Israel

America: A Crisis of Faith

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I’m an old-fashioned news hound. I can’t start my day without reading the newspaper. The Washington Post is my paper of choice. And I read the hard copy that gets thrown on my lawn every morning around 5am. But then, as I start my workday, I work in a professional bubble of my own creation. I get no news feeds at all. Given how upsetting the news has been for the past four years, putting the news out of sight and out of mind once my day gets going has been an act of self-preservation.

On January 6th, I had a 4pm call with a rabbinic colleague. It started with him asking me: “Have you seen the footage of the U.S. Capitol being overrun by Trump supporters?” I was incredulous. My friend filled in a few more details, we agreed to proceed with our business and, when the call ended around 5pm, I left my study to watch TV for the next few hours.

This article appeared in the Times of Israel on January 14, 2021.  

It has taken a few days for some of the details to get filled in. The colossal failure of the Capitol Police to heed the warnings from the FBI about the threat posed by those who came to Washington to stop Congress from ratifying the election of Joe Biden as our next President. The heroism of many police who, badly outnumbered, tried to protect the Capitol and the legislators inside from an angry mob. The complicity of other police who aided and abetted the insurgents. The courage of members of Congress to come back that same evening to finish the business of certifying Joe Biden’s victory. The craven actions of other legislators who, even after living through an attempt to sabotage a democratic election through violence that cost five lives but could have taken many more, still voted to reverse the outcome of the election.  

Donald Trump’s culpability for, what can only be called, an insurrection, is beneath contempt. From the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville in 2017 to the sacking of the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, he has given Presidential sanction to White Nationalists, Neo-Nazis, racists, anti-Semites and other purveyors of violence and hate. What has long lurked on the peripheries of American society has now been given a national spotlight. Who would have ever thought that these dark and evil forces would be championed by a sitting U.S. President?

I, like many Americans, find myself deeply rattled by the events of January 6th.  Is America a land of equal opportunity for all? Does the American justice system treat all people the same? Do we welcome to our shores, (in the words of Emma Lazarus, carved on the Statue of Liberty) “the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free?” Black Americans, living a totally different reality than White Americans, have long despaired of these American myths. For the rest of us, this new consciousness creates a crisis of faith.

The Talmud tells the story of Elisha ben Abuyah. Born to a prominent Jerusalem family, Elisha earned a reputation as a most promising, young, rabbinic scholar. It is told that he witnessed a young boy climbing a tree to take some eggs from a bird’s next. Following Jewish law, the boy chased away the mother bird before taking the eggs, showing a concern for the feelings of the mother bird. And yet, when coming off the tree, the boy was bitten by a snake and died. Having fulfilled a mitzvah for which the Torah promises a long life, Elisha witnessed the opposite and he suffers from a crisis of faith. Elisha abandons Judaism, becomes an apostate and from that time forth, is only referred to in the Talmud as Acher, “the other one”.

So much of our faith in America has been shaken. It is easy to despair. We could take Elisha’s path—by becoming cynical; by disengaging from politics; by demonizing all those who don’t agree with us. And each of those options will accelerate the erosion of America’s democratic fabric. No. Despair is not an option.

The Jewish community has a large stake in what is unfolding in Washington D.C. A significant number of Jews turned a blind eye to manifold examples of Donald Trump’s assault on truth and alleged criminal behavior because he was “good for Israel”. It is no different than Evangelical Christians who ignored the many ways that Donald Trump’s ethical behavior violated core teachings of the Church just because he could deliver a few, reliable conservative justices for the Supreme Court. The Jewish people paid a heavy price when a previously democratic country came up with all kinds reasons to allow a demagogue called Adolf Hitler to take over Germany. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s powerful video this week draws the obvious parallels between the rise of Nazism in Europe, which his family lived through, and the behavior of Donald Trump.

After four years of Trump’s Presidency, we have suffered tremendous damage to our country’s democratic institutions and principles. Within days of this writing, we will have a new President and a Democratic-led Congress. What is certain, is that the road back to an America that is worthy of cherishing, will require the commitment and energies of every person who cares about liberty, tolerance and justice.  

May we be equal to the challenge.

The Passover Spirit-Compassion First

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Note: These were remarks given at a Pre-Passover Vigil held in front of the Embassy of Israel in Washington D.C. on March 27, 2018.

I am Rabbi Sid Schwarz. I am the founding rabbi of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, MD; a life-long Zionist and a Board member of Truah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.

Three nights from now, we will sit at our Seder tables. The Seder tells our people’s master story which begins with our ancestors being slaves in the land of Egypt, in Africa. The triumphal moment in the story is the recounting of our ancestors’ redemption from slavery, allowing them to travel, through the desert to the land that God promised to Abraham, the land of Israel.

The Seder is both an historical re-enactment and an ethical charge. Some years, we test our imaginations to make it a re-enactment. But that has not been the case the last few years. The world today is flooded with refugees, over 60 million. Each and every one of them is looking for their Promised Land, a land in which they and their families can be safe. In the past decade over 50,000 Africans facing war, oppression and death in their home countries crossed the same desert that the Israelites crossed in the Passover story—the Sinai–and entered into the State of Israel.

Israel is not the only country in the world facing this dilemma. But it may be the only country in the world founded on the principles of the Hebrew prophets. “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him/her as yourself for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Lev 19:34).

In the Haggadah we read: Kol dichfin yatai veyachol –“let all who are hungry, all who are needy, come into our homes and eat.” This is the ethical charge of the Passover Seder.

Jews are rightfully proud of the state of Israel and its accomplishments. It is a country that has been settled by and built by refugees. After WWII, Israel offered a refuge to the Jews of Europe who were decimated by the Holocaust. In the 1950’s Israel took in Jews from Arab lands. In the 1980’s Israeli’s engineered a remarkable rescue of Jews from Ethiopia. And, in the 1990’s Israel took in almost a million Jews from the FSU. Wherever Jews have faced oppression, Israel has been a place of refuge.

But the true test of Biblical hospitality is opening our gates to those refugees who are not part of the majority culture. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that starting next week, Africans who came into the country illegally will be deported to Rwanda or Uganda. Tens of thousands of Israelis have protested the decision, arguing that such an action violates a core principle upon which Israel was founded.

In that same spirit, over 900 rabbis have signed a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu, co-sponsored by HIAS, the New Israel Fund, Truah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights and Right Now: Advocates for African Asylum Seekers in Israel. I am proud to be among the signers.

