“The Ban on Lara Alqasem Is a Gift for BDS, and a Disaster for Israel” – by Jeremy Ben-Ami, Haaretz

Note: The following is a clear and compelling statement why Israel’s policy of denying entrance to pro-BDS activists is wrong-headed and counterproductive strategically and democratically.

To be clear, I am opposed to BDS (the Boycott, Divestiture and Sanctions movement against Israel) for the same reasons stated in Jeremy Ben-Ami’s op-ed in Haaretz below.

Israel is, after all, a democracy and the best way to shine a light on ideas that are repugnant to most pro-Israel activists and Israelis is to allow them to be expressed freely and then criticized forthrightly in the public square. Persuasion, not suppression, is what has driven democracy and Jewish tradition over the centuries.

Israel has detained an American student Lara Alqasem (age 22) whose grandparents are Palestinian because of her former activism (2014-2017) in the BDS movement, arguably an anti-Israel movement. Yet, she had applied and was accepted for study at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. What better way to show a young student what Israel is really all about than to permit her entrance to live in Israel and learn about its vitality and democratic diversity.

For the Haaretz article, go to https://bit.ly/2PwAgK1 or read Jeremy Ben-Ami’s open letter to Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs and Public Security Erdan below:

 

Dear Minister Erdan:

I am aware that, as Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs and Public Security, your portfolio includes managing Israel’s response to BDS. Over the years, you and other officials of the Israeli government have met with J Street and with other liberal Jewish leaders to ask for advice on countering the global boycott divestment and sanctions movement.

Allow me to say to you today, in no uncertain terms: What you are doing in the case of Lara Alqasem is not only morally wrong, it is the most un-strategic and damaging move that the state could make if it hopes to minimize support for BDS and promote Israel’s interests and standing around the world.

J Street is a pro-Israel, pro-peace organization that supports a two-state solution and opposes occupation. We oppose the BDS movement because it doesn’t recognize the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, it doesn’t support a two-state solution and it makes no distinction in its fight between occupation and the existence of Israel itself.

As progressives who fight for democratic values, diplomacy and peace, we are well-positioned on campuses and in our communities to make the case against boycotts – even as we oppose many of the policies that your government is implementing.

We firmly believe that the only way for Israel to effectively counter BDS, on campus and beyond, is to pursue and reach a two-state peace agreement that resolves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and brings an end to the occupation.

Targeting BDS supporters – or those who merely have critical political views – and banning them from entering Israel does not counter their arguments or stem the global tide of concern for the Palestinian people. Like other anti-democratic actions by your government, it empowers Israel’s fiercest critics and undermines pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy.

What exactly is the threat posed by allowing a 22 year-old American student to study for a year at Hebrew University? How will she harm the economy? How will she damage the strongest military in the Middle East? What is so frightening about someone who seeks to learn more about Israelis and Palestinians?

The only harm being done to Israel right now is the terrible damage to its reputation as a democracy that results from detaining a young student in a holding cell at the airport, for days and weeks on end, because of her political beliefs.

Subjecting those who wish to visit and study in your country to ideological litmus tests cuts at the very heart of the values on which the U.S.-Israel relationship is based and threatens to further shred the ties between us. This is the kind of action we have come to expect from authoritarian regimes – not from fellow democracies and allies.

Let me give you my clearest and simplest advice on how to counter BDS and advance the long-term interests of your country: Drop the case against Lara Alqasem.

Let her study at Hebrew University. Invite her to share her views with you. Encourage her to see the many things in Israel of which we are so rightly proud. Respect her right to tell you and your colleagues what she believes that you are doing wrong. Recognize that the right way to deal with speech you don’t like is to counter it, not silence it.

Let me be equally clear that the surest way to damage support for Israel and build up the BDS movement is to continue to interrogate people about their political beliefs at the border, to penalize young students and to promote laws – both in the Knesset and in the U.S. Congress – designed to criminalize boycotts and non-violent political protests.

Perhaps that is your strategy: instead of treating the BDS movement as the pesky but largely toothless challenge it is, your government treats it as a strategic threat to distract Israelis and Israel’s supporters from the real threat posed to the country’s future by the ever-deepening and never-ending occupation.

