We're Still Here

Rosh Hashana Sermon, 5768

by Rabbi Frank Hellner

It’s 1956. Friday. I’m on a train travelling from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This is my first time in Israel, the culmination of years in the Zionist youth movement dreaming about this time.

 I was born into a secular Jew—ish  family; non-observant except perhaps for the gastronomics of Jewish life: Lokshen soup, chopped liver, gefilte fish, bagels & lox on Sunday morning. You know the scene. But strangely, although I was born an American, I somehow never totally identified with American history. Abraham Lincoln, George Washington were American heroes but, somehow, not really completely mine either. I felt more like a visitor, a guest, perhaps because I was only a first generation American. My roots were not yet deep enough. My real heroes were yet to be discovered, and I found them only years later, once I had joined the Zionist youth movement. These were heroes like Rabbi Akiba, Judah HaNasi, King David, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Judah Maccabee and the like. I became a Jew through Zionism. I discovered my Jewish roots in B’nai Akiva & Young Judea. It was, I felt, through an accident of fate that I was born in America rather than Palestine. My grandfather might just as well have  gone to Palestine rather than America. And that I never rectified the situation can be attributed to diverse & complex factors in my life.   

And now I was on this train pulling into the train station in Jerusalem, and a voice over the loudspeaker announced in Hebrew: “Beruchim habaim lirushalayim,” Welcome to Jerusalem—Shabbat shalom.  I cannot adequately describe the warmth & elation that I felt at that time. Imagine: “Welcome to Jerusalem. Shabbat shalom”, in Hebrew, the language of our people. I had come home.

 As it was Israel that brought me to Judaism, you can understand why I feel so passionately about the Land.

My own connection with the Land began ten years before that train journey. It was 1946. There was no State of Israel then. Only a hope & a dream. And I, even then, as a starry-eyed eleven- year- old lad looking for a cause knew that that hope & that dream would never come to reality peacefully, even if the United Nations would give its blessing. It would have to fight to survive. Like every redemption, like every new-born child, it would come about only through the birth pangs of a messianic happening. And so, unbeknown even to our parents, a group of us pre- Bar Mitzvah youngsters in Hashomer Hadati, the precursor to B’nai Akiva, were recruited to join with a band of adults in an empty second story of a Philadelphia department store, and there, under the supervision of members of the Hagganah we packed clothing, together with concealed munitions and armaments, to be shipped to this yet unborn, unnamed Jewish State.

But outside in the street, everyone else, Jew and Gentile knew the name of that state: “Palestine”. So it was not surprising that one evening in 1946 while I was standing outside a cinema in Philadelphia collecting money for the JPA, the Jewish Palestine Appeal, that I was accosted by a non-Jew who shouted at me, “Go back to Palestine, Yid”. How ironic that they are now shouting, “Get out of Palestine, Yid”. I was

strangely heartened & consoled to read only recently in Amos Oz’ autobiographical novel, “A Tale of Love & Darkness” that he had had the identical experience as a youth, which would have been about the same time. For in those days, “Palestine” was associated with the Jewish community. It was the only name by which we knew that wedged shape sliver of land between the Mediterranean sea & the river Jordan. The Jews, the chalutzim, living there were called Palestinians. The Jewish wine company, to this day, is known as Palwin, an abbreviated form of Palestinian wine; the Jewish newspaper was known as the “Palestine Post” (which only changed to the “Jerusalem Post” after the State was proclaimed); The Jewish scenic postcards was & is still known as “Palphot”, a shortened form of “Palestine Photos”. So much so was the name Palestine associated with Jews, that even Emir Faisal, who later became King of Iraq, and who was acting on behalf of the Arab kingdom of Hejaz, while here in London in 1919, through a communiqué with Dr Chaim Weizmann on 3rd January, referred repeatedly to his wish to see the establishment of an “Arab State” alongside “Palestine” which he saw as the name of the proposed Jewish state. So people could be excused for thinking in those days that ‘Palestinians’ meant Jews. Although I didn’t realise the later repercussions at the time, I feel that David Ben Gurion made a detrimental mistake in 1948 by naming the Jewish state “Israel”, rather than retaining the accepted name ‘Palestine’, the name by which we had always associated with Jews. “Israel”, traditionally, in Jewish history always referred to the Jewish people, not the land. To refer both to the People & the Land by the same name is not only confusing but misleading. Although it may seem only a semantical difference, when we now see how iconic & loaded the word “Palestinian” has become, & now associated only with the Arabs, we realise how great was Ben Gurion’s misjudgement of the power of words. In fact, George Antonius, author of the classic text on Arab nationalism, in his book “The Arab Awakening”, never refers to the land as “Palestine” in any of his maps, except during the British Mandate. He depicted that sliver of land always as part of lower Syria together with the Lebanon.

