The Key to Peace in the Middle East<\/p>\n
By: Paula Levin<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly one nation is capable of destroying the Jewish People \u2013 and that is the Jewish People.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Mark Twain once said that \u201cHistory never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme\u201d. And the song that was playing before October 7 was eerily familiar \u2013 the chords of discord. Before the destruction of the Second Beit Hamikdash, with Jerusalem besieged, factions within the city were fighting\u2026 each other! The city had enough food in storage to withstand years more, but those storehouses were burned to the ground \u2013 leading to the horrific scenes of starvation we read about in Eicha every year on Tisha Be\u2019av. Now for the parallel. Just ten days before Hamas launched its depraved attack \u2013 Jews in Tel Aviv were physically fighting each other \u2013 at a Yom Kippur prayer service \u2013 over the issue of segregated seating in a public square. The protests over judicial reform that had shut down highways, placed barbed wire over light rail tracks, and filled families with rancour for each other had reached the point that fighter pilot reservists vowed they would not defend the country if the reforms were passed.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out that over the last three and half thousand years, every world superpower has tried to destroy us \u2013 the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Christian and Muslim crusaders, the Nazis, and the Soviet Union. They are all gone, and yet we remain. The times that we faced the existential threat of exile, however, were each precipitated by our own a<\/em>ctions. The first exile was to Egypt. The pasuk says that the brothers hated Yosef, they could not speak with him in peace[1]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup>, and, coming close to killing him, sold him as a slave. The second exile happened after just three Jewish kings had reigned (Saul, David, Solomon) and civil strife split the Jewish People into two kingdoms, Judah and the ten tribes of Israel. The latter were conquered by the Assyrians in 721 BCE and disappeared from the annals of our history. As a direct result of the split, the two remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin were vulnerable to the Babylonian onslaught, which resulted in the destruction of the first temple 586 BCE. Rabbi Sacks even makes the point that our name \u2013 Jews \u2013 comes only as a result of this split \u2013 previously we were known as the children of Israel.[2]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> And in what surely cannot be a third coincidence<\/em> \u2013 more internal strife resulted in the aforementioned Roman destruction of the Second Temple. Says Rabbi Sacks, only one nation is capable of destroying the Jewish People \u2013 and that is the Jewish People.<\/p>\n
In a fascinating feature of classical Jewish thinking, the Prophets of old and the Sages of the Talmud always placed the responsibility for our fate squarely on our own behaviour. As Jews, we are never victims of other people\u2019s evil designs, we carry both the accountability as well as the key to our own redemption. This incredibly resilient worldview guides us never to despair or feel unfairly victimised, we need never waste our energy on Days of Rage or fantasies of revenge. What we do need to do \u2013 as Michael Jackson put it \u2013 is look at the man in the mirror and ask him to change his ways. We always have hope because we always have agency.<\/p>\n
Divisiveness has been at the root of our suffering at all of our watershed moments. How, then, do we navigate our differences, our passionately held beliefs? How does Israel flourish as a democracy with a plurality of cultures and views, allowing space to protest and to stand for or against certain political positions \u2013 but without the baseless hatred that always leads to catastrophe for our people?<\/p>\n
October 7 changed us all. Most visibly in Israel, it changed Israeli society into a brotherhood. Unprecedented levels of unity have characterised Israeli society in its aftermath. Protest organisations pivoted overnight to drive volunteerism and fundraising for displaced families and soldiers \u2013 or their fellow countrymen, regardless of political beliefs. Charedim were barbequing for soldiers, while secular Jews kashered their restaurants to make them food. Intuitively, those most traumatised by Hamas issued impassioned pleas to stop the internal hatred. They knew our response needed to be unity. Many people have seen the heart-wrenching video clips. A soldier who has lost a leg, begging for it not to have been in vain, begging for unity. Two or three weeks after October 7, a video of Shelly Shem-Tov, the mother of Omer, went viral. \u201cWe are all brothers! Brothers! Unite. My Omer was not kidnapped stam<\/em>. But because for an entire year, we have been warring with one another. Enough! Enough!\u201d Natalia Casseroti, mother of 21-year-old Keshet (the Hebrew word for rainbow) who was murdered at the Nova Festival, wrote the following: \u201cThe enemies who see us divided with mutual hatred between us know that they easily overpower us. If we are not together, truly together, in acceptance of our differences, we will not overcome what we have been through, and the death of 1 400 people, including my son, will be in vain! In their death they commanded us life. You don\u2019t have to love each other. Definitely not. But yes, we must accept. There are great differences between us, like many colours, but we all have a place in the rainbow.\u201d Faced with an actual, merciless, savage enemy, Israelis were confronted with true evil \u2013 and those on the opposite side of the political spectrum \u2013 whom they had previously seen as an existential threat to the country \u2013 who they had labelled as evil \u2013 suddenly paled in significance. On the scale of one to ten \u2013 where evil is ten, people with different political aspirations and religious beliefs suddenly moved to the centre.<\/p>\n
