A Very Small Nation Called Israel

Second Day Rosh HaShanah
October 5th, 2005
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Introduction

This morning's Torah portion is one of the most dramatic scenes in the Bible. Abraham's plea for a son with his wife Sarah had been answered in the birth of Isaac. Now God commands him to sacrifice him on an unknown mountaintop. We have read these words but have no idea what they mean. Have any of us ever been summoned like this? Have not all of us been protective and nurturing to our children, even to a fault? From the moment that their child is born Israeli parents count to eighteen not thirteen, that is when their child enters the Israeli army. They serve on the Golan, the West Bank, in the Negev, on the Lebanese border, on the seacoast, and, until last month, in the Gaza Strip. Every Israeli parent is an Abraham and Sarah. We only read the words.

The second window on my left contains prophecies from Ezekiel. The very bottom panel is the representation of his vision of the dry bones, a prophecy set in the years following the destruction of Solomon's Temple in 586 B.C.E. Ezekiel, in Babylonian exile, asks God: "Can these bones live?" He is asking, "Is the Jewish people dead? Is God's covenant with Israel over?" God shows Ezekiel the bones coming together, infused with breath and standing erect. The message is clear. Israel will not die. Israel will rise again. The people of Israel, the Jewish people, are eternal. And yet…

Those younger than me probably do not remember June 1967; Arab armies perched like vultures to devour a nineteen-year-old country that had never ceased fighting for its life. We remember well the trepidation and the fear that Israel might be destroyed, and could not fathom life without her. Oh, the euphoria of victory! Then the reflection of what might have been and the rejection of a callous world. Abba Eban came to the U.N. on June 19th and delivered an address to the General Assembly that, at one time, I could almost recite by heart. Within its twenty-two pages are the following words:

On the fateful morning of June 5, when Egyptian forces moved by air and land against Israel's western and southern territory, our country's choice was plain. The choice was to live or perish, to defend the national existence or to forfeit it for all time.

From these dire moments, Israel emerged in five heroic days from awful peril to successful and glorious resistance. Alone, unaided, neither seeking nor receiving help, our nation rose in self-defense. So long as men cherish freedom, so long as small states strive for the dignity of survival, the exploits of Israel's armies will be told from one generation to another with the deepest pride. The Soviet Union has described our resistance as aggression and sought to have it condemned. We reject this accusation with all our might. Here was armed force employed in a just and righteous cause; as righteous as the defense of freedom at Valley forge; as just as the expulsion of Hitler's bombers from the British skies; as noble as the protection of Stalingrad against the Nazi hordes, so was the defense of Israel's security and existence against those who sought our nation's destruction. What should be condemned is not Israel's action, but the attempt to condemn it. Never have freedom, honor, justice, national interest and international morality been so righteously protected.

Eban concluded his speech with these words: 

The Middle East, tired of wars, is ripe for a new emergence of human vitality. Let the opportunity not fall again from our hands.

That is the how and the why Israel controlled the Gaza Strip. It was not some grand Israeli/Jewish scheme. I still hear his voice ringing in my ears. The world has forgotten. As we know the course of history, his plea went unanswered then and now.

What has happened to our Israel?
What did it do in relinquishing Gaza?
Should they have ever settled there?
What is the inner story of these days?
And, what is our response?

I. Succinctly put, Israel, selflessly, relinquished a great deal without concretely receiving anything.

While living there last fall, Ruby and I watched Israel struggled with its soul, with its history, with its vision of itself, what it is to be "Jewish," whether to be democratic, with the dichotomies within the population - left verses right, religious verses secular, settler verses inside the Green Line, Likud verses Labor. The body politic of Israel was writhing in agony, shredded by Sharon's disengagement from Gaza and four settlements on the northern West Bank. Zealous messianic expectation was pitted against real politick.

This is what Israel gave up, for the dream - fantasy, maybe, of peace:

• 1.3 million Palestinians will no longer be under Israel jurisdiction.
  
• Dismantlement of four settlements in the northern West Bank, creating a contiguous region of 300 square miles under Palestinian control. As a result, 430,000 West Bank Palestinians will no longer be under any Israeli security control.
  
