meaning another no looking at peace as a step towards victory in an elaborate chess game. Real peace involves wholly opening the heart the basic humanity of other human beings.
This kind of peace is connected to one the idea of G-d as creator. Since we are all G-ds children we are united by our common humanity no matter what our beliefs.
That kind of peace is implicit in the writings of the philosopher Isaiah Berlin who said that what is desired is not moral relativism which says in effect that what ever you do or think does matter any way but rather we can hold radically different beliefs and be vehement about our own rightness but that we recognize that we both have a common humanity which allows us to treat each other with respect and even to learn from each other.
Peace also involves self knowledge. Inner turmoil results from feeling compelled by circumstances to act in a way which is contrary to our own moral code. When our actions are in harmony with our beliefs we feel a kind of internal unity that allows us to face the world with strength and equanimity.
One of the most well known prayers is Oseh Shalom Bimromav. He who makes peace in the heavens above may he create peace for us and for all Israel. The kind of peace this prayer envisions is a dynamic one in which all of the planets and stars revolve in their various directions harmoniously non impinging on the other. It is the opposite of the kind of peace where nothing moves the peace of a grave yard.
Peace then implies not sameness uniformity but rather like Adams each part spinning in its own way.
I understand that the Arabic language has several words that are translated into English as peace. One is Hudna which is a temporary truce made because it is, for the time being, no longer advantageous to fight but is readily broken when conditions change. Salam like shalom is a full peace without reservations. What the world need now is Shalom.
Of all of the many conflicts in today’s world there is one that involves us in an especially personal way, the Arab-Israeli conflict. That is because we are Jews and Israel was created to be the national state of the Jewish people. We are part of the conflict whether or not we are religious, whether we look at ourselves primarily as Americans or not, whether or not we personally care the least bit about Israel.
Zionism is based on the premise that we Jews are not only a faith but that we are also a nation. We are a nation because we are the physical and cultural descendants of the Jews of ancient times who were exiled from our land 2,000 years ago. who have maintained ourselves in distinct and often self governing communities from ancient times until modernity. In these communities we developed a unique culture which constitutes an important part of the universal cultural heritage of humanity.
Zionist thinkers realized that in the modern world the continued existence of the Jewish people was endangered by two opposing sets of circumstances. The first one was anti-Semitism, the dislike of and contempt for Jews which seemed to be an intrinsic part of Western culture. The second and opposite pole was assimilation. The gradually becoming so much a part of the majority culture that we loose our own culture and our own identity. Thus faced with the prospect of massacre on one hand and total loss of our identities on the other they felt that the solution was to recreate the Jewish people as an independent nation in the very place where the Jewish people originated as a nation. Thus Zionism was in a sense created for people like us. The purpose of what became the state if Israel was and is provide, when needed, a refuge against hatred while also providing a center where Jewish culture could flower and flourish and be exported to Jewish communities around the world helping to overcome the loss of identity through assimilation.
The first part of this vision has at least in part already tragically come to pass. in the Holocaust. Anti-Jewish feeling in Europe rose to a level beyond even the nightmares of past generations, resulting in the elimination of the historical center of the Jewish people, the European Jewish communities, through mass murder.
The people of these communities were unable to resist in any effective manner because there was no state, no country backing them. Thus they lacked the military means in the form of arms and military forces to defend them. At the same time they did not have real advocates to bring their plight to the attention of the world community and demand that something be done because they had to depend on the good will of others to plead their cause. The Jews of the 1930’s and 1940’s had neither they physical means to defend themselves or a voice in the council of nation to demand their rescue or even provide place of refuge to escape to. The result, the mass murder which we call the Holocaust.
HAS the world learned its’ lesson and will no longer allow genocide to happen. Well what about the genocide in Rwanda? During which the whole world including the United States merely expressed regret while the massacres went on and did nothing to stop them. In the last week thousands of Roma Gypsies in France and Italy have been summarily rounded up and deported to Romania and Bulgaria based on a kind of racism thinly disguised as enforcement of immigration rules.
Will the second part of the prediction which says that we will just assimilate away occur? We don’t know yet. There are many who already see us just melting away through assimilation each one of us you can I’m sure give many examples of this.