***

But all that is now history. I mention it only so that you can better understand my passion for Israel & my hope that you might be able to share part of it. During this period, at this time of the year, our hearts & minds are focused on the core issues of our Jewish lives: repentance, identity, meaning, purpose… and foremost among them—especially at this time must be reflections on the meaning of the State of Israel to the Jewish people.

For me, today, this is a particularly troublesome & existential problem. For nearly sixty years now we have been living with the reality of the reborn state of Israel in its ancestral land and all that that means to the Jewish people. It was welcomed into the comity of nations that recognised the natural, historic, cultural & religious ties of the Jewish people & the Land. But for the consecutive conquests by the Greeks, the Romans, the Christians, and the Moslems and the repeated decimation & expulsion of its Jewish inhabitants, we might all still be living there today. That we are not is also a historical fact & we are now scattered throughout the world and have made significant contributions to countries of our birth as loyal & devoted citizens. What troubles me is the gradual dilution and weakening of those ties & pride we once had with the Jewish state. I’m not talking now about dual loyalties or anything like that. Those questions I would have thought should have died out a long time ago. For example:

A few days ago we witnessed the football match between England & Israel. And at that time I was asked: ‘Whom do you want to win, England or Israel?’ It reminded me of the story my mother told me about her childhood in Whitechapel. When she was asked by her classmates, who do you support, Oxford or Cambridge? If she said ‘Oxford’, she got punched; if she said ‘Cambridge’, she got punched. It was a no win situation. No, those questions do not interest me. As for my football preference for England or Israel, well, as Rhett Butler would have said: frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. I wish it were merely a question of which football team we support. My concern, I’m afraid runs a lot deeper than any such superficial loyalties. My concern is with the very continued existence of the state of Israel, itself as a Jewish state. These fears are becoming more & more chilling as we move more & more into post-modernism with its new religions of multi-culturalism and political correctness gone wild. This, together with a growing malaise or indifference in the Jewish world to the Jewish State  and coupled with the agenda of our enemies to see the end of the State of Israel are fast becoming realities and it worries me enormously. The current issue of the CCAR journal, for example, concludes that several studies in America reveal that “the American Jewish educational system has failed in building strong connections and commitments to Israel”. It goes on to say that “indeed, over the past few decades, Israel and a sense of Jewish peoplehood have become increasingly peripheral to American Jewish identity.” And I dare say that I suspect the same is true here as well, certainly in Liberal Judaism. From Israel itself, Daniel Gordis, the head of the Jerusalem Fellows programme, laments that under the guise of political correctness & democratic values, a number of proposals have been promulgated by Israeli Arabs today calling for a new constitution banning, inter alia, Hatikva as the national anthem for it does not speak for the minority Arab citizenship and calling for the repatriation of Arab refugees, ostensibly meaning, the end of Israel as a Jewish state. But hey, since when, before post-modernism and political correctness does democracy mean that every minority view must be accommodated? Are we to remove “God” from the national anthem or “religion” from the national curriculum because Richard Dawkins and his fellow humanists & atheists are affronted? When our parents, grandparents & great-grandparents came to this country, they came to adapt themselves to British values & institutions, not to change them to fit in with the shtetl. And we continue in their wake. We send our children to schools where, so far, Christianity is still the predominant religion. If we don’t want to expose our children to this, we can opt to send them to a faith school, but not to change what exists. If the demographic statistics change, then the problem will have to be resolved. The same is true in Israel. Israeli Arabs account today for 20% of the population, admittedly, not an insignificant minority. If their numbers increase to the extent that they become the majority, then a resolution must be found, but it would be at the expense of a Jewish state. And I suspect that is exactly what the Arabs want now.

