Kol Nidre Sermon 2011

Let me share with you two very contrasting perspectives of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.  The first comes from a rabbi, the second from a doctor, both live in Israel.

First, the rabbi, Shlomo Riskin who in 1983 went on aliya, shares this lovely anecdote in his very recently published memoir “Listening to God”.  He writes how soon after arriving in Efrat just 7 miles from Jerusalem.  He set out to establish cordial relationships with the neighbouring Palestinian village of Wadi El-Nis inviting its mayor to his home for a social get together.  Reciprocal hospitality was offered and a relationship of mutual respect, even friendship was established.  1986 was the year of the first intifada – Arab uprising; Arab adults and youths, throwing stones at passing cars, maiming drivers and causing many injuries and deaths.  Let Riskin take up the story.  “The IDF ruled that a protective fence be put up between Wadi El-Nis and Efrat.  The mukhtar, mayor, came to see me.

‘We have a verse in the Koran,’ he said ‘A close neighbour is better than a far-away brother (we have the same verse in The Book of Proverbs).  We have been close neighbours where love for each other has made us brothers.  I beg of you, do not put up the fence.  It would embarrass our friendship.  I guarantee that there will never be a problem form Wadi El-Nis.’

Our city council checked with the IDF and the order for us to put up a fence was removed.  Until this day there has been no trouble from Wadi El-Nis – much the opposite, they have proven their friendship in many significant ways!”

The second perspective comes from the doctor, Arieh Eldad – professor and head of the plastic surgery and burns unit at Jerusalem’s Hadassa hospital, who also reached the exalted rank of Tat Aluf (Brigadier General) in the Israeli Army.  Let him take up the story.

“The skin bank I established is based at the Hadassah Ein Kerem University hospital in Jerusalem where I was the Chairman of plastic surgery.  This is how I was asked to supply skin for an Arab woman from Gaza, who was hospitalized in Soroka Hospital in Beersheva, after her family burned her. Usually, such atrocities happen among Arab families when the women are suspected of having an affair.

We supplied all the needed homografts for her treatment.  She was successfully treated by my friend and colleague, Prof, Lior Rosenberg and discharged to return to Gaza.  She was invited for regular follow-up visits to the outpatient clinic in Beersheva.

One day she was caught at a border crossing wearing a suicide belt.  She intended to explode herself in the outpatient clinic of the hospital where they saved her life.  It seems that her family promised her that if she did that, they would forgive her.

This is only one example of the war between Jews and Muslims in the Land of Israel” concludes Eldad.  “It is not a territorial conflict.  This is a civilizational conflict, or rather a war between civilization & barbarism.”

Now whenever I have spoken about Israel from the pulpit, I hope the perception has been that I am an unequivocal lover of Israel who believes that a secure sovereign independent Jewish state of Israel is necessary for the physical safety of the Jewish people, the political defence of democracy, and for the moral decency of civilisation.  If Israel, chas v’shalom were to cease to exist Am Yisrael, the Jewish People, democracy, civilization would suffer deeply wounding and irreparable setbacks.

This is the thirty-seventh consecutive year I have spoken to you on Kol Nidre, each time about Israel – a sort of State of the Union message, the union between Jew and Israel.  I make no apology for introducing what some may say is politics into this holiest night of the Jewish year because for me Israel is not politics, Israel is family, home to nearly one half of the 13 million Jews around the globe I call family, living in a land promised to my family, your family, our family through a covenantal relationship between God and Abraham, and enjoying an unbroken Jewish settlement since Joshua led the Bnei Yisrael back to the country some three thousand two hundred years ago.  I also make no apology for speaking about Israel because each year over the past 37 years, Israel, our family, has become more vulnerable suffering an unceasing intensifying, well funded and insidious campaign of denunciation, deligitimisation and demonization – a campaign waged with great passion and professionalism in parliamentary chambers, royal palaces, dictator’s citadels, town councils, media, universities and work places.  This tsunami of malevolent misinformation and bigotry has gathered strength invading all parts of the globe, overwhelming its developed and developing parts, spewed out alike by religious fundamentalist and unwavering secular, rabid, right wing and radical left wing; democrat and despot and even Jews, intelligent Jews, well-intentioned Jews but arguably ill informed, however I have no intention of abusing the sanctity of this holy night by denigrating and disparaging those who seek to achieve or affect the extermination of a Jewish State.  I will not hesitate to use the pulpit on a Shabbat for this purpose because truth is an essential ingredient of Judaism.  Moreover, in the Torah, ironically in Yom Kippur’s Torah reading from Leviticus we read “You shall reprove your fellow man, and not share his guilt.”      

But Yom Kippur more so than any day in the Jewish calendar is an opportunity, more a holy obligation, a mitzvah to look above all at ourselves, openly, honestly.

Many Jewish visitors to Israel enjoy the welcome evidence of a burgeoning economy, experiencing the luxury five star hotels and high class restaurants while remaining oblivious to the daily concerns of the Israeli.  Three brief examples of these concerns.  First Leonard Cole in his book “Terror – How Israel has Coped” records a conversation between Laurence Lauer who was walking home with his 14 year old daughter Anya near their Jerusalem home when she suddenly suggested that she and her father change positions on the pavement, “Dad, I think you should be walking on the outside and I should be on the inside.  What if a terrorist bomb should explode from the street?  If you died, I think that somehow I would eventually get over it, but if I were killed I know you would never get over it.”

