Mark Pinsky: Parshat V'Yikra - And He Called

We begin Nisan & Leviticus this week with parashah Vayikra… And He called.

The Israelites are riding high, so to speak, or at least as high as Israelites can ride. Sure, there was that Golden Calf incident, but Adonai had rescued and freed them from slavery, parted the Reed Sea for them, and given them His Commandments. Then He promised to dwell among them in the mishkan. And the cloud lifted—in the narrative, at least. 

How were the Israelites feeling? How would we be feeling? Grateful? Absolutely! Elevated? Sure. Divinely selected? Probably. Chosen? It would have been tempting… hubris is seductive.

A traditional reading of Vayikra says the small aleph ending the word “vayikra” is a reminder of Moses’ humility, and so a kavanah for all of us to live and lead with humility. That lesson seems particularly important now in the face of unprecedented Presidential hubris.

Let’s don’t forget that hubris is the first giant misstep toward failure. Because are several steps from hubris to failure, though, we know there is time and space there today for humility. We do not have to succumb to hubris–not in ourselves and not in our President. Humility is a step toward hope. And change.

Our own Bobbi Breitman offered a drash at Minyan Dorshei Derekh in late 2020 (that Evolve published soon after) on the “Ethical Imperative of Hope.” She asked and answered a question, which I am paraphrasing today: How do we go on when everything around us feels hopeless? She drew her answer from a midrash she had heard about Noah, Moses, Joseph, and Mordechai: “It was because they could see a new world.”

Another teaching I have leaned on for decades is the Stockdale Paradox.

Admiral Jim Stockdale was the ranking U.S. military officer in the Hanoi Hilton—the North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp—during the Vietnam War. By the way, if you’re in need of some humility, the Vietnamese call it the American War.

Military protocol made it Stockdale’s primary responsibility to help his men survive. What he learned and practiced—what became the Stockdale Paradox—is that the men who survived saw the harsh reality in front of them with brutal honesty yet never stopped believing that they would prevail.

“Oh,” someone once asked him, “you mean the optimists?”

No, Stockdale explained, the optimists all died of broken hearts. They kept telling themselves they would be released soon—by Pesach or by the 4th of July or by Christmas. The pessimists, meanwhile, could not imagine that things might get better; they died of despair, the absence of hope.

Those who survived could envision a different, better world.

When I said that hubris is the first step toward failure, I did not mean that as an abstraction.

I am an avid student of Jim Collins, who studies success and failure. During the the Great Recession, he published a book on organizational failure following success called “How the Mighty Fall.”

They fall in five steps:

First, they embrace hubris born of success. Can you think of a kid who inherited millions of dollars as well as his father’s successful housing business but tells everyone he lifted himself by his bootstraps?

The second step is the reckless pursuit of “more.” Elon Musk keeps coming up for me here.

Third, denial of risk and peril. The Republican Party.

At this point—and this is the point I assume we all fear we as a nation are today or will soon be—recovery is still possible.

The fourth step toward failure is grasping for salvation. Panic is not a strategy.

Some of us fear that we as a nation are already grasping for salvation. But the fact that we are talking, writing, resisting, and protesting about the risks and perils is proof that we are not giving in.

Organized people can and will make the difference.

The final, fifth step to failure is capitulating to irrelevance.

So How DO we Reconstructionist Jews keep ourselves relevant?—Boldly relevant, in fact! How do we hold onto hope?…  and What hopes do we hold on to when we see, with brutal honesty, the irrevocable harm being done to people we know, people we don’t know, our economy, our nation, and all the people and nations who rely on us?

I believe that experience is not what happens to us but what we do with what happens to us. We are humble, we are responsible, we see the facts before us with brutal honesty, and we never stop believing that we will prevail.

As we prepare for Pesach—and so for ALL the times when impossible things are possible—I offer Bobbi Breitman’s words as a blessing:

“May the light of these holy days help us see with new eyes, as we find the strength and courage to bring forth the world in which we hope to live and pass on to our children and grandchildren, an olam hadash,” a renewed World.

Dibarti.

