Apologies in advance for this Holy Day-length Shabbat message!
Dear Friends,
This week I found myself going back to a sermon I wrote almost twenty years ago.
The sermon was about Israel, about misinformation, about delegitimization, and about the challenge of loving something that is imperfect. It was about the difficulty of defending Israel against lies and distortions while also refusing to pretend that every decision made by an Israeli government is wise, moral, or beyond critique.
And as I read it, I realized something unsettling: while my hope for a two-state solution is further away than ever, I could have written much of it this week.
Since October 7, and through the devastating war that has followed, the world has again become very good at speaking about Israel with certainty and very little humility. Israel is judged, condemned, simplified, demonized, and too often treated as if it alone among the nations has no right to complexity, no right to grief, no right to self-defense, and no right to imperfection.
At the same time, loving Israel cannot mean closing our eyes. It cannot mean pretending that every action is justified, every policy is wise, or every leader is worthy of our defense. Real love is never blind. Real love tells the truth.
And that is why I want to share this older sermon with you now. Not because nothing has changed. A great deal has changed. But because the core question remains: How do we stand with Israel in a world of distortion without surrendering our moral voice? How do we defend Israel without denying its imperfections? And how do we keep our own Jewish community from tearing itself apart in the process?
The sermon:
Here’s a hypothetical for you.
You have just heard things about someone that you care about—a friend, a cousin, or a co-worker—that are blatantly untrue. They cast him or her in a poor light.
Good things that he or she has done are being overlooked or, worse, they are being misrepresented and turned into negatives. Half-truths are being repeated as if they are the entire story.
Now here is the thing.
You know your friend, or cousin or co-worker to be a mixed bag. Like all of us, they have wonderful, admirable qualities. But like all of us, they also have numerous shortcomings. You know that they have made mistakes. She has done things she should not have done and has not acted when perhaps she should have. You’ve even seen him overreact when he is challenged or when he feels threatened.
All of that is true. But you KNOW the current rumors are false. And the more you see it, the clearer it becomes that those spreading the rumors and half-truths have an agenda. They are out to hurt someone you care about.
So what do you do?
Do you stand up and defend your friend from those making the attacks?
Or do you sit back and hope it blows over?
Good thing it is just a hypothetical. Right?
Wrong. It is the reality Israel lives with today.
The momentum against her is growing. And the strategy of delegitimization is working on a global scale.
Because of this, it was clear to me that I should speak about Israel this Yom Kippur morning. I thought it would be easy to talk about something I care so much about… It wasn’t.
You see, I outlined one sermon but then put it aside and outlined a 2nd sermon. When I went back and looked at the two sermons together, I realized they could have been written by two different people.
So which sermon to give? The 1st or the 2nd? I deliberated. And I deliberated some more. And I finally reached a conclusion. Both.
Sermon Number 1:
For most of the world the conflict in the Holy Land isn’t about the Palestinians. It is about Israel’s right to exist in the first place. And, as Jews, we had better wake up, open our eyes, and recognize the threat to the Jewish State, before it is too late.
When I attended a conference recently one of the more troubling sessions I attended focused on the growing movement to delegitimize the Jewish State.
The term “delegitimization” itself encompasses a variety of ways in which Israel’s very right to exist is called into question. The ultimate goal is to turn Israel into a pariah state, a nation whose conduct is considered to be out of line with the international norms of behavior.
The process of delegitimization began to gain momentum when Israel’s enemies realized that the Jewish state could not be defeated militarily. And the tactic has worked far better than I suspect they even hoped. In recent months Israel has become increasingly isolated. And the situation is worsening.
Until recently, I saw delegitimization as a strategy to use against Israel on behalf of the Palestinians, but the more I have thought about it, the more I have come to believe that we may be misreading the entire issue.
I am beginning to question how much the nations waving the Palestinian banner really care about the Palestinians gaining a nation. I am beginning to wonder if the Palestinians are simply being used as an excuse to keep hating Israel.
And if that is the case, the process of delegitimizing Israel is not a strategy to use against Israel in her conflict with the Palestinians. Rather it is actually the end-game itself—the belief that a Jewish State does not have the right to exist. Period.
This strategy becomes clear when we see Mahmoud Abbas speak to the UN about the historic ties between the Muslim and Christian communities to the land of Israel without any mention at all of the Jews. And there was no outcry from the international community.
This strategy becomes clear when we hear the Palestinian ambasador to Brazil tell a group of university students that Israel should disappear. And he does not mean that Israel should disappear from the West Bank. Rather, he is suggesting that Israel should be wiped off the map. And there was no outcry from the international community.