I hope that is not the case. But if that is the goal, it is doomed to fail.

In the meantime, know this: the majority of Israel’s supporters in the U.S. will not give up on our efforts to promote a two-state solution, to end the occupation and help secure Israel’s future as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people.

And we will not keep quiet while the misguided policies of your government do such serious damage to the interests of the State of Israel and to the values of the Jewish people.

Jeremy Ben-Ami is president and founder of J Street, the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement. Twitter: @JeremyBenAmi

 

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“The Chosen Wars – How Judaism Became an American Religion” by Steven R. Weisman – A Review

Steven R. Weisman does the American Jewish community and anyone interested in who we are and how we came to be who we are a deep favor. His history of the American Jewish experience (publ. 2018 – 266 pages) is a wonderful read. He covers the beginning of our history in the new world when Jews first arrived on American shores in New Amsterdam in 1654, spends much time on the dynamic 19^th century, and brings it all into the present.

Weisman’s readable narrative is comprehensive. His nuanced discussion of events and trends as they reflect the influences of the American experience on our community gives insight into how we evolved from before the American Revolution through the Civil War into the industrial age and twentieth century as we strove to be at once American and Jewish.

He describes how we acclimated to the new world in every generation without losing a sense of Jewish meaning. He discusses radical and conservative religious, ideological, and practical responses to the myriad of challenges Jews encountered coming from Central Europe, Germany, Russia, and Sefardic lands over a period of two centuries.

Weisman discusses at some length the emergence of the American Reform movement, the founding of the Conservative movement, and how orthodoxy struggled to survive and then staked its ground as immigrant waves from Eastern Europe arrived during the twentieth century.

The title of the book (“The Chosen Wars”) is Weisman’s thesis. So often, there is a tendency to look back with nostalgia on our history and smooth the edges of controversy. To do so, however, is to mischaracterize history itself and especially Jewish history. He shows that we Jews were and continue to be argumentative and rarely unified even as we have aspired for unity.

He writes in the epilogue:

“Judaism’s flourishing in America was not foreordained or inevitable. Neither was it free from conflict and animosity. On the contrary, the disputes among Jews in America were emotional and personal. They were also very American…The Jews shaped their experience in America, and they were shaped by the America they found. The push and pull for Jews followed a historic tension.”

Steven R. Weisman is vice president for publications and communications at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He previously served as a correspondent, editor and editorial board member of The New York Times. He is the author of “The Great Tax Wars: How the Income Tax Transformed America.”

I recommend this volume highly. If you want deeper understanding about who we are as an American Jewish community, how we got here, and what contemporary challenges we face, this book will not only frame it all for you but inspire you with the hope that, indeed, we are NOT the ever-dying people.

Reform Judaism doubles down on Israel engagement and Reform Zionism

Our Reform movement has taken the drift among some American liberal Jews seriously and is stressing the importance of the peoplehood and State of Israel as intrinsic to the fabric of American liberal Jewish identity.

 

Read this article – it’s important!

 

http://jewishjournal.com/analysis/239498/reform-judaism-doubles-zionism/

High Holiday Sermons 2018-5779 – Temple Israel of Hollywood, Los Angeles

The following are my farewell sermons after serving Temple Israel of Hollywood for 30 years. This is my last High Holiday season before my retirement at the end of June, 2019. These are highly personal sermons, but they reflect the greater themes and challenges that Judaism presents us during the High Holidays, and were the best personal reflections on a forty-year rabbinate and thirty years at my home congregation.

