Moving Forward-Rabbi Boris' Blog

This week we read the story of Noah, a man who directly confronts a world of horror and suffering.  Our introduction to this man is a bit ambivalent.  We are told he is not much of a hero, but an “ish tzadik tamim," a simple good man, or as is often translated, "a man blameless in his age."  If his deepest qualities need any more mystery, the commentators spend pages discussing whether his goodness was because the rest of the world was so bad or because he truly was a standout in a world filled with so many other good people.  We don't know exactly why he is chosen by God, but as he takes on his role, he follows God's every word, and watches quietly as the world is destroyed.  He responds because he is asked to, but at the same time he willfully ignores the suffering around him.  Whoever he is, he stands alone in a world that is falling apart.  He reacts, by not reacting.

As has been brought up so many times over the past few weeks as we confront the aftermath of the horrible tragedy in Israel, we need to ask ourselves how our reaction, how Israel's response not only stands in the current moment but how well it stands up to other moments in history.  A mass terrorist attack against Jews, an unfathomable evil act of murder and the darkest form of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hatred, demands a response.  Not only does this response require some sort of military action, but we would also hope for a response from those innocent people  watching around the world.  So many Jews and so many others have reacted with horror and strength, but so many others have not.  Far too many when encountering the news and the images of mass murder, violence, beheadings, hostage taking and death to over 1000 Jews, immediately jumped to blame Israel.  What should have inspired even the most simple of compassion and support, caused too many to ignore and cause blame.  This reaction is horrifying now, and it was a similar willful ignorance that allowed the Holocaust to happen.  

What is especially scary for so many of us, especially in the liberal community, is the reaction of many of the progressive social justice groups, some of which are made up of large numbers of Jews.  From Israel-focused organizations, such the extreme left Jewish Voice for Peace, we have heard a condemnation of Israel’s violence and barely a word against the horror perpetrated by Hamas. But so many other liberal organizations, from Black Lives Matter to many major environmental and social groups, have at best done little to condemn Hamas, and at worst have flat out blamed Israel.  This ignorance can somehow be expected, but how would this reaction look in 1942 in the midst of WWII and the Holocaust?  Unfortunately, very familiar.  

Like Noah, our reactions to the tragedy in Israel, or really any catastrophic event, always need to be looked at through the fullness of our history and all the other lessons we should have learned from in our past.  After the horrors of the Holocaust, we chanted “never again” and vowed to not ever let antisemitism take over our world. Yet, here we are.

Personally, this has been a difficult time, as I, like so many people in this community, have been longtime supporters of so many left-leaning causes and organizations.  I am a supporter of Rabbis for Human Rights and T'ruah. I am a member of Jstreet and Peace Now, organizations which thankfully have forcefully condemned Hamas’ actions, while also delicately leaving space for concern about the Israeli response and the current right wing government of Israel.  But so many other groups have clearly gone off the deep end, ignoring the terrorists acts and the murder of thousands of Israelis to only place blame on Israel and the Jews.  

I was reading about Eric Spiegleman, a Los Angeles lawyer and longtime social justice activist who put it well in his reaction to these protests, and was especially bothered by the protests of the Democratic Socialist of America, a group he supported.  He said  “It’s like, I belong to this political organization that believes in three things: affordable housing, raising the minimum wage, and the wholesale murder of Jews,“Two out of three ain’t bad!”

So many articles and op-eds have done their best to try to unpack this strange situation, to try to understand how so many supposedly liberal compassionate people, so many Jews, somehow can ignore the horrors of what we have just seen the past few weeks.  It is not as easy as calling them self-hating Jews, because the roots are much more about privilege, whiteness and I never thought I would say these words, the dangers of being too liberal.

When writing about these challenges in Tablet Magazine, Boaz Munro said, “I was waking up to the apathy of the same left which claims to care about marginalized groups and claims to “uplift” their voices; validate their truths; dismantle the systems that oppress them. And now we are waking up to an even starker truth: that millions of people love dead Jews and can’t stand living ones.”

I remember these challenges well as a university student many decades ago.  My university was definitely a left-leaning activist community, where there were a group of people seemingly fighting for every cause one could think of.  There were multiple environmental organizations, feminist and pro-choice groups, strong Jewish, Muslim and Christian organizations, and many more.  During my time there, I founded and led the school’s chapter of Students for a Free Tibet and was active in pro-choice, animal rights and here and there, a few environmental groups.  Add to all of this, I was a passionate leader at the campus Hillel, and dreamed of becoming a rabbi.  I had a full activist plate, and loved feeling like I was making a difference in a very broken world.

Yet looking back, I could see that being part of these groups, no matter what the cause, also promoted a sense of pride, maybe a somewhat immature one.  We were fighting against the system, some sort of broken system, and we had the knowledge and wisdom to go against the mainstream beliefs and ideologies we somehow had taken over the world.  I was liberal, but a different kind of liberal.  I was Jewish, but not that kind of Jewish. We didn’t need to listen to the mainstream voices, because the mainstream voices were wrong.