Anti-Semitism is no longer a social barrier and Jews are welcomed into families like the Clintons and the Kennedys. In the more affluent and educated circles that many Jews find themselves in, religion and nationality is not counted as being all that important. In our increasingly globalized world the goal is for everyone to somehow blend together into one harmonious orchestra or vegetable soup where while ones identity is not denied or disparaged it is not considered very important either. Israel provides a center where a vital and natural Jewish culture can develop which can then spread out and energize Jewish communities throughout the world.
In a sense the Arab-Israeli conflict is about us as much as it is about Israelis. Our support for Israel is ultimately about our own identities and our own vision for the future. The continued existence of Israel is also about our continuing to exist as Jews wherever we are around the world.
When we hear the criticism of Israel in the media we feel very uncomfortable. This is especially true when the criticism is from individuals and sources we usually respect or when it echoes familiar anti-Semitic images. In just this weeks issue of time magazine the cover story goes to lengths to argue that Israelis are selfishly living the good life and have no interesting peace. The purpose of many of these articles and stories is plain. It is to make us doubt Israelis’ rightness and many other people around the world think that Israel is the equivalent of apartheid South Africa or some other pariah nation unworthy of being counted in the family of nations.
Lately I don’t enjoy reading the Jewish media. They are too filled with bitterness at the worlds’ lack of fairness to Israel; too filled with defensiveness and hurt.
It is very important that we be able to inform ourselves and others of the case for Israel in response to those who would delegitimize Israel as a nation.
The Jewish people in Israel are not colonial settlers they are the physical and cultural descendants of the ancient inhabitants of the land who have returned and have the right to return. The Bible, holy to Christians and Jews, and the Koran holy to Islam all recognize a special connection of the Jewish people to that land.
Jews wanted very much to live in peace with the Arabs of Palestine, though not to the point that they were willing to give their right to live there. The Israeli declaration of independence of 1948 includes the word “We appeal to the Arab inhabitants of the state of Israel to preserve peace and to participate in the up building of the state in the basis of full and equal citizenship…Had the Arabs of Palestine accepted the partition plan of 1948 there would have been no Palestinian refugees.
Israel has shown a great deal of restraint in it’s’ use of force in order to avoid harming civilians, more so than NATO in Kosovo or the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. Self defense has been considered a right throughout history and it has to be remembered that Israel has not been fighting for territory or power but for its’ very existence against groups and nations that been quite open about their desire to wipe Israel off the map. The oft complained about check points only went up in 2000during the suicide attacks of the second intifada which means that they were not present for the first 33 years of Israeli control
Jews are not taught to hate Arabs of Muslims. Israel and the Jewish commu- nities around the world have no innate hostility to Arabs, Arab culture and religious expression. What hostility there is a result of its struggle for existence against a self proclaimed foe that sees its existence as both unjust and impermanent.
A few minutes ago I asked you to choose a blessing for this year. Many of you thought of the word Shalom. What a beautiful world it would be if there was Shalom between Israel and the Arabs. How wonderful it would be if there was an end so much tzoris. It would truly be “Atchalta d’ Geula: the beginning of the redemption. Jewish and Arab cultures have so many similarities so many parallels perhaps together we could bring some good to the world.
President Obama is embarking on a lofty pursuit. Netanyahu and Abbas have at least publically endorsed the goal of an agreement within a year. That means that by next Rosh Hashanah it’s possible that a lot may change for the better.
Let’s hope and let us American Jews be watchful to make sure that what happens is Shalom real peace not Hudna the peace that is preparation for war.
We have a job to do us here in the Unites States and that is to try to convince people from the white house down of a few things. Peace can’t be a forced marriage both sides have to be really committed or it will unravel leaving the situation much more violent than before. Some people want to convince us that Israel is the barrier to peace. If the Israelis would just give-up a little more, make a few more concessions there would peace. And peace in the Middle East would go along way towards world peace. And it’s the Israelis who are keeping it all from happening. All of the pressure by the president all of the concessions in the world will not bring peace unless both parties have genuine desire for real Shalom
We have to be cautious because the peace process has so far brought no peace at all.
The west banked Gaza were relatively peaceful until the start of the first peace negotiations over twenty years ago. The peace process is not about the personalities of the leaders or their political standing. It is not about trivialities but on the issue it is about the most fundamental concerns of the people involved
For Israel it is a matter of the continued existence of the country and its people and ultimately the existence of the Jewish people itself.