For all TIOH Rabbis’ Sermons in 2018, go to

https://www.tioh.org/worship/rabbis/clergystudy  These include sermons by Rabbi John Rosove, Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh, and Rabbi Jocee Hudson

The following are the sermons I delivered, the final High Holiday sermons I am ever likely to deliver:

Rosh Hashanah 5779  – “Carrying forward the Life of Our People”

Video Direct Link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqcY1nwo0tc

Text – https://www.tioh.org/images/Worship/ClergyStudy/HH_Sermons/John_Rosove/5779/Carrying_Forward_the_Life_of_Our_People-RH2018.pdf

Kol Nidre 5779 –  “What I Wish for You”

Video Direct Link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPHP_ui4YQ4

Text – https://www.tioh.org/images/Worship/ClergyStudy/HH_Sermons/John_Rosove/5779/What-I-wish-for-you-RJohn-KN-2018.pdf

Yom Kippur Yizkor 5779 – “Midrash on the Death of Moses”

Text only – https://www.tioh.org/images/Worship/ClergyStudy/HH_Sermons/John_Rosove/5779/Midrash-on-the-Death-of-Moses-RJohn-YK-2018.pdf

 

 

Meet the Israeli Volunteers Who Offer Rides and Hope to Sick Palestinians – Haaretz by Dina Kraft

In the context of so much negative press about Israeli policies in the West Bank, this story from the Israeli daily newspaper “Haaretz” is powerful, inspiring, and unexpected. Haaretz’s story speaks for itself. Jews the world over ought to feel proud that 1400 Israeli volunteers are helping thousands of Palestinians reach hospitals and clinics in Israel from the West Bank on a daily and weekly basis.

The following is the Haaretz story. Share it especially with those who ought to know that Israelis are performing the mitzvah of g’milut chassadim (loving-kindness) for their Palestinian neighbors without expectation of compensation or reward.

 

“The Road to Recovery organization collects Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza borders and takes them to Israeli hospitals for treatment.

It’s almost 6:30 A.M. and the sun is rising quickly over the Sha’ar Efraim checkpoint separating Israel and the West Bank. Amid the rush of Palestinian workers heading toward vans that will take them to jobs inside Israel stand the Alwaneh family, including 3-year-old Kais clutching a “Bob the Builder” backpack.

The father, Samir Alwaneh, 41, smokes a cigarette, his face tense. The family is waiting for a driver from Israel – someone they have never met before – who will collect them and take them the 32 kilometers (20 miles) to Israel’s largest hospital, Sheba Medical Center, near Tel Aviv. It is time for another surgery for Kais, who was badly burned in a fire last year, leaving his face severely disfigured and his hands as stumps. This will be his fourth surgery and is meant to help repair damage to the skin around one of his eyes.

The family looks up to see Orli Shalem, 56, driving up in a blue hatchback. Shalem, a member of Kibbutz Ma’abarot, is with Derech Hachlama (The Road to Recovery), an organization boasting some 1,400 Israeli volunteers who drive Palestinians from border checkpoints – both in Gaza and the West Bank – for medical treatment inside Israel.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians are treated in Israeli hospitals every year, most for cancer or heart problems, and many of them are children. There are between 30 and 60 rides given per day; without them, the Palestinian patients and their families would be left to foot the cost of taxis to the hospitals, which can cost anything from 150 to 400 shekels ($41 to $110) each way.

“It’s a small way of helping, but it is some kind of help, and a way to show we care so they [the Palestinians] can see there is not just the brutal, threatening side of Israel,” explains Shalem as she heads west to the hospital.

Shalem and the Alwanehs had exchanged a quick and limited greeting of “Shalom” when they met, since Shalem does not speak Arabic and the Alwanehs do not speak Hebrew. It is a common problem.

Tami Suchman, 71, from Kibbutz Beeri near the Gaza border, started volunteering as a driver five years ago. In the past she would try to talk to her passengers as much as possible, even if it meant pushing through the language barrier with hand gestures and facial expressions. “But these days I prefer to speak less,” admits Suchman.

“What is there to say after we agree conditions are bad?” she asks. “We both want things to be good, but understand that it’s going to take a long time till things get better. For me personally, I feel guilt. I find myself apologizing for the situation that I’m ashamed we are even in.”

“I don’t justify what they are doing – for example, with the burning kites,” Suchman adds, referring to the recent incidents that have set thousands of dunams of kibbutz fields ablaze, “but I understand where it comes from.”