We can see how this view is playing out so dangerously in the current crisis.  So many good people, so many good organizations, many of which prided themselves on their progressive values, have now failed us as they have very proudly proclaimed that they don’t need to fit in with the rest of the Jewish world.  They can watch the mass murder of Jews, the worst since the Holocaust, and refuse to acknowledge what must come first no matter where the conversation flows: that the evil was caused by Hamas and that is what started this conflict.

Don’t get me wrong.  Even in the midst of all of the horror of the past few weeks, so many of my beliefs about Israel haven't changed.  My love for Israel is stronger than it has ever been, but I still am against the settlements, I believe that Palestinians as a whole have been wholly mistreated for far too long, I still believe that Netanyahu is a dangerous and destructive prime minister whose government has been activity destroying the fabric of Israeli democracy, and I believe that Israel is far from perfect.  I could even blame the government for much of the long seated feelings of the Palestinians, and for the imperfect response to what happened on Oct 7th.  There is more than enough to be bothered by.  But what happened two weeks ago, cuts through all of this.  Jews were murdered, and Hamas must be destroyed.  Everything that I care about in Israel cannot be forgotten, but it needs to be directly and powerfully put in perspective while we heal from this disaster.  Now is the time for stepping back so that we can offer strength and support, not the time for stepping in and causing more of a mess.  As others have said before, we need to fight against evil, but always must remind ourselves that peace is the best victory we can achieve.

Going back to Noah.  When we are introduced to this important Biblical character, we see him as a one man standing against an entire world that is falling apart.  From his vantage point, he sees a society that has been taken over by ignorance and violence.  He sees hatred and destruction and like many of us, he feels stuck.  As we read “The earth became corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with lawlessness.” 

“Lawlessness,” according to the Talmud, was at its core describing a society where even the basic respect and honoring of each other was lost.  People cheated each other for even small amounts of money, they lied and manipulated and the courts did nothing about it. The people lost faith in the government so they fell into anarchy.  And what is the word the Torah uses for this lawlessness?  Hamas.  While the Hamas we know is actually an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement and has no direct connection to the Hebrew, the meaning still is clear.  When we encounter this deep level of darkness and suffering, we need to be careful to stay strong and stay connected to our community and to our values, otherwise we too may fall into anarchy. 

Many commentators have seen the darkness of this first attempt at creation as one where everyone was on their own, there was no sense of communal cohesion and no ability to respect or fight for the needs of others.  As Thomas Hobbes wrote in his work Leviathan: “Where every man is enemy to every man, . . . wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, . . . which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  This is not the makings of a stable, peaceful society.

Near the end of the parsha, once the flood has receded and the world seems to be back to some state of calm, God gives Noah and his family a strong reminder about our responsibility to each other.  Death is inevitable, but murder and hatred of another directly affects each other person too.  In this new world, we exist deeply connected to each other, and murder is not only wrong, but it must be punished: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God, God made man." (Genesis 9:6)   As God continues speaking , we are reminded of our obligation to care for the earth and for each other.  It is easy to see that beyond the details, we are being told to honor life, to honor community and to do our best to bring light into the world no matter how much darkness we may see.

A Hamas official in the past week made it clear the difference between this world view and that of his organization, “The Israelis are known to love life. We, on the other hand, sacrifice ourselves. We consider our dead to be martyrs.”

This encounter between light and darkness, life and death, is where the rainbow comes in.

As we read: “I have set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow is seen in the cloud, that I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.” (Genesis 9:14–15)

Usually seen as God's message to us that the world will never again be destroyed, the rainbow is also a reminder about the power of light to confront darkness.  From a scientific perspective, we have to remember that rainbows never appear on sunny days.  A rainbow, this magical bow of color and light can only exist after and during the confrontation between light and dark.  Often seen through a misty break in the clouds, the rainbow is created by a direct "war" between darkness and light. It is a beautiful sight to see, but it is a rare and challenging sight to create.  

The rainbow is the end of the story of a man and his family who may be righteous, but they do not do much to speak up.  Noah sees violence and suffering, and does nothing, he waits for God's orders and watches with seeming neutrality as humanity is destroyed. When the flood ends, Noah is no better, and he gets drunk, and feels lost amid the new opportunity which lies in front of him.  Noah may be righteous in his generation, but he is not much of a tzadik.

But the next generation to appear is Abraham,  the first Jew.  Abraham also follows God’s command, but he so much more represents what can be our path forward.  He fights against evil, destroying the idols of ignorance and apathy.  He is a military warrior fighting against a very real enemy, yet also sees each life as sacred, and is willing to argue with God to make this point clear.  He opens his tent to the stranger, and works for peace, and humbles himself before people who are different from him.  Abraham stays deeply connected with his past, gains strength from building community, but is always looking forward to a better future.  

Abraham manages to take the lesson of that rainbow and live it: to know the power of light over darkness, to fight--against this darkness, but also for the even stronger goal of peace.  Abraham will always be a warrior, but at the same time, he will always be a healer.  We too can be both.

As we head into what promises to be another challenging time in our Jewish community, this needs to be the lesson forward.  It may be the only chance we have.