Mark Pinsky serves as Treasurer to the Board of Directors of Reconstructing Judaism

 

Hope as an Ethical Imperative 2020 - Barbara Breitman

Hope as an Ethical Imperative

An Offering in Honor of Stefan Presser

Minyan Dorshei Derekh, December 12, 2020, 3rd Night of Hanukkah

Barbara E. Breitman

Before the election, like many of you, I was engaged in a variety of GOTV activities as well as getting trained to be present at a polling place on Nov 5 to support people whose right to vote might be challenged. Though my experience at the polling place was, fortunately, uneventful, my sense of how critical it was that I be out fighting to protect our democracy and voting rights was and is very strong. My hope that our democratic process would withstand the threats against us, that every legal vote would be cast and counted, was the only outcome I allowed myself to imagine. My hope for that outcome was not a feeling, but an existential position, an ethical imperative. It is sobering, if not shocking, that even after the election, our democracy is still at risk. 

As we face with urgency not only the divisiveness and suffering in this country caused by centuries of economic and racial injustice, and as we are living through climate change and a pandemic rooted in climate change, I would like to share a Midrash from Genesis Rabbah, that I first heard from Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari, that speaks powerfully to this moment.

The Midrash asks: 

How did Noah manage to survive the flood and live to see his children exit the ark, thus begetting a new generation of humanity?
How did Moses go from fleeing from Pharaoh to plunging him into the sea?
How did Joseph go from being shackled in prison to a governor in Pharaoh's court?
How did Mordechai go from being ready for the gallows to executing his executioners?

In other words, what made it possible for Noah and Moses, Joseph and Mordechai to transform the life-threatening situations in which they were living into a radically transformed reality?


​Fortunately, the midrash doesn't just ask the question.
It offers an answer. It says that for each of these biblical characters, the answer is the same.
אֶלָּא רָאָה עוֹלָם חָדָשׁ
It was because they could see a new world. An Olam Hadash. 

(Genesis Rabbah 30:8)
Each of these biblical characters was able to imagine new ways of being and living. Their vision strengthened them, gave them direction and enabled them to meet the challenges of their historic moment and to prevail by creating a radically new and different reality. 

The midrash teaches that it is our moral imagination, our ability to envision the world we hope to live into, that makes it possible to transform our current situation and bring a new world into being. The contemporary Indian author and human rights activist Arundhati Roy echoes this ancient Midrash as she speaks directly out of and into our current situation:

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this ... despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. ......Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can ....(be) ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

Hope as an ethical imperative means having faith in the power of an ethical/spiritual vision to guide our action and activism toward revitalization, justice and compassion. Hope is an ethical imperative because when we face extraordinary challenges, despair drains us of energy and commitment. Taking a stand for our hoped-for outcome, empowers our work toward it.

In a 2011 commencement speech at the University of California, Berkeley, Amory Lovins, a physicist and international visionary for a Green transition, said: “We work to make the world better, not from some airy theoretical hope, but in the pragmatic and grounded conviction that starting with hope and acting out of hope can cultivate a different kind of world worth being hopeful about.....Fear of specific and avoidable danger has evolutionary value....But pervasive dread, lately promoted by some who want to keep us pickled in fear, is numbing and demotivating. When I give a talk, sometimes a questioner details the many bad things happening in the world, all the suffering and asks how dare I propose solutions: isn’t resistance futile? The only response I’ve found is to ask, as gently as I can: “I can see why you feel that way. Does it make you more effective?” 

Joanna Macy, much beloved Buddhist teacher and long-time environmental activist says: “Active hope doesn’t require our optimism. We can apply it even....where we feel hopeless. The guiding impetus is intention, we choose what we aim to bring about, act for, or express. Rather than weighing our chances and proceeding only when we feel hopeful, we ....let our intention be our guide.” “Active hope is a practice. ...it is something we do rather than have. .... First, we take a clear view of reality; second, we identify ... the direction we’d like things to move in or the values we’d like to see expressed; and third, we take steps to move ourselves in that direction.”

I’ve heard Macy put forth a version of the following question when she speaks about the dire situation of the Earth: if a dearly beloved family member or friend is dangerously ill and you know death is a real possibility, would you walk away, give up and do nothing for them because you don’t feel hopeful about their survival? How can we do that in relationship to our beloved Mother Earth?

In 2012, in her book Active Hope, Macy put forth a vision that is ever more critically meaningful today. She describes three world shaping stories that co-exist uncomfortably at this moment in our nation: 

1. The first Is “Business as Usual’...the view that economic growth must continue and that for a market economy to grow, we need to consume more and more than we already do. In this perspective, climate change is irrelevant to the dramas or choices of our personal lives. 

