June 2006 Archives

Former Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir was once asked if she could ever forgive the Arabs for seeking Israel’s destruction. She replied by saying that she could forgive them for killing her sons, but she couldn’t forgive them for forcing her to kill their sons.

I like this quote because it reflects the pain a moral individual feels about the human cost of self-defense. This is part of the Jewish psyche. It is why we dip our fingers to withdraw some wine from our glasses at the recitation of each plague at the Passover seder, for we should not rejoice at the death even of enemies who seek our destruction.

Israel always finds itself in a moral dilemma when faced with how to respond to terrorist attacks. Jewish law requires that we defend ourselves and others, for we are not to stand idly by the blood of our brothers. To not respond at all invites more attacks.

The issue is not one of proving that Jewish life is no longer cheap (though it was treated as such throughout centuries of anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic violence when Jews were powerless to protect themselves) but of defending oneself and others against a rodef (literally a pursuer, someone presenting a threat to life or limb). This requires even preventive measures if a threat seems imminent. Nevertheless, Jewish law also requires that we use the least amount of force necessary to immobilize or eliminate the threat.

That is why I am confused by the timing of Israel’s incursion into Gaza and about why the government did not give Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a few more days to try to find the two young Israeli men who were kidnapped by Hamas militants.

It is true that more than 500 Qassam rocket attacks have struck towns within Israel, particularly Sderot, killing 15 Israeli citizens and foreign workers. No sovereign nation would stand passively by under such an attack. Israel has responded with targeted strikes. The most recent took out a car carrying Islamic Jihad terrorists transporting a Katyusha rocket that has an even longer delivery range than a Qassam. Some Palestinians were killed in these counter-attacks.

Does that mean Israel should not defend itself?

On one hand, we should be proud of the efforts the Israeli army takes to minimize danger to civilians, often at great cost of danger to Israeli soldiers. Where the army makes mistakes or makes decisions that protect Israeli soldiers at the expense of Palestinian civilians, we should be proud of Israel’s independent Supreme Court and Israeli Jewish human rights groups, which serve as watchdogs in this area. (If the Palestinians showed as much concern for Jewish life, they would have had a viable, thriving state decades ago.)

However, even with the best of efforts and intentions, even when the army may not mean to take life, innocents are killed. In military parlance, such loss of life is chalked up to “collateral damage.”

For Jews, every life, even of our enemies, is precious. That is why Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently expressed his regret over the death of Palestinian civilians even as he explained why the Army had to do what it was doing to stop the rocket attacks that were being launched from inside Gaza against Israel.

One could argue that for the mourning family, any death is a tragedy, regardless of its cause. However, I would suggest that if the Palestinians were as dismayed about taking innocent Jewish lives as the Israelis are of taking Palestinians’ lives, the conflict between our two peoples would have been resolved decades ago.

Now two young Israelis have been kidnapped.

Self-defense is a moral obligation. Israel is in the unenviable position of trying to defend itself from enemies who intentionally hide among civilians. Perhaps it is up to those civilians to say they no longer want rockets being shot from their front yards into ours.

Is Israel’s overwhelming show of force counterproductive? I don’t know. This is the dilemma Israel faces: how to be strong and wise in the face of an intractable enemy dedicated to its destruction. What worries me is that force alone cannot win this battle.

Israel's response to the recent kidnapping of Cpl. Gilad Shalit by invading Gaza is nothing shocking or all that new. It is what is: the latest incarnation of the cycle of violence that continues to cripple the Middle East.

Is Israel justified in taking such actions? Ultimately, justice in the context of Middle East politics will only only be understood in retrospect. That said, there is something about Middle East politics that instinctively makes all of us fall back into the blame game, justifying our behavior based on what was done in the past instead of waiting to see what happens in the future. Are we right in falling back into the blame game? No, but such is politics. So, excuse me for saying so, but Israel not at fault in this fiasco.

It's a shame Palestinians have to suffer, but no one forced them to elect Hamas or empower its leadership. We make choices and have to learn how to live with them. Each choice we make in life has repercussions. If the Palestinians cannot even take responsibility for the very people they freely elected into office, can they be trusted?

Not to hold Palestinians responsible for their government's actions is either to make them into fools who neither know what they say or understand what they do, or to abet and support the terror that they have unleashed on Israel. While in theory I am all for granting humanitarian aid to Palanstinians, practically such aid looks more and more unlikely.

Those we elect represent us and speak on our behalf. The Palestinian people need to uproot and denounce Hamas. Until that happens, what kind of humanity would Israel and America be supporting by giving aid?

