Yom Kippur 2004 Kol Nidre   Israel's Struggle to Survive If I were to ask you to close your eyes and imagine you were standing this evening at The Wall, I expect everyone here would know which Wall I mean; the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, the Kotel, in Jerusalem . It was during Herod's reign, from 37 B.C.E. to 4 C.E., that the area of the Temple Mount was enlarged and huge supporting walls were built. The Second Temple construction project began around 20 or 19 B.C.E. The Wall, the Kotel, remains and has become the holiest site for Jews all over the world. But, of course, even on something so simple as "The Wall," the mental vision one has might well depend on where one happens to be. The Kotel, our Wall, is not the oldest, or necessarily, most famous wall. "No one can tell precisely when the building of the Great Wall [of China ] was started, but it is popularly believed that it originated as a military fortification against intrusion by tribes on the borders during the earlier Zhou Dynasty. [The ancient Great Wall] was completed by 204 B.C.E., nearly two hundred years before Herod engaged 10,000 men, including a thousand priests, to start on The Temple Project. The Great Wall was not the last wall to separate people. I suspect if you had asked in Europe a few decades ago about "The Wall," their mental vision would probably have been of the Berlin Wall. "On August 13, 1961 the Berlin Wall was erected and divided the city of Berlin , [the residents of East Berlin from the residents of West Berlin ] for more than 28 years." Most of us remember when the Berlin Wall was erected and most of us remember much more happily when it was torn down on November 9 th , 1989 . And I suspect if you happen to be a Palestinian, or a Palestinian supporter, your mental vision of "The Wall" today, is the security barrier that Israel is building. It, too, is meant to separate people. We have heard much about the construction of The Wall, its legality, its purpose, its intrusiveness and even its composition. Parts of it may be airy, chain link with razor wire coiled at the top. But I have seen pictures on line that show solid blocks of gray concrete reaching to the sky; they must be every bit of thirty feet high. Walls that separate people are very different from walls that support the Temple mount. So is this a wall that keeps peace or creates enemies? Doubtless, it is too soon to reach a final conclusion, but many of us do care about Israel , and we need to think something about This Wall. I don't know if I ever met Daniel Gordis, a younger colleague of mine. But his uncle, Dr. David Gordis, was my first Talmud teacher in undergraduate school. I also had the good fortune of studying Bible one semester with his grandfather, the great Dr. Robert Gordis, alav hashalom . Rabbi Daniel Gordis with his wife, Elisheva, and their three children left the comforts of California and moved to Israel in July 1998. He currently is the Director of the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows, the author of the book, If a Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State , and regularly writes dispatches about events in Israel . A dispatch that appeared last month, on August 3 rd was entitled: "Wall Sight Journal." In it, Rabbi Gordis wrote about a trip he took with a female, Palestinian friend of his. "For a long time, she's been asking me to spend a day with her in Abu Dis, [her village] to see the 'wall' up close. Seeing it, she was assured, would make me a vociferous opponent of the entire project. I had no idea how I would react, but it seemed to me that if I lived only fifteen minutes away from parts of it, the least I could do would be to spend a day taking a look . We took the main drag through Abu Dis, and there it was, looming right in front of us. Can't exactly miss it. I looked at the graffiti on the wall. Much of it read 'From Warsaw Ghetto to Abu Dis Ghetto," or 'No to the Busharon Wall.' There were also [other,] spray painted slogans and a few biblical verses about freedom, Some graffiti, I thought was missing. Where was the slogan that said 'Stop the bombings, so they take this thing down ? Nowhere. Not a single indication that the wall was a reaction to something. Not an auspicious beginning to the tour. We hiked around. I took some pictures, she explained the layout of the village to me, and then suggested that we go to her sister's house on the other side of the wall. No problem, since the wall ended there. Her sister also speaks a perfect Hebrew. She sat down and told us about the hardships of the fence. How she used to drive her son five minutes to his school bus, but now has to go all the way around Ma'aleh Adumim, and how it takes forty-five minutes on a good day. The story, to be sure, wasn't a pretty one. The wall is enormous, it's ugly, and at least here, it cuts right through the middle of the village. And it makes life very, very inconvenient for a lot of people. No question. I sat and listened, but couldn't help thinking about one missing fact – why the wall had been built in the first