Tag Archives: terrorism

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

February 4, 2017

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Exodus (שמות)

Comments

2 Comments

Immigration, Terrorism, and History – Parashat Bo 5777

I am the child of a stateless refugee.

My grandfather, Israel, was from Lodz, Poland, and my grandmother, Feiga, was from Kamenets-Podolsk, Ukraine.  Each of them fled East from the Nazi advance – the only members of their families to escape and survive.

They both made their way to the Soviet Georgian town of Poti, on the Black Sea – which was beyond the Nazis’ advance into the Soviet Union.  In 1943, my grandmother’s landlady thought they would make a nice couple, so she introduced them.  They were married 6 weeks later.   After the war, they returned to Poland to search for surviving relatives, without success.  When pogroms broke out, they escaped to the West, and ended up in an American-run Displaced Persons camp in an Rosenheim, West Germany.  They applied for a visa to come to America.  My grandfather had an older sister, Bella, who had emigrated to the United States in 1930 and settled in Long Beach, California.  She sponsored their application.

My father, Carl, was born in the DP camp in 1948.  They did not receive the visa until he was three years old.  By that time, the DP camp had actually closed down.  Finally, in June 1951, my father and grandparents arrived at Ellis Island aboard the USS General M.B. Stewart.

I have grown up with this story.  I always kind of wondered why it took my grandparents so long to receive their visa – but never looked into it.  Over the last couple of weeks, as issues around immigration and refugees has exploded across our country, I have been thinking a lot about my own family’s journey.

I asked my father why it took so long to get the visa.  He explained that the United States had annual refugee quotas, and that there was no preference given to Jewish refugees who had survived the Holocaust.  So they simply had to wait their turn.

Searching online for information, I came across the Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island Foundation and discovered that more than 51 million passenger records have been scanned and recorded in a searchable database.  I ran a query for the name Berkenwald, and was surprised to discover records for 21 people.  All of them had originated from Lodz, Poland, so I am almost certain that they are all relatives.  It is remarkable because we thought we knew about all of our surviving family members.

The earliest immigrant on the list, 21 year old Schmul Leib Berkenwald, arrived in 1906.  Two Berkenwald’s arrived in 1921.  (Remember that year.)  One came in 1938, leaving from Belgium.  Five managed to arrive during World War Two, a pair leaving from Spain in 1941 and a mother and her two daughters coming from the United Kingdom.  Twelve Berkenwald’s came as refugees after the war, including my father, listed as Calel, and my grandparents, Feiga and Israel.

America is a nation of immigrants.  Each of us has stories about how we arrived.  Some people in this room are themselves immigrants, and even refugees.  But the truth is, as the Jewish people, we are all immigrants and refugees.

This morning’s Torah portion, Bo, describes the final moments before our Israelite ancestors leave Egypt.  The story takes a break from the narrative to record instructions for observing Passover.  It specifies symbolic rituals that are to be reenacted every year.  We are to slaughter and eat the paschal lamb on matza and maror, with loins girded, sandals on feet and staff in hand.  We are to remove hametz from our homes and eat only unleavened bread for seven days.  Our Passover seder today is directly based on these instructions given to Moses over three thousand years ago.

What does the seder recall and celebrate?  The Exodus, after four hundred years, of our people from the oppressive Egyptians.  Looked at from a different angle, it is a celebration of the moment when our ancestors became political refugees.  They wandered for forty years through the wilderness, homeless and stateless.  It was essentially a refugee camp, not too dissimilar from refugee camps in the Middle East today.

As the Torah progresses, it hammers home our memory of being strangers in a strange land.  We cannot forget what it was like to have been aliens living in Egypt.  Jewish tradition instructs us to recall our redemption from slavery every single day.

It is not only the ancient past.  We have experienced persecution, exile, and statelessness over and over throughout our history.

That memory must make us compassionate to strangers living among us.  The Torah repeatedly tells us to take care of the strangers in our midst.  Citizens and non-citizen alike must be treated with the same set of laws.

These are the ideals of our tradition.  In the real world, however, things get more complicated.  Nations cannot simply throw open their borders and allow anyone who wants to come in.  Governments’ primary responsibilities are to those who are already living in the country.  So it is absolutely legitimate to screen potential immigrants before their arrival.  The dilemma we face now is how many immigrants we ought to be accepting, and which ones.

I am certain that everyone in this room has an opinion about these questions.

Before we get too locked in our beliefs, I ask that we first consider a couple of things.  First, let’s each think about our own family history.  How did each of us end up in America?  Those of us who are not immigrants, at some point had ancestors who arrived on these shores from somewhere else.  What compelled them to make the journey?  What were they leaving behind – were they seeking opportunity, or fleeing persecution?  What kind of welcome did they find when they arrived?

It is important to recall our personal stories, because it reminds us that government policies have impacts on the lives of individuals and families.  Just imagine if, when your relatives wanted to immigrate, immigration policies had been more restrictive and they were turned away.

The second thing we ought to all consider is the history of immigration into the United States.  President Trump’s Executive Order titled “Protecting the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States” did not appear out of a vacuum.  Our nation has a long history.  Before any of us takes a stand on this issue, we ought to know what has come before.

So please allow me to summarize the past 135 years of US immigration and refugee policy.

Since the founding of our nation, there have been many laws which regulate who can be admitted into the country as immigrants.  Some of those laws expanded immigration, while others limited it.

The first immigration law to restrict a particular ethnic group from coming to America was passed by Congress in 1882.  It was called the Chinese Exclusion Act.  Initially, it was meant to last ten years, but it was so popular that Congress renewed it in 1892 and made it permanent in 1902.

Large numbers of mostly male Chinese workers had immigrated beginning with the California Gold Rush in 1848.  They continued as laborers for the construction of the transcontinental railroad.  As the economy declined in the 1870’s after the Civil War, fear of the “Yellow Peril” increased.  Chinese workers were blamed for driving down wages.  Chinese residents had already been banned from becoming US citizens.  The new law imposed a total ban on Chinese immigration.  Anyone who left the country needed to have special certification in order to reenter.  This meant that husbands could neither sponsor their wives to join them from China, or themselves go to visit their families.

The law was overturned in 1943 in deference to the US’s alliance with China during World War Two.  The new legislation allowed Chinese residents in the US to become naturalized citizens.  With regard to immigration, it expanded the national quota – to 105 Chinese immigrants per year.

Until the 1920’s, Chinese were the only immigrant group that was specifically targeted by law.

After World War One, huge numbers of Europeans were fleeing the devastation that had been wreaked on their homelands.  Immigration to the United States exploded.  At the same time, the US economy took a downturn as war-spending declined.  The result was predictable: anti-immigrant backlash.

The Immigration Act of 1917 was the first to broadly restrict immigration.  It marked the beginning of nativism in the United States.  It established literacy requirements and created classes of inadmissible people.  It banned all immigration from the Asia-Pacific Zone, a huge swath of territory defined by latitude and longitude which included the Arabian Peninsula, India, Afghanistan, Asiatic Russia, and more.  Nobody who lived there would be allowed in the country.

In 1921, Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, which introduced the National Origins Formula.  For the first time, the US imposed immigration quotas.  It worked like this: The 1910 US census included records of the numbers of foreign-born residents currently living in the United States, divided up by country of origin.  3% of the total number from each country would be permitted to immigrate each year.

The National Origins Formula was originally designed to be temporary, but it became permanent three years later when Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924.  The new act changed the formula.  The percentage would decrease to 2%, with an annual ceiling that would severely reduce the total number of permitted immigrants.  Instead of the 1910 census, immigration would now be based on the 1890 census.

Furthermore, relative percentages from each country were now going to be based on the overall proportion of all naturalized citizens, including those whose families had been in the United States for generations.  This was designed to give a tremendous preference to new immigrants from the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany, who were seen as racially superior.

It was also meant to reduce immigration by Eastern European Jews, Italians, and Africans.  It worked as intended.  86% of the 155,000 permitted immigrants in the first year came from Northern European countries.  The restrictions were so great that in 1924, there were more people from the undesirable countries that left the United States than who entered it.

The law was not controversial.  It passed the Senate by a vote of 69 to 9 to 18, with strong bipartisan support.  It was rooted in beliefs in eugenics that were popular at the time.  One of the architects of the law, Senator David Reed, complained that earlier legislation “disregards entirely those of us who are interested in keeping American stock up to the highest standard – that is, the people who were born here.”  He claimed that Southern and Eastern Europeans and Jews arrived sick and starving and were less capable of contributing to the American economy and adapting to American culture.

In 1932, President Hoover shut down nearly all immigration.  1933 saw just 23,000 foreigners move to the United States.

Throughout the 1930’s on average, more people emigrated from the US than immigrated to it.    Under the Mexican Repatriation Movement from 1929 to 1936, as many as 2 million people were deported by the Immigration and Naturalization Services, many without any due process.  Significant numbers of the deportees were actually US citizens at the time.

Most Jewish would-be immigrants throughout the 1930’s were refused admission.

Things began to swing the other way in 1952.  The Immigration and Nationality Act changed the quotas, basing them on the 1920 census.  It also removed racial distinctions.

Finally, in 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments abolished the National Origins Formula.  It put limits on immigration based on hemisphere.  For the first time, there was a limit for immigration from the Western Hemisphere – 120,000 per year.  The Eastern Hemisphere was given 170,000.  It also established a seven-category preference system, giving priority, for example, to potential immigrants with relatives who were US citizens, and to those with professional or specialized skills.

In subsequent years, further refinements have been made.  Many of these changes should be understood in light of the rise of globalization and the increasing ease of movement around the world.  The 1980 Refugee Act established policies for refugees, redefined refugees according to UN norms; and set a target for 50,000 refugees annually.

In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, signed by President Reagan, established penalties for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants and provided amnesty for 3 million illegal immigrants.

The 1990 Immigration Reform and Control Act increased immigration limits to 700,000 annually, and increased visas by 40%.  It also increased the amount of employment-related immigration.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed laws to expand the categories of criminal activities that could lead to deportation.  As of 2013, this legislation had resulted in the deportation of more than 2 million people.

Recent years have also seen resolutions by Congress and the California Legislature apologizing for discriminatory immigration policies of the past, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Mexican Repatriation movement.

