In my early 20s, when university friends first came back from the West Bank with stories of what they had seen, I did not listen as I should have done.
One friend described the death of a child and sitting consoling her mother and said, “There’s just not enough sad in the world for how sad it is.”
I thought, “yes, yes, I know, let’s get onto talking about action we will take and what our solutions are and how we theorise all this.”
I feel thoroughly embarrassed at how callous I was. I feel deep shame and a need to make amends.
I understand better now why I was wrong.
Yesterday, we went to the ruins of Umm al-Khair to show solidarity. There were not enough activists there to keep a permanent protective presence.
So, as we were in the car on the way to a peace conference, we received news that the villagers had been shot by settlers. Apparently, it was a “revenge” attack on them for daring to show their devastation to internationals.
I listened to speeches with grand promises of peace, equality, and coexistence.
Then, in the car on the way back, we heard that the army had also gone in to shoot at the Bedouin too, and destroyed one of their temporary structures.
The people in Umm al-Khair now have had their homes, water, and electricity destroyed. And they have at least two elderly women in hospital. And these were people I met and looked in the eye and wished for God to give them strength. These were friends of friends with full lives.
After the conference, we had no discussions about the speeches or the ideas. There was nothing to talk about. Only Umm al-Khair. Only getting as many internationals and Israelis there as possible. Only doing everything possible to stop them dying.
It is a small piece of everything that is happening here. How can we talk ideologies when people are dying imminently? We may waste our entire time coming up with solutions while entire families, cultures, and livelihoods are destroyed.
This is my promise to myself. I will not be part of that.
I will never, for a moment, let myself think that ideologies matter more than human lives.
I will always prioritise people first.
Because there is not enough sad in the world, and I wish I had seen that sooner.
Before coming here, a friend sent me a podcast about how resilience is not so much an intrinsic quality as it is the culture of support you have around you. Who can stay strong when nobody is holding them up?
The podcast was talking about the experiences of people living through illness and disability. How much more true must it be for those trying to defend their land against an entire military and its bureaucracy?
Last night, we slept with the Bedouin shepherds doing “protective presence” to keep the settlers away. Before we went to sleep, an Israeli activist showed the Palestinian women and girls her videos from Saturday’s protests. They rejoiced watching.
The oldest woman called out: “Yes! Free Palestine! Everyone in the world wants us to be free! All the Arabs want us to be free! All the Jews around the world want us to be free!”
Despite everything, knowing that others were calling for her freedom was giving her strength. If it weren’t for international protests, solidarity from Israelis coming to camp with them, and activists worldwide showing their support, she might feel insignificant against the much mightier force of the occupier.
In the morning, we drove over to Umm al-Khair, a Bedouin village where the settlers just razed 12 families’ homes to the ground. Delegation from all around the world were there to denounce these illegal actions and demand international law.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“We are showing them they are not alone, right in front of the settlers. Everyone needs to know the Palestinians are not alone.”
After that, we headed to Susiya with aid packages. Susiya’s economy has been destroyed since Israel withdrew all work permits. We came with food and formula milk to tide them over, as they struggled with having their economic independence taken from them.
In a way, it is a sticking plaster. What they really need is access to their own land which has been taken from them. But the food is also more than food. It is a statement: “Stay strong. Don’t leave. You have the right to be here.”
As long as Palestinians refuse to leave, their fight is not over. As long as people keep supporting them, they will have the resilience to resist.
“If we could just flood the West Bank with activists, I truly believe this place would look so different,” one of the Israelis told me.
He is right. I hope others will come out and join us here in being part of this.
But everything everyone is doing – all the solidarity from around the world – is giving people the strength to carry on.
As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset.
When King David was a boy, he worked as a shepherd in the valleys. His job was to keep the wolves away from the flocks.
Today, in the valleys of this ancient land, there are no wolves.
But there are settlers.
We are waiting in the shadow of a large Israeli settlement, comprised of roughly 1,000 people. Palestinian shepherds graze their flocks, hoping the settler youth won’t turn up and attack the locals. If they do, our only role is as a “protective presence.” The hope is that Israeli and international observers will deter them from being excessively violent. It is unlikely that the police or army will intervene and, if they do, it will be on the side of the settlers.
I am amazed by the resilience of the shepherds. The Palestinians call it by the Arabic word sumud: going to ground and not giving up.
Yet what other choice do they have? This is not just their ancestral land and their generational way of life. They have nowhere else to go. Why should they join others as refugees or in displaced person camps?
The shepherds describe how their space has got ever smaller. “Our lives are very hard. The settler wants to live, and he wants the Palestinian not to live.” This, they say, has ramped up significantly since the start of the war.
Their homes have already been destroyed. The settlers have cut off their water, made it harder for them to access their land, and paved motorways with military checkpoints through the grazing pastures.
It is so unjust, and I cannot see how anything will change.
