Rabbi Anna Gerrard is Rabbi of Three Counties Liberal Jewish Community (3CLJC). This sermon was delivered at 3CLJC on Rosh Hashanah morning.
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On Rosh Hashanah, we take stock. “Today we stand before the Mirror of All.”[1] What do we see?
We see ourselves juggling busy lives, balancing our Jewish identities with many other identities, activities, commitments and responsibilities. We see our small Jewish community thriving through hard work and incredible volunteers, thinking creatively about how to make Judaism relevant in our modern lives. We see the new Movement for Progressive Judaism going from strength to strength as it settles into its stride and takes its place in the British Jewish landscape.
We also see a UK Jewish community often in shock, sometimes in conflict and always in a state of anxiety about the rise in antisemitism, and about the need to keep ourselves safe without compromising our right to gather and observe our traditions.
In the UK and beyond, we see the Jewish world grappling with Israel and Palestine: what it means for us as diaspora Jews. Many of us are deeply connected to Israel; many of us are deeply concerned about the direction Israel’s current leadership is taking. All of us are wondering what this means for the future of Israel and Palestine, and the future of Jewish and global security.
Rosh Hashanah invites us to stop and look at our reflection. In recent years, that has not been easy. This year, it feels harder still. When we look in the mirror, we see a world riddled with contradictions and competing narratives. We see confusion and fear. We see attempts to claim legitimacy coming at us from every direction.
We are living in a moment that constantly tells us that we have to pick a side, that if we acknowledge one person’s pain we are somehow betraying another. That if we criticise Israel, we must not care about Jewish safety. That if we defend Israel’s right to exist, we must have no regard for the lives of Palestinians. That if we define ourselves as Zionist, we must defend everything done in Israel’s name.
Judaism gives us another possibility. It teaches us to wrestle with complexity, to argue ‘l’shem hashamayim’ (for the sake of Heaven) without erasing the person with whom we disagree. It invites us to hold two truths together even when that feels uncomfortable or confusing or complicated.
This is true – and this is also true.
This traditional Jewish approach feels particularly important this week, after the UK government announced sanctions against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The Jewish response to this announcement has been varied.
Some Jewish leaders, including Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations Ephraim Mirvis, have warned that these measures could make British Jews less safe and could embolden those who seek to harm the British Jewish community.[2] That fear cannot simply be dismissed.
Antisemitism is real. Jewish communities need security. Jewish people have every right to expect their government to protect them, and we should never be casual about anything that threatens Jewish safety.
But there is another truth, and it must also be spoken. Sanctions directed at Israeli settlements are not the same thing as an attack on Jews. Many British Jews and many Israelis also oppose and deplore the occupation of the West Bank, the expansion of settlements and the use of violence against West Bank citizens.
Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, speaking after witnessing the consequences of settler violence first-hand, described what is taking place in the West Bank as “a Chillul HaShem, a violation of God’s name of the worst order.” Wittenberg believes that the Settler movement and the Israeli government that supports it are a desecration of our Judaism and Jewish values. “We must speak out. We must do so out of deep concern for what is human and just, and for the sake of Israel and Judaism. We cannot turn away.”[3]
We need to heed these words. There are dangerous ideas lurking amid the current debate: the idea that Jewish safety requires Jewish silence about Palestinian suffering; and the idea that support for the Palestinians requires a complete denouncement of support for Israel.
The debate does not need to be polarised in this way…
If we care about Jewish safety, we should care about what Israel does in our name and what happens to Palestinians living under occupation. If we care about Israel, we should want Israel to be a secure, democratic society living alongside a Palestinian state, rather than a country locked permanently in conflict. And if we care about fighting genuine antisemitism, we should be able to say clearly that criticism of the Israeli government, opposition to settlements and support for Palestinian rights are not, in themselves, antisemitism.
Rabbis Charley Baginsky and Josh Levy, Co-leads of The Movement for Progressive Judaism, released a statement this week: “Our Jewish values call us to hold together truths too often separated: the safety and dignity of Israelis and Palestinians; our attachment to Israel and our opposition to the expansion of settlements; Israel’s right to security and the Palestinian right to freedom, self-determination and a State of their own.”[4]
That is not fence-sitting. It is not moral equivalence. It is a demanding political position that refuses the simplicity of a zero-sum game. It says that my humanity does not depend on denying yours. My security does not require your permanent insecurity. My national self-determination does not require the absence of yours.
This is true – and this is also true.
The Torah portion on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the story of Sarah, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael, is, among other things, a story about what happens when one person’s security is experienced as another person’s rejection. Once Isaac is born, Sarah feels threatened by Hagar and Ishmael, and she asks Abraham to cast them out. God convinces Abraham to carry out Sarah’s request. And yet, almost immediately, the Torah makes it clear that God also cares for Hagar and Ishmael.
When Hagar and her child are sent into the wilderness and the water runs out, she turns away, and God hears the cry of the child. Ishmael’s very name means “God hears.” The God of our Torah is listening to Sarah’s fear and to Hagar’s anguish. The existence of one story does not cancel out the existence of the other.
We cannot treat this story as a simple allegory for the modern conflict, and we should not pretend that the Bible gives us a neat political solution. But it does offer us a profound spiritual challenge. Sarah’s fear is real, and Hagar’s suffering is real. The Torah does not ask us to pretend these realities are identical. It asks us to notice that they exist at the same time.
This is true – and this is also true.
A two-state solution is sometimes dismissed as naïve, impossible or already dead. But isn’t it more naïve to believe that permanent domination, occupation and fear can somehow produce lasting security?
We should be demanding a future in which Israelis and Palestinians can build ordinary lives rather than continually burying their children. As Progressive Jews, this is where we may have to be bold. There are so few people holding the middle ground, we have to make our voices heard. We need to remind people that it is possible to say these things in the same breath…
Israel has a right to security and Palestinians have a right to freedom.
Hamas’s crimes do not justify the permanent oppression of Palestinians and Palestinian suffering does not justify attacks on Israeli civilians.
Antisemitism must be confronted wherever it appears and anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia must be confronted too.
Settler violence must be condemned and terrorism must be condemned.
The Torah asks us to begin with our own story, but it does not ask us to end there. The stranger, the widow, the orphan, the vulnerable person, the person without power – again and again Torah asks us to notice them. To notice Sarah and Hagar. To feel compassion towards Isaac and Ishmael.
The ‘Mirror of All’ does not reflect a perfect version of our world. It shows us what is actually there, in all its complexity. It proves that the world is capable of holding multiple narratives, because all those narratives are there, staring back at us from the mirror’s glass.
This is true – and this is also true.
In ‘The Place Where We Are Right’, Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai warns against the human desire to ‘be right’. He reminds us that the ground where we are absolutely right can become hard and impenetrable – nothing new can grow there. The poem tells us that when we are willing to listen with genuine curiosity, this openness ploughs the land and makes it fertile for change and growth.
From the place where we are right flowers will never grow in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world like a mole, a plough.
And a whisper will be heard in the place where the ruined house once stood.
May that whisper be heard in 5787. May doubts and loves create a fertile ground for a better year for all. Shanah tovah!
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[1] Rami Shapiro, The Mirror of All
[2] ‘A dark day for British Jews’ – The Jewish Chronicle
[3] Senior UK rabbis come out in support of sanctions on Israeli settlements | Foreign policy | The Guardian
[4] Statement on the possibility of UK action on settlement expansion – The Movement for Progressive Judaism