• 8,000 people, some 1,700 families have left their homes and livelihoods that they have built, some for several decades. The 'hitnatkut' - disengagement meant leaving, really destroying:
  3 high schools
  7 elementary schools
  36 kindergartens
  42 daycare centers
  5,000 school children will be in new schools
  38 synagogues - as we have seen - have been destroyed
  166 Israeli farmers have lost their farms, thus
  5,000 Palestinians employed their have lost their jobs.
  48 graves, including those of six residents murdered by terrorists, were exhumed and reinterred in Israel.
  
• The cost in shekels to build and to tear down is in the billions.
  
• The cost to the Israeli neshema - inestimable.
  
• They gave up a fantasy, perpetrated by the combination of Israeli chauvinistic nationalism and ultra religious messianism called Eretz Yisrael HaShelemah - the full/complete Biblical Israel. When I came to Israel in 1968, I bought and still have a huge five-piece wall map that stretches from Damascus to the Suez Canal. We have witnessed the demolition of that fantasy and the discrediting of both extremist views, messianic and nationalistic.
  

Out of love for Israel, in thirty-one years of public preaching and speaking, I have never spoken against Israeli policy. I would not give fuel to those who would attack Israel. Because of the fear of greater harm and not greater good, I kept my thoughts private and did not join in public dissent. Now said simply, Israel should never have settled there. It was a tremendous mistake that took thirty-five years to recognize. There was no strategy, no vision, no contemplation of the historical question of living with the Arabs already there, no introspection of the Israeli soul, no analysis of the Zionist dream. They never used the proverbial 'yiddishe cup.' My soul has cried over the agony that Ruby and I witnessed in person and from a distance. After painful discussions with Israelis who would bear the burden, who fought in Israel's wars and defense, my neshama ached for what has happened to our national dream and Jewish conscience, the soul of Israel. The process by which Israel left Gaza might be questionable. That Israel needed to leave, in my mind and heart, is beyond any doubt. Being a good Conservative - capitol C, Masorati Jew, my political position connected to my religious posture rejects the extreme right and left of the spectrum. I cry because no one is articulating a middle ground. What was will never be again. They need a voice to articulate what they can and should be. There is no clear dreamer who captures the nation's imagination and provides a vision. From afar I cry for Zion and my soul longs to be near.

II. During the past months of agony, with the threat of civil disobedience, even civil war, where yeshiva rabbis were telling their soldier-students to resist and disobey orders, with nails strewn across Israeli roadways, and during the days when Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip, there are certain stories that we need to hear.

They are Israeli stories. They are Jewish stories. And to the degree that we are Jewish in the marrow of our bones and identify with Israel, they become our stories too.

A young soldier walked a 9-year-old boy to the bus that had come to spend the last month with his relatives in a Gaza settlement. He was explaining to the soldier that he had preserved the memory of the last month in the town by taking enormous numbers of pictures with his camera.

A female soldier held the baby of a woman being evacuated forcefully, in order to make a political statement, who wanted to make sure her child was safe.

Despite all threats, there was neither civil war nor financial paralysis. The Israeli stock market kept climbing all that week.

Letting people finish davening before evacuation, with soldiers carefully carrying men wearing tefillin to make sure that the tefillin would not fall of or be treated with disrespect, or even to their making sure to adjust them properly for those being evacuated so that they could still fulfill the mitzvah.

No one was killed in the evacuation of Gaza and the four settlements. Injuries were few and low level. Most of those hurt were soldiers and police. In Israel, the civilian-police injury ratio is expected to be few civilians and more soldiers. 

One settler spokesperson, Eve Harrow, tells of a hot, frustrating evening when protesters blocked moving trucks leaving Gush Katif. Cranky, sweaty, hungry soldiers, settlers and truckers shouted at each other with the staccato viciousness that all too frequently punctuates Israeli life. Suddenly, someone yelled "Mincha." Everyone stopped. The religious among the combatants prayed together, then continued arguing after the afternoon prayer. The warring factions also paused for a water break.

The stories are legion. The residents were allowed their last services in their synagogues, to march around the town with the menorah. That women handled women and men handled men in respect to modesty. That every religious object was taken to avoid desecration. That students took out their teachers. That cousins evacuated cousins. That the police and soldiers were unarmed. And that communities like our sister region Emek Hefer have opened their arms, hearts and purses to comfortably and honorably resettle and integrate their fellow Israelis, their fellow Jews with dignity. What nation as ever acted like this? What people have ever behaved like this to each other? What county, after righteously defending its very life, has ever given so much and received so little?