This language gap can feel like a metaphor for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself. Road to Recovery was founded in 2006 with the hope that, amid the seemingly intractable conflict, the human connection and goodwill forged in these rides might eventually help break down walls, both psychological and real, between Israelis and Palestinians.

It was established by Yuval Roth, who had become active in the Parents Circle Families Forum – which brings bereaved families from both sides of the conflict together – after his brother was killed by Hamas terrorists in 1993. It was at one of these meetings, in 2005, that he met a Palestinian woman whose brother was ill. She asked Roth to drive him from a checkpoint for treatment in Israel – and that one ride developed into a nonprofit that is now on the brink of expanding inside the West Bank as well, offering Palestinians rides to both sides of the checkpoint. Legendary Canadian singer Leonard Cohen was the project’s first donor.

Road to Recovery describes itself as an apolitical organization, drawing volunteers from across the political spectrum – including retired army officers and even a small number of Jewish settlers. For people like Shalem, however, the act of volunteering is also a political one. She opposes the Israeli occupation and says the rides are one of the few ways she has found to express that opposition in a practical and, she says, hopefully helpful way.

Alwaneh says the round-trip rides to the Israeli hospitals are a big help. And the medical care his son has received in Israel has moved him, noting: “Their treatment of Israeli and Palestinians is the same there – they treat Kais like a boy, like any other boy.”

Neely Gardin, 53, opens the gate that leads from her house to her car on a narrow street in a Tel Aviv suburb. This is her first day as a volunteer driver and she has given herself extra time to get to the Efraim checkpoint. Once there, she will rendezvous with Shalem – who will help if there are any problems – and the Palestinians she is driving to hospital.

She’s never been to a checkpoint before and says she does not know any Palestinians from either the West Bank or Gaza. She is not a particularly political person, she points out, but heard about the organization and just knew she wanted to help out.

The dawn sky grows lighter as she navigates her car past olive groves, open fields and, eventually, the sprawling Arab-Israeli city of Taibeh. The checkpoint comes into view and she calls Naim Albeida when she parks.

Palestinians need permits to enter Israel, and the permit system can be cumbersome and slow – final authorizations from the Israeli army usually only come a day before a patient’s appointment at the hospital, and if they arrive too late the patient cannot travel. Albeida, a Palestinian who lives in the West Bank, oversees the logistics for the Palestinian patients, working as a link between the PA, the Israeli army and Road to Recovery.

Gardin follows Albeida’s instructions and finds her Palestinian patient at the border. She greets Rami, 32, a cancer patient who has finished his treatment but is going to Israel for some tests. He is accompanied by his wife and mother. Neely and Rani start chatting in Hebrew and he tells her about his young daughters, showing her some photos.

“The thing that struck me most was how normal, how everyday, it all felt,” Gardin tells Haaretz afterward. “It’s very important to see that the person who stands on the other side [of the border] is a human being. We know that theoretically, but until we are with someone real, that remains only an idea. We forget everything that we have in common, because we are all so focused on the conflict, each side wrapped up in their own justifications.”

Albeida has only been a Road to Recovery staffer for a few months. But he’s been helping out as a volunteer since 2010, when he stumbled upon the organization while looking for ways to help a neighbor find an affordable way to get to an Israeli hospital.

When he first heard about it, he admits not believing that such help could really exist. He called Roth, who told him, “Sure, no problem.”

“And I said, ‘No problem? What do you mean no problem?” recounts Albeida – who even traveled with his neighbor to see with his own eyes that it was all real.

“I met the volunteer at the crossing and I thought to myself, ‘She’s like an angel, not a person,’” recalls Albeida, who lives in Kafr Jayus, near the city of Qalqilyah. Every day after that, he started communicating with Roth, helping to coordinate the rides.

It was not easy: He was working in construction, often receiving urgent phone calls while he was atop a ladder or up scaffolding. He says he lost two jobs because of those phone calls. “It interfered with my focus on the job, but what could I do? There were medical emergencies going on,” Albeida explains.

He credits his fluent Hebrew not only to 25 years working on construction sites in Israel but also to a woman named Dalia, whom his mother befriended when he was a young boy. His mother worked as a cleaner in an Israeli hospital, where Dalia was a nurse.