place. That, neither my friend, nor her sister, nor, for that matter, anyone else we met during the rest of the day, seemed inclined to mention. It was, as my friend expected, an unsettling day for me. But not for the reasons that she'd thought. No one can deny the massiveness of the wall. No one can deny that it's ugly as sin. Or that it poses real hardships. Or that it may not have been built in all the right places. But no one can deny, either, that the reason that we, like many other Israeli parents, worry much less about whether our children will make it home is because of that wall. And that the reason that Jerusalem , and much of the rest of the country, has been exceedingly quiet recently, for almost five previously unimaginable months, is also because of the wall. And before the wall, this was a different country. A country terrorized. By people who came from places like Abu Dis. Who, for the most part, can no longer get in. It was their absolute unwillingness to even mention Israel 's need for the fence that, contrary to her expectations and her hopes, slowly but inexorably eradicated most of the misgivings I'd had about the fence, at least in principle. Neither [my friend nor her sister] in an hour of talking about the fence and a day of touring the area, ever mentioned any reason why Israel might do such a thing. That silence, much more than the fence, is what I found disconcerting. And surprising. More surprising, of course, than the ruling at the International Court of Justice. Everyone knows that the wall is a problem. Israel 's Supreme Court said the same thing. 'Eliminate the hardship,' the [Israeli] Supreme effectively said, 'as much as you can.' While the [International Court of Justice] said, with admitted hyperbole on my part, 'Eliminate Israel , as soon as you can.' My friend and I were quiet as she drove me back to West Jerusalem . 'What did you think?' she asked. But she didn't want to know. What I thought was that though I genuinely like her very much, and admire a lot about her, the wall didn't create the gulf between our worlds. It just formalizes it. What did I think? What I couldn't tell her was that I was thinking of Avram and Lot , and the verse that says 'the land could not support them staying together' (Gen. 13:6). And wondering if it was no less true today than it was thousands of years ago." Why is it important to talk about Israel and its problems on these days when so many of you are here? Precisely because so many of you are here. For the older generation, it might have been unnecessary; they were so aware, so involved with Israel – they needed no reinforcement from a pulpit. But the current and next generations differ from the past in more than just music, dress and computer use. Dr. Arnold Eisen, Professor of Jewish Culture and Religion at Stanford University wrote: "There seems a widespread recognition – brought on by the Al Aksa Intifada and the widespread loss of hope for any near-term solution of Israel's intractable problems – that American Jewry has not done a very good job in educating itself about the reality, as opposed to the myth, of Israel. Most American Jews seem quite content to keep their distance from the State, both physically and emotionally. Israel does not loom large in American Jewish literature, or American Jewish religious thought, or American Jewish curricula." (Pg. 24-25 Conservative Judaism , 350 th Supplement) Jews need to feel a commitment to be informed about Israel because it is our national homeland; our dream of two thousand years; our best opportunity to integrate Jewish values and traditions in the daily life of a modern, democratic country; our refuge for any Jewish community whose life is threatened. And we cannot depend on reports from CNN or articles in the New York Times as our only sources of information. Steve Bergstein forwarded to me an article from HonestReporting and its weblog: MediaBackSpin.com. The article informs us about a decision of "CanWest, owners of Canada 's largest newspaper chain, who recently implemented a new editorial policy to use the 'T-word' in reports on brutal terrorist acts and groups. On September 14 th , they exercised their right to change [a] Reuters line that whitewashes Palestinian terror: [Reuters reported]: the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which has been involved in a four- year-old revolt against Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank . (Jeffrey Heller, 9/13 " Sharon Faces Netanyahu Challenge') [CanWest changed to this line]: the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a terrorist group that has been involved in a four-year-old campaign of violence against Israel . Reuters didn't like the adjustment, 'Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling someone,' said David A.Schlesinger, Reuters' global managing editor. Mr. Schlesinger said he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to 'confusion' about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations." Reuters' refusal to call terrorists 'terrorists' is not about reporting