It reads, in part: “We write as Jewish clergy from around the world to urge you to stop the deportations of asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea who have sought refuge in Israel. As a country founded by refugees and whose early leaders helped to craft the 1951 International Convention on the Status of Refugees, Israel must not deport those seeking asylum within its borders. We Jews know far too well what happens when the world closes its doors to those forced to flee their homes….”

“…Our own experience of slavery and liberation and our own experience as refugees compel us to act with mercy and justice toward those seeking refuge among us. Please affirm these Jewish values as well as Israel’s international commitments by stopping the deportations.”

In the Biblical story of the Exodus, we are told that Pharaoh “hardened his heart” against his Hebrew slaves. We know what hard hearts look like. In the United States it is promoted as America First and it threatens 3.6 million undocumented immigrants and 800,000 “dreamers” who came to this country as children. Hard hearts are contagious. We now read of Hungary First, Austria First, Italy First, Myanmar First. Each of these countries has its unique victims. And now, Israel First. For every country that closes its heart and closes its borders, the most destitute people on our planet suffer.

We are here today, on the eve of Passover, the holiday of freedom, liberation and justice, to call for a new spirit. Rather than country first, how about compassion first? Instead of ethnicity first, how about hospitality first? Instead of me first, how about justice first? Let Israel be a light unto the nations in the way it treats its refuges.

Kol dichfin yatai veyachol –“let all who are hungry, all who are needy, come into our homes and eat.” Let the Passover season inspire us to open our hearts, open our homes and open our countries to the strangers in our midst. That would be a Passover worth celebrating.

These remarks were published in the New York Jewish Week on the same day as they were delivered.

Yitzhak Rabin: Reflections on Loss, Despair and Hope

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For people who care deeply about the State of Israel, the future of the Jewish people or about the prospects for peace in the world, the twentieth anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin provided much to think about.

People of my generation readily remember where they were when they heard the news about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The news of Rabin’s assassination hit me even harder, likely because I was far more invested at that point in my life in all the things that Yitzhak Rabin had come to represent. I recall vividly getting home from shul in the early afternoon of that November day when a neighbor driving by slowed down to ask me if I had heard the news. As the only rabbi on the block, she wanted to know my reaction, but it was the first time I got the news. My knees buckled and I got that feeling in the pit of the stomach that is triggered when the world, as you have come to know and rely on it, is about to fall apart.

As I think back now, it is clear that the assassination actually achieved its nefarious objective. The Oslo peace process was killed along with Rabin. In a new book, Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel, author Dan Ephron argues that a better analogy for Rabin’s murder than the assassination of JFK was that of Abraham Lincoln. Both Lincoln and Rabin won elections in young countries that were deeply divided over one critical issue, slavery for America and the possibility of trading land for peace in Israel. The opponents to these political leaders believed that the very future of their nation was being compromised by the elected head of state. The rhetoric that came out of these dissenting sectors provided incentive and justification for two young men in their 20’s, John Wilkes Booth and Yigal Amir, to take history into their own hands. The major difference, however, was that Lincoln had already vanquished the Confederacy by waging the Civil War, thus putting an end to the prospect of a country, “half slave and half free”. The Oslo Process was still in its infancy when Rabin was assassinated. Only a leader with moral courage and vision could lead a wounded and vulnerable nation away from occupation and perpetual conflict towards a more hopeful future. It was not to be.

We have seen this scene all too often in recent history. Leaders of political or social movements that seek to reverse generations worth of hatred, prejudice and oppression often pay the dearest price for their courage—Mahatma Ghandi, Anwar Sadat, Martin Luther King, Jr. What a sad commentary on human nature that terrorist networks can survive the killing of their leaders while movements for peace and justice often falter when their leaders die or are killed.

Yitzhak Rabin was a soldier who believed that peace would require more than a strong military. It would require a courage deeper than that which is called upon in battle. I was privileged to be seated on the White House lawn in September 1993 when, in the presence of President Bill Clinton and, face to face with Yassir Arafat, Rabin uttered words that could have reversed a century-old conflict. After recounting how many lives had been lost and all the reasons that Israel might be justified in continuing the cycle of war, he made a leap of faith by saying: “We say to you (Palestinians): Enough of blood and tears. Enough. We have no desire for revenge. We harbor no hatred towards you. We, like you, are people who want to build a home, to plant a tree, to love, to live side by side with you in dignity, in empathy, as human beings, as free men….”

Contrast the tone of those words with the extremism, the hatred, the mistrust and the ongoing cycle of violence that characterizes the situation in Israel/Palestine today. Leaders on both sides of the conflict are more inclined to bow to the pressures of their most extreme constituencies than to lead their people in the direction of mutual recognition, trust and peace.

Because even Jewish secularists are People of the Book, it is interesting to note that in the weeks following Rabin’s assassination, many commented that it took place in the week when the Torah portion was Vayera, the portion telling the story of the Binding of Isaac/Yitzhak. The Biblical Yitzhak was spared thanks to an angel; the Yitzhak who was the Prime Minister of the State of Israel had no such angel to spare him.

This year, the twentieth anniversary of the secular date—November 4th—fell a week later in the Torah reading cycle. It too had a message that makes one pause. The portion of Chayei Sarah starts with the death of Abraham’s wife, Sarah. Abraham wants to acquire a proper burial plot for her and he pays a high price to a local Hittite to gain full title to the Cave of Machpela. That Biblical city of Kiryat Arba is today the city of Hebron, probably the ugliest front in an all-too ugly history of conflict between Jewish settlers and a majority Palestinian city in the West Bank. It was the site of the massacre of 29 Palestinian Muslims at prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque (named after the common ancestor to both Jews and Muslims) by Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein on Purim, 1994.

Abraham’s purchase is the first act that begins to fulfill God’s promise of the Land of Israel to Abraham’s offspring. At the time it was an act of love and loyalty. But acts of love and loyalty, when not tempered by compassion for others, is precisely what allows extremists to employ religion to be a force for hatred and violence instead of as an inspiration to work for reconciliation and peace.

If ever there was a time to raise up the legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, z”l, now is that time.

Note: This article appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy on November 17, 2015.

Discovering America

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There is a wonderful phrase in Hebrew that drips with sardonic, Jewish wit. It is when someone says “gileta et America”, meaning “so you discovered America!”. It is said to someone when they say something so obvious that everyone has known it for years, but the person who shared it put the thought out in a way that suggests that they were the first person to uncover this truth.

This article appeared in the New York Jewish Week on August 21, 2015.

