The White Paper

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Rosh HaShanah 5763 -- September 7, 2002

At a rabbis' meeting this summer, an older colleague mentioned that he had heard Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, one of the great orators of the last century, deliver a sermon on the High Holidays, in the late 1930's or early 1940's. The world was a mess. The news from Palestine, as it was called then under the British Mandate, and from Europe, was only bad. Rabbi Silver who had the most magnificent voice, spoke in a monotone, recounting at length all of the setbacks to the Jewish people and to the western democracies that year. Then he addressed the congregation briefly: "we will survive" he said and sat down.

I do not want to be melodramatic in comparing our times with his, but I have had moments this month of wondering what more there is to say. In my 21 years as a rabbi, I do not believe that the Jewish people have experienced a worse year. All summer long as I would open up my files on the weekly Torah portion to prepare for our many bar and bat mitzvah services, I would find things written in the summer of 2000. What a contrast with today.

In the summer of 2000, we American Jews were bursting with pride as an observant, committed Jew, ran for vice president. The Jewish press was full of articles about the demise of the old rationales for Jewish identity, support for the state of Israel and fear of anti-Semitism, arguing that these had both become non issues for contemporary generations. Anti-Semitism seemed on the wane, and Israel was anticipating further peace dividends as the Oslo process continued its troubled but still forward movement towards peace. Israeli politicians, experiencing booming economic growth, were telling American Jews that Israel was doing ok and their contributions could be better spent on Jewish communal needs in America. American Jews seemed ready to make that shift, and focused on renewal and spirituality rather than on the Holocaust and supporting Jews around the world.

On every score things are different today. As Americans and as American Jews we are feeling much less secure. From worrying about it having become too cool to be Jewish, we have come to deep concern about a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe and around the world. Above all, there has been constant painful news from Israel, where a war which is not exactly a war has already killed more Israelis than died in the Six Day War in 1967. We have nightmares about it becoming 1948 all over again, a struggle in which 1 in a hundred Jews residents then in Palestine lost their lives.

We alternate between pessimism and depression as we witness the loss of lives and of dreams. Listening to the onslaught of irrational and disproportionate criticism of Israel while innocent civilians are being killed almost daily, we feel the need to defend the Jewish homeland and its people. Some of the misinformation that enters people's minds is almost beyond belief. A non-Jewish friend of Aviva's from high school, a student at a prestigious East Coast university, asked in passing, "don't the Israelis use suicide bombers too?". She had no special animosity towards Israel, its just the news coverage with its constant stress on equivalency had subconsciously planted in her mind the existence of a group of Israeli suicide bombers. When I go out and speak about Israel I feel bombarded because there are so many blatant historical inaccuracies bandied about, ranging from Arafat's insistence at Camp David that there was no Temple and no Jewish ties to Jerusalem, to the frequent purposefully misleading representation of the Palestinians as powerless without any weapons with which to inflict harm on Israel, to the innocent school girl who asked me why the Jews destroyed the Palestinian state that used to be there. I find that if I respond to all of them, I sound like a hysterical crazy person. The need for more effective education on the Middle East and a better presentation of the case for the State of Israel, calls out to us.

But here among friends, in the midst of the Jewish community, we can admit to ourselves that we also have experienced moments of disquiet when we fear that policies of the current Israeli government are unwise or on occasion not in keeping with Jewish values, when elements of Israeli society put forward a vision of the Jewish state that we cannot accept. There have been things that happened that we wished we didn't have to explain to our children. There are Palestinian deaths that we deeply regret and even knowing that the Palestinians' suffering is to the greatest extent the result of their community's choices and the actions of the other Arab states, is not totally satisfying.

I am a Zionist, a proud and outspoken Zionist. I believe the Jewish people like other peoples on the face of this earth, has a right to a safe and secure national home. I cannot minimize the dangers of terrorism and its widespread support in the Palestinian national movement. But I am also an American and a Reform Jew with strong convictions about democracy and civil liberties, someone whose Zionism has always been intrinsically linked to social justice.

Let's go back to the days of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver for a moment.

In 1939 the British issued a White Paper which drastically limited Jewish immigration from Europe to the area of the British mandate. With estimates of 2 million European Jews seeking refugee status, the White Paper allowed only 75,000 Jewish immigrants to Palestine in the years 1939-1944 and none thereafter.