For now, I hope, we may be able to keep the wolves at bay.
In the morning, at Shabbat services, a young woman got up at the end to announce that last week was the birthday of a girl she had taught as a youth leader. Her friends all met up in Tel Aviv to celebrate it. She wasn’t there.
Her name is Naama Levy. She was taken hostage on October 7th. The images of her capture are burned into my brain. If you have not seen them, please exercise extreme caution before you look them up.
After Shabbat services, I went down to see friends in Rechavya. There, all the posters are displayed for a guy called Hersh Goldberg-Polin. He is an ultra for the local football team, HaPoel Yerushalayim.
Hersh was abducted on October 7th after his arm was blown off by a grenade. His mother has been campaigning tirelessly for diplomatic measures to get her son home safe.
At my friend’s house, she asks: “my mum says that back home in America “bring them home” is a pro-war slogan? Can that be true?”
“Yes, it is in Britain too. It’s been quite the adjustment seeing it here.”
“But who is it directed at?”
“I don’t know, I guess they’re petitioning Hamas.”
“I don’t understand though: how can people want the hostages home and be pro-war?”
“The hostages are the pretext for all the attacks on Gaza.”
“But they are not in Gaza for the hostages!” her husband insists.
I know. They know. Everyone here knows. I wish people in Britain knew too.
When Shabbat ended and the first stars appeared in the sky, I joined the protests to bring the hostages home.
Everyone had banners calling for an end to war and an end to occupation. Supporters of Hersh’s mum handed out stickers with the number of days he has been held captive.
At the end, legendary Israeli peacenik David Grossman gave a speech as police charged at demonstrators.
Where is their support from Diaspora Jews? I wish I could hear my own community’s voices raised like these in Jerusalem- against war.
We are looking at a video of a little girl, learning to dance, waving to her daddy.
He has not seen her since October.
Gone is the joy of our hearts; our dancing has turned into mourning.
Yesterday, I spent the day with paperless workers from Gaza in the West Bank. After October 7th, all of the workers from Gaza who had passed the security checks had their work permits revoked. If they stayed at their postings in Israel, they would be taken to detention centres, where they would be beaten. If they returned to Gaza, they may well die. They fled to the West Bank, where they are now in hiding.
One of them is showing me a video of his daughter learning a traditional Palestinian dance. “The war has destroyed everything beautiful,” he says.
These men tell me their stories, and I hear them intermingled with every other story of disaster I have ever heard. I was not prepared for the scale of despair I would feel. I hear their words, and I hear the prophet Jeremiah echoing back lamentations.
I am the strong man who has seen oppression under the totem of his overflowing rage.
They are still not safe in the West Bank, either. A few days ago, the Israeli army marched up and down their stairs at night. If they had found them, they would have deported them to Gaza or imprisoned them. They weren’t actually looking for anyone, though. The army calls it “making our presence known.” Breaking the Silence reports it as a common intimidation tactic.
“We haven’t left the house in three days. It just feels too scary to go outside.”
He has walled me in and I cannot escape; he is weighed me down with chains.
They are catching up on the situation, sharing news from Gaza City, Khan Younis, Nuseirat, Rafah. We watch a video of an old lady woken up in the night by soldiers, who set their dog on her.
Streams of water fall from my eyes over the destruction of my people.
We hear stories of families back home. They cannot eat properly. People have only eaten tinned food. There are no fresh vegetables. The water is dirty. People are smoking leaves from trees. Everything is so expensive. People will fight each other for scraps.
Children beg for bread, but not a scrap for them.
Now they are getting sick. Skin diseases. Insects that eat up arms. Sores and spots appearing on the face. Why are my child’s lips fuzzy red? Why can’t my mother get up out of bed? They are all so sick in mind and body.
Our skin glows like an oven with the fever of famine.
They have been chased around by bombs to every corner of the beseiged area of Gaza. Now, one man’s entire family are staying in a sweaty fabric tent on a cousin’s land. Everything is destroyed. Where there are buildings, they cram twenty people into tiny rooms. It is already so very hot here.
Swifter were our pursuers than the eagles of the sky. In the mountains they pursued us and in the wilderness they ambushed us.
Back in London, there were all kinds of debates about ideology and tactics and strategies. Now, in front of me, there are real human beings, who just want to go home and see their children. “They are destroying the world on top of our heads.”
My life is bereft of peace. I have forgotten what happiness is.
I ask about their childhoods in Gaza. “We had a lot of adventures. We had days at the beach. We endured wars and all kinds of problems but never anything like this. Our celebrations were so huge. A wedding lasts a week and thousands of people come from all round. I married my best friend’s sister and he married mine and we were all going to grow up together…”
He has ravaged the booth like a garden; he has slaughtered his sanctuary.
“I don’t want a big house any more. I just want the war to be over. I just want to see my daughters again.”
