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Sukkot is a holiday of homecoming and homelessness
This story was originally published on My Jewish Learning.
(JTA) — What is home? The question sounds like it would best be answered by a children’s book on which each page proclaims a sweet tautology like, “Home is where you feel at home.” There would be a picture of the family nest, parents, grandparents, kids and a dog, a fire in the hearth and soup on the table. Home as Norman Rockwell painted it. Home as so many have sung it: “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave / Oe’r the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
But pondering what home really is opens us to what is arguably the most troubling political and theological puzzle of our times. For we have entered an age of homelessness and Homeland Security, of mass migrations and refugees fleeing scarcity, tyranny, drought and famine, of rising oceans, poisoned air and water, ongoing wars that destroy homes while killing and displacing whole populations. We have entered the age of the loss of home.
It is especially important for Jews to reflect on the meaning of home today. Not only because that is precisely the philosophical task of this week’s Sukkot holiday, but because we live in the aftermath of a war in which we were almost erased from the earth. And because we live in the presence of a 75-year-old reborn Jewish state, where many Jews feel they have come home to a security unavailable elsewhere.
So what does it mean, for a person or a people or a species, to lose home or to come home? What exactly is lost when you lose home and what is gained when you recover it?
Historically, Jews know much more about exile than home, more about wandering the wilderness than inhabiting the land. On Sukkot, we are instructed to consider that home may not be fixed, stable and enduring but rather fragile, temporary and portable. How dissonant it can sound then to ears inured to exile when they hear Jerusalem, the object of millennial yearning, described as the “eternal undivided capital” of a state, a national possession, a city like any other.
Consider the reflections of a man born in rural Austria in 1912, the son of an assimilated Jewish father and a Catholic mother who, forced to recognize his Jewish ancestry in 1935 when the Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws, finally fled to Belgium with his Jewish wife in 1938 after Hitler annexed his homeland. An adamant atheist, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Brussels, tortured and then bounced among various camps for two years until the war’s end. When he returned to Brussels anxious to reunite with his wife, he discovered she had died. Alone, unknown and penniless, he changed his German name to Jean Amery and became a journalist and essayist.
In one of his essays, he writes: “For there is, after all, something like a transportable home, or at least an ersatz for home. That can be religion, like the Jewish one. ‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ the Jews have promised themselves for generations during their Passover ritual, but it wasn’t at all a matter of really getting to the Holy Land; rather it sufficed to pronounce the formula together and to know that one was united in the magic domain of the tribal God Yahweh.” Amery could still think of home, but he could no longer taste it. In losing home, he had lost himself. And in 1978, he finally took his own life.
Now consider the thinking of a man who left his home in Warsaw voluntarily at the age of 17 to study and teach in Vilna and Berlin before eventually finding himself a refugee in the United States in 1940. In his short classic, “The Sabbath” (1951), Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes of finding spiritual home not in space, but in time: “The Bible is more concerned with time than with space. It sees the world in the dimension of time. It pays more attention to generations, to events, than to countries, to things; it is more concerned with history than with geography.”
Yet just weeks after the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Israeli army’s lightning conquest of Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Sinai peninsula and the Golan Heights, Heschel visited Israel. Smitten by what he experienced there, he wrote a book, “Israel: An Echo of Eternity,” which seemed to many readers a repudiation of his earlier thinking. He writes: “There are moments in history which are unique, moments which have tied the heart of our people to Jerusalem forever. These moments and the city of Jerusalem radiate the light of the spirit throughout the world. The light of the spirit is not a thing of space, imprisoned in a particular place. Yet for the spirit of Jerusalem to be everywhere, Jerusalem must first be somewhere.”
Was Heschel overcome by a moment that felt like homecoming? Or shall we say he lived and thought like a pilgrim who understood that while life is always about the quest, there are nevertheless times when a pilgrim needs, sometimes desperately, glimpses of home both in space and in time?
Amery could not abide homelessness. Heschel was able to take up the task of working for and with African Americans in their own struggle for home. When you feel at home you feel commanded to extend that feeling to others. Sukkot teaches that home is the place and the moment to offer shelter to strangers.
