July 2021

Friday, July 30, 2021 – כ”א באב תשפ”א

By Rabbi Josh Weinberg

This summer thousands of our campers have returned to camp. We have returned to color wars and campfires. We are back to climbing Alpine Towers and drinking bug juice. We have figured out how to have large song sessions keeping ourselves distanced enough to be safe, yet together. This year we can be reminded of the significance of Jewish summer camp experience, how necessary it is for thousands of children, teens, staff, and parents – all of whom know that camp’s impact goes way beyond the activities, the outdoors, and even lifelong friendships.

The success of Jewish summer camps lies in their capacity to instill a strong Jewish identity – the way that no supplementary Hebrew school can. Camp creates a complete Jewish ecosystem, a full Jewish society. It is a Jewish bubble where weekly programming and activities stop on Shabbat and campers enter that palace in time, regardless of an individual’s level of observance; where playing sports, climbing the high ropes course, arts and crafts, campfires, and singing become Jewish activities along with limmud (study), Ivrit (Hebrew language immersion and instruction), and tfilah (prayer and ritual).

The relationships, the feeling of belonging in a Jewish community, and even the skills gained by campers and staff alike, become part of camp culture, creating an ethos that defines our gemeinschaft (i.e. “community”). Camp is formative and transformative.

Some have been critical that investment in camp comes at the detriment of year-round experiences. They argue that camp should be seen as a laboratory for experimenting with Jewish life and education, and not a total existence or an “ideal Judaism.” But let us understand camp for what it is: it is an example of the utopian existence to which we aspire and the pipeline for connecting tens of thousands of Diaspora Jews with Israel and Zionism.

The first Jewish camps sprouted up amid the larger organized camping movement in America, led by 19th-century social reformers seeking to give a reprieve to children living in the squalid conditions of industrializing cities. These fresh-air programs blended spiritual, educational, and recreational components. By the mid-1920s, hundreds of camps had opened in forested, lakeshore spots around North America.

The early Jewish camps were motivated by the need to bring inner-city kids living in Lower East Side tenements to the country, and “Americanize” the children of Eastern European immigrants. What made these camps Jewish was their demographics, not their programming, leading some to label them as ‘camps for Jews,’ rather than Jewish camps.

As the decades passed, we saw a stark transition. In the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, as more Jews assimilated into American culture, Jewish camps switched their motivation and mission to instill a sense of Jewishness and teach Judaism. “Each camp has a very strong and intentional culture, camp by camp. Camp’s power to socialize young Jews–How do I be a Jew? How do I be a member of the Jewish community?–depends on this culture,” said Amy L. Sales, co-author with Leonard Saxe of How Goodly Are Thy Tents: Summer Camps as Jewish Socializing Experiences (Brandeis University Press, 2003).

In fact, Jewish summer camp created a microcosm of the cultural Zionist ideal – a complete Jewish society. Camp itself was like a mini-Israel (or maybe more like a kibbutz). The idea of Jewish public culture, a society that operated using a Jewish language, and which lived according to Jewish time was the Zionist dream. This was most notably articulated and envisioned by the forebearer of cultural Zionism Ahad Ha’am.

In his 1897 essay “The Jewish State and Jewish Problem,” Ahad Ha’am wrote:

“For this purpose, Judaism needs at present but little. It needs not an independent State, but only the creation in its native land of conditions favorable to its development: a good-sized settlement of Jews working without hindrance in every branch of culture, from agriculture and handicrafts to science and literature. This Jewish settlement, which will be a gradual growth, will become in course of time the center of the nation, wherein its spirit will find pure expression and develop in all its aspects up to the highest degree of perfection of which it is capable. Then from this center the spirit of Judaism will go forth to the great circumference, to all the communities of the Diaspora, and will breathe new life into them and preserve their unity; and when our national culture in Palestine has attained that level, we may be confident that it will produce Jews in the country who will be able, on a favorable opportunity, to establish a State which will be a Jewish State, and not merely a State of Jews.”

Jewish summer camp was where Jewish kids accustomed to their outlier and minority status felt accepted and part of the mainstream. Jewish summer camp was the place where they didn’t need to explain themselves to their peers and didn’t feel embarrassed about being Jewish.

Nowhere else in the Jewish world, outside of Israel, are we able to create such an environment of a complete Jewish society – providing both formal education and creating a culture of Jewish living – other than at Jewish summer camp.  The foundation of camp as a complete Jewish experience paved the way for the introduction of Zionism and that we Diaspora Jews could live in this romantic ideal as our permanent existence and not just for a month or two a year. While I understand that this is a romantic and generalized view of both camp and Israel, I suggest it here as a basis from which we can then move to discuss the particularities.