The issues have been wisely drawn by Netanyahu. They are that the Arab world recognizes Israel as the national state of the Jewish people and that they agree that the conflict is over with no additional claims and recriminations. And that the 1948 refugees and their descendants accept that they will not return to their former homes in Israel. Abbas has also outlined what his desires; that Israel return to the 1967 borders, remove every Jew from what will be the Palestinian state, divide Jerusalem and accept the return of the 1948 refugees and their descendants who now number three and one half million.
Is there a way of bridging this gap? Only G-d knows.
The message of Rosh Hashanah is hope. It tells us don’t give-up don’t despair. What you pray for however unlikely might just happen that’s what we read about in yesterday’s Torah reading. Abraham and Sarah longed for a son it seemed impossible they were already long past the age to have children yet a son Yitzchak was born and we are his descendants.
Today like Abraham and Sarah we pray that none of our children in the land of Israel or anywhere else fall victim to hate and that hatred will turn acceptance
It doesn’t seem likely but the prophet Zachariah called the Jewish people Asirei Hatikvah prisoners of hope. We Jews can never let go of the hope that some how, and we right now don't understand how, the hold hatreds will disappear and peace will come.
If you were born on Rosh Hashanah you were born on a very special day because there is an ancient tradition that the world was created on Rosh Hashanah. As we read in the Machzor “Hayom Harat Olam” “this is the day that the world was created” which makes Rosh Hashanah a kind of cosmic birthday party. On a birthday we often think about our lives up to that point and speculate about what the future might be. Perhaps that’s why self scrutiny and repentance are such important themes on Rosh Hashanah. Today however, I would like to focus on another aspect of birthday celebration. Blessings and the giving of good wishes. It is a Hasidic custom that at a birthday celebration everyone present gives a good wish or blessing to the one celebrating and also makes a Hachlata a decision to work on some specific kind of self improvement for the year to come.
If we were observing this Hasidic practice in proper style we would go around the room and everyone share a good wish for the world in the year to come. What do you think these wishes would be? I think that many of us would wish the world the same thing. “Inscribe us on the book of life, blessing and peace”.
Peace, the Torah tells us the importance of peace over and over again “Ilemaleh Hashalom lo nitkaimu shamayim vaaretz” If not for peace, heaven and earth” the cosmos itself “could not endure” We are asked to be disciples of Aaron who “loved peace, pursued peace and made peace between people” doing anything to bring reconciliation and end hatred.
I’m sure that most of you know the Hebrew word for peace if course its Shalom. I would guess however that only a few of us know that the word Shalom comes from the word Shalem, wholeness or completeness. This implies that in order for there to be Shalom, peace, you have to be shalem, whole. For real peace there can be no holding back, no saying one thing but meaning another no looking at peace as a step towards victory in an elaborate chess game. Real peace involves wholly opening the heart the basic humanity of other human beings.
This kind of peace is connected to one the idea of G-d as creator. Since we are all G-ds children we are united by our common humanity no matter what our beliefs.
That kind of peace is implicit in the writings of the philosopher Isaiah Berlin who said that what is desired is not moral relativism which says in effect that what ever you do or think does matter any way but rather we can hold radically different beliefs and be vehement about our own rightness but that we recognize that we both have a common humanity which allows us to treat each other with respect and even to learn from each other.
Peace also involves self knowledge. Inner turmoil results from feeling compelled by circumstances to act in a way which is contrary to our own moral code. When our actions are in harmony with our beliefs we feel a kind of internal unity that allows us to face the world with strength and equanimity.
One of the most well known prayers is Oseh Shalom Bimromav. He who makes peace in the heavens above may he create peace for us and for all Israel. The kind of peace this prayer envisions is a dynamic one in which all of the planets and stars revolve in their various directions harmoniously non impinging on the other. It is the opposite of the kind of peace where nothing moves the peace of a grave yard.
Peace then implies not sameness uniformity but rather like Adams each part spinning in its own way.
I understand that the Arabic language has several words that are translated into English as peace. One is Hudna which is a temporary truce made because it is, for the time being, no longer advantageous to fight but is readily broken when conditions change. Salam like shalom is a full peace without reservations. What the world need now is Shalom.