It is a long and complicated history.  Ours is a nation of immigrants, and yet we have gone through periods of time when the ideals of freedom and equality enshrined in the Constitution were not necessarily reflected in our immigration policies.  The overall trend since the end of World War Two has been to establish a fair and equitable system of immigration that provides a steady inflow of people from around the world who will assimilate into American culture and contribute to the flourishing of the country.  America has also been a haven for persecuted individuals who enter as refugees.  That is why I am standing here today.

In periods of restricting immigration to the United States, we have seen some of the same kinds of fears expressed as we are witnessing today: Immigrants take jobs from Americans.  They depress wages.  They will not be able to assimilate American values.  They will change the demographic mix of the country and disrupt American culture.

Are these valid concerns?

We each have our opinions.  But I would urge all of us to acknowledge that these same claims have been made in the past when other groups have been excluded, including Jews.

A fear that is widely expressed today is that by accepting Muslim refugees specifically, we open the doors to potential terrorists who would try to take advantage of weak vetting policies.

That is the stated reason for President Trump’s Executive Order.  By the way, if we are going to express an opinion about it, it behooves us to read it first.  Some elements might be a good idea.  The President instructs the Secretaries of Homeland Security and State, and the Directors of National Intelligence and the FBI to conduct reviews and submit reports of the status of various aspects of our current vetting procedures for visas and immigration and to create more rigorous screening procedures.

The sections that have generated so much controversy, and that should be viewed in light of our nation’s immigration history, is the outright banning of all travel by any person from those seven countries, the total halting of all refugee resettlement for 120 days, the indefinite halting of acceptance for all Syrian refugees, and the implied favoring of Christian refugees over Muslims.

Consider two questions:  1.  Are these steps consistent with our nation’s values?  2.  Do they address a problem that actually exists?

There is an underlying flaw with the whole thing.  Terrorism-generated fear is vastly overweighted and thus leads to really bad policy.  That is precisely why terrorists do what they do.  They want governments to overreact.

How many people have actually been killed in terrorist attacks in the United States by people born in foreign countries?

In September 2016, the CATO Institute, a libertarian thinktank, issued a report entitled “Terrorism and Immigration.”  The author, Alex Nowrasteh, catalogs all foreign-born terrorists between 1975 and the end of 2015.  He looks at how many people they killed, which countries they came from, and what kinds of visas they used to enter the United States.  In that time period, there have been 154 foreign-born terrorists who have murdered 3,024 people on US soil.  Keep in mind that 2,983, or 98.6% of them, were killed on 9/11.

114 of the 154 foreign-born terrorists did not actually manage to kill anyone.  They either failed in their attacks, or were caught by law enforcement before they could act.  40 terrorists are responsible for the murders of 3,024 people in that 30 year time frame.

During the same time period, 1.13 billion foreigners entered the United States legally or illegally.  More than 28 million foreigners entered the country for each victim who was killed in an attack.  The chance of being murdered in a terrorist attack on US soil by a foreigner is one in 3.6 million per year.

Fear of refugees is unsupported by the facts.  Nobody has been murdered in a terrorist attack in the United States by a refugee since the 1970’s.

Of the nineteen hijackers on 9/11, eighteen had entered on tourist visas.  None of them came from the seven countries banned by the President’s order.  In fact, there has never been a single person killed in a terrorist act on US soil by someone from one of those seven countries.  Here are the countries of origin of radicalized Muslims who have carried out attacks in the United States since 9/11: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and the United States.

The attack at the Pulse nightclub this past December in which 49 people were killed was committed by Omar Mateen, who was born in New York.  The San Bernardino killings were committed by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik.  He was born in Chicago.  She was born in Pakistan and raised in Saudi Arabia.

In light of our recent history, it would seem that the threat of terrorism is not an especially significant problem with regard to our current immigration and refugee policies.  This is not to say that we should not take great care regarding who is permitted to entire our nation.  We should, but we must not allow ourselves to be driven by fear.

The deeper question we must consider is what our personal experience, our national experience and the experience of the Jewish people over the last three millennia teach us about dealing with those who leave their homelands to seek greater opportunities.  What are the values that we hope to embody?  And in an increasingly complicated and quickly-changing world, how do we translate those values into actions?

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

October 17, 2015

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Genesis (בראשית)

Comments

2 Comments

Please Let It Not Be Another Intifada – Noach 5776

The violence in Israel right now leaves me feeling worried and confused.  Everyone seems to be throwing up their hands trying to understand what is going on.

It would be one thing if it was a terrorist organization like Hamas, Islamic Jihad or the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade that was planning and carrying out these attacks.  Then, we could point to a particular group with its own ideology, and hold it accountable.  But that is not what has been happening.

What we are seeing is scarier.  Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Hebron, Afula… These attacks have not been coordinated.  They are being carried out by boys and girls, men and women with knives and meat cleavers.  People with families.  People whom we would not expect to be violent.  A young girl.  A thirteen year old boy.  A perversion is taking place that is producing a kind of collective insanity, a national blood-lust.  What else could explain why two teenage cousins would go out into the street, and randomly stab a thirteen year old on a bicycle?

When a society goes astray like this, it is the leaders of that society that must step up and take responsibility for setting it back on course.  But there have been too few voices calling for calm.

What ostensibly set off this violence were claims by some Palestinians that Israel was planning to take the Temple Mount away from Muslims.  It is not true.

When Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem during the Six Day War in 1967, an Israeli flag was quickly installed on top of the Dome of the Rock.  As soon as he found out about it, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan immediately ordered it removed.  Soon later, he gave authority over the site to the Muslim Waqf, which is charged with maintaining Muslim holy sites.  Jews were forbidden from praying on the Temple Mount.  That has been the status quo arrangement ever since.

Recently, rumors started spreading that Israel was planning to take over the Temple Mount.  Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately denied the rumors, and affirmed that the status quo would remain as it has been for nearly fifty years.

But nobody listened.  Even those who ought to know better have been fanning the flames of violence.  As the rumors were spreading last month, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said: “Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure, every martyr will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God.”  Then he declared that Jews “have no right to desecrate the mosque with their dirty feet.”  This week he also accused Israel of “executing” Palestinian children.

What does he think he is doing?

As Jeffrey Goldberg writes in The Atlantic, this is not the first time that false rumors of an impending Jewish takeover of the Temple Mount have led to widespread violence.  In 1928, Jews brought a wooden bench up to the Western Wall for elderly worshippers to sit along with a partition to separate men and women for prayer.  Local Muslim leaders stirred up popular anger by declaring that the Jews were planning to take over the Temple Mount.  Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, used the incident – the placement of a bench – as proof of a plot against Islam.  He incited Jerusalem Arabs to riot against the Jewish community.  Doctored photographs showing a defaced Dome of the Rock were distributed in Hebron to rile up the community.  In riots the following year, 133 Jews were murdered.

In 2000, the Second Intifada was launched when Ariel Sharon went up to the Temple Mount.  Granted, he took a large military presence with him.  But he had cleared it with Palestinian security officials in advance, who assured him that the situation would remain calm.  And he certainly did not go to pray.

After the visit, Palestinians began protesting, and the leader of the Waqf, on a loudspeaker, called on Palestinians to defend the Al Aqsa Mosque, which Sharon had not even entered.  The protests became violent, and it soon grew into the Second Intifada.  It later turned out that the uprising had been planned in advance by Arafat and other Palestinian leaders, but it was Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount which was used as the pretext to incite Muslims to defend their holy place.

Today, there are many Arab leaders who are fanning the flames of violence, many even more blatantly than Abbas, but it does not seem to be a coordinated strategy.

And to be clear, it is not everyone.  Just three days ago, the Bedouin village of Zarzir, which my children passed through every day on their way to school, organized a public rally for peace.  They called it “We refuse to be Enemies.”  Many of our friends from Kibbutz Hanaton participated.  There were signs and posters in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.  Village leaders, wearing kafiyyehs and holding Israeli flags, spoke against violence and in support of the State of Israel.  But I did not read any news reports about it except for an article by Rabbi Yoav Ende, of Kibbutz Chanaton.

I saw a news clip of Arab news reporter, Lucy Aharish, speaking about as forcefully as a person could in condemning the violence and declaring that there is no justification whatsoever for committing terror.  She blasted Arab leaders for failing to come out and strongly condemn the violence.  That is where she placed the responsibility.

I do not claim that Israel has been perfect.  As you know, I have a lot of disagreements with decisions of the Israeli government over the years.  I think that Israel’s policies have contributed in part to feelings of hopelessness within Palestinian society.

While Israelis are understandably feeling scared, I think it is awful that some have responded to the terror with their own violence and discrimination.  It is inexcusable.

But nothing justifies stabbing a random stranger with a knife, or driving a car into a crowd of people waiting at a bus stop.  There is no moral equivalency when police, soldiers, or even civilians respond with violence to defend against a terrorist who is actively trying to kill an innocent person.  There is no excuse when the leaders of a society glorify a teen-ager who has committed a terrorist act, or fail to do everything they can to stop violence.

I do not have any suggestions for how to solve the chaos that ensues when a society that is not mine has lost its way.

In this morning’s Torah portion, Noach, we read of another society that has lost its way.

“The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with lawlessness (chamas).  When God saw how corrupt the earth was, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth (hishchit kol basar et darko), God said to Noach, “I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with lawlessness (chamas) because of them: I am about to destroy them with the earth.”

Ironically, the word that the Torah uses for “lawlessness” is chamas.  It is just a coincidence, but an ironic one.  Nahum Sarna defines chamas as the “flagrant subversion of the ordered processes of law.”    (JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis, p. 51)  There was no rule of law.  No respect for communal standards.

Then the Torah says ki hishchit kol basar et darko – “for all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth.”

God’s response is not to give them a warning, or a punishment, or to send a Prophet to urge them to change their ways.  God regrets having created humanity, and decides to wipe out all life on earth, saving only representative male and female samples of each species.

After the flood, humanity is just as wicked as before.  It is the same DNA.

But God makes two significant changes.

He tells Noach and his offspring that they must punish those who murder.  “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.”  This is retributive justice.  According to the theory of evolution, the strongest, most violent people ought to survive.  But God introduces an element to counter the morality of “survival of the fittest.”  Simply put, whatever you do to harm the body of another shall be done to you.  This is the basic premise of retributive justice.  Human societies have to protect their members by punishing those who commit violence.