But for me, the “Jewishness” of Israel is not for e-Bay. It is its very raison d’être. If Islam is the state religion of 22 countries in the Middle East, then one Jewish state is not excessive. If Israel ceases to be a Jewish state it ceases to be anything.  As Jonathan Sacks said: “When you challenge Israel’s right to exist, then you are calling into question the right of the Jewish people to exist collectively”.

I would like to share with you what Israel means to one woman, Sherri Mandell, in a letter from Israel:

“It feels crazy to live in Israel right now. A few people are leaving. I understand them.   It’s horrible to live with violence, and the attendant stress and anxiety. We Israelis are so vulnerable: travelling in a car or bus, going to a café, even staying at home. All have been woven with terror. Every time of day and night, we know we are targets.

    One recent Friday night, we were awakened at 1:00 in the morning by the loudspeaker in our community. “There is a warning that there is a terrorist in Tekoa. Lock your windows and doors, sleep with a gun, guard your children. Turn out all of the lights”.

    We quickly turned off the lights even though we are Sabbath observers. We locked the doors and windows. We put a chair in front of the front door. Then the telephone rang. Our neighbour was calling to make sure that we had heard the warning.

    The kids were scared, shaking.  I told them we would protect them, take care of them. That they should try to go to sleep.

    The kids fell to sleep, all of them in our bed. I prayed and then slept fitfully, hoping that morning would soon be on its way. Around 3:00 the loudspeaker came on again. The warning was over. For now. But as I told my children, it’s rare that terrorists warn you.

    They certainly didn’t warn my son, Koby, 13, before they stoned him and his friend Yosef to death, crushing their skulls so that they were unrecognizable. Koby and Yosef were hiking near our home in Tekoa. The two boys wanted to know the canyon beyond our house like the backs of their hands.

    They were killed for their love of the land. They were killed for being Jews.

    My friend was at a movie in Jerusalem on Saturday night, the night of the massacre at the Moment Café when a terrorist killed 11 people. The manager stopped the movie and told the patrons what had happened and asked if they wanted the movie to continue. They didn’t. They all went home.

Why do people continue to stay here even though we are being slaughtered by terrorists? Because many of us feel a deep sense of connection here, to our country, our heritage, and to each other.

    The sense of connection manifests itself in surprising ways. Today I go to the makollet, the grocery store, and there is a man filling a cardboard box with goodies to send to his son in the army. The man picks out a bar of , plain milk chocolate. And the makollet lady, Rena, says: “Your son doesn’t like that kind of chocolate> Noam likes crunchy chocolate”.

    Another story: My friend Ruth is at a kiosk buying a drink. A little girl says shyly: “What can I get for 2 shekels?” He says, “Nothing”. Then he hands her a shekel. “But now you have three. You can buy gum or candy”. Ruth fishes into her pocket. “Now you have four”.

    Here there is a feeling of family. Here in the face of pain and suffering, we don’t feel alone. We feel that we are a net that is woven together and though it is full of holes, it is strong enough to lift us up.

    If we make a hole in the net, the net is weakened> Of course it can be mended. But it will never be quite the same.

