Rabbi Eliyahu Stern: April 2006 Archives

“This Zionist-Crusader war” is probably the most oft-repeated line invoked by the terrorist-madman Osama bin Laden in his latest rant against the West.

As Bin Laden sees it,

"A war is under way to offend the messenger of Allah, his religion and his Umma (nation). The Muslim preparedness and their jihad should be on a par with these events. The duty of our Muslim nation over this Crusaders' campaign with its different aspects is to focus on supporting the prophet, his religion and the Umma to the best of our ability in all fields."

But Bin Laden is not the only one linking together the “Crusaders” with the .00000000000000001 percent of the world population called “Zionists.” In their “report,” “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt ever so casually make the same kind of connection between the Zionist lobby and American Christian leaders. While Jews should own up and take responsibility for their influence, affluence, and power, the cabal-like overtones in the latter’s report is frightening.

Unlike Bin Laden's rant, what makes the report so disturbing is the fact that these two professors are far from mad. Luckily, the report has been met with a number of responses.

But the great irony as I see it in Mearsheimer’s and Walt’s argument is that far from being right-wing, war-mongering extremists, Jews have been and continue to be at the forefront of every major American liberal peace initiative on Israel and the Middle East. Contrary to popular opinion, Jews (or the Israel lobby) are if anything monolithically liberal.

While there are a few loud and influential right-wing Jews, the vast majority of Jews remain staunch liberals through and through. The fact that there are right-wing Jews ready to wage war against Islam is only proof that Judaism is not monolithic in its politics. I know it comes as a shock to some, but there are Jewish Republicans, and they are entitled to promote their causes, just like the gun lobby, the senior citizens' lobby etc… and what’s undemocratic about that?

After my last post, I received a number of responses asking me to flesh out and explain a little more what exactly I was trying to say about all this Jewish memory stuff. So with Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, coming on April 25, I thought I would explain myself a little better.

There is a beautiful vignette told by Jorge Luis Borges, about a man named Funes whose life revolved around remembering. After many years of remembering everything, he finally “determined to reduce all of his experiences to some seventy thousand recollections, which he would later define numerically. Two considerations dissuaded him: the thought that the task was interminable and the thought that it was useless.”

Funes' predicament points to just how all-consuming but ultimately unfulfilling memories can become. The obsession with memory is something all of us relate to. As the historian Y.H. Yerushalmi, author of Zachor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, points out, the Hebrew word zachor appears in the Bible no less than 169 times.

Memory to be sure is not history. It is far more powerful, leaping over time periods and generating meaning from disparate human experiences and events. It collapses time. Many of us grew up in homes where the stories of Auschwitz and Egypt were historically intertwined. Pharaoh and Hitler were synonymous. For many, the lines between Hom Hashoah and Passover were a little blurry.

The Holocaust was constantly mentioned and remembered at ever seder table. We learned that in every generation evil exists and that each person is obligated, “chayyav,” to remember, but that in ever generation “bchol dor vador chayav adam lerot at atzmo keilu hu yatzah mimitzraim.” On this commandment those such as Maimonides claim that in every generation we must reenact our redemption from Egypt. In other words, remembering is not good enough; the story of Egypt and its message must become a present reality. Every year, this sentiment would be repeated over a few weeks later on Yom Hashoah. This year that present is the situation in Darfur, Sudan.

Sometimes memory can be narcissistic. We forget about others because we are too busy remembering about ourselves and all that we have been through. The greatest insult to the memory of those who survived Auschwitz would not be failing to put up another museum, or another plaque in honor of someone, but rather failing to prevent it from happening again under our watch. All the museums and plaques in the world can’t make up for the taking of one innocent life. What "Never Forget" means is not never forget, but rather never forget to act.

We all lead busy lives, and everyday there is another tragedy. We are prudent in how we live life. As Abraham Joshua Heschel so aptly put it, “a prudent man is he who minds his business, who is busy making money, buying a new car, and being proud of his success in society. And who among us is not practical and prudent? Our conscience dwells secure, we cast the blame on inevitable Fate. The rhetoric of indifference is highly effective. It is extremely easy to adjust to other people's suffering graciously.”

