Pro-Zion, Pro-Peace

Dear Ami Shalom Community,

In my Rosh HaShanah evening sermon—which I invite you to read in its entirety on our website—I began by reflecting on the threats to peace and stability within Israel and the Palestinian territories, the frustration and dismay we all feel as we learn about the suffering that occurs there, and a helplessness that characterizes so much of our feelings about this issue.  I then shifted towards a discussion of Zionism.  What I want to focus on now are some other opportunities that exist for us to address these concerns, express our hopes and fears, and enhance our understanding about this conflict and the possibilities for its resolution.  Specifically, even if you do not read any further, please make note of the critically important conference occurring at the end of this month at the nearby Claremont School of Theology.  On Sunday and Monday, October 29-30, an interfaith gathering will explore “Israel and Palestine: Untangling Perceptions, Building Relationships,” an effort to increase awareness of the different stories and struggles involved in this conflict and the ways we can bring our various yearnings and visions for peace to the conversation.  You can obtain complete information about the conference by visiting its own web page, http://www.cst.edu/about_claremont/news_I-P.php.  We are also including much of the relevant materials in the same membership mailing that brings you the hard-copy version of this letter.  Ami Shalom is an official sponsor of the entire event, so a strong turnout from our population is crucial.  Please make an effort to attend part if not all of this very special program, and please read on for some additional thoughts that bridge these concerns to my Rosh HaShanah talk.

On Rosh HaShanah, I noted that this past summer, almost all of us watched as if from the sidelines.  We observed as our homeland’s war with Hezbollah unfolded on one front, alongside the ongoing conflict with Hamas-sponsored terrorism from across the Gaza border.  To the feelings of helplessness, I posed the following question:

What do we do from here to combat [these feelings] as we watch from afar?  How can we make a real impact on the survival and flourishing of the Jewish State?

We have heard about many potential courses of action: We have been urged to attend rallies, to donate money, to visit Israel in its time of need, to say prayers—for the return of captive soldiers; for the protection of those reservists who had left their families to enter harm’s way across the Lebanese border; for the innocent Jewish, Arab, and other Israeli civilians besieged by a flagrant act of malicious war; for the innocent Lebanese who are caught in the crossfire and whose nation is essentially held hostage by the terrorist sponsorship of Hezbollah from Syria and Iran; and for the Palestinians in Gaza (and the West Bank)—may their numbers and strength grow!—who wish not to perpetuate hatred and violence but simply to live freely and peacefully.  I want to reiterate all these calls—for supporting Israel, going there, and for praying—even as we wait with cautious optimism for the continued keeping of the cease-fire and implementation of the UN intervention.  As I implied at the outset of this message, I also believe we can enter into dialogues of friendship and civil disagreement with some of those whom we currently identify as our enemies, or with some of their supporters.

The course of action I proposed on Rosh HaShanah, after I discussed some different perspectives on Zionism, focused on the active involvement in Jewish life within our own local community:

I believe that when we strengthen our own Jewish community, we participate in the larger Zionist goal—of strengthening world Jewry and our ever-evolving Jewish civilization in all its manifestations.

I borrowed the term, “Think globally, act locally.”  “Think about global Jewish excellence,” I said.  “Help bring that excellence about by making your local Jewish community thrive.”  I described the many exciting successes occurring here at Ami Shalom, and then made the following bold statement:

If we abandon our efforts at this kind of excellence here, then any vocal or passionate support for Israel is empty.  And when we do engage in these efforts with passionate conviction, then we are living out our Zionism; we are fulfilling the same goal towards which support of Israel is directed; we are responding to our concerns for Jewish survival—in the Land of Israel or anywhere; we are launching rockets of creative, transformative Jewish action into the social, cultural, and spiritual atmosphere—one of the most productive and lasting responses to Hamas or Hezbollah.

I would like now to turn our attention towards another course of action that I believe is necessary for us to embrace once we think about some more universalistic goals.  We all claim to want peace, and not just for ourselves and our friend and relatives, but for all humanity.  We wish not only to launch symbolic rockets of life-affirming Judaism; we also wish for the launching of real rockets to cease.  We wish for an end to the suffering that comes from violence, regardless of how or by whom it is provoked.  We all cling to a vision of a brighter day of peace, when the pursuit of war is a thing of the past.  How do we bring about this vision?  I believe that one response is very similar to that which I offered for “living out our Zionism.”

I believe that the way in which our passion for a dynamic and thriving Jewish world magnetizes us towards Zion (the Land of Israel) as a primary locus and source of inspiration for that thriving—so too our hopes for peace throughout the world easily draw our attention to our ancestral homeland, where such peace seems so difficult to achieve.  Just as Zion symbolizes the flourishing of Judaism, a real and enduring peace in Zion symbolizes the worldwide peace for which we all pray.  Many of the prophetic visions of peace—some of which I discussed over the High Holidays—include the idea of Zion as a mountain upon which all the peoples of the world will come to pray.  I write this message during the week of Sukkot, the holiday for which the first day’s Haftarah reading, from the book of Zechariah, describes a lasting peace that will come to Jerusalem.  This peace will include the annual pilgrimage of all nations to the holy city, where they will worship a unified God and actually observe Sukkot—the festival of open hospitality to all the world and the celebration of God’s canopy of peace hovering over us.  The idealistic vision of our ancestors, even though it may have placed their (and our) “own” special place atop all others, nonetheless saw that place as a meeting ground for peaceful communion of all peoples.

Of course, peace for Israelis and Palestinians is a goal that requires real, on-the-ground action; but just as I encouraged us to enhance Jewish life in our own locale as a way of contributing to the Zionist cause, I believe we need to enhance efforts at dialogue and peace-building in our own diverse communities—across religious, ethnic, and ideological lines—as a way of contributing to the global cause of peace.  We cannot simply pray for leaders in the Middle East to settle their differences, to reach compromises, to quell the violence and hatred that festers within the populations there.  Rather, as Gandhi said, we “must be the change [we] wish to see in the world.”  We need to involve ourselves actively in the process of making peace.  As with our Zionism, again, we must think globally and act locally.  We must help peace thrive wherever we may be, in the hopes that such positive energy can help counter the destructive forces that prevent our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world from enjoying the safety, security, and comfort that comes with peace.

Currently, in our own community, there are abundant and exciting opportunities for meeting this challenge of direct participation in bringing more peace into the world.  The Claremont conference is one such opportunity.  Another occurred on the second day of Sukkot, Sunday, October 8, at Ami Shalom, which hosted an interfaith gathering that focused on the peace-related theme of reconciliation.  It was an immense pleasure to see over thirty people in attendance from at least seven different religious or ideological communities, all gathered underneath our own sukkah, literally placing ourselves inside the symbol of peaceful inclusivity.