Category: Peace

A Pesach Message

As we prepare to celebrate this time of freedom, may we remember the work is not yet complete. As we call out to all who are hungry to come eat let, may we remember that many remain hungry in body and spirit, Jew and non-Jew alike. Let us work towards the day when all might be satisfied and we move step by step towards a world of understanding and peace.

A zissen Pesach to all and Shabbat Shalom.

Selma- It is our story

This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the march in Selma. As Americans and as Jews we are proud of this landmark achievement in our nation’s history and our part in it. Jewish Americans have been on the forefront of civil rights movement and we continue to champion civil rights and social justice for all. But the march in Selma is a seminal moment and we burst with pride, kvelling, at the sight of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel along side of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We are deeply moved that so many American Jews stood bravely and fought during the struggle, most notably including those who gave their lives for these ideals.

This was our story. We Jews had found our place in American society and we found our voice. The prophetic ideals that are a foundation of our Jewishness galvanized us to support the civil rights movement because we believed that until all were free, none were free.   So Jews stood proudly along side the African-American community demanding change.

However, the movie Selma does not tell this story. In fact, unless you looked carefully and unblinkingly during the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, you probably missed the man in the kippah off to the side.   The story told in Selma, is moving, but it is not a story that includes us. It is told from the perspective of the African-American community and glorifies the struggle that was theirs. Although the time is the same, the march is the same and the facts are the same, the stories however are different. But that is okay.

The tellers of this story needed to share their perspective, which did not have room for us. Selma was about empowering their heroes to assert themselves. It is not an unreasonable thing to look through a different lens and tell a different story that has meaning even though it is not the telling of the story we might choose. That does not detract from the contribution that Jewish leaders made, nor does it lessen the pride that we might feel for their participation. It only shows that there are particular and more universal stories that might be told about the same unfolding of events.

As we approach the Pesach Seder, this gives us an opportunity to re-examine the telling of our quintessential freedom narrative. What do we emphasize and what do we leave out? Many different versions of the Exodus story will be told this night, each of them valid, each of them part of the larger story. The recollection of events only remains meaningful when we can make the connection to those events in a way that speaks to us. Only then is it more than a recounting of events, but rather a moving story that evokes emotion and prompts us to action. We share at our Seder tables the hope that “Next year may we all be free,” but until that time, may our stories keep the dream alive.

 

 

G*d’s Burning Questions: A Tribute to Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu Salha, and Razan Abu Salha

The following is a re-post of Rabbi Michael Bernstein’s piece.  Thoughtful and wise as always, Rabbi Bernstein’s words are worth contemplating.

Shabbat Shalom

 On Tuesday, February 13th, Deah Barakat, Yusor Mohammed Abu Salha, and Razan Mohammed Abu Salha were shot to death by a man living next door to them at an apartment complex in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Because they were observant Muslims and the man who murdered them had expressed what he called anti-theist views against believers of all faiths, there is an open question as to what motivated this murderer to pull the trigger and whether the killing was an act against the faith professed by these three students – whether they died because they were Muslims in America. For me, however, as I learn more about the incredible acts of devotion, kindness, and service to humanity performed by newly wed Deah and Yusor, and Yusor’s younger sister Razan, I am moved above all by how being Muslims in America shaped how they lived.

  Deah Barakat was a dental student who, among other projects, raised money for and led a mission to Turkey in order to provide urgent medical procedures and preventative oral care for Syrians whose lives had been ripped apart by war and turmoil.  His work on behalf of those in need also informed his messages on behalf of seeking peace for all without exception.  While the  views of the world and its conflicts he expressed were in solidarity with Palestinians and other Muslims, he explicitly spoke out against violence done against Jews and against anyone who thought killing was the answer.   He was a supporter of interfaith programming, including participation in sharing Ramadan with Beth Meyer Synagogue in Chapel Hill.

   What would be the last months of his life was a celebration of his love for his wife Yusor, a Muslim woman and fellow dental student.  Yusor spoke powerfully about the blessing of being a Muslim in America on this StoryCorp recording and posted on social media about the practice of wearing the hijab, a full head covering, from the perspective of women’s empowerment.  Her sister, Razan, was an award winning artist who, along with Deah’s brother Farris, was instrumental in helping to create an incredible video that affirmed the forward looking and hopeful mindset of Muslim students at North Carolina State University in a way that also showed the playfulness and individuality of a community often treated as monolithic by others.

  Deah, Yusor and Razan spent a significant part of their lives responding to a burning question read this week in the Book of Exodus (Mishpatim).  This question arises in an unexpected place, an enumeration of laws of civil behavior that is explicitly concerned with not favoring any party in a dispute or legal proceeding.  And yet in the midst of cases involving oxen being gored or goring others, and the laws of lending to those in need, the text breaks out of its legalistic tone and demands to know what would happen if a lender insisted on taking the only coat of a poor person as collateral and did not make sure to return it before the sun set.