The phrase occurred to me when I read Daniel Gordis’ August 13th column in the Jerusalem Post titled “What if we Stopped Hasbara”. In the column he condemns the “Israel can do no wrong” mentality among the burgeoning number of Israel advocacy groups. He also urges the groups that truly care about Israel to talk about the country with a bit of nuance. There is no way that such groups have any credibility among thoughtful diaspora Jews when again and again they portray Israel as always in the right and everyone who challenges Israel as always in the wrong.

Gordis’ key passage: “Why, then, do some of us insist that being a real Zionist means insisting that … Israel does not have a racist, xenophobic cancer in its midst that simply needs to be excised? In part, that is too often what we model. When has the leadership of the Zionist world (except for the past two weeks) offered (any) critique of Israel’s actions, whether during peace or in war?”

So Daniel Gordis has “discovered America”.

It is indeed tragic, that it takes the slaying of Shira Banki, a 16 year old participant in Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade and the death of a Palestinian toddler (Ali Saad Dawabsha) and his father (Saad Dawabsheh) at the hands of arsonists to awaken the conscience of Israeli leadership to the scourge of extremist Jewish terrorism.

Liberal Zionists have been sounding the alarm bell about the unchecked rise of ultra-nationalist, anti-democratic and racist Jewish groups for decades. It would be too kind, and untrue, to say that the Netanyahu government has just ignored the phenomenon. There is ample evidence that many arms of the Israeli government have been complicit in aiding and abetting the rise of forces that threaten the future of the state of Israel as much if not more than Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran combined. Nor is it even remotely acceptable that the Prime Minister himself, on the eve of the last election, gave voice to the most vile anti-democratic and racist sentiment when he warned his supporters that Arabs (who are Israeli citizens) were going to flood the voting booths and that his supporters needed to turn out to re-elect him.

It is not surprising that a country under siege falls victim to increasingly xenophobic attitudes. In a 2012 poll conducted by an Israeli polling firm, Dialog, 59% of Israeli Jews wanted preference to Jews over Arabs in public employment, 49% wanted the State to treat Jews better than Arabs and 33% objected to Israeli Arabs even having the right to vote. The Israel Democracy Institute has been reporting a consistent rise of racist sentiments among Israeli Jews for more than a decade. It is even more pronounced among younger Israelis. In such an environment, one would hope for political leadership with some moral courage.

To say the least, Prime Minister Netanyahu has not provided that kind of leadership. In addition to his own statements, he has appointed senior cabinet members who have shown shocking insensitivity to the principles of minority rights, due process or the Jewish value of “protecting the stranger”. Minister of Justice, Ayelet Shaked, has suggested that the Israeli Supreme Court needs to be “reined in” because of its rulings that often uphold the rights of Palestinians. Minister of Culture, Miri Regev has stated that public funds should be withheld from artists who might be critical of the government, sending a serious message about freedom of expression in Israel. Deputy Foreign Minister, Tzipi Hotovely, who for all intents and purposes runs the Foreign Ministry in the absence of Avigdor Lieberman, has stated that because God gave the Land of Israel to the Jewish people, there is no problem with settlements on the West Bank.

Thank goodness for Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, who has been a consistent moral voice defending the rights of Israeli Arabs and condemning the hate speech and hate crimes that have become more prevalent and more acceptable in the Israeli public square. For his moral courage, Rivlin has had to shore up his security detail because of the growing number of threats being made of the kind that led up to the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin.

Daniel Gordis is the darling of the Jewish establishment on all things Israel. I say this with both admiration and some irony. I love reading Gordis. He hits many of my emotional Zionist buttons very deeply. Perhaps that is what gives him both some cover and some credibility to say what many of us have been saying for a very long time about the very real dangers facing Israel as both a democratic and a Jewish state.

On the issue of Israel, the Jewish community has become a toxic place. The open exchange of ideas is now far less valued than loyalty to the tribe and to the state of Israel. In such an atmosphere, truth suffers and thoughtful Jews become increasingly alienated from the Jewish community and from Israel.

I’m glad Daniel Gordis “discovered America”. Maybe someone will listen.

Israel: A Season of Reckoning

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The season of reckoning is upon us. For Jews, the sentiment will likely evoke thoughts of the upcoming Days of Awe. Both the Hebrew month of Elul and then the ten days of repentance that starts with Rosh HaShana and ends with Yom Kippur is the time when Jews are called upon to go into introspection mode. Where we identify particular sins of commission or omission the Jewish tradition calls upon us to repent and to make amends.

These are also days of reckoning for Israel which has the excruciatingly difficult task of trying to live up to the aspirational language of its Declaration of Independence to be “a society of freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel” while living under unrelenting threats to the safety and security of its citizens. This is something worth remembering as over the next few months Israel will be under scrutiny by several different human rights bodies.

Note: This article appeared in the New York Jewish Week on October 1, 2014.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) just issued a report on Israel’s treatment of Sudanese and Eritrean nationals who made their way into Israel. The report is titled “Make Their Lives Miserable”, a quote from former Israeli Minister of Interior, Eli Yishai. Indeed, that phrase has characterized Israeli policy towards the 50,000 plus Africans who have come to Israel in the last few years. HRW found that Israel has “coerced” some 7000 Sudanese and Eritreans to return to their countries even as that repatriation exposes the refugees to torture, imprisonment and charges of treason for setting foot in Israel. Israel’s asylum procedure—for those Eritreans and Sudanese who even manage to gain access to it—has resulted in a 100 percent denial rate for Sudanese, despite any Sudanese being liable for up to 10 year’s imprisonment for having set foot in Israel, and a 99.8 percent denial rate for Eritreans, despite their global refugee approval rate of 83 percent. The vast majority of the Eritreans and Sudanese still in Israel are living in detention centers where prospects of finding work and getting residence papers are next to impossible. Israeli officials deny that they are engaged in forced repatriation, although they do say they encourage repatriation to a third country.

The vast majority of the Eritreans and Sudanese still in Israel are living in detention centers, where prospects of finding work and getting residence papers are next to impossible. Last week, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the Holot detention facility in the Negev to be closed in 90 days, and it struck down a section of the Anti-Infiltration Law that allowed illegal migrants to be held in closed detention for a year.

As tragic and ironic as the African refugee situation is in Israel, it pales in comparison to the attention that will attend several inquiries that will take place investigating this summer’s war in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) itself has started an internal investigation of 99 separate incidents that took place during the Gaza war. They include Israeli military actions that resulted in the killing of civilians, the bombing of UNWRA facilities that were serving as safe havens for women and children and the use of Palestinians as human shields during ground operations. While several human rights organizations, both in Israel and abroad, have claimed that such internal investigations are not sufficiently rigorous or objective, this internal review process has resulted in some indictments in the past.

