SECOND DAY ROSH HASHANAH
SEPTEMBER 15, 2015
For the past two years the world has been absolutely horrified by the
savage, brutal, barbaric actions of the fanatical, fundamentalistic, terrorist,
religious-political entity known as either ISIS, ISIL, or the Islamic State. In creating
a radical Arab caliphate in those parts of Iraq and Syria that it controls, ISIS has
engaged in conduct that no one ever expected to witness again: death by public
beheading, death by drowning, punishment by bodily mutilation, the mass
murder of civilians, the murder of prisoners of war, the destruction of churches,
the forced conversion of non-Muslims to Islam on pain of death, the ethnic
cleansing of ancient Christian and non-fundamentalistic Islamic communities, and,
possibly, the use of poison gas. ISIS gloats at its savagery and its putting into
practice the most fundamentalistic interpretations of sharia law, and through its
savvy use of social media it has recruited tens of thousands of Muslim men and
women, many who grew up in the West, who have become radicalized and who
pose a constant terroristic threat, not only in the Middle East, but throughout the
world.
It is obvious to anyone in whom there beats even a shred of human
decency that ISIS must be stopped. The nations of the world must act more
strongly than they have to terminate this scourge of evil which has rained down
such barbarousness among humanity. But that is not the issue I want to address
today.
Instead, I want to discuss the Jewish aspect of two questions related to the
whole enterprise of ISIS.
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The first matter is this: ISIS claims that it is perpetrating these atrocities
because that is what its religion dictates it to do. Most Muslims would disagree, if
they were brave enough to admit it publicly; they and we would call ISIS and its
interpretation of Islam “fanaticism.”
So here is my question: where does religiosity end and fanaticism begin?
What distinguishes an observant person from a fanatic? When does one cross the
line between piety and fanatical zealotry? And in asking you to ponder this
question, I am not talking about ISIS; let’s think about this question in terms of us
Jews and Jewish observance and action.
For example, I am a Jew who believes that God gave us the written Torah
which contains the commandments God wants us to observe, and God also gave
us an Oral law that details how we are to observe. I believe that we are to
observe the commandments of our Jewish tradition. Does that make me a
religious fanatic? No, it does not; it makes me a traditional Jew.
As a Rabbi, I strongly encourage you, my congregants and their family and
friends, to observe Judaism fully. Does that make me a fanatic? I don’t think so.
After all, it’s my responsibility as a rabbi to urge greater Jewish observance; that’s
why you engaged me as your spiritual leader.
If a Jew keeps kosher, observes Shabbat and the holidays; if a Jewish man
davens every morning with tallis and tefillin; or a Jewish woman goes to the
mikveh every month; if a Jewish relative won’t daven in our shul on your
son/daughter’s Bar/Bat Mitzvah because we have mixed seating, or won’t eat in
your home because you don’t keep kosher, or won’t attend an interfaith wedding
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ceremony – does that make him/her a fanatic? – I would say “no”; that Jew is
observing the Jewish religion. And those Jews who are less observant must
respect the standards of more-observant Jews, just as observant Jews must
respect less-observant Jews, even though those less-observant Jews may not be
living according to the rules that Jews should be following.
So at what point does one become a Jewish religious fanatic? What line
does one cross? I would answer as follows: when a person forcibly imposes his
religiosity onto another person who either is not as observant, or who is a
member of another religious group -- that’s when one crosses the line and
becomes a fanatic.
To illustrate: When ISIS, in the name of Islam, gives Christians the choice of
converting to Islam or suffering death – that is fanaticism.
When ISIS, in the name of Islam, destroys churches and other historic and
archaeological sites because they were used for non-Islamic purposes hundreds
and even thousands of years before Islam even existed – that is fanaticism.
When ISIS forces other Muslims to follow its interpretation of sharia law on
pain of death – that is fanaticism.
But, as I said, my concern is not ISIS, it is with the Jewish community.
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To be more specific: if a Jew keeps a kosher home and eats only kosher
outside the home, does that make him/her a religious fanatic? – I say “no”; that
person is an observant Jew.
What about if a child studies in Israel for a year and comes back and will no
longer eat in his/her parents’ kosher-but-not-kosher-enough home, does that
make him/her a fanatic? – again, I would respond “no.”
When your Rabbi informs you that he officiates at only those weddings that
are held at a synagogue or kosher facility – that is not his being a fanatic; it’s his
acting according to his standards of Conservative rabbinic practice.
But if a religious Jewish neighbor should call you a “pig” for not keeping
kosher – that’s an example of fanaticism.
If your child should come home from Israel or college, ask you to keep
kosher, and then smash all your treyf dishes when you refuse – that’s fanaticism.