Second, a while ago I watched a TV international edition of Moving Home.  I never watch these programmes but in flicking through the channels I heard Tel Aviv mentioned.  The programme focused on a twenty five year old

Tel Aviv woman Rachel seeking her first property  The choice was narrowed down to three – a small flat in fashionable Rechov Shenkin, a small town house in Jaffa or a flat in Ramat Gan.  Rachel fell in love with the Jaffa property – its seaside location, its obvious potential.  Yet she chose the Ramat Gan flat – Why?  Because her mother pointed out that the Jaffa property lacked a bomb proofed room.  How different    flat hunting in Israel is from NW London.  How different life and death can be in Israel.

Third, there are in Israel regular air sirens and air raid exercises,  the security cabinet meets in an underground bunker somewhere in the Judean hills while dozens of government and security officials simulate how they will act in time of mass missile attacks.  With their hearts Israelis yearn for peace, with their lips they pray for peace, with their heads they prepare for what many regard as the inevitability of war.

All this, all this, compounded by the fact that Israel is surrounded on all sides either by the sea or hostile countries, outnumbered by 60 to 1 and battered and bruised by a well funded, well organized, world wide demonization campaign means the country and the people suffer a unique sense of vulnerability. 

The phrase “a second holocaust” with reference to a nuclear attack on Israel is being deployed more and more.  Historian Ron Rosenbaum, author of many books on the holocaust, writes chillingly “It’s a phrase we may have to begin thinking about.  A possibility we may have to contemplate.  A reality we may have to witness.”

This vulnerability, this fear, informs Israel’s yearning for peace and her many generously offered but consistently rejected proposals of land concessions to the Palestinians, indeed it informs and underwrites her every policy.

Some Diaspora Jews have detached themselves from Israel having absorbed the one eyed relentless propaganda spewed out by all and sundry. 

Let me share with you this news story found in the Israeli news paper Ha- eretz – a story that puts the propaganda into proper perspective.  The head of the IDF forces in the West Bank, Brigadier General Nitsan Alon, apologized today on Israeli television for an incident in which an Arab civilian was killed in his bed during a raid which took place in Hebron yesterday. 

He said that Israeli soldiers shot Amir Quwasme last night in his home by mistake during a raid that was aimed at capturing six terrorists who had been released the day before by the Palestinian authority. 

Quwasme lived one floor above the intended target Mahmoud Said Bitor.  Bitor who was involved in a deadly bombing attack that took place in Dimona in 2008, was apprehended during the raid and is now in an Israeli prison.

The general announced that the soldiers had made an honest mistake, and that they would therefore not be arrested and put on trial.  However, he said that the Israeli government deeply regrets the incident and expresses its condolences to Mr Quwasme’s family for their loss.  What does this story tell us?  All armies are made up of human beings and all human beings make mistakes but I don’t remember reading about any other country in the world whose chief of staff admits  when they kill someone by mistake as this general did.  British Colonel Richard Kemp writing an article in the Times 3 months ago under the heading “In Modern war, civilian deaths are inevitable” points out that according to some analyses civilians made up 45% of those killed in the First World War and 65% in the Second.  Every death is a tragedy but Israel has a better record of care and concern than any army in history.  Asa Kasher, Tel Aviv University professor and co-author of the first IDF Code of Ethics points out how before Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, Israel made 160,000 phone calls urging local citizens to leave their home voluntarily and temporarily – warning they are in a potential war zone.  Israel broke into their TV and radio to relay the warnings. No one in history has ever done that.

If anyone questions the moral decency of the ethos of the IDF, let me refer  you to a 13 page newspaper interview in the Jerusalem Post with Kasher who continues to work on the moral doctrines that shape the IDF’s actions.

So who is right in their perspective?  The rabbi or the doctor – Riskin or Eldad, a hand held out in friendship or a hand clenched ready for war.  We have to hope, pray, believe it is Riskin, but my real gutwrenching fear is that it may be Eldad.

The last line of the Kaddish reads

“May He who makes peace in the Heavens make peace for us and all Israel.” Traditionally when we say this last line we take three steps backwards, bowing to the left, then the right and then a third and final time to the centre.  So to achieve peace both sides need to retreat a little from our position.  When Riskin first invited the local Palestinian mayor to his home his wife strongly objected, she refused to prepare food and greet the visitor on principle, her principle.  Eventually she relented, retreated, prepared food but then left the home refusing to greet them.  She retreated a little but still embraced her principles.  Riskin, his wife and the Palestinian mayor, who courted condemnation from fellow Arabs for accepting Riskin’s hospitality, offer a template for peace.

In 1939 when Rabbi Benzion Uzziel, became Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel he delivered his inaugural address in Hebrew and then added these words in Arabic – We reach our hands out to you in peace, pure and trustworthy…. Make peace with us and we will make peace with you.  Together all of us will benefit from the blessing of God on His land; with harmony and peace, with love and fellowship, with goodwill and pure heart we will find the way of peace.  72 years later Israeli and Arab are still searching for the way of peace – hands still need to be held out – the reward of harmony and peace awaits, ready to be grabbed, held and embraced.

May God who makes peace in the heaven, bring this peace to us and all the world in our lifetime.

RABBI STEVEN KATZ