    We don’t want to make a hole in the net. We don’t want to leave the place where our son is buried. We don’t want to leave the only place in the world where time is measured by a Jewish calendar, where the celebrations centre on the Jewish holidays,

where the language is the language of the Bible. We don’t want to leave the centre of Jewish history. Now we are part of that long, hard history. We are part of the struggle of the Jewish people trying to live in their land. My son died for being a Jew. I want to live as one.”        (Yom Kippur Readings, P.221)

Like Sherri, some of us feel that there must be one place on this earth where Jews are in control of their own destiny; where Jewish life can unfold naturally in our ancestral land, a land where priests & prophets roamed; where time is measured by a Jewish calendar, where public celebrations centre on Jewish festivals, where the language of the country is the same language spoken by Jeremiah & Isaiah, by Abraham & King David, by Rabbi Akiba & Judah Macabbee, a land whose description fills the pages of our Bible. I want for the Jewish people in one state, the same rights as Moslems & Arabs have in 22 states.

There is no question that a Jewish state compromises the interests of the minority. I have no doubt that Arab Israelis or Arab Palestinians as they prefer to call themselves, feel aggrieved by Hatkva or by the Jewish character of national festivals. And it is true that in this regard there is a  paradoxical clash between a democratic state and a Jewish state, but we don’t live in an ideal world, and in our imperfect world there are many such contradictions, paradoxes & inconsistencies. No less in this country than anywhere else. There is no country on earth that satisfies the needs of all its citizens equally. But Israel has special needs. It was created out of special needs. The ever-present and ominous spectre of the Holocaust makes all other considerations pale.

Again, Daniel Gordis writes from Israel: “But with all the problematics that a distinctly Jewish state raises, you need to understand that it’s simply not up for discussion. The reasons are terribly complex, but if you want to boil them down to a few succinct sentences, they would be about the fact that there is simply nowhere else on the planet for Jewish civilization to flourish. There’s nowhere else where Hebrew could have been revived, where three-year-olds can speak the language of the Bible. There’s nowhere else where questions about borders and immigration can become Jewish questions, where Jewish law, Jewish ethics, and Jewish history and memory get factored in. There’s nowhere else where the Jewish people can re-imagine what Jewishness ought to be about, and have the tools to make that happen.

“Yes, it may be, in some ways, more dangerous to be a Jew here than it is anywhere else in the world, but there’s also nowhere else where Jews get to chart the course of their own destiny. There’s nowhere else, in short, where the Jews can have what every other ‘normal’ nation has at least somewhere. How can a people that wants to survive in a meaningful way just give up on that? It can’t.”

Throughout history there are those who sought to put an end to the Jewish people. As we are reminded during our Passover Seder:

Shelo echad bilvad amad aleynu l’chaloteynu—for not one enemy alone has sought to destroy us, but in every generation enemies seek to destroy us…

And make no mistake. The end-goal of all those who in different ways have sought to destroy the Jewish state is to see an end to the Jewish people. I do not believe that Israel is beyond reproach; like all other countries, it is not perfect. Nor do I believe

that to criticise Israel is necessarily being anti-Semitic. But I do believe that those who deny to Jews what every other nation has & who want to see Israel’s destruction, are. When close to a half million people are murdered in Darfur and British academics are calling only for the boycotting of Israel, that IS anti-Semitism. When 38 reporters are arrested  in Iran and British journalists are boycotting Israel, that IS anti-Semitism; when 700 human rights activists are tortured in Zimbabwe and British academics boycott Israel, that IS anti-Semitism; when Venezuela’s most independent & most popular TV station is shut down, but British journalists are boycotting Israel, that IS anti-Semitism. In the 19th & 20th centuries, Jews were hated because they were rich & because they were poor; because they were capitalists and because they were communists; because they kept to themselves and because they assimilated. Jews have always been accused of being responsible for the world’s problems. And when they can’t blame Jews as individuals, Israel becomes the target. Only last week at a UN conference in Brussels, speakers strategized how to isolate Israel from the international community, when our own Parliament member, Clare Short stated that Israel “undermines the international community’s reaction to global warming.” So now we’re being blamed for that as well. When British Unions have singled out Israel alone for boycott, ignoring all the other problems in the world, there is only one word that would describe their motives. Of all the countries in the world- many of whom are truly rogue states- Israel is the only country whose very existence is questioned.  As the most recent edition of MANA, the journal of the Sternberg Centre opens: “The Boycott is alarming & sickening. It is also a loud wake-up call for British Jewry.”  

