Tag: settlers

article · israel

Who will we be now?

levtaylor

The following essay is published in the Movement for Progressive Judaism’s first book, Progressive Judaism, Zionism and the State of Israel, alongside 40 other contributors.

Stand on the edge of the canyon of history.
Clasp your hands around your mouth and call out: who are the Jews?
A hundred answers will echo back at you.
Throughout the cavern, stories will reverberate. Voices saying you are monsters. Voices saying you are victims. Sounds of priests and prophets; legends and laws; heroes and martyrs. How do you choose? Which version of the story of the Jews is you?

***

From out of history come the sounds of persecution.
In September 2025, Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner appeared as a witness on the BBC’s Moral Maze. One of the panellists brought her a question. He said: “Sadly, the problem in the Middle East conflict is that both sides are right about each other. Do you share that view?”
Rabbi Laura responded with a question: “Can you finish the sentence?”
For a moment, the questioner fumbled, then put forth that both Israelis and Palestinians had “very little good intent, very little willingness to compromise.” He averred that, given half the chance, either the Israelis or the Palestinians would destroy the other. Their positive views of themselves were lies, and their demonisation of each other was the truth.
Rabbi Laura ignored the simplistic stereotyping and talked about how interconnected Israeli and Palestinian lives are.
I shuddered. I heard unspoken echoes of old European prejudices. The questioner certainly did not intend malice, but the well of antisemitism goes deep, and people draw from it without realising. Medieval passion plays depicted Jews as greedy, bloodthirsty baby-killers. Crusader propaganda portrayed Muslims as barbarous, fundamentalist hordes. The unflattering stereotypes of Palestinians and Israelis go back centuries, and do not originate from either party. They are the product of systematic othering.
Who the Jews are is not only determined from within: it is, unfortunately, a conversation with bigotry. In some minds, you are still Shylock pursuing his pound of flesh. You are the snivelling moneylender. No matter how assimilated you have become, you are Fagin trafficking children into crime.

***

Go ask Bondi Beach who the Jews are.
Dare those academics, who arrogantly proclaim that Jews are not oppressed, to tell that to Heaton Park Synagogue Manchester, or Tree of Life Synagogue Pittsburgh, or Hypermarche Paris, or Lee Park Charlottesville, or The Great Synagogue Copenhagen. From coast to coast, the voices echo.
So many places will tell you that Jews are victims. History is littered with millions of Jewish corpses. In some minds, you are still the helpless child in striped pyjamas, with a yellow star stitched on your lapel, and a number tattooed on your arm.
But don’t let that be your only answer. If we think of ourselves as permanent victims, we will rob ourselves of the agency God gave us. We will forget our power: to hurt and to heal.
We must retell our story as Jews. We cannot think of ourselves exclusively as the persecuted, and never as the persecutor.
Jews have entered history. We must take responsibility for what we do there.

***

Take a walk to the well and call into it. Ask the well who the Jews are.
The voice of the prophets will rebound, telling you that righteousness will flow out like an ever-flowing stream. You will hear the song of Miriam, whose fountain followed the Israelites in the desert; the cries of Hagar, who found water when she needed it most.
At the well of Beersheva, our father Abraham and his rival Avimelech chose to share water. Abraham, the first of our people, showed that a Jew was one who could negotiate and apportion according to need.
Still, the well may tell you that there is not enough water for everyone. That either we will drink or they will. The water might tell you that you have only one commandment, and that is to survive. If you do not drink, you will die.
Atop West Bank settlements, religious Jews rejoice at surviving. They chant: “the nation of Israel lives on; our father lives on.”
Let the water show you how some settlers have mains pipes filling their swimming pools, while Bedouin shepherds have to ration their water in butts.
Yet other Jews fight for shared resources and shared futures. Rabbi Dana Sharon stands in the way of settlers who want to attack Palestinian farmers in the West Bank. She is an organiser for Rabbis for Human Rights.
When I first met Rabbi Dana, I asked what had inspired her to get involved in peace activism. She said: “Ever since I was a  child, I wanted to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, I thought the problems in my own country would be sorted by the time I grew up, and I’d have to do it somewhere else.” She knew what kind of Jew she should be, and became it.
In November 2025, Dana was shot with a drone by a settler wearing military fatigues. She was seriously injured. When I think of Dana, I believe that our father Abraham lives on. His message resounds: that sharing is a greater guarantor of survival than fighting.