  “This is his only cloak, in what will he sleep?”  If a person has no cloak, no wealth, no protection either from nature or from malice, no one to care about his or her well-being —- “In what will they sleep?” And in many ways it was questions such as this that led Deah Barakat to dedicate his talents and his time to trying to alleviate suffering in Syria seeing what he could provide as a dentist as his version of the cloak. It is the revelation that G*d demands our attention for each person’s well-being  that drives the kind of reflection on faith that inspired Yusor and Razan to articulate so powerfully how their beloved traditions must lead to understanding between different people and be a source of communal responsibility.

  For me, this bittersweet opportunity to learn more about these three remarkable people, “three winners,” as those dear to them have chosen to name them, has made me think of Matthew Eisenfeld and Sara Duker, may their memories be a blessing, dear friends murdered  nineteen years ago by Hamas terrorists practicing a faith that is so unlike the understanding of Islam that these three students professed .  Unlike the killers of Matt and Sara, it is not clear that the man who murdered Deah, Yusor, and Razan hated everyone like them.  However, like Matt and Sara it is clear that the murderer’s cruel, unfathomable act of violence took from the world people whose incredible faith, talents and commitments to do good would have brought so much more compassionate insight into a world so in need of love. I imagine them having much to learn from each other should they meet  beyond this world.

  A beautiful commentary called the Kli Yakar (“Precious Vessel”) reads the question “In what will he sleep?” also as a reference to the tradition that when a person dies their soul is cloaked in the good deeds they have done on behalf of others.  If a person refrains from helping someone in this world, “In what will that person sleep” in the next world?  Deah Barakat, Yusor Mohammed Abu Salha, and Razan Mohammed Abu Salha are, I believe, among those clothed now in the deeds of the righteous.  Yet we are poorer for not having the new answers that they would have provided to G*d’s burning questions.

 May G*d, to whom we call by many names, provide for these witnesses an abode in Paradise, may their memories be a blessing to all they touched and the entire world.

 Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Michael

 

Thoughts for Shabbat

The swirl of events both at home and abroad makes keeping an even keel difficult if not almost impossible. The storm rages and calls out to us to react harshly, which can only add to the anger. Some may recall Jonah offering himself up to be sacrificed and when the sailors threw him overboard, the seas calmed. But that is not how it is here. Instead it is more like Nadav and Abihu, the priests and sons of Aaron who brought offerings ostensibly honoring God. But God rejected their alien fire and they were destroyed. The storms call out for more sacrifices but to give in would consume not only our offerings but us as well.

We are compelled to act against the injustice and the evil we see in the world around us, compelled to act against the injustice and evil that seduces its followers to do wrong while believing they champion a worthy cause.   Now more than ever, each of us is compelled to seek the wisdom of our texts, the Ethics of our Fathers, to guide us on straight paths. This Erev Shabbat, I share with you the poem “IF” by Rudyard Kipling:

 

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son.

Shabbat Shalom

 

Peace, the PA and the ICC- Fighting Fire With Fire but not losing sight of the Prize

To fight fire with fire is the best way to counter and respond to Palestinian Authority (PA) move to bring charges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israel for war crimes. The PA’s decision to try Israel for war crimes I believe is misguided and foolish; This move into the international criminal court system only detracts attention and energy away from the important issues the PA and the Palestinian people must confront in building a Palestinian state. But the need to respond properly to this move is very important.

 Although the ICC process will bring heightened awareness to the issues surrounding a state of hostility between the parties, the PA essentially willfully mires itself in its victimhood and portrays itself as helpless in a struggle against overwhelming odds rather than a responsible player, an agent of change to create a State for the Palestinian people. This therefore is truly a misguided move and a squandered opportunity.

 However, it must be noted that the PA is seeking redress in the international world community through an established peaceful system. Although I do believe this is a wrong course of action for the PA to take, I must however praise the PA to use the peaceful means available to it. So I suggest that the appropriate Israeli response to this move is one of like kind.

 Israel too should file a complaint with the ICC, seeking redress for the crimes committed by Hamas and other entities in Gaza. Targeting civilian populations is a war crime or terrorist activity at best; planning ambushes and terrorist attacks against civilians are war crimes or terrorist activities at best; seeking to violently overthrow and eliminate an existing legitimate state is a war crime or a terrorist activity at best. The ICC would by necessity need to carefully consider the Israeli allegations and charges against those who are enemies. The gross hypocrisy of not considering the Israeli charges with the same seriousness and determination as the Palestinian charges could not be ignored and would completely undermine the ICC if it to occur.

 This approach does nothing to resolve the matters of creating peaceful coexistence. It does not eliminate those who are dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel. It does not help the process of peace or create bridges to building peace. It is however on the world stage a civilized approach to the particular arguments that exist surrounding the gruesome nature of war. To withhold transfer payments or payments of support to the PA seems to be an inappropriate response, a punishment for peaceful actions however politically motivated they may be. The truly important issue is to remember the ultimate end goal, two people living side by side in peace. That must remain the focus; both sides need to embrace this idea before any true progress can be made and the death and destruction of war might someday come to an end.

Rabbi David Levin