2. The Second story is the “Great Unraveling”. According to this story, the world we’ve been accustomed to living in, is in the midst of unraveling. The world our children and grandchildren will inherit will be radically different than the world we grew up in. The conditions of the next generation will be much worse than for people living today because of economic decline, natural resource depletion, climate change, mass extinction of species, world-wide pandemics, social division, increasing numbers of climate refugees and war. This is the story that punctures the illusion we can continue with business as usual; it is the story penetrating our consciousness and breaking through denial ever more fiercely these days. The pandemic has brought climate change up close and personal to privileged folk in the first world.

The stories of Business as Usual and the Great unraveling are contrasting accounts of the state of our world. The story of Business as Usual is increasingly being disrupted by the reality of the mess we are in. The pandemic is part of that mess and it is crucial that we understand how the pandemic is rooted in climate change and the economic growth story. This will be true, whether or not a vaccine helps us out of our current crisis in the coming months.

3. The third story is the ‘Great Turning’, a story that has begun to catch on more and more: the commitment to act for the sake of life on Earth as well as the vision, courage and solidarity to do so. This involves a rethinking of the way we do things, and the creative redesigning of the structures and systems that make up our society. This is the enormous challenge of our moment. The ethical imperative is to give ourselves to that story so it can act through us, breathing new life into what we do and what we demand and expect of ourselves, our government and our leaders. 

Such a profound transformation requires that we keep reading, learning, talking with each other, sharing ideas and practices, working together and supporting each other to make changes in our lives and insist that our government turn the gigantic ship of state toward policies and action that are in alignment with the truths about the mess we are in. Hope as an ethical imperative is not a solo practice. It must be a communal practice, a societal practice, a global practice. I know there are people in this community with far more knowledge than I have about the ecological transformation necessary for our survival and have been engaged in activism on this issue for years. We need each other for learning, for motivation and for inspiration. We need to be able to see with new eyes together to find and do our part to create an Olam Chadash. 

Our nation is also at a crucial point of inflection about race, brought about not only by the persistence and greater visibility of systemic police violence but also because we can see that economically vulnerable populations, mostly black and brown people, have been more devastated by the pandemic. One of the gateways between this world and the next that has been opened by the pandemic has to do with race. I have been oriented and guided by far-seeing social justice activists who are articulating ethical and spiritual visions for American futures we must fight for.

Here is the vision of Valerie Kaur, a daughter of Sikh immigrants who is now a civil rights activist connected to Rev William Barber and the Poor Peoples’ campaign. She shared these words on November 4, 2020, on the eve of the November election. 

Our nation is in transition. These last convulsive years are part of a larger transition in our country. In the next 25 years, the number of people of color in this country will exceed the number of white people for the first time since colonization. And we are at a crossroads. Will we birth a nation that has never been? A nation that has never been in the history of the world, a nation made up of other nations. A nation that is truly multi-racial, multi-faith, multi-cultural, where power is shared and we strive to protect the dignity, the wellness, the safety of all. Or will we continue to descend into a kind of civil war? Into a power struggle with those who want to return America to a past where only a certain class of people hold dominion.

This power struggle has been going on for a very long time in this country. The founders of our nation crafted the US constitution to consolidate power for white Christian men of an elite class. The rest of us were simply not counted in “We the people...” .....
And yet the founders had invoked words that even they could not constrain: justice, freedom, equality, the guarantee of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. These were magical words that ...seized the imagination of people for whom they were never meant. In every generation, black and brown people, and white accomplices have risen up in movements to unleash the magic of these words, to bleed for these words, to expand these words so “We the people” would include more and more and more of us.

This brings me to you. These last four years, you have wept, and prayed, and grieved, and marched and raged, and fought and now you have voted and gotten out the vote. Now I ask you to stay in the labor. Stay in the labor with love. Because America, our America is a nation that is still waiting to be born, and the only way that we will birth that nation is if we do so with love.

Love calls us to look on the face of anyone and say you are a part of me I do not yet know. Love calls us to be brave with our grief and take in those wounded and neglected and abused, as our own flesh and blood. To harness our rage in the face of injustice because the purpose of divine rage is not vengeance, but to reorder the world. Love refuses to leave anyone outside our circle of care. For we are one family, even those who vote against us. For the only way we will birth an America for all is if we leave no one behind. So let us vow to be brave with our love, love for others and love for ourselves. For you matter. Your life matters and the only way we will last is if we let joy into our bodies and breath. Sing, dance, breathe, rejoice, let joy in. Joy will give us the energy for that long labor ahead. Laboring with love and with joy is the meaning of life.