But more on than next week…

Shabbat Shalom,

Josh

This article is Part I of a three-part series looking at the connection between Jewish summer camp and Israel.

By Rabbi Josh Weinberg

July 23, 2021 – י”ד באב תשפ”א

While much of this week’s attention has gone to Ben and Jerry, and where their ice cream will and will not be sold, a far more significant and alarming issue is brewing that we cannot ignore. In a recent poll by the Jewish Electorate Institute, over 25% of American Jewish voters agreed that Israel is an Apartheid state, another 22% were unsure. Much of the poll did not produce earth-shattering results, however, we, as Jews and Zionists, should be paying very close attention to the additional 9% who felt that Israel does not have a right to exist and another 22% who accuse Israel of genocide(!)

For some, these statistics are earth-shattering and shocking. For others, these are metrics that confirm the growing sense that the critics of Israel have crossed a line in their criticism of Israel, and for myself, I feel like we’re just talking about two entirely different places.

Why do the accusations of Apartheid, genocide, and Israel’s right to exist unleash a particularly painful sting for those of us in the progressive Zionist camp?  For several reasons.

For starters, the use of those terms is not only about naming Israel’s behaviors. An objective observer could consider Israel’s 54-year military rule over more than 2.5 million Palestinians to be wrong. An objective individual could conclude that the military administration must come to an end without delving into provocative and sensitive attacks. An objective observer of international and foreign affairs might look around at other conflict areas, even in the Middle East, and not rank the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even among the top ten most dire issues. For example, Saudi Arabia’s entanglement in Yemen has caused a devastating humanitarian crisis resulting in tens of thousands of Yemenis being killed while pushing the country to the brink of famine. The decade-long conflict in Syria which has left over half a million dead might also come to mind. Read that again – over 500,000 souls were murdered or have gone missing in Syria. Yet, 22% of American Jews accuse Israel of genocide without so much as a word about some of these much more devastating examples of actual genocide. I’m not saying this to divert attention away from Israel or Israel’s critics, but there is something deeply wrong with how some of our people approach our people’s problems relative to problems elsewhere in the world.  (Not to mention that the sale of ice cream over the Green Line is occupying a disproportional amount of attention in comparison with deep life and death crises.)

According to data published by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), since 2008 there have been 5,951 Palestinian fatalities and an incredibly high (127,657) number of Palestinian injuries. These numbers are nothing short of tragic. However, they are also nothing near genocide.

The usage of terms like Apartheid and Genocide is intentional, of course. They are floated both to resonate with and to be categorized with other familiar and far more tragic stories. And they are designed to touch a Jewish nerve.

The accusation of Apartheid, the Afrikaans term meaning “separation,” cannot be mentioned without direct correlation to the racist and unjust policy of South Africa that officially ended in 1994. The goal in using this term relative to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank to the largely uninformed international progressive community is to inflame international outrage by a human rights organization most liberals and progressives trust (such as Human Rights Watch), and then make a comparison digestible to liberal and well-meaning people.

If by “Apartheid,” one means that Israel is like apartheid South Africa with one race subjugating another race, then Israel is NOT an Apartheid state. Jews of color are part of every facet of life in Israel. In addition, Palestinians who live within the 1948 borders of Israel are citizens of Israel. Though they face discrimination, Palestinian-Israelis vote, serve in the Knesset and judicial system, attend Israeli universities, work as physicians and nurses in Israeli hospitals, work in all facets of society, and have freedom of movement. The conflict in Israel-Palestine is simply not about race.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a huge problem. We do face a situation where Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza do not have basic freedoms including freedom of movement and self-determination. In protest of this, we do not call for the dissolution of the State of Israel, but rather we protest against the policies of the Israeli government and support human rights organizations and Israeli NGOs working to end the occupation.

The same is true for “genocide,” with a slight twist. The term “genocide” especially resonates with Jews as we were victims of the greatest genocidal program in modern history when Nazi Germany attempted to erase the Jewish people and Judaism from existence. The word “genocide” was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in 1943 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Lemkin developed the term partly in response to the Nazi policies of systematic murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust and in response to previous instances in history of targeted actions aimed at the destruction of a specific group of people. The insidious accusation of genocide here is to turn the tables on the Jews. It is simply a cabal and a farce designed to deconstruct the Zionist project which aimed to establish a sovereign entity for the Jewish people. The accusation of genocide is an attempt to claim that when Jews have power they behave as do other nationalistic and barbaric peoples. It would be better, they claim, for us Jews to be relegated to the powerlessness that we had long since grown accustomed to. Let us not be bothered or concerned by the quotidian calls for actual genocide of the Jewish people by its neighbors, the Iranian regime, and others. Must we only be alarmed when Jews kill? It is a “man bites dog” story, to use journalistic parlance. After all, we read this week the second set of the 10 Commandments, which prohibits murder, but does not prohibit engaging in warfare or killing in self-defense (a lengthy discussion topic for another time).