***

Go to the Cave of Machpelah and stand at its entrance. This is a holy site in Hebron, where the founders of monotheism prayed. It is a tomb many thousands of years old, in Area A of the West Bank. You will have to get past checkpoints and walls and into a fortified compound, but you will find a cave.
Clasp your hands around your mouth and call into the hollow: who are the Jews? A hundred answers will echo back at you.
Here, Abraham procured a burial place for Sarah, and in turn was buried there. Abraham’s two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, came to bury him in Hebron. Ishmael had been cast out by his father. Isaac had nearly been killed by Abraham. We can’t imagine the pain they felt seeing each other, and performing a funeral for this man. Nevertheless, they prayed together at that sacred site.
Here is an answer to who Jews are. We are the descendants of Isaac, who prayed at the same tomb with his brother, Ishmael. We are the people who choose non-violence, reconciliation, and prayer.
The cave’s echoes continue, coming ever closer to the present day. The cave is a mosque and a synagogue, but the brothers do not pray together. In 1929, Palestinian rioters killed 67 Jews as part of a pogrom based on false rumours. In 1994, Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Muslims at prayer.
Murder reverberates over the South Hebron Hills. Only last year, Palestinian peace activist Awdah Hathaleen was murdered by settler Yinon Levy. Despite the assassination being filmed, the killer has not been charged with a crime.
Is this not also an answer about who Jews are? Can we reject it so swiftly because we abhor it?

***

So ask the shtetl yeshiva who you are supposed to be.
Confronted with the horrors of some Jews’ deeds, you may wish to retreat back there. You might imagine life would be simpler before Jews had power that they could weaponise against others. Maybe the Satmar Hassidim were right and we all just need to keep our heads down until the Messiah arrives.
So, go ahead. Pretend the Enlightenment never happened. Go back to the old Jewish study houses of a vanquished world. Sit at the rebbe’s table. Unless you’re a woman, of course. But, gentlemen, by all means, take a seat and open a holy book.
There, in your Mishnah, you will read: “be disciples of Aaron, loving peace, pursuing peace, loving all creatures, and bringing them closer to Torah.”
Hillel reaches out through the millennia-old books and grabs you by your shirt collar, and growls: did you think you could escape your responsibilities that easily? Our tradition demands you seek peace in your own world and lifetime. You cannot shirk away from the task of building a perfected world just because reality frightens you!
The study of Torah may happen in the yeshiva, but you live out its precepts in the streets. You fulfil the commandments by acting and taking risks.
If you want to be Jewish, you must know your past, but you cannot live there. You have to resist hatred, war, and greed in your own time. Be a disciple of Aaron. Love peace and pursue it.

***

Stand on the streets of any major city and start a chant: who are the Jews?
In New York, London, Cape Town, Paris, and Sydney, you will find people protesting for peace. In every demonstration, no matter where you are, you will find a Jewish Bloc. You will see Jews standing proud in their heritage and furious at oppression. You will hear them invoke their ancestors and their traditions in the name of human rights. Truth echoes out through skies and seas as thunderous clouds.
The prophet Jeremiah went to jail for protesting against the powerful. He chastised the false prophets who proclaimed peace where there was none. He accused them of putting tiny plasters on great gashes. Jeremiah’s rebuke of Israel was harshest because he knew that peace was possible and he saw what Jews could be.
Go ask the streets and they will tell you: those who wave placards and chant songs of dissent today stand in the footsteps of the prophets.
But the streets have other stories too. On those same marches, in other sections, there are people who chant words denouncing Jews. There are those who glamourise terror and those who monger hate.
Yes, it is true that not everyone in the coalition for Palestine is there for Palestinian human rights. Some march because they want to see Jews destroyed. Some march against militarism, nationalism, and fundamentalism. Others march for militarism, nationalism and fundamentalism of their own.
When Jeremiah denounced Israel, he chastised them they could not trust Egypt or Babylon. He attacked those who would ally with their enemies. The judgement of the prophet falls on every nation.

