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We need to talk about Israel. Tisha B’Av’s central text suggests ‘how.’
(JTA) — This week, the Knesset began the process of overhauling Israel’s judiciary, removing the only checks and balances that currently exist in Israel’s government. It has done so with the slimmest of possible majorities, in defiance of the months of demonstrations, hundreds of thousands of protestors and international condemnation, including from some American Jewish institutions.
As Israeli democracy is shaken to its core, I have received other messages from the American Jewish community — messages that acknowledge little about the judicial overhaul, nothing about protests, and less about increasingly emboldened settler violence that has unfolded between Purim and Tisha B’Av, I say to myself: “How? How can this be?”
As the words leave my mouth, I realize that the first word of the Book of Lamentations, the central text of this week’s Tisha B’Av fast, is “eicha,” or how, and gives the book its Hebrew title. “How does the city sit solitary, that was full of people!” it begins in disbelief.
Many of us in the Jewish community are echoing this cry of “Eicha — How?” as we seek to understand the monumental, anti-democratic shifts going on right now within the Israeli government, or try to address Israeli human rights abuses of Palestinians.
For years now, one of the central tenets of our communal and educational institutions is that if we just continue repeating the same talking points about a shiny, illusory Israel, rehearsing them for ourselves and inculcating our children with them, then no matter what is actually happening on the ground, they will be true. This fixation on only one side of the picture belies the growing fear and pain expressed by the very people these institutions serve: Israel may no longer be a democracy, and for some, it has never been.
This eve of Tisha B’av provides a moment to consider the rabbis’ thoughts about this exclamation, “How?” as they reflected on the destruction of Jerusalem. In the first chapter of the rabbinic commentary on Lamentations (Eicha Rabbah), some of the commentators understood the initial cry as God’s. In need of a model for mourning after the destruction of the Temple, God was looking for direction and asked the angels, “How does a king of flesh and blood mourn?” The angels reply, “‘He sits in silence” and “He sits and weeps.”
“That is what I will do,” God replies, according to the commentary.
We must find a way to shift from the paralyzed silence of the “how” in Lamentations to the frankness and honesty of “how” we should be speaking with one another. None of us should find ourselves sitting in silence, alone and in mourning. We must rededicate ourselves to critical conversations, so we can openly confront the pain of Israel’s reality and find a path forward together.
We have been in the silence for a while already, and it’s part of what has brought us to this place. Tonight and tomorrow we may need to sit in deep lamentation, but what about the day after Tisha B’av?
We have a collective fear that if we start to deal dynamically with the reality on the ground, the picture of the world we have so carefully constructed will fall apart. But we can’t make violence go away by pretending we don’t see it. Only by confronting hard truths together do we stand a chance of keeping our real world from falling apart.
So we ask once again, “Eicha? How?” How do we move from paralysis to action? The first step must be to find constructive rather than destructive ways of engaging.
We already have models in our community for opening conversations about the really hard things that matter to help us hear one another and face reality together. In my work at NewGround: a Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change, we convene groups across a wide spectrum of differences to break down polarizing terms that obscure our understanding of one another and what is at stake for our communities, and we broaden our perspectives through listening to one another’s experiences and stories.
Resetting the Table, another group focused on facilitating hard conversations, uses its “core technology” to help communities “grapple, argue, and learn across political differences” in Hillels, synagogues, federations and, increasingly, churches, throughout the country. Libby Lenkinski of the New Israel Fund and anti-racism educator Jonah Canner, in their article “The Elephant in the Bunk,” remind us that summer camp can be a place where young Jews seeking to define their Jewishness are invited to think, feel and listen to one another about why and how Israel matters to them.
At the end of Tisha B’av, we get up from mourning and move toward the reflective month of Elul, toward Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It is never too late for teshuvah, for repair. But we must do the work, which means we have to engage these communal questions together and reflect upon our own complicity. To continue to sit in silence is but to bring on more destruction. Reckoning with reality is the only way to bring redemption.
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The post We need to talk about Israel. Tisha B’Av’s central text suggests ‘how.’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Treasure Trove explores the connection between errant arrows on Lag ba-Omer and comments that hit the mark
Are these kids the worst archers you have ever seen? Based on where their hands are, it is not obvious how the arrows will fly (which is probably a good thing, since most of them are facing each other). This 1910 postcard printed by the Hebrew Publishing Company of New York depicts the holiday of […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the connection between errant arrows on Lag ba-Omer and comments that hit the mark appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel’s Gantz Demands Gaza Day-After Plan By June 8, Threatens to Quit Cabinet
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz speaks at Reichman University on Nov. 23, 2021. Photo: Ariel Hermoni / IMoD
Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz demanded on Saturday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commit to an agreed vision for the Gaza conflict that would include stipulating who might rule the territory after the war with Hamas.