We all wish Israel did not have to take such steps, but I also wish the Palestinians never elected Hamas. Once again, we are back to square one, and all that I can think of is that its their fault!

The Hamas raid last week against an army post in Israel, with the murder of two soldiers, the wounding of a third, and the kidnapping of 19-year-old Gilad Shalit, is a classic example of the tactical jujitsu that terrorists have employed dating back to the FLN’s attacks on French troops in Algeria in the 1950’s. The twisted logic goes something like this: You’re fighting against an enemy whose military might is vastly superior to your own. So you engage in acts of provocation designed to invite a disproportionate response. When the provoked response comes, it is met with international condemnation. So powerful is this approach that a young Yasser Arafat is said to have been motivated by this example in planning PLO strategy following the Six Day War.

Palestinian militants have been cynically playing this game for decades with a blatant and utter disregard for human life–both that of Israelis who are killed or maimed in their attacks and that of fellow Palestinians who suffer in the Israeli response. In the months leading up to this latest atrocity, militants had been firing ever-increasing numbers of Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israeli towns and villages. The IDF has now moved into Gaza, but the fact is that it is extremely difficult to prevail against an enemy so canny and nihilistic that it will send teenagers to blow themselves up to further the cause.

What to do?

One could argue that the Israelis need to turn a blind eye to international opinion. It is they who are under attack, they who are dying, and they who need to respond as appropriate. The world has never been particularly well-disposed toward Israel in the first place; why should Israel allow its citizens to live in fear of bombers and shells when the world may condemn it no matter what it does?

The danger with this approach is that it tends to lead down a slippery slope toward ever-stronger responses designed not just to stop attacks, not just to deter, but to punish indiscriminately. Unless a country is very careful to minimize unnecessary casualties, the situation becomes increasingly entrenched and radicalized. Making the leap from constructive and preventive measures to oppression and collective punishment isn’t just bad policy; the country runs the risk of losing its moral compass and even its very soul.

In responding to attacks, it is imperative–for its own sake–that Israel act with the greatest restraint possible while still taking steps to defend its own citizens. So far, Israel has acted with care to avoid casualties, but it bears pointing out that Hamas has ‘won’ this round by provoking Israel to respond, making Israel reactive rather than proactive.

As it moves ahead, Israel must avoid the temptation to reach for "easy" military solutions and instead must do the hard work of pursuing militants while engaging in the search for lasting political solutions. Both tactically and ethically, it is the right thing to do, for Palestinian terrorism is an enemy that must be defeated not only militarily, but morally, with an approach whose concern for innocent human life can counteract a martyr-happy culture of death.

I took my seventh graders to the U.S. Holocaust Museum the other day. We stopped in front of the crematorium door as the students took in what it meant: that the Nazis burned the bodies of their mostly Jewish victims like we might burn garbage.

Jewish mourning practices have always prohibited cremation. Jewish tradition believes that ultimately at some end of days, our soul will be reunited with its body, miraculously, resurrected. Even if we may not believe in the physicality of resurrection of the dead, we can appreciate the metaphorical message inherent in it: that our embodied life in this world is inherently worthwhile.

The Greeks, and by extension Christian theologians, saw the soul as good and pure and the flesh as weak and evil. According to the Jewish philosopher Will Herberg, the Jewish belief in resurrection (the reunification of our soul with its body at the end of days) is the antithesis of Greek/Christian belief. Judaism says that the body God created for us is good and holy in its own right, not something to be merely sloughed off and eliminated when our soul is ready to continue on to the next world. The body is thus inherently good, and our bodily experiences in this world have such wholeness and holiness that there is a place for our bodies in a future perfect world.

This is one of the reasons Judaism prohibits cremation.

A number of religious traditions practice cremation, and it is not my place to judge them. However, we can condemn where some traditions used cremation to take innocent life. Just think of the Moloch worshippers burning children in the fires of Geihinnom, the valley of Hinnom, below Jerusalem’s walls (one possible source for the idea of a fiery hell), or the Hindu communities who, until recently, may have forced widows to commit sati, "voluntarily" accepting cremation with their deceased husbands. In such scenarios, cremation has certainly been used to devalue life. (Hindu cremation traditions thankfully continue now without sati. The last documented case of sati occurred in 1987.)

Our sages understood that those who burn bodies may all too readily devalue human life. The Holocaust made that all too clear.

Some consider cremation an inexpensive alternative to burial. To that, I reply that a graveside funeral and simple pine casket is certainly preferable Jewishly and need not be much more expensive. Others are concerned about the ecological waste of land required for burial. I think about the trees and open spaces cemeteries protect and remember that burial is part of God’s recycling plan: from dust we are formed and to dust we return, as the soul returns to God who gave it.

