Israel and the Double Standard

Rabbi Melanie Aron

June 20, 2002

It was just two summers ago, when Joseph Lieberman, an observant Jew was running for vice president, and you heard lots of talk about how cool it was to be a Jew, and how Jews were admirable in a variety of ways.

Now things feel very different, as our generation gets a taste of what it is in the world that made our grandparents say, "its hard to be a Jew." We hear Israel constantly criticized and often, associated with that, especially abroad, are attacks on Jews as a community or Judaism as a religious faith.

In this week's Torah portion, Balaam, the pagan sorcerer comes to curse the Israelites, and instead ends up singing their praise. The conventional reading of this text says that Balaam had no choice. He could speak only the words God placed in his mouth.

But other commentators understand the text differently. They believe that Balaam fully intended to curse the Israelites, based on what he had heard about them from Balak, based on the ill report he had received of them. But when he went up on the mountainside and saw the Israelites for himself, he found in them positive qualities, and instead of cursing them, ended up praising them. In particular we are told he saw how this large group of people were encamped in close proximity, yet managed to conduct themselves with great civility and respect one for another. The Malbim tells us that Balaam waxed poetic over Israel's moral rather than aesthetic beauty.

According to this reading, Balaam's conversion was not a consequence of God's overwhelming power, but rather, the result of the Israelites behavior. From it we are to learn in the words of one commentator, the contemporary Orthodox rabbi Shlomo Riskin, to " act in such a way that even an inimical gentile will change his curse to a blessing and his damnation to praise."

That of course is the standard we would like Israel to meet. Israel should be a light unto the nations, a country whose every action would be a source of pride to Jews around the world. And even in the last few weeks there have been moments like that. Did you read about the young suicide bomber, who had been wounded and was taken to an Israeli hospital, where he was being fed cucumbers by the military police watching over him, as he received world class medical treatment? We all know the fate of the two Israeli reserve soldiers who got lost and were then captured in Ramallah. In many situations Israel has been remarkable in its respect for law and democratic process and in its humanitarian concerns.

But the news is not always like that. I remember an Israeli saying to me this winter: "If you want Israel to be holy, you should have chosen a different neighborhood for the Jewish homeland. This is a tough neighborhood. We don't share a border with Canada." The Israelis deal daily with the extremely difficult challenge of balancing Jewish values and democratic ideals with a dangerous and explosive situation on the ground.

Still there are occasions where getting a real view of Israel helps create a more favorable picture. We see it with individuals who change their minds about Israelis after some personal contact, whether through capture or some coincidence of their life ( like being in East Jerusalem and needing sophisticated medical treatment at Hadassah Hospital) or because they sought out dialogue opportunities. One member of our Arab-Jewish dialogue group said it was the Jewish thesis advisor he was assigned when he came to the United States to study engineering who forced him to reconsider everything he had learned about Jews in the Arab country in which he had grown up.

A first hand view can also help news organizations, who often have had to print retractions when stories are later checked out. It was European investigative reporters who arrived at the conclusion that it wasn't an Israeli bullet that killed the boy on the first day of the second intifada, nor were those Israeli extremists shooting at the car of the United Nations envoy.

We find in this week's Torah portion, just after the famous Mah Tovu text, the words, Mevarchecha Baruch "I will bless those who bless you", and we expect it to continue, and "those who curse you I will curse," but instead, we find an unusual Hebrew word, not ekallel but aaor, and to those who curse you, literally I will show the light. As we say at the high holidays, it is not the death of the wicked that God seeks, but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and repent.

Finally among the words that Balaam spoke there were some that were both a blessing and a curse, most famously, "hen am levad yishkon- a people who dwell alone." About this Rashi says: "When they rejoice no other nation rejoices with them", or as we have experienced with the constant barrage of civilian fatalities from terrorist, when we mourn, do other nation mourns with us? Yet our uniqueness as a people is also our calling, it the aspiration that makes us accept in part the world's double standard.