A few years ago, Jonathan Sacks wrote:

“Anti-Semitism is undeniably the most successful ideology in modern times. Fascism came & went. Soviet Communism came & went. Anti-Semitism came & stayed. Its success is due to the fact that, like a virus, it mutates. At times it has been directed against Jews as individuals. Today, it is directed against Jews as a sovereign people. The common factor is that Jews, uniquely, are denied the right to exist in whatever form their collective existence currently takes. There is a direct line from ‘you have no right to live among us as a people’ to ‘you have no right to live among us’ to ‘you have no right to live’.

“What disturbs me most”, Rabbi Sacks goes on, “is that were this cumulative hate to be directed against anyone else, the Left would be the first to protest. Have we learned nothing from history? An assault on Jews is an assault on difference; and a world that has no room for difference has no room for humanity itself.”

We have been to Egypt… and we’re still here,

We have been to Spain… and we’re still here,

We have been to Auschwitz & Maidanek…and we’re still here,

And now, even in our own generation, there are those who still attempt to destroy Israel the people by demonising and delegitimising Israel, the country. The same object; only different tactics. Today, the closer we come to a two-state solution, the more our detractors are calling for a one-state solution. That’s not a solution. That’s dissolution!  But we’re still here. The question today is, for how long?

My friends, I deliberated long & hard whether this should be the theme of my High Holy Day address, rather than a Doris Day, feel good sermon, where everyone goes home happy. But the problem of a resurgence of anti-Semitism mutated & metamorphosed into anti-Zionism today is far too serious a problem to ignore. As the Manna Leader had it: “It is a loud wake up call for British Jewry”. And as the ‘Boycott’ call comes from the largest trade union for academics, lecturers & researchers in the UK, no Jew with any sense of history could fail to be alarmed.

In a few minutes time we shall hear the shofar blast. It is introduced by Maimonides’ famous exhortation: Uru y’sheynim mishnatchem, nirdamim hakitzu mitardeymatchem—Awake, you sleepers from your sleep! Rouse yourselves, you slumberers out of your slumber.

An alarm is not a call for despair, but it is a time to awake. To be aware of what is happening today and not to assume the ostrich pose & go into denial. It means becoming knowledgeable about the facts and being prepared to meet challenges and confront allegations we know to be false. Not to wait for someone else to do it. As we are all targets, so are we all ambassadors. To be able to discern between legitimate criticism and criticisms we know are not. It is a time to engage in dialogue with those who are truly interested in searching for a way forward. To be proud of Jewish accomplishments in this country and take pride in the positive achievements of the state of Israel. Moses, we are told, was not privileged to enter the Promised Land because he had given up on his people. That is one of the greatest sins: to give up on our people. Not everyone out there is our enemy. Many are disillusioned and frustrated, seeking a ‘cause’ to right the wrongs of our world. Many in their eagerness have, unfortunately, jumped on to the bandwagon of popular causes of which demonising Jews & Israel are the flavour of the month. They are not evil, only naïve & mistaken. Let us try to win them over. Let us not give up on them either.

So we enter a New Year today. Everything is new for us. 365 pristine days. It is a new beginning. We can create a new year and new realities from the raw time allotted us. We can win support and we can turn old enemies into new friends. May we have the strength and courage of our convictions to do it.  

Our future depends on it.

Sermon delivered at Finchley Progressive Synagogue on Rosh Hashanah 5768,

13th September 2007 by Rabbi Frank Hellner  

Rabbi Frank Hellner

Finchley Progressive Synagogue