This goal becomes clear when we realize that the UN Human Rights Council, a body that counts among its members such shining exemplars of human rights violators as China and Pakistan, chooses to put Israel’s transgressions as a standing agenda item every time they meet. Two thirds of the resolutions that body has passed since its formation condemn just one country. Israel.
It is time we woke up and realized just how aggressive and dangerous the threat against Israel really is.
That is the essence of the first sermon.
Sermon Number 2:
What is the Netanyahu government thinking? Why do they insist on pouring gasoline on an already burning fire? Don’t they understand that ultimately there needs to be a resolution to this ongoing conflict? Don’t they understand that their current approach is simply turning more and more of the world against the Jewish state?
I believe that, while it seems more distant than ever, there should ultimately be two states. I believe it is the right thing for the Palestinians. But more importantly, I believe it is the right thing for Israel, who faces a demographic nightmare if the occupation does not end soon.
And while I do have serious questions about the sincerity of the Palestinian leadership’s desire for peace, I find the Israeli government far from blameless.
As a senior editor of The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace writes, “negotiations that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas conducted from 2006 to 2008 managed to build upon the foundations that were established at Camp David …” The deal would be based on the 1967 borders, the dismantling of the outposts, land swaps for Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Palestinian control of East Jerusalem, and the virtual abandonment of the Palestinian right to return.
But the Netanyahu government, which took office in March 2009, refused from the beginning to build on these negotiations. Netanyahu took three months even to utter the phrase “Palestinian state,” and leaders of his Likud party, and members of his coalition, remain opposed to a Palestinian state. He insisted that negotiations start from scratch, refusing to agree even to the 1967 boundaries as a starting point.
The New Republic does not describe an Israeli Prime Minister who is anxious to resolve the conflict and move forward.
In the meantime, more and more construction is underway in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and dividing the land is becoming increasingly difficult. Israelis and Palestinians alike continue to live under the threat of war. It is an untenable situation that cannot continue indefinitely.
I truly believe that, if there is to be an end to this conflict, the only real option is the distant hope for a two-state solution. And the longer it is put off, the more difficult that becomes.
That is the essence of the second sermon.
2 sermons, one Rabbi and a huge internal conflict I believe many of us feel.
The vast majority of the world now stands against Israel. America is her only real friend. And we cannot afford the growing division within the committed American Jewish community.
We cannot afford attacks on an American President who said nothing different about the 1967 borders than Israeli Prime Minister Olmert did just a few short years ago. And we cannot afford attacks on one another.
Jewish tradition has always emphasized a multidimensional approach to debate. The two famous Talmudic rabbis, Hillel and Shammai, almost always disagreed with each other. But they and their disciples always listened and learned from their disagreements. It was for this reason the Talmud says of their debates: “These are both the words of the living God.”
I began this sermon with a hypothetical about a family member, a friend or a co-worker, and I offered two choices of action: stand up and fight for them or stand back and hope it blows over.
To my mind, there is only one choice of action. Stand up, correct the lies, reveal the poorly hidden agenda and do whatever it takes to protect the person under attack.
And so, nearly twenty years later, I find myself returning to the same place.
Israel does not need us to pretend she is perfect. No nation is perfect. No democracy is perfect. Certainly no country living with trauma, terrorism, war, grief, fear, bad leadership, and impossible choices is perfect.
But Israel does need us to tell the truth.
To tell the truth when Hamas is romanticized or excused.
To tell the truth when the suffering of Palestinians is used not to advance peace, but to deny Jewish peoplehood.
To tell the truth when criticism of Israeli policy crosses the line into the old and familiar hatred of Jews.
And also to tell the truth when Israel falls short of the values on which it was founded and the values we hold dear.
That is the tension. That is the burden. And that is the responsibility of serious Zionism.
We can love Israel and criticize its government.
We can grieve for Israelis and for Palestinians.
We can demand the return of the hostages and also pray for innocent people in Gaza.
We can reject the lies told about Israel without denying the painful truths that also exist.
What we cannot do is walk away.
We cannot walk away from Israel because she is imperfect. We cannot walk away from one another because we disagree. And we cannot allow others to define for us what it means to be loyal, loving, moral, and Jewish.
The task before us is not simple. It never has been.
But Jewish tradition has never asked us to choose between love and truth. It asks us to hold them together.
And that is what Israel needs from us now: not silence, not slogans, not blind defense, and not abandonment.
Israel needs our love.
Israel needs our honesty.
Israel needs our voice.
And so do we.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Daniel Cohen