The phenomenon of demonising someone who has hurt us, or whom we see as a threat \u2013 has a psychological explanation. Clinical psychologist Joanne Zagnoev explains it at length in her upcoming book Soul Therapy<\/em> (Mosaica). It\u2019s called \u201csplitting\u201d, and it describes our tendency to simplify complex things into black and white categories. It starts as a legitimate defence mechanism in infancy, when our cognitive abilities are still developing. Sadly, many of us never grow out of it. Joanne explains that when triggered by pain, shame, or fear, we lose sight of \u2018the whole picture\u2019 \u2013 the fact that most humans are neither all-good nor all-evil, but a mixture of both \u2013 mostly good! We may do bad, hurtful, ignorant, or destructive things, but this is not the totality of who we are. Splitting is when all good or bad in this mixture is erased and we are left with a two-dimensional picture of the person, or group. Splitting is common in politics, and the phenomenon is purposefully used by populists in search of power or votes. The easiest way to manipulate people and pit them against others is to use incendiary language. Sticks and stones are far less sinister than the labels that shut down conversation and drive people away from each other. If you pay attention, you will see this in full force in every society today as labels like racist, nazi, and genocide are thrown around to shut down dialogue. In Israel, those words may be chareidi, fanatic, chiloni, leftist, rightwinger. Beneath the labels, though, are people. And for the Jewish People, those people are our brothers. Our own family! The Talmud in Nedarim states that the Jewish people are one body. The left and right are two hands beating each other! Could anything be more ridiculous? As Tzvi Freeman puts it, \u201cThere are no two sides, just two hands of a single body that are not coordinated too well.\u201d<\/p>\n
We need a way to hold onto each other\u2019s goodness even when our fears are triggered, even when we feel threatened by their politics. Freeman writes that our religion should actually be spelled Jewdaism, because without Jews, there is no Judaism. If the Torah is the foundation of the world, our peoplehood is the ground in which this foundation is built. Without our unity, without our love for each other, there is no foundation. We have to put our relationships with each other first. \u201cIf we are not a people, what are we doing in that land?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n
But, as Rabbi Sacks puts it, unity does not mean uniformity. G-d is the ultimate unity, but is there anything simple about the Infinite Oneness? Hashem chose to create a world of astonishing and infinite diversity, with unity and interconnectedness at its core. Our job is to reveal the underlying unity, while also allowing space for diversity. Each person reflects a unique aspect of \u201ctzelem Elokim\u201d<\/em>, the image of G-d, in which we were all created. If Israel can get this right, wouldn\u2019t this be the greatest light unto the nations? If a society made up of countless different colours, cultures, histories, and stories can find the grace to tolerate one another \u2013 would that not be the ultimate model for every society?<\/p>\n
The Torah offers a roadmap for how this is done. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out that the Oral Torah is a record of heated debate among scholars. Why not just record the conclusions reached? \u201cWe need to stay in the argument until it leads us to love each other,\u201d he says. If we stay at the same table \u2013 we can share the collaborative search for truth. Rabbi Gartner explains that the talmud teaches that just as we all have a different face, so we each have a different opinion. \u201cWhy does it say, just like we have a different face? It can simply say we each have different opinions. My rebbe taught that the example is the whole point. Just as we aren\u2019t annoyed that someone\u2019s face looks totally different to our own, but accept this face completely, so too we should not take personal offence by the fact that someone thinks differently to us!\u201d<\/p>\n
Truth is a process of collective discovery through curiosity and exploration and testing. And it demands that we keep talking to each other \u2013 instead of about each other. This may be why there are so many laws governing speech in Judaism. We have to be careful not to diminish, demonise, and defame each other through our words. And when we talk to each other, we connect with our shared humanity and are confronted by our common destiny. \u201cThough we may be divided on matters of faith, we share the same fate,\u201d says Rabbi Sacks.<\/p>\n
Something amazing happens when we talk to<\/em> each other \u2013 instead of at<\/em> or about<\/em> each other. Menachem (Manny) Shasha is a Brooklyn-born Israeli who defines himself as Charedi. Together with his wife and five children, he lives in a secular neighbourhood in Herzliya. Manny loves hosting people, and when he saw a lone soldier at his minyan in the old age home where he davens, he invited him for a meal. The soldier asked if he could bring some flatmates, also recently released from the army, and four young men from around the world arrived for a meal. The next week, Manny asked his new friend to spread the word that they were welcome to join his family for Friday night Oneg Shabbat \u2013 an informal gathering with food and song and connection. That\u2019s how Manny ended up hosting between 20 and 30 young people every Friday night. These are \u201cirreligious people’\u201d with diverse views about Israel, all choosing an Oneg Shabbat in Herzliya over Tel Aviv\u2019s nightlife. \u201cI think it\u2019s because they know I don\u2019t have an agenda. I\u2019m not trying to convince them of anything or prove anything. My wife and I simply open our home and heart to them because at the end of the day we are all family.