Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon Rabbi Josh Whinston Last March, on a Trip

Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon Rabbi Josh Whinston Last March, on a trip to Honduras, a trip on which I only expected to be discussing the situation in Central America, I found myself in a conversation about Israel. Roxana was born in Lima, Peru. She immigrated to the United States when she was a young girl. Her father had been a member of the Peruvian Congress, and they had to flee in the 1980s. We spoke about her sense of America and migration, we talked about the way she believed the world could work. She told me she didn’t believe in nation-states. Roxana then began to shift the conversation. She brought up Israel and began to talk about her take on the country. She stopped herself after a few seconds and asked me, “You know, I don’t know where you stand on Israel.” I hesitated for a moment and then said, “Well, I like to think of myself as a progressive Zionist.” Roxana looked at me with confusion, “What’s that?” were the next words out of her mouth. I am beginning my 4th year as your rabbi, and I have yet to speak about Israel. I haven’t spoken on Israel at Shabbat services, and I haven’t spoken on Israel during any of my previous High Holy Day sermons. I haven’t spoken about Israel, and I recall only one member of our congregation asking me about this. I imagine some of you have noticed, but only one person decided to say something. It is a sad statement that no matter what I say about Israel, I am sure there are folks here who will be upset. And truth be told, no matter what I say about Israel, I will be upset. I will be upset because I love Israel, at times in my life, I have wanted to live in Israel, and I also know that Israel is not living up to its ideals. Like most countries, there is so much right about Israel, and there is so much wrong. I could spend the next few minutes talking to the Israel defenders or the Israel critics; it would certainly make for good post-service discussion. However, I’d like to speak to the silent majority in the room today, the Israel-ambivalents. Yes, most of us in the room are likely a part of that group, folks who have thrown up their hands in utter exasperation at the current state of conditions. Whether one blames the Palestinians or the Israelis, most of us have given up on peace between them. The last 20 years have made the conversation in the American Jewish community too toxic, too offensive, and too pointless. Many of us have not traveled to Israel, we don’t teach our children Hebrew as a practical language, and few of us know much about Israeli history. Even if none of this ever changes, American Jews and liberal Jews, in particular, have a stake in the future of the State of Israel, we must not relegate ourselves to the periphery of this conversation either with other Jews or with less than friendly progressives. We have a stake because of like-minded Israelis, because Israel invites us to the conversation, and because what happens to and in Israel affects world Jewry. As Reform Jews, we have a stake in the future of Israel, partly because Reform and Conservative Judaism, that is, Liberal Judaism is growing exponentially in Israel. “In a recent survey, 34% of Israeli Jews said that the Progressive [Reform] movement is the Jewish movement they most identify with. (23% stated that they identify most with Orthodox Judaism).” Because it is not only the ruling rabbinic leadership that rejects us but also the choices the state has made in the recent past around reform rabbinic compensation and western wall policies, we must work to uphold the position of progressive Jews in Israel. When other Jews fail to recognize and support our understanding of Judaism in the public square, in a state whose inception was to protect all Jews, we must raise our voices. But shared religious outlook is not the only reason we have a stake in the future of the state of Israel. More than religious recognition, there are Israelis fighting in their society for issues of equality with which most of us would find common cause. We share values, political and religious. We tend to think of the social justice issues in Israel just having to do with the occupation and the need for a just peace, but organizations like Zazim are fighting against the disenfranchisement of Arabs and specifically Bedouin. In the last two elections, Zazim did something many of us will be doing in the coming months. Zazim organized rides to polling stations, in their case, for Bedouin people who would not otherwise be able to vote. The Israeli Religious Action Center, an arm of the Israeli Reform movement, is fighting for equal treatment of LGBTQ families and the ability of folks in that community to adopt children in the same way heterosexual folks are able. Yes, there is a lot more going on in Israel that needs our attention than the occupation. And just for clarification sake, I am not saying that the occupation does not matter and that peace between the Israelis and Palestinians does not matter, American Jews need to be aware that it is not the only thing that matters in Israel. When women are forbidden from praying out loud at the western wall, we must raise our voices. When Ethiopian Jews are shot by Israeli police officers, we must raise our voices. American Jews must engage with Israel to be in solidarity with Israelis fighting similar fights many of us believe in as well, but we should not just engage with Israel only for altruistic reasons. Even if we are Israel-Ambivalents, even if we’ve resigned ourselves to not care, to avoid the subject, to look the other way, what happens in Israel affects us. What happens in Israel affects all Jews. Like it or not, when people talk about Israel, even though they are wrong to do so, they are also talking about Jews. And when Israel speaks, it tries to speak for us. There is no separation for many between the two. We must engage with Israel because far too often Israel either tries or de facto speaks for us, and we must be engaged in that conversation. Israel will engage you if you don’t engage it! Whether it is your child on campus, a conversation about politics, or listening to Right-wing Christian Evangelicals, it is nearly impossible to avoid the subject. Whether it is the Dyke March in DC or the anti-Semitic memes that invoke images of Israeli national leaders, we fool ourselves to think that we can hide from Israel. And when we try to hide, someone else gets to control the narrative; someone else gets to tell our story. And I say our story because it is our story. Yes, political Israel may be a sovereign nation-state, but unlike most other nation-states that are autonomous of each other and non-citizens, Israel has always been and continues to be deeply linked with world Jewry. The World Zionist Congress will be meeting again this coming year. The Zionist Congress helps influence the State of Israel by determining how some State money is spent and helps fulfill leadership positions in some of Israel’s national institutions, including the World Zionist Organization (WZO), the Jewish Agency for Israel, and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael – Jewish National Fund (KKL- JNF). In at least these formal ways, Israel has always sought external influence, and I would argue that it is our obligation as members of the American Jewish community to utilize these formal mechanisms for influence and to use our influence in American national and state politics to affect outcomes in the State of Israel. I believe in Jewish peoplehood. As Jews, we are members not only of a religion but a group of people who have defined ourselves as different than other peoples. Yes, that line of just how different may move all the time, but we are more than another church down the street. This is part of the reason we still have the World Zionist Congress; it is why Israel still needs us, and we need it. With more than half of world Jewry living in the State of Israel, we have a moral obligation to engage with Israel, a moral obligation to ensure the future of the State of Israel. Some of us may differ on what we believe that means, but if the notion of peoplehood in Judaism still exists, then the Jew who doesn’t believe I am a rabbi is still my brother, the Jew who does not think that women should read from the Torah at the western wall is still my sister. I may disagree with them, and I may fight their bigotry with all my might, but at the end of the day, they are still my people. Who ever said family is easy? In his 2014 book, Jewish meaning in a world of choice, Rabbi Dr. David Ellenson, Chancellor of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion discusses Reform Zionism. He writes, “Our people’s return to our land is not simply mythic. It has taken on ﬂesh and blood, and to celebrate that fact is to applaud much more than “mythic renewal.”… This does not mean…that the daily conduct of life and the moral sensibilities evidenced in the political policies of the Jewish state are or ought to be matters of indifference to us.

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