While many will write in the history books of Israel how glorious was the pre-State era, how courageous were the fighters of the war for Independence, how brave were the soldiers of the IDF during the Six-Day War and even more so of the Yom Kippur War, which Ruby and I witnessed in person, living in Jerusalem, those days, I believe, in my heart, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, these days of hitnatkut, these days when Jew carried Jew, revealed through pictures and stories, when Israel will exist for a thousand years, the writers of history will look back and say "this was Israel's shining hour."

III. What is our response to this epic chapter in Israeli and Jewish history?

Surely, our attention is certainly redirected because of the terrible catastrophe of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. However, a Jew must always pay attention to Jews. We must keep focused on Israel.

What do we do here and now?

1. Love Israel. Israel must never be relinquished to the back of our mind. In some mystical way, I believe that if all Jews somehow exhibited a love for Israel in their hearts, and Israelis knew that Jews the worldwide loved them and cared for them, it could move the heavens and help them.
2. Advocate for Israel. Do not be silent.  Talk to your neighbors. Talk with your co-workers. There is everything to be proud of and nothing to be ashamed of. Speak up against the blackmail of Israel called "divestment." Stand up against that which they call anti-Zionism and which is neither distant nor different from anti-Semitism, which goes hand in hand. One says to the Jews "Don't live there" and the other says, "Don't live at all."
3. Buy Israel bonds. Even a small one. Israel needs to replace and build new infrastructure. Ben Gurion's vision of building the Negev will now be an Israeli priority. We are partners in the building of the State even if you do not pick up a shovel. The bonds we buy make us shutafim - partners.
4. Send your children to Israel. Every one of our children must spend time in Israel. We specifically sponsor the most excellent programs: USY Pilgrimage in the summer; college age program Koach participates with the birthright; USY High School for a semester; the Conservative Yeshivah where Ruby and I studied for after college and before graduate work; a semester with credit at any of the major Israeli universities of Haifa, Tel Aviv, Bar Ilan, Ben Gurion, and Hebrew University in Jerusalem where I studied. Single Jewish children must know why Israel exists, how it lives, and why they have a stake as a Jew that it will always exist! They must walk the walk, talk the talk and kiss the soil of the land of Israel!
5. Come with Ruby and me to Israel next July. Seeing pictures, buy bonds, and even sending your children without going yourself is like "kissing the bride through the veil." It is not the same. Moreover, if you have been there before, go again. I assure you, you did not see it all. You did not see it the way we are going to see it. The theme of the trip is "The Places That Built the State." We will also visit our fellow Masorati Jews and our partner area Emek Hefer. Come with Ruby and me, and let us do it together. We will host a meeting in our home on Sunday, October 16th, 2005 at 6:30 P.M. [4101 West Franklin Street] to review the details and learn more in preparation for the trip. You must email [rabbi_temblebethel@verizon.net] or call me [804-355-3564] so that we can prepare. Not only your children but you too, must walk the walk, talk the talk, and kiss the soil of Eretz Yisrael. 
   

That is the short list of our response to this epic moment in our history. 

Conclusion

Abraham was prepared to offer his son, his destiny, on the altar, but it did not happen. Israel has offered its sons and daughters on the altar of its existence. It has happened. Now Israel has again made an offering on the altar for peace. Islamic leaders claim to be an "Abrahamic Faith," a descendant of Abraham. If that it so, I ask them, what are you prepared to offer on Abraham's altar? Moreover, if Christendom's leaders also claim to be an "Abrahamic faith," what will they bring to Father Abraham's altar? Will they offer up their hatred of Israel and their hatred of Jews, and let it be destroyed by the flames of the altar? Will they offer up their violence and their terrorism, their murder of innocents, to be destroyed by fire of the wood that Isaac carried on his back? We are Abraham's descendants. We read his story as our own. We carry the seal of his covenant in our flesh. What will we bring to the altar? 

Our love of Israel? 

Our dedication to Abraham's God? 

Our funds? 

Our children, to see what Abraham saw, and more? 

Will you come with me to walk Abraham's walk? 

May peace come. 

May those hurt and harmed by natural disasters of tsunamis and hurricanes be healed. 

May peace come to the world. 

May peace come to Israel, and may we see it in our lifetime.

Amen.