The second change is a counter to the first.  God declares:  “Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the devisings of man’s mind are evil from his youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living being, as I have done.”

God knows that human nature has not changed.  People will continue to have an urge to cross boundaries.  But retributive justice alone is not enough.  Forgiveness is also needed.  So even though God know that yetzer lev ha-adam ra mine’urav – “the devisings of man’s mind are evil from his youth,” God promises to not wipe out all life again – even though they may deserve it.  There are times when justice must be set aside in favor of mercy.

This is the challenge that God presents to the children of Noah.  Build societies that are anchored by justice and forgiveness.

Although it seems perpetually elusive, that is my prayer for Israel and Palestine.  One day, both societies will have leaders who take responsibility for their own actions, as well as for their respective people’s actions.  Neither society will tolerate the dehumanization of the other.  Both will recognize that justice cannot be administered selectively.  The two peoples will recognize and protect each others’ sacred places without feeling threatened.  And Israelis and Palestinians will one day be able to hear one another’s stories with a sense of compassion and forgiveness.

For now, as our brothers and sisters are living under the daily threat of terror, we can turn to God in prayer.

Shomer Yisrael — Guardian of Israel,

We pray not to wipe out haters but to banish hatred.

Not to destroy sinners but to lessen sin.

Our prayers are not for a perfect world but a better one

Where parents are not bereaved by the savagery of sudden attacks

Or children orphaned by blades glinting in a noonday sun.

Help us dear God, to have the courage to remain strong, to stand fast.

Spread your light on the dark hearts of the slayers

And your comfort to the bereaved hearts of families of the slain.

Let calm return Your city Jerusalem, and to Israel, Your blessed land.

We grieve with those wounded in body and spirit,

Pray for the fortitude of our sisters and brothers,

And ask you to awaken the world to our struggle and help us bring peace.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

September 16, 2015

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons)

Comments

Leave a comment

For the Love of Israel – Rosh Hashanah 5776

I am a lover of Israel.  And so it is with great love that I share the following:  This summer has been a tough one for Israel.  I am not talking about the Iran deal.

It started in June, when the Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes, one of the holiest sights in Israel for Christians, was burned down in an arson attack.  Spray-painted on the wall were the words, in Hebrew, v’ha-elilim karot yikareitun – and their gods will be cut down, lifted out of our siddur from the prayer Aleinu.

On July 30, at the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade, an ultra-Orthodox man stabbed six people, one of whom, a teenage girl named Shira Banki, died.  The murderer had been released from prison just three weeks previously after finishing a ten year sentence for stabbing several people at a gay pride parade in 2005.

The next day, Jewish arsonists firebombed the home of the Dawabsheh family in the Palestinian town of Duma, killing 18 month old Ali, and both of his parents.  Four year old Ahmad is the only survivor, with burns covering 60% of his body.  Hebrew graffiti was found on a nearby wall with the spray-painted words nekamah – “revenge,” and y’chi hamelekh ha-mashiach – “long live the the king, the messiah.”

These are not just stand-alone incidents.  Over the last several years, there has been a rise in Jewish extremism and terrorism.  Although often cloaked in religious garb, it is classic right-wing nationalism.

Without a doubt, these actions do not represent the attitudes of the vast majority of Israelis, or of Jews around the world.  Politicians and national leaders from all parties, as well as leading Rabbis, were quick to publicly denounce violence, call for the criminals to be brought to justice, and pay condolence calls to the families of the victims.  The Israeli public was appropriately outraged.

But when it comes to taking action, it is a different story.  Israel has been slow to address the problem of Jewish extremism and racism.

Over the past three and a half years, more than forty churches and mosques have been burned in Israel, usually accompanied by biblical passages scrawled on a nearby wall.  Until this past June’s attack, Israeli security services had not arrested a single person.  No arrests have been made for the murder of the Dawabsheh family.  Not a single Rabbi was detained for encouraging students to commit violence.

Do any of us have any doubts whatsoever about the capabilities of Israeli security services to take these kinds of Jewish hate-crimes seriously?  Where were the task forces and undercover informants?

Just this summer, under pressure, the Shin Bet began using “Administrative Detention” to apprehend Jewish terrorist suspects.  It is a tool that has been using against Palestinians, with great success, for many years.  Why did they wait so long?

It did not happen earlier because there was no political will to do so.  Policies by every single Israeli government for the past thirty five years to settle the West Bank with 400,000 Jews has quietly fanned the flames of Jewish nationalist extremism.  The perpetrators are widely known to come from extreme religious nationalist settlements which often have a lot of political clout.

We cannot complain about moderate Muslims’ failure to take on Islamic extremism while we ignore our own Jewish extremism.

I know that some of us are thinking, ‘but what about all of the Islamic fundamentalism around the world?  How can we even compare what a few religious wackos are doing to what is going in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, and many other parts of the Muslim world?’  You are right, there is no comparison.

But they are not our own people.  We are talking about family.

How do we, the American Jewish community, react when we hear about Jewish racism and Jewish terrorism?

There are some in the Jewish community that will never say anything critical of Israel, at least not publicly.  Others have bought in to the anti-Zionist rhetoric that portrays Israel as a gross violator of human rights.

These two groups tend to be made up of the people who yell the loudest, creating what I suspect is a false depiction of a divided American Jewish community.

Anyone who says that Israel has a perfect human rights record is either blind or does not know what ethics is.  Anyone who claims that Israel is one of the worst human rights abusers in the world is either naive or antisemitic.

Both extremists are guilty of the same assumption – that Israel must be perfect.  Those who don’t see the blemishes and those who only see the blemishes are both blind.

But we can admit it: there are blemishes.  Israel has some serious challenges.  It struggles with poverty and unaffordable housing costs.  It faces sharp social divides between different ethnic and religious streams.  It has a problem with large numbers of immigrants trying to cross the border illegally.  There is deeply-felt racism, conflict, and distrust between ethnic and religious groups.  Hundreds of thousands of people who had lived on the land for generations were displaced when new immigrants arrived.

These problems should all sound familiar, because these are all challenges that are faced: here in America, as well as in Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.  In other words, nations, by definition, struggle to balance the pursuit of security and prosperity with the pursuit of justice and morality.

We don’t give up on America because it is not perfect.  Nor should we give up on Israel because it is not perfect.

The Torah reading for this morning, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, begins with Isaac’s birth.  Abraham circumcises his son on the eighth day, and then, at his weaning a few years later, throws a party on his behalf.  At the party, Sarah, Isaac’s mother, sees Ishmael, Abraham’s other son, playing – m’tzachek.  Something bothers her, and she tells her husband to banish Ishmael and his mother Hagar from the household, “for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

Abraham is distressed, but God reassures him that all will be okay.  ‘Do what your wife tells you to do.  I will make Ishmael the father of a great nation as well.’

Sarah and Abraham represent two distinct parental concerns.  Sarah looks at Ishmael and sees in him a threat.  One midrash explains that Ishmael was bragging that he, as the eldest son, would receive a double inheritance.  Other commentators suggest that the word m’tzachek implies that Ishmael was involved in idolatry, and that Sarah was concerned that he would be a corrupting influence.  Sarah is the mother who will protect her son from any perceived outside threat, regardless of collateral damage.

Abraham, in contrast, is concerned about the effect that favoring Isaac will have on Hagar and Ishmael.  He knows that that there will be a personal and moral toll if he defends Isaac at all costs.  He understands Sarah’s desire to protect her son, but he also sees the suffering that will ensue on the part of Hagar and Ishmael.  So he is paralyzed, unable to take action until God breaks the stalemate in his conscience by assuring Abraham that Ishmael will not only survive, but will thrive.  In the end, God affirms both Sarah’s protectiveness of Isaac and Abraham’s concern for Ishmael.

When I think about Israel today, I hear Sarah and Abraham’s voices arguing in my mind and in my heart.

We have got to look out for the Jewish people, because if we do not, nobody else will.  And, we have to be concerned with morality in our treatment of the other.

In a perfect world, there would be no contradiction between these two values.  In a perfect world, Sarah and Abraham would be of one mind when it came to matters affecting their son.  In an almost perfect world, God would step in to offer a solution when our self-protection conflicts with our ethics.

Alas, we do not live in a perfect world, or even a near-perfect world.

As I said earlier, I am a lover of Israel.  But there are different kinds of love.

Any good love affair begins with infatuation.  Our beloved glows.  Everything she does is perfect.

After Israel gained independence in 1948, Jews around the world were infatuated.  Israel could do no wrong.  What was the narrative?  Israel had risen out of the ashes of the Holocaust.  The New Jewish soldier-farmers fought a scrappy war of Independence against all odds to enable the Jewish people to come out of exile and reclaim our place in history.

In 1967, Israel’s sneak attack and victory against menacing Arab armies created an illusion of invincibility.  It was David against Goliath, and we were David.

In 1982, that image began to crumble.  Israel invaded another country in a war that was optional.  It was not, like the others, a fight for survival.  The IDF found itself an occupying power in Southern Lebanon.  Atrocities were committed.  While Israeli soldiers looked the other way, Lebanese Christian Phalangists murdered over two thousand civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut.

International condemnation followed, and the Israeli public was furious.  Ariel Sharon, the Defense Minister at the time, was found to be personally responsible by an Israeli commission of inquiry, and was forced to resign.

The Lebanon war was followed a few years later by the First Intifada, Oslo, the Second Intifada, The Gaza pullout and subsequent wars with Hamas.  You know the stories.

It has been a complicated thirty years in which Israel is no longer David to the Arabs’ Goliath.  Israel has struggled to balance security and morality as a powerful nation with dangerous enemies and sovereignty over people who refuse to accept it.

And all of this occurs in the spotlight, under a magnifying glass.  I do not need to tell you this.  So what kind of love do we bring with us?

For those of you (I do have to exclude myself) born before 1967, your foundational memories of Israel are of a nation that can do no wrong.  The American Jewish community, especially after the Six Day War, was infatuated.

But for those of you born after 1982 (again, I have to exclude myself) – the only Israel you have known is one that has struggled, in the most public way, with being depicted as an immoral aggressor.  You never had a chance to experience infatuation and fall in love.