Even more attention will focus on the panel appointed to develop a report on this summer’s Gaza war by the UN Human Rights Council to be headed by Canadian jurist William Schabas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he will refuse to cooperate with this commission though a final decision has yet to be made. Informing the threatened boycott are statements that Schabas has made in the past critical of Israel and specifically, of PM Netanyahu. If Netanyahu follows through on his threat to boycott, the action will parallel Israel’s boycott of the UN panel of inquiry led by Richard Goldstone investigating the 2012 Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

No comment has yet been made by the Israeli government about another inquiry that UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has proposed to specifically look into Israel’s shelling of UNWRA facilities during the Gaza war this summer. This body will be in addition to the Schabas panel and the report will likely be juxtaposed to the IDF inquiry of the same incidents. One can easily predict that the contrast in the findings will make headlines.

All together this season of reckoning promises to be difficult not just for Israel, but for Jews who are torn between their liberal, humanitarian values and their identification with and affection for the state of Israel. The double standard by which Israel is judged by human rights organizations, by the UN and by the media is well documented. Two hundred thousand civilian deaths in Syria, the imprisonment of thousands of political dissidents in Egypt and the summary executions of suspected collaborators without due process in Gaza by Hamas will get a fraction of the attention that will attend Israeli human rights abuses. It is even harder to accept the irony that sitting in judgment of Israel on the UN Human Rights Council is China, which harvests the organs of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners, Saudi Arabia where homosexuality is a capital offense and Pakistan which executes people for religious blasphemy.

Notwithstanding all this, I believe that Israel would be making a serious strategic mistake if it again chooses to boycott or disregard the international human rights community. Judge Richard Goldstone, in an op-ed in which he reflected on the report he issued on Gaza (which the Jewish community characterized as his “apology”), made clear that the report would have been far more balanced had Israel cooperated with the investigation. He was left with no choice but to talk to the sources available to him—primarily Hamas.

In addition, in the court of world opinion Israel hurts its own cause by thumbing its nose at the only instruments that we have to insure some kind of sane world order. The instruments are flawed, to be sure. But do we believe that the world would be better off without them? Even the U.S. has learned that it has no choice but to work with these trans-national institutions and state actors. The Jewish community is complicit in this counter-productive strategy when it takes out full page ads to discredit respected international jurists like William Schabas even before he begins his work.

Israel’s human rights record is far better than most of the world believes it is but it is far worse than the organized Jewish community would have us believe. In the rabbinic tradition, one of the names for God is emet, the Hebrew word for truth. At this season of reckoning, neither individuals nor nations can afford avoiding hard truths.

Can Zionism be the Answer?

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Students of American Jewry often point to 1967 as a watershed in the evolution of the American Jewish community. The anxiety that American Jews felt in the weeks leading up to the Six Day War was palpable. There was no evidence that Israel could defend itself against any concerted Arab military assault, no less a multi-front war.

Because people most treasure that which they are on the verge of losing, identification with and sympathy for Israel skyrocketed. With Israel’s surprising and convincing military victory, Jews had much to celebrate. Sympathy turned quickly to pride and in the years that followed and American Jewry enjoyed a surge of ethnic, religious and Zionist identity.

Note: This article originally appeared in the New York Jewish Week on June 3, 2014.

By the middle of the 1980’s there was a growing chorus of voices that warned that Jewish identity could not be built exclusively around the commemoration of the Holocaust and pride in the state of Israel. It is worth noting that the Jewish community did a brilliant job of using those two events as drivers of Jewish identity. But questions were raised about whether identity built around a trip to Auschwitz or a mission to Israel would last. How healthy is a Jewish identity that is built on a story of Jewish victimization? What are the implications of having one’s religious identity tied to a nation-state whose decisions are driven by domestic politics and changing geo-strategic considerations?

These questions linger. But however valid the questions are, the alternative to building Jewish identity around the tragedy and triumph of 20th century Jewish history is to create a community deeply devoted to Torah (Jewish learning), Avodah (prayer, God and matters of the spirit) and Gemilut Chasadim (acts of lovingkindness towards one another and a commitment to heal a broken world).  Non-Orthodox American Judaism has yet to build that type of community (and the Orthodox fare only slightly better). So it is that our community builds Holocaust museums and memorials in city after city and invests hundreds of millions of dollars in Birthright Israel. As expensive as these projects may be, they are infinitely easier to make happen then getting Jews serious about actually living a Jewish life.

Now I happened to grow up as an observant Jew and was the beneficiary of a day school education. Yet what made me most passionate about Jewish life and what eventually led me to want to become a rabbi was my activism in the Soviet Jewry movement and my love for the state of Israel. These “tribal” elements of my Jewish identity are becoming increasingly anachronistic.  More and more Next Gen Jews see such loyalties as offensive. In the Pew study, only 43% of those surveyed felt that caring about Israel was essential to being a Jew. Among those who were under the age of 30, that number drops to 32%. In a more recent study conducted by Steven M. Cohen, close to 20% of non-Orthodox Jews aged 18-29 were “Israel-alienated”.

Perhaps Birthright will make a difference. Evaluation data from past participants show a marked difference in the likelihood that Birthright alumni will marry other Jews and find ways to connect with the Jewish community. Still we know that without high quality follow up much of the initial impact of a first trip to Israel will weaken. Birthright Next has not yet found a way to capture high percentages of Birthright alumni with Jewish content programming. The Jewish Agency’s Masa program has provided financial incentives for longer term Israel program for young adults, from five months to a year. In the wings is a new project coming out of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office. Dubbed the “Prime Minister’s Initiative” it promises to dwarf Birthright in size and scope and the goal is to engage Next Gen Jews in some serious Jewish identity programming with Israel as a centerpiece of a range of experiences.

One has to admire both the ingenuity of Jewish organizations for creating such innovative responses to the challenge of insuring Jewish identity on the part of Next Gen Jews as well as the generosity of Jewish philanthropists who help foot the bill for these programs. Yet I am concerned that one piece of the puzzle is missing. Since the vast majority of the American participants in these programs will live their lives in America, these programs must make a connection between an Israel experience and the heritage called Judaism. When I was a young adult the link between the two was called Zionism.

Zionism is the meeting point between Jewish history, Jewish heritage and the aspirations of the Jewish people to establish a sovereign nation-state in the community of nations. Because I deeply resonate to that synthesis I am both willing and proud to call myself a Zionist even when I find myself in deep disagreement with the policies of one Israeli government or another. At its best Zionism is nuanced and allows for a variety of interpretations of the kind of society that is created in Israel and the relationship between that State and Jews who live throughout the world.

