| Yom
Kippur 2005 Kol Nidre
We and Our Neighbors
We have just finished celebrating the 350th anniversary of Jews
in America. There were many noteworthy highlights throughout the
country and in the Lehigh Valley where the festivities were skillfully
chaired by one of our members, Judith Rodwin. But our relationship
with our neighbors and fellow Americans is complex and involves
more than just the contributions of Jews to local and national
society.
Rabbi Mitchell
Wohlberg of Beth Tfiloh Congregation in Baltimore, the Orthodox
Rabbi I quoted during Rosh Hashanah, "was invited
in December of 2004 by the Maryland Governor and his wife to light
a Chanukah menorah in their home.
[He] felt comfortable enough
not only to go and do it, but to tell the Governor and his wife
that if they the Ehrlichs, Christians can celebrate Hanukah,
[he] wanted to tell them about a Jewish family [he] had read about
who celebrate Christmas. And [he] told them a story about a teacher
who was very curious about how each of her students celebrated
Christmas. She called on young Patrick Murphy. "Tell me, Patrick,
what do you do at Christmas time?" Patrick addressed the class: "Me
and my 12 brothers and sisters go to midnight Mass and sing hymns.
Then we go to bed and wait for Father Christmas to come with toys."
"Very nice, Patrick," the teacher said. "Now, Jimmy Brown, what
do you do at Christmas?" ""Me and my sister also go to Church with
Mom and Dad and we sing carols, and after we get home we put cookies
and milk by the chimney and we hang up our stockings," Jimmy replied. "That's
very nice, Jimmy," she replied.
Realizing there
was a Jewish boy in the class and not wanting to leave him out
of the discussion, she asked Isaac Cohen the same
question. "Now Isaac, what do you do at Christmas?" Isaac said, "Well,
we go for a ride and we sing a Christmas carol."
Surprised,
the teacher questioned further. "Tell us what you sing." "Well,
it's the same thing every year. Dad comes home from the office.
We all get into the Mercedes, and we drive to his toy factory.
When we get inside we look at all the empty shelves and we sing, "What
a friend we have in Jesus." Then we all go on a cruise to the Bahamas.'"
Apparently the Governor also found it funny. But how many of us
would be comfortable telling that joke to a Christian? Especially
to someone who is essentially a stranger?
And yet, as
Rabbi Wohlberg reminds us: "just about every candidate
who was running for last year's Democratic Presidential nomination
took pride in the fact that someone in their family was Jewish:
John Kerry's paternal grandparents and brother; Howard Dean's wife;
Wesley Clark's grandfather not only Jewish but also a Kohen;
Joe Lieberman's grandparents and parents on both sides!
"
In
Real News 24/7,
there was a featured story on September 27, 2004 by Ken Francis,
entitled 'Wesley Clark is fourth Democratic
candidate touting his Jewish connections.'
Part II: Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the most kosher of
them all?
Francis wrote: "the Lieberman campaign has been quick to question
the Jewishness of not just Dean, but all the other candidates.
Lieberman spokesman Jano Cabrera quipped: 'Oy vey. All this talk
about who is Jewish and who isn't is absolutely meshuga. That
said, there's only one candidate in this race with a real lox
box.' Oddly enough, however, it is this very fact that may cost
him votes in the Jewish community. The St. Petersburg Times reports
that some Jews think this - Americans aren't ready to elect one
of their coreligionists president,
"
Could
it be that we Jews want clout, but not too much visibility? Well,
we have achieved a lot of visibility over the past 350 years.
On January 14, 2004, the Wall Street Journal featured an
article by Elizabeth Bernstein entitled: "You Don't Have to Be
Jewish to Want A Bar Mitzvah." "After his daughter, Melissa, had
attended a handful of bar mitzvahs a few years ago, Kevin Williams
decided to spend $12,000 to throw a faux bat mitzvah at a Manhattan
hotel.
'After that party, two more of her non-Jewish friends
had them,' says Mr. Williams."
Indeed,
millions of Americans have watched bar and bat mitzvah celebrations
on their televisions over the years. Probably the
most recent was by Krusty the Klown, the prodigal son of Rabbi
Hyman Krustofsky during the 15th season of The Simpsons.
But I was surprised to discover how many other famous television
shows featured a bar mitzvah. In 2002 it was Frasier, whose
son is being raised by his obviously, or not so obviously, Jewish
mother, Lilith. In 2000, actress Kim Cattrall was hired to plan
a bat mitzvah party for Jenny Brier on Sex and the City.
In 1997, Seinfeld featured a bar mitzvah storyline that's
probably not a big surprise. But as far back as the 1960s, General
Electric Theater, Car 54, Where Are You? and,
of course, The Dick Van Dyke Show all had plots centered
on a bar mitzvah.
