Munich

January 6th, 2006
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Munich is a name, is a place, which resonates in Jewish consciousness before and separately from the fall of 1972. Jews first came to that city in the early 1200's and lived through cycles of expulsions, pogroms, readmittance and renewed persecutions that continued in the 1800's. Jews in Munich never knew extended peace and quiet; certainly not security. The community grew in the 19th and 20th centuries until its destruction by the Nazis in the Holocaust. The first concentration camp, Dachau, was opened just outside the city. For reasons that I will never understand, Jews kept coming back to Munich, including the 1972 Olympics. Surely, they must have thought, we all thought, that Jews wouldn't be murdered any more in the city of Munich, in the country of Germany. How wrong that thought was. 

I remember that time explicitly and vividly. Ruby and I were married in June 1972 and those High Holy Days would be the first time that I officiated for an adult congregation, having previously led services for teenagers. I was both looking forward to and terrified of that opportunity. I led services, davened, blew shofar and read Torah. The murder of the Israeli athletes at Munich paralyzed me. I was left speechless. Fortunately the chazzan, a much older and wonderful gentleman, born in Europe, spoke before Yizkor. I can't remember what he said. 

Wiser because of years, and more experienced, especially by living in Israel for nearly two and a half years of my life, having studied and immersed myself in Zionism, having watched Spielberg's movie "Munich" last night, I can simply say, it's not one of his best. It is fundamentally flawed. It has lines that beg for context and his simplistic treatment allows people, Jews and gentiles, to deduce ideas and thoughts that are erroneous. It is influenced by a pronounced anti-Zionist personality, Tony Kushner. The writers never consulted the living participants or the surviving families. The characters are caricatures. It is disappointing, upsetting, disgusting, much too long, and not worth the price of admission. If I didn't need to make this sermon, I wouldn't have given him my $8.50. What can we say? What should we say?

• What happened at Munich, 1972 was murder. Murderers are not heroes. Murderers should be punished. Yet the Games went on and the surviving murderers were ultimately set free. The world moved on. Jewish blood watered the German earth, again. This movie is very misleading. The struggle between Arabs and Israelis or better put, between Moslems and Jews didn't begin in Munich. This wasn't a tit for tat scenario. The struggle began in a virtually empty Turkish province, its forests denuded, its water infested with malaria-infested mosquitoes, absentee landowners, and a very small indigenous Arab population along with a small aged Jewish community, mostly in Jerusalem and Tzfat. To this ignored and devastated piece of real estate, the only people to proclaim sovereignty in its area, returned - key and operative word - returned Jews who had learned a difficult and most painful lesson long before the Holocaust - the world, at least the European world, was not hospitable to Jews. Legally obtaining land, purchasing it for cold, hard cash, these Jews, the BILU and other early Zionists, renewed - again a key and operative word - renewed Jewish settlement on the land, where when you dig, you find Jews, Jewish things, and Jewish names. Originally, the Jews were welcomed home - another key word, by the Turks and Arabs. This was not to last. From then on Jewish existence would be bought by blood. Books are sanitized records that don't show you the blood and guts by which the Jewish people reclaimed, resettled and repopulated their - our homeland, all the while attempting to live in peaceful coexistence with the growing Arab population. Ultimately, autonomous Jewish existence, on whatever tiny and inconspicuous area, was, and to some Moslems/Arabs, remains an anathema. That must be extinguished and expunged. He should have named the movie, The Munich Murders, for Munich was just one point in a continuing never-ceasing-saga of the murder of Jews, of Israelis. A truism from the movie - an Israeli is never a civilian. As long as they have served in the army, when they are out of uniform, they are still fair game to be killed. There is no battlefield where the war ends. One side can be defeated but not vanquished, so the fight continues. That is true. The movie corrupts the historical record.

• Fighting for your existence is dirty. Therefore Israel and Israelis deserve our highest respect and admiration. That does not translate into justifying everything that Israel or Israelis do. But you and I don't have to lift a finger except maybe to write a check. Our lives are not on any battlefield. Our children dream of computers, Ipods, and not learning how to shoot an M-16, fly and jet fighter, or hand to hand combat, or the really dirty stuff of stopping those who would kill you. The episodes after Munich that the movie tries to portray and does so most badly, were not for revenge as much as they were counter-terrorism, so intercept and interdict those who would perpetrate such actions upon Jews/Israelis in Europe. This is not Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. This is blood and gore. This is killing so you will not be killed. The only rule in all of this is that there are no rules. The old maxim is true, this much: All is fair in love - I don't know about that - and war. This is war! It is still war! How do think they have stopped buses being blown up in Jerusalem? How do think they stopped hotels being blown up on Seder night? How do think they stopped they from taking children hostage and murdering them, as they did in Ma'alot, a village you don't even remember? Not by saying "Pretty please." And not by offering anything and everything. The movie shows the dirtiness, but it doesn't show that Israel has cried "stop" and was answered by the three "no's" of Khartoum, no recognition, no negotiations and no peace. Why didn't he put that in, to show the hopelessness and helplessness of Israel's predicament? Why doesn't he allude to uselessness of the United Nations that since 1948 has done nothing to secure Israel's existence and would it be massacred along with all the other massacres that it has done nothing to prevent or stop? Silence. This movie says nothing. For Tony Kushner the creation of the State of Israel was a mistake. And everything that follows from the mistake is fruit tainted by the "original sin." Thus everything that happens to Israelis/Jews is justified.