The irony here is that those who preach tolerance and nuance as sacred values of the progressive camp fail to exhibit both. Those in the progressive camp might say: when it comes to such abhorrent manifestations of abuse of power such as Apartheid and genocide why should we progressives be expected to be tolerant and nuanced? I say that progressives need to be tolerant and nuanced in their determination of actual Apartheid and/or genocide. But so many have jumped on the bandwagon of Israel-bashing, they don’t bother to seek out anything beyond the surface-level accusations. If progressives level accusations, and ‘I am a progressive,’ then ‘I’ can safely trust those accusations to represent the “truth.” This un-nuanced approach provides affirmation for a worldview that seems reticent to accept the idea of Jewish sovereignty, power, and a majority Jewish State.

Let us not make the mistake of saying that because Israel is not an Apartheid State, nor does it commit genocide, that we can now be free to desist from dealing with its problems and injustices. As committed Jews – committed both to Judaism and to the evolving story of Jewish nationalism and its complex manifestation over the past 73 years as the only Jewish Nation-State in the world – we aim to speak out against those who seek to delegitimize Israel in the eyes of the world and to participate in the deep introspection and critique of Israel’s behavior and policies that are unjust. We Reform Zionists are committed to supporting the causes and organizations working on the ground promoting a Shared Society between Israeli Jew and Israeli Arab citizens, a Two-State arrangement that brings justice and national sovereignty to Palestinians, and steps resulting in a secure eventual End of Conflict resolution for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Anything less is unacceptable.

Shabbat Shalom,

Josh

Friday, July 16, 2021 – ז’ בסאב תשפ”א

אֵיכָ֥ה אֶשָּׂ֖א לְבַדִּ֑י טׇרְחֲכֶ֥ם וּמַֽשַּׂאֲכֶ֖ם וְרִֽיבְכֶֽם׃

“How can I bear unaided the trouble of you, and the burden, and the bickering!” Deuteronomy 1:12

Earlier this week, I was sitting with a colleague at a Jerusalem café when a man approached us and asked us for Tzedakah for needy families. On the surface of it, by the man’s dress and speech, we assumed that he probably was not a supporter of Reform or liberal Judaism. He likely did not agree with us on fundamental values and the application of Jewish law and life. Instead of conditioning our tzedakah on whether he supported our values, we acknowledged that we were amidst the nine days between the first of Av and the ninth of Av and that we should reach out to those beyond our circles and world outlook. A small example of a bigger issue.

Tomorrow night we begin Tisha B’Av, the Ninth day of the month of Av, the national day of mourning for the Jewish people. On this day we mark the destruction of the First and Second Temples and, over time, Jews added a myriad of tragedies to the events to mourn on this day – from the Spanish Inquisition to the Shoah.

As modern Reform Jews, I venture the claim that most of us are not actually distraught over the Temple’s destruction. We don’t yearn for the re-establishment of the Priestly caste nor a return to sacrificial rites. In fact, Reform Judaism developed as anti-Tisha B’Av. We removed mention of the Temple, messianism, sacrifices, and priestly roles from our liturgy and nomenclature. We retitled our synagogues, “Temples,” and re-purposed references to the Temple in Jerusalem to be about local “Temples” and metaphoric interpretations about justice in a future universalist messianic age.

For most Jews, Tisha B’Av is not about rebuilding the ancient, destroyed structure. Rather, our sages teach that it is about a spiritual and social reckoning and self-examination of the root causes that led to the decimation of Jewish society. The classic example given by the rabbis of the Talmud for the destruction of the Second Temple is sinat hinam – gratuitous hatred for one another. We are taught in the Talmud (Gittin 55a-56b) that “Jerusalem was destroyed on account of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza,” pointing to the famous anecdote exemplifying hatred towards one another (see the full story below).

The Talmud tells us explicitly (Yoma 9b):

אֲבָל מִקְדָּשׁ שֵׁנִי שֶׁהָיוּ עוֹסְקִין בְּתוֹרָה וּבְמִצְוֹת וּגְמִילוּת חֲסָדִים, מִפְּנֵי מָה חָרַב? מִפְּנֵי שֶׁהָיְתָה בּוֹ שִׂנְאַת חִנָּם. לְלַמֶּדְךָ שֶׁשְּׁקוּלָה שִׂנְאַת חִנָּם כְּנֶגֶד שָׁלֹשׁ עֲבֵירוֹת: עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה, גִּלּוּי עֲרָיוֹת, וּשְׁפִיכוּת דָּמִים.