The vision of America as a nation still waiting to be born has animated the creative work of black activists and artists for many decades, like Langston Hughes, Dr. Vincent Harding, Maya Angelou and many others. In his book Is America Possible?, Harding wrote: 

It is precisely in a period of great spiritual and societal hunger like our own that we most need to open minds, hearts, and memories to those times when women and men actually dreamed of new possibilities for our nation, for our world, and for their own lives. It is now that we may be able to convey the stunning idea that dreams, imagination, vision, and hope are actually powerful mechanisms in the creation of new realities—especially when the dreams go beyond speeches and songs to become embodied; to take on flesh, in real, hard places.

Still, oppressive structures, ideologies and beliefs that have existed for centuries can become so embedded within us, that they take on an aura of inevitability.  When this happens, our moral imagination is sapped or disabled in ways we are not even aware of.  I recommend that people who have not already, read the book Caste by Isabel Wilkerson.  Wilkerson resurrects the concept of ‘caste hierarchy’ to describe how the dominant white caste, living under the illusion of innate superiority, have used power and terror to keep African Americans in the bottom tier, deemed innately inferior: exploited physically, economically, legally and socially. She shares many stories that describe vividly the ways in which this hierarchy gets internalized psychologically and enacted in social relationships of all kinds.  She explores parallels, overlaps, similarities and shared origins of how an American caste system was constructed and continues to shape our common life in America, differently, but not differently enough, from India and Nazi Germany.  

After the election, I read the words of Ruby Sales, the well-known black activist, who at the age of 6, was the first child to integrate into an all-white elementary school in New Orleans. Ruby is now a 72 yo woman, still an activist, who has dedicated her life to working for social and racial justice. And yet even a courageous activist like Ruby had her vision temporarily occluded because of how caste can get embedded in our souls, how powerful despair can be and how easily we can slide toward it. Listen for the shift in her perspective as she ponders the results of our recent election. Her words were enormously helpful to me, and might well be for you, because, after the election, my vision was distorted in much the same way as hers...until I read her words. 

It is another end of a long and emotional day. Yet this day was different from all other ones in the last four years. Hope is everywhere because we have come through four years of unimaginable despair and grief..... However we are headed towards a new tomorrow where a new horizon dawns.
Yesterday I could not see the clearing, and I slumped for a moment as I focused my eyes on the fact that 55% of White women .... and 58% of White men voted ...[for things to continue as they have for these four years.] These stats captured my mind and spirit. [This is a slight adaptation of her words, altered to leave out he who shall not be named] 

My sight was narrowed by despair because I looked at these stats through the White gaze. It was one that extols and reinforces the power of Whiteness and raises it up to the normative majority even when it is the weakened minority.
In doing so, I diminished our collective power while making us invisible. Instead, I centered White lives rather than our diverse lives. Consequently, I overlooked the important point that the 55% and 58% of White women and men did not represent the total universe of men and women (in America). Rather these statistics only represent a high percentage within White America instead of the broadness of a diverse multi-ethnic and intergenerational America.
Because I fell into this trap of making this group my reference and starting point, I missed the significant and most hopeful meaning of the moment which was right before my eyes in clear sight. It is the new 21st century multiethnic coalition which is larger and ... (more) democratized .....

 

40% of White men voted for change

43% of White women voted for change

80% of Black men voted for change

91% of Black women voted for change

61% of Latinx men voted for change

70% of Latinx women Voted for change

60% additional races of color voted for change

.... This coalition of men, women, multi-ethnic and intergenerational formation is the evidence of a new 21 century community coalition that destabilizes White supremacy. This new community .... sets in motion the concrete manifestation of a dream that flows toward a multi-ethnic democracy. It is in this new story and vision that we find hope. ...This is the hope to which we must hitch our work. It is this hope that has galvanized generations of Americans who kept on working towards it even in the nation’s worst moments.”

As we gather tonight, on the 3rd night of Hanukkah, it is important to connect with the energy of this holy season and remind ourselves, as Rabbi Arthur Waskow reminds us, that: “Hanukkah was created in a time of resisting tyranny and honoring the resistance with a teaching and a practice: “Not by might and not by power, but by My Spirit, says the Breath of Life.” And the proof of the efficacy of that practice is that One day’s energy, one day’s olive oil, met eight days’ needs! If we resist tyranny and refuse to worship idols, we could learn how to make sure that it could take only a minimum of nature’s energy to serve us... we (can) and need to create social systems that not only sustain us but allow for us and the Earth we’re harvesting to mutually sustain one another. Forever.”