I woke up this morning in a friend’s home on a moshav in Israel-Palestine. I am here for a month to learn and to volunteer with Rabbis for Human Rights.
The setting is beautiful. As the sun set last night over the mountains, the shrublands lit up in shades of orange and brown. Then jackals began to bray, calling out in the echoing valley. As we went to sleep, we even heard a hyena.
Overlooking us is a massive military compound for Israeli surveillance. On the walk to my friend’s home, I could see the separation wall.
We are on land that was taken during the Nakba of 1948. The people who lived here were dispersed, and their farmland taken. We can now see the native fig vines still, but alongside European pine trees planted by the JNF. The village opposite us is comprised of people who were forcefully evicted from a neighbouring town. They are Palestinian citizens of Israel within the “Green Line.”
It is all here. The beauty and the architecture of war. The reality of cruelty and the possibility of what might be.
“If anything, I am more convinced I want to stay now,” my friend says.
Since the start of the war, they have been protesting for peace several times a week. They have been involved in grassroots solidarity actions and getting aid to the people who need it most. At the very beginning, they were part of underground efforts to get people to safety. (And now you understand why I have to write so vaguely.)
The work looks exhausting. They and their friends have been beaten, imprisoned, shot at, and surveyed, only for trying to bring about peace.
“I have to stay now because I can see what it could be.”
Amidst all the rubble, they can see even more clearly the possibilities of a shared peaceful future with the Palestinians. And feel even more that is worth fighting for.
Once our rabbis were ascending to Jerusalem. When they reached Mount Scopus, they tore their garments. When they reached the Temple Mount, they saw a jackal leaving from the site of the inner sanctum of the Temple ruins. They began weeping, but Rabbi Akiva laughed.
The sages said to him, “Why do you laugh?” He said to them, “Why do you weep?”
They said to him, “Jackals now tread on the site regarding which it is written, ‘And the stranger who approaches shall die’ (Bamdibar 1:51) – shall we not weep?”
He said to them, “For this very reason I laugh… In the context of the prophecy of Uriya it is written, ‘Therefore, because of you, Zion shall be plowed like a field’ (Yirmiyahu 26:18), and in the prophecy of Zekharya it is written, ‘Elderly men and women shall once again sit along the streets of Jerusalem’ (Zekharya 8:5).
Until Uriya’s prophecy was realized, I feared that perhaps Zekharya’s prophecy would not be realized; but now that Uriya’s prophecy has been realized, it is certain that Zekharya’s prophecy will be realized.”
There are jackals braying in the mountains here. There is occupation and division and war.
And there are also the people building solidarity. Because of them, the prophecies of peace may be fulfilled.
Back in January, I attended a civic service for Holocaust Memorial Day. As part of the proceedings, we watched a video, in which a local volunteer interviewed a survivor from the Warsaw Ghetto. The volunteer was kind and gentle. She asked sensitive questions about the survivor’s life.
Then, she asked another question: “what can we learn from the Holocaust?”
The survivor shook her head: “Nothing.”
This answer clearly took the interviewer aback, so she rephrased, and asked again: “What moral lessons do you think people should take away from what the Nazis did?”
Again, the survivor responded. “Nothing. There is nothing to learn. Nobody can take anything from it.”
Her tone was not accusatory or angry. It was matter-of-fact. It seemed so obvious to this survivor that the genocide was not ethically instructive. It seemed just as obvious to the interviewer that there must be some lesson from it.
This reflects something of how the Holocaust is taught today. In British schools, children are educated that the Nazi genocide is an example of man’s inhumanity to man, and that they must learn from it how to act morally.
In the aftermath of the Nazi genocide, the United Nations signed up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When Holocaust Memorial Day was officially adopted by the United Nations in 2005, its then General-Secretary, Ban Ki-Moon said the purpose was to “apply the lessons of the Holocaust to today’s world.”
This was, presumably, the message the interviewer hoped to hear: “You should learn from the Holocaust how to be morally good.”
Why did the survivor refuse to give her that answer? I can only speculate. I think I can see why somebody who had endured such brutality would not want it to have moral meaning.
After all, what would it say about the death she witnessed and the misery she experienced if it was all just there to teach somebody else a lesson?
What is her life, as a victim of Nazi persecution, if she just a stepping stone for Christian Europeans to develop a moral conscience?
If it is all just a lesson in ethics, then the Shoah’s martyrs are just side characters to help the stars – that is, the genocide’s perpetrators – on their journey to self-improvement.
By giving the Holocaust meaning, something is detracted from the meaning of the survivor’s own life.
Tomorrow, Yom HaShoah starts. In Israel, tomorrow evening, the country will enter into 24 hours of solemn contemplation. They will remember all those who died and suffered during the Second World War.
Then, a week later, next Monday evening, the country will erupt into celebrations for Yom HaAtzmaut, Israeli Independence Day. The streets will be draped in blue and white flags as Israel rejoices at turning 76.