“However, considering that the people during the Second Temple period were engaged in Torah study, observance of mitzvot, and acts of loving-kindness, and that they did not perform the sinful acts that were performed during the time of the First Temple, why was the Second Temple destroyed? It was destroyed due to gratuitous hatred. This comes to teach you that the sin of hatred is equivalent to the three severe transgressions: Idol worship, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed.”

We are, sadly, not lacking examples of senseless hatred in our communities, of Jews hating one another. However, later in the story, we learn an additional lesson. The sages tell of a rabbi, Rabbi Zekharya ben Avkolas, who refused to offer a blemished sacrifice. The refusal to see the bigger picture, to choose when to be flexible and the unbending rigidity of Jewish law was a cause of the war that led to the great destruction.

In our communities today, no subject has been more controversial and divisive than our people’s discourse around Israel, the Palestinians, and how we should speak to one another. This discourse has led to some claiming that others are “outside of the pro-Israel Jewish tent” and accusations of even worse offenses.

Today we should ask ourselves and each other: How can we use Tisha B’Av as a way to move beyond our unbending rigidity and close-minded hatred and intolerance of other Jews? What would it take for us to listen to those whose opinions are abhorrent to us and who we regard as a real threat to the safety and security of the Jewish State? And after we ask about listening attentively to them, we should ask: how can we approach or speak to those whose positions and opinions threaten our moral fabric and fly in the face of everything that we believe is just and true?

The Talmud (Bava Metzia 30b) offers us a solution and a challenge:

אשר יעשון זו לפנים משורת הדין דאמר ר’ יוחנן לא חרבה ירושלים אלא על שדנו בה דין תורה אלא דיני דמגיזתא לדיינו אלא אימא שהעמידו דיניהם על דין תורה ולא עבדו לפנים משורת הדין:

“It was taught …: “… they must act” beyond the strict and narrow letter of the law, as Rabbi Yoḥanan says: Jerusalem was destroyed only for the fact that they adjudicated cases only on the basis of strict Torah law in the city. The Gemara asks: … what should they have done? Should they have adjudicated cases on the basis of arbitrary decisions? Rather, say: That they established their rulings on the basis of strict Torah law did not go beyond the letter of the law.”

Let us take the challenge and go beyond the letter of the law. I am sure each one of us knows someone or is in contact with someone, with whom we do not see eye to eye. On this Tisha B’Av, in addition to reading Megilat Eicha that recounts the destruction of Jerusalem and fasting, we might take the opportunity to go out of our way to reach out to someone, to listen, internalize, and then talk. Let’s start with listening, going beyond the surface of the matter, and hearing how they reached their conclusions. I hope that we can begin to hear each other more deeply, go beyond the “letter of the law,” loosen our rigidity and avoid another destruction.

Shabbat Shalom and wishing you a meaningful Tisha B’Av,

Josh

*Talmud Gittin 56a:

The emperor went and sent with him a choice three-year-old calf. While bar Kamtza was coming with the calf to the Temple, he made a blemish on the calf’s upper lip. And some say he made the blemish on its eyelids, a place where according to us, i.e., halakha, it is a blemish, but according to them, gentile rules for their offerings, it is not a blemish. Therefore, when bar Kamtza brought the animal to the Temple, the priests would not sacrifice it on the altar since it was blemished, but they also could not explain this satisfactorily to the gentile authorities, who did not consider it to be blemished.

The blemish notwithstanding, the Sages thought to sacrifice the animal as an offering due to the imperative to maintain peace with the government. Rabbi Zekharya ben Avkolas said to them: If the priests do that, people will say that blemished animals may be sacrificed as offerings on the altar. The Sages said: If we do not sacrifice it, then we must prevent bar Kamtza from reporting this to the emperor. The Sages thought to kill him so that he would not go and speak against them. Rabbi Zekharya said to them: If you kill him, people will say that one who makes a blemish on sacrificial animals is to be killed. As a result, they did nothing, bar Kamtza’s slander was accepted by the authorities, and consequently the war between the Jews and the Romans began.

