On a daily basis, we can open the newspaper and find any number of articles that tell us what is wrong with the world. Two weeks ago, I opened the newspaper Ha’Aretz to read headlines that were particularly distressing to me: “The police suspect that a new right-wing cell is trying to harm left-wingers.”
No one was killed, thank G-d. And I am not, by nature, a person who tends to get involved in matters of politics. I find politics to be more often than not a world in which people talk too much and do little and in general generate a lot of hot air. However, the notion of a Jew acting as a terrorist – and let us call this an act of terrorism – against another Jew especially when Israel has been a democracy for 60 years, is extremely frightening to me, especially when it is terrorism motivated by political aspirations. An attack of Jews on Jews is a frightening reminder of the fragility of our democracy. Can we say we live in a democracy, in a free country, when people are bombing each other as a matter of political expression? Does this make us any better than nations we define as “third world” or “uncivilized” or “terrorist regimes”? Whether or not we agree with the politics of the victim Professor Ze’ev Sternhall, I am sure we all agree that we cannot condone this form of national expression. But what exactly are we doing to stop it? Has any of us written a letter to the editor? Has any of us written to a Knesset member or member of the government expressing outrage over this act? Is anyone active in an organization to bring about the end of violence in our society?
In Israel, the most obvious way of influencing public life is by casting our votes at the ballot box. Historically, Israel prides itself on an extremely high voter rate. However, in recent years, we have seen a decline in voter turnout and also a decline in participation in civic life. In the last general election, for example, young people in Tel Aviv voted for the Pensioners party without even knowing what they stand for because they said to themselves: What does my vote matter anyway?
I can easily say: I am a nice person who lives in Ramat HaSharon and isn’t involved in politics. I just vote and besides that, I work hard in my profession dedicating many hours a week to work to support my family and to live in a comfortable home. I like to enjoy a quiet Shabbat at home or at the beach, and the occasional trip abroad. I did my army duty and I do it when I am called. This little bomb has nothing to do with me.
And we shrug our shoulders when the reports come in about the state of education in Israel. When even here in Ramat HaSharon, kids are stuffed 35-40 to a classroom, the school day ends at 1 p.m., and Israeli students ranked in 39th and 40th place in math and science, respectively, out of 57 participating Western nations.
We sit by as our tax shekels support public schools where pupils don’t learn basic subjects like math and history, rabbinic courts that chain women to abusive marriages, and the salaries of rabbis to whose synagogue we would never go.
On my first visit to Israel 11 years ago, I was overwhelmed yet impressed that everywhere I went, I was consistently asked by native Israelis (mostly secular), “When are you making aliyah?” which I understood as: We are building a great project here in Israel, why don’t you come and join us? Three years ago, when I actually made aliyah, I was consistently asked, “What are you still doing here? Are you crazy – life is so much better where you come from.”
What happened in such a short time? What has changed?
I want to remind the nice person residing in Ramat HaSharon about some of the visions that built the State of Israel. Life was much harder here than it is now. And yet, declared Herzl: “Zionism, which is thought of as an unfortunate vision, is nothing other than an ethical, legal, and humane movement that aspires to an ancient goal which is the uplift of our people’s spirit.”
According to Herzl, we are here in Israel to bring the best of the Jewish spirit to life.
Amos Oz, who grew up in an impoverished and war-torn Jerusalem in the 1940s and 1950s, nevertheless continues that vision in his perspective, writing, “There has always been in Zionism the dialectic tension between the deep longing for the faraway beauty of the days of yore and the mighty aspirations to turn to a completely new page here….the condition on which to reconstruction the ancient is the act of renewal. Without “new”, there is no “old”, and the opposite – this is almost the entire Zionist on one foot.”
The Jewish way has always been to innovate new ideas and inventions and make them the continuation of ancient traditions. Our modern wineries and olive presses: the renewal of our people’s agricultural heritage in this land. B’nai mitzvah and army inductions at the Kotel: the renewal of a central holy place of our people for new ceremonies. The prayer for the peace of the State of Israel: ancient words for a new existence.
These are not things that just came about חי וקים. They were built by everyday people. As the poet Rachel wrote,
I have not sung to you, my land,
And I have not praised your name
In tales of heroism,
In the bounty of battles;
Only a tree – my hands have planted
On the quiet riverbanks of the Jordan.
Only a trail – my feet have conquered
Through the fields.
People like you and me planted the trees. People like you and me paved the highways. They saw the swamp, envisioned the orchard, and then set to work to drain it. The State of Israel was not built by wars, but rather it was built by the construction workers, the tailors, the farmers, and the poets. It was also built with financial support – along with our high taxes it also came more often than not from North American Jews. We all enjoy the fruits of these labors – we travel highways to work and to weekend tiyulim (though we didn’t bargain for the traffic jams!), we shop in world class clothing stores, we eat in gourmet restaurants, sit in air conditioned concert halls with premier acoustics, and we live our daily lives with cutting edge technology. Not bad.
