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News: Rabbi's Reflections
ISRAEL AT 60!
This year, on Yom Ha-Atzmaut – May 10 - Israel turns 60. It’s a time for celebration and reflection, rejoicing and thoughtful consideration.
Our hearts turn to the land where our religion was first born, where Abraham arrived after his journey of faith, which beckoned to Moses as an ever-elusive goal, and where the voices of Isaiah and Hosea thundered forth on behalf of the oppressed, the weak, the poor. We feel that tug, and yet from our comfortable armchairs half a world away, what do we do?
How committed are we to Israel? Are we members of AIPAC or Americans for Peace Now? Are we members of ARZA? Do we take the time to really understand what our own Association of Reform Zionists of America represents?
How familiar are we with the issues? The geopolitical situation in Israel continues to be fraught with difficulties. There are no ready, easy, and simplistic solutions. It’s a cauldron of conflicting ethnicities and religions and ideologies, where history becomes the present, and the present becomes an ever-changing reality. Israel is filled with paradoxes and inconsistencies, both a modern nation with all of the concomitant strengths and weaknesses, and at the same time a reflection of the Jewish soul. The secular with the religious, the pragmatic with the ideal. For some of us living in the Diaspora, the connection to Israel is truly a visceral one, a heart-felt bond that transcends the rational, accepting the inevitable reality that at times Israel will make decisions and pursue a course that we may deem to be wrong. Yet the connection is still there. But for many of us, the connection is absent, or at best, weak.
As Leonard Fein wrote: “We have to learn how to sustain our attachment despite our disappointments. We have to learn how to prevent the disappointments from unbalancing our appraisal of the earthly Jerusalem, where flowers still bloom, where good men and women daily do battle for justice and sometimes win. We have to learn how to regather our energies lest our dream be reduced to yet another page in the book of Jewish nostalgia. The voices that now cry, woe unto us, what happened to the dream? must learn again to cry out clear in the desert a road for Adonay! Most of all, we have to learn, together with the Israelis, how to understand Israel as the joint endeavor of the Jewish people. There is a place to stand between the impossible dream and the rude awakening, and we – and the Israelis – have to find that place and stand there.”
We can talk about Israel, and we can disagree about the issues, and we can passionately argue about possible solutions. But there must be more. We must also feel. Our connection to the land of our spiritual birth should be like an ember glowing in our souls, always there and always felt, and sometimes blazing into a red-hot intensity of passion as we react to what may be happening in Israel, or what others say about Israel, or what policy Israel might be pursuing. As Israel reaches this milestone in its young and yet millennia-old history, we should all look within, as we strive to deepen that connection and strengthen that bond that binds all of us to the land of our spiritual birth.
Friday evening, May 9, will be a special celebration of Israel’s 60th! At 6:30 pm we will have a Shabbat Dinner featuring the foods of Israel [$14 per adult, $12 per child over 4; please RSVP to Alan Hochberg at the Synagogue office]. At 7 there will be Israeli singing and dancing led by Hagit Avnon. And at 8, we will enjoy our special Shir Shabbat, during which our Junior Choir will enrich this service with special Israeli melodies. And as an added bonus, members of Sisterhood will help conduct the service. There’s something for everyone, and then some … I hope to see all of you as together we celebrate the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence.
B'Shalom,
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