***

Go stand at the viewing point in Sderot. Look out over the ruins of the Gaza strip.
From this point, for two years, tourists watched bombs explode on houses like they were fireworks. Spectators could watch Jewish boots carry Jewish guns under Jewish flags into a densely-packed enclave.
Why don’t you ask Gaza who the Jews are? Will you like the answer that you hear from the unnumbered dead and rubble? Does the bombed-out rubble think the Jews are heroes?
You need not speculate. The words of Palestinians are publicly available, if you can brave the burning eyes of Gaza. Asmaa Al-Ghoul is a secular feminist in Gaza, who campaigns against the corruption of Fatah and the terrorism of Hamas. She witnessed more corpses than any soul could bear. After her cousin’s home was bombed, killing everyone inside, she wrote: “the house and its future memories have been laid to waste, its children taken to early graves, homes bombed into oblivion, their inhabitants homeless and lost, just as their camp always had been. Never ask me about peace again.”
In the days of the Judges, Samson was held captive in Gaza; all his strength sapped and his eyes gouged out by Philistines. With the last ounce of energy left in his battled body, Samson pulled down the pillars of the temple, killing himself and everybody in it.
We are brought up with stories of Samson. We call him “Samson the Hero.”
I met with a father from Gaza who had not seen his daughters in two years. They were trapped in that war zone. He told me: “They are destroying the world on top of our heads.” I wondered whether echoes of Samson were still there in Gaza, raining down destruction on their heads. Is this our hero?
In Hebrew, the word for hero, strongman, and warrior are the same. On military checkpoints, teenagers in IDF uniforms smile out from stickers, with words about who they were. For some, they are proof of ongoing Israeli heroism. All I see is dead kids, cast aside as cannon fodder for a vainglorious war.
We need to find a way of separating out heroism, masculinity, and war. Vivian Silver used to transport people from Gaza back and forth from this borderland. She lived on Kibbutz Be’eri, and was murdered there by Hamas on October 7th. 3 days beforehand, she organised a march of thousands of Israeli and Palestinian women against war.
Which is more heroic: to destroy an enemy or to make a friend? We need heroes whose strength is not in force but in fortitude.
Maybe Vivian Silver’s spirit still echoes on Gaza’s borders, too. And maybe, then, there is another way to be a Jew.

***

Go to your own heart and ask it who you are.
The great medieval sage Rabbi Moses ben Maimon told us that the ultimate question was not “what should I do?” but “who should I be?” Rambam wrote that the point of our religious laws, stories, and rituals was to help us morally perfect ourselves. Our goal should be to become the best possible human beings, in terms of character and intellect.
Rambam saw our religious inheritance as a guidebook on how to become moral agents. He taught that human beings are free to choose the right course, and showed that repentance is always available to us.
You are not stuck with a fixed version of who a Jew is. You always have the ability to make yourself anew. You can become more peaceful, more loving, and more devout. Seek to be the kind of person who wants peace and justice. Let your actions follow the highest inclinations of your heart.
Ask your heart who you are as a Jew. Let it tell you that you are a work in progress.

***

Now, return to the valley where it all began. Go stand on Mount Sinai. Surely this is the canyon of history. From atop its peak, the Ancient of Days spoke to you.
Clasp your hands around your mouth and call out: who are the Jews?
From out of this desert, the Jews spread knowledge of ethical monotheism throughout the world. At Mount Sinai, you once heard a voice: “I am the Eternal One your God, who redeemed you from the land of Egypt, to be your God.”
It is time you introduced yourself too.
Ask the canyon: who are the Jews? The question will come echoing back at you.
Canyons echo. The canyon of history is no different. If history repeats itself, it is only because we keep asking the same question.
Like a boomerang, your question returns to you: who are you?
History is Jewish. It likes to answer a question with another question.
This is your power and your burden. You must decide who you will be.
You are the answer to who the Jews are.

israel · sermon · torah

This is Torah. This is its reward.

levtaylor

Loving others will not make you popular.

Pursuing peace will not make you safe.

Choosing life will not protect you from death.

But, if you do not love others, if you do not seek peace, if you do not choose life, who will you be?

When Moses ascended Sinai, he found God adding flourishes to the Torah’s letters, which only Rabbi Akiva would ever be able to read. Moses asked to see what became of Akiva.

The Holy One showed Moses how the Romans flayed Rabbi Akiva’s skin as they martyred him, then sold his flesh in their marketplace.

Moses threw his hands in the air and demanded: “Is this Torah, and this its reward?”

“Silence,” said God. “Such is My will.”

This is Torah. This is its reward.