By Rabbi Josh Weinberg                                                                   Friday July 9, 2021 – כ”ט בתמוז תשפ”א

This week saw the swearing in a of a new President Yitzhak “Bougie” Herzog, the first to have been born after the State was founded. Herzog’s presence will hopefully give a sense of stability to the never-ending roller coaster of ups and downs, highs and lows, with last minute twists and turns, and nail-biting endings that is Israeli politics. Such was the case this past Monday night with a tied 59-59 vote on the annual extension of a particularly controversial law known as the “Citizenship Law” or the “Law of family reunification.” The vote to extend the law failed resulting in egg on the faces of the coalition.

The issue at hand requires a much longer debate and discussion than I will give it here. Suffice to understand that the recent Knesset vote should be viewed on two different levels.

This first is the realm of the political and what this means for the recently sworn-in narrow coalition. The second is the essence of the bill itself, which has heretofore been met with broad consensus among the Israeli mainstream, and what the bill therefore says about Israel as a Jewish and democratic State.

PM Bennett and his shaky coalition faced its first serious challenge. Many forewarned of the potential of political paralysis with such an ideologically diverse coalition. Others shared concern that with the first controversial issue to present itself the government would collapse. Well, a controversial issue arose this week and we lived to tell the tale.

According to the government and the law’s authors, the Citizenship Law is strictly about security. It was codified in 2003 during the height of the Second Intifada/War when the Israeli security establishment grew wary that some Palestinian potential terrorists would take advantage of the option to marry a Palestinian-Israeli citizen and thus grant entry into Israel with full citizenship, freedom of movement, and the ability to circumvent checkpoints, barriers, and other security measures.

It passed then, although not without controversy. In the 18 years since, it has annually been approved for a year-long extension. But, as the extension came up for renewal this past week, it became a political wedge issue used by head of the Opposition Benjamin Netanyahu to destabilize the new government led by PM Naftali Bennett. As Noa Landau commented in Haaretz: “Until now, its annual automatic renewal was facilitated by general indifference, despite the legal and moral criticism, but this time the political complexity compelled the Israeli public to recognize and show interest in a long-standing problem that demands to be addressed rather than repressed.”

Fascinatingly, many of those who this week voted against the extension of this law had voted in favor of it in years past. The Opposition’s plot was so transparently partisan that Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s comments only scratch the surface  –  “Some people put their desire to make life difficult for the reigning coalition over their commitment to the country.” .

But here’s the thing – this bill actually should be opposed on moral grounds. While PM Bennett’s new coalition suffered a political blow, Israeli democracy is better for it. While maintenance of “The Citizenship Law” was perpetuated under the guise of “security,” it is not difficult to infer that rather than trying to prevent terrorists from infiltrating legally – of which there were noticeably few – the real rationale for support of the law was to prevent a demographic imbalance. If Palestinians could leave the West Bank and flee the Palestinian Authority to marry an Israeli citizen, it would not be hard to run background checks on them and determine whether they pose a security risk. It would also not be out of the realm of possibility to imagine Israel’s Palestinian Arab minority exploding exponentially and posing a threat to Israel’s Jewish minority. The challenge is how to maintain a Jewish majority and apply the law equally to all citizens? (Note: A two-state arrangement remains the most plausible guarantee for Israel to continue as a democracy with a Jewish majority). As the book of Leviticus reminds us:

מִשְׁפַּ֤ט אֶחָד֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם כַּגֵּ֥ר כָּאֶזְרָ֖ח יִהְיֶ֑ה כִּ֛י אֲנִ֥י יְהֹוָ֖ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶֽם׃ (ויקרא כד:כב)

You shall have one standard for stranger and citizen alike: for I am Adonai your God. (Leviticus 24:22)

When God says, “I am Adonai your God,” Rashi interprets this to mean that I am the “God of all of you. Just as I attach My Name to you, so do I attach it to the strangers.”

However, as Jews, we take pride in the particularistic thrust of Israel’s Law of Return which allows any Jew to become a naturalized citizen of the Jewish State. Herein lays the dilemma. We also take pride in the fact that any Israeli citizen can marry a partner – Jewish or not – and have that partner become a full citizen. So, as a modern democracy, how can Israel limit a democratic right for some citizens and not others simply because they are not Jewish?

There was a deal proposed to the members of the coalition who oppose the bill. In exchange for extending the law, 1600 Palestinian families were to be reunited and given full rights after having been left in limbo for years. Now that the extension vote ended in a stalemate resulting in the law’s demise, will conditions for the reunification of many more families improve? Yes, they might, which is a good thing. Will the vote destabilize the coalition? No, the coalition, bloodied but unbowed, will live another day.

This is Progressive Zionism at its finest (albeit, achieved in a peculiar and roundabout way) as the Jewish State is still Jewish demographically and morally.

Shabbat Shalom and Hodesh Tov,

Josh