Having been given political control over the areas of Palestine and Trans-Jordan following World War I, the British were having a hard time fulfilling the simultaneous contradictory promises they had made to the Jews and the Arabs. Watching as Arab rioting spread throughout the country and became more violent, the British feared the vast Arab world would side against them. As war in Europe seemed more and more inevitable, the British gave in to Arab demands. At the time when European Jews were desperately seeking a haven, the British closed the doors of Mandate Palestine to Jewish immigration.

The yishuv, the Jewish community in what would in less than a decade become the state of Israel, found themselves with a terrible dilemma. How could they not fight this White Paper which was a death sentence to European Jewry? But how could they not support the British in their struggles against Nazi Germany? Chaim Weizman addressed the Zionist congress that year. He spoke about sitting "in the shadow of the white paper which threatens the destruction of our people and under the shadow of war which threatens the destruction of all human liberties, perhaps of humanity itself." How could they not support Britain in its darkest hour: "how should they", to quote Rabbi Silver, "put weapons into the hands of Britain's enemies."

And that's how the policy was developed, of fighting the White Paper as if there were no war with the Nazis, and supporting Britain in its war against the Nazis as if there was no white paper.

I believe that we can learn from this.

We must defend Israel, the Jewish national homeland, and its people, with all our hearts and all our might, as the threat to Israel's ultimate survival is real and present. But we must also, as Rabbi Eric Yoffie states so eloquently, continue to struggle in the battle for Israel's soul.

What must we do as defenders of Israel and it people? First, we must learn our history and current politics and then we must practice talking about Israel so that we can share what we have learned with others. The Reform movement is sponsoring a nationwide study day on Israel on September 29th which we will follow up here at Shir Hadash with a three session Sunday morning class. To reach out to our non-Jewish friends and neighbors, the Temple will host an educational program this fall for the general community, in cooperation with Temple Beth Am, at both sites on October 27th and we will need your help in encouraging people to attend. We are also counting on you to help us by organizing coffees and parlor meetings with your friends and business associates in your homes with speakers we can help provide. We need your assistance as well to find entree into some of the ethnic communities, our Hispanic and Asian neighbors for example, where we do not have a long history of dialogue and where bilingual Jewish participants could be of tremendous value.

Whatever our personal criticism of Sharon or of particular policies of the current Israeli government, we must not let American politicians get the idea that Jewish Americans are ambivalent in our support of Israel itself. As we participate in the fall campaigns for both the Republican and Democratic parties, we need to remind those we work with how important Israel is to all of us.

We must, as Arthur mentioned last night, even in our own difficult times, support Israel financially, whether by helping Israel's economy in continued business dealings with Israel, or through charitable giving. Its not just about buying Judaica and Israeli fruit and cosmetics. Be creative. I am giving members of my family Sara's Prints "made in Israel" pajamas this year for Hanukah. There are even high fashion Israeli products and of course high tech. Members of our congregation have done valuable work this spring and summer on the anti-divestiture campaigns, have contributed generously to the Israel Magen David Adom and have also traveled to Israel both for business and on private trips.

But we must also continue our battle for Israel's soul. This summer when the Knesset was considering a law, a racist law, which would have forbidden Arabs citizens of Israel, who incidentally have 10 representatives in the Israeli parliament, from owning land in certain parts of Israel, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the leader of our movement, broke ranks and violated the etiquette of the highest echelons of American Jewish leadership, by criticizing publicly the Council of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations.

We fight for Israel's soul when we support Reform social services like the Reform movements day care centers. Our funds allow them to include students who can't afford the normal fees. This seems like such a small matter but it is of great significance. Poor children who don't find a place at our schools will often end up in the free programs of the ultra-nationalistic Shas party Over the past decade they have provided free preschool, after school care and extended health care services, services the government can't for budgetary reasons. In this way, they have attracted thousands of followers and in doing so they have transformed Israeli politics. Our differences with Shas are not parochial issues of one or two days of yuntef, Reform rabbis officiating at weddings, or even whether women should count in a minyan. They are profoundly important issues like, do non-Jews have souls, and should Israel be a democracy. In a recent sermon Shas' leader Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, once a relatively moderate in the responsa he wrote, told his followers that anyone who used a civil court in Israel, even for business dealings, would be stricken with leprosy. Do we love every ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court? But we are proud of Israel's judicial system, proud that even Palestinians in the territories have found redress before the Israeli High Court. We need to remember that the mere existence of that court is an anathema to Israel's anti-democratic forces and its abolition is part of their agenda.