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The post Sukkot is a holiday of homecoming and homelessness appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Helicopter Carrying Iran’s President Raisi Crashes in Mountains
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi speaks during a meeting with the cabinet in Tehran, Iran, January 19, 2023. Photo: Presidential Website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister crashed on Sunday as it was crossing mountain terrain in heavy fog on the way back from a visit to the border with Azerbaijan, an Iranian official told Reuters.
The official said the lives of Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian were “at risk following the helicopter crash.”
“We are still hopeful but information coming from the crash site is very concerning,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The bad weather was complicating rescue efforts, the state news agency IRNA reported.
State TV stopped all its regular programming to show prayers being held for Raisi across the country and, in a corner of the screen, live coverage of rescue teams searching the mountainous area on foot in heavy fog.
The 63-year-old was elected president at the second attempt in 2021, and since taking office has ordered a tightening of morality laws, overseen a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests and pushed hard in nuclear talks with world powers.
In Iran’s dual political system, split between the clerical establishment and the government, it is the supreme leader rather than the president who has the final say on all major policies.
But many see Raisi as a strong contender to succeed his 85-year-old mentor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has strongly endorsed Raisi’s main policies.
Interior Minister Ahmed Vahidi told state TV only that one of the helicopters in a group of three had come down hard, and that authorities were awaiting further details.
Raisi had been at the Azerbaijani border to inaugurate the Qiz-Qalaisi Dam, a joint project.
The post Helicopter Carrying Iran’s President Raisi Crashes in Mountains first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Despite Polls, Biden Aides Insist Anti-Israel Campus Protests Will Not Hurt Reelection Bid
Demonstrators take part in an anti-Israel demonstration at the Columbia University campus, in New York City, US, Feb. 2, 2024. REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
Several top White House aides say they are confident protests across U.S. college campuses against Israel’s offensive in Gaza will not translate into significantly fewer votes for Joe Biden in November’s election, despite polls showing many Democrats are deeply unhappy about the U.S. president’s policy on the war.
The White House optimism on the issue, which is shared by many in the Biden campaign, runs contrary to dire warnings from some Democratic strategists and youth organizers who warn misjudging the situation could cost Biden dearly in a tight race with Republican rival Donald Trump.
Several aides told Reuters they are advising Biden to remain above the fray, rather than directly engage with the relatively small groups of protesters on college campuses, arguing their numbers are too insignificant to harm the president’s reelection campaign.
Faced with a choice between Biden and Trump in November, many officials remain confident even Democrats who oppose U.S. policy will choose Biden. Reuters interviewed nearly a dozen top White House officials in recent days, but only two expressed concern about the impact of the protests and Biden’s handling of the issue.
The issue returns to the spotlight Sunday, when Biden makes the commencement address at Morehouse College, over some objections by students and faculty, and a warning from the college’s president that the ceremony will stop if there are protests.
Most officials Reuters spoke to said they believe housing costs and inflation were the issues top of mind for young voters, not the war in Gaza, pointing to a recent Harvard poll that ranks Israel/Palestine 15th on a list of issues, after taxes, gun violence and jobs. Several aides refer to the protesters as “activists” rather than students.
Asked for comment on the issue, White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said Biden understands this is a painful moment for many communities and is listening. He has said too many civilians have died in the “heartbreaking” conflict and that more must be done to prevent the loss of innocent lives, Bates added.
Biden and Trump are nearly tied in national polls, and Trump has the edge in the battleground states that will decide the election, multiple recent polls show. On economic issues like inflation, Trump scores higher with voters overall than Biden.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll found Democrats deeply divided over Biden’s handling of both the war in Gaza and the U.S. campus protests against it, with 44% of registered Democrats disapproving of Biden’s handling of the crisis, and 51% of his handling of the protests.
Young voters still favor Biden, but support has dropped significantly since 2020, polls show. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in March showed Americans aged 18-29 favored Biden over Trump by just 3 percentage points – 29% to 26% – with the rest favoring another candidate or unsure if anyone would get their vote.
Two White House officials Reuters spoke to emphasized Biden’s support among young voters is not where it was in 2020 and said they worry the administration is not taking the drop seriously enough.