The proximity of genocide remembrance to national celebration is not a coincidence. It is part of how the Shoah is taught in Israel.
There, the country has a national liturgical cycle. The full name of this remembrance day is Yom HaZikaron leShoah veLigvurah: A Day for Remembering the Holocaust and Heroism.
Yom HaShoah is timed to coincide with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when a thousand Jewish militants attempted to physically resist the Nazis. The date is chosen to tell a story that Jews were not passive victims, but did all we could to fight against them.
Six days after Yom HaShoah comes Yom HaZikaron, a day for remembering the soldiers who fought in Israel’s wars. This narrative paves a path. First, the deaths of those killed by Nazis; then, the deaths of those killed for the Israeli state; all pointing towards the joyous outcome, when Israel is founded.
That path is clearly outlined the evening after Yom HaZikaron with Yom HaAtzmaut, Israeli Independence Day.
This is the core story that the state of Israel tells through its Holocaust remembrance services. Once we were victims because we had no state. Now we are not victims because we have a state. The Jews as a people began as ghetto resistance fighters, became soldiers in the wars for Israel, and now enjoy security in their own country.
That liturgical cycle continues on to early June, when Israel celebrates Yom Yerushalayim, the anniversary of the conquest of Jerusalem in the 1967 War. Look, says the calendar, we won, we kept on winning, we will expand as far as we need. We are not victims after all, but military heroes.
You can see why people would want to tell this story. So much of the storytelling paints Jews as pathetic.
This version of events, the heroic one, stands in direct contrast to the one where the victims are just moral guides to instruct Europeans. Here, they are masters of history, taking events into their own hands.
Yet this story is deeply worrying, especially now, in a context of an ongoing and aggressive war. The deep wounds of the Nazi genocide, when told as a story of heroism, can become a justification for just about anything. Every conquest, every military victory, every land grab, becomes just another way of enacting vengeance for the Holocaust. In showing that Jews are not victims, this story absolves Jews of turning others into victims.
In different ways, the Shoah remembrance events are troubling. They tell stories, but, when you start to pick those stories apart, they look problematic.
We are trying to make sense of something which, by its very nature, was senseless. There is no reason to racism, and there is no great moral lesson in unimaginable suffering.
Nevertheless, we are forced to make our own meaning. Through liturgy, through rituals, and through storytelling, we have to find a way to explain how the world could be so incredibly cruel. We have to develop our own answers to that everlasting question of suffering.
Emil Fackenheim survived the Shoah. He was imprisoned in a concentration camp before escaping to Britain, then Canada, and becoming a Reform rabbi. He taught that the Holocaust might not have its own meaning, but that we Jews would create one from its ashes.
Rabbi Fackenheim argued that, in the wake of the Nazi genocide, we Jews had to add our own commandment to the prior 613. In addition to the Laws given to Moses, we would add a 614th Commandment: never to give Hitler a posthumous victory.
To Fackenheim, this meant that, despite everything, we would keep on being Jews. We would not abandon our faith. We would not forget those who had perished or the extent of their suffering. We would never give up hope. If we did any of these things, said Fackenheim, we would be letting Hitler win after his death.
So instead of looking for an answer to the Holocaust, where all of that suffering finally makes sense, let us take up Fackenheim’s clarion call and respond with a vow.
We will never allow Hitler to win.
We will survive as Jews, full of the hope and ethical mission and faith that make us Jews.
We will never allow anyone to erase the memory of the Shoah martyrs or deny what happened to them.
We will not allow fascists and genocidal forces to win.
Ever.
Anywhere.
Shabbat shalom.
Picture: Edith Birkin, The Death Cart – Lodz Ghetto
Sermon for Birmingham Progressive Synagogue, Parshat Acharei Mot
Take a moment and think about what you love about being Jewish.
When I think about it, there are certain feelings, sounds, tastes and smells that transport me into this place of true Jewish joy.
I smell cloves, absolutely anywhere and at any time, and I am immediately transported to havdallahs of my childhood.
Similarly, leather seforim- those big bound Jewish books. I touch them and I can suddenly feel myself back in my grandfather’s study.
That feeling of stillness of being in a Jewish sanctuary. I used to love sitting in our little rented synagogue in Reading. Sometimes I come into this space, when nobody is here, and feel that same connection.
There’s the music, there’s the text study, there’s the Friday night dinners, there’s meeting a complete stranger and finding you’re related, there’s the beigels, so much better here in East London than anywhere else… I could go on.
Yes, I love Jewish life. And I love seeing others love their Jewish lives.
Last week, I felt a certain eeriness walking around central London. Wherever I went, wearing my kippah and tzitzit, there was a massive picture of a smashed Star of David in every newspaper stand. The Evening Standard bore the harrowing headline “London’s antisemitism shame.”
