וַיִּקַּ֞ח אֶת־הָעֵ֨גֶל אֲשֶׁ֤ר עָשׂוּ֙ וַיִּשְׂרֹ֣ף בָּאֵ֔שׁ וַיִּטְחַ֖ן עַ֣ד אֲשֶׁר־דָּ֑ק וַיִּ֙זֶר֙ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י הַמַּ֔יִם וַיַּ֖שְׁקְ אֶת־בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it up until it was thin-powder, and strewed it on the surface of the water and made the Children of Israel drink it. Exodus 32.20 (Translation Everett Fox)
What is going on in the U. S. Jewish community?
Why do the secular Jews of the U.S. continue to support the occupation, excusing it and engaging in victim-blaming to an absurd degree that they would never tolerate in language anywhere else?
Why do so many secular U.S. Jews seem willing to ignore the ongoing suffering of Palestinians, when they are first in line to help any other suffering people?
Why are so many so willing to do what Jewish youth call “leave your Jewish ethics at the door when it comes to Israel”? Why are so many Jewish youth calling themselves anti-Zionist?
The war began with Hamas’ attack on Jewish communities in the area near Gaza, on a Shabbat morning. There is a huge symbolic difference between the U.S. Jews who chose to ignore Shabbat in order to begin rallying the community, and those who respected Shabbat. It has to do with what each group is actually worshipping.
Ever since, I’ve been thinking about the profound difference between Jews who seek out a shul when they are in pain, and Jews who do not. And I’ve been musing on the severity of the feelings aroused in many secular Jews whose Jewish identity is deeply linked to the State of Israel. They are using words like “pogrom” and “Babiy Yar” to express their sense of what happened.
But there is one big difference. The State of Israel was founded at least partially because pogroms happen to Jews who are defenseless in Diaspora. As my Israeli cousins and their friends already know, this was a failure of the state. As such for them it is a time very like the 9/11 experience in the U.S. Failures of intelligence and political negligence are a part of both events, and too many innocent people continue to die horrible deaths as a result of both.
In 1934 my great aunt Rina traveled with her family from Germany to Palestine, and Rina became part of the faithful Zionist fabric of the new state of Israel. She and her growing family went to war, participated joyfully in rationing and cooperated in a kind of social compact that truly seemed miraculous the first time I experienced it as a U.S. Jewish teenager. Shortly before her death we recalled an avocado tree she had planted, which now towers over several houses in her moshav. I asked her how she felt about the state she’d help to build for so many years. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” she replied. The second Lebanon war was then in progress, and Israeli military law enforced on the lives of of Palestinians was entering its second generation.
For any U.S. secular Jew for whom the State of Israel has been a very satisfying religion for 75 years, it’s getting harder to bat away the dismay. As of today, that which secular Jews have placed on top of the Holy Ark instead of HaShem has shown something worse than the “growing pains” or invoking “a harsh neighborhood” we offer as excuse when explaining the political corruption or stalled peace process, or the continuing misery of an occupation of other human beings which Israeli generals already warned in 1967 was going to be a powder keg.
Unthinkable as it may be, the State of Israel failed its citizens. And it is failing all of us who wanted to look toward it as a beacon of all that makes being Jewish meaningful and special to us. It is not acting as a Jewish state, not upholding Jewish values, not a haven for Jews – and not fulfilling the promise of its own Declaration of Independence. Every Israeli young adult who does their army service in the Occupied Territories is victimized; every Diaspora Jew who wants to support Israel with all their heart is devastated.
While we do not know what will come next, and I for one pray for peace with all my broken heart, the secular god of so many Jews will never again be what it was for so many of us: a safe Jewish place, where we could trust that the welfare of all Jews came first and foremost for its elected leaders, no matter what else was there to cause dismay.
When a god dies, as we know from ancient Middle Eastern theology, a people disappears. The grounding of the identity of secular Jews has been attacked in a way no enemy could manage. Their response leaves no room for nuance, no room for kindness, and no room for Torah. For those of us who do look to Torah for glimpses of deeper truth, this parasha of Ki Tisa, the story of the Golden Calf, is haunting.
וַיַּ֤רְא מֹשֶׁה֙ אֶת־הָעָ֔ם כִּ֥י פָרֻ֖עַ ה֑וּא כִּֽי־פְרָעֹ֣ה אַהֲרֹ֔ן לְשִׁמְצָ֖ה בְּקָמֵיהֶֽם׃
Moses saw that the people were out of control—since Aaron [i.e. their leadership] had let them get out of control—so that they were a menace to any who might oppose them. (Exodus 32.25)
We who are made terrified too often become dangerous, and incapable of discerning just action. So it is with traumatized Israelis, and so it is with traumatized Palestinians.
וַיֹּ֣אמֶר לָהֶ֗ם כֹּֽה־אָמַ֤ר יְהֹוָה֙ אֱלֹהֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל שִׂ֥ימוּ אִישׁ־חַרְבּ֖וֹ עַל־יְרֵכ֑וֹ עִבְר֨וּ וָשׁ֜וּבוּ מִשַּׁ֤עַר לָשַׁ֙עַר֙ בַּֽמַּחֲנֶ֔ה וְהִרְג֧וּ אִֽישׁ־אֶת־אָחִ֛יו וְאִ֥ישׁ אֶת־רֵעֵ֖הוּ וְאִ֥ישׁ אֶת־קְרֹבֽוֹ׃
He said to them, “Thus says יהוה, the God of Israel: Each of you put sword on thigh, go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay sibling, neighbor, and kin.”
וַיַּֽעֲשׂ֥וּ בְנֵֽי־לֵוִ֖י כִּדְבַ֣ר מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיִּפֹּ֤ל מִן־הָעָם֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַה֔וּא כִּשְׁלֹ֥שֶׁת אַלְפֵ֖י אִֽישׁ׃
The men of Levi did as Moses had bidden; and some three thousand of the people fell that day. (Exodus 32.27-28)
And so from that place of fear and recoil, of the absence of human feeling, crowded out as it is by the hardening of our hearts, we become people who can justify the killing of people; who can take sides when the only side a Jew should take is l’hayim, the side of life. Note that this is not HaShem’s command, not that we see in the Torah; it is the command of Moshe, an angry, terrified, traumatized human being who in that state can no longer hear the voice of HaShem – or believes that the command to murder, which in fact originates in his own brain, was something that he actually heard from HaShem.
The golden calf idol was ground to dust that day and the people who survived were forced to drink it, consuming the own poison they themselves had allowed to grow in the name of security. As the peace activists – the scouts – of Israel and Palestine are bravely saying as they raise their voices together even now, when the fever of war has poisoned so many against them, is that there is no security without safety, and that there is no safety without peace.
In Jewish theology, idolatry is anything that keeps our hearts from seeing HaShem. We cannot see HaShem through the fog of fear, much less the place without mitzvot where fear leads us. By focusing our need for certainty and safety upon something less than HaShem, we seal our own doom as well as that of anyone who depends upon our acts.
If Israel is an idol, we are told from antiquity that HaShem will tear it down. For some of us, Israel has always meant safety in our homeland in a world that reliably hates Jews, but if we worship that state of Israel and, has v’halilah, insist that it inform our spirituality, we have fallen into deepest idolatry. It will not hold us up.
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 