Vivian Silver was murdered by Hamas on October 7th.

Vivian Silver founded the Israeli peace organisation, Women Wage Peace. She worked for human rights groups like Btzelem and ALLMEP. She lived on Kibbutz Beeri, near the Gaza border, where she engaged in solidarity work with Bedouins, Gazans, and Palestinian construction workers.

Three days before October 7th, she organised a march of 1500 Israeli and Palestinian women for peace.

On October 7th 2023, terrorists broke into her home and murdered her.

Even as she hid from the militants, she gave an interview to Israeli radio, where she said the very fact that she was under attack showed the need for a peace deal.

A year later, her son, Yonatan Zeigen, eulogised her. He said:

“Being a peace activist is not something to save you from being killed in war. It’s something to prevent a war from happening. And to create a reality where war is not an option.”

Silver’s love of others did not make her popular.

Pursuing peace did not make her safe.

Choosing life did not protect her from death.

But it made her fully human.

This is Torah. This is its reward.

On Monday evening, as my community sat down to listen to poetry in preparation for Tisha B’Av, I received a text to say that a Palestinian peace activist I knew had been murdered.

Awdah Hathaleen was shot in the chest in his home.

Awdah lived in the village of Umm al-Khair in the south Hebron hills. I visited his village twice last year with Rabbis for Human Rights. The second time, I stayed in the bunk beds adjacent to his home. In the morning, he brought breakfast to me and the other solidarity activists.

A delegation of Progressive rabbis met Awdah earlier this year when they went to the West Bank with Yachad.

Awdah was an English teacher. He was born in the south Hebron hills and had known tanks, guns and occupation all his life. He worked with Israelis to protect his home and build a peaceful future.

This did not make him popular. For some Palestinians in neighbouring villages, this meant that he was engaged in normalisation with the Israeli occupier.

Indeed, after the Oscar-winning movie about his village, No Other Land, gained international recognition, the BDS movement called to boycott it, because it showed Israelis and Palestinians working together.

Awdah chose the path of non-violence. Even after his uncle, Haj Suleiman, was crushed by an Israeli police tow truck; yes, even after his elder was cruelly murdered; and yes, even after those who killed his uncle were never brought to justice; after all that, he still chose the peaceful path.

For the settlers who wanted to capture his home and ethnically cleanse his village, his activism made him a target.

He and his family never knew safety.

Awdah wrote for 972 Magazine, a joint Israeli-Palestinian publication, about the struggles of raising his traumatised son in this village under attack. He wrote: “He even knows some of the settlers by name. Sometimes I tell him that they went to jail; I’m lying, but I want to make him feel safe.”

He was lying. Settlers who carry out murders do not go to jail.

The man who murdered Awdah was called Yinon Levi. He was filmed doing it. Still, the only person who has been taken into custody by the Israeli police is Awdah’s cousin, Eid, a fellow non-violent activist.

Yinon Levi was already subject to EU sanctions and recognised internationally as a terrorist. But he is protected by government minister, Ben Gvir, who has dedicated his life to helping settlers get away with murder. Even before the far right coalition took power, plenty of settlers had been able to perpetrate atrocities with impunity.

Loving others did not make Awdah popular.

Pursuing peace did not make him safe.

Choosing life did not protect him from death.

No; you will not be better off if you do the right thing.

But God does not ask us to live lives that are comfortable.

There is no commandment in the Torah that we should be popular.

All of us, regardless of religion, are placed on this earth to be God’s stewards; to uphold God’s most sacred commandments; that we must choose life, pursue peace; seek justice; and love the stranger.

This is Torah. This is its reward.

This sacred work comes with no promises. But who else would you want to be?

It is a charge often laid against woolly moralists like me that we do not really get how militants like Hamas think; that we just cannot understand the mentality of the settlers.

That is true. I do not want to think like them. I do not want to become like them.

Who will we be if we let our hearts become warped and set our minds to cruelty?

Loving others will not make you popular. But it will make you loving. And pursuing peace will make you peaceful. And seeking justice will make you just. And that is what your God asks of you.

We are approaching Tisha B’Av, when we recall every catastrophe that befell our people. If you believe that peace is possible and that these assaults on basic humanity are wrong, you can add another disaster to the roster. On Monday, Awdah was murdered.

Yes, a Muslim murdered by a Jew is a tragedy for us all.