“I learned early on that not all Israelis are soldiers who come into our homes and arrest us. They are also people living their normal lives,” says Albeida. “I know the occupation is what ruined lives on both sides.”

Albeida adds that he noticed the Israeli volunteers’ desire to connect more deeply with Palestinians, so now he hosts lunches at his home once a month for people on both sides of the border to get together. “After the meal we sit and talk, and discuss our shared future,” he says.

After about an hour’s drive, Shalem pulls up at the Sheba Medical Center. Kais is whimpering in the backseat. Seeking to distract him, his mother, Hanna, tickles him and covers his burned face with kisses.

Shalem watches as the family walks toward the hospital entrance. “Goodbye, and good luck,” she calls out.

https://bit.ly/2MqgqxS

A Prayer for Peace in the New Year

May we hold lovingly in our thoughts / those who suffer from tyranny, subjection, cruelty, and injustice / and work every day towards the alleviation of their suffering.

May we recognize our solidarity / with the stranger, outcast, downtrodden, abused, and deprived / that no human being be treated as “other” / that our common humanity weaves us together / in one fabric of mutuality / one garment of destiny.

May we pursue the Biblical prophet’s vision of peace / that we might live harmoniously with each other / and side by side / respecting differences / cherishing diversity / with no one exploiting the weak / each living without fear of the other / each revering Divinity in every human soul.

May we struggle against institutional injustice and governmental corruption / free those from oppression and contempt / act with purity of heart and mind / despising none / defrauding none / hating none / cherishing all / honoring every child of God and every creature of the earth.

May the Jewish people, the State of Israel, and all peoples / know peace in this New Year / and may we nurture kindness and love everywhere.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu

Rabbi John L. Rosove – Temple Israel of Hollywood, Los Angeles

Jerusalem – A City of the In-between and Not-Yet Peace

[Photo by Peter Marcus]

Jerusalem, itself on a mountain, is made up of a series of mountains. On top of each mountain is an important symbol sacred to a religion or people. Taken together, these multiple symbols represent perhaps the most significant city in world history.

Har Habayit – The Mountain of God’s House, also known as Har Moriah – The Mountain of ‘Sight’ is, of course, the most sacred place in Judaism. Legend teaches that the dust that formed the first human being, Adam, was gathered here, and this mountain top is the place on which Abraham bound his son Isaac. It is here that King Solomon built the First Temple and King Harod built the Second Temple.

Har Habayit- Har Moriah is the gateway between heaven and earth, the umbilicus through which the milk of Torah flows from the Divine breast to the children of Israel, where there is Divine sight and insight.

This most ancient of Jewish mountains is claimed by Islam as its third most sacred site after Mecca and Medina. Muslims call it Haram al Sharif – The Noble Sanctuary where Quran says Mohammed ascended to heaven.

On another small mountain is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, now shared in a delicate and sensitive balance among Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Coptic, Roman Catholic, Syrian, and Ethiopian Christians because Jesus was crucified there.

To the east is Har Hazeitim – the Mountain of Olives at the foot of which is the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed and his disciples slept the night before their Lord’s crucifixion.

Har Hazeitim contains the most holy Jewish cemetery in the world, the closest burial ground to the “The Golden Gate” of Jerusalem that was sealed by the 16th century Ottoman Qalif, Suleiman the Magnificent, because he feared that the Jewish Messiah would pass into the holy city through this gate in the end of days. Jews have been burying our dead on the Mountain of Olives for centuries so their souls would be close and ready to follow the Mashiach (“Messiah”).

Just south of the Old City walls is Har Tziyon – Mount Zion from where the prophets Isaiah (2:3) and Micah (4:2) said that Torah and God’s word came into the world. For Christians, Jesus and his disciples celebrated the Last Supper here.

A few miles west is yet another mountain made sacred by Zionism and the State of Israel, Har Herzl, on which is built the military cemetery for those who died in the defense of the state and the nation’s leaders. Har Herzl is walking distance from Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial and Museum.

