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The 2024 High Holidays: Should God Atone, Too?
New immigrants experience their first High Holidays in Jerusalem as official residents of Israel, Oct. 6, 2019. Photo: The Jewish Agency for Israel.
We are approaching a period of atonement. And sometimes I wonder who should be atoning. It may sound blasphemous, but perhaps God should be atoning (metaphorically of course), as much as we atone to God for our shortcomings.
The rabbis envisaged God suffering with us in exile. And the Talmud has God praying to Himself that his quality of mercy should override that of justice.
Yet it is God (or as some might say, the universe) who made us with all our faults and capacities for evil — just as much as for good. As the Talmud says, humans were not created to be angels.
If you take the position that God controls everything on earth, then if we are suffering, what is God doing about it?
Of course, we understand that God is not a human being, and therefore ascribing human characteristics to God simply doesn’t make sense. When we look at the physical world, we see this constant turmoil and conflict between good and evil, and the struggle to deal with it.
But when we think of God in spiritual terms, we think of a relationship — between us and life, and a way of dealing with it, however best we can.
We know that life is going to bring us pain and ultimately death. That there will be happy and sad moments, and that we have to navigate these rapids while still preserving a sense of goodness.
But it is hard for the Jewish people, when we seem destined to suffer out of all proportion to the rest of the world, time and time again. Have we been chosen to suffer? And each time we think we may have transcended hatred, it comes back to bite us, harder and harder.
Can we — should we — challenge God? After all, the Biblical Book of Job is a critique of God and how God allows bad things to happen to good people.
This time last year, we had no idea what we were about to suffer — both in Israel and the Diaspora. When I think of all those mothers bereaved of sons, those who lost husbands, children now orphans, I can’t imagine the pain they’re going through.
Somehow or other, most of them will survive — and they will need our help both financially and emotionally. We have carried on our lives, for better or for worse, as if nothing was going to change. Yet I certainly have not lived through a year as painful and sometimes depressing, not just because of the evil perpetrated and the loss of life, but because of the ongoing crescendo of hate from supposedly moral, educated people.
Yet I should not be surprised. Very little has changed over thousands of years, either in terms of violence, hatred, or our capacity for self-destruction.
We should not be surprised that some 80 years after the Holocaust, irrational hatred has returned. Yet we should be grateful for the fact that we have more tools to defend ourselves now than we ever did before.
I can derive both pain and comfort from the great prophets. But the agony, the question, is: how have we deserved this?
We are living in a world without trust. We don’t trust governments; we don’t trust institutions. I have no idea where this is going to lead.
But the one thing I do know is that for all the crises before October the 7th and since, the one common and remarkable factor that binds us is a shared solidarity when the crisis strikes.
The Jewish community has shown that we can pull together. The root of this solidarity is loyalty. Either you’re for our survival or you’re against us.
That doesn’t mean to say that we can’t criticize or complain about corruption, dishonesty, failed policies, and missed opportunities, wherever they come from.
It’s no different than a parent dealing with a difficult child, and trying to bring about change. But in the end, you have to be there in a supportive role and let that child make its own mistakes and hope that in the end, something good will come out of it.
The world goes on according to its own system and rules, says the Talmud. But there is hope and faith.
We have survived because however much we’ve failed, our traditions give us purpose and a mission.
We cannot speak for God. The idea of God is essentially the realization that there is some other force, energy, or reason for what happens on earth, and that much of what happens is beyond ourselves.
God works as God works. What we know is that we must speak and atone for ourselves, and find solace where we can. Many of us will pray and hope with extra motivation and passion this year, to ourselves, and that the Almighty will be kinder in 5785.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
The post The 2024 High Holidays: Should God Atone, Too? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Top Teachers Union Votes to End Alliance with ADL Over Israel Support
NEA Headquarters in Washington, DC. //WikiCommons
On Sunday, the National Education Association (NEA) voted to cease its relationship with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), citing the latter’s defense of the Jewish state.