If a Jewish family observes Shabbat by lighting candles, making Kiddush and
motzi, refraining from work, refraining from watching television and using the
computer or other electronic devices, not turning on/off lights on Shabbos, and
attending shul -- does that make them a bunch of fanatics? – Absolutely not, that
is how Shabbat is supposed to be observed.
And if your rabbi informs you that if you want him to officiate at your
child’s Saturday night wedding you will have to make the wedding sufficiently late
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so that he has time to get there after Shabbos ends -- he is not being a fanatic; he
is observing Shabbat and maintaining the standards of Conservative Judaism
which prevent him from driving until after Shabbat is over.
But if Jews, for example, go around smashing the windows of stores that
are open on Shabbat – that is fanaticism. If Jews stone cars driving on Shabbat –
that is fanaticism. On the other hand, to deliberately drive through a religious
Jewish neighborhood on Shabbat is patently disrespectful.
Judaism believes that for the sake of Jewish survival Jews should marry
within the faith. For the sake of Jewish survival we – meaning parents, Hebrew
school, and synagogue -- must encourage endogamy. Where an intermarriage is
going to occur, for the Jewish partner to encourage the non-Jewish future spouse
to consider sincere and meaningful halachic conversion to Judaism – that is
certainly not fanaticism; that is praiseworthy.
For the Rabbinical Assembly, which is the international organization of
Conservative Rabbis, to insist that Conservative rabbis not officiate at
intermarriages and forbid Conservative rabbis from even attending an interfaith
wedding as a guest, even when a close relative is the bride or groom, on pain of
expulsion – that is not an act of fanaticism; it is maintaining the standards of
Judaism.
If religious relatives decline to attend an interfaith wedding ceremony –
that is not fanaticism. However, in this day and age, at least among Conservative
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Jews, for parents to publicly sit shiva for a child who intermarries – that to me is
fanaticism.
For a Conservative synagogue to repulse intermarried families who want to
be part of our synagogue community would be foolish, which is why we welcome
interfaith families (albeit with some provisos) and encourage their children’s
Jewish education.
I do believe that it is possible for two people of the same gender to
establish a loving relationship. So should we accept for membership in the East
Meadow Jewish Center same-sex couples or families? Though we have not been
approached by such a couple or family yet, I think we should. We should
welcome any Jewish family that would find inspiration within our walls and
synagogue community. Would we give a gay man or a lesbian woman an honor at
services? Yes; we do not check anyone’s tzitzis here.
But the Torah prohibits homosexual copulation, and in my reading of
Jewish law, same-sex marriages are not condoned in Jewish law. I do not officiate
at same-sex weddings. Am I being a fanatic? – I think not; I am following Jewish
law and tradition.
But to attack and murder GLBT individuals as occurred at the Jerusalem Gay
Pride Parade and elsewhere – that is clearly an act of fanaticism and terrorism
that has no place in Jewish society. It is an act of fanaticism that must be
condemned in the strongest terms.
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Which leads me to the second issue: all of us vehemently condemn
terrorism, especially the monstrous kind perpetrated by ISIS, al Qaeda, and other
Islamic terrorists and fundamentalists in the name of religion. If so, why are we
not condemning Jewish terrorism and fundamentalism perpetrated in the name
of religion with equal vehemence? Maybe it’s not as pervasive as the terrorism
committed by Muslims, but, embarrassingly, Jewish terrorism exists in Israel
today.
This past July 30th, a Haredi Jew named Yishai Schlissel attacked six
participants in Jerusalem’s Gay Pride parade; one of those participants, Shira
Banki, died three days later of her wounds. Ironically, Schlissel, who has since
been charged with murder, had been released from prison just three weeks
earlier after serving time for stabbing three people ten years earlier in the 2005
Jerusalem Gay Pride March. And if you doubt that Schlissel’s actions were
religious terrorism, here is what he said when he was arrested for the 2005
attacks, "I came to murder on behalf of God. We can't have such abomination in
the country."
The Anglo-Jewish media does not report much about another form of
Jewish fundamentalistic terrorism that has become rife in Israel. These are called
“Price Tag Attacks.” How many of you have heard of them?
So-called “Price Tag Attacks” are actions, frequently revenge actions,
perpetrated by right-wing Jewish extremists against Arab properties,
communities, families, or individuals in retaliation for Arab attacks on Jewish
settlements, or for Israeli government actions against illegal settlements.
