Shabbat Mikketz 5784
You can listen to Rabbi Miriam's sermon here or read it below.
I have spent the week lighting candles. When I say that, I don’t just mean it’s Chanukah and therefore each night I quietly lit the chanukiah, I mean that again and again and again each day I was telling the story of Chanukah or teaching a little message as I did so when going into schools - Jewish and not, nurseries, bridge club, services, people’s homes and finally each night our own home. Five separate candle lightings in one day was my personal best!
Each time I found myself a little more anxious by what I heard. It was impossible not to have the war in Israel and Gaza as the backdrop to the festival, whether it was explicitly referenced or not. Yet as I went into non-Jewish spaces, extolling the Chanukah message of freedom of religion and the importance of diversity, it was when I was in Jewish spaces, schools and shuls that I was met with military vitriol and a need to see the current Israeli army in the place of the Maccabees. Children in Jewish schools likening the Maccabees’ victory over Antiochus to the hope for an IDF defeat of the Palestinians. Adults questioning as to whether it was still appropriate to include the change made in the 1940s by Rabbi Hertz, the then British Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue who adapted the line of Moaz Tzur from L’et tachin matbe’ach (“When God prepares the slaughter of all enemies”) to read l’et tash’bit matbe’ach, (“When God shall cause all slaughter to cease”). Surely it is now in war we need to end all killing not sing about a desire to “finish them all off”.
I was struck, saddened and sickened by the hate, the pain, the anxiety leading to a mindset of when it comes to survival it’s now either us or them. As if the maths is our survival at the expense of the lives of the whole Palestinian population. It seems people have defaulted into thinking that’s the “easy solution”. End the problem once and for all. Even our more left- wing allies seem to have been broken by the atrocities of the attacks on the 7th October to the point of being unable to see another option – us or them. I am shocked and wondering how I find and amplify the voices of moderation. I am sure that before October 7th, the desire for a two-state solution was one that I shared with most but now in this post-traumatic, mid-war mindset, what was mainstream has been made to look naïve and idealistic. Even Israeli political leadership on both sides of the spectrum, Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid are urging America not to talk publicly about a two-state solution. Netanyahu would have us all caught up in the fear that a Palestinian State is a stepping stone to having Israel wiped off the map.
I cannot give up on my ideals. I cannot allow a narrative to be formed where peace is so difficult that we, as human beings, can entertain being responsible for the annihilation of an entire people and not just the terrorist influencers within. We are a people who have repeatedly been persecuted and annihilation has been attempted and yet we walk through the streets of London, Washington and Tel Aviv with the slogan Am Yisrael Chai. Is it because of a Jewish strength and resilience that no others could possibly possess, or is terror a unifying force which lasts for generations?
Surely, we have to learn from our own experiences. The more people tried to destroy us the stronger our sense of identity, unity and peoplehood survived. As homes and infrastructure are destroyed in Gaza in the attempt to root out the evil elements of society and find the Hamas operatives, the seeds of another generation of Palestinians who hate Israel, who hate Israelis, who hate all of us Jews, continue to germinate. We cannot violently irradicate hatred for us, in order to protect us from further atrocities. Destroying Gaza is slowly breaking down the infrastructure which continues to rain down rockets on Israel but what does it create in terms of the legacy we will have to be dealing with for generations to come? Will we always be living in fear for the next attack, the next obscene and horrifying outbreak of violence against our families, our friends, ourselves whether we create a safe place for Palestinians to call their home or whether we try to wipe them off the face of the earth?
So what is my alternative, what is my idealised, naïve response to ending the terror and stops the hatred in our own community which comes out in words and the hatred we have witnessed against Israel which has left such a traumatising effect on us all near and far? It’s simple enough to be scoffed and jeered at by those who are not ashamed by a more violent alternative.
For all I am calling for is education. We have to educate the hate out of society. The education has to be based on not giving up on the hope for peace. It has to be steeped in our Jewish values, the same values which brought about an independent Jewish homeland in 1948, Judaism teaches that “every person shall sit under their vine and under their fig tree and no one shall terrorise them” (Micha 4:4). We must teach “Tzedek Tzedek tirdof”, “Justice justice shall you pursue” and ask the question, why is the word Tzedek, justice repeated? Because as the midrash teaches, justice cannot come about if one people gets the whole because to establish true justice there is always compromise, we have to pursue your justice and their justice which has to be shared in order for it to be real. If we don’t ensure Jewish values are at the core of how we create the next chapter of life in Israel the entire Zionist plan is undermined. Israel is our past, our present and our future. It is our history, this is where we have always been whatever history people would rather rewrite and teach. In every generation we have our products of writings, rituals and heritage from the Holy Land and that which was created as a response to mourning our temporary exile. We have always and will always return. But we have to live the Jewish values that were created in that land. One of resilience over strength, one of morality not short cuts. We have to educate on both sides, teaching humanity and understanding. We have to stop the Palestinian Authority using textbooks in their schools that vilify Israel and we have to stop Israeli kids thinking that if we could just get rid of the Palestinians they wouldn’t have to learn to run to bomb-shelters or delay their education by serving in the military.
Is it ever possible? Will human nature allow for such a radically tame response to hatred, fear and attempts on both sides of annihilation?
The words of professor of social science Michael Billig have become so familiar to many of us because they appear in our siddur, “There is nothing inevitable about human prejudice. There is no biological gene which stipulates that groups should harbour distrust against others.” I wonder at what point Billig’s thesis becomes false when hatred and distrust is bred from one generation to the next. How can we ensure we educate in the way that Billig affirms: “Groups which bring together people from different religions can symbolise a more hopeful future. The precondition is not that groups should come together in order to learn about the other as if the other were an anthropological specimen. Instead there should be a willingness to accept that in learning from others oneself changes.”
Maybe I will find these words are too soon. That no one can hear them while hostages remain unaccounted for, while physical wounds are still healing and psychological ones are so present. But, the narrative is moving in a direction that feels too frightening. We cannot let our grief and distress put our values and long term goals on the wrong trajectory. We have to hold on to the possibility of co-existence and peace for “if not now, when”?