As we continue to light Hanukkah candles this week and celebrate the power of faith and even the possibility of miracles, may we remember that ‘hope, like every virtue, is a choice that becomes a practice that becomes spiritual muscle memory.” (Krista Tippet) 

May the light of these holy days help us see with new eyes, as we find the strength and courage to bring forth the world we hope to live into and pass on to our children and grandchildren, an Olam Chadash. May it be so.

Questions for small group discussion: 

Think of a situation, personal, communal or societal, which is calling for change:

What is the direction in which you would like things to move or what values would you like to express?

If you assume the stance of hope as an ethical imperative, what steps or action could you take that would be in alignment with your hoped-for outcome?

If you are already engaged in working toward an Olam Chadash, please share your experience: how is it changing you? What learning and new perspectives are you developing? Where do you imagine moving next? What experiences have you had through which you felt yourself being part of a force for greater than yourself for good, for justice, for compassion?

Closing song: 

We Shall be Known by Karisha Longaker of MaMuse

We shall be known by the company we keep
By the ones who circle round to tend these fires
We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap
The seeds of change, alive from deep within the earth

It is time now, it is time now that we thrive
It is time we lead ourselves into the well
It is time now, and what a time to be alive
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love

Barbara Breitman, Yom Kippur 5775: On Forgiveness

Barbara E. Breitman  - 2014

Minyan Dorshei Derekh, Germantown Jewish Center, Philadelphia, Pa.

           

          When I was invited to speak on Yom Kippur, it was still summer and the war between Israel and Hamas was raging hot.  As I thought about whether I might have something to say on this holy morning, I realized how obsessed I was, not about geopolitics, but about questions having to do with vengeance, trauma and forgiveness. I decided to take the responsibility of this dvar as an opportunity to think more deeply, very aware I was doing so from the comfort and safety of my home in the United States.

            These are my questions: How will these people who have suffered so much at each others’ hands ever be able to live together in any configuration of peaceful co-existence?  What enables people to empathize with the humanity of the ‘other’ after such prolonged violence?  What can we learn from people who have been able to forgive and partner with their enemies and work for peace? Is there any wisdom in Judaism about forgiveness that might be helpful?  What wisdom might there be for us when we face questions about experiences of trauma and the challenges of forgiveness in less catastrophic circumstances? 

            I want to begin with basics from the Jewish tradition’s perspective on forgiveness, recognizing that these principles were not meant for conditions of war.  But in order to ground us in a foundation.  Within the tradition, forgiveness is consequent on repentance.  To become worthy of forgiveness, a person who has harmed another must first engage in a process of teshuvah which entails a number of steps: 

1.      Acknowledge that one has done something wrong

2.      Confess one’s wrongdoings to God and community

3.      Express remorse

4.      Resolve not to transgress in this way again.

5.      Compensate the victim for injuries inflicted and do acts of charity for others.

6.      Sincerely request forgiveness by the victim…with help from community or friends…and do so up to three times.

7.      Avoid the conditions that caused the offense

8.      Act differently when confronted with the same situation.

            Once someone has done teshuvah, we are obliged to forgive. At the heart of the tradition is the idea that forgiveness is an obligation and acting on the demands of that duty enables us to live as a community worthy of God’s presence. (see Elliot Dorff in Dimensions of Forgiveness)  The bonds of community are re-established through action rather than a change in feelings.  It is the preservation of these bonds that is central to the traditional perspective.  Forgiveness is not the private emotional process we usually think of today.  I take from this a valuable principle:  forgiveness is a practice.  It is a choice and a decision.  It is not an emotion.

            And yet we know….the practice of forgiveness involves emotional challenges. 

            What makes it hard to ask for forgiveness?

            It is an act of vulnerability.  It means giving power to the other person by needing something from them that might be refused.  It means accepting our own capacity to do harm.  It takes humility and courage.

            Why are we motivated to forgive people who have harmed us? 

            We know we have harmed others and we want to be forgiven when we are the ones at fault.  Or we want to get past an incident and get on with our lives, not continue to harbor anger and resentment. 

            What makes it hard to offer forgiveness?

            Offering forgiveness is often the outcome of a painful struggle, with rage, fear, ambivalence, and conflict. Forgiveness involves overcoming feelings of hostility and vengefulness.  It involves overcoming feelings of vulnerability.  We have been harmed in a way we were unable to avoid, which has compromised our safety.  By forgiving, we may put ourselves at risk again.