This came after Mark Gardner from CST said Central London had become a “no-go area for Jews” on Saturdays. He wasn’t explaining where the eruv boundaries were.
He was saying that Jews were not safe when the protests for Palestine were happening.
I don’t feel I need to go into much detail on the headline. We all know that antisemitism is real, and some members here have had horrible experiences. It is not just about central London, as the local area can feel very intense. The demonstrations outside Lidl this week were intimidating, and clearly did include antisemitic harassment.
We all also know that London is mostly very safe, and comparisons with Nazi Germany of talk of mass Jewish departure are overblown. I have always felt absolutely fine being visibly Jewish in London. I can also feel the great tension that affects this area. We are all smart enough to come to a balanced judgement about the true picture.
What struck me about Mark Gardner’s statement was not in the headline, but buried in the text of the newspaper article. When asked about Jews who themselves go on the Palestine marches on Saturdays, the CST chief said:
“There are two types of Jews who attend the protests in the main – ultra orthodox Jews who believe the state of Israel prevents the Messiah coming. Then you have revolutionary socialists using their Jewishness so people get the impression the movement is not fundamentally antisemitic.”
This was such a dismissive and unkind way to talk about fellow Jews, as if they could just be brushed aside and ignored. I bristled with indignation.
Certainly, Haredim and socialists have always been regular attendees of pro-Palestine rallies. But, so what if they are?
Are Haredim, the most visibly Jewish group and the most likely to experience structural discrimination for being Jewish, any less qualified to comment on what is antisemitic? Are socialists, who pride themselves on their culture and traditions, any less able to say what being Jewish means?
These are two groups of people who love being Jewish.
You may not want to be Haredi (I don’t) and you may have criticisms of their approach to their religion (I do) but I would never dream of questioning their love of Jewishness, or their sincerity of conviction.
The strictly Orthodox Jews in places like Stamford Hill and Hendon are crucial to London Jewish life. We have our kosher delis, our judaica shops, and our bookstores because of the commitment of Haredim to building up Jewish life here.
When I think of the strictly Orthodox, I have no doubt that they, too, love being Jewish. They might not love all the same things that I do, and they might love some things I don’t, but they are fellow Jews, creating vibrant community.
I do not know the Haredi world, and have never been part of it, but I believe they have important things to say about being Jewish and facing antisemitism.
I feel I can speak with more confidence about the revolutionary socialist Jews. That’s much closer to my world, and one that I interact with readily. That is a group of people I can say, with certainty, love being Jewish.
It would be easy for such people to disregard their Jewishness, or downplay it. Plenty of Jews have, in all times and from all political persuasions, for varying different reasons. But the Jewish socialists have chosen to wear their Jewishness as a badge of honour.
These are people who have regular book groups, looking at Jewish thought. They are deep-divers of Jewish history, who keep alive the stories of the East End and the shtetl. They are Jews who will insist on telling me they are atheists, before heading off to Friday night dinners with each other, where they will sing the same songs and recite the same blessings that you all will at your dinner tables.
The revolutionary socialist Jews often see their politics coming precisely from their Jewishness, and not in spite of it. They are, in my experience, serious thinkers about antisemitism, who have done the reading, experienced the vitriol, and arrived at smart and nuanced conclusions about how to combat anti-Jewish hatred.
They are with us, loving being Jewish, and building Jewish life.
What good does it do to dismiss them out of hand like that?
Perhaps it is simply that they are easy to dismiss. They have no stake in the formal institutions of Anglo-Jewry, like the Board of Deputies, nor do they want to. In both cases, they will carry on living their Jewish lives as they want to, unhindered by such dismissal.
But I don’t think Gardner is quite right that socialists and Haredim are the only groups who march on Saturdays: increasingly, they are joined by young people who grew up in movements like Reform Synagogue Youth (RSY-Netzer.) They are the bulk of Jews in groups like Naamod.
To see such people marching, especially in such numbers, was unthinkable only ten years ago. When they demonstrate, they are singing the songs they learnt in Reform youth camps. When they speak, they talk about the rabbis and leaders that shaped our Jewish world. They are attending as Progressive Jews.
One month ago, the movement workers for LJY-Netzer issued a statement, calling for a ceasefire, and decrying Netanyahu’s war. In their public message, they shared their dual sadness: on the one hand, at rising antisemitism; and, on the other, at a seeming inability to talk about Gaza.
LJY-Netzer is Liberal Judaism’s youth movement, parallel to the Reform one, RSY. The “Netzer” part is Hebrew, meaning Reform Zionist Movement. Today, while I lead here, Rabbi Jordan is meeting with them at Chagigah.
These critics of Israel are young people firmly within the institutions, who participate in their local synagogues. They love being Jewish, and, more than that, they love Progressive Judaism, our Judaism.