Television
is the world of fiction. But sometimes, I wonder if we realize
in how many ways we Jews have impacted American life ways
that may not even be well known to us. I am sure everyone is aware
that there is a Federal Department of Education. But did you know
that going back to 1978, there is an Education Day USA? And where
did I learn about this? From a book entitled: The Rebbe's Army:
Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch. "In 1978, [President]
Carter declared the first "Education Day USA" in [Lubavitcher Rebbe]
Schneerson's honor.
In 1997, at a tribute commemorating the third
anniversary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's death, U.S. Secretary of
Education Richard Riley thanked Schneerson for his early and concerted
support for the department's creation. 'His voice, so respected
and beloved, helped to make it happen,' Riley said,
"
Looking at the last three years of Presidential proclamations
for what is now called Education and Sharing Day USA, each year
there is a paragraph tribute to the Lubavitcher Rebbe!
In 2004 it
read in part: "For the past 20 years, this day has
honored Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
After
his death in 1994, the Rebbe received the Congressional Gold Medal
for his 'outstanding and lasting contributions toward improvements
in world education, morality, and acts of charity.'"
And from this
year: "Education and Sharing Day honors the memory
of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who
established education and outreach centers that offer social services
and humanitarian aid around the world."
Sometimes, the real world offers more unusual realities than the
world of fiction. But if we Jews have penetrated deep into the
fabric of American cultural, political, religious and educational
life, let us not be lulled into thinking that everything is perfect
here.
There are very
minor phenomena, like Jews for Allah, that are disturbing by
their very existence. The larger proselytizing effort,
often referred to as Jews for Jesus, but embracing a number of
different messianic Jewish groups, has certainly grown in the public's
consciousness. And there remain Christians who would like Jews
even better if they only accepted Jesus. Paul Kottler recently
emailed me an article from CNN.com with the headline: "Anti-Defamation
League: Use of converted Jews is offensive. A leading Jewish
organization is condemning the Southern Baptist Convention for
using a group of 'messianic Jews' those who have converted to
Christianity in its evangelism." At the moment, the idea of using
messianic Jews just seems to be a proposal. But we note that in "A
1999 prayer guide by the International Mission Board [of the Southern
Baptist Convention] recommended conversion of Jews to Christianity
during their High Holy Days." Apparently, they thought you were
more vulnerable after going to shul! "As recently as 2003,
Jewish leaders criticized a Southern Baptist seminary president
for saying Christians have a mandate to evangelize Jews just as
a surgeon has a responsibility to tell a patient about the presence
of a 'deadly tumor.'"
But
the larger area of my concern is the simmering and sometimes
erupting campaign that calls for divestment from Israel. It seems
redundant to emphasize that there are many Jews who disagree with
any number of policies of various Israeli governments, including
the current one. Non-Jews have a right to express their opposition
to any number of policies, including those that affect Palestinians
and Arabs, without being considered anti-Semitic. But in a world
where genocide is casually and quietly being ignored in the Sudan
and where slavery remains a reality in a number of countries, not
only to single out Israel, but to continually compare it to South
Africa during its apartheid period, surely gives many of us a feeling
of anti-Semitism. This feeling is not helped when major Protestant
denominations join with college campus campaigns in promoting divestiture.
By now, I think everyone here has heard about the proposals made
last year by the national Presbyterian Church to study divestiture.
Both on the local and national level, Jewish leaders have met with
Presbyterian leaders to discuss the issue and many individual Presbyterian
churches have distanced themselves from the national effort. Nonetheless,
in the September 16, 2005 edition of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz,
Amiram Barkat wrote an article entitled: "Israel the Divestment
Snowball." In it, he reports that "the U.S. Presbyterian Church's
Committee on Social responsibility Through Investment
is demanding
the first four corporations withdraw their aid to the Israeli occupation,
and is threatening to sell stock valued at $60 million if those
companies do not comply. The companies targeted
include Caterpillar,
ITT
Industries,
United Technologies,
and Motorola." Mr. Barkat,
the article's author, makes this disturbing point. "The decision
to identify international corporations whose operations aid the
occupation was made by the Presbyterian Church in July 2004. Since
then, despite the countercampaign by Jewish organizations and the
progress made in the disengagement from Gaza and the West Bank,
the divestment campaign has gradually gained momentum in the mainline
Protestant establishment in the U.S.
In November
2004, the Episcopalian Church made a similar decision, and will
soon publish its own list of corporations involved in
activities that aid the occupation.
The United Methodist Church
took similar steps in June and the United Church of Christ will
join these efforts in another month." Nor is this battle being
fought only by mainline Protestant Churches. Colleges and universities,
with their substantial endowments, are another battleground.