Recently, many of these attacks have been directed against Israel’s generally nonpolitical Christian community, which clearly demonstrates the religious aspect of
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these attacks. Price tag attacks can range from entering an Arab village and
slashing tires and setting cars afire; to defacing churches, monasteries, and
mosques by spray-painting such statements as “Mohammed was a pig,” or “Jesus
was a pig,” or “Mary was a whore” on the building; to vandalizing and/or torching
churches, mosques, and other property; to cutting down Arab-owned orchards; to
the beating up Arabs. But these price-tag attacks can reach heinous proportions,
too. I remind you that last year, following the kidnapping of the three Israeli
teens and the ultimate discovery of their murdered bodies, Jewish terrorists
kidnapped an innocent Arab teen by the name of Abu Khdeir at random, beat him
up, doused him with gasoline and lit him on fire. And this past summer, just one
day after the Gay Pride Parade attack, Jewish extremists entered the Arab village
of Duma, and threw flaming torches into three houses, resulting in the burning to
death of an 18-month old Arab child and the death a few days later of his father
from the injuries he sustained; tragically, his mother died of her injuries just last
week. And if anyone doubts that this attack was a form of Jewish religious
terrorism, I remind you that police discovered graffiti written in Hebrew on the
burned house that read, "‫ יחי המלך המשיח‬-- Long live Messiah the king", "Price
Tag," and "Revenge".
That such acts of Jewish terrorism are wrong, wrong, wrong should be
patently clear to all. First, since when do we Jews, who rightfully protest when
people spray-paint Jewish homes with swastikas or scratch swastikas into Jewish
cars, commit similar acts against the homes and cars of others? We Jews painfully
know what it is like to see our synagogues defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti, we
know what it means to witness one’s shul vandalized, and we certainly bear the
historical scars of seeing hundreds of synagogues set on fire – so how dare any
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Jew commit such outrages and sacrileges against the sacred institutions of other
religions? What kind of warped, fundamentalistic Jewish thinking justifies such
action? I admit to you, the Torah did command the Israelites to destroy
idolatrous, polytheistic, pagan Canaanite shrines upon their entry into the land of
Israel, but our Rabbis long ago were unanimous that neither Christianity nor Islam
is idolatrous, polytheistic, pagan, or Canaanite, and that their religious buildings
must be respected. Those Jews who, through religious casuistry, condone the
desecration and/or the destruction of churches, monasteries, and mosques are
engaging in precisely the same fundamentalist false interpretation as is ISIS; both
must be condemned. We Jews have been the victims of arbitrary and systematic
murders throughout our history; we know how evil such attacks are. So how can
any Jew release similar savage attacks on others?
Second, these Jewish extremists commit one of the ultimate injustices
under Jewish law, by taking matters into their own hands and meting out what
they call “justice” in a totally unjust manner from the Jewish standpoint. When
they indiscriminately torch Arab cars or attack Arab villagers or firebomb a house
and murder an Arab baby and its father – they are committing outrages against
people who may have done nothing wrong! They act at random, taking “law” into
their own hands. True Judaism condemns such random acts of vengeance. In
Jewish law – and this is clear in the Torah, throughout the Talmud, and in all
Jewish law codes – for a person to be punished for a crime there must be
evidence and testimony that such-and-such a person committed a crime. In their
indiscriminate attacks on Christian and Muslims these Jewish extremists totally
and outrageously make a mockery of Jewish law.
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Third, the Torah and the Prophets place a responsibility on our Jewish
shoulders. We are to be ‫ לאור גוים‬-- lights unto the other nations of the world,
teaching others how to act morally and ethically, how to act with justice and with
compassion. Biblical tradition demands that we Jews behave better than others
do, that we conduct our lives according to the loftiest of values, that we have the
utmost respect for all life, even the life of our enemies. Judaism warns us against
sinking to the level of the basest, most ignoble members of society. The Jews
who engage in these Price Tag Attacks trample this basic imperative of Jewish life.
Fourth, these Jewish hatemongers commit the same type of stereotyping
that we Jews cringe at. They assume that all Arabs and all Muslims and all
Christians are enemies, and must be treated as such. But that is far from the
truth. There are many Israeli Arabs, for example, who much prefer living in the
Jewish State of Israel than under the Palestine Authority of Mahmoud Abbas.
There are many Palestinians living in the West Bank who would prefer to live
under Israeli authority than to live under the extensively-corrupt Palestinian
regime. You might have heard on the internet the graduation address of the
valedictorian of the Masters Division of Tel Aviv University; he is an Arab from
Egypt, and in his valedictory address he spoke about how wonderful Israel and
Israelis are, and how studying in Israel changed his whole outlook. Again on the
internet, you may have seen or heard the speeches of an Israeli Arab who is part
of Israel’s Foreign Ministry. To maliciously claim that all Arabs are fair game in
these price tag attacks is to pervert Judaism.