            Offering forgiveness can involve a profound wrestling with good and evil, within our-selves and outside of our-selves.  As one writer expressed it:  “Forgiving involves facing this most difficult of moral and personal challenges:  striving to take the goad from our sides without eviscerating ourselves of our guts—our moral sensibilities, our self respect, our standards of justice and our hope.”  (Steven Cherry, Healing Agony: Re-imagining Forgiveness)  After extremes of violence and trauma, how is forgiveness even possible?

            In a remarkable memoir, a black South African psychologist who served on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission named Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela reflects on her interviews with Eugene de Kock, the commanding officer of state-sanctioned death squads under apartheid rule.  After witnessing an interaction at the hearings between de Kock and two black South African women whose husbands he was responsible for murdering, who yet offered de Kock forgiveness, Madikizela wanted to understand how remorse and forgiveness happen after mass atrocity.  “How,” she asks, “can we transcend hate if the goal is to transform human relationships in a society with a past marked by violent conflict between groups?  These questions,’ she says, ‘may be irrelevant for people who do not need to live as a society with their former enemies.  But for those of us whose lives are intertwined with those who have grossly violated our human rights…, ignoring the question is not an option.” I was asking the same kind of questions and though I don’t see the South African situation as historically or politically similar to Israel and the Palestinians, I wanted to learn from her.

            Was de Kock too evil or were his acts too evil to be worthy of the forgiveness offered to him, she asks?   In a face to face encounter, Gobodo-Madikezela confronts one of the existential crises that arise when a victim of extreme trauma faces a remorseful perpetrator.  As de Kock expresses what seems to be sincere grief and remorse over what he has done, Gobodo-Madikizela finds herself feeling sympathy for this mass murderer. At that moment, she instinctively touches his hand … but then recoils.  Was she crossing the moral line which allows one to maintain a measure of distance from a perpetrator by actually being able to identify with him? Was she violating her own sense of morality by feeling the human impulse of empathy for this killer?

Reflecting later, she sobs with despair for her suffering as a black woman under Apartheid.  But at the same time, she explains she felt a profound sense of loss about de Kock, “(for) the side of him she had touched (that) had not been allowed to triumph over the side that made him Apartheid’s killing machine.”

            It is an extraordinary quality to be able to empathize with such an enemy…and, of course, this was only possible once de Kock was in prison and the power dynamic between them had been reversed.  When war or oppression is still ongoing, such empathy can be nearly impossible.

            One of the most profoundly disturbing dimensions of this summer’s war was witnessing the ever more deeply entrenched dehumanization between Israelis and Palestinians from both sides.  Dehumanization made ever more intense as the everyday interactions that used to occur between the two peoples before the Second Intifada have become increasingly rare. That is what happens as violence and vengeance suck people into the cycle of kill or be killed, dominate or be dominated. (Embodying Forgiveness)  Empathy, even for the dead children of the enemy, can become a victim of war, as Bob Tabak’s recently posted dvar Torah so painfully named.  Empathy or even attempting to understand the other seems like treason.  This is why peacemakers are often assassinated by their own people.

            Sitting with those thoughts, I was moved to discover the words of a Christian theologian, L. Gregory Jones:   “It is important to analyze and confront our tendencies in modernity…  to see the world either as ‘lighter’ than it is (hence trivializing forgiveness by making it therapeutically easy) or as ‘darker’ than it is, hence believing that forgiveness is impossible or ineffective because violence is ultimately our master.”  I stopped in my tracks after reading that sentence. Has violence indeed become our master? 

            Jones continues: “It is urgent to explore whether there are ways to unlearn and break habits of violence, to stop cycles of vengeance, to cultivate a politics of holiness…. Our commitments to unlearn and break these habits is fragile, even when there is a desire to do so.  If such commitments are to be sustained, they require supportive friendships, practices and institutions that enable the unlearning of destructive habits and the cultivation of holy ones……...” (Bolding mine)

            And so I continued reading to learn more from people who have broken those habits.

            Among the books I read was Nelson Mandela’s autobiography.  In his introduction to the book , Bill Clinton reports Mandela’s answer to the question of how he was able to make the journey from prisoner to peacemaker and president:  “When you’re young and strong, you can stay alive on your hatred.  And I did for many years.”  Then one day, “I realized that they could take everything from me except my mind and my heart. They could not take those things.  Those things I still had control over.  And I decided not to give them away.  I realized that when I went through that gate, if I still hated them, they would still have me. I wanted to be free.  And so I let it go.”   “To make peace with an enemy one must work with that enemy, and that enemy (has to) become one’s partner.”

