Hold Fast to Dreams

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Friday, June 4, 2010

With great prescience it seems, we chose next Saturday morning to focus on dissent in the American Jewish community.

Recent events around the Gaza flotilla provide a painful example of how the same incident can be viewed in many different ways .The varied statements issued by Jewish organizations, reveal striking disagreements within our community. My sense is that these differences exist not only between organizations, but also within them, and within smaller more intimate groupings, even among family members and friends.

For some the revelation of additional information contextualizes the story to include not only the tragic loss of life, and poorly conceived Israeli plans of engagement, but also a larger narrative which becomes more complicated. The differences in the interpretation of recent events are large and conceptual, but also rest on every particular of the situation. I heard a tube of banned hair conditioner brought forth as evidence of Israel’s inhumane, capricious and autocratic control and then held up by others as evidence that vital items are not banned and truly humanitarian aid like shampoo is getting through.

Is the foreground the suffering of those living in Gaza, or is it the efforts of Hamas and Hezbollah? Will the results from this week’s events, be only further loss of prestige and sympathy for Israel, or will there be some significant change of policy or plan?

I hope you will consider joining us next Saturday morning as we look not only at this disagreement, but at the ways of approaching disagreement within our greater Jewish community.

Tonight though I’d like to start with our Torah portion and go in a somewhat different direction, reflecting a bit on the graduates who are with us tonight.

The tragedy of this week’s Torah portion, the incident with the spies who are sent to scout out the Promised Land, and end up postponing the people’s entrance to Canaan by 40 years, is not in the report itself, but in its effect in crushing the dreams of the people. Before the people have even started to come close to achieving their goal of entering the Promised Land, the seeds of uncertainty planted by the spies, sprout quickly growing weeds that strangle all of their hopes.

It would seem that the portion ends on that negative note. After all, the Israelites are punished with 40 years of wandering. Every adult member of the community will die without reaching their goal. They then compound their suffering with a poorly conceived offensive against the Amalekites and Canaanites that fails dramatically.

But the portion doesn’t end there. It has a little coda, a set of laws, a hodgepodge, sacrifices, fairness to the stranger, atonement for sins committed unwittingly, a description of the tzizit, the fringes on the corner of our garments, and four verses about the challah offering, a mitzvah still observed by traditional Jews when baking bread.

“The Lord spoke to Moses saying: Speak to the Israelite people and say to them. When you enter the land to which I am taking you and you eat of the break of the land, you shall set some aside as a gift to the Lord.”

A wandering nomadic people does not bake bread. The action of bringing forth bread from the earth, is actually a complicated multi-step process that requires a certain stability and even wealth. This law is in preparation for becoming a settled people. Even with its very technical and matter of fact language, this commandment keeps the dream alive. It shows the people, that even with the delay, God is preparing them for agricultural life, for their entrée into the society of landed peoples.

Dreams can be kept alive, by little things.

This week as I plowed through the many emails that had come while I was away and particularly all the distressing statements about the flotilla and Israel’s response, there was also an email, in Hebrew, Arabic and English, from the Galilee Women's Interfaith Encounter.

Randa of the Interfaith Encounter Association wrote:

“The women's encounter on Sunday was amazing. It was an excursion in nature near Bueine , (an Arab village near Nazereth)– spectacular view and very beautiful place. We were 12 women and 9 children. The excursion was very family, exciting and nice. All the women were truly happy, the children played together and connected wonderfully. We made Tabuleh, Kubeh and Burekas and had also peanuts, sunflower seeds, soft drinks, coffee and cake. It was great!

I am very grateful for this opportunity that I have to bring together women and children to be happy together.”

One tradition holds that the new generation was allowed to come into the promised land because they had never lived under the burden of slavery. Another, proclaims that those who were spared, were still young enough, under 20, that even with the spies’ report, they had not dropped their dreams.

This evening as we celebrate with families whose high school student is graduating, we celebrate youth and its aspirations. We pray that our young people have dreams and that these dreams do not die. May their highest hopes find support, if necessary even in the smallest hint of possibilities, and may we be careful always not to be unnecessary purveyors of disillusionment.

“Hold fast to dreams, For if dreams die, Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly, Hold fast to dreams, For if dreams go, Life is a barren field, Frozen with snow”
—Langston Hughes