Are they to be dismissed too? Will they find their Jewishness cast aside in some press release? Will they, for their principled stance, find they are no longer worthy to comment on Jewishness or antisemitism?
Ignoring them is not an option. It would be unconscionable to throw them away, with their opinions.
That doesn’t mean you have to agree with them. You should certainly disagree with them if that is how you feel!
But do so from a place of love. Because you love being Jewish. Because they love being Jewish. Because you should love each other as Jews.
Disagree, by all means, but disagree as Jews. What could be more Jewish than lovingly disagreeing?
If we are faced with hatred, we will only love more. We will love ourselves more. We will love being Jewish more. We will love the sights and smells and sounds and rituals and families and discussions and Scriptures and songs.
We will love each other more. We will love others’ ways of being Jewish more. We will all embrace each other, seriously, and with affection, as fellow Jews. We will encourage others to love what they love about being Jewish. So that they will keep on loving being Jewish, long into the future.
A few weeks back, I attended a retreat with Christian colleagues. At some point, surprisingly enough, we got onto talking about God. I asked one of the priests a question: “do you believe God speaks to you?”
He looked slightly bewildered by the question. “Literally?” he asked. “No, not really.” He shook his head.
The answer seemed obvious. After all, we were liberals, at an interfaith event. That kind of talk is for fundamentalists. We’re all too rational for that.
“Why?” he asked, turning back to me, “do you?”
“No,” I said, sheepishly. I don’t know why I felt so embarrassed. Of course, many believers see the voice of God mostly as a metaphor, or as a way of giving expression to moral intuition. I’m just not one of them.
I do believe in a personal God, who has a loving relationship with every human being on earth. And I do talk to God. It’s not that I expect answers in any sense, but I do believe some One is listening: that prayers are more than idle words I recite to myself.
Perhaps my Christian colleague would have agreed with me if I’d put it in these terms, because finding vocabulary to talk about God is hard. Words like ‘literally’ and ‘metaphorically’ start to evaporate when you are dealing with faith.
I think, perhaps, the reason I gave a sheepish no – maybe even that I asked the question at all – was that I was having a mini-crisis of faith of my own. Ever since the war broke out, I have been praying differently, more fervently, desperately begging the Universe for peace. I have been hurling questions and recriminations into the void. I have been wondering… do I still believe in this God?
My personal relationship with God has carried me through some of the toughest times. When I have felt most lonely, God has been like a best friend. When I have hated myself, God has been like a lover. When I have needed direction, God has been a wise counsellor. I have looked to God in every time of disaster, and always found comfort in a loving Presence that reaches out and caresses from across a boundary of unknowability.
But now I listen for God’s voice. And all I can hear is screaming.
As long as there have been people who believed in religious meaning, there have been those who questioned it. Usually, they were the same people. Abraham, Moses, Hannah, Kohelet, Job: they all had faith, and they all questioned it. They asked questions so that they could challenge their beliefs, and refine them. Lately, although less adequately than those prophets, I have been forced to do the same thing.
The first question we usually ask when confronted with crises of faith is “do I believe in God?” Fairly regularly, people come to me with conclusions one way or the other: “you should know, rabbi, I don’t believe…” or “you should know, I have a strong sense of belief…” My follow-up is always the same “… and what is it that you do (or don’t) believe in?”
For me, the answer is moral truth. When I talk about believing in God, what I am saying is that moral statements are not just opinions. When we say “murder is wrong” we are not just expressing a preference, like “my favourite flavour of ice cream is tutti-frutti.” We are describing a reality, no different to the claim that there are 24 hours in a day. We are describing something literally true.
I think that’s what God is. When we want to know why our feet are firmly on the ground, we give the shorthand answer of “gravity.” When we want to explain why objects in space interact with each other as they do, we use words like “attraction.” And when we want to express how we know that murder is wrong, we use the word “God.”
So, in feeling the great sense of angst I have had since the war began at the end of the High Holy Days, I am forced to return to the old questions. I am forced to ask whether I still think moral statements are true. I am forced to ask whether I still believe murder is wrong.
I do.
And that is why I believe that God is screaming.
What we talk about when we describe God is obviously more complicated: it is something infinite, and greater than we can put into words. That’s why words like “metaphor” and “literal” are so inadequate – because we are describing something more real than reality. So we have to find shortcuts. We have to find ways of talking about God in human language, to make sense of God on human terms. God is then “a tender parent”; “a loving shepherd”; “a righteous judge”; “a generous creator.” All of these are good descriptors, and all of them are incomplete.
I have been relying on a version of God that has worked for me for a while. I have imagined a sweet aunty or a gentle older friend. In times of loneliness, desperation and heartache, that image of a loving God has helped me get through the day. But that image doesn’t serve me now. I think if I used God for comfort in a time like this, I would be retreating from responsibility. God does not need me to feel safe now, but to shake me from illusions and complacency.