Our dilemma today is that at the very time that we desperately need an ideological linkage between powerful Israel experiences and the creation of robust Jewish communities for Next Gen Jews in America, “Zionism” is absent from the mix. The term has been hijacked by the left and by the right. Among Next Gen Jews I hear arguments that echo the claim of the political left that Zionism is form of racism. I also hear other arguments that echo the party line of much of the Israel advocacy establishment that to be a Zionist means that Jews need to provide unqualified support for Israel because the world is so hostile to the national aspirations of the Jewish people. Even if I accept the second part of that statement, there are very few Next Gen Jews who are prepared to simply be Israel flag wavers.

I believe that the state of Israel is the single most important project of the Jewish people of the 20th and 21st centuries. There is much to be proud of after 66 years but much work left to be done—finding a suitable political agreement with the Palestinian people; strengthening Israel’s democratic principles; achieving true religious pluralism; eliminating institutional discrimination that negatively impacts Israel’s Arab citizens; supporting the renaissance of Jewish culture and learning; incubating new forms of communal life that reflect Judaism’s highest values. This effort should excite, inspire and engage the best minds and hearts in the Jewish world. That would be a Zionism worthy of the term.

Loyalty, Truth and Freedom of Expression

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Given the controversy surrounding Theater J’s production of Motti Lerner’s play, The Admission, at the DCJCC, I expected a full scale indictment of Israel’s conduct during the 1948 War of Independence. Instead I encountered a play that probed the complexity of war, politics, memory, ethnic identity, love and survival with astounding sensitivity and nuance.

Ever since the play was scheduled last summer a small group of Washington area Jews organized themselves into a group called Citizens Opposed to Propaganda Masquerading as Art (COPMA). COPMA exerted enormous pressure on the local Jewish Federation to cut funding to the DCJCC because its Theater J had sponsored plays that ask uncomfortable questions about the state of Israel. The effort is similar to actions taken in New York and San Francisco to shut down Jewish Film Festivals because some of the films are critical of Israel. In a display of Jewish communal courage all too rare these days, the executive director and president of the Washington Jewish Federation issued public letters declaring that the community would not cave to the pressure exerted by COPMA even though that action will likely cost the Federation tens of thousands of dollars in contributions.

This article originally appeared in The Washington Post on March 30, 2014.

In fact, the DCJCC did make a concession to the protesters. They downgraded The Admission from a full production to a “workshop” and then inserted into the spring schedule an additional production of Golda’s Balcony, a play about former Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir.

The incident is but one of dozens of examples of how the Jewish community currently labors under a not so hidden loyalty test as it relates to what one can and cannot say about the state of Israel. National Hillel is under increasing criticism for its attempt to enforce standards that would keep certain kinds of anti-Israel speakers from being sponsored by their campus chapters around the country. Jews who associate with J Street have been accused of disloyalty to the Jewish community despite the fact that J Street’s policy explicitly endorses a safe and secure Israel as well as advocates for a two state solution to the Middle East dispute. A recent study found that one-third of American rabbis are not comfortable speaking the truth as they see it as it relates to Israel out of fear for their jobs. Recently, the rabbis of B’nai Jeshurun, the famously liberal synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, were called to task for signing an ad that was seen as critical of Aipac.

I understand what is behind this atmosphere of fear and retribution. Israel is increasingly treated as a pariah nation in the international community despite being the only democracy in the Middle East and having a far better human rights record than any of its neighboring countries. While powerless to change the antipathy of so much of the world to Israel, some Jews try to demand of their co-religionists a loyalty to the country that allowed the Jewish people to reconstitute itself after the Holocaust. Yet with the passage of time fewer and fewer Jews carry these memories and their ties to Jewish communal solidarity weaken. Attempts to enforce communal discipline and require a non-critical assessment of the state of Israel not only cannot succeed in America, it is likely to alienate the very Jews the community hopes to engage.

Ironically a play like The Admission may do more to engage Jews with the issues at the heart of the Middle East conflict than foolhardy attempts to enforce loyalty. The play portrays an overly self-righteous son trying to come to grips with the fact that his father may have been complicit in the killing of Arab civilians during the 1948 War of Independence. The father, perhaps altruistically and perhaps out of a sense of guilt, has devoted his life to improve the quality of life of Arab Israelis. The Arab/Palestinian Israelis in the play are torn between their desire to stay out of trouble, get an education and improve the quality of life for themselves and their children and their desire to unearth evidence of an injustice done to their parents and grandparents a generation earlier.

Hovering over the play is the recognition that war has no victors. All in its wake are victims, even, to quote the Bible, “unto the tenth generation”. Those in the Jewish community who seek to stifle freedom of expression are no less living out the trauma of the Holocaust than those in the Palestinian community who say that there can be no peace in the region until they can return to the villages of their grandparents which are now inside the borders of the state of Israel.

One of the great gifts that Nelson Mandela gave the world was the understanding that no healthy nation can be built on back of an historical injustice without a process of truth and reconciliation in which all parties come to grips with the transgressions of the past. There is plenty of blame to go around, on all sides. Until the parties to the Middle East conflict are ready for such a process, perhaps art will have to suffice.

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Rabbi Sid Schwarz is a senior fellow at Clal. He is the author of Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Community (Jewish Lights). He also serves as the director of the Rene Cassin Fellowship Program, a fellowship on Judaism and human rights with hubs in New York, London and Jerusalem for Next Gen Jews.

Rabbi Sid in Print

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“A Rabbinic Call For Human Rights”

published in the Jewish Week – January 23, 2013

Last week, I was one of several rabbis from a range of religious denominations who met with a senior Israeli diplomat at the Israeli Embassy. We were there to deliver a letter asking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel plans to construct a new settlement in the E1 zone.

Such a new settlement would not only create a major obstacle to a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict, but would exacerbate tensions between Jews and Palestinians and inevitably lead to the violation of the human rights of Arabs living in that area. The letter was signed by more 700 rabbis and cantors representing well over 100,000 American Jews.

Last year, I was one of several rabbis who went on a trip to South Florida to stand in solidarity with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) who have been trying for years to stop the near-slavery conditions endured by migrant workers in the agriculture industry. Since then, the CIW has made significant progress in getting the food industry to abide by a Fair Food Agreement that holds growers to a policy of zero tolerance for slavery, zero tolerance for sexual harassment, and minimum wage and safety protections for all workers.

