Rabbi's Chayva's Chat

You’ve seen the recycle and compost bins, you know how many of our forms have shifted from paper to electronic. In many ways, we are already a community that tries to be thoughtful and cautious about our impact on the environment. Recently, our board elevated our efforts to a new level, championed by Terry Levy. Congregation Am Tikvah has joined the Jewish Climate Leadership Coalition powered by Adamah, and we need your help to create our own Climate Action Plan and get the funding we need to make meaningful changes to our synagogue property. If this is a cause that’s meaningful to you, please reach out to me, Terry, or Sherrie Rosenberg. They are the co-chairs for our new Sustainability Team. Many thanks to them, and to you who join them, for helping Congregation Am Tikvah fulfill our obligations as Jews, and as humans.

It’s been another week of difficult news from Israel, but in addition to the continued trauma and tragedy, I have been hit almost daily by a different challenge: dismay and worry. I am deeply unsettled by what I have learned, and I want to share it with you because we have committed to navigating the challenges of this war together.

First, Israeli religious nationalists and some families of hostages have repeatedly blocked humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza because they believe that the lethal pressure of starvation and disease will return their families or give them revenge. I cannot imagine what the families of hostages are going through and perhaps I might do the same in their place, but I struggle to extend the same empathy to right-wing activists who convey that they do not see a difference between being a Gazan Palestinian and being a Hamas terrorist. Five thousand activists of the same school of thought gathered for a conference in Jerusalem on Sunday, openly calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, reestablishing Israeli settlements on the ruins of Gaza City and its surrounding area, and by doing so, would move the Jewish people into a new phase of approaching the messianic age. When Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich took the podium, neither mentioned saving the hostages.

Second, Haaretz reported yesterday that the IDF has burned down hundreds of private, vacated homes, and the New York Times reported today that the IDF has destroyed hundreds of buildings in controlled explosive demolitions. I don’t deny that these houses, apartments, mosques, and schools might have been Hamas operations centers, as they are known to use their constituents as human shields, but once vacated, all that’s left is someone’s home or mosque or school. When questioned, the IDF has responded that they’re creating a security buffer zone, but many of these instances have been far from the buffer zone. Why would we, as Jews and the descendants of refugees, employ something akin to a scorched-earth policy?

Which brings me to my third point. I have studied Israel, its languages, histories, and cultures for enough years to learn how much more there always is to learn. I would readily admit that the understandings and interpretations I have articulated thus far might be limited and too quick to jump to conclusions. If it were not for Gadi Eisenkot’s recent interview.

Gadi Eisenkot is a member of Israel’s war cabinet, along with Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Benny Gantz, and Ron Dermer. Eisenkot is a minister in the National Unity party, was IDF Chief of Staff from 2015 to 2019. He has filled numerous military and political leadership roles, but his connection to the war is the most personal of all war cabinet members: on December 7, he lost his son, the youngest of five and only twenty-five years old, in an explosion in Gaza, and the next day Eisenkot’s nephew was killed too. His niece had also been wounded and hospitalized.

In a major television interview last week, Eisenkot said:

1. Bibi bears partial responsibility for the failures that led to October 7.
2. It’s unrealistic to believe that Hamas will be uprooted and routed in this war.
3. Those who talk about an absolute defeat of Hamas do not tell the truth.
4. The government doesn’t have a plan to end the war.
5. The primary goal of the war should be getting the hostages home.
6. The hostages will not be saved through military action and the government should be willing to stop the war, and soon. It’s impossible to get the hostages back without a deal with Hamas.
7. He has red lines and it’s therefore very possible that he’ll need to leave the war cabinet and government soon (implying that the war is not being waged in the way it should be).

I am worried. I have started to worry that this war will hurt rather than help Israel’s security - that it has created unhealable wounds, and Israel is caught again in a cycle of gut-wrenching pain and destructive retribution. It’s a terrible way to live that brings out the worst in people.

So how do we hold these distressing developments? Two lessons come to mind. The first is the sense of Jewish peoplehood that I spoke of on Yom Kippur morning: no matter how complicated and difficult, we are part of the Jewish family. It makes it more personal and more challenging, but also means we have a say in the matter. Second, in Pirkei Avot, the sage Hillel teaches, “B’makom she’ein anashim, hishtadel lihiyot ish - in a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.” In other words, when those around you have gone off the path, do not give up hope and do not let go of your values. 

May we all continue to navigate this period together, led by our values and buoyed by our compassion. I am always here if you want to talk.

There’s a certain irony in the fact that one of the few things Jews agree on is that we like to disagree. The style of argument might vary by cultural context, but the practice of disagreeing is universal. It goes back to our formative rabbinic text, the Talmud.

The Talmud is a multi-volume collection of generations of rabbinic debate about biblical interpretation, law, ethical values, and stories, compiled between the 3rd and 8th centuries CE in modern-day Iraq (the Babylonian Talmud) and Israel (the Jerusalem Talmud). Each section of Talmud ostensibly provides commentary on the Mishnah (the 2nd century CE collection of rabbinic teachings), but since it is a record of rabbinic conversation, the discussion often goes off into tangential territory. Rabbis’ opinions are presented, sometimes in conversation with each other and sometimes simply recorded. Notably, however, these texts feel no obligation to establishing accord or a unified conclusion; both the Talmud and the Mishnah often present conflicting opinions.

