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Rosh Hashana
Wow, I never thought I'd hear those words come out of the mouth of a Reform rabbi.
It's like this. The one thing that makes me feel very awkward as a Reform Jew isn't a matter of ritual, or halacha, or theology. Sure, I have disagreements there, but my disagreements ae in the Reform spirit of "go and study"; being a fairly-observant Jew who believes that God really did speak to Moshe at Sinai is not inconsistent with Reform, even if it might get me some funny looks at times. No, the area where it appears that we part ways more seriously is that of politics: most Reform Jews I've met, and the Reform party line, are so far to the left that FDR looks like a ruthless hardliner.
So when political discussions come up at shul, I remain quiet. When the gun-control petitions circulate, I ignore them (or, if pressed, politely decline). When the campaigns to raise taxes for social programs that we ought to be voluntarily supporting through tzedakah, not forcibly and inefficiently supporting through taxes, come around, I find other places to be. And so it goes.
So when it became clear that our associate rabbi was going to use the Rosh Hashana pulpit (Monday night) to talk about Israel, the Palestinians, and terrorism, I braced for the worst.
But he didn't go where I expected him to go. He started by saying that he really wanted to believe in the possibility of a peace treaty, and that the Palestinian Authority could negotiate in good faith, and that there existed a solution that resulted in a Palestinian state and a secure Israel. But he went to Israel this summer and, while there, spoke with some Knesset members along with the "civilians" (like the rabbis he went there to see, and folks on kibbutzim, and so on). And he came away with the understanding that Arafat and his subordinates do not want peace with Israel; they want a Palestinian state "from the river to the sea", with Israel gone, and anything else is just an intermediate step on the path to that. (I've believed that for months, with that interview in June with one of Arafat's main people cementing it. He said this was their goal and allowed it to be printed.)
So what should Israel do about it? Are targetted assassinations so bad? Rabbi Freedman didn't come out and say he supports them, but he clearly does. Not because assassination is good, but because it beats the alternatives. (An almost-quote: "What would you do if you knew with certainty that someone was planning a bombing? Stop him before he can act, or wait until he's killed 15 people and maimed dozens and then condemn the act? What would you do?")
He didn't talk directly about the attacks on the US last week, but he did say that we are beginning to understand what Israel faces every single day, and maybe we should look to them for ways of fighting terrorism. (Aside: the counter-argument is that it doesn't seem to be working. Of course, it might work better than anything else. Who knows?)
He said this does not make him a hawk; he's not advocating full-scale war and indiscriminant killing. He'd rather believe that peace is possible -- but in the case of Palestine, giving them what they want in hopes of peace is a bad idea. (He did not actually offer a thought for what Israel should do, beyond what it's currently doing, but that's a very hard problem so I'm not surprised.)
After the service I complimented him, said I had never expected to hear those words from a Reform pulpit, and welcomed him to the moderate right. :-) (I'm not sure how he took that last part.)
This morning the senior rabbi spoke eloquently (in a way that doesn't summarize well) on the themes of prejudice and helping each other. One point was that since any of us could have been on those planes, our lives from last Tuesday forward are gifts and we should think about how we use them.
I spent a little time this afternoon looking over my part for Yom Kippur. (I'm leading part of the mincha service.) Y'know, I can sound out anything in Hebrew if you give me time, but I'm glad I looked this over far enough in advance to do something about the short phrase that was missing its vowels. That's upping the ante. :-) (Doing something consisted of handing it to Dani, who figured it out from context. But you actually have to have a vocabulary for that trick to work.)
Dani says he's willing to answer Hebrew questions from me, so maybe I'll get out that textbook and take another crack at learning the language. I'd like to be able to comprehend and not just pronounce, after all. I'm getting better; I was able to just listen to today's Torah reading and follow it, though of course I knew what it would be going in so it's not like parsing completely-free text. But I have a long way to go. And I still grok only a tiny bit of the grammar.
It's like this. The one thing that makes me feel very awkward as a Reform Jew isn't a matter of ritual, or halacha, or theology. Sure, I have disagreements there, but my disagreements ae in the Reform spirit of "go and study"; being a fairly-observant Jew who believes that God really did speak to Moshe at Sinai is not inconsistent with Reform, even if it might get me some funny looks at times. No, the area where it appears that we part ways more seriously is that of politics: most Reform Jews I've met, and the Reform party line, are so far to the left that FDR looks like a ruthless hardliner.
So when political discussions come up at shul, I remain quiet. When the gun-control petitions circulate, I ignore them (or, if pressed, politely decline). When the campaigns to raise taxes for social programs that we ought to be voluntarily supporting through tzedakah, not forcibly and inefficiently supporting through taxes, come around, I find other places to be. And so it goes.
So when it became clear that our associate rabbi was going to use the Rosh Hashana pulpit (Monday night) to talk about Israel, the Palestinians, and terrorism, I braced for the worst.
But he didn't go where I expected him to go. He started by saying that he really wanted to believe in the possibility of a peace treaty, and that the Palestinian Authority could negotiate in good faith, and that there existed a solution that resulted in a Palestinian state and a secure Israel. But he went to Israel this summer and, while there, spoke with some Knesset members along with the "civilians" (like the rabbis he went there to see, and folks on kibbutzim, and so on). And he came away with the understanding that Arafat and his subordinates do not want peace with Israel; they want a Palestinian state "from the river to the sea", with Israel gone, and anything else is just an intermediate step on the path to that. (I've believed that for months, with that interview in June with one of Arafat's main people cementing it. He said this was their goal and allowed it to be printed.)
So what should Israel do about it? Are targetted assassinations so bad? Rabbi Freedman didn't come out and say he supports them, but he clearly does. Not because assassination is good, but because it beats the alternatives. (An almost-quote: "What would you do if you knew with certainty that someone was planning a bombing? Stop him before he can act, or wait until he's killed 15 people and maimed dozens and then condemn the act? What would you do?")
He didn't talk directly about the attacks on the US last week, but he did say that we are beginning to understand what Israel faces every single day, and maybe we should look to them for ways of fighting terrorism. (Aside: the counter-argument is that it doesn't seem to be working. Of course, it might work better than anything else. Who knows?)
He said this does not make him a hawk; he's not advocating full-scale war and indiscriminant killing. He'd rather believe that peace is possible -- but in the case of Palestine, giving them what they want in hopes of peace is a bad idea. (He did not actually offer a thought for what Israel should do, beyond what it's currently doing, but that's a very hard problem so I'm not surprised.)
After the service I complimented him, said I had never expected to hear those words from a Reform pulpit, and welcomed him to the moderate right. :-) (I'm not sure how he took that last part.)
This morning the senior rabbi spoke eloquently (in a way that doesn't summarize well) on the themes of prejudice and helping each other. One point was that since any of us could have been on those planes, our lives from last Tuesday forward are gifts and we should think about how we use them.
I spent a little time this afternoon looking over my part for Yom Kippur. (I'm leading part of the mincha service.) Y'know, I can sound out anything in Hebrew if you give me time, but I'm glad I looked this over far enough in advance to do something about the short phrase that was missing its vowels. That's upping the ante. :-) (Doing something consisted of handing it to Dani, who figured it out from context. But you actually have to have a vocabulary for that trick to work.)
Dani says he's willing to answer Hebrew questions from me, so maybe I'll get out that textbook and take another crack at learning the language. I'd like to be able to comprehend and not just pronounce, after all. I'm getting better; I was able to just listen to today's Torah reading and follow it, though of course I knew what it would be going in so it's not like parsing completely-free text. But I have a long way to go. And I still grok only a tiny bit of the grammar.
Happy Holiday