Of all of the many conflicts in today’s world there is one that involves us in an especially personal way, the Arab-Israeli conflict. That is because we are Jews and Israel was created to be the national state of the Jewish people. We are part of the conflict whether or not we are religious, whether we look at ourselves primarily as Americans or not, whether or not we personally care the least bit about Israel.
Zionism is based on the premise that we Jews are not only a faith but that we are also a nation. We are a nation because we are the physical and cultural descendants of the Jews of ancient times who were exiled from our land 2,000 years ago. who have maintained ourselves in distinct and often self governing communities from ancient times until modernity. In these communities we developed a unique culture which constitutes an important part of the universal cultural heritage of humanity.
Zionist thinkers realized that in the modern world the continued existence of the Jewish people was endangered by two opposing sets of circumstances. The first one was anti-Semitism, the dislike of and contempt for Jews which seemed to be an intrinsic part of Western culture. The second and opposite pole was assimilation. The gradually becoming so much a part of the majority culture that we loose our own culture and our own identity. Thus faced with the prospect of massacre on one hand and total loss of our identities on the other they felt that the solution was to recreate the Jewish people as an independent nation in the very place where the Jewish people originated as a nation. Thus Zionism was in a sense created for people like us. The purpose of what became the state if Israel was and is provide, when needed, a refuge against hatred while also providing a center where Jewish culture could flower and flourish and be exported to Jewish communities around the world helping to overcome the loss of identity through assimilation.
The first part of this vision has at least in part already tragically come to pass. in the Holocaust. Anti-Jewish feeling in Europe rose to a level beyond even the nightmares of past generations, resulting in the elimination of the historical center of the Jewish people, the European Jewish communities, through mass murder.
The people of these communities were unable to resist in any effective manner because there was no state, no country backing them. Thus they lacked the military means in the form of arms and military forces to defend them. At the same time they did not have real advocates to bring their plight to the attention of the world community and demand that something be done because they had to depend on the good will of others to plead their cause. The Jews of the 1930’s and 1940’s had neither they physical means to defend themselves or a voice in the council of nation to demand their rescue or even provide place of refuge to escape to. The result, the mass murder which we call the Holocaust.
HAS the world learned its’ lesson and will no longer allow genocide to happen. Well what about the genocide in Rwanda? During which the whole world including the United States merely expressed regret while the massacres went on and did nothing to stop them. In the last week thousands of Roma Gypsies in France and Italy have been summarily rounded up and deported to Romania and Bulgaria based on a kind of racism thinly disguised as enforcement of immigration rules.
Will the second part of the prediction which says that we will just assimilate away occur? We don’t know yet. There are many who already see us just melting away through assimilation each one of us you can I’m sure give many examples of this.
Anti-Semitism is no longer a social barrier and Jews are welcomed into families like the Clintons and the Kennedys. In the more affluent and educated circles that many Jews find themselves in, religion and nationality is not counted as being all that important. In our increasingly globalized world the goal is for everyone to somehow blend together into one harmonious orchestra or vegetable soup where while ones identity is not denied or disparaged it is not considered very important either. Israel provides a center where a vital and natural Jewish culture can develop which can then spread out and energize Jewish communities throughout the world.
In a sense the Arab-Israeli conflict is about us as much as it is about Israelis. Our support for Israel is ultimately about our own identities and our own vision for the future. The continued existence of Israel is also about our continuing to exist as Jews wherever we are around the world.
When we hear the criticism of Israel in the media we feel very uncomfortable. This is especially true when the criticism is from individuals and sources we usually respect or when it echoes familiar anti-Semitic images. In just this weeks issue of time magazine the cover story goes to lengths to argue that Israelis are selfishly living the good life and have no interesting peace. The purpose of many of these articles and stories is plain. It is to make us doubt Israelis’ rightness and many other people around the world think that Israel is the equivalent of apartheid South Africa or some other pariah nation unworthy of being counted in the family of nations.
Lately I don’t enjoy reading the Jewish media. They are too filled with bitterness at the worlds’ lack of fairness to Israel; too filled with defensiveness and hurt.
It is very important that we be able to inform ourselves and others of the case for Israel in response to those who would delegitimize Israel as a nation.