Some of the religious authorities -- rabbis -- who serve as spiritual advisers
and supporters of these Jewish terrorists justify their actions by calling all Arabs
“Amalekites.” The Amalekites were the fierce, belligerent tribe that attacked the
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Israelites shortly after they crossed the Red Sea; what made the Amalekites so
contemptible in the eyes of God was the fact that they attacked the Israelites
from the rear, where the weakest, most feeble Israelites were located. For their
dastardly action, God condemns the Amalekites to perdition, and, shortly before
his death, Moses reminds the Israelites to annihilate the Amalekites in what we
would call today jihad.
But the Amalekites were a very specific tribe who lived at a very specific
time in Jewish history. While it is true that Jewish tradition employs Amalek as a
metaphor for all heinously murderous individuals and peoples – like Haman, and
Hitler and the Nazis -- and while, as Rabbi Shai Held of Machon Hadar points out,
one can easily imagine a Jewish thinker extending the image in a more
generalized way to people who behave in monstrous ways, brazenly and
remorselessly attacking the innocent, because Amalek is the rhetorical device in
Judaism's arsenal for speaking of utter ruthlessness and inhumanity, yet, as Rabbi
Held explains, “such moves are also extremely dangerous: In labeling someone
an Amalekite, and thus raising them to the level of metaphysical evil, we run the
risk of giving ourselves license to behave in savage ways in attempting to root out
savagery. In the process we may become the very thing we set out to combat. If
we wish to employ the language of evil, we must be vigilant lest it pave the way
for us to behave in evil ways.” And that is what all extremists and fanatics do:
they demonize their enemies, and when one demonizes one’s enemies, one gives
oneself permission, so to speak, to act in the most horrific and inhuman of ways
against one’s enemies. The Nazis, based on long Christian tradition, did it to us
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Jews: they claimed that we were the embodiments of Satan; once they equated
us with satanic forces, it gave them “permission” to ghettoize, brutalize, shoot,
and gas over six million Jews. That is what ISIS does: it labels Christians, Jews,
Muslims who do not follow Islam as they do as infidels; once they label their
enemies as infidels, they give themselves permission to act towards their enemies
with unbridled savagery. And against everything for which Judaism stands, these
extremist Jews demonize all Arabs as Amalekites, and thus give themselves
permission to engage in these terroristic Price Tag attacks that have resulted in
the death of innocent people.
All such actions must be vigorously condemned, which, quite frankly, has
not happened. Sure, some religious authorities such as the Chief Rabbinate have
issued statements against these attacks which contravene true Judaic values and
teachings, but they have certainly not done so with the vigorousness the issue
demands. Just as we expect imams to condemn Muslim terrorism, we Jews
should expect our own rabbis to condemn Jewish terrorism and fanaticism, which
I am doing today.
To my mind, there are several “take aways” (as they are called today) we
should learn:
First, we must respect our fellow Jews, no matter their level of observance.
We must respect their religious beliefs, their religious practices, their religious
standards, even if they are not ours and even if we find them objectionable. For
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example, I may disagree with Reform Judaism, but no one has ever heard me
utter a negative or disparaging word about Temple Emanu-el or Community
Reform Temple, because I have never uttered such a negative or disparaging
word; I respect those temples and their clergy and members . I may disagree with
certain aspects of Orthodox or Haredi Judaism; their way may not be my way, but
I respect their practices, though I might find them excessive. (The one element of
some Haredi Judaism that I have openly and publicly criticized is their denigration
and delegitimization of the modern State of Israel; for me that is unconscionable.)
Where, however, I draw the line is that we should not forcibly impose our
religious practices on other Jews; we can encourage them, we can urge them, we
can cajole them – but, ultimately, their decisions about their observance are
theirs to make, and they will either enjoy or suffer the consequences.
Of course, we must show respect for other religions and their adherents,
just as we demand respect from others, except when they try to forcefully impose
their religious beliefs and practices upon us; then all bets are off.
But mostly we must understand that we should never stoop to the level of
our enemies; engaging in Jewish terrorism is as reprehensible as any other type of
terrorism. Instead we should always act as the Torah demands: with high morals
and ethics, and with justice and compassion towards all.
The prophet Micah, in a passage that I have quoted to you in years past,
tells us succinctly what God expects of each and every one of us:
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‫ – הגיד לך אדם מה טוב ומה ה' דורש ממך‬He has told you, O man, what is good
and what the Lord demands of you:
‫ – כי אם עשות משפט‬only to do justice,
‫ – ואהבת חסד‬to love kindness,
‫ – והצנע לכת עם אלהיך‬and to walk humbly with your God.
A perfect prescription for a world full of disrespect, hatred, fanaticism, and
terrorism: Act with justice and kindness, and walk humbly – and I emphasize the
word “humbly” – with God.
May all of us follow this prescription, and may God bless us and the world
with a year of respect, a year of liberation from fanaticism, a year of the
extirpation of terrorism, and a year of peace.
Amen.
Shanah Tovah!
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