My Dvar Torah to a Zionist Audience

[u/ApplesauceFuckface]

Hello friends! Some of you may remember this post I made a few weeks ago after I had the privilege of speaking at an event celebrating Palestinian culture.

Today, I had the chance to deliver this sermon at the synagogue I attend (a Canadian, Conservative and Zionist congregation).

Shabbat Shalom

This week's parsha, Vayeshev, continues one of the grand narratives of the book of Bereishit, the story of a man--Abraham--who started a family that became a tribe, and that tribe which would go on through the other sifrei Torah, the books of Shemot and beyond, to become a nation.

The stories in Bereishit, and particularly in Vayeshev, reveal the complexity of familial relations. This week's story starts with Jacob playing favourites amongst his sons for reasons we can understand from the stories we heard in previous weeks. And then we see the devastating impacts of that favouritism on the family: rupture, resentment, and murderous rage. And yet, despite the pain and trauma that arises from Jacob's blatant favouritism, the Torah does not condemn Jacob. We later come to see that the familial rupture caused by Jacob's favouritism is the foundation for the salvation and sustenance of B'nei Israel. Had Joseph not been cast into the pit and sold to the Midianites, the nation of our heritage may never have come to exist.

In a discussion of Vayeshev, the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks quotes from The Laws of Repentance, one of the great works of the sage Maimonides: "Therefore we should see ourselves throughout the year as if our deeds and those of the world are evenly poised between good and bad, so that our next act may change both the balance of our lives and that of the world." Rabbi Sacks goes on to explain that although Reuben's intervention to save Joseph was less effective than he had intended--a Midrash says, "Had Reuben known that the Holy One blessed be He would write about him, “When Reuben heard this, he saved him,” he would have lifted Joseph bodily onto his shoulders and taken him back to his father."--Reuben's intervention serves to show us that the long-term impacts of our actions can be more significant than we would ever think.

It's clear that Reuben's intervention saved Joseph in the short term, and played a vital role in the long term survival of his people--our people. I would also argue that Reuben's intervention saved his other brothers in the short term. Joseph may have been a brother from another mother, but he was still family. Jacob's grief when he thought that Joseph had been torn apart by wild animals is heartbreaking enough; imagine the horror if his sons had returned with Joseph's coat and their hands soaked in Joseph's blood.

I invite you to think about this idea: when members of a family decide to enact their worst impulses--even if we can understand where those impulses come from--it is so important for someone within the family to say, "no, this isn't who we are, this isn't what we want to become."

And here my remarks to you today are going to take a hard left turn. Those of you who know a bit about me and my politics will understand why I use that turn of phrase and may have some idea of where I'm headed.

I'm going to start with a comparison that may seem kind of contrived and superficial, but bear with me. I recently had the pleasure of attending a Palestinian cultural night, and there I learned about their style of embroidery known as tatreez. If you've ever seen a Palestinian woman dressed in a traditional thawb you'll be familiar with the vibrant colours and intricate patterns of tatreez, not unlike the coat of many colours that Joseph wore.

And yes, here I am suggesting that we the Jewish people are to Palestinians as the sons of Leah, Bilhah and Zilpah were to Joseph, son of Rachel. Our lineages are not identical, but there is much that we share in terms of heritage and culture. Obviously we both have a profound connection to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. We Jewish people have a history of being subjected to the whims of imperial powers, of being colonized and expelled, and in that way our past resembles the Palestinian present. We honour the memories and stories of figures who resisted colonial forces: Hanukkah is right around the corner and we celebrate the story of the Maccabees. Other figures of resistance that have a prominent place in Jewish lore are the martyrs of Masada, and those of the Bar Kochba rebellion. And on a completely different note I can also point out that we share with the Palestinians a commitment to literacy and learning, with literacy rates in the West Bank and Gaza of nearly 98% (as of 2022).

I understand why, in this post-October 7 world, it may be hard--impossible even--for some of us to see ourselves and Palestinians as part of the same family. I acknowledge the historical traumas inflicted on our people, the raw and open psychological wounds from seeing people like us treated brutally and cruelly, and the grief we share knowing that there are still people held captive by those who we can't trust to see us as kin. These undeniable realities may mean that Palestinians can only appear to some of us as mortal enemies and as an existential threat. I will say that the Palestinians I've had a chance to speak to face-to-face have been nothing but welcoming and gracious when I approach them with a spirit of brotherly love, but just because that is the right path for me doesn't mean that everyone else needs to follow in my footsteps.

To any of you who aren't ready to embrace Palestinians as family, please indulge me in suggesting another way that you can make a difference and give life to the words of Maimonides "that our next act may change both the balance of our lives and that of the world." You may know people whose sense of pain and hate is so strong that it leads them to engage in or to rationalize the unconscionable. I probably can't reach those people; once they get a sense of my perspective, they will label me and write me off as a traitor, a Hamas supporter, a useful idiot, a self-hating Jew. But some of you may be able to reach them, and save them as Reuben saved his brothers from the consequences of their worst impulses. You may find yourself in places, whether physical or virtual, where others in our Jewish family feel entitled to celebrate and encourage ongoing devastations and injustices being inflicted on Palestinians, most of whom are innocent of any wrongdoing. If and when you see that, I ask--no I beg of you-- that you please use your voice to remind our brothers and sisters of the 13 attributes of Hashem's mercy:

Adonai, Adonai, el rachum ve-chanun, erech apayim ve-rav chesed ve-emet, notzer chesed la-alafim, noseh avon vafeshah ve-chata'ah ve-nakeh.

My Lord! My Lord! God of compassion and grace. Slow to anger and full of lovingkindness and truth. Bestowing kindness to thousands of generations. Forgiving transgression, iniquity and sin. Granting of pardons.

We may find that like Reuben in this week's parsha, our attempts to intervene are less immediately effective than we would like, but with the passage of time we may discover that they are actually more impactful than we ever would have thought possible. I truly believe, and I hope you will take some time to consider, that our collective safety as Jews, here in the diaspora and especially in Israel, will only be secured when we find true and lasting ways of living those attributes of mercy, b'tselem elohim*,* in the image of god, in relation to Palestinians.

Thank you for bearing with me for this long. I'm going to wrap up right away.

Some of you may be familiar with the late Canadian writer and broadcaster, Stuart McLean, and his Dave and Morley stories from his radio show, The Vinyl Cafe. For those of you who don't know, The Vinyl Cafe is also the name of the independent record store that Dave runs in the stories, and it has one of the greatest and most memorable slogans I've ever encountered: "We may not be big, but we're small."

I think the same can also be said of us here in this congregation, in this community. Like Dave as proprietor of The Vinyl Cafe, we understand that our success is not measured in growth and size, it's measured in the depth of connections we forge among ourselves and with the wider community. Now more than ever, those connections are so important. We can use those deep connections to bring people together and call for peace. If we don't, the consequences for ourselves here and especially for our family in Israel could be dire. And here I do want to emphasize that while I've mostly spoken about family in a more metaphorical sense, when I talk about family in Israel I also mean it literally, as many of you know.

Every week during this service we say a prayer for peace, and I think it is worth dwelling on this line from that prayer: "We have not come into being to hate or to destroy, we have come into being to praise, to labour and to love." And it is with that spirit of love for this local community, the global Jewish community, the Palestinians who have held my outstretched hand, and the human family that we are all a part of, that I leave you with these two statements: Shabbat Shalom, and Free Palestine.

It was actually received pretty well.

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[u/00000hashtable]

Yasher Koach!

[u/eitzhaimHi]

Really well done!

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