In recent years, the rise of the BDS movement on many college campuses has created such an oppressive atmosphere for Jewish students, that some feel the need to hide their identity, and not get involved in Jewish life altogether.  The rest are put in the position, as 18-22 year olds, of defending Israel on behalf of the rest of the American Jewish community.  It is a tremendously unfair burden.

Some American Jews are so turned off by all of the attention that they check out.  Why should I care?  Why should I get emotionally invested in something that attracts so much conflict?  For those Jews, Israel does not play much of a role in their identity.

That is unfortunate.  Israel has been central to the Jewish people throughout our existence.  When God first spoke to Abraham, it was to send him to an unknown Promised Land where his descendants would one day constitute a nation that would serve as a blessing to the world.  When our ancestors left Egypt, their destination was Israel.  At the Covenant at Mount Sinai, we committed to accepting the Torah and the mitzvot and God committed to settling us in the land of Israel in peace and prosperity.

And so, Ahavat Yisrael, the love of Israel, both the people and the land, has been central to Jewish identity from our formation as a family, as a religion, and as a nation.

But what kind of love?

Not infatuation that blinds us to seeing our beloved as she truly is.  Real love is not blind.  Real love requires our eyes to be wide open.  Real love is conditional.  I love you because of who you are, not regardless of who you are.

So what would a mature, lasting love of Israel look like?

On Rosh Hashanah, as we celebrate the beginning of the new year, we engage in Cheshbon HaNefesh, taking stock of our souls – not just as individuals, but also as a people.  What does Cheshbon HaNegesh mean on a national scale?

It means lively and respectful debate about where we are as a Jewish people, here in our local community, in America, and as a global Jewish community.  Israel, as our eternal homeland, must be part of that debate.

Unfortunately, so many aspects of Israel have become polarized.  If you are a Republican, then you are against the Iran deal, against Obama, and for Netanyahu.  If you are a Democrat, you are for the Iran deal, for Obama, and against Netanyahu.  We have to reject this kind of “issue packaging.”  A person can be against the Iran deal and still like Obama.  A person can be for the Iran deal and against the settlements.  It is possible to be disappointed in both Netanyahu and Obama, or to be fans of both (not very likely).  We have allowed the loudest voices to polarize the Jewish community in a very unhealthy way.

Let me tell you about the Israel I love.  As you may know, my family and I recently returned from a five month sabbatical, most of which we spent living in Israel, so I’ve had a lot of time recently to think about this.

I love that Israel provides an opportunity for the Jewish people to bring the values of our tradition into the real world.  When we read the Bible and pay close attention, we realize that Jewish sovereignty in the Bible ultimately failed.  The Torah presents a model of a society that, in addition to an elaborate system of ritual worship, emphasizes justice, ethical social and economic interactions, and righteous treatment of all members of society, including resident non-Israelites.  The biblical Prophets are constantly railing against both the leaders and the populace for failing to live up to the standards established by the Torah.

The modern State of Israel, as a democratic Jewish State, offers us an opportunity to bring Jewish values into the world, with all of the messy challenges that are entailed.  And while not perfect, I think Israel’s record is pretty strong, especially considering how many challenges it faces.

I also love the expansion of interest in Jewish life that has been taking place in Israel in recent years.  More and more secular Israelis are turning back to our religious tradition and our texts for spiritual fulfillment.  In contrast to a shrinking non-Orthodox Judaism in America, the liberal movements in Israel are growing.

I love all the ways that usually go unreported that different groups interact with each other positively.  In June, Dana and I participated in the Zarzir Night Run.  Zarzir is a Bedouin Village in the Jezreel Valley close to where we lived in Kibbutz Chanaton.  Our kids drove through Zarzir every day on their way to and from school.  On full moons during the summer time, a running store on the outskirts of Zarzir hosts a night run on paths through the fields.  Well over a thousand men and women showed up, including religious Jews, secular Jews, and Arabs.

I love that Israel is expanding it’s national parks, and making them more accessible.  I love that Hebrew has been revived as a spoken language.  I love that Israel has an entire month dedicated to books.  I love Israeli pop music.

There are also ways in which I wish Israel did better, and it is love that makes me care so much about where Israel is off the mark.

I am horrified that there are racist Jews, and even more so that there are members of our people who commit terror.  And I am disappointed that Israel’s leaders have been so slow to do anything about it.

I wish that the government supported education equally for all Israelis.  Currently, there are different funding levels depending on which public school system a child is learning in.  Arab Israeli students receive far less education spending than their Jewish counterparts.  That is wrong.

I cannot stand that the Rabbanut is allowed to impose its will on the rest of the country in matters pertaining to marriage, divorce, and conversion.  I wish the Israeli government recognized the rights of non-Orthodox movements so that, for example, a wedding officiated by one of my Masorti colleagues would be recognized by the State.

I wish the government did not continue to encourage new Jewish settlement in the West Bank.  I think it makes peace more difficult and sends unspoken messages that encourage extremist behavior.

Israel is a complex country that is far from perfect.  And yet, to me, it is special and unique.  I think it ought to be that way for all Jews.  So I am not asking any of us to love everything.  I am asking all of us to find what it is that we love about Israel, and love it even more.  And if we can identify aspects of Israel that we think are off the mark, it is ok to disagree, as long as we are not disagreeable.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

January 18, 2015

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Exodus (שמות)

Comments

Leave a comment

Va’era 5775 – France Without Jews is not France

We are still in shock over the murders by Islamic terrorists a week and a half ago of Yoav Hattab, Yohan Cohen, Philippe Braham and François-Michel Saada as they were doing some last-minute shopping before Shabbat.  Those killings, along with the attacks at the offices of Charlie Hebdo have been a wake-up call.  Much soul-searching is taking place in France, and around the world.

It seems that some people outside of the Jewish community are finally recognizing that there is a connection between antisemitic attitudes and rhetoric and terrorism – that ignoring the former will invariably lead to the latter.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared last week that “France without Jews is not France.”  To back up this sentiment, he announced on Monday that 10,000- military troops would be deployed to protect sensitive sites, and that 4,700 police officers would protect Jewish schools and synagogues.

At the rally in Paris last Sunday of a million and a half people, in addition to signs declaring “Je suis Charlie,” there were some that read “Je suis Juif.”  I am Jewish.

I imagine it must be at least somewhat reassuring to French Jews to have both the leaders of the country as well as some of its citizens taking their safety seriously and making commitments to protect them because they recognize that French Jews are citizens of the country who make up an important and integral part of the national fabric.

Not everyone is so hopeful.  On Sunday, Prime Minister Netanyahu, attending the rally in Paris, explicitly invited the Jews of France to move to Israel.  “Israel is your home,” he said.  This was not the first time that an Israeli leader urged French Jews to make aliyah.  In 2012, at a joint press conference with President Francois Hollande, Netanyahu said:  “In my role as Prime Minister of Israel, I always say to Jews, wherever they may be, I say to them: Come to Israel and make Israel your home.”

It has not only been Netanyahu.  At a ceremony in 2004 welcoming new immigrants from France, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon advised French Jews to “move immediately” to Israel to escape “the wildest antisemitism” in France.

The French were not pleased then either.

There is something of a rhetorical tug of war going on here between those who say that “France without Jews is not France,” and those who claim that there is no future for Judaism there.

This is not the first time the Jewish people have faced this question.  In this morning’s Torah portion, Va-era, there is also a tug of war over the future of the children of Israel.  At the opening of the parashah, they are enslaved in Egypt.  God has identified Moses as the prophet who will carry the message “Let my people go” to Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of slavery and to the Promised Land.

Not everyone wants to see the Israelites leave, however.  Pharaoh and his court, certainly, do not want to see their enslaved workforce disappear.  The Israelites themselves are skeptical of Moses’ insistence that God is going to lead them away.  They prefer an enslaved life that they know to an uncertain life of freedom.

God knows, however, that there is no future for Israel in the land of Egypt.

God hears the groaning of the Israelites and remembers the commitment made to their ancestors generations before.  God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that their offspring would be as numerous as the stars and would one day inherit the land of Israel.  They would be a blessing to the world.  This is a destiny that cannot be fulfilled by slaves in a foreign land.

God tells Moses:

Say… to the Israelite people…  I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage.  I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements.  And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God.  (Exodus 6:6-7)

These four verbs – “I will free you, I will deliver you, I will redeem you, and I will take you” – are the four stages of redemption that our Passover Seder identifies as the basis of the four cups of wine.

In this redemption, freedom is only part of God’s promise.  God also means to build a covenantal relationship with the Jewish people.  Central to that covenant is the establishment of a Jewish society in the Promised Land.  Only then can the Jewish people become what God has intended for them to become.  Only then will they realize their potential and flourish.

This tug of war in the Torah between slavery and freedom, between Egypt and Israel, is black and white.  In the millennia since our ancestors first became free, the question of where the Jewish people can best flourish has been more complicated.  Maimonides, fleeing persecution in Spain and then Morocco, made his way to the land of Israel.  There, he found a backwards Jewish community in which he did not see a future.  So he kept going South and settled in the thriving Jewish community of Fustat, Egypt.

We are a people that is both rooted in our Promised Land, and capable of bringing our faith and identity with us wherever we go.  We have been successful at it, developing tight-knit communities whose members support one another and are a force for good in their surrounding environments.

Part of the importance of the State of Israel today is that it truly functions as the homeland of the Jewish people.  Robert Frost said “Home is the place where, if you have to go there, they have to take you in.”  Israel is that home for Jews, wherever we happen to be living right now.

Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, it has opened its doors to refugees from the Holocaust, masses of Jews fleeing pogroms in North Africa and the Middle East, Jews of the Former Soviet Union and Ethiopia.  “Welcome home,” Israel said.

So what of the Jews of France today?

The Jewish community in France is significant.  There are an estimated 500,000 Jews living in France.  The is the largest community in Europe and the third largest in the world.  It is a diverse, cosmopolitan community, comprised of Jews across the religious spectrum – from secular to ultra-Orthodox, and everything in between.

The last few years have seen a rise in acts of antisemitism.  This has led to increasing numbers of French Jews deciding to move to Israel.  Last year, nearly 7,000 French Jews made aliyah, more than double the previous year.  With continued anti-Jewish violence, that number is expected to be even higher this year, perhaps as many as 10,000.

When we consider the long history of Judaism in France, it is particularly sad that the community finds itself facing so much pressure now, because France has really come a long way.

