The Miracle of Israel Lives On: Without Us, In Spite of Us, or Because of Us

by Rabbi Sim Glaser

Rabbi Glaser, one of 125 Minneapolitans who participated in the Minneapolis Jewish Federation’s Leadership Solidarity Mission to Israel, shared his reflections about the mission for his sermon given January 18, 2002. This is the text of his remarks.

There is a dramatic moment in the Biblical wilderness story when the Israelites are about to enter the land to possess it. Two tribes, the Reubenites and the Gadites petition Moses to allow them to remain east of the Jordan River because they have discovered that the land is superior for raising their livestock. They say to Moses: “Here we will build sheepfolds for our flocks and houses for our children.” The response to them is that they must first ensure the safe deliverance of the Israelite people into the land, fighting alongside them. Only then may they and their families return to east of the border to settle, and this agreement is reached. History has always questioned the actions of those tribes, but the outcome was considered an acceptable compromise.

Living in the age of the modern miracle that is the State of Israel, I often think of myself as a member of one of those tribes that has chosen to aid Israel from a safe distance, remaining in the perhaps more fertile, promising territories of the Diaspora.

I hear the voices of my teenage peers with whom I attended high school in Jerusalem three decades ago who challenged me to come make my life there. How can you live here for one year and then return to America? Is it fair that we should serve in the army in three years for your right to come visit? The words stung then. They still haunt.

We hear the voices of our ancestors saying: You mean that after two thousand years of wandering and oppression there exists a Jewish homeland and you are not living there?

I hear the voice of Theodore Herzl at the end of the 19th century reminding us that two thousand years of history have taught us that the world does not suffer the homeless Jew for very long in a host country. We require a homeland.

I have lived in Israel, visited Israel for weeks and months as a tourist, but I have never been on a “mission” before. And I have never traveled to Israel to spend only three days there. Three Days! Can you imagine? We calculated that we might have been seated on the El Al flights half as long as we were awake in Israel.

Over five hundred people made up the United Jewish Communities delegation, and I am proud to say that our Twin Cities group was nearly one fifth of the total. We found each other in large crowds by holding up “Frozen Chosen” signs. (though you should know there was one day when it was colder in Jerusalem than it was here).

Within our group was represented each major branch of the American Jewish community, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Orthodox. And the corresponding rabbis, of course (they must have considered this an extraordinary photo op – they made us into a mouse pad, lest we forget that we were once all standing together arm in arm – it’s a continuing joy to run the mouse over my colleagues’ faces – these things were going like hotcakes!)

We toured together, studied Torah, sang on the bus rides, ate at restaurants, visited dignitaries and village