objectively, but about intimidation from the terrorists and their supporters. Are you aware that the 216 th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States voted during its meetings of June 26 – July 3 rd of this year "to begin a careful process of selective divestment in companies whose actions support the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories." Rick Ufford-Chase, Moderator of the 216 th General Assembly, attempts to explain this position on the Presbyterian Church's website, which Sam sent me, at pcusa.com. The coincidental use of "pc" for the Presbyterian Church made me smile. Ufford-Chase writes: "We have a long history – all the way back to 1948 – of standing in support of our Jewish brothers and sisters and of the right of the state of Israel to exist within recognized and secure borders. We also have long supported the Palestinian people and, in response to consistent pleas from our Christian Palestinian sisters and brothers, we have stood firmly against the occupation of Palestinian lands and the growing encroachment of settlements there. Some would suggest that holding those two positions is contradictory, or even morally untenable. I would suggest the opposite, that we should be proud of our history of upholding both positions." And I would suggest to the Presbyterian Church that divestiture has very ugly connotations and is not an appropriate vehicle for expressing their concerns. If they recognize Israel 's right to exist within secure borders, what is their realistic solution to the terrorist problem? Like Rabbi Gordis' Palestinian friend and her sister, they offer no solution to terrorism, no solution to the absence of a negotiating partner, no solution to the financial rip-offs of the Palestinian people by their own leadership – but "selective divestment" aimed at Israel they do offer! For those who feel uncomfortable in their own knowledge of Israeli history in the face of the constant attacks on Israel as a racist state, a militaristic state, a state of political assassins and house wreckers, I strongly encourage you to read Alan Dershowitz's book The Case for Israel . Published last year, Professor Dershowitz addresses many popular accusations against Israel and answers them with hard facts and not mere propaganda. Whatever you may think about Alan Dershowitz's chutzpah or his legal positions, this is a book worth reading and having as a reference source. The Presbyterian Church, like many of us, want both the Israelis and the Palestinians to enjoy the benefits of peace. In the summer of 2000, when President Clinton was meeting with then Prime Minister Barak and the real source of the Palestinians' problems, Yasir Arafat, we thought that peace was at hand: Israel with secure borders living next to a Palestinian state; even a shared Jerusalem. But this is 2004 and the beautiful, serene dreams of four years ago have been shattered and splattered by terrorist bombers and the blood that flows from their victims. In another penetrating reflection entitled: "The Losses That May Save Us," Rabbi Daniel Gordis wrote, this past January, about ideology and survival. He reports on Benny Morris, "famous as one of the leading Israeli 'new historians.' Morris [the author of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 ] had regularly been excoriated by the right as being just short of a traitor, as having humiliated Israel internationally for exposing her role in forcing many of the refugees out of their homes in the early years of the State and for having proven that the Israeli mythology that all the Palestinians simply fled was simply untrue. [In a January 2004 interview in the Israeli newspaper HaAretz , Morris explained] the difference between history and ideology. Historically, he noted, what happened happened. There were, in fact, expulsions. There was, in fact murder. But history, he notes, isn't the same as ideology. Morris continues, 'A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore, it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.' And what about the Palestinians who suffered? 'I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice.' [As Rabbi Gordis analyzes Dr. Morris' interview,] or put another way, in addition to human rights and the love of the land, does the survival of the Jewish state also count as one of your core values? Because if it does, you'd better wake up. You can't have American-Canadian foreign policy here and survive, and you can't have all the land and survive. We're going to have to pick our losses, and they are going to be painful." Every Jew in the world should support Israel 's right to exist. But as Rabbi Gordis suggests, we had better wake up. We have few friends, and the immediate future appears to be painful. There is a new wall in Israel ; it is one we would like to see come down. But for the moment, Israel 's physical survival may depend as much on that wall as its spiritual survival has depended on the Western Wall for two millennia. May we live to see security walls come down, as peace arises.     << Back to Rabbi Juda's Sermons