The first Jews probably arrived about 2,000 years ago.  Attracted by economic opportunities, they did well in the early middle ages.  Charlemagne embraced the Jews, seeing them as a blessing to his kingdom.

The Crusades brought new attitudes across Europe.  Rulers stoked antisemitism, and peasants took out their frustrations on their vulnerable Jewish neighbors.

The persecutions began around the year 1000 CE.  Jewish communities were often confronted with the choice of conversion to Christianity, death, or exile.  Several waves of expulsions took place in 1182, 1306, and 1394.  Jews often had property and assets seized, or debt owed to them cancelled.  Blood libel accusations were frequent.

Don’t think, however, that it was all bad – that the middle ages were centuries upon centuries of pure suffering.  Also during this time, there were Jewish communities that thrived, enjoying prosperity and cultural flowering.  Some of the most important Jewish leaders and thinkers in history came from France.

Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzchak, more commonly known as Rashi, is the most important commentator of the Torah and Talmud in Jewish history.  He lived and taught in Troyes, in Northern France in the eleventh century and gave rise to a school of innovative Jewish thinkers that flourished for several generations.

As the years passed, the Jews of France, as they were everywhere else in the world, were seen as other, and treated as second-class citizens, at best.

By the 1780’s there were approximately 40-50,000 Jews living in France.  They had legal status to be there, but with extremely limited rights.  They were basically restricted to the money-lending business.  Things were changing in Europe, however, especially in France.  The Enlightenment had taken hold, and there were finally some Christian voices that were calling for tolerance and acceptance of minorities.

The French Revolution of 1789, with its ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, introduced the notion that all residents of a nation could be considered citizens, regardless of their religious affiliation.

The change was sporadic and haphazard, as the chaos of the revolution proceeded and the Reign of Terror took hold, but the Jews of France recognized that something new was happening, and they were excited about the possibilities.  Jewish communities helped fund the revolution, and Jewish soldiers joined the Army of the Republic in its battles against other European countries.  Many Jews patriotically gave their lives for the sake of their French homeland.

When Napoleon came to power, he wanted to finally resolve the Jewish question.  In 1806, he convened the Assembly of Jewish Notables, naming it the Grand Sanhedrin.  Twelve questions were posed to it members, the answers to which would determine the future status of the Jews of France.  Those questions included:

• May a Jewess marry a Christian, or [May] a Jew [marry] a Christian woman? or does Jewish law order that the Jews should only intermarry among themselves?

• In the eyes of Jews, are Frenchmen not of the Jewish religion considered as brethren or strangers?

• Do the Jews born in France, and treated by the law as French citizens, acknowledge France as their country? Are they bound to defend it? Are they bound to obey the laws and follow the directions of the civil code?

• What kind of police jurisdiction do the rabbis exercise over the Jews? What judicial power do they exercise over them?

The answers the Assembly gave essentially declared Jews to be French citizens first, and Jews second.  Intermarriages would be considered binding.  French Jews would consider non-Jews to be their brethren.  Jews would consider France to be their fatherland, and would defend it when called upon, etc.

When asked if they wanted to be citizens, with all that it would entail, the Jews of France answered with a resounding “oui.”

In 1807, Napoleon added Judaism as an official religion of France.  As his armies moved across Europe, Napoleon liberated Jewish communities of other lands from the ghettos to which they had been restricted.

Emancipation was not yet complete, however.  In 1846, the Jews of France became fully equal when the French Supreme Court found the More Judaico, the Jewish oath, rooted in medieval antisemitism, to be unconstitutional.  Legally, the Jews of France were now fully French, with rights equal to Catholics and Protestants.

The social reality, however, was quite different.  Despite tremendous efforts by Jews to assimilate into French society, antisemitism was still widespread.  At the end of the nineteenth century, a traditionalist faction of army officers concocted a plot to frame a young Jewish Captain named Alfred Dreyfus for treason.  The subsequent trials were a major political scandal in France that lasted from 1894 – 1906 and that divided the country between the anticlerical, pro-republic Dreyfusards and the pro-army, mostly Catholic anti-Dreyfusards.

Theodore Herzl was a secular Jewish journalist who had grown up in antisemitic Austro-Hungary and moved to France due to what he perceived as its progressive, humanist values.  He was a strong proponent of Jewish assimilation into European culture as the solution to the Jewish problem, which had become “an obsession for him.”  (Dictionary of the Dreyfus affair, Nichol, p. 505.)  Herzl’s coverage of the Dreyfus Affair in 1895, however, led him to conclude that Jews would never be accepted by the non-Jewish world.  As much as Jews had given up to become citizens, they would never be seen as equals.

In his book, Der Judenstaat, Herzl writes:

If France – bastion of emancipation, progress and universal socialism – [can] get caught up in a maelstrom of antisemitism and let the Parisian crowd chant ‘Kill the Jews!’ Where can they be safe once again – if not in their own country? Assimilation does not solve the problem because the Gentile world will not allow it as the Dreyfus affair has so clearly demonstrated.

Herzl subsequently founded the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, creating Zionism as a political movement and laying the foundation for the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel.  If the Gentile world is incapable of accepting Jews as equals, Jews will have to establish a land of their own where they constitute a majority and are free to determine their own fate.

At the beginning of World War Two, there were 350,000 Jews living in France, a number of them having fled Germany in the 1930’s.  During the Holocaust, one fifth of France’s Jewish population were murdered by the Nazis, often with the collaboration of French officials and citizens.  There were also many enlightened French who saved Jews.  France has the third highest number of people honored as Righteous Among the Nations among any country.

Between 1948 and 1967, France was a strong supporter of Israel, with close military ties.  The Israeli nuclear reactor in Dimona was built with significant assistance from the French government in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  Israeli Air Force pilots flew French fighter jets in the Six Day War in 1967.

By the end of the twentieth century, France’s population had among the most favorable attitudes towards Jews of any country in Europe.

The resurgence of anti-Semitism over the last fifteen years has come from a non-traditional  source.  While there are still antisemitic attitudes from those on the far right and the far left, the rise in anti-Jewish activity has been attributed mainly to increasing violence by people in the French Muslim community.  Flare-ups have tended to occur especially when there is political tension in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In addition to the terrorist attack on the Hypercacher grocery store, there have been other murders, acts of vandalism, attacks against synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses, anti-Jewish demonstrations and chants, and more.

That is why French Jews are increasingly nervous, why French emigration is up, and why real estate prices in Israel are soaring.

I am not French, but I doubt that we are going to see a mass Exodus of the entire Jewish community of France to Israel.  I hope and pray that there is a thriving future for the Jews of France.

Like you, I am extremely concerned for our Jewish brothers and sisters who had to cancel Shabbat services at some synagogues last week and who require police and military presence at all of their institutions.  I hope that this wake-up call to the French people will lead to action, will help them realize that the Jewish people are the proverbial canary in the coal mine, because the Prime Minister is correct when he says “France without Jews is not France.”

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

January 11, 2015

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Exodus (שמות)

Comments

Leave a comment

Shemot 5775 – Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God

When I was in college, I had an opportunity to attend a talk by the the famous Israeli author and peacenik, Amos Oz.  Something he said has stuck with me.  “I have never once in my life seen a fanatic with a sense of humor, nor have I ever seen a person with a sense of humor become a fanatic, unless he or she has lost that sense of humor.”

The wisdom captured by this insight was on display in France this week.  Islamic terrorists, upset about cartoons that insulted Muhammad attacked the offices of the French weekly magazine, Charlie Hebdo, murdering twelve people.

Ironically, it is the fanatic who is the funniest of all, and who most needs to be satirized.  It is the fanatic who most urgently needs to understand the joke, but on whom the punchline is lost.

Charlie Hebdo is a rude, satirical magazine that is an equal-opportunity insulter.  As Jews, we might get offended at how it depicts our coreligionists, but then again, when we consider that  Christians and Muslims receive the same treatment, perhaps there is something going on here other than antisemitism.

As we gather together this morning to pray, to celebrate Shabbat, to be together, and in a little while, to eat, we cannot help but also reflect on the terrible events of this week in France.  First, the murder of twelve souls at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.  Then the shooting of a police officer.  And right before Shabbat, the taking hostage and murder of Jewish shoppers in a kosher grocery store.

The sad thing is that we knew this was coming.  The Editor of Charlie Hebdo even had a bodyguard, who was among the victims.  The Muslim terrorists who committed these terrible acts received training by Al-Qaeda in Yemen and were heavily armed.  It seems that there was really no stopping this tragedy from happening.

Consider other recent events around the world, including the beheading of Western journalists in Syria and Iraq, the killing of 132 schoolchildren in Pakistan, the murder of a Canadian soldier in Ottawa, the taking hostage of diners in a cafe in Australia – all were committed by Islamic terrorists in the name of their religion.

ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbullah, Taliban, Boko Haram, and the list goes on.  It is impossible to deny that we are facing a global epidemic of Islamic fundamentalists whose interpretation of religion compels them to fight anything to do with the West: democracy, women’s rights, freedom of the press, religious pluralism, the list goes on.

How is it possible that religious people could have such a perverse interpretation of what God wants from humanity?  It is mind-boggling.  Comical even.  ISIS would make a fantastic comic book villain if it was not real.

How does religion become totalitarian?  This phenomenon is so antithetical to how our Jewish tradition would have us see the world.

This morning, we begin reading the Book of Exodus.  Parashat Shemot introduces us to the major characters in this drama: the Israelites, Pharaoh, Moses, Aaron, Miriam, and of course, God.

The English title of the book captures what we usually think of as its major theme: Exodus.  In Hebrew, we refer to this event as Yetziat Mitzrayim, the leaving of Egypt.  This is our formative story as a people.  It is a story which is embedded into our consciousness individually and collectively.  We were once slaves.  God saved us with an outstretched arm.  Now we are free, and we are in a covenantal relationship with God that, among other things, requires us to care for the downtrodden.  We know this story well.  We tell it in our daily prayers.  We reexperience it every year during Passover.