There is great wisdom in Jewish funeral practices. Wisdom to help the mourner walk the journey of loss and recover, wisdom to cherish and value the goodness of the entirety of human life and experience. These are lessons our world still needs to learn. So perhaps, more than ever, we should hold tightly to our traditional prohibition of cremation and let our loved ones rest gently in God’s green earth.

Of all the issues I engage with my congregants around, I find shiva--Jewish mourning practices--to be among the strangest and most challenging. The vast majority of my congregants –like the overwhelming majority of Jews in this country today–don’t understand themselves as bound within a halachic (Jewish legal) framework that obligates them to act in particular ways.

The original purpose of shiva minyans (the quorum of 10 adults, traditionally men, for prayer) after all, is to allow mourners to maintain their obligation not to leave their home (except on Shabbat, when shiva is suspended) while simultaneously providing a minyan so they can fulfill their obligation to recite kaddish (the prayer recited in honor of the dead) for their loved one: If you can’t take yourself to the minyan, we bring the minyan to you.

But most of the people I work with simply don’t think that way. They may want to stay home for a few days so close friends can stop by, and they’ll want minyanim in the evening–but usually more because this provides a focal point and activity for bringing community than for the service itself.

The truth is, the way our suburban community is organized, many of the traditional mourning rituals don’t make sense. Dual-career households mean fewer people can stop by and visit during the day. Mourners themselves may wish to take off from work for a couple of days, but sitting at home for a week on low benches feels odd and oppressive. Other observances, such as not shaving or greeting visitors, also feel arbitrary and awkward, especially when so many of the visitors–Jewish and non-Jewish–don’t come from a cultural context where these observances make sense.

Of course, many aspects of Jewish practice require education–and, more important, experience–to be fully appreciated. Shabbat is a prime example of an observance that does not "fit" with the way we tend to order our lives–precisely because it is not supposed to, because it is a step outside of and a counterweight to our usual daily activities.

Similarly, I see great beauty and dignity in many aspects of traditional Jewish mourning practices. But following the death of a loved one, when the family is looking for comfort, doesn’t feel like the right time to launch into a shiva dos-and-don’ts lecture. Better to find a way to incorporate those mourning practices that families find meaningful and comforting–lighting a shiva candle, covering mirrors, inviting guests in for scheduled services and close friends to stop by as they wish–than to fit a family’s grief into a more standard set of rituals that may or may not be meaningful, or even familiar, to the mourners. And if this includes practices not part of a traditional shiva–planting a tree, playing music special to the person who has died, looking at photographs–well, that’s OK too.

There are, of course, Jewish communities where the traditional rituals of shiva are organic and nourishing to their members, and they should appreciate and maintain them. But in places where these practices only confuse rather than comfort, make angst rather than make sense, we must allow mourners to express their sorrow and move toward healing in ways that draw on the traditional practices but also feel more natural to them.

One of the many rituals surrounding death in the Jewish tradition is the practice of going to a mourner’s house during a seven-day mourning period called “shiva.” The mourner sits on a low stool and he/she is comforted by friends,...

On today’s New York Times op-ed page, David Dow writes a very interesting but ultimately morally flawed article on the death penalty. In short, he suggests: Instead of focusing on the issue of whether or not someone convicted of the...

The January election of a Hamas-led government in the Palestinian territories immediately led to stern resolve on the part of the international community not to have dealings with or assist this regime–and rightly so. Hamas has been and continues to...

I can’t stand people who invoke moral obligations regarding providing humanitarian aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.I am sorry, but a group that demands my destruction has no right to make moral and ethical claims on me or anybody else.Suicide...

If someone wants to destroy you, are you obligated to help them? How humanitarian is aid when it supports hate?This stopped being a theoretical question when Hamas was elected to lead the Palestinian people, because Hamas continues to be dedicated...

In the past few years, an increasing number of allegations about rabbinic sexual impropriety have come to light, beginning with charges against Rabbi Baruch Lanner and more recently against Rabbi Mordechai Gafni of Bayit Chadash in Israel and Rabbi Yehuda...

Recently, there has been a spate of sexual abuse cases surfacing within the Orthodox community. These cases have come to the fore primarily through the constant pressure of blogs. Blogs are an important check for religious democracy. Traditional communities by...

Should the Internet be used to publicize the names and alleged improprieties of alleged sexual predators? Is such use justified to protect victims and potential victims from sexual predators even if it runs roughshod over the requirement to protect innocent...