A man who was committed to non-violence was shot in the chest by a settler, leaving behind 3 children. He was 31.

Do not give in to cynicism or try to calculate what you might gain for kindness. This world has no guarantees. And we know nothing about the hereafter.

You do what is right because it is right. Because if you do not, who will you be?

This is Torah. This is its reward.

May God have mercy on us all.

diary · israel

We are contesting what being Jewish means

levtaylor

“Nothing that happens here is transcendental. It is just about who gets to live in and farm these hills.”

In the Jordan Valley, there is a vague tedium for we who do protective presence. We are not farmers, and I suspect I would be fairly useless at the tough manual labour these men and women do from dawn until dusk.

Once we have entertained the children, read our books, and drank enough caffeine to feel slightly buzzed, all that is left to do is talk.

My Hebrew is weak, and Arabic limited to basic conversation words, so I can only really talk properly with the one English speaker, an Israeli activist who comes here every week to support these Bedouin families.

He does not understand why international Jews care at all. “If I could forget this place, I would.”

True, it is a humanitarian catastrophe and a deep invasion of people’s basic right to life, but it is deeper than that.

We are contesting what being Jewish means. Is it these settlers, deploying the power of a large military to attack and displace the Palestinians? Is it the police officers who randomly arrest shepherds as an intimidation tactic? Or is it the ethical practices and God-fearing mentality we have developed over three thousand years?

“You (Diaspora Jews) think about us so much, but we don’t think about you at all. If anything, we have contempt for you, with all your bagels and tefillin.” (I have, indeed, brought my tefillin, and the gefilte fish I am eating look to him like weird hangovers from a shtetl past.) The whole business of our exilic life looks bizarre.

“You have to understand,” he says, “Israel is a modern European country, and like any modern European country, it hates Jews.”

I know what he means. Not, of course, the modern Israeli Jews. Not the army officers in my hostel who are sharing misogynistic stories of their sexploits. Jews like me, with our effeminate affinity for books and ideas.

Before starting work for Rabbis for Human Rights, my interlocutor had only heard of Reform Judaism as a punchline. In fact, in the context of Israeli society, where rabbis are normally seen giving blessing to bombing campaigns, even the concept of rabbis who stood up for human rights sounded like a joke.

In my own context in Britain, Judaism is so obviously a contested site. The debates about what antisemitism is are just as much debates about who is Jewish, who has the power to make pronouncements about it, and what being Jewish means in the context of the divisions at the heart of an imperial core.

In a way, holding onto Diasporic Judaism is a fundamentally conservative project. We are seeking to protect old institutions, like synagogues and Talmud study, from the unbearable weight of a modernity that sees no role for them.

Yet, even there, we are contesting what being Jewish means. Will it be complicit, for example, in the subjugation of women and silencing of queers, or will it be instrumental in their liberation? Will we be Britain’s best model minority who acquiesce to every part of nationalist capitalism, or will we be key to resisting it?

On Shabbat I hung out with an Israeli rabbinic student with whom I have quickly become friends. She is very active in the resistance and proudly part of the radical left. “Being Reform here is very edgy,” she tells me.

The idea of a feminist religion seems a contradiction in terms. Here, religion, state power, and patriarchy are synonymous. It is hard for most Israelis to imagine how faith could be counter-cultural.

Yet the Reform Jews exist in Jerusalem, where they demand a different definition of Judaism. On Saturday, they made havdallah outside the President’s residency before joining the protests against war. I have seen how their spiritual practices maximise Judaism’s emancipatory potential.

So there is a fundamental question, when we come to do Palestinian solidarity, about what being Jewish means.

And I worry that we are losing. 

I do not feel any certainty that my Judaism – this collection of Diasporic religious practices rooted in struggles of oppressed people – will win against the forces of chauvinism.

So I think my Israeli friend is wrong. There is something transcendental happening here. Across borders, we Diaspora Jews and they Palestinians have been joined to each other. Neither intended it but we are connected.

And if they cannot survive colonisation, I do not know if we will either.

This is what Hashem of Hosts, the God of Israel, says to those in Diaspora who have been exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat from their fruit. Take wives: have sons and daughters; multiply and do not decrease. Seek the peace of the city where I have scattered you. Pray to God on its behalf. In its peace, may you find peace. – Jeremiah 29

diary · israel

We need you here

levtaylor

Last night, Eid Alhad’lin spoke on Zoom to Rabbis for Human Rights from Masafer Yatta, and explained what was happening to his village.