Gantz told a press conference he wanted the war cabinet to form a six-point plan by June 8. If his expectations are not met, he said, he will withdraw his centrist party from the conservative premier’s broadened emergency coalition.
Gantz, a retired top Israeli general who opinion polls show is Netanyahu’s most formidable political rival, gave no date for the prospective walkout but his challenge could increase strains on an increasingly unwieldy wartime government.
Netanyahu appears outflanked in his own inner war cabinet, where he, Gantz and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant alone have votes. On Wednesday, Gallant demanded clarity on post-war plans and for Netanyahu to forswear any military reoccupation of Gaza.
If the prime minister were to do that, he would risk angering ultra-nationalist coalition parties that have called for Gaza to be annexed and settled. Losing them could topple Netanyahu, who before the war failed to enlist more centrist partners, given his trial on corruption charges he denies.
“Personal and political considerations have begun to penetrate the Holy of Holies of Israel‘s national security,” Gantz said. “A small minority has seized the bridge of the Israeli ship and is piloting it toward the rocky shoal.”
Gantz said his proposed six-point plan would include bringing a temporary U.S.-European-Arab-Palestinian system of civil administration for Gaza while Israel retains security control.
It would also institute equitable national service for all Israelis, including ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are now exempted from the military draft and have two parties in Netanyahu’s coalition determined to preserve the waiver.
The post Israel’s Gantz Demands Gaza Day-After Plan By June 8, Threatens to Quit Cabinet first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Pushes Into New Parts of Northern Gaza, Recovers Another Slain Hostage
Smoke rises following Israeli strikes, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Jabalia refugee camp northern Gaza Strip, May 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa/File Photo
Israeli troops and tanks pushed on Saturday into parts of a congested northern Gaza Strip district that they had previously skirted in the more than seven-month-old war.
Israel’s forces also took over some ground in Rafah, a southern city next to the Egyptian border that is packed with displaced people and where the launch this month of a long-threatened incursion to crush hold-outs of Palestinian Islamist terror group Hamas has alarmed Cairo and Washington.
In what Israeli media said was the result of intelligence gleaned during the latest incursions, the military announced the recovery of the body of a man who was among more than 250 hostages seized by Hamas in a cross-border rampage on Oct. 7 that triggered the war.
Ron Binyamin’s remains were located along with those of three other slain hostages whose repatriation was announced on Friday, the military said without providing further details.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
Israel has conducted renewed military sweeps this month of parts of northern Gaza where it had declared the end of major operations in January. At the time, it also predicted its forces would return to prevent a regrouping by the Palestinian Islamist group that rules Gaza.
One site has been Jabalia, the largest of Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps. On Saturday, troops and tanks edged into streets so far spared the ground offensive, residents said.
“Today is the most difficult in terms of the occupation bombardment, air strikes and tank shelling have going on almost non-stop,” said one resident in Jabalia, Ibrahim Khaled, via a chat app.
“We know of dozens of people, martyrs (killed) and wounded, but no ambulance vehicle can get into the area,” he told Reuters.
The Israeli military said its forces have continued to operate in areas across the Gaza Strip including Jabalia and Rafah, carrying out what it called “precise operations against terrorists and infrastructure.”
“The IAF (air force) continues to operate in the Gaza Strip, and struck over 70 terror targets during the past day, including weapons storage facilities, military infrastructure sites, terrorists who posed a threat to IDF troops, and military compounds,” the military said in a statement.
RISING DEATH TOLL
Armed wings of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and Fatah said fighters attacked Israeli forces in Jabalia and Rafah with anti-tank rockets, mortar bombs, and explosive devices already planted in some of the roads, killing and wounding many soldiers.
Israel’s military said 281 soldiers have been killed in fighting since the first ground incursions in Gaza on Oct 20.
In the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 1,200 people were killed. About 125 people are still being held in Gaza.
In Rafah, where Israeli tanks thrust into some of the eastern suburbs and clashed with Palestinian fighters there, residents said Israeli bombing from the air and ground persisted all night.
Israel says it must capture Rafah to destroy Hamas and ensure the country’s security.
The post Israel Pushes Into New Parts of Northern Gaza, Recovers Another Slain Hostage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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