All of us advanced students who learned in the kollel at Yeshivat Hamivtar adjacent to Efrat had to take turns performing shemirah – nighttime guard duty. And so, after an afternoon at an army base where I was trained to use an M-16 rifle in a language I only 70% understood, I too joined the rotation of yeshiva students patrolling our small campus of caravans – converted trailer homes – set off by barbed wire fences from Palestinian farms and pastures.
During the nights that I was on guard duty there was never anything remotely threatening in our vicinity and most of my focus on guard duty was talking with Israeli soldiers, reservists, who were stationed alongside us at the yeshiva compound.
One memorable reserve-soldier with whom I shared a shemirah was an oleh, a recent immigrant, from the Former Soviet Union. As we talked, he shared his opinion that Ben Gurion had made a mistake in aligning the new State of Israel with the West. “Israel should have aligned with the Soviet bloc instead,” he told me. “Stalin would have been a stronger ally. He would have sent in tanks and solved all of our problems for us.”
I think this is a somewhat funny story because the soldier’s cynicism – and his naiveté – are so preposterous.
His cynicism is dark. Zionism, from its very beginning in all of its factions was a liberal movement committed to democracy. We didn’t return to our homeland after 2000 years to build a Soviet bloc state, nor a Jewish Pakistan.
But his statement was not just cynical – it was also naïve. Stalin’s support for Israel would have lasted as long as it was in Stalin’s interest. Stalin did in fact support Israel in 1947 and the votes of the Soviet satellite states enabled the Partition Plan to pass the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947. But a few years later he had withdrawn his support for Israel.
Ben Gurion understood that Israel did not belong in the Soviet bloc and he understood that Israel needed allies but he understood that Israel had to chart its own course among the nations, just as every sovereign nation must do.
I thought of this Stalinist solider this week and his fantasy that Israel’s challenges could have been solved with the backing of a different sort of super-power as I read and heard reactions to the nuclear agreement that was signed this week between Iran and the United States and our allies.
I’ve now read thoughtful critiques and thoughtful defenses of the agreement. I’ve also read knee-jerk critiques and knee-jerk defenses that were clearly written before the agreement was even finished and show little evidence of being based on an actual reading of the text of the accord itself.
For obvious reasons, I paid special attention to a join statement released by the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America. They were appropriately careful to avoid the perception that their response was not considered and deliberate and they mention a process of study:
“…we took the time to read the agreement, hear from senior Obama Administration officials as well as Israeli leaders, and consider the analysis of experts in the field.”
They continue:
“Our assessment of the agreement, and of the presentations by government officials and analysts, is driven by one fundamental question: Will the proposed agreement protect the security of the United States, Israel and our other allies? By this standard, we have found the deal with Iran seriously wanting and will mobilize our member rabbis and synagogues throughout the nation to urge Congress to fulfill their mandate and disapprove the agreement.”
Maybe because I know so many of the rabbinic leadership of the RCA and the OU, I chuckled when I read the account of their consulting and considering analysis from experts. They are sophisticated thinkers, they are formidable Torah scholars and they are inspired and inspiring educators. They are not experts at diplomacy. They have no background in strategic thinking. Their rabbinic education, if it was anything like mine, contained nothing whatsoever about the relative merits of IR-1 and IR-8 centrifuges or the differences between a plutonium fueled nuclear bomb and one fueled by uranium.
They consulted experts and came to a conclusion. But I don’t need rabbinic or religious organizations to evaluate expert analysis and come to a conclusion. In thirty minutes on the Internet, each one of you has access to the same analysts and expert opinions they consulted and more. A generation or two ago, especially in Reform and Conservative synagogues, congregational rabbis often had the most secular education of anyone in their communities. That isn’t true in this shul and it isn’t true in most contemporary congregations.
Shul isn’t a policy think tank and shul isn’t a debating club.
Almost fifty years ago, in the fall of 1967, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik gave his first “Teshuva Drasha” since the the Six Day War. These annual lectures, in Yiddish, to capacity audiences at Yeshiva University’s Lamport Auditorium were an event each year for Jews of all kinds. During the first opportunity to speak to this large audience since the war Rav Soloveitchik discussed the nature of Divine rescue and salvation that Israel and experienced the previous June.
He then mentioned that the dilemma facing Israel, what negotiating stance to adopt with her defeated neighbors, a dilemma that still confronts the State of Israel – is a question that he was not qualified to answer:
“I don’t need to rule whether we should give the West Bank back to the Arabs or not to give the West Bank to the Arabs: we Rabbis should not be involved in decisions regarding the safety and security of the population. …What specifically these security requirements are, I don’t know, I don’t understand these things. These decisions require a military perspective, which one must research assiduously. The borders that must be established should be based upon that which will provide more security. It is not a topic appropriate for which Rabbis should release statements or for Rabbinical conferences.”
If matters of security and how to achieve it are not topics for which “rabbis should release statements” what can we speak about? Shul isn’t a policy think tank and shul isn’t a debating club. Shul is a place where we can learn how to talk to one another and how to treat one another and how to take responsibility for our lives, for our brothers and sisters in Israel, and for humanity at large.
