Rabbi Marc E. Berkson – Rosh Hashanah Morning — 2nd Day — 5766
SEEING EACH OTHER
Rosh Hashanah Morning, Second Day–5766
Such a tiny sliver of land—just 25 miles long and six miles wide. Did it, does it, fall into the boundaries of the land promised to us by God? A tough question to answer. For God was never fully clear about the borders of the Promised Land. At different times in Torah, in different places in Torah, one can find different definitions of the extent of the land promised unto the children of Israel. Still, while not necessarily promised by God, Gaza has surely been promised by different Israeli governments to various settlers since 1967.
8-9000 Israeli Jews in the midst of 1.3-1.4 million Palestinians. Deep down, most of us knew that the day would come when Israel would depart Gaza. We knew that Israel could never be both a democratic state and a Jewish state if it held onto all the territories captured in the Six-Day War. In fact, some demographers thought that Jews had already become a minority in the area of land stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, that, in other words, Jews had already become a minority in the areas controlled by the Jewish state. That demographic reality alone may well have prompted Prime Minister Sharon’s quite public change of heart from his former days as minister of housing. The architect of so many of the settlements in the past has now become the one responsible for their evacuation; the one who, himself, vowed to never abandon any settlements becomes the one who moves his entire party, and thus, the vast majority of the Israeli electorate, to support unilateral disengagement from this tiny strip of land.
As the late summer deadline for disengagement approached, increasingly vituperative and angry debates consumed the Israeli populace. In the midst of those debates, the fear of civil war always loomed. Think back over the last months. Soldiers disobeying orders. Traditionally observant troops abandoning their posts. Fears of casualties. Deadly wounds to the body politic. But the war never began. Martin Peretz, editor of The New Republic, put it most succinctly. “The civil war that had been widely feared,” he wrote, “turned out to be a lot of civil and very little war.”
Six weeks. That was the amount of time the army thought would be necessary for it to complete the evacuation from Gaza. Yet within the short and Biblically significant span of six days, it was all over. Everyone was gone. Then, it was just a matter of weeks before everything was gone. It was almost as if the houses and the stores and the cemeteries, the greenhouses and schools and synagogues never were.
Six days—not six weeks. And in those six days order was brought once again out of chaos. Such, as I noted Rosh Hashanah evening, begins between people—people we need to reach out to; people who should be brought into our sukkahs with us; people whose pain is recognized, remembered, reduced; people who see in the other themselves.
Such surely did not come from a number of the ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Israel who played the Torah card if you will. Knowing that 20% of the Israel Defense Forces’office r corps and many soldiers are traditionally observant, two former Chief Rabbis of Israel, Rabbis Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliyahu, called on traditionally observant soldiers not to carry out their orders. Others, in religious settings, even called for the death of Prime Minister Sharon, going so far as to lay out a “Jewish” case for assassinating him. And if you have forgotten the power of words, just think back ten years to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Similar statements set the climate for his assassination.
Do not reach out and bring in; rather, push away and reject, in the process making those who disagree with you into the other.
Even more problematic was the behavior of many of the settlers. Some of them played the Massada card, using the last outpost of the Zealots before they all killed themselves to avoid being taken by Rome. On the day of evacuation, the settlers in one Gaza Strip settlement put out a banner bearing the words, “KFAR DAROM WILL NOT FALL AGAIN.” Similarly, when he was with us for the program we hosted with AIPAC, reporter Gil Hoffman related the following story:
A woman raised her baby to a soldier’s face and said, “I want you to look in the eyes of my son Maoz (which means fortress), so that you will be haunted by his face for the rest of your life, just as he will be haunted by your face for the rest of his life.”
Or take the episode at one of the settlements evacuated, that of Nitzarim. Related Charles Krauthammer, the menorah of this settlement’s synagogue, the last one to be evacuated, was carried off “perched on a horizontal rod borne on the shoulders of men walking one behind the other.” The image, in profile, intentionally resembled that reflected on the Arch of Titus in Rome. Erected in 81 of the Common Era, the Arch reflects the Roman conquest of the Temple and the end of the Jewish commonwealth. On the Arch, the menorah from the Temple is shown being carried back to Rome as booty. The message—the evacuation by a Jewish army governed by a democratically elected Jewish state was, in reality, a replay of the Roman conquest in 70 CE. Again, turning those who disagree with you into the other, in this case, into evil Romans.
Other settlers played the ultimate trump card—the Nazi card. The Nazi card was first played with one of the slogans the settlers used relatively consistently. “Yehudim lo megarshim yehudim—Jews do not expel Jews.” Again, regardless of the fact that the settlers were not being expelled, but evacuated by Jewish soldiers of a democratically elected Jewish state, the implication of the slogan was that the soldiers were other—they were Nazis. Yet many of the settlers adopted other Nazi symbolism. Remember the picture, so famous, of the young boy, yellow star on his chest, arms raised high, fear on his face, as he is being led out of the ghetto to the gas chambers? Similarly, the settlers chose orange as their color (with those in favor of disengagement choosing blue and white), placing orange stars of David on their chests. When the time came to evacuate their settlements, many of these parents had their children leave, orange stars on chests, arms raised high, fear on faces, as if being led to the gas chambers. Again, that turned Israeli soldiers into the other, into the hated other, into the evil other, into Nazis. Wrote Joseph Aaron in the Chicago Jewish News, “That a Jewish mother could equate the disengagement with the Holocaust, Israeli soldiers with Nazis is disgusting enough. But the really scary thing is that a Jewish mother could use her own child as a political pawn, dress him or her up as one of the six million.”