It is not only our story.  Martin Luther King, Jr. used the story of the Exodus as a biblical paradigm BFranklinSealin the Civil Rights movement.  Abraham Lincoln turned to the Exodus for inspiration in the fight to end slavery.  Benjamin Franklin wanted the seal of the United States to depict the Israelites safely on the far side of the Sea of Reeds while the Egyptian army drowns in its depths.  The motto surrounding the seal would have read: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

That is the other message of the Book of Exodus.  Pharaoh is a tyrant.  He is a fanatic.  He has no sense of humor.  Just as God brings the Israelites into freedom to convey a universal concern for human freedom, God also set out to overthrow Pharaoh as a sign to the world that despotism is never to be tolerated.

God’s problem with Pharaoh is not that he is an idolater.  In fact, the Torah is ambivalent with regard to other nations’ religious beliefs and practices.  The Jewish people are never commanded to rid the world of idolatry or to force the rest of humanity to worship God.

Pharaoh’s sin is that he, a human, claims to be divine.  And further, he allows for no possibility of anything else.

At the beginning of Exodus, Pharaoh looks at his kingdom, sees the Israelites, and notices that they are different.  He cultivates a sense of fear among the Egyptian people, convincing them that the Israelites pose a threat to Egypt.  The regime of slavery begins, but Pharaoh’s paranoia only gets worse.  Still fearful of a rebellion, he orders the execution of all male Israelite children.

The Torah, in its wisdom, is articulating the steps of how a totalitarian dictator consolidates power by demonizing foreign elements.  It is setting the stage for God’s overthrow of a tyrant.

When Moses first comes to Pharaoh as God’s Prophet, he does not ask for freedom from slavery.  He asks only for a three day break so that the Israelites can go out into the wilderness and worship God.  Three days.  Pharaoh cannot tolerate even that.

What is he so worried about – three days of lost work?  No.  Pharaoh cannot accept that these lowly people refuse to acknowledge him as divine.  The worship of God is a threat to Pharaoh.  How does he respond – by increasing the workload.

This guy takes himself way too seriously.  Pharaoh has no sense of humor, no capacity to see things from another’s perspective.  He is so stubbornly fanatic that he brings his entire nation down to hell rather than give up an inch.

God has two objectives in Exodus.  One is to free the Israelites.  The other is to demonstrate to Pharaoh, the Egyptians, and the other nations of the world, that Pharaoh is Pharaoh and God is God.  God clearly is on the side against totalitarianism.

The Book of Exodus is about the preciousness of freedom and the evils of arrogance.

This is a message that is sorely needed today.

What we are facing today is not a war between Islam and the West.  What we are facing is a totalitarian fundamentalism rooted in the Islamic religion that seeks nothing less than total domination.

To be clear, Islam is not inherently violent.  There are plenty of peaceful, tolerant Muslims.  But let’s not be naive and pretend that the numerous terrorist attacks all over the world committed by Muslims in the name of their faith are not part of a broader trend.

Islamic fundamentalist groups are fighting to create societies that are governed by Sharia courts.  Infidels must convert, die, or in some cases live as second-class citizens.  Moderate Muslims must convert to this extreme brand of Islam.  It is why so much of the killing in recent years has targeted other Muslims.  If this was really about a war between East and West, why is there so much Muslim on Muslim killing?

There may not be anything that we can do to change the minds of those who have already committed to Islamic fanaticism.  Force may indeed be the only way to defend ourselves from people without a sense of humor.  In the Book of Exodus, Pharaoh is not capable of teshuvah.  The only outcome for this tyrant is total defeat.

But a ray of light emerged last week from a more contemporary Egyptian leader.  Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, delivered a speech at Cairo’s al-Azhar University on January 1, which on the Muslim calendar this year coincided with the birthday of Muhammad.  In the audience sat leading Egyptian Muslim clerics, as well as the Minister of Religious Appropriations.  President Al-Sisi made forceful, honest comments about Islam that are the kind of words that could get him killed.  Here is an excerpt from his speech:

It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.  Impossible!

That thinking—I am not saying “religion” but “thinking”—that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world.   It’s antagonizing the entire world!

Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live? Impossible!

I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema—Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I’m talking about now.

All this that I am telling you, you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.

I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move… because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.

Notice a few things.  Al-Sisi specifies that it is not the Islamic religion itself that is so violent, but it is the way that it has been interpreted over the centuries that has caused so much destruction.

I agree.  Our Jewish texts have some brutal passages that, if taken literally, would make us fanatics as well.  But we have a more than two thousand year old interpretive tradition that has found ways to address those difficult passages.  Al-Sisi is calling for Islam to develop similar interpretive traditions.

Also, he does not claim that “Islam is a religion of peace,” nor does he state that the terrorists are not really Muslims.  Al-Sisi does not blame the West, or point his finger at colonialism.  He takes responsibility as a Muslim.

He calls for a change in the way that Islam is understood and practiced, and he acknowledges that it will not be easy.  Islam has been interpreted in fundamentalist, triumphalist ways for so long that those modes of thinking have become fully embedded.

But it does not have to continue that way.  Islam, he argues, is “in need of a religious revolution” that comes from within.  Who has to lead it?  Al-Sisi places responsibility where it belongs – on the Imams seated before him.  It is they who must take the lead on changing Islamic thinking about its role in the world.

Until that happens on a widespread and sustained global level, I fear, the clash between tyranny and freedom that our world is experiencing will continue, and this week’s events will be repeated somewhere else, sometime soon.

On this Shabbat, our prayers extend to the families and communities who lost loved ones this week.  We pray that more people in the world will embrace the core lessons of Exodus: that freedom is precious, and that tyranny is intolerable.  We pray for all those around the world who risk their lives to protect innocent people from terror.  And we pray for strength and offer solidarity to our Muslim brothers and sisters who are courageously raising their voices and calling for change from within.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

December 16, 2014

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Genesis (בראשית)

Comments

2 Comments

Torture vs. “Enhanced Interrogation” in Judaism – Vayeshev 5775

Like just about everything that takes place in Congress, Senate’s Report on Torture by the CIA that was released this week is probably partisan – at least that is what everyone who does not like it seems to be saying.  It was put out by a Democratic-controlled committee on its way out of power about events that took place under policies of the previous, Republican administration.

Just consider if the roles were reversed: What if it was a report by a Republican controlled committee about policies from a prior Democratic administration?  We would likely be hearing the same voices that are currently crying fair or foul on opposite sides.

Keep in mind that this does not mean that information in the report is not accurate.  Just because a person has a bias does not make that person wrong.  So how are we to know what to think?

Unfortunately, much, most, or perhaps even all of what we think we know about torture comes from television and movies.  Jack Bauer employs torture to great success in every season of “24.”  The movie Zero Dark Thirty suggests that the location of Osama Bin Laden was made possible through “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  If you have seen the movie, I am not sure that you could call what it shows on screen anything but torture.  Most James Bond movies involve some sort of torture scene – although 007 is usually able to keep his secrets..  And the list goes on.

We also hear politicians and talking heads disagreeing vociferously on the subject.  Those who oppose it call it torture and say that it does not produce any actionable intelligence.  Those who support it call it “enhanced interrogation techniques” and claim that it saves lives.

I personally do not know whether torture works.  I doubt that there is anybody in this room who does.  If we are honest with ourselves, we ought to admit that our opinions on the matter are influenced more by our our underlying political leanings and our consumption of entertainment than by personal experience or our familiarity with the facts.

This is a real problem.

In a democracy, we the citizens are responsible for the actions of our government.  If the U.S. government is for the people, by the people, then we are complicit in what the CIA does, and we have a moral obligation to acknowledge this, and potentially to do something about it.

So how do we really feel about torture, and what are willing to have our government do in our names?

Let’s get past the political, partisan posturing.  Let’s try to set aside what we think we know from television and movies.

Let us try to clarify some of the issues around torture so that we can better understand what our values truly are.  Let us consider also how our Jewish tradition informs these issues in a way that enables us to take a more sophisticated and informed position.

The first question must be: what constitutes torture?

In this morning’s Torah portion, Vayeshev, the sibling rivalry between Joseph and his brothers spirals out of control.  As we heard earlier, the brothers’ hatred becomes so pitched that they decide to kill him.  Before they commit fratricide, they throw their annoying little brother into a pit.  This is how the Torah describes it:

…they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the ornamented tunic that he was wearing, and took him and cast him into the pit.  The pit was empty; there was no water in it.  Then they sat down to a meal.  (Genesis 37:23-25)

The medieval commentator Rashi cites a midrash that explains that not only did the pit not have any water, it was filled with snakes and scorpions.

What have they done to him?  The brothers have humiliated Joseph by stripping off his coat.  They have deprived him of food and water, highlighted by the Torah’s juxtaposition of the parched pit with the brothers’ picnic.  And according to the midrash, they have terrorized him by putting him in with poisonous animals.

In this case, the brothers are not trying to get any intelligence out of Joseph.  It is straightforward revenge.  They are getting back at him because they feel he has wronged them.

But perhaps we need a more specific definition.  According to a summary of Article 1 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment “torture is the intentional infliction of severe mental or physical pain or suffering by or with the consent of the state authorities for a specific purpose.”

I am not going to read the entire list of tactics that the Senate report contains, because some of it is pretty disturbing.  But it does include things like keeping prisoners awake for 180 hours consecutively, waterboarding, threatening to harm family members, keeping prisdoners in total darkness for extended periods of time, exposure to extreme cold, withholding of medical care, and so on.  “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” or “Torture?”  Do we rally need to argue about terminology?  Does the name matter?

The second question is a critical one.  Are there some circumstances in which torture could be permitted?

We might say, on the one hand, that torture in any circumstance is wrong and should be avoided.  While the Constitution protects American citizens on American soil from cruel and unusual punishment, this is really a universal moral value that applies equally to all human beings everywhere.

On the other hand, what about the “ticking time bomb” scenario.  A bomb is set to go off somewhere in the city, and we have a person in custody who knows where it is and how to disarm it.  Many, if not most of us would agree that torturing that person would be acceptable if it would produce information that could potentially save hundreds of lives.

This is the fundamental question:  Am I categorically opposed to torture, in which case there is no need for further discussion, or am I willing to consider the possibility that torture might be justified in certain circumstances?