Few of us are prepared to hop on Air Sudan and start doing sit-ins singing "Kumbaya" in the sweltering heat of the African desert. But we can commit ourselves to going to the rally being held in Washington, D.C., on April 30 being sponsored by the American Jewish World Service and a coalition of faith groups. If you can not make it, please go on line to the American Jewish World Service website and help prevent the death of another hundred thousand.

If there is one thing that the movie Hotel Rwanda taught us it was that ordinary people can make a difference. I know all of you have packed schedules, but this is truly a shat hadchak, a time of grave danger. Human life is at stake.

“Remember this day that you departed from Egypt from a house of bondage for you with a strong arm God took you from here.(Exodus 13:3).” If there is one thing Jews love, it's “to remember.” Perhaps the only thing Jews do more on Passover than remember is eat matzah and get indigestion. But more seriously, the Jews can be a little narcissistic when all we do is remember about ourselves.

Which brings us to the issue of the day, Darfur.

This Passover, instead of never forgetting, Jews need to start acting. Simply put, it's not good enough never to forget when people around us are being enslaved and murdered in the same way we were 60 years ago. Rabbis, lay leaders, and people of all faiths need to listen up: There is a genocide happening in Darfur!! Most disturbing is how little everyone seems to care. As Nick Kristoff explained to the Washington Times:

“According to monitoring by the Tyndall Report, ABC News had a total of 18 minutes of the Darfur genocide in its nightly newscasts all last year and that turns out to be a credit to Peter Jennings. ‘NBC had only 5 minutes of coverage all last year, and CBS only 3 minutes (except for '60 Minutes') about a minute of coverage for every 100,000 deaths. In contrast, Martha Stewart received 130 minutes of coverage by the three networks. ‘Incredibly, more than two years into the genocide, NBC, aside from covering official trips, has still not bothered to send one of its own correspondents into Darfur for independent reporting." )

Some say close to a half-million people have been killed, and the numbers of dead are climbing daily. Look, I know we all lead busy lives, and every day there is another tragedy, so I don’t expect any of you to hop on Air Sudan and start holding sit-ins in the African desert. But before we sit down at our Passover tables this year and take two days out of our lives to remember our own tsuris (problems) and God's greatness, let's truly bring some godliness into this world and commit ourselves to going to the rally being held in Washington on April 30 being sponsored by the American Jewish World Service.

Let's stop remembering and start acting, so that one day we don’t all have to sit around a seder table and justify to our children why we continue to remember how God took us out of Egypt but we were not appreciative enough to help to do the same for someone else’s children.

Do you think Rick Warren, the author of the "Purpose Driven Life" and super duper mega-church leader, knew the joke about two Jews and three opinions when he sat down to consult Synagogue 3000 on how to attract more Jews to synagogues , maybe? Nonetheless, as they say, ignorance is bliss and most important, it’s nice to hear about an evangelical minister helping Jews to become more Jewish. We need more of that.

The idea of mega-synagogues with yoga workshops, banjo-playing Jewish rock stars leading mussaf service, and Rick Warren-styled rabbis preaching to 10,000 overworked, overeducated, and over-purpose-driven Jews would sure be a sight to see.

But more seriously, the idea of a mega-synagogue gets to the heart of a great new Jewish question: What is heresy in the 21st century? Is it apathy or deviancy?

Synagogue 3000 answers that question with an unequivocal chant of “apathy.” To be honest, for years now the Chabad movement of the Lubavitch Hasidic group has been giving that answer. While Chabad offers a good bowl of chulent and schnapps, Synagogue 3000 offers meditation, healing, and music. In response to the fear of no one coming to synagogue, Synagogue 3000 is offering a whole smorgasbord of different 21st-century programs to bring people back to the pews.

To be honest, I dread the day that a DJ overtakes the cantor and a cheerleader becomes the rabbi, but I am even more scared of the day that no one even shows up to synagogue.