There are two things that I think we can say today and that we ought to say and to hear:
Our brothers and sisters in Israel are worried. Many of them are even scared. Whether or not one supports or opposes the agreement in aggregate, there are new risks for Israel and we have to feel that and we have to acknowledge the special risks that Israelis will now face. A profoundly antisemitic regime that directly funds Israel’s most dangerous enemies and that has been implicated in murder and terrorism around the world, is poised to grow in power and prestige. That should frighten all Jews but it is particularly frightening for Israel and we need to remember that and honor that.
We heard Moshe’s powerful words earlier this morning: “Shall your brothers go out to war and you sit here?”
That angry outburst echoes through history and should hit us in our gut.
הַאַֽחֵיכֶ֗ם יָבֹ֙או֙ לַמִלְחָמָ֔ה וְאַתֶ֖ם תֵ֥שְבו פֹֽה׃
When the tribes of Reuven and Gad asked to remain in the territories that had already been conquered so their cattle could graze, Moshe is outraged that they would consider leaving Jewish destiny in the hands of others. Even today, some people are shouldering more than their share of responsibility for Jewish destiny.
Netziv, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, makes a very insightful observation into this exchange between Moshe and the representatives of the tribes of Reuven and Gad.
וְלָ֣מָה תנואון [תְנִיא֔ון] אֶת־לֵ֖ב בְנֵ֣י יִשְראֵ֑ל מֵֽעֲבֹר֙ אֶל־הָאָ֔רץ אֲשֶר־נָתַ֥ן לָהֶ֖ם ה׳׃
“Why shall you discourage the hearts of B’nai Yisrael from crossing into the land that the Lord has given to them?”
Reuven and Gad were criticized for their corrosive effect on the morale of the other tribes. If these two tribes take portions of land on the Eastern Bank of the Jordan, maybe the land on the other side isn’t so good? Or, perhaps, these tribes wish to live out their collective existence with a little bit less Divine supervision. Maybe leaving in the Holy Land isn’t such a good idea.
The loss of the soldiers from Reuven and Gad was not Moshe’s main concern. His concern was the morale of the rest of Bnai Yisrael.
Today as well, Israel does not primarily need us as soldiers- although that’ is a profound way to serve our people. But we must not undermine Israel’s morale. That means, at all times, hearing the concerns of our brothers and sisters in Israel with empathy and with sympathy. We need not and cannot defer our political judgements to any government. It would be a betrayal of our responsibilities as citizens to outsource our judgements to others. But we dare not minimize or dismiss their fears. And we must honor all those who are taking on burdens and risks on our behalf and for the sake of the Jewish people.
The second thing that we can say here in shul is to do our part to prevent tensions between the Israeli and American governments from escalating into a crisis between America and Israel. As we debate and advocate and lobby, and even argue with one another, we must remember that the source of the problem is not an American government that is too flexible or an Israeli government that is too rigid. The problem is a violent and repressive regime in Tehran that has left the international community no good options. America, Israel, and our allies are left to choose between bad options. A growing divide between Israel and America is Iran’s greatest hope.
Rav Solvoeitchink was acutely aware of this dynamic as well. Writing in 1977, at a time when the Israeli government was under heaver pressure from the Carter administration to be more flexible in negotiations with Egypt, Rav Soloveitchik wrote:
“The maintaining of friendly relations and understanding with the United States is the most important thing from the perspective of Israel. One must also be cognizant of the situation of American Jews. Tension or, God forbid, a crisis in the relations between Israel and the U.S. will create a political and spiritual dilemma for American Jews. American Jews see themselves as full-fledged Americans. The creation of a conflict will be a political and spiritual disaster.,. No one in history has ever received all that he wanted in a negotiation.”
Since 1977, the identification of American Jews with America has gotten stronger in two opposite directions in problematic ways. Some Jews identify so thoroughly as post-modern Americans that any dissonance between their American and Jewish identities will cause them to abandon their Jewish identities completely. And, at the same time, other Jews have become so comfortable in our American Judaism that we forget that we are in exile here. It’s a nice galut, but it’s still galut. We forget that the interests of the United States and Israel will not always perfectly aline and we should not expect them to. We forget that our own religious traditions and the values we learn from the Torah will make us counter-cultural in big and little ways. We need the confidence to adhere to our own worldview and the tolerance to recognize that our perspective may be at times be a minority and counter-cultural one.
At the beginning of our second parashah this morning, Parashat Ma’asei, before listing the stages along the Jewish people’s journey to Eretz Yisrael, we are told:
וַיִכְתֹ֨ב מֹשֶ֜ה אֶת־מוצָאֵיהֶ֛ם לְמַסְעֵיהֶ֖ם עַל־פִ֣י ה׳ וְאֵ֥לֶה מַסְעֵיהֶ֖ם לְמוצָאֵיהֶֽם׃
“And Moshe wrote down all of their journeys according to their point of departure for the journey that was undertaken at God’s direction and these are their journeys from their point of departure.”
There is a reversal of language within the verse between the “motza’eihem – point of departure” and “masa’eihem” their journey or destination – In the first half of the verse motza’eihem l’masaeihem, and the second half of the verse, “masa’eihem l’motza’eihem.” Nearly 60 years ago, Rabbi Simon Dolgin suggested that the blending of point of origin and destination in this verse is the secret to Jewish survival.
More than anything else, we have an existential need to have a clear understanding of where we come from and a clear articulation of where we are headed.
Ben Gurion recognized that Israel always needs allies but the reason why we need Israel is so that we never need to depend on them.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 