Parashat Lech Lecha 2023: Why Zionism Matters
My thoughts on Zionism, Why it Matters, How to Help in this Moment, and the amazing blessings of a bar mitzvah.
Parashat Lech Lecha 2023: Why Zionism Matters
I want to talk to you about how I am feeling.
This has been a really hard few weeks, to say the least, but one thing I take comfort in, is knowing that when I walk into this space, even if we don’t all agree on specific policies, we all agree on certain core values of Judaism, with zionism, a commitment to a safe, secure, and sovereign state of Israel, for the Jews, in the land of Israel, being as one of the values.
But, this is not the only emotion.
I am devasted for the families in Israel and I am terrified for the hostages, and I have compassion for the dead Gazans that are collateral damage because of the terrorist actions of Hamas, and I am deflated as to where we are as a world. I am a parent of two boys-15 and almost 18. I can't believe this is the world they are entering as adults.
I am proud-I am proud of how the Jewish community has stepped up. It is wonderful that the school where my son and Isaac go, the Heschel school has welcomed 50 Israeli children though it is tragic that mothers and children need to flee.
I am appreciative. I am appreciative of our elected officials-from President Biden to Gov Hochul and Gov Abbot and Mayor Adams and Congressman Torres. To those congressman and senators on both sides of the aisle who are able to come together for help.
I am worried. I am worried for our college students.
But I am also reflective-I want to today, think about what zionism has meant and where we are today, and what we can do about it. not because all of you need an academic lecture, but because in a time where there is so much information coming at us, I want to try to think through some of these issues, and how they impact us today, in a religious space.
To do that, let’s start with our parashah, as that is the grounding and guiding wisdom for this setting:
In lech lecha, we have numerous verses but there are a few that I want to focus on:
Chapter 12
1 The Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
2 I will make of you a great nation,
And I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
And you shall be a blessing.
This parasha is the spiritual basis for zionism, a belief and a goal that we will make it to the land, and we will be able to live there.
So what is the context for this.
God is in the business of making covenants. Just as a covenant was made last week with Noah, where God described the role of the rainbow, in this week’s parasha, a covenant is made between God, Abraham and the future Jewish people.
Why is this important? Because even when we encounter stress-and Abraham did-famine, wars, infertility, you name it…he also enjoyed blessings. This means that we can believe that even when things are awful, we will get a chance to live and build again
This is of course a theme that we see over and over again in Jewish tradition-
Out of the murder of Abel, still, the world continued…
From the depths of slavery in Egypt, with a desire to kill babies, a nation reborn…
From the exile in Babylon to the return to Jerusalem
From the destruction of the temple to the flourishing of Jewish life throughout the world
From the pain of the pogroms, the anti semitism against dryfuss, and the ashes of the Shoah to the growth of the State of Israel
At every moment we have prayed, and advocated, and have spoken out.
So, how do we understand this rebuilding?-in the late 19th century, Theodore Herzl, a secular Jewish journalist, realized that anti semitism was here (or it hadn’t gone away) and it was time to do something about it, and as the founder of political Zionism, he wrote the pamphlet, The Jewish state. He wrote in 1896:
"And what glory awaits those who fight unselfishly for the cause! Therefore I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews will spring into existence. The Maccabeans will rise again... The Jews who wish for a State will have it. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes. The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.”
Ben-Gurion, “the Imperatives of the Jewish Revolution,” 1944 We must master our fate, we must take destiny into our own hands!...Galut [Diaspora] means dependence – material, political, spiritual, cultural, and intellectual dependence – because we are aliens, a minority, bereft of a homeland, rootless and separated form the soil, from labor, and from basic industry. Our task is to break radically with this dependence and to become masters of our own fate – in a word, to achieve independence. ..Independence for the Jewish people in its homeland!
These thinkers built on the courage of Abraham and, in our post enlightenment world, understood that to be alive meant to live and work in freedom. In this land, that God had showed Abraham.
Scholar Gil Troy a scholar today, also wrote about American zionism in the 1st half of the 20th century-- Despite being so marginal demographically, Zionism (actually) threatened American Jewry ideologically; American Jews had arrived in the “Golden Medina”; they did not want to feel caught between dueling Promised Lands. ...Steeped in liberal ideals and committed to helping other Jews, American Zionism resolved the ideological dilemma. Both Louis Brandeis and Henrietta Szold understood how “menacing” pure Zionism could be to the American Jewish dream-yet how essential American Jewish support was to fulfill the Zioinst dream.
So where are we today:
First, we need to hear from people who are there: Why are they there, what does Zionism mean, and what can we do?
My friend Yuval-an Orthodox Rabbi wrote when I asked:
Zionism for me is first and foremost a belief in the connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, but mainly the call to me as a Jew to be an active part of history and to act within the redemption process to strengthen this connection
From my friend Loren-a Conservative rabbi who lives in Jerusalem:
Personally, I made aliyah because I was running toward something, running to be part of the greatest experiment in Jewish sovereignty in 2,000 years, to live as the majority and work on the challenges of doing that and being a real democracy.
As Dr Micha Goodman wrote last week in Jerusalem:
Dr. Goodman also took note of the contradiction between two Israeli and therefore Zionist, aspirations:
“When we speak about our international relationships, there are two emotions we have to be thinking about: love and fear.
From the West, We want love. We want Bono to sing songs about us. We want Madonna to share stories on Instagram, about how much she admires us and loves us.