Jerusalem has been conquered thirty-four times since the age of David. It is arguably the most famous and fought over real estate in the world. It is a city of the in-between. It embraces old and new, past and present, east and west, reason and faith, earth and heaven, this world and the world to come, imperfection and messianic dreams, temporal and divine power. It has been and remains the symbol of a history of intensely competing interests.

Israel celebrates “Jerusalem Day” this Sunday, May 12 (28 Iyar), marking 50 years since Israel reunified the city after the 1967 Six-Day War. Though Jerusalem has rarely known peace, it is an enduring symbol of our people’s yearning for peace nevertheless.

What is to become of this sacred city for so many going forward? Most Israelis don’t want it ever divided again. For the past 50 years Israel has maintained the peace and security of Jerusalem and free access for peoples of all faiths to the city’s holy sites. Yet, distrust and hatred fills still too many hearts and pollutes too many minds. Spitting and shoving, vandalizing and threats, provocation and incitement, violence and murder continue despite efforts by Israeli security to prevent it.

The problems that continue are compounded by the absence of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. East Jerusalem’s Palestinian Arabs, non-citizens of Israel who live under Israeli military rule, do not share equal rights with Israeli citizens, nor is their property necessarily respected by Israeli military law and ultra-Orthodox Jewish squatters who use every opportunity to occupy Arab homes.

Two different sets of law are enforced and non-Israeli citizens almost always come up short.

In the coming weeks, the United States will formally move its Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a controversial decision taken by President Trump that shook the Arab world. Yet, Jerusalem is the people and State of Israel’s capital city. Its government buildings, the Prime Minister’s and President’s residences are there.

For Israel’s sake as a Jewish and democratic state and for the sake of the Palestinians the status quo is unsustainable, and if Jerusalem is to be the beacon of and symbol for peace throughout the world, it will take our two peoples, Israeli and Palestinian, every ounce of courage, patience, creativity, understanding, and mutual respect to make it happen.

I believe, despite the deep distrust and hostility that there is a solution, but that will take the willingness to compromise and accommodate the needs of the “other” not as some kumbaya liberal dream, but for the sake of peace, security, the survival of and the dignity of all peoples.

 

 

 

“Netanyahu’s Use And Abuse Of American Jews: A Review of ‘Bibi’” By Anshel Pfeffer – Batya Ungar-Sargon for The Forward

For those of us watching up close the Prime Minister of Israel over the last number of years, this piece in the Forward is not surprising.

It documents the disdain that PM Netanyahu feels towards American Jews and why the relationship between the current Israeli government and the American Jewish community is so fraught with dissension. The blame/responsibility can be laid at Netanyahu’s feet. For any of us to think otherwise is to be ostriches with our heads in the sand.

 

“American Jews have always been prepared to forgive any of his shortcomings. This toxic relationship was the work of their love for Benjamin Netanyahu. Another Israeli leader must never again be allowed to use and abuse American Jews in such a way and take the Diaspora for granted.”

 

Anshel Pfeffer’s ‘Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu’ is published by Basic Books.

 

Read more: https://forward.com/opinion/400112/how-american-jews-enable-bibis-never-ending-cycle-of-abuse/

 

Loving our enemies

Rabbi Akiva called the central verse in this week’s Torah portion Kedoshim: “Klal gadol baTorah – a great rule of the Torah.”

This verse is among the most famous in the Hebrew Bible and the most misunderstood – “V’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha… You shall love your fellow/neighbor as yourself….” (Leviticus 19:18)

The verse raises at least three questions.

First – how can we be commanded to feel love or, for that matter, anything else? We can’t, which means that the mitzvah to “love” must involve something other than feelings.

The spiritual teacher David Steindl-Rast writes that there’s one thing that characterizes “love” in all its forms – erotic, romantic, familial, tribal, national, spiritual, religious, and even love we feel for our pets. That one thing is found in our yearning to belong to and be connected with something greater than ourselves.

“Love,” he says “is a wholehearted [and willful] ‘yes’ to belonging” (Essential Writings, p. 73) with all the implications that attachment to, responsibility for and accountability with others bring.