The Jewish people in Israel are not colonial settlers they are the physical and cultural descendants of the ancient inhabitants of the land who have returned and have the right to return. The Bible, holy to Christians and Jews, and the Koran holy to Islam all recognize a special connection of the Jewish people to that land.
Jews wanted very much to live in peace with the Arabs of Palestine, though not to the point that they were willing to give their right to live there. The Israeli declaration of independence of 1948 includes the word “We appeal to the Arab inhabitants of the state of Israel to preserve peace and to participate in the up building of the state in the basis of full and equal citizenship…Had the Arabs of Palestine accepted the partition plan of 1948 there would have been no Palestinian refugees.
Israel has shown a great deal of restraint in it’s’ use of force in order to avoid harming civilians, more so than NATO in Kosovo or the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. Self defense has been considered a right throughout history and it has to be remembered that Israel has not been fighting for territory or power but for its’ very existence against groups and nations that been quite open about their desire to wipe Israel off the map. The oft complained about check points only went up in 2000during the suicide attacks of the second intifada which means that they were not present for the first 33 years of Israeli control
Jews are not taught to hate Arabs of Muslims. Israel and the Jewish commu- nities around the world have no innate hostility to Arabs, Arab culture and religious expression. What hostility there is a result of its struggle for existence against a self proclaimed foe that sees its existence as both unjust and impermanent.
A few minutes ago I asked you to choose a blessing for this year. Many of you thought of the word Shalom. What a beautiful world it would be if there was Shalom between Israel and the Arabs. How wonderful it would be if there was an end so much tzoris. It would truly be “Atchalta d’ Geula: the beginning of the redemption. Jewish and Arab cultures have so many similarities so many parallels perhaps together we could bring some good to the world.
President Obama is embarking on a lofty pursuit. Netanyahu and Abbas have at least publically endorsed the goal of an agreement within a year. That means that by next Rosh Hashanah it’s possible that a lot may change for the better.
Let’s hope and let us American Jews be watchful to make sure that what happens is Shalom real peace not Hudna the peace that is preparation for war.
We have a job to do us here in the Unites States and that is to try to convince people from the white house down of a few things. Peace can’t be a forced marriage both sides have to be really committed or it will unravel leaving the situation much more violent than before. Some people want to convince us that Israel is the barrier to peace. If the Israelis would just give-up a little more, make a few more concessions there would peace. And peace in the Middle East would go along way towards world peace. And it’s the Israelis who are keeping it all from happening. All of the pressure by the president all of the concessions in the world will not bring peace unless both parties have genuine desire for real Shalom
We have to be cautious because the peace process has so far brought no peace at all.
The west banked Gaza were relatively peaceful until the start of the first peace negotiations over twenty years ago. The peace process is not about the personalities of the leaders or their political standing. It is not about trivialities but on the issue it is about the most fundamental concerns of the people involved
For Israel it is a matter of the continued existence of the country and its people and ultimately the existence of the Jewish people itself.
The issues have been wisely drawn by Netanyahu. They are that the Arab world recognizes Israel as the national state of the Jewish people and that they agree that the conflict is over with no additional claims and recriminations. And that the 1948 refugees and their descendants accept that they will not return to their former homes in Israel. Abbas has also outlined what his desires; that Israel return to the 1967 borders, remove every Jew from what will be the Palestinian state, divide Jerusalem and accept the return of the 1948 refugees and their descendants who now number three and one half million.
Is there a way of bridging this gap? Only G-d knows.
The message of Rosh Hashanah is hope. It tells us don’t give-up don’t despair. What you pray for however unlikely might just happen that’s what we read about in yesterday’s Torah reading. Abraham and Sarah longed for a son it seemed impossible they were already long past the age to have children yet a son Yitzchak was born and we are his descendants.
Today like Abraham and Sarah we pray that none of our children in the land of Israel or anywhere else fall victim to hate and that hatred will turn acceptance
It doesn’t seem likely but the prophet Zachariah called the Jewish people Asirei Hatikvah prisoners of hope. We Jews can never let go of the hope that some how, and we right now don't understand how, the hold hatreds will disappear and peace will come.
- "To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be." - Golda Meir ,when questioned on Israel's future, in The New York Times ( 1974-12-12)
- We do not wish, we do not need to expel the Arabs and take their place. All our aspirations are built upon the assumption — proven throughout all our activity in the Land — that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs. - David Ben gurion