With the war in Gaza now in its seventh month, US support for Israel’s government could weigh heavily on the presidential election in November, they said
“There is almost a level of defiance when it comes to some of the president’s closest advisers on this issue,” said a senior White House official with direct knowledge of the matter, who did not wish to be named. “They think the best approach is to simply steer clear and let it pass.”
BIDEN SPEAKS CAUTIOUSLY
Protests over Israel’s war in Gaza have broken out at more than 60 colleges and universities this year, disrupted Biden’s events around the country, pushed Democrats in key battleground states to vote “uncommitted” and divided the Democratic party.
Biden, who is known for saying what he thinks, even when it’s not politically beneficial, has been cautious on the issue of protests over Gaza. He spoke in early May on the importance of following the law, while defending free speech and later on addressed the threat of antisemitism on college campuses.
Both times, he mostly avoided the issue that has sparked the protests – how young Americans feel about his support for Israel. But he also said bluntly that protests will not change his Middle East policy.
Groups organizing the protests say that a recent halt to some weapons to Israel was too little too late, and are planning fresh demonstrations, though the summer break may quieten action on campuses.
Michele Weindling, political director of the climate-focused youth group the Sunrise Movement, said “young people are incredibly disillusioned, they are angry at the way the president has treated this conflict.”
“A huge risk right now is that young voters will completely stay out of the electoral system this November, or deliberately vote against Biden out of anger,” Weindling said.
That has the potential to cost Biden dearly, given 61% of the more than half of Americans aged 18 to 29 that voted in the 2020 general election voted Democratic, a Tufts University research group found. The youth turnout was up 11 points from 2016.
GAZA NOT A TOP ISSUE
Republicans both overwhelmingly disapprove of the protests and Biden’s handling of the war, a Reuters/Ipsos poll published this week shows. Some Republicans have called for him to send National Guard troops on to campuses.
But until a day before Biden delivered his first speech on the protests on May 2, he remained unsure he needed to address the issue, two officials said. Biden asked his team to put together “something rudimentary,” so he could edit and change it, which he did that evening, one of the officials said.
He did not make the final decision to speak until the morning, after violence broke out on the UCLA campus, the official added.
The Harvard youth poll showing Israel/Gaza is low on youth concerns is being circulated at internal meetings at the campaign and the White House and is in line with private data the White House has seen, the first official said.
The president doesn’t speak about every issue in the news, on purpose, another White House official said. It “doesn’t always happen, no matter what kind of news it is, whether it’s the news of the day or the week or the month,” he said.
The post Despite Polls, Biden Aides Insist Anti-Israel Campus Protests Will Not Hurt Reelection Bid first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Confirms Air Strike Killed Senior Hamas Terrorist Azmi Abu Daqa
An Israel Air Force F-15 fighter jet escorts an American B-1b heavy bomber through Israeli airspace, on October 30, 2021. Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit
i24 News – The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that a senior Hamas terrorist, Azmi Abu Daqa, was killed in an airstrike conducted by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) on Saturday.
Abu Daqa was an operative in Hamas’ Procurement Department, involved in smuggling weapons and terror funds into the Gaza Strip.
The targeted airstrike, guided by precise IDF intelligence, is part of a broader campaign against Hamas operatives.
The IDF spokesperson stated, “Aircraft of the Air Force, under the intelligence direction of the Intelligence Wing and the Southern Command, attacked and killed Azmi Abu Daqa, a leading figure in the Hamas Procurement Department, promoting the transfer of weapons and funds intended for terrorism in the Gaza Strip.”
In addition to Abu Daqa, the IAF struck dozens of terror targets over the past day.
These strikes included the elimination of two tactical-level Hamas commanders who were preparing to attack IDF troops in the Rafah area. These commanders were identified and targeted by the 215th Fire Brigade.
Furthermore, the IAF announced the successful strike on a senior Islamic Jihad operative last night. The targeted individual was the Head of Logistics for the Rafah Brigade in Islamic Jihad, responsible for preparing operations against IDF ground troops in the region.
The post IDF Confirms Air Strike Killed Senior Hamas Terrorist Azmi Abu Daqa first appeared on Algemeiner.com.