And what now? The author S. Yizhar asks, “There will arise one who knows and who will say, in what do we believe – in the trough of the political parties? In the big speeches? In God who is in heaven? What did we add, what one thing, word, or letter did we discover outside of the military field, what did we say?”
So, what do we say? What will we say to our children and our grandchildren? What is the Israel that we are creating for them? More importantly, what is the Israel that we want for ourselves?
As we gather together on this Yom Kippur 5769, we gather to consider our past year and look to the new year. Many times throughout this day, we will bang our chests saying “Al Chet….For the sin that we transgressed….” We will say the traditional “Al Chet” about cheating, robbing, haggling, overcharging, and more. But what are the sings of our society today? Perhaps we can add, “Al Chet” for indifference, denying responsibility, being silent before the pain of others, cynicism, and in hiding behide the armor of mistrust….” (Gates of Repentance, p. 328-329)
We cannot continue to blame the government – the government is only as accountable as we hold them to be. We cannot blame the lessening of donations from our Jewish brethren abroad. We are responsible.
We will read tomorrow in the Torah portion for Yom Kippur, parshat Nitzavim, a parshah that we can say without a doubt is directed at every single person in the Jewish people. “You are standing here today, all of you, before Adonai your G-d, the heads of your tribes, your elders and your men-at-arms, every man in Israel. Your children and your women and your stranger who is in the midst of your camp, from the woodcutter to the water carrier. (Deuteronomy 29:9-10)
We will read G-d’s promise to all of our ancestors and thereby to all of us. “I testify through you today by the heavens and by the earth – I put before you life and death, blessing and curse, and you shall choose life so that you may live, you and your offspring. (Deuteronomy 30:19).
Ultimately, it was the Israelites that decided to cross the Jordan and conquer the land. It was the individuals that chose to build settlements and work the land. It was a rabbi who chose to surrender to the Romans and change Judaism from a religion of sacrifice to a religion of prayer. It was merchants who chose to travel and settle in lands like Italy, Spain, and Morocco. It was young idealists who chose to come and settle the Land of Israel.
People ask me all the time: When will your synagogue be built? I answer: Whenever you want.
The time has ended in which Israel is, in the words of Alice Shalvi, a “welfare state”. (Women’s Torah Commentary) And as we see in the tumbling markets of the Nasdaq, the time is ending in which we are the “poor relation” of our rich American uncles who will sponsor all of our projects. It is time for a shift in mentality to become, in the words of Dr. Yishayahu Ben-Aharon, educator, philosopher and community activist, director of School for the Humanities “Civil Society.” According to him, “The wide and accepted definition of the expression ‘civil society’ is an approach that is characterized by organization, free choice, independence, and common values in which the players act within the framework of the public agenda. (Diamond 1994).
“The civil society encourages civil obligation whose meaning is willingness to work together to bring about collective goals, thereby contributing to the state. An obligated citizen is ready to translate in the time of need the feeling of obligation to a concrete act. The civil society bridges and enables different socio-economic and ideological strata and enables them to live in concert through mutual respect and mainly through coming to terms with difference.”
We Israelis have the ability to do it ourselves. The choice our ancestors were given is still our choice. We have opinions about public affairs – we should voice them. We have money – we should make sure our money goes to promote our values, whether it’s through advocating for allocation of government funds to provide the services that reflect the demography of our society (i.e. equal sponsorship of all religious streams) or contributing part of our resources for philanthropic projects that will enrich our community and strengthen our society.
“In Israel, there is giving, but not in large amounts,” says Nachman Shai, the representative in Israel of the United Jewish Communities in America.
The businessman Roni Doel, who owns the campus of the organization Shitufim for the Establishment of Israeli Philanthropy and the Crystallization of Dialogue and Cooperation Among Non-Profit Organizations, Business, and Government, said to an Ha’Aretz reporter, “It is not a matter that the guy with the money decides everything, but rather that the guy with the money has a responsibility to society….I want that when the businessman drives to work through a depressed neighborhood, he will look left and right and will understand that the social situation here will also have an impact on his children and also on his country.”
On Rosh HaShanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed…How will we write the new year? Let us not be victims – not of terror and not of indifference. Let us stand with arms outstretched – not to receive handouts but to give and to contribute. Let us create a civic society that we design and that reflects our values of democracy, pluralism, egalitarianism, and innovation.
I was always taught – the more you give, you more you get.
If we will it, it is no dream – dreams turn into reality. We are standing here today, and we are choosing – May it be G-d’s will that we will choose life so that we may live in the State of Israel and thousands of generations will live here after us.
Amen.