But in the Middle East, we don’t want to be loved. [In order to survive] we want to be feared. We want Hezbollah to have a panic attack when they think about the Israeli Defense Forces. We want the Middle East to be in fear of us [or we will not survive[].
Honestly, it is like America Ferrera’s monologue in the Barbie movie about women…we need to be strong but not too strong, pretty, but not too pretty. You get it.
And so this is the challenge-
As Israelis are stressed about perception and existential survival, they are hurt. Deeply hurt and Dr Yehuda Kurtzer wrote last week,
"I feel deeply concerned that Israelis are on the verge of a massive crisis of widespread ethical loneliness. Ethical loneliness is the phenomenon in which someone or a group is first made victim by violence and then suffers a secondary injustice of not being heard or not being believed."
Rabbi Matt Futterman who lives in Ashkelon-wrote, Other than coming in person and placing their lives in danger or contributing to an effective organization caring for the displaced or for our soldiers – people want to know what else they can do.
After days and days of pondering I have an answer: Get in the faces of the Hamas enablers where you live with the truth. And stress that the Palestinians are not the enemy – Hamas is. We need you to flood the enablers with graphic proof of the inhuman savagery of Hamas.
This reminds me of our Torah, where two of the tribes asked Moses if they (like us) could remain on the other side of the Jordan and not enter:
6 Moses replied to the Gadites and the Reubenites, "Are your brothers to go to war while you stay here? 7 Why will you turn the minds of the Israelites from crossing into the land that the Lord has given them?...
16 Then they stepped up to him and said, "We will build here sheepfolds for our flocks and towns for our children. 17 And we will hasten as shock-troops in the van of the Israelites until we have established them in their home, while our children stay in the fortified towns because of the inhabitants of the land. 18 We will not return to our homes until every one of the Israelites is in possession of his portion. 19 But we will not have a share with them in the territory beyond the Jordan, for we have received our share on the east side of the Jordan."
THIS IS WHAT WE MUST DO AS ZIONISTS who are here in the diaspora. Affirm that our family is safe, there, in Israel.
So this brings us to what we can do-I was asked this question yesterday, and I answered with what i have been doing-
1) I am advocating to federal officials to condemn hamas, to care for college students, and to send aid to Israel
2) I am working to create support and connection with Israel, which is an extension of how I always serve as a rabbi. I often try to bring Israel to SPS and SPS to Israel. This has only strengthened my resolve. Israelis need to hear from us and I make sure they are.
3) I am reaching out to my non Jewish colleagues and sharing my honesty with them about my disappointment in their silence and then, amplifying their voice when they do the right thing. I am offering to go to their churches to share what this means to the Jewish people
4) I am working on fundraising for security at SPS because of course, nothing is happening in a vacuum-we need to raise dollars to pay extra guards and to get this security renovation done through our capital campaign which we announced this fall.
5) I am sharing resources with our college students about how to get involved and get educated and I am speaking to them at all hours of the day or night.
6) I am continuing to be thoughtful in what I am reading and taking in and sharing. I am trying not to have knee jerk reactions but rather, responses that make sense, so that, people will listen to what I have to say
7) I am talking about why Israel and Zionism matters. I am not letting anyone off the hook. This needs to be part and parcel of who we are.
I am working really hard to continue to invest in the important work of Jewish education and Jewish identity building. When I am not worrying about the above, I spend all my waking hours trying to think about the growth and trajectory of SPS. I am with the little kids, the teens, the young professionals, and the adults of all ages. It is crucial that we have a strong, vibrant, proud Jewish community for people to gather together. SO many people have been showing up here because they are seeking solace and inspiration.
And this is the challenge-we need to focus resources on Israel, but we must focus resources here as well so that we can connect people and motivate them to be involved.
And finally, as we think about these weeks, we should hearken back to the Torah where we read:
14 And the Lord said to Abram, after Lot had parted from him, “Raise your eyes and look out from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west, 15 for I give all the land that you see to you and your offspring forever. 16 I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, then your offspring too can be counted. 17 Up, walk about the land, through its length and its breadth, for I give it to you.”
Figure out how you can connect to the land. Listen, read, come here. Go there.
And then, build it up.
I will conclude with a poem written by my colleague, Rabbi Aaron Weininger:
Lech Lecha
“Go forth,”
God said to Abraham
The words pass through centuries
Like a game of telephone
Wiring through
The pit with Joseph
The parted waters with Miriam
Amidst Temple rise and ruin
The resilience of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai,
Electrifying
The spirit of Yavneh.
“From your native land
And from your father’s house,”
Writing into literature and music
Crying from persecution to enlightenment
And burning into gas chambers
Holding
Us
When we could breath
And when we suffocated.
“To the land that I will show you.”
Silence. Victory. Terror. Power. None. Repeat.
1-9-4-8 my fingers dial a familiar number
But incomplete
What is the rest?
I’m waiting, God,
For you to answer.
Or to call.
Something.
Give me a sign.
Lech Lecha
Is it You, this week?
Above the din of voices that
Reduce millennia to soundbites.
“I will make of you a great nation,
And I will bless you:
I will make your name great,
And you shall be a blessing.”
Let us go forth again.
Isaac-You are a blessing. Your biblical namesake is the one who was the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham that this line would continue. You are someone who will help us go forth. We are sorry that the land is both a burden and a blessing, our people is one of joy and angst. But you know what it means, And there is no better person that I would want to celebrate this morning, as we welcome you as a Jewish adult, to Am Yisrael, as you are a blessing to the name of your family, the name of the Jewish people, and the descendants of Abraham and Sarah.
Shabbat shalom.
