Shabbat Va-yeitzei 5784
You can listen to Rabbi Miriam's sermon here or read it below.
I usually write my sermon some time during the week. I know what I want to reflect on, talk about and often the idea is sloshing around my head until I sit down and write it.
This week I've been holding my breath.
My shoulders have been up around my ears and I’ve been waiting.Waiting to write, waiting until I could see the first hostages released. To hear what we were going hear from them and to see how they emerge back into their new and completely broken world.
They have, no doubt, been longing to return to the life that they were snatched from but so many of them will also now have to have been told about the massacre of their loved ones, the destruction of their homes and the displacement of their communities.
What does it mean for a 3-year old held hostage for 7 weeks in conditions we couldn’t even begin to imagine to “come home” when both her parents were murdered in the same moment that she began the nightmare she’s been subject to.
The pain of these days, dragging out their return, with more released today, Please God, and over the weekend, until we get to the horrifying point that we know we will ultimately get to when they will admit that there were some who were dragged into Gaza and their whereabouts are now unknown. They will forever be assumed dead, but with no body, their families will live with the crushing hope, of maybe just maybe, that they will walk in the door. It is so impossibly painful for those who will be left unable to welcome them home with a crushing embrace nor begin to mourn, finding ways to rebuild their lives with their broken heart of loss, so they stay forever in limbo of loss and hope, the trauma which never ends.
And I see 4 days of a ceasefire. 4 days when Gazans can breathe a little more calmly without the fear of devastating explosions which have killed a shockingly horrific number of people and ruined lives as homes, schools, shops and the infrastructure of life is turned to rubble. Yet alongside the fuel and food deliveries, with the trucks of nappies and water, I wish I wish more than anything there were teachers. Calm, rational, teachers who could see the conflict through the lense of Jews and Palestinians and in these days of ceasefire, resetting could happen on both sides based on understanding the lives of the people who now, more than ever, are enemies and yet it doesn’t have to be this way.
This week, the charity Jewish Women’s Aid have asked that their work is promoted in all synagogues, that we acknowledge domestic abuse and people are asked if the relationships they are in are healthy ones. I realised it was living through this atrocity that I could highlight so many tropes of unhealthy relationships that are playing out through the media, through war, globally which perhaps we can see better as a collective than perhaps we can allow ourselves to see in homes perpetrated by the people who are meant to love us most.
The manipulation of language: When language is weaponised it can be so hard to prove. It can look so innocent but sometimes it isn’t just frustrating, it’s dangerous. Yesterday, there was no hostage exchange, this was not, as the media may have wanted us to believe, a swapping of your women and children for my women and children. 13 Israelis, who, in a terror filled attack on the 7th October were snatched from their homes, grabbed from their sofa or whilst walking their dogs in the safety of their own kibbutz, were taken against their will and held hostage for 7 weeks without being able to get any word to their family or friends about their whereabouts. They were toddlers and young children 2, 4 and 9. This is not the same as women and older teenagers who have been convicted in a democratic, judicial system for crimes they have committed. Stabbing security officials, being caught carrying explosives for people paying them to perpetrate crimes, they were tried in a court of law and given a sentence with a specific time frame. I have no doubt many could justify why they were driven to such crimes and that their families were desperate for their return too, but this was not an exchange of people in the same situation, whatever language was being used. Language is a dangerous and manipulative tool for abuse of power and needs to be called out.
Separating people from the ones they love is another trope of domestic abuse. When grandchildren are weaponised, and people made to take sides. Support me or you won’t see your grandchildren again, you call your mum too often you tell her everything, you don’t need to speak to your sister again. We know these things happen in the home to give the perpetrators of domestic abuse more power, trying to come between their wives and her mum or friends the other people who might give her strength. Hostages were the greatest weapon of power. No government can respond rationally when toddlers and grandmothers are being used as collateral. Releasing some hostages and not all of them at once stops people speaking out, stops people sharing about their experience for fear of the repercussions of those still being held. The children who have been released while their fathers are still held captive will not be saying anything that they have been told to keep secret. Any information which might make their whereabouts or information about the tunnels or the perpetrators will remain unspoken.
I was struck by the joy of the people in Tel Aviv Square last night. What feels like a gift when it has been preceded by such pain. The joy of the return of a small number when we really are still in the depths of war and grief. The perpetrator of domestic violence may need to shower their victims in gifts constantly tempering their guilt for the acts they have committed. Yet I also found Israel’s behaviour in the releasing of prisoners sad too. Such strict rules to try and stop celebrations occurring in the West Bank and Gaza. Was it fear that the celebrations could rouse jubilant mobs to breaking the ceasefire or was it fear that Israelis and the media might see Palestinians taunting Israel, gloating over a small victory?
When you are in an abusive relationship do you poke the beast to manipulate the explosion which brings the world saying, look what they are like really. Or when you are in an abusive relationship do you live cowering in fear desperate not to allow havoc to be reeked, living with the protection of an iron dome and an army always ready to mobilise? Both sides are painted as the abuser and the abused, that’s what makes this conflict so impossibly hard. Yet perhaps those living in their own abusive relationships find themselves both living under the protection of ways to prevent the explosions of arguments, tiptoeing around to avoid the things that set them off, a bag packed in readiness for the moments they have to get away yet also now and again lighting the fuse almost to remind themselves this isn’t how they should be living.
I feel the Jewish community in London at this time are living as if we are all the victims of domestic violence at the moment. Worrying about what might be said or done next and living with the constant frustration of twisted narratives and being othered. I may not often support the methods or narratives of the Campaign Against Antisemitism and I am worried about what voices might be heard at tomorrow’s rally which really don’t reflect my world view. I am worried about who might want to ally themselves with us at this time but have never been an ally in the past, and their motivation to support us may not be one we want to give credence to. Yet I am going to the march tomorrow Against Antisemitism because what we the Jewish community need now more than ever is to admit that we feel like the victims of abuse, we feel ourselves to be in a hate filled relationship with society around us. We feel when you only march pro Palestine you are matching against us. It doesn’t have to be that way, you can want peace and support Jews and Palestinians to live in peace side by side but it means you have to be prepared to march for both of us. So, I will be walking tomorrow, not because of organisational logos on posters but because I want to say I am a Jew and antisemitism in the UK in 2023 is not acceptable. I hope we will be joined by Jews and non-Jews, and that this simple statement will not get manipulated into any other messages.
Let’s campaign against antisemitism, against hate of any sort, lets walk for a world when Jews and Palestinians can live peacefully side by side and in a world where global politics sets the tone for what it should be like in every household around the world. Homes filled with peaceful, loving relationships, without violence or fear, a future when Jewish Women’s Aid becomes defunct because no one is living in fear.