The settlers have cut off water and electricity, demolished homes, and shot people.

I met them last week. Their leader gave a talk to European diplomats in Arabic, then a younger man explained the situation in English. An elderly woman clutched her cane and talked to the women about the sexual harassment she has experienced from settlers.

Not long after we left, the settlers shot them, apparently as reprisal for talking to internationals. The problem, however, was not that we had been there.

It was that we had left.

There was a time when the villagers in Umm al-Khair could call the police for support or rely on the army to stand in their way. Now, if the police come, they will fit the residents for crimes and arrest them. If the army come, it is more likely that they will shoot the villagers. The settlers, too, now have guns and military uniforms.

After the settlers had shot the Palestinians, it seems the army came back to shoot them some more. When ambulances came, settlers prevented them reaching the wounded. It was a wonder the ambulance came at all. Everything in the south Hebron Hills is now geared towards expanding Jewish territory and displacing Palestinians.

The only thing that is preventing greater violence and deeper ethnic cleansing is the presence of internationals and Israelis. While they are being watched, the settlers and the army hold back.

It is, by no means, a solution, but it is the only thing in the power of ordinary individuals.

In order for it to work, however, it needs 24/7 presence from human rights activists in every village. My time here has been quiet, mostly because the village we are supporting has that constant support, predominantly from retired Israelis.

Masafer Yatta has retained a strong international presence, but in the moments where they have been left unsupported, they have experienced dire crisis.

So where are all the internationals? When I talked to Saleh in Sheikh Jarrah, he shared what an outpouring of support they had received around 2008-2009 (when I first became politicised on the issue). But where are they now?

In theory, the entire area should be swamped by radicals and peaceniks. There are millions of tweets about the issue every day, and thousands of demonstrations worldwide. If even a fraction of the people who shared links on the Internet or marched in the big cities would come and do protective presence work, the situation here would look very different.

Come with Rabbis for Human Rights. You don’t have to be a rabbi. You just have to believe in human rights.

There are so many organisations doing this too, and all are struggling to recruit. Join women’s groups supporting the olive harvest. Come with the ISM. Come with the Jewish Centre for Non-Violence. Or Tzedek Torah. I don’t care. Find the group that works for you and get out here.

You can be any age. Plenty of the activists are either university students or retired people.

You don’t have to speak Hebrew or Arabic (though I recommend learning a little).

And, yes, it is dangerous, obviously. Not long before I came out, two Israeli activists were shot. You need to be realistic with yourself about what risks you can take and what it means to you.

But we really do need people.

The settlers have realised that, with fascists in the coalition government and the window of the war in Gaza, they have an unprecedented opportunity to destroy villages and get away with it.

You have the power to reverse that tide.

Get out here.


The Eternal One is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?
God is with me as my helper. I will see the downfall of those who hate. – Psalm 118

diary · israel

What can be remembered from rubble?

levtaylor

Until this morning, I had avoided the Old City. I am not sure why. I think there was some feeling of indignation in me; a certainty that there is nothing sacred about the Western Wall.

I come from a Liberal Jewish tradition that runs directly counter to such national religious architecture. The Diaspora is our permanent home; the synagogue is our replacement Temple; the Shabbat table is our everlasting altar to God.

I have prayed twice (I think) at the Kotel. It means going through body scanners and security checks through the army to stand underneath nationalist symbols surrounded by men. Nothing about it feels sacred.

This morning, however, I joined the other yeshiva bochers from CY and went down to the egalitarian section of the Kotel: Azarat Yisrael. There, there are no army checkpoints or flags. It looks more like the site of an archaeological dig. Propped up by scaffolding that snakes round towards the ancient site, it is a little oasis among ruins.

Ruins is exactly what they are. There is nothing polished about this section of wall. Broken rocks everywhere. Weeds growing in the nooks. Smashed up slabs. It looks like the site of a disaster, as it should.

On these liminal stones two thousand years ago, an ancient cult was destroyed because its adherents rebelled against a mighty empire. From then on, there was no more priesthood or ancient Israelite religion. The ruins are testament to all that was lost.

And out of that disaster came something new. Prayers replaced sacrifices; rabbis replaced priests; and the grand courtyards were replaced by storytelling.