If God is the moral voice of the universe, that voice must be crying out in desperation.
In the last few months, 23,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli bombs. I am kept awake at night thinking about that. I imagine God, smothered by the rubble of obliterated hospitals, calling out. Like Abel, stricken by Cain, the voice of the blood is calling out from the ground (Gen 4:10). I imagine God, pulled from the wreckage, crying: “Thou shalt not kill. (Ex 20:13) Thou shalt not kill. (Deut 5:17)”
Those were the commandments given to the Jews, above all others. In some variations, it is the very first commandment, the one that holds the most power. And as Israel stands in the dock at the Hague, it is not only South Africa that places it on trial, but God too, who comes with the accusation: “did I not tell you: thou shalt not kill.”
Since the war began, Israeli settlers, with governmental support, have seized around 20 villages in the West Bank, displacing thousands of people, so that Jewish Israelis can expand their territory and claim others’ homes. I imagine God calling out from deserted towns, on the trail with refugee families, wailing “thou shalt not steal” (Ex 20:15), “thou shalt not steal” (Deut 5:19).
Netanyahu says, unabashedly, that he will push the Palestinians from Gaza and create a new border with Egypt. The Torah answers, in desperation: “thou shalt not move thy neighbour’s boundary” (Deut 19:14). Land theft is a sin.
Israeli soldiers enter Gaza and use Jewish symbols as weapons. They recite the Shema from the pulpits of mosques and place mezuzahs on Palestinian homes. They desecrate our religion. They destroy our faith. From the depths of history, God cries out “honour thy mother and thy father (Ex 20:12); honour thy mother and thy father (Deut 5:16).” Do not profane the faith of your ancestors with war crimes.
Worse still, the politicians claim that God gave them the right. That this is what the Torah intended. Can you not hear the scream of revulsion as God decries: “thou shalt not take My name in vain (Ex 20:7); thou shalt not take My name in vain (Deut 5:11).” This is what was intended: do not abuse God’s name for worthless pursuits like war, but elevate it for the purposes of peace.
I believe that God is screaming.
The commandments may once have been given as words of instruction or even as a love letter, but now they are a desperate plea.
God says “I am the Eternal One thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods before me.”
No other gods. No state, no flag, no military, no leader, no ideology, no grudge, no border, nothing. None of these can ever be placed before God. None of them have any trump over God’s words.
God’s word says: “You shall not pollute the land in which you live; for blood pollutes the land, and no expiation can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed in it.” (Num 35:33)
So I believe I can hear God screaming: thou shalt not kill.
And I do not want to silence that voice. I want to amplify it. I want the Holy Torah to be heard now, more than ever. I hear God screaming, and I want to join in.
Fifteen years ago, the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave a powerful speech, in which she warned about “the danger of the single story.” This, she says, is how you create a single story: “show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”
Because of the single story told about Africa, Westerners knew it only as backwards, poor, and disease-ridden. They did not know how diverse, interesting and resilient Africans were. They did not know that Africans were not, in fact, one people with one story, but billions of people with billions of stories.
She warns her listeners: “The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasises how we are different rather than how we are similar.”
In the book of Joshua, we are presented with a single story about the Israelites and their enemies. In our haftarah, Joshua gathers the tribes of Israel at Shchem and presents his account of the conquest of Canaan. He declares:
You crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho. The citizens of Jericho fought against you, as did also the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites, Girgashites, Hivites and Jebusites, but I gave them into your hands. I sent the hornet ahead of you, which drove them out before you—also the two Amorite kings. You did not do it with your own sword and bow. So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.
In Joshua’s single story, the Israelites are a nation united at war. They all came over at once and went to conquer the land of Canaan. Their enemies were diverse in name but unified in mission. In the list of warring tribes that came up against the Israelites, there is no distinction. Every one of them fought the Israelites. Every one of them lost. By God’s miraculous deeds, the Israelites took over the entire country, and now they have a whole land, ready-made, for them to inhabit.
But wait. There is a flaw with this single story. Just as Joshua decrees that the entirety of these foreign nations has been wiped out, he also warns the Israelites not to mix with them.
All of these other tribes have been completely driven out of the land of Israel; all of them have been vanquished; now the only people left are the Israelites.
But even though the Israelites are the only people remaining, you must not marry the others; or get involved in their cultural practices; or go to their shrines with them and worship their gods.
The Jewish bible scholar, Rachel Havrelock, has written a book looking at why this contradiction is so stark. She suggests that, while the Book of Joshua would love to tell a single story of unanimous military victory, it cannot get away from what the people see with their own eyes.
In reality, all the nations that the Israelites “drove out” are still there. The Israelites are still meeting them, marrying them, striking deals with them, and fraternising with them.
Joshua is putting together the war story as a national myth to bring the people together. In his story, the Israelites must be one people and so must all their enemies. Victory must be total and war must be the only way.