Jewish law does not address this question directly, but it does deal with a related issue.  According to Jewish law, self-incrimination is not permitted.  Under no circumstances may a person’s own testimony be used against that person.  The mid-twentieth century Rabbi and Professor Saul Lieberman, possibly the greatest Talmudist in history, taught that  “the purpose of the rule [banning self-incrimination] was to eliminate the possibility of forced confessions and testimony motivated by fear…[Early Jewish law] insisted on a strict standard for the admission of evidence and eliminated the possibility of torture to compel confessions at a time when torture and other cruel practices prevailed in the Roman court.”  (Elijah J. Schochet and Solomon Spiro, Saul Lieberman: The Man and His Work, Jewish Theological Seminary Press, 2005, pp. 209-210.)

In other words, there was concern that a person would falsely confess after being tortured.  So to prevent this from happening, confessions were ruled to be inadmissible.  A conviction in Jewish law requires testimony from two valid witnesses.

Similarly, the Fifth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution grants citizens the right to not self-incriminate.  This is not as strict a standard as Jewish law, mind you.  We are all experts on the Fifth Amendment, by the way.   Whenever the cops on a television police drama arrest a suspect, they have to read him his Miranda rights, “You have the right to remain silent.  You have the right to an attorney…”

That requirement came about as the result of a 1966 Supreme Court case, Miranda v. Arizona.  In it, Chief Justice Earl Warren traces the origin of the principle of non self-incrimination.  “We sometimes forget how long it has taken to establish the privilege against self-incrimination, the sources from which it came and the fervor with which it was defended.  Its roots go back into ancient times.”  In his footnote, Chief Justice Warren cites Maimonides’ thirteenth century law code, the Mishneh Torah.

Another Supreme Court decision (Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493 (1967)) issued one year later elaborates on the principle.

…the Constitutional ruling on self-incrimination concerns only forced confessions, and its restricted character is a result of its historical evolution as a civilized protest against the use of torture in extorting confessions. The Halakhic ruling, however, is much broader and discards confessions in toto, and this because of its psychological insight and its concern for saving man from his own destructive inclinations.

Of course, this concern with self-incrimination and torture is only in the context of confessing one’s own guilt.  What if the purpose is not to determine guilt, but rather to gain information that would save lives?

The Jewish concept of din rodef, the law of the pursuer, teaches that if a person is being pursued by another with the intent to kill, that person is permitted to use physical means to protect him or herself.  Din rode also stipulates that one may use force to prevent the pursuer from harming another person.  This opens up the possibility that torture could be used if it will result in saving lives from an imminent attack.

This leads to our second question.  How effective does torture need to be?  What percent of the time must torture yield helpful information?  How many innocent people are we willing to torture to find the ones with actionable intelligence?

The problem with this question is that there is no way of knowing whether torture will be successful until after it has taken place.  To make an ethically informed decision, we still have to have an idea about success rates, and we have to be prepared for the possibility that it may not produce results.

This needs numbers.  If you knew that 50% of the time, torture would yield important information, and 50% of the time a tortured person would not provide any useful information, would you condone it?  What if it was 20% of the time?  10%?  1%?  We have got to draw the line somewhere.

What about the type of intelligence?  There is a difference between information that leads to stopping an impending terror threat and information about the location of training camps.  How many lives must be saved to justify torture?

Finally, we know that our justice system makes mistakes.  How many innocent people are we willing to torture to get to the ones who have information?

Of the 119 tortured prisoners described in this week’s Senate report, twenty six of them are considered to have been wrongfully detained, in other words, altogether innocent.  That is 22%.  Is that a tolerable percentage?

We come from a religious and ethical tradition in which Abraham, our forefather, challenges God about God’s plan to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness.  Certain that there must be some righteous people in those societies, Abraham boldly asks: “Shall the judge of all the earth not perform justice?”  He then argues that a small fraction of innocent people ought to save the lives of a thoroughly wicked populace.

The question of torture is almost the opposite of Abraham’s.  How many possibly guilty people are we prepared to torture to possibly save the lives of innocents?  That is what this comes down to.

Ours is a tradition that has at its core a respect for the dignity of every human being.  All humans are made in the image of God.

We have explored several questions this morning that I hope will help us get past the politics, and past the television shows to the fundamental questions about what we are willing to have our government do in our names.

It is essential for us, as citizens of our country, and as Jews who have inherited a strong ethical tradition, to face difficult issues like the use of torture in the fight against terror with open eyes and with honesty.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

September 30, 2014

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons)

Comments

Leave a comment

Blinded by Fear – Rosh Hashanah 5775 (first day)

Today is the day when Jews around the world celebrate the new year, so it is a good time for us to take stock of how things are going around the world for the Jewish people.  Let us start with a place where things are great for the Jews – Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan is one of Israel’s closest allies.  In 1991, when Azerbaijan declared independence from the U.S.S.R., Israel was one of the first countries in the world to recognize it.  A community of around 10,000 Jews live there, with the Mountain Jews tracing their roots back 1500 years.  The Jewish Agency has had a school in Azerbaijan since 1982.  There is very little antisemitism, and Jews there are an important part of society.

Israel and Azerbaijan have close diplomatic relations.  Trade connections are strong and growing.  Israel is one of the major providers of military equipment, and has helped modernize Azerbaijan’s armed forces.  They have cooperate closely in intelligence gathering and in the fight against terrorism.  If Israel ever has to launch a strike against Iran’s nuclear program, it is likely that the plan will involve the use of an Azerbaijani airfield.

In 2010, the Azerbaijani President banned the issuing of visas at the airport for visitors from every country in the world except for two, one of which was Israel.  The majority of the population of Azerbaijan is Muslim.  So there is one shining example of sanity in our world.

Of course, much of what our people have experienced around the world has not been so positive.  Our brothers and sisters suffered through a fifty day war with Hamas this summer.  Incidents of antisemitism have been on the rise in Europe.  In Belgium a few months ago, four people were murdered at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, by a suspected Frenchman of Algerian descent who had come back after a year fighting with ISIS.  Just a couple of weeks ago, there was an arson attack against a synagogue that was also firebombed back in 2010.

Two Muslim girls were recently arrested for plotting to blow up the Great Synagogue in Lyon, France.

A cell phone store in Istanbul recently posted a sign which read “The Jew dogs cannot come in here.”

European synagogues typically station armed guards outside for weekly Shabbat services.  If you visit the website of many European synagogues, you will see something like “To attend services, please bring photo identification or fax a copy of your passport.”  Jews in Europe are feeling less and less safe.  Perhaps that is why the rates of aliyah of Jews from Western Europe increased by 35% in 2013, and are continuing to increase this year.  It is too bad for Western Europe.  Historically, nations who expel their Jews tend to go downhill shortly afterwards.

So…  Did you pay more attention to the good news or the bad news?  Which evoked a stronger emotional reaction – Azerbaijan or Europe?  I am going to guess that it was the latter.

Fear is an extremely powerful emotion, one that blinds us to the blessings that stare us right in the face and often leads us to behave irrationally, bury our heads in the sand, or adopt fatalistic attitudes about the future.

If this is the time of year for taking stock of our lives, for conducting a cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of our souls, then it behooves us to look both inward and outward with open eyes.  Accountants, after all, need accurate data to make their calculations.

In the Torah portion for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, fear leads to nearly disastrous consequences.  At Isaac’s weaning celebration, Sarah sees something that terrifies her.  Ishmael, her handmaiden’s son with Abraham, is playing with Isaac in a way that causes her to fear for her son’s future.  To ensure that Isaac will not have to deal with his half-brother, she demands that Abraham banish Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness.  Although troubled, Abraham complies after God assures him things will turn out okay.  He gives the unfortunate mother and son provisions and sends them away.

When the food and water run out, Hagar begins to despair.  Thinking the end is near, she places Ishmael under a bush so that she will not have to watch him die.  Then she bursts into tears.  She is despondent and passive.

The boy is also wailing, and his cries reach heaven.  God sends an angel to Hagar, who scolds her: Mah lakh Hagar?  Al tir’i – “What troubles you, Hagar?  Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is.  Come, lift up the boy by his hand for I will make a great nation of him.”  (Genesis 21:17-18)

Then God opens her eyes and shows her a well of water.  Ishmael survives and grows to become the father of a great nation.

How is it possible that Hagar could have missed a well of water that was right there all along?  In the desert, wherever there is water, there are signs of it.  Plants grow where springs bubble up from the earth.  How could she not have seen it?

And how could she not have seen her son’s greatness, his destiny to become the father of a great nation?

It was fear.  The angel recognizes it instantly.  “What troubles you, Hagar?  Fear not…”  Fear blinds her to the blessings that are in front of her.

This story presents two different responses to fear.  Sarah reacts to her fear by lashing out.  Hagar’s fear leads her to bury her head in the sand, abandoning her son in his time of need.

Edmund Burke, the eighteenth century Irish statesman and supporter of the American Revolution, once said:  “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”

How much are our lives controlled by fear!  Fear-filled messages surround us.  They are so ubiquitous that we do not even notice them.  Here are a few examples.

The cosmetics industry.  The marketing of makeup, hair products, age-defying skin creams and the like, is based on the premise that we should be afraid of our bodies getting old, as if that is something than can be prevented.

The organic food industry is growing at a rate of approximately 14% per year, driven by fear.  We pay more money to ostensibly protect ourselves and our children from pesticides, growth hormones, and genetically modified organisms.  Milk containers often include the following two contradictory statements:  “This milk is from cows not treated with rbST,” implying that rbST is something we should be worried about, and “The Food and Drug Administration has determined there is no significant difference between milk from rbST treated cows and non-rbST treated cows.”  So is rbST safe?  I have absolutely no idea… but am I willing to risk it for myself and my family?

Politicians are notorious for using fear-mongering to attract votes and raise funds.  To avoid setting off any partisan debates with a contemporary example, let’s go back fifty years.  The famous “Daisy” ad of 1964 features a cute little two-year-old girl standing in a field, picking petals off of a flower while she counts to ten.  As soon as she reaches nine, an ominous male voice starts counting down.  “Ten, nine, eight…”  The camera zooms in to the girl’s face and her eyes open wide as she sees something alarming in the distance.  When the countdown reaches zero, we are shown the image of a nuclear explosion and its billowing mushroom cloud.  Lyndon Johnson’s voice then warns, “These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.” Then another voice summons us to “Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd. The stakes are too high for you to stay home.”  The ad was only shown once before it was pulled, but it left its mark.  Fear attracts votes.