Our yearning to belong inspires greater understanding of who we are and what is our role in the world. That yearning links us heart to heart and soul to soul with others, with creatures large and small, with nature, the universe, the cosmos, and God.

Jewish mystics taught a central truth; that we are physically and spiritually part of a vast Oneness. We share common origins and a common destiny with each other and with every people and nation. Consequently, we’re responsible for one another and accountable for how we behave with family, friend, foe, and stranger.

Too often our idea of “self” (as suggested in “You shall love your fellow as yourself”) is limited to our little egos. If that verse, however, is to mean something then we need to think about “love” differently; not as a feeling but as an attitude of the heart.

V’ahavta understood this way enables us to fulfill the commandment “to love our fellows” because our response to them isn’t based in a feeling but as an act of will when we take responsibility for others because we belong to each other as part of the great Oneness of humankind.

Second – What does it mean to “love” someone as we love ourselves?

Maimonides taught that if it’s ever a toss-up between saving our own lives and saving another, we’re obligated to save our own lives first.

Nachmanides added that what we wish for ourselves we must wish for others whether we know them or not, like them or hate them.

Third – Does this commandment demand that we “love” our enemies in some way?

No. Indeed, there are some people we can’t wish well as we wish for ourselves because their deeds are too heinous to tolerate or forgive.

That being said, I’ll never forget Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s words on the White House lawn at the signing of the Camp David Peace Accords with Egypt in 1978.

Begin told the world that the Jewish people considers it amongst the greatest of mitzvot to make of a “ra” ( an “evil” person – an enemy) into a “rea” (“a fellow” – a friend).

Though Egypt and Israel are hardly “friends” as we understand friendship between nations, since that day (September 17, 1978) there has not been one day of war between Israel and Egypt.

Though Judaism doesn’t command us to “love” our enemies, tradition requires us to give a penitent person a chance at reconciliation.

As a people we’re required always to act ethically towards everyone, including our enemies. In doing so we leave open the possibility of transformation should circumstances warrant (see Exodus 23:4).

It’s difficult to imagine peace given the hatred and mistrust that animates the current relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, but we ought to remember that once Germany was our people’s greatest enemy. Today Germany is the least anti-Semitic country in Europe.

Germany and Japan were America’s bitter foes seventy-five years ago. Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland were once killing each other. Today, these former enemies have laid down their guns and established peace.

The mitzvah of loving one’s fellows requires at the very least that we keep open our hearts to the possibilities of change in our relationships with our enemies for in the end, we are all related and we share a common destiny.

Shabbat shalom!

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The Syrians are on the fences” – An Israeli Reform Synagogue in Holon is committed to help

‘The Syrians are on the fences’ is a phrase used in Israel to describe the threat from Syria to Israel when the two countries were in an active state of war. Today this same phrase is being used to describe the Syrian tragedy, just beyond the Israeli border.

Kehilat Kodesh V’Chol, a Reform synagogue in Holon, Israel (near Tel Aviv) (and my own synagogue’s sister-Israeli Reform synagogue) is helping an Israeli organization called “Just Beyond Our Border” to raise money through a congregation-wide bake sale to help Syrian children traumatized by the seven-year Syrian civil War.

Click onto this video. I have posted a translation of the narrator’s words below.

https://www.justbeyondourborder.com/english

“Since 2011 there has been a bloody war, right here, beyond the Israeli border. In these years, 470,000 people were killed, nearly two million were injured, and 6 million people were exiled or fled their homes. We must see the truth as it stands before our eyes.

The Syrians are on the fences, homeless, starving for bread,freezing on the cold nights,getting up every morning to their own personal disaster.

We have to keep the children out of this tragedy. They need food, medicine and clothing for the harsh winter in the area. These children need us, all of us. They need good people to lend a hand.

It is our Jewish, human and moral obligation  not to stand by and reach out to them.

“Forever is mercy built.” (Psalms 89)

Look for the ‘Syrians on fences’ and contribute.

Together, we will be on the right side of history.