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s this attitude that led Manny into the unusual position of collaborating with a left-wing organisation and forging meaningful connections with people with polar opposite political beliefs. \u201cI was walking in the neighbourhood and I noticed a reform shul\u2019s community hall that had been turned into a \u201cChamal\u201d \u2013 a war room \u2013 which is a place where people bring donations for displaced families and soldiers. One day I walked inside to see what they were doing and if I could help. Of course they were shocked to see a religious looking man coming into the hall, but I was really moved by the chesed that is at the heart of what they were doing and who they are, so I asked how I could contribute.\u201d Manny was so inspired by the important work these people were doing that he brought potential donors to see and began to assist the women in charge of the operation. Before long, because he is Manny \u2013 he had invited them to his home. \u201cI often host a rabbi to give an open dialogue about the Torah perspective on life, I invited these ladies to come and check it out \u2013 no pressure. They joked with me afterwards: \u2018You probably thought we wouldn\u2019t come!\u2019 And it\u2019s true. I didn\u2019t. But I feel so hopeful about this connection because I think this is what is sometimes missing from Israeli society. It\u2019s easy to get obsessed with the 1% that we disagree on, or on how someone is dressed, because there\u2019s no face-to-face interaction, we miss the other 99% of the values we actually share! Building bridges must start with a smile, saying good morning, and being a mensch. It means looking at the good. There\u2019s a lot of criticism of the chareidim for not serving in the army, and while there are many who do, the overall idea is not something that is welcome within their communities. It must be understood that from the perspective of the Eternal Jewish Nation, they are the ones who are plugged into the electricity which is the \u201cYahadut\u201d (Judaism) of what it means to be a \u201cYehudi\u201d (Jew) \u2013 they provide the unbroken chain of Torah since Har Sinai. Whenever a person wants to return to our roots, to our history and thousands of years of Torah knowledge, the chareidim are there to reconnect them. In addition, there are so many Charedi organisations that contribute to society in so many ways, for example Zaka who are volunteers that went into the South after the massacre, knowing they would be traumatised for life with the atrocities they witnessed and yet they still chose to go. On the other hand, we also have to look at the good in people we call secular. Their passion for standing up for what they believe is right. The gemara teaches that during the reign of King David, the nation was on a very high level spiritually to the extent that even a five-year-old girl was greater than any of the tzaddikim in our generation. And yet, many soldiers were killed in the many battles that were fought. In contrast, during the reign of Achav and his evil wife Izevel, when the nation were idol worshipers, not a single soldier was killed in battle. And the gemara explains that the people\u2019s unity is what protected them. They did not speak negatively about each other. So it\u2019s clear that unity is our secret weapon and is what G-d wants from us.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, we no longer need to support the families who were displaced, but we are still collecting and sorting out things for our soldiers. And I think it\u2019s important to notice that no one asks what a soldier\u2019s opinions are on politics or religion before they will give him a neck warmer, thermal socks, or hygiene products. It\u2019s enough that he or she is our brother or sister and defending all of us, for us to care and want to do everything to support them. I believe that when this war is over, those soldiers who were there for each other in the hardest moments, standing shoulder to shoulder in the face of death, united on a level we can\u2019t imagine, they will help create a new society of love, loyalty, and tolerance. They will help us remember that we are all brothers. Brothers fight. But those arguments should always be seen for what they are \u2013 a small noise in a sea of love.\u201d<\/p>\n
The protests against the government have resumed. Wearing their t-shirts representing a far left party, Manny\u2019s new friends told him they were going back to Kaplan street on Shabbat. \u201cI think things will be different this time,\u201d he concludes. \u201cWe now know that we have common ground and that we can work together. And I\u2019m hopeful that we can build on the positive\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\n
- Genesis 37:4 \u2191<\/a><\/li>\n
- One People, Tradition, Modernity, and Jewish Unity – Jonathan Sacks \u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Key to Peace in the Middle East By: Paula Levin \u201cOnly one nation is capable of destroying the Jewish People \u2013 and that is the Jewish People.\u201d Mark Twain once said that \u201cHistory never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme\u201d. And the song that was playing before October 7 was eerily familiar \u2013 the chords of discord. Before the destruction of the Second Beit Hamikdash, with Jerusalem besieged, factions within the city were fighting\u2026 each other! The city had enough food in storage to withstand years more, but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5337,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-93","category-pesach-2024"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5338,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5336\/revisions\/5338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishlife.co.za\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}