In fact, Havrelock finds that there are lots of contradictions in the book of Joshua. It says that the nation was united in war, while also describing all the internal tribal disagreements and all the rebellions against Joshua.
It says that they took over the whole land, but when it lists places, you can clearly see that plenty of the space is contested, and that the borders are shifting all the time. It says they took over Jerusalem, and also says that it remains a divided city to this day.
So what is the reality? Archaeological digs suggest it is very unlikely that the conquest of Canaan ever happened in the way the Book of Joshua describes. The land was not vanquished in one lifetime by a united army. Instead, more likely, the Israelites gradually merged with, struck deals with, and collaborated with, lots of disparate tribes.
They were never really an ethnically homogenous group. They were never really a disciplined military. They were a group of people who gathered together other groups of people over many centuries to unite around a story. Ancient Israel was the product of cooperation and collaboration.
Our Torah takes all the different stories of lots of different tribes and combines them into a single narrative. That is why the Torah reads more like a library of hundreds of folktales than a single spiel.
But a government at war needs a single story. It needs to tell the story that there is only one nation, which has no internal division. It needs to tell the story that there is only one enemy, and that the whole of the enemy is a murderous, barbarous bloc. It needs to insist that the enemy must be destroyed in its entirety. It needs to tell the story that war is the only way.
Reality, however, rarely lives up to the single story that war propaganda would like us to believe.
Over the last few months, we have been bombarded with a single story of war. We are all at war. Not only Israel, but the whole Jewish people. We are all at war until every hostage is freed from Gaza. We are all at war until Hamas is destroyed. We are all at war and there is no other way.
But hidden underneath that story are other stories. Suppressed stories. Stories that suggest Israel may not be united in war.
There is the single story that Gaza must be bombed to release the remaining hostages.
There is another story. Avihai Brodutch was with his family on Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7th. He survived. His wife, Hagar, was taken hostage, along with their three children, aged 10, 8 and 4. His whole family and his neighbours were taken hostage.
Only a week later, at 3am, Avihai took a plastic chair and his family dog, and went to launch a one-man protest outside the Israeli military offices. He insisted that blood was on Bibi’s hands for refusing to negotiate. He said that Netanyahu was treating his family as collateral damage in his war. He initiated a rallying cry: “prisoner exchange.”
This has become a demand of Israeli civil society. They will swap Palestinian prisoners for the Israeli hostages. This was achieved, when 240 Palestinian prisoners were swapped in return for 80 Israelis and 30 non-Israelis captive in Gaza.
There are still over 100 hostages in Gaza. There are still around 4,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. Around 1,000 are detained indefinitely without charge. Around 160 are children.
It is simply the right thing that Hamas should release the hostages. It is also simply the right thing that Netanyahu should release the Palestinian prisoners. If they did agree, everyone would be able to return safely to their families. Doesn’t that sound more worth fighting for than war?
There is a single story, promoted by Netanyahu, that Israel must fight until it has destroyed Hamas.
There is another story. Maoz Inon’s parents were both murdered by Hamas on October 7th. As soon as he had finished sitting shiva, he took up his call for peace. All he wanted was an end to the war.
Speaking to American news this week, he said: “A military invasion into Gaza will just make things worse, will just keep this cycle of blood, the cycle of death, the cycle of violence that’s been going for a century.”
His call for peace is echoed by other families of those who lost loved ones on October 7th. They have lobbied, produced videos, and sent letters to Netanyahu, begging to be heard.
Some are desperate for the government to recognise that further death is not what they want. Now, as Netanyahu has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, their call has still not been heard.
And after all those dead, is Hamas any closer to being destroyed? Of course not. All this bombing does is ensure that a new generation of Palestinians trapped in Gaza will grow up to hate Israel.
This war is how you get more terrorists. It’s how you ensure that war never ends. Wouldn’t it be better to fight for a ceasefire than to fight for a war?
There is a single story that the nation is united in war.
There is another story. This week, 18-year-old Tal Mitnik was sent to military prison in Israel for refusing to fight in the war. Although this news has barely made it into English-language media, many Israelis have expressed their support.
Writing to Haaretz, one refusenik wrote: “I was inside. We were so brainwashed there. I refused and I’m not the only one. I have a family and this is not a war with a clear purpose. […] My children will have a father and I hope yours will too.” Another parent wrote: “My son is also refusing. I will not sacrifice him for Bibi.”
There is another story: that this is Netanyahu’s war, not ours.
There is another story: that war is not the answer.
There is another story: that every captive must go free.
There is another story: that all bombs and rockets must end.
There is another story: that we will not give licence to any more bloodshed.
There is a story that the nation is at war. In times of war, the government must tell that as the only story, to blot out alternative stories, to ensure that war is the only way.
But there are other stories. And, if we tell those other stories, there will be other ways.