Furthermore, the texts are explicitly conscious of this fact. The most famous rabbinic pairs often oppose each other: Hillel and Shammai, Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish. Tractate Ta’anit says that just as iron sharpens iron, scholars improve each other through scholarly disagreement. There is even a Hebrew word for this: machloket. It comes from the root ch-l-k, whose family of words include the noun chelek, a section, segment, or territory; and the verb chalak, divided or shared.

It would be easy to use the rabbinic legacy of disagreement to justify our every argument. Fortunately, the rabbis knew that not all disputes are justified.

Pirkei Avot, the tractate of the Mishnah focused on wise rabbinic sayings, lays it out clearly in 5:17:

Every dispute that is for the sake of Heaven, will in the end endure; But one that is not for the sake of Heaven, will not endure. Which is the controversy that is for the sake of Heaven? Such was the controversy of Hillel and Shammai. And which is the controversy that is not for the sake of Heaven? Such was the controversy of Korach and all his congregation.

Numbers 16: he and his compatriots rebel against Moses’ authority without offering respect or a proposed solution. Their dispute is personal and vindictive, and aimed to divide the community. In contrast, Hillel and Shammai almost never agreed, but Hillel would teach Shammai’s perspective as well as his own, and their family members married each other. They disputed matters of importance, and they always maintained a sense of respect and of being in community with one another. That is argument for the sake of heaven.

Our world is full of fraught topics - potholes, as we navigate relationships and our growing sense of community. May our guiding star for navigating tricky terrain be that disagreements should always be l’shem shamayim, for the sake of heaven.

When the Barbie movie came out, I was a little busy (it was just before High Holy Day season), so you’ll forgive me that I saw it for the first time on New Year’s Eve. I was never a Barbie girl myself, but appreciated its pithy articulations of the challenges of being a woman - “cotton candy for modern feminists,” as a friend described it. I’ve experienced many of the contradictions they described, both in my personal life and in rabbinic life, and I know I’m not alone in that.

Yet as much as I felt seen by America Ferrera’s scripted rants, the film left me feeling ambivalent. For all of its clear articulation of feminism, its presentation of masculinity never grew into something nuanced and mature. Perhaps that’s too much to ask of one movie and they should make a sequel, but mature conversations about gender identity and mutual understanding will not wait for a sequel. So, of course, I looked to Torah.

This week, in Parshat Shemot, we meet our new hero, Moses, though we don’t know him by name until he has grown up and been brought into Pharaoh’s daughter’s household (see Exodus 2:10). Moses quickly presents several personality traits: he acts against injustice, both in the abusive Egyptian taskmaster (Exodus 2:12) and in the Midianite shepherds who will not let women water their flocks (Exodus 2:17). He has a sense of curiosity and wonder in seeing the burning bush, humility (and perhaps insecurity) in being called to God’s service, ability to step into leadership and take Pharaoh to task, and willingness to question and wrestle with God.

We might want to add other traits to the list. I encourage us to have these conversations; to let femininity and masculinity be parts of a whole rather than mutually exclusive, and respect to be elevated above pride. And if you haven’t yet seen “Barbie,” I do recommend it.

I’ve made no secret about my interfaith family of origin. Part of my extended family is Protestant, which is why Dr. Keren McGinity’s talk last Shabbat was quite personal for me. Dr. McGinity is the inaugural Interfaith Specialist of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the national organization of Conservative congregations, and she led us through a study of the changing portrayal of interfaith heterosexual couples in twentieth century film and television. First, Jewish women were portrayed as exotic and ethnic, often courted by Catholic men. Next, in the post-war period, Jewish men were portrayed as desirable husbands who were able to assimilate into Protestant American society - perhaps reflecting the Jewish male writers, producers, and directors who wanted their own life choices normalized by the silver screen. 

Dr. McGinity covered a lot of ground and I won’t summarize it all, but I was struck by her final pitch for empathy. Not that empathy is surprising in itself, but she raised it regarding the tension between Hanukkah and Christmas in interfaith families called “The December Dilemma.” Dr. McGinity encouraged us to rename this “The December Delights,” and to honor all parts of a family or couple’s religious and cultural composition. She emphasized that even when someone has converted, their family hasn’t converted with them, and their childhood memories (perhaps of Christmas) remain. When we remember and respect that, when we invite non-judgmental conversation about it, we do not lessen the Jewishness of our community or ourselves; rather, we live our Jewish values. If you know or are part of an interfaith extended family, as many of us are at Am Tikvah, I encourage you to be proud, inquisitive, and respectful in the coming week. And regardless of your family or personal identity, I encourage you to join the Southside Jewish Collaborative on Sunday, December 24, when we will do a Mussar study of goodheartedness and the mitzvah of making sandwiches for homeless residents of San Francisco. May it be a week of respect, generosity, and goodheartedness.