Strength, Courage and Hope

Rosh Hashanah Message

Among the many brilliant observations made by the historian of American religion, Martin Marty, is that our nation’s citizens enjoy the freedom, even the privilege, of living spiritual lives based not on coercion but on voluntaryism. With the exception of fundamentalist sects among Jews, Christian and Muslims in the United States, most of us can, constitutionally, choose to believe and practice our faiths however we want — and this includes the freedom and privilege to practice nothing at all.

While it is true still today in the Jewish context, that there are ultra-orthodox enclaves where the familial, communal and institutional pressures to remain within the fold are enormously powerful, American cultural and constitutional worldviews of exalting individual freedom of expression over all else (perhaps a god, if potentially narcissistically idolatrous in its own right) remain both a lure and an escape from the strictures of fundamentalism.

But Marty and other observers of the American religious condition are talking about faith and spirituality. For Jews, faith is not the exclusive means by which one identifies. For more than a thousand years of Yiddish culture, there is “Jewishness,” or what is better known as Yiddishkeit, best understood as a total way of life that is expressed in language, culture, customs, food, music and humor. And despite the unspeakable decimation of Yiddish culture in the Holocaust, Yiddishkeit still thrives both for Jews and non-Jews, in whose life choices a whole world of non-religious Jewishness still thrives.

Zionism, of course, is the other way of being Jewish without faith. Like Yiddishkeit, there is a vast sea of possibility in living a Jewish life in the indigenous, native, historical homeland of the Jewish people; in speaking the Hebrew language and living within the constant development and unfolding of Hebrew culture, customs, food, music, humor, and of course, necessarily, self-defense.

“Man makes plans, God laughs,” so goes the Yiddish proverb. Hey, we learned from the best.

I was in Los Angeles last October 7, staying with my cousins, and planning to celebrate a bat mitzvah with friends and dance with the Torah that night. October 7 was Shemini Atzeret, the penultimate day of the fall festivals, and Simchat Torah was to be that night. But it was the WhatsApp notifications at 5 am and the terrifying texting with friends in Israel that shattered the moment for me and redefined, in an instant, what it means to be a Jew in America today. Because what the Hamas attacks of October 7 revealed and what the toxic floodwaters of hate have shown ever since, over and over again — from campus quads and classrooms to cowardly city council chambers; from public square demonstrations waving flags of hate and terror to odious and hypocritical boycotts in arts and literary circles — is that a Jew is a Jew is a Jew. Believer or not, there would be no choice. The death sentence was unambiguous.

October 7 and the murderous hate expressed toward Jews since — has created a new definition of chosenness, hasn’t it? Not chosen by God to serve but chosen by Israel’s enemies to suffer. This is alas, a far cry from the voluntaryism of American religious pluralism.

Murder, rape, dismemberment, the taking of hostages — all for the crime of being Jewish or of being with Jews on that hellish day. This is one meaning of October 7. That weak-minded antisemites and their self-hating enablers pour gasoline on the corpses’ memory, like Nazis trying to cover up their crimes, by claiming October 7 was “resistance” against Zionism is like falling asleep, tumbling down a rabbit hold, and finding oneself without air, food or water in a Soviet Gulag.

The 2023 FBI Hate Crime report reveals it in plain black and white. According to the Associated Press, “the Jewish community was the most-targeted religious group, with 1,832 anti-Jewish incidents accounting for 67% of all religiously motivated hate crimes recorded by the FBI. That was up from up 1,124 incidents the prior year. The incidents include vandalism, harassment, assault, and false bomb threats.

All ages, all genders, believers and non-believers, children and the elderly and everyone in between. If you are a Jew, you were the most hated group in America last year. And you may have been unlucky enough to be hated by Jews as well.

The Jewish Voice for Peace at the University of Michigan posted on its Instagram last week a message that read, “‘death to israel’ is not just a threat. it is a moral imperative and the only acceptable solution. may the entire colony burn to the ground for good.” Some voice for peace. (Instagram took down the hateful and yes, genocidal screed, for violating guidelines; but it’s saved on the Haaretz page.). Who needs Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran calling for burning Israel to the ground when we have JVP?

Of course, anyone can drink from the poison wells of hatred. Jewish Settler violence against Palestinians has been painfully documented by David Shulman for the New York Review of Books. We cannot in good conscience only condemn hate of one kind. Hate is hate is hate.

To mourn the loss of innocent Jewish life since October 7 is to mourn the loss of innocent Palestinian life as well. This must remain a truth by which we live. Whether it is the eliminationist, totalizing and apocalyptic worldviews of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran; or the territorially maximalist and apocalyptic messianism of the Settler movement, we must, without hesitation, and with the fullest expression of our human capacity to do good, declare that every life is sacred, especially in its potential to join us — those who are committed to doing “what is just and what is right” — in doing good.

This means we must mourn with broken hearts the deaths of innocents on October 7 and the hellscape of the hostages still suffering in tunnels in Gaza.

This means we must mourn with broken hearts the deaths of innocent Palestinian men, women and children who have suffered the Israeli bombardment in its war against Hamas in Gaza.

This means we must mourn with broken hearts the deaths of Israelis by terror attacks since October 7 — including last night in Jaffa.

And this means we must mourn with broken hearts the deaths of innocent Palestinians at the hand of indiscriminate Settler violence in the West Bank.

To retain our humanity, each of these mourning gestures is essential.

Whether we know this from our scripture — “And God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26) — or from our Sages — “anyone who takes one life is seen as having destroyed the entire world” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4) — or from our kishkes, Yiddish for our “guts” — the sacredness, uniqueness, and singularity of the individual is simply true. We know it to be true.

It always has been — from the beginning — and always will be — until the end.

And so as we prepare to count a new year, 5785, at sundown tonight, here is my prayer, here is my hope.

Just as the Sages taught that Rosh Hashanah is the birthday of the world, I pray, I hope, for a world remade this year in the image of a God who demands of us that each life is sacred.

Just as the Sages taught that in the order of Creation, God made teshuva, repentance, before God made the human, to remind us that we will always err but that there will always be a way back, I pray, I hope, that we have the humility to examine our own words and deeds, make repair, and find it in our hearts to forgive others as well.

And just as the Sages taught that the Shofar blasts are meant to pierce our hearts, to cry out at us and encourage us to cry back, to feel another’s pain and to express one’s own, I pray, I hope that our tears will flow like the purifying waters of the mikveh and strengthen in us tikvah, hope, the capacity for hope.

One soul at a time: Whether you believe this or feel it in your guts. Know yourself. And be the best Jew you can be in the New Year.

Be strong and of good courage.

Love thy neighbor as thyself.

May you be written into the Book of Life for a year of Goodness and Peace.

Thanks for reading and Shanah Tovah.

Andy