We engaged in several protests at local supermarkets to put pressure on grocery chains to comply with the agreement. In one, not so small victory, days after our protest at a new Trader Joe’s, the company signed onto the Fair Food Agreement and also agreed to pay one penny more a pound for tomatoes — for the average worker, that translates into $7,000 a year. Trader Joe’s became the ninth major retailer to sign the agreement.

And just last fall, I joined a rabbinic-led campaign that stood up to anti-Muslim hatred with a true Jewish message. What spurred us into action was the fact that Jewish “activist” Pamela Geller had raised money to place an ad in the New York and Washington subway systems that read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.” It continued, “Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” Now it is hard for me to be ashamed by an ad that ends with “support Israel,” but I was more than ashamed; I was outraged. Within weeks a counter ad appeared that read: “In the choice between love and hate, choose love. Help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbors.” The “love” ad made New York magazine’s 2012 list of Fifty Reasons to Love New York.

The common denominator in all three of these stories was Rabbis for Human Rights-North America (RHR-NA). Founded in 2002 as an affiliate of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, the organization has gradually broadened its mandate to include a wider range of issues. By mutual agreement with our colleagues in Israel, this past week the organizations announced that even as we would continue to collaborate on Israel related issues, the North American organization would re-organize itself independently under the name, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. (See “Rabbis For Human Rights’ International Split,” Jan. 18.)

Much of my work in the American Jewish community involves helping rabbis be more effective leaders. Whether serving in congregations, Jewish educational institutions or Jewish communal organizations, rabbis represent our link to a precious Judaic heritage. Rabbis need to be not only teachers of the values of that heritage but also guides for how Jews might navigate a morally complex world.

Yet advancing human rights is not just the job of rabbis. It is the responsibility of all people of conscience. Religion, if it is going to be a force for good in the world and not a force for division and extremism, needs to motivate people to protect the rights that are guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ratified by the international community in 1948. That Declaration was largely driven by the horrors that the world witnessed during the dark days of World War II. Going forward, T’ruah intends to mobilize the larger American Jewish community to address human rights issues in the world from the perspective of Jewish values. As a people that was so victimized by the failure of the world to take action during the Holocaust, Jews should be at the forefront of efforts to ensure that such horrors never happen again.

There are currently more than 1,800 rabbis and cantors who are part of T’ruah’s network. But this is only the beginning. In the coming years, we hope that all Jews, whether religious or secular, conservative or liberal, wealthy or poor, become part of a movement to ensure that all human beings be treated as if they were made in the image of God (b’tzelem elohim). Standing up for the human rights of all people, regardless of religion, race, sexual orientation or national origin is one of the central mandates of Judaism. If Judaism cannot offer wisdom and guidance as to how we might make a small contribution to heal a broken world, then it has little to no relevance at all.

New International Fellowship Program on Judaism and Human Rights

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Last week an application process was launched for a brand new program called the René Cassin Fellowship Program (RCFP). With hubs in New York, London and Jerusalem, the RCFP will select 36 outstanding Jewish young professionals, ages 25-35. The year-long program of study, travel and hands-on impact projects does not take the place of one’s current employment or program of studies. It is rather an enrichment experience that will explore Jewish visions for a just society and will provide young Jewish professionals with the knowledge, skills and contacts needed to enhance their activism in the areas of social justice, international human rights or related fields.

It is sad and a bit ironic that some in the Jewish community have acquired an aversion to the array of organizations that deal with human rights. This stems from the fact that for several decades many human rights groups have put a spotlight on Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinian population living in the territories captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War. The U.N. has been a forum particularly hostile to the state of Israel, with many resolutions of condemnation failing only because of a United States veto in the U.N. Security Council. The U.N. sponsored 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban South Africa became a flashpoint for the obscene and disproportionate attention paid to Israel as compared to many other countries with no tradition of democracy or legal due process and with far worse records on human rights.

The RCFP starts with a different premise. We believe that the many international, national and NGO forums in which human rights is the focus can either support or detract from the legitimacy of nations. Israel and the Jewish people have an important stake in the issues addressed by these bodies. While it is unfortunate that Israel must engage in a debate over its legitimacy in the community of nations 65 years after its founding, the choice to be absent is an error. Israel was created by an act of the United Nations. Even in the face of the most outrageous accusations and plentiful evidence of double standards being used by states whose record on human rights are among the worst in human history, Jews must appear at such forums and speak the truth in the noblest tradition of Jewish values. The Fellowship program is designed to equip participants for just such kind of engagement.

The sponsoring organization for the fellowship program is René Cassin, a human rights NGO based in London that uses the experience of the Jewish people and Jewish values to campaign and educate on universal human rights issues such as discrimination, detention and genocide. Founded in 2000, the organization is named in honor of René Cassin, a French Jew and Nobel Laureate who was one of the principal co-drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With special consultative status at the United Nations, René Cassin uses that forum to give voice to Jewish values within the international human rights community.

The RCFP is funded by a lead gift from New York UJA/Federation’s Commission on the Jewish People. A critical dimension of the program is having three cohorts of fellows each from a different center of world Jewry. Between monthly study sessions, there will be regular Skype conversations between Jews in the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel. Each will bring their unique historical and cultural background to bear as they reflect on the very challenging issues presented in the international human rights arena. The group will participate together in a study tour of Israel in June 2013.

Partnering with René Cassin in Israel will be Makom, a division of the Jewish Agency for Israel led by Jonny Ariel. Makom is playing a leading role as a catalyst for effective and compelling Israel engagement and Israel education. The lead educator in Israel will be Rabbi Gideon Sylvester, an Orthodox rabbi from the UK with expertise in human rights who now lives and teaches in Israel. The lead educator in London will be Simone Abel, a human rights attorney who is also the executive director of Rene Cassin.

The deadline for applications is December 1, 2012. Those interested in learning more about the fellowship program or who would like to obtain an application form please email info@renecassin.org with subject line “RCFP”. Applicants should be between the ages of 25 and 35 and live close to one of the three regional hubs – New York City, London or Jerusalem. Selections will be made by February 15, 2013, with the program commencing in May. To learn more about the program, please visit: http://bit.ly/UCaRz3 which is part of the René Cassin website.

Rabbi Sid Schwarz, author of Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World and the forthcoming, Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future, is the director of René Cassin Fellowship Program and will also serve as the lead educator in New York.

(Originally posted on http://ejewishphilanthropy.com)

Welcome to the Tribe

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Kol Nidre, 2012:

Some years ago the Jewish Week asked me to write an op-ed before the High Holydays. At the risk of being thrown out of the rabbi’s union I said that I wasn’t quite sure how many of the Jews showing up for Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur were there for the prayers or, for that matter, to wrestle with the themes of forgiveness and repentance. Rather, they were there to hang out with other Jews. Well before the internet was invented, Jews created the original flash mob. “Pass the word. Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur are coming. Everyone will be there. Show up.” And we do.