            Mandela’s words echo the wisdom of Torah.  Just weeks ago, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote on the biblical injunction “Do not despise the Egyptian because you were a stranger in his land”.   “The wisdom of Moses’ command not to despise the Egyptians still shines through today.  If the people continued to hate their ….oppressors, Moses would have taken the Israelites out of Egypt but would have failed to take Egypt out of the Israelites.  They would still be slaves, not physically but psychologically.  They would be …… held captive by the chains of resentment, unable to build the future.  To be free, you have to let go of hate.  That is a difficult truth but a necessary one…..Always be ready, Moses seems to have implied, for reconciliation between enemies.”

            Rabbi Sacks continues:  “No less surprising is Moses’ insistence: “Do not despise an Edomite because he is your brother.”  Edom, he reminds us, was the other name of Esau.  The earlier stories from the book of Genesis seem to imply that the enmity between Jacob and Esau would be eternal.  Why then, asks Rabbi Sacks, does Moses tell us not to despise Esau’s descendants?  “The answer is simple.  Esau may hate Jacob.  It does not follow that Jacob should hate Esau.  To answer hate with hate is to be dragged down to the level of your opponent.  When….I asked Judea Pearl, father of the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, why he was working for reconciliation between Muslims and Jews, he replied with heartbreaking lucidity:  “Hate killed my son.  Therefore I am determined to fight hate.”

            And this is what I discovered to be the distinguishing and shared characteristic of people who have been able to partner with the enemy and do the hard work of peace-making:  not to see the one who inflicted violence and trauma on them as the enemy, but rather to see the enemy as hate itself.  So simple.  So profound.  So seemingly impossible.  But there are people who do it.

            Several years ago, a Palestinian doctor, Izzeldin Abuelaish probably changed the course of Operation Cast Lead and the bombing of Gaza in 2009.  Dr. Abuelaish was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza.  He went to medical school in Cairo, studied obstetrics and gynecology in Saudi Arabia and did his residency in Israel. He spent years working in Israeli hospitals where, he has said, patients were always surprised to find a Palestinian doctor delivering Jewish babies.  He travelled through check points daily to work and was widely respected by many Israelis. On January 16, 2009, only 5 months after his wife had died of leukemia, Dr. Abuelaish’s home was hit by a bomb during Operation Cast Lead. Three of his daughters, aged 13, 15 and 21, were killed; another daughter, was seriously injured, a niece died and a fifth girl, another niece, suffered catastrophic injuries.  Right after the shell struck, he ran to the room that had been hit. "I saw my girls drowning in a pool of blood," "I saw their body parts… all over the room". Desperate for medical assistance, he called his friend Shlomi Eldar, a presenter on Channel 10 in Israel who happened to be on air at that moment. The doctor’s agonized cries for help in a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic were broadcast live throughout Israel. Within an hour, with the help of his Israeli friends, his injured daughter and niece were evacuated from Gaza.    Then Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, also heard the broadcast. Two days later he announced the ceasefire.

            Dr. Abuelaish has written a powerful book called:   I Shall Not Hate . In an interview he was asked:  But how is it possible that you do not feel hatred after what has happened to you?  "There is a difference between anger and hate, he explains. “Anger is acute but transient; hate is a poison, a fire which burns you from the inside. ….It is important to feel anger in the wake of events like this, anger that signals that you do not accept what has happened, that spurs you to make a difference.  But you have to choose not to spiral into hate.  All the desire for revenge and hatred does is drive away wisdom, increase sorrow and prolong strife… …I realized that I had two options …:  I could take the path of darkness or the path of light.  If I chose the path of darkness, of poisonous hate and revenge, it would be like choosing to fall into the complications and the depression that come with disease.  To choose the path of light, I had to focus on the future and my children.”

            Even if the enemy has not expressed remorse, this letting go of hatred is a form of forgiveness that is an innovative gesture, breaking open the logic of vengeance and cycles of violence. 

            The organization Bereaved Families was founded by Yitzchok Frankenthal, an Orthodox Jewish business man from Bnei Brak.   Frankenthal’s 19 year old son Arik was returning home from his army base on a weekend pass when he was abducted by Hamas terrorists and never returned.  In 1995, Frankenthal and several bereaved Israeli families founded the Parent’s Circle Family Forum. In 1998 the first meetings were held with a group of Palestinians families from Gaza who identified with the call to prevent further bereavement through dialogue and reconciliation. The connection with the group in Gaza was cut off as a result of the second Intifada, though the work of the organization continues.

