... To God's Ear

Rabbi's Notes - November 2000

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

I hate writing about Israel. It's like when you have close friends who are quarrelling, and you've listened to them both go on forever in their vitriol until you realize that there is no objective position, no moral high ground, and really no good use anyhow for your own hard-won opinion. So at present, as I write, things seem to be "breaking down" in Israel and Palestine. But is this even true? With all their many and opposing perspectives, the tenor for Israeli Jews seems to be of intensely heightened watchfulness; fear, maybe, but a prepared kind of fear. They've been at this stage before. But they are not happy to be there again. From the perspective of Palestinians in the occupied territories the violence is not increasing. It is resistance that is increasing to violence that has been at a high pitch for months, years and decades. From the perspective of the handful of American Jews that I know, two have had trips to Israel cancelled in the past week because violence is, if not escalating, seeping out of its usual confines in the territories to scare tourists and Israeli Jews. And everybody involved has lots of opinions.

Here and in Israel both, there have been numerous demonstrations and fervent prayers for peace, whatever peace might be -- maybe for things to go back to where they were a month ago, which was better for tourists but not necessarily better for Israelis and certainly not for Palestinians, or maybe ahead to a two-state "solution," which will only arguably be better for either party if it should, from my mouth to God's ear, finally come to be.

Twenty years ago even, most of our relationships with Israel and with the past few weeks' headlines would have been less confusing. But in these post-Begin, post-Lebanon, post-intifada, post-assassination of Rabin days, it's pretty layered for a lot of us. We are not simply bystanders, studying the maps on CNN trying to figure out where Gaza is, like we might have when listening to the news from Srebrenica or Kigali. Many of us have travelled or lived in Israel. Some of us have relatives there. All of us can rehearse the old argument: there are no other Jewish states. If Something happened, where else would any of us run? And almost all of us feel a kind of tidal pull towards Israel, below the level of our politics or ethics or anything else. "If I forget thee, o Jerusalem, may my right hand wither..." Most of us still have two functioning hands.

And yet I must say I don't hear the word "zionist" bandied proudly about much in our shul these days, like I might have twenty or thirty years ago. We are affected by the "new historians," Jewish scholars who are debunking some of the stories we grew up with, like the one that says that Palestinians voluntarily left their homes in 1948, despite the invitation from the new Israeli government to stay and be well, preferring to amass and destroy Israel. It seems pretty factually clear that it didn't happen that way. And most of us simply know more about the Palestinian people and about what the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza actually entails than we did a few decades ago, so that -- rightly -- our empathy and our horror are aroused.

And so many of us have managed to find some kind of rhetorical strategy to distance ourselves from those people doing the oppressing, or protecting, or whatever it is that They, and not we, are doing. So here we are, on the Mendocino Coast, watching the news, feeling horrible and scared and variously angry, praying perhaps, expostulating on who is to blame, what They should do, imagining what we would do differently if we were Barak or Arafat, thankful indeed that we are not.

I am personally deeply horrified by the details of the occupation and strongly sympathetic to the yearnings of Palestinians for their own homeland. How can any Jew not passionately identify with the struggle and longing of Palestinians? At the same time, I do believe that it is possible that, if these entirely legitimate aspirations are fulfilled, it may very well mean significant danger -- and maybe even annihilation -- for the Jewish state. How can any Jew discount the implications of this possibility?

Looked at as an "either/or" the situation is indeed very likely hopeless. Either Israeli Jews live indefinitely in a bunker, stained at the soul by committing endless violence, and Palestinians endure indefinite repression, or else the obvious rage boiling from this cauldron erupts so violently that the Jewish presence in Israel is wiped out entirely. I have to imagine, if not believe, that there can possibly be a third way. As apparently unsuccessful as the "peace process" has been so far, it at least represents a vision of another set of possibilities. And there are other visions, of shared control, of international supervision of sensitive spots, even of a single state jointly run by two nations, bound by their mutual roots in the land and the economic bounty resulting from laying down enmity and cooperating. Likely? I doubt it. Possible? Absolutely -- in some measure, to some degree, for a time.

"Ours is not to complete the task, but neither are we free to desist from it." What we can do is to support those initiatives which best live out the vision of peace that we would like to see as the "third option." From my perspective, these are efforts -- and there are many -- to promote human connection between Jews and Palestinians and opposition to at least the most flagrant excesses of the Israeli occupation, such as the demolition of homes or the use of torture on detainees, if not to the occupation itself. If you'd like specific ideas and contacts, let me know and I'd be glad to make suggestions. Some of us may choose to support efforts that simply aim at a more healthy state of Israel -- more democratic, more diverse, more prosperous, less polarized -- even if these efforts apparently have nothing to do with the Palestinians. This is good, of course. But I think we need to ask when supporting Israel in any way, how will my contribution affect the pursuit of peace for both peoples? Some of us have made mistakes before, thinking we were planting trees when we were actually buying tanks, supporting ambulances that leave wounded Arabs on the side of the road.

Will these little peace efforts work? What does it mean for something to "work?" For several years now I've been writing (not enough) letters advocating for an especially impoverished Palestinian family whose home is under demolition order. Their house still stands, but so does the order for demolition. Has my advocacy worked? I don't know, but I have photos of "my family" now and an invitation to visit them in Beit Ummar when I am in the area. I just sent an e-mail to them via a Mennonite farmer from Indiana who will be visiting them soon, bringing my blessings in this time of escalated conflict. They are surprised and apparently touched that not only a Jew but a rabbi is speaking up on their behalf. It doesn't feel like much, but it feels like a tiny little bit more peace then there would be otherwise. I wish I could end the occupation, establish full democracy for Palestinians in their homeland and insure security for Israeli Jews in their/our homeland all by myself. But I can't figure out how. So for now I do this.

And I pray -- not because I count on God to establish justice for either Israel or Palestine (I think that one is in our hands), but because I do believe that prayer opens the heart and the mind to the most expansive possible awareness. Prayer increases imagination. It increases compassion. It helps love to prevail over fear, inside each of us and even between us. And, like that that petite nun I spoke of Yom Kippur morning, who prayed for an end to hunger in her city, sometimes it even gives us good ideas and the energy to act on them. "May the One Who makes peace above make peace HERE ON EARTH! Amen!"

Copyright 2000 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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