There is something nice, comforting, even exciting about being with other people that you know and even many that you don’t know who share a common history, religion and ethnic folkways. Mordecai Kaplan hit the nail on the head when he called it “peoplehood.” In many ways, peoplehood is another term for tribalism. For me, there are no negative connotations to the term “tribalism”.  It does not require drums, feathers or body paint (although Adat Shalom is really big on drums). Tribalism is simply an extended family, and it carries all the charm and dysfunction of family as well. The tribal instinct of Jews is strong due to historic conditioning; in so many places over so many centuries, Jews were the oppressed minority. There was no one we could count on except each other.

There are, however, two problems with tribal Judaism. First is that we are becoming increasingly aware that tribal identity can be morally corrosive. It is too easy to get into our tribal cocoon and see everything exclusively from our own, limited perspective. Jews are certainly prone to the syndrome. There are many Jews who evaluate every matter of public policy based on whether or not it is “good for the Jews”. In Israel, the tribal path is the one that makes Palestinians invisible. Too many Jews in Israel and in the diaspora choose to ignore the abuses of Palestinian rights that take place in the territories every day and the discrimination facing the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Palestinian Arabs. Sometimes our tribal tendencies make us so obsessed with our own history of persecution and ongoing threats to Jewish survival that we cannot see how we might be complicit in the oppression of others.

There is also a second problem with tribal Judaism. Our children, next generation Jews, the Jews who are Millenials, are increasingly post-tribal. I call their identity “covenantal”. Covenantal Jewish identity is strongly rooted in universalist tendencies. Covenantal Jews have some awareness that Judaism brought many core values into the world like compassion, charity, human dignity and care for the natural world. They might even take pride in that fact. Yet they will see those values best realized in service to humanity at large. Because their primary identity is as global citizens, and their Jewish identity is secondary at best, covenantal Jews resist the bias of previous generations to preference Jewish loyalties. That bias relates to friendships, organizational affiliations, relationship to the state of Israel and even the choice of spouse. In fact, the suggestion to a covenantal Jew that they should only consider marrying other Jews sounds ethically offensive because they see it as violating a key Jewish value about treating all human beings equally.

As with all attempts at categorizing attitudes and behaviors, my tribal and covenantal categories are stereotypes. Many here will identify with some parts of each. The case I want to make is simple. The Jewish community we have today was created by tribal Jews for tribal Jews. To the extent that the next generation of Jews is more heavily covenantal than it is tribal, the Jewish community cannot conduct business as usual and expect that the Jewish community will still be around in 100 years. We are already seeing dramatic declines in all of the tribal indicators of a strong Jewish community including synagogue affiliation, participation in communal Jewish federation campaigns, support for the state of Israel and in-marriage.

So here is the challenge: Can we transmit a tribal Jewish story in a way that next generation, covenantal Jews can hear it?

This evening, I want to articulate the shape of this new narrative.  I’ve got two objectives. First, there are a fair number of covenantal Jews here tonight whose future commitment to their Jewish identity and that of their children is up for grabs. I am hopeful that what I say and how I say it might make them open to Jewish identity in a way that they may not have been before. Second, for those whose Jewish identity is stronger, I hope you will take on some missionary work. Not in the Mitt Romney/Mormon fashion; I don’t want you to go door to door either in your neighborhood, or God-forbid in a developing country across the globe. Yet you interact daily with family members, friends and colleagues who don’t totally “get” why you identify as strongly as you do with your Jewish heritage and with the Jewish community. I want to provide you with some language that will help you because I think that our Jewish identity should be a great source of pride that we are willing to share with others.

Let me start with a story. Last December, I led a group of 18 members of Adat Shalom on a trip to Haiti. Organized by Pamela Sommers and Wendy Swire, the group was evenly divided between adults and their children, ages 15 to 30. We stayed in Leogane, near the center of the earthquake that devastated the country two years ago, and close to the New Christian School of Pastor Johnny Felix which Adat Shalom is supporting financially. During the days we worked side by side with Haitians helping to build houses that would enable them and their families to move from one room wood huts with no plumbing to these new homes. In the evenings, after our physical labor was done, we explored the teachings of Judaism to understand how our work was a fulfillment of Judaism’s core commandments about tzedek u’mishpat, doing righteousness and justice in the world without regard to race, religion or nationality.

It was clear to me that the adults were more taken by the study of Jewish sources than the young people. Though respectful, my sense was that to the teens, the Jewish study was some nice window dressing offered by their rabbi to fill the evenings. To paraphrase the title of a sermon I gave from this bimah a few years ago: “What’s Judaism got to do with it?” The important work was happening during the day.

Then on Sunday we went to Pastor Johnny’s church. It became abundantly clear in that setting that our being Jewish mattered a great deal.

The church was in a tent with a dirt floor. The benches people sat on were cast offs. Some were broken. It was clear how poor these Haitian were. Most did not even have permanent homes. Yet they were dressed exquisitely and had been there already for two hours when we arrived for the last 90 minutes of the service. As we walked in we were greeted by a Hebrew song that I taught a year earlier when I first visited the congregation–Shabbat shalom.  Our visit fell during the festival of Chanukah. Pastor Johnny had invited me to preach the morning sermon so I chose to use the lessons of Chanukah to offer words of hope and encouragement to people that had endured not just the devastation of a natural disaster but whose families had endured decades of brutality, oppression and corrupt rule by a string of dictators. And when our makeshift Adat Shalom choir got up to teach some Hebrew songs, the congregation joined with passion to the words: Hine mah tov umah naim, shevet achim gam yachad, “how good and beautiful it is to be in this space, one tribe of sisters and brothers sitting together in the spirit of friendship and in unity.”

These Haitians were devout Christians who live on next to nothing. Most had not finished high school. Sunday worship was the highlight of their week and no one would dream of missing it. They were simple people but beautiful souls. They had never read Mordecai Kaplan. To them we were God’s chosen people who had come to worship with them, to support their pastor and to provide financial support to the school Pastor Johnny built to educate their children. To them we were the children of Israel doing God’s work in the world just as had been written in the Bible.  The fact that we were Jewish mattered and everyone of us in the Adat Shalom delegation walked out of that church tent knowing it.