• Fighting dehumanizes you. But it doesn't remove the justice of the mission. Spielberg and Kushner did not interview real Mossad operatives or their families because they didn't want the truth, which would not have made for a good movie thriller. They didn't question their mission. They didn't show the angst. They didn't regret their deeds. They regretted that this is the world into which they were born and into which they will bring their children. When I hold our grandson and play with our granddaughter and then read the newspapers I have many twinges inside of me. Oh for such a world. Yet mothers in Israel send their sons and daughters to the army and all branches of service. Fathers see their children in uniform and look at themselves in the mirror. Is there a choice? If the opposite side refuses to say "peace" and mean it, not like Arafat, even when offered 97% and Jerusalem? And when the other side - the Palestinians say Gaza now and Jaffa next, as if Tel Aviv doesn't exist, nor the past 57 years? Kushner doesn't care. That is why Avner, not true to life, remains in New York. For Kushner the twin towers are still standing in the last scene. That is a lie. Terrorists destroyed them and murdered their occupants. The same would be the fate of Israel. Kushner doesn't get it. For him, Israelis are Jews who should leave or get what they deserve, or become pitiless animals. He has ignored the historical record and Spielberg with him did not make a documentary. They used it as a pretext for a bad, gory thriller, which should be panned and ignored, and certainly rebuked.

• In many ways there is no separation between Jew and Israeli. We think there is. Israelis think there is. So why does the media call me when Robertson makes statements about Sharon? Do Catholics have to answer for Italy? Israelis are just Jews living in Israel. Jews are Israelis living elsewhere. That is how the world sees us. Maybe they are right. If the Jewish people are really one, and that is not a Federation slogan to get us to give more money, then we should pay attention to each other, care for each other and know each other. Maybe the real problem is not enough Jews are going to get really mad about this film and say something or do something. Why do we call Israel a "homeland?" What does it mean to you? I know what it means to me. Is it just a tear-jerking tourist stop, or a place to which each Jew should make a religious pilgrimage? Why is it so difficult to get Jews to come with me to Israel, when there is no intifada? And if there is no connection, then why should we care about this movie at all? I won't permit you the fantasy that there is a real middle ground. There isn't.

• In Psalm 149, verse six, we read: "…and a double-edged sword in their hand; to execute vengeance - n'kama - upon the nations, chastisements upon the peoples…" All the late medieval Jewish commentators cloak these words in apologetics. They couldn't even imagine a Jew fighting; never mind in a tank and jet plane. They sugar coat these words to mean religion, prayers, and beliefs. They did this because they really knew the plain meaning of the words: there comes a time when you have to defend yourself, to kill or be killed, to strike back lest timidity encourages further attacks, when silence indicates weakness and vulnerability. Inaction indicates the victim ready to be victimized. What's wrong with vengeance sometime? Why should our blood be less red than someone else's? Why should the murderers and butchers be right and the blood of the murdered and the butchered be spilled with impunity? The Rabbis said that at times, even if God be silent and we expect or with hubris demand His action and it does not, then it is "At La'asot" - "A time to do." Spielberg doesn't get it. Kushner couldn't care less. What it says is says in an undignified manner. He also omits that every prayer service ends with a prayer for peace, not vengeance. Every Hamas pronouncement ends with a call for our eradication. They cheered with Sadaam Hussein's missiles hit Israel, a non-combatant in the Gulf War, and little fuss is made when the Iranian president calls for Israel's destruction and denies the Holocaust. Spielberg and Kushner don't get it. Because of the uneducated or myopic general public, Jew and non-Jew alike, this movie is not only bad. It is dangerous.

Don't see the movie if you haven't already. 

Second thought, go see the movie, too bad for the wasted money, and get mad. 

Third thought, see the movie, get mad, learn more and speak knowledgeably to others. 

Last thought, see the movie, get mad, learn a lot, speak to others, and come with me to Israel. 

Now. This summer. Prove the connection between Jew and Israel. 

Show Israelis that Jews love them. Show the world that we love Israel. 

By action and not lip-service. 

Shabbat Shalom.