The Torah card, the Massada card, the Nazi trump card—each turning the members of the Israel Defense Forces and the police into the other, into the hated other. Yet it was the behavior of the soldiers of the IDF and of the police which ensured that they would not become the other. Consider, first, their slogan. In contrast to “Jews do not expel Jews,” they chose “With Sensitivity and Determination.” Yet more. While the settlers dressed in imagery turning the soldiers and police into Nazis, the soldiers and police sought uniforms that would make clear that which was shared, clothing that would reach out to bring in the other. The police, for example, who normally wear vests with the word “mishtarah—police” on the front, wore, instead, new vests and hats. While the same color and the same shape as the old, the word was replaced by an Israeli flag. Wrote Daniel Gordis, an American rabbi who has made aliyah, when “the settlers saw the long columns of blue uniforms marching in to their communities, [they] saw police, yes, but they also saw a long line of bobbing Israeli flags. The flag they love. The flag they know is the only one Jews will have as long as any of us are alive, and far beyond that.”
This message they communicated was also one of inreach as they entered the settlements. Their commanders went in, unarmed and without bodyguards. Most of the soldiers did the same. Not once did they raise a nightstick or a club. Contrast that with the behavior of some of the police and soldiers in New Orleans who came in with rifles raised and set. You can better understand, then, the scathing anger and astonishment of the woman at the convention center who proclaimed, “We are American.” As I noted Monday evening, she understood that Americans are not supposed to be strangers to one another. As the Israeli soldiers and police entered the settlements, their behavior clearly said, “We are Israeli—we are all Israeli.”
And the soldiers and the police continued to reach out to bring in. They listened to the settlers, they mourned with the settlers, they davened with the settlers, they cried with the settlers. Recognizing that many settlers found disengagement unfair, soldiers who knocked at doors of homes in the settlements would, when answered, tear their own uniforms as keriah, as a sign of mourning.
In another settlement, a reporter by the name of Fiamma Nirenstein noted this exchange. A group of citizens had barricaded themselves inside a house. The IDF commander, Udi Lav, invited them out for a discussion saying, “You have to come out now. I have the order to operate the disengagement, and sooner or later, today, I have to fulfill orders.”
Came the reply, “But this is the home we have built with our own hands, our forefathers were here, what will you tell your sons, will you tell them the story of how you dragged out your Jewish brothers from the land they have given so many lives for?”
One settler, acting as spokesman, approached Lav. Lav put his hand on the settler’s shoulder and said, “Brother, I understand you, but you have to come out of here. I’m so sorry. I cry with you, but now it’s time to go.”
Responded the settler, “You know I will not go because I am right and I obey the law.”
Lav offered a small smile. He put his hand on the Israeli flag on his uniform and softly said, “You know that I’m right. I’m simply right because it’s me actually, obeying the law. I represent law and order. I represent a decision of the Knesset, you cannot mix politics and religion.” Said softly and respectfully, the two Israelis walked away together and the others left the house.
Some soldiers listen for hours. One sat in the home of a family whose son was killed in 1997. The parents are going to have to leave their son’s grave. And a soldier speaks up (also heard by Nirenstein), “I only want to tell you that I love our country no less than you. Please believe me. I and my friends serve in the most distinguished units, just like your son, of whom I have heard so much about. I’m here just to help overcome any possible fracture among our people. We cannot allow it. Please let me help bring your bags out.” Together, then, they walk to the synagogue to sit and cry and prepare for the move.
Again, as I spoke on Rosh Hashanah eve, the lesson of Ushpizin, when we invite the symbolic honorary guests like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob into our sukkot along with real flesh-and-blood guests who are in need. The ones in need become symbolic of the Biblical ancestors. Standing in for Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, they become Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as they also become us.
So one last story. In another settlement, a young girl kept throwing the slogan “Yehudim lo megarshin yehudim – Jews don’t expel Jews” at a young male soldier time and time. She also started screaming at him to “look into my eyes.” Time after time, she repeated those words while the soldier patiently waited. When he could no longer stand it, he asked her, “Don’t you see? I’m just looking into your eyes, blue eyes. You have to look at me, too.”
The girl, observant, probably never looked into any boy’s eyes. Such would not reflect modesty. But she looked at him, the sad expression on his face, the Israeli flag on his vest, and exclaimed, “Wow, its true. You are looking into my eyes. We see each other.”
These soldiers and police blessed Israel with their sensitivity and their determination. They also taught us how to begin to say “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” We begin by looking into another’s eyes and seeing each other.