Now the stones are a testament to the power of memory – how, by holding onto meaning, civilisations can endure beyond their physical structures.

Yesterday and Monday, I was back in the Jordan Valley doing protective presence with Bedouin families.

Their rubble is more recent than this.

Their rubble is the dirt tracks they take their goats down while settlers ride big cars down paved roads. Theirs is the ruins of their tents from settler invasions; the lack of running water while Israelis draw baths in villages above them. Theirs is the accumulating rubbish that nobody will come to collect.

I was slated in the Jewish Chronicle for signing a letter with the other rabbis that called this apartheid. What other word is there for it? What else can you call it? The only thing they have in common is the army, and their guns are aimed from the settlers towards the Palestinians.

The Bedouin have already had much of their culture reduced to rubble. Before the British imperialists arrived, they traversed the entire trans-Jordan, shifting their herds with the seasons. Then the people were walled in; confined to borders they’d not before known; deprived of the culture they had built.

What remains for them now is a rubble of their civilisation. A small enclave where their families can keep chickens. And even that is being taken away from them.

Across their land, settlers have planted Israeli flags. They are signs to remind them of their humiliation. They are only there as symbols that the Palestinians have been conquered, and will be conquered further.

Out of this destruction, they build their own semiotics, so that something of them cannot be destroyed. Kheffiyes wrapped around their heads. Necklaces with the historic lands bearing the Palestinian flag. Songs they teach their children: “I am a Palestinian; my blood is Palestinian.”

I realise now that we are not really here to prevent the destruction. That does not seem within the power of a few non-violent humanitarians. We are here to be witnesses.

We are here to see how a culture is being destroyed. We are here with a memory, which we have held since a Temple was broken two thousand years ago, that they cannot destroy a people entirely. They cannot destroy your spirit.

We are here to say: your lives are worth living and your culture worth defending.

We are here to assist in the building of memory, so that not everything can be destroyed.

May they remember, even in the rubble.

One who cries out over the past prays in vain. And if you are walking on the way and you hear a scream from the city and you say “may it be God’s will that such a scream does not come from my house” – that prayer was delivered in vain. – Berachot 54a

diary · israel

A commitment to myself

levtaylor

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.

diary · israel

The whole world wants us to be free!

levtaylor

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.

(Seriously, sign up now.)

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.

diary · israel

The settler wants to live, and he wants the Palestinian not to live

levtaylor

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.

israel · theology · torah

I believe that God is screaming.

levtaylor

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.

Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not kill.

israel · protest · sermon

Not in our name

levtaylor

This week, Israel went to the polls, electing its most far right government yet. Netanyahu is set to return to power, and take control of the legislature to stop them prosecuting him on corruption charges.

To secure power, he has allied himself with extremist religious nationalists, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir. They are unabashed racists, who are explicitly opposed to Reform Judaism.

Their whole ideology is about securing an ethnically Jewish majority, by deploying military means against the Palestinians, preventing mixed marriages, and expanding the borders as far as they will go.

They want to make sure all Jews are reproducing to win their demographic war, so promote institutionalised sexism and homophobia. In particular, Smotrich wants to ban abortions, bring back conversion therapy, stop trans access to healthcare, and ban gay men from donating blood.

In the preceding weeks, Jewish News warned that this was not an Israel British Jews would want to see. Many quarters have expressed great alarm at the election results.

In fact, this is not so new or surprising. There was a time when Naftali Bennet, also a religious nationalist, was considered the most far right voice in Israel. He has now spent the last year as Prime Minister, ruling on a supposedly moderate ticket, mostly because of how far right the rest of the religious nationalist movement has become.

It is not simply that they are bigots. It is not just that they loathe me and everything I stand for. On that front, the feeling is very much mutual. It is that they have twisted Judaism into a bellicose hate cult.

You can find them rioting through East Jerusalem, terrorising the Palestinians to scare them out of their homes.

You can see them expanding into new settlements, throwing people out of their family homes.

You can hear them singing at the Western Wall that they will violently wreak vengeance on the Palestinians.

And, of course, you can find them in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, passing laws. Their most recent triumphs are declaring that Israel is only a state for the Jews and that Arabic is not a recognised language; and defending settler violence in the West Bank.

All this, they say, is to defend the Jewish people.