             Robi Damelin, whose 28 year old son was shot by a sniper while serving in the Israeli army,  and who works for the Family Forum, says the first words that came out of her mouth when she learned of his death were ‘do not take revenge in the name of my son.’  Robi travels around the world with Palestinian partners to promote dialogue.  One of those partners, Ali Abu Awwad, born in 1972 on the West Bank, was given a 10 year prison sentence as a teenager for throwing rocks but was released 4 years later after the signing of the Oslo Accords.  In 2000, during the Second Intifada, Abu Awwad was shot in the leg by an Israeli settler and his brother Youseff was killed by an Israeli soldier at a check point incident. Together with his mother, Abu Awaad became a member of Bereaved Families Forum.  He reports that he was shocked at his first meeting when he saw an Israeli parent cry: “I never believed that Israelis could cry.  I saw that they could be victims.”   David Shulman, a professor of Humanistic Studies at Hebrew University describes Awwad as one of the leaders of a new generation of non-violent resisters in Palestine, and quotes him as saying:

"The Jews are not my enemy; their fear is my enemy. We must help them to stop being so afraid – their whole history has terrified them – but I refuse to be a victim of Jewish fear anymore".

             AliAbu Awwad has been on tour this fall in the USA with Orthodox Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger, a passionate Zionist settler who says he has been transformed by his friendship with Ali.  Abu Awwad is coming to Congregation Mishkan Shalom this coming Thursday evening, October 9^th and to Germantown Jewish Centre on Friday morning. 

            I cannot begin to figure out the geopolitics of the Middle East.  But I understand human relationships.  I do not know if I would ever be capable of the kind of forgiveness exemplified by these remarkable people, but I know I want to learn from them. At a moment in history like this, on this Shabbat Shabbatonim, I want to take seriously that forgiveness is a powerful Jewish practice.  I want to take seriously that hope is an ethical position, not an emotion.  I want to take to heart Sharon Salzberg’s words on faith:  “the power of faith doesn’t mean we’ve annihilated fear, or denied it, or overcome it through strenuous effort.  ….  It means feeling our fear and still remaining in touch with our heart, so that fear does not define our entire world, all we can see or do or imagine.”

            I want to leave you with the words of two poets.  The first is Jewish, Rabbi Tamara Cohen and the second by Palestinian American, Naomi Shihab Nye.

No Pain Like My Pain (Lamentations 1:12) - for Tisha b'Av 5774/ 2014 

That's how it feels Dear God.

That's how it felt to the lamenters exiled and Temple-shorn. 

That's how it feels to each grief-wracked mother, father, sister, son, family, nation.

                                                                                             הביטו וראו אם יש מכאוב כמכאובי

"Look carefully and see if there could possibly be pain like my pain, like the one bestowed by You upon me."

No pain like my pain, 

no exile like my exile, 

No land my land,

No desolate city like my desolate city.

No heart like my own aching heart.

No fear like the fear of my people.

No genocide like our genocide.

No humanity like our humanity. 

No right like our right.

No wrong like their wrong.

No rage like my rage. 

No pain like my pain,

immediate and raw and righteous, 

ancient and true and etched in our genes by history's injustices.

Dear God, help us look, 

look closer so that we may see

our children in their children,

their children in our own.

Help us look so that we may see You --

in the bleary eyes of each orphan, each grieving childless mother, 

each masked and camouflaged fighter for his people's dignity.

Dear God, Divine Exiled and Crying One,

Loosen our claim to our own uniqueness.

Soften this hold on our exclusive right -- to pain, to compassion, to justice. 

May your children, all of us unique and in Your image, 

come to know the quiet truths of shared pain, 

shared hope, 

shared land, 

shared humanity, 

shared risk, 

shared courage, 

shared peace.

In Sh'Allah. Ken yehi Ratzon. 

May it be Your will. 

and may it be ours.

       - Rabbi Tamara Ruth Cohen

 From ‘Jerusalem’ by Naomi Shihab Nye

I’m not interested in
who suffered the most.
I’m interested in
people getting over it.

Once when my father was a boy
a stone hit him on the head.
Hair would never grow there.
…..
Later his friend who threw the stone
says he was aiming at a bird.
And my father starts growing wings.

….A child’s poem says,
“I don’t like wars,
they end up with monuments.”
He’s painting a bird with wings
wide enough to cover two roofs at once.

There’s a place in my brain
where hate won’t grow.
I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.
Something pokes us as we sleep.

It’s late but everything comes next.