In October
2002, Will Youmans, a third year law student at UC-Berkeley wrote: "A little more than a week ago several hundred college students
from all over the United States met in Michigan to further the
growing campaign to divest American universities of companies with
holdings in Israel. The students gathered because they share recognition
of the importance of severing the US-Israeli umbilical cord that
feeds Israel's destructive military occupation of the Palestinian
people." Whether you love him or dislike him, Alan Dershowitz gives
an important perspective to the efforts on college campuses in
his book: The Case for Israel. He writes: (pg. 197/198) "The
campaign currently being waged against Israel on college and university
campuses throughout the world is fueled by ignorance, bigotry,
and cynicism. Led by efforts at Harvard University, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and other schools to end university investment
in Israel and to boycott Israeli speakers and academics, this campaign
seeks to delegitimize and isolate Israel as a pariah state. The
campaign also seeks to convey to college students the false notion
that Israel is among the worst human rights violators in the world
and is guilty of genocide, torture, racism, ethnic cleansing, and
Nazi tactics, whereas the Palestinians and their Arab supporters
are victims of Israeli aggression.
Although it
is unlikely that divestiture will be implemented on these campuses,
the goal of the campaign is similar to, and grows
out of, previous attempts to single out Israel by equating Zionism
with racism and by complying with the now discredited and illegal
Arab boycott of Israeli and Jewish goods."
In my hand
I am holding a 34 page pamphlet I downloaded from the internet.
Written this past summer it was updated on October first
and is entitled: "Fighting the New Apartheid: A Guide to Campus
Divestment from Israel." Produced by Fayyad Sbaihat who is part
of the University of Wisconsin effort to divest, he gives special
thanks to Wendy Ake and Noura Dabdoub from The Ohio State University.
This is a complete kit including sample petitions and articles
on divestment. The last page of the pamphlet is a sample resolution
and the text immediately preceding it reads: (pg. 33): "As Israel
resembles the once apartheid-ridden South Africa in every way,
let there be a day when our resolve and the voice of conscious
Israelis bring out a new DeKlerk."
"In the world of Hamid Dabashi, supporters of Israel are 'warmongers' and 'Gestapo
apparatchiks.' The Jewish homeland is 'nothing more than a military
base for the rising predatory empire of the United States.' It's
a capital of 'thuggery' a 'ghastly state of racism and apartheid' and 'it
must be dismantled.' A voice from America's crackpot fringe? [asks
staff writer Douglas Feiden in the November 21st, 2004 New York
Daily News] Actually, Dabashi is a tenured professor and department
chair at Columbia University. And his views have resonated and
been echoed in other areas of the university
. In three weeks of
interviews, numerous students told the Daily News they face
harassment, threats and ridicule merely for defending the right
of Israel to survive."
By now, I am
sure you get the point. Success in some areas of life does not
bring success in all areas of life; not for anyone
and certainly not for Jews. What do we do? First we need to be
aware. Secondly, we need to be informed, about Judaism and about
Israel. Both on the more distant and recent history, Alan Dershowitz's
book: The Case for Israel offers useful information. We
need to support the Institute for Jewish-Christian Understanding
because it offers a fairly unique way to reach Christian clergy
and lay people and its resolution "Supporting Reversal of the 2004
Divestment Action of the Presbyterian Church" could serve as a
model for mainline Christian denominations. We need to reach out
to our neighbors and make sure that after we are informed, that
they become informed. I never turn down an opportunity to speak
to a Church group, young or old, whether at their place or ours.
I almost always get in a good word for Israel, no matter what the
main topic happens to be.
Our relationship with the Catholic Church is an example of progress
through dialogue. Pope John Paul II died this past April. Let us
not forget too quickly that in 1979 he was the first Pope to visit
Auschwitz. In 1984, Pope John Paul II gave full recognition (April
20, 1984) to Jewish nationhood, by right, in the Land of Israel.
In 1986, he was the first modern Pope to visit a synagogue. In
1994, he sent the first Vatican diplomatic envoy to Israel. And
in 2000, he visited Yad Vashem.
"Invoking
the name of our common ancestor [Abraham], Pope John Paul II,
writing to the Jews of Poland on the 50th anniversary
of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, issued this simple yet eloquent
and most meaningful appeal [in 1993] (as reported in L'Osservatore
Romano, August 17, 1993):
'As Christians
and Jews, following the example of the faith of Abraham, we are
called to be a blessing to the world (cf. Gen.
12:2 ff.). This is the common task awaiting us. It is therefore
necessary for us, Christians and Jews, to be first a blessing to
one another.'
To this sentiment, we should all be able to say: AMEN
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