The policymaking, 7,000-member assembly of the nation’s largest teachers’ union approved “new business item 39,” a measure that resolved: “NEA will not use, endorse, or publicize any materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or its statistics. NEA will not participate in ADL programs or publicize ADL professional development offerings.”
In response to the decision, the ADL called it “profoundly disturbing, that a group of NEA activists would brazenly attempt to further isolate their Jewish colleagues and push a radical, antisemitic agenda on students.”
The ADL declared: “We will not be cowed for supporting Israel, and we will not be deterred from our work reaching millions of students with educational programs every year.”
Cautioning that “there’s an internal NEA process that deals with issues like this, and it is far from a completed process,” the ADL vowed: “We will continue to call out this antisemitism and prioritize our Jewish students and educators.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a consistent and influential critic of Israel’s right to exist, praised the teachers union’s rejection of the ADL.
“We welcome the NEA’s vote to stop exposing public school students to biased materials provided by the Anti-Defamation League due to its long history of spreading anti-Palestinian rhetoric,” CAIR said in a statement.
“The ADL has only become worse under its increasingly unhinged director Jonathan Greenblatt, who has repeatedly smeared and endangered students in recent years,” the group said. “This principled move is a significant step toward fostering respect for the rights and dignity of all students in public schools, who must receive an education without facing biased, politically-driven agendas.”
In a post Wednesday on X, ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt wrote: “The answer to the surge in antisemitism in our classrooms isn’t to exclude the Jewish community from the conversation. Anti-Israel activists within @NEAToday cannot poison U.S. classrooms with politics. @ADL‘s priority is, and has been, to support Jewish students and educators. Our nation’s school systems should have access to the best resources for education on the Holocaust and antisemitism.”
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‘Transparently Antisemitic’: Google Founder Sergey Brin Blasts UN in Internal Company Forum
Sergey Brin of Google
(Source: ReutersConnect)
Google cofounder Sergey Brin criticized the United Nations in a company forum, calling it “transparently antisemitic” after the release of a report that accused Google and other tech firms of enabling Israeli military operations in Gaza.
Brin was responding to a UN report that claimed companies including Alphabet, Google’s parent company, profited from what it called “the genocide carried out by Israel” by providing cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government and military.
“Throwing around the term genocide in relation to Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides,” Brin wrote in a discussion thread on a Google DeepMind employee forum. “I would also be careful citing transparently antisemitic organizations like the U.N.”
The report was the brainchild of Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. The Trump administration has accused her of antisemitism and has called for her removal, saying she has demonstrated consistent antisemitic biases in her work and has unfairly singled out Israel.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the US was imposing sanctions on Albanese under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.”
In a post on X, Rubio accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on “human rights violations” that Israel allegedly commits against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and rationalize Hamas attacks on the Jewish state. In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7 atrocities across southern Israel, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
Google has faced internal uproar over the company’s $1.2 billion Project Nimbus deal with Israel. The deal has faced sustained criticism from human rights activists and some Google employees, who argue the technology could be used to enhance Israeli military operations and surveillance of Palestinians. According to a recent UN report, the agreement provided Israel with key cloud and AI infrastructure after Hamas launched its deadly October 7, 2023 attack against the Jewsih state, killing approximately 1,200 people and prompting a large-scale Israeli military response in Gaza.
Google has previously punished employees who protested the company’s relationship with Israel. After a wave of internal demonstrations in 2024, CEO Sundar Pichai issued a companywide memo urging staff not to use the workplace to debate political issues.
In the months following Oct. 7, Israeli defensive military operations in Gaza have led to the deaths of more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. Hamas, the terrorist group that runs the Gaza Health Ministry, has repeatedly fabricated casualty statistics in the past.
The UN report accused US tech firms of exploiting a lucrative opportunity created by the conflict and Israel’s need for digital tools. It singled out Google and Amazon as being complicit in Israel’s so called “genocide” in Gaza.
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US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.
In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation.
Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: “A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!”
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