We don't want to wake up one day and find Judaism in Israel derailed into a racist caricature of itself, the way some of our moderate Muslim friends are slowly waking up to what has happened due to Whahabi money within the world of Islam.

We must help carry the battle for the ideals which were so important to Israel's founders, ideals of equality and justice, expressed in Israeli's declaration of Independence and in our ancient prophets.

Last week I was filled with sympathy for Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the British chief Rabbi. He had given an interview, the entire text of which was available and which I read. However, for its own reasons, the press chose things he said that were critical of Israel and quoted them in an inflammatory way, totally out of context. Jews who saw the articles wondered if Rabbi Sachs had become the British Michael Lerner and there was a great deal of dissension. But Rabbi Sachs' actual criticism of Israel were those of an ohev yisrael, a lover of Israel and that is how I speak to you today.

In our charitable giving to Israel we need to be responsible. Some fundraising efforts sound apolitical, but have secret agendas, like one organization that advertised this spring for donations to send pizza's to young Israeli soldiers, but actually used most of the donated funds to support intensely ideological settlements in the Hebron area. We need to monitor Federation giving to make sure we support our Israel and don't provide funds for organizations that undermine Israeli democracy or the future potential for peace.

The Reform movement has reluctantly accepted the recent change in the longstanding policy of not spending Federation charitable dollars over the green line, that is in Jewish communities in the west Bank and Gaza. The issue arose this summer when the UJC provided direct financial assistance to victims of terror attacks, regardless of where they were living. Rabbi Yoffie explained: "Our basic approach has been that we can accept aid that goes directly to victims of terror, but that no money should be spent for anything else -- infrastructure, social service, programming". With regard to Israel Bonds, an institution which will not currently make a policy declaration on whether they fund projects in the settlements, " The UAHC and the CCAR have formally asked for a clarification, and we expect to get an answer next week." ( Rabbi Eric Yoffie via email 9/4/02)

The UJC, that is Federation, is an independent charitable organization, but Israel Bonds is a government office and answers directly to Prime Minister Sharon. For that reason at the present time, I urge you to give money to Israel through Federation, through the Israel campaign of the UJC, but to make your investments in Israel directly to companies in Israel rather than working through the Bonds organization. Should a satisfactory clarification come through, I will organize a bonds luncheon immediately.

Over the years I have more than once brought to your attention the verses which imply that Ishmael and Isaac were reconciled at the time of Abraham's burial. Yitzchak Rabin also evoked this text, when he spoke about graves after the handshake on the lawn. In the current contex,t that vision of reconciliation is too far away, and the path towards it strewn with obstacles, seemingly insurmountable, and with mines.

My hope this year is more modest. I have been thinking about another analogy. It also comes from Genesis but relates to Jacob and not Abraham. Perhaps that's more appropriate anyway, Abraham was the father of many peoples, but its Jacob who is eventually called Israel. Also, our tradition holds Abraham up almost as a saint, but Jacob is a human character, with flaws, yet still our hero.

Jacob and Laban are not on good terms. Laban insists that all along Jacob was an indentured servant and not a hired worker, and that therefore his wife, his children, all his property, really belong to Laban. In Laban's world there is no room for an independent Jacob. In Laban, Jacob has met his match in terms of being paid back for his earlier immoral behavior. Jacob accuses Laban of cheating him and lying to him over the past two decades. It is a conflict they cannot resolve.

Since neither can overcome the other, they agree to make a covenant. They pile stones together, gal-ed, stones of witness, mitzpeh- a place of watching. And they say: "This heap of stones be witness and the pillar be witness, that I will not pass over this heap of stones to thee and that thou shalt not pass over this heap and this pillar unto me, for harm."

Last spring I spent my Sunday mornings at churches trying to explain and defend Israel to the non-Jewish community and my Sunday afternoons working for Arab-Jewish understanding. Its not that I have a split personality disorder, I think that both are vital for Israel's well being. It is vital that the American people look more critically at what they think they know about Israel and the Middle East. And it is critical that opportunities for dialogue between moderates on both side be promoted, and that there be progress towards contact and understanding between peoples, so that if a peace process can be put in place, it will have some chance of succeeding on the ground level. But until that day comes, until we can live the dream of two peoples reconciled and working together cooperatively, I would settle for gal-ed, "I shall not pass over, nor shall you pass over, for harm."