The work we did was not benefiting Jews; we were engaged in helping poor Haitians whose predicament got worse as a result of an earthquake. But Judaism framed our entire experience. It helped us explore the meaning of faith and suffering. It offered us the wisdom passed down through the centuries about our obligations to the poor. And to the Haitians who had never met a Jew before, we were the children of Israel, behaving in accordance with the word of God as written in the Bible. We were engaged in covenantal work but it took on much greater meaning when understood and presented in the context of our tribal identity.

Which brings me back to the changing nature of Jewish identity in America. How do we fulfill the commandment from the Sh’ma: v’shinantem l’vanecha, “you shall teach it diligently to your children?” How do we convey that Judaism is not some relic of religious practices and superstitions handed down from the past but rather a way of being in the world that allows us to live a life that honors our particular history and urges us to make the world better for all of humanity?

I believe that being a member of the tribe that we call the Jewish people helps us to live lives of sacred purpose. I offered a glimpse of what that looks like by bringing you with me into Pastor Johnny’s church on Sunday morning. But too many Jews, disgusted by the excesses of tribal identity, come to the conclusion that they are better off, the world is better off, if they abandon their religious/cultural/ethnic identity. They are wrong.

It is not a coincidence that Jews have been in the leadership of movements for positive social change for more than a century in numbers totally disproportionate to our percentage of the population. I could cite the labor movement, the civil rights movements, the anti-apartheid movement, international human rights and a dozen more such causes. Even fairly assimilated Jews are powerfully motivated by the Jewish tribal story because it contains universal, covenantal lessons. We are a people who were born in slavery and transitioned to freedom. We are a people who are reminded again and again in our liturgy and sacred texts, “oppress not the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”. We are a people that has been history’s perpetual minority so we have worked to make the most radical teaching of Torah become part of a global ethic of human rights–that every human being has within them the spark of the Divine and must be treated with respect and dignity.

And you, my friends, by virtue of being part of the tribe called “the Jewish people” are potential carriers of that sacred covenantal message to a world that desperately needs it. I know many of you. And I know how many awesome good things you are already doing in the world. Yet I fear that there are still too many Jews who rejoice in their Jewish tribalism without thinking about the sacred purpose behind the tribe. And I also fear that too many Jews do the covenantal work but don’t value the tribe that is necessary to carry the message forward.

So much of the program here at Adat Shalom is designed to balance those twin commitments. Whether it is showing up the third Tuesday of every month when Adat Shalom staffs the Manna Food Center in Rockville; participating in Sukkot in April in conjunction with Yachad, to rehabilitate the home of a poor resident in our community; or perhaps signing up for Adat Shalom’s second annual service mission to Haiti Dec. 22nd-30th. I could give you a dozen other examples, but you get the point. The way Jews “walk the talk” of prophetic Judaism is by practice, practice, practice. I urge you in the year ahead to consider increasing your commitment to engage in just such kind of holy practice.

When we make “lives of sacred purpose” the central core of our Jewish identity, it is much easier to appreciate and celebrate the tribal aspects of our identity. I remember bumming around Europe as a college student with my best friend. In every city, we made a bee line to the synagogue or Jewish community center where we never failed to find a free meal, a warm bed and stories that gave me a new appreciation of the tenacity of Jewish survival and the mutual support from one Jew to the next that made that survival possible. Thirty years later Sandy and I were in Madrid during Passover. After we finished touring the Prado Museum we sat outside to eat lunch with the matzah and tuna fish that we had brought with us. A college student walked by and exclaimed: Matzah! She was a Jewish exchange student studying in Spain for the semester and had not made a single Jewish connection in all her time there, not even for Seder. But seeing matzah, all of her tribal bells starting ringing and she was elated. Of course, we invited her to share our matzah. We did not stay in touch, but I’d like to think that that little matzah moment helped connect this college student to her Jewish identity. Welcome to the tribe!

Some of you know that for more than 20 years, one of my central passions was the Soviet Jewry movement. I can think of no better example in my lifetime of how tribal ties between Jews was leveraged to achieve a greater good. In fact, the Soviet Jewry movement effected a change in the course of the history of the world. I was therefore deeply touched when just this past shabbat, David Silberman relayed a story initially told by Shlomo Carlebach during his session at shabbat breirot. It takes place in a Russian Gulag prison during the dark days of Communism. A Jew is serving a life sentence for his activism to emigrate to Israel, a crime under the Soviets. He hears that another Jew was just brought to the prison and he is committed to seek him out. During their one hour of exercise in the yard, he sees the new inmate, and falls into step beside him.

“Shalom Aleichem landsman”, he says in a whisper.

The new inmate glares at him. “Are you crazy? You will get us shot.”

“Do you know what tonight is?” asks the first Jew. “It is the start of Yom Kippur.”

“Big deal. We are Jews. So what? What has it gotten us?”

“I’ve been in this prison for ten years. You are the first Jew I have seen in all of this time. We must share this night together in some way. Let’s sing Kol Nidre together. Do you remember the melody?”

Tears filled the new inmate’s eyes. He whispered: “I used to sing Kol Nidre with my father in synagogue as a young boy. I haven’t heard it since then.”

So the two of them begin to chant the Kol Nidre melody together very softly. Suddenly they see the guards in the watchtower pointing their guns at them. The captain climbs down from the tower, walks in their direction with gun drawn. “What are you two Jews doing?” he demands.

“We are just singing a song.”

“Let me hear it again” said the captain. The two Jews are certain that this will be their final act before they are shot. The captain listens for a couple of minutes, allowing the prisoners to sing the melody through.

And then the captain said: “I was taken away from my family at age 14 and put into the Tsars army. I have been in the army my entire adult life. But your melody brought back memories that I had long forgotten–going to synagogue with my father, huddling under his talis as the cantor sang the Hebrew prayers. Now I realize that I was born a Jew even though it has been decades since I had anything to do with my people. I cannot help you out of this prison, but thank you for helping me remember who I am.”

Welcome to the tribe indeed.

Each of us asks ourselves. “Who am I? What parts of my identity are most meaningful? What is the legacy that I want to pass on to the next generation? For me, there is no part of my identity that confers more meaning than being part of the Jewish people. Not just the tribal part of the Jewish people but, as well, the piece of the Jewish story that compels me to ask myself every day whether I am worthy of my ancestors who stood at Sinai to receive the covenant of Torah.

At this time of the year we are painfully aware of our own mortality. Part of the beauty of connecting our personal life journey to the Jewish tribal story is that we know that the work of healing a broken world neither started with us, nor will the work end with us. To the extent that our values are important to us we hope that they will be carried on by our children, our grandchildren and generations well into the future. If we are successful perhaps our sacred tribal legacy might just bring the world a tad closer to redemption.