Perhaps, we might concede that they and their friends are stronger because they have the full might of a large army behind them. If that is their definition of Jewish defence, fine.

But it has nothing to do with defending Judaism. Their so-called Judaism is based on perverse, anti-rabbinical readings of religious texts. They see the whole of the Jewish tradition and history as a summons to colonise the entirety of David’s historic kingdom and annihilate anyone who stands in their way.

They do so in our name. And in the name of our Torah.

While the general thrust of our religious text is towards peace and justice, there is more war in the Torah than you might expect. The Torah is, after all, an ancient Near Eastern text, from a time when emergent states and nascent empires were locked in near-constant battles for territories and resources.

This week’s parashah is a prime example. Lech Lecha dedicates an entire chapter to a fantastical description of war.

Abraham enters a military pact to defeat the armies led by Kedorlaomer. Often called “The War of the Nine Kings,” the chapter includes descriptions of alliances, rebellions, military campaigns, and looting the spoils of war.

If you are hearing this story for the first time, you are not alone. We often skirt over it in favour of the more elevating sections of this week’s reading.

It’s not just our very polite sensibilities as British Reform Jews. In general, the rabbinic tradition as we know it, has downplayed the Torah’s violence, or reinterpreted it to be about more moral topics.

Judaism as we know it was born out of abortive wars and failed uprisings, so our rabbinic progenitors went to great lengths to caution against war and violence. In practice, Judaism has been pacifist, if only out of pragmatism, rather than principle.

The preceding periods, in which pre-rabbinic Jews did have military power, were pretty horrific. The Second Temple period, under the Hasmonean Dynasty, saw brutal repression of any deviation from official state religion. Its leaders were corrupt, seeking to control every part of legislative and economic life. They were tyrannical.

When our rabbis rebuilt Judaism out of the ashes of the destruction of the Temple, they wanted to introduce necessary correctives to historic fundamentalism. They sought to create a Judaism that would be ethical, based in the grassroots, committed to diversity, and, above all, peaceful.

So, our tradition opted to understand the Torah’s violent exhortations differently. The rabbis understood the calls to massacre entire nations as personal struggles to blot out the violent parts of ourselves.

In our parashah, they understood the text not as a summons to war, but to faith. They read Abraham’s conquests as a moral message about the importance of trusting in God. When the King of Sodom offers Abraham spoils of war and he refuses, our rabbis interpret this not as a rebuttal of a future military alliance, but as Abraham saying that real riches come from God in the form of blessings.

This moral and peaceful hermeneutic became the foundation of Judaism.

All that changed in the 19th Century, with the emergence of the religious nationalists. For them, the Torah was not a moral handbook, but a military one.

They were inspired by Christian fundamentalists who wanted to see a world-ending war. Still now, those evangelicals are their primary financial backers.

When they read our parashah, they treat it as a call to arms. “Lech lecha” is not, for them, a moral command to follow God, but a political one to move to Israel. The wars are not stories of an ancient civilisation, but justifications for military violence today.

When they read biblical mandates to massacre nations, they take them literally. They imagine that they are divinely mandated to enact genocide.

This is not a fringe group on the margins of Israeli politics. This is the Israeli government, and it has been for decades.

This is not an aberration in Israeli politics. It is the trajectory the country has been on at least since I was born. The far right have continually dominated, show no sign of abating, and hold every possible government to ransom.

Liberal leaders keep saying that, at some point, when the racism gets too much, they will withdraw their support for Israel, but the day never comes.

At this point, it has to be asked: how far is too far? If Ben Gvir and Smotrich are not too much, what will be? Will there ever be a point at which people are finally willing to draw a line? When will we say that enough is enough? When will we cry out: not in our name?

We do not like to look at the verses in Torah that glamourise war and nationalism. We do not like to look at the news from Israel that does the same.

But, right now, we have to look at it. Because these facts are staring at us. And we can no longer presume to turn away.

When this government imposes its reactionary plans, they will be doing so in our name. In the name of our Torah. We have to stand up and assert that they do not.

The so-called Judaism of the religious nationalists is not ours. We repudiate their racism, their fundamentalism, and their militarism.

We affirm the Judaism of the rabbis and the Reformers – based on ethics, dignity, piety and peace.

We will do everything we can to resist this government’s perversion of Judaism.

Not in our name. Not in the name of our Torah. Not in the name of our God.

Shabbat shalom.