In reporting the news, it is accepted as an ironclad law that good news will not sell more papers, but a headline about the latest ISIS attack, the spread of the Ebola virus, or the most recent grisly murder in San Jose will.  The growth of the internet and social media, and the change in the news business, have only exacerbated this.  Information moves so fast, and there is so much competition, that those who hope to share information are pressured to use any means possible to get attention, and that means fear.

Do not think that we Jews are above it.  Jewish organizations frequently use fear to garner support, whether we are talking about the the existential threats facing Israel, worsening cultures of antisemitism on college campuses, declining rates of Jewish affiliation, and so on.

The pervasive messages of fear that inundate us leave their mark.  Our world feels like a dangerous place.  The United States no longer has the influence and clout that it once enjoyed.  Our economic recovery is precarious.  Terrorism is on the rise, along with violence against women, human trafficking, illegal immigration, economic inequality, rising sea levels, pollution, drought, disease, war…  The list goes on.

Nevertheless, I am happy to report that things have never been better.

Fact:  On a global scale, we are living in the safest, freest, most peaceful time in human history.

Before we go any further, let us acknowledge that war is tragic, and violence produces real human suffering.  Nearly two hundred thousand people have been killed in the civil war in Syria, and millions have fled as refugees.  In Nigeria, Boko Haram takes schoolgirls captive and terrorizes through rape and murder.

As a people, we know what it means to be the victims of persecution and discrimination.  It has sadly been part of the Jewish experience for thousands of years.  During the Holocaust, the Nazis murdered nearly two thirds of the Jews of Europe, representing more than one third of Jews globally.  This cannot be minimized.  We must never trivialize the loss or suffering of anyone who has been the victim of violence, whether war, genocide, domestic, or other.

But speaking about humanity as a whole, we have allowed fear to blind us to the many blessings of our world.

Profesoor Steven Pinker, a Pyschologist at Harvard, wrote a book a few years ago called The Better Angels of Our Nature, in which he looks at actual data about violence throughout human history and finds that the twentieth century was the safest, most peaceful century in human history.  So far, the twenty-first is looking even better.

But what about World War One, World War Two, the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, Syria, Ukraine?  Conventional wisdom says that the twentieth century was the bloodiest, most violent ever.  The problem with that claim, Professor Pinker points out, is that nobody who makes it looks at evidence from any other century.

Previous centuries saw wars with names like “The Thirty Years War,” “The Eighty Years War,” and “The Hundred Years War” (which was actually 116 years).  Five hundred years ago, the Great Power nations typically spent about 75% of their time in a state of war with each other.  There has not been a Great Powers War since 1945.

Contrary to what all of the experts forecasted during the Cold War, America and the Soviet Union never went to war against each other.  Nuclear weapons were not used since the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The truth is, the overall trajectory of human history demonstrates a falling likelihood that any given person would die a violent death.

Professor Pinker starts at the beginning.  Looking at the archaeological remains of prehistoric human skeletons around the world, it turns out that approximately fifteen percent of them show physical signs of having died by human caused violence.

In Europe and the United States through the entire twentieth century, including both world wars, approximately .6% of deaths resulted from violence.  Globally, during the twentieth century, violent deaths, including those resulting from man-made famines, account for about three percent of all deaths.  In the year 2005, .03% percent of deaths globally were the result of violence.

Violence within societies has also fallen dramatically.  A person living in England today has about 1/35 the chance of being murdered as his or her medieval ancestor.  This is true in every European country for which we have data.

Corporal punishment, once common, was outlawed in the United States by the 8th Amendment, which banned cruel and unusual punishment.

Although the US is the only country in the western world that has not abolished the death penalty, our execution rate is only about 45 per year in a country with almost 15,000 homicides.

Violent crime has been steadily declining for decades in both per capita and absolute terms in every single category, including murder, robbery, rape, assault, property crime, and so on.  Society is getting more peaceful.

Slavery was legal everywhere on earth until the middle of the 18th century.  As of 1980, when Mauritania abolished it, slavery is now illegal in every country on the planet, although it does persist as an underground problem.

Extreme poverty is also declining globally.  In 1990, 43.1% of human beings lived on less than the equivalent of $1.25 per day.  In 2010, it was down to 20.6.  We still have a long way to go, but that is a remarkably fast improvement.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the average global life expectancy was 31.  In 2010, the world average was 67.2.

Globally, 84.1% of people fifteen and older know how to read and write.  Under the Millennium Goals, between 1999 and 2007, the percentage of children enrolled in primary schools in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 58% to 74%.

Freedom is spreading also.  Approximately half of the world’s population now lives under some sort of democratic rule.

Women’s rights have improved dramatically.  While domestic abuse is still a problem, it is nearly universally condemned in the US today, as we are currently witnessing as the NFL is trying to address domestic violence by professional football players.

Gay rights have expanded at a very quick pace, with nineteen states plus the District of Colombia and the federal government now recognizing same sex marriage.

What has caused all of this improvement?  It is not because human nature has changed.  Pinker identifies several factors.  One is the expansion of international commerce.  It is in everyone’s best interest to have trade between countries, and that requires peace.  Literacy and education have also been huge factors.  The ability to read exposes a person to other ideas, other ways of living and believing.  And this expands what he calls “the empathy circle.”  If I can imagine what it might be like to stand in another person’s shoes, I am much less likely to take pleasure when I watch that person burned at the stake.

Societies comprised of people with more education tend to experience lower violence and less racism, and are more receptive to democracy.

Do not get me wrong.  Things are far from perfect.  There is still tremendous suffering, injustice, and inequality that requires a lot of focus.  Civil wars rage.  The spread of militant Islam cannot be ignored.  But as a human species, we must acknowledge that we have made incredible gains.  For vast numbers of people in the world, life has never been better.

What about in the Jewish world?

Again, I do not want to deny the seriousness of the threats facing Israel, nor of Jews in Europe who are dealing with often violent antisemitism, nor of the oppressive culture on many college campuses.  But let us take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

In his 2010 book American Grace, based on a massive survey of Americans’ attitudes about religion, the Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam reports that Jews are the most admired religious community in America.  A 2009 study by the Anti Defamation League found “anti-Semitic attitudes equal to the lowest level in all the years of taking the pulse of American attitudes toward Jews.”  (http://forward.com/articles/133047/robert-putnam-assays-religious-tolerance-from-a-un/)

Reacting to the good news, Abraham Foxman, the National Director of the ADL, said that “…the significant diminution of widespread prejudice against Jews is tempered by the manifestation of violence, conspiracy theories and insensitivities toward them.”  (http://archive.adl.org/presrele/asus_12/5633_12.html#.VBn32Uu7uoo)

Can’t we just be happy that they like us?

As Abba Eban once said, “Show us a silver lining and we will search for the cloud.”

I am sure that you have probably received dozens of emails listing all of Israel’s extraordinary accomplishments.  Let me mention just a few to make the point.  Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any country on earth – by a lot.  It has the highest concentration of high tech companies in the world outside of Silicon Valley.  Israel is number two in the world for venture capital funds, behind the U.S.  It is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in trees.  It has developed dozens and dozens of life saving medical devices, not to mention all of the other high tech innovation.  Israel is a leader in solar power and water desalinization technology.  Israel has more museums per capita and is second in books published per capita.  Israel is the one country in the Middle East in which Christianity is growing.  It is the only country in which women can travel freely without the permission of a male guardian.  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-steven-carr-reuben-phd/imagine-a-world-without-i_1_b_5706935.html)

And so on…

But isn’t Israel a dangerous place?  That is a question that people ask me all the time.

In 2013, the rate of violent deaths per capita in Jerusalem was slightly less than that of Portland, one of America’s safest cities.

In the more than 100 year history of violence between Israel and its Arab neighbors, there have been 70,000 fewer deaths than in the Syrian civil war of the past three years.  In 2013, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claimed 42 lives, about the monthly murder rate in Chicago.  (http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/183033/israel-insider-guide)

Even in this summer’s fighting, the enormous lengths that Israel undertook to minimize civilian deaths on both sides of the border were extraordinary.  Can you imagine how that war would have gone if any other country had been in Israel’s position?

Some will call it naive, but Israel is doing pretty good.

But in the words of the Israeli author S. Y. Agnon upon receiving the Nobel Prize: “Who remembers the blessings?  I have received so many.  I remember those who did not bless me.”

As we celebrate the beginning of the year 5775, let us start to look for the blessings.  Let us recognize and be thankful that we live in one of the most diverse, tolerant, and affluent communities in human history.

Let us look with open eyes at this world that God has created.  Where have things gone well?  When have we reached our fullest human potential?  How have we made life better for each other?  What problems that used to cause suffering are now solved because we pulled together?  It should be a long list.

Then, when we look at the persistent challenges facing us today, let fear not cause us to hide, nor to overreact.

One hundred years from now, what global challenges of today will our descendants look back on and wonder why it took us so long to fix: rising carbon emissions, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, income inequality, lack of treatment for those with mental illness, oppression of women in the developing world, lack of universal access to safe drinking water?

Which challenges facing the Jewish people must we address?  There are communities in which our fellow Jews are struggling, where synagogues, because of real threats, station armed guards 365 days a year, not just on the High Holidays.  At anti-Israel demonstrations in Europe,  people shout “Death to the Jews.”  At some college campuses, 18 year old Jewish students must walk by people screaming at them as “baby killers” on their way to class.  Israeli children live under the threat of rocket attacks.

What are we doing to support them?  Not enough.

Fear gets in the way.  A sizable portion of the Jewish community responds by burying its head in the sand.  Why be tied to the fate of a people that constantly faces existential threats?  Another portion of the community responds with bellicosity, stifling debate and branding anyone who disagrees a “self-hating Jew.”

Where is the community solidarity that we demonstrated in the movement to free the Jews of the Former Soviet Union; the willingness of Jewish communities across America, including this one, to welcome refugees into their homes?  We need to bring the best of what Judaism offers to the challenges facing our people, and the challenges facing our world.

As Jews, we have learned much about building caring communities based on the values of Torah, passing Jewish tradition down to our children, and keeping our identity while engaging positively with a surrounding non-Jewish culture.  We have learned to succeed in science, medicine, art, politics, finance, philanthropy, and the pursuit of social justice.  As Jews, we have a lot of accomplishments.

So instead of always asking, “what is wrong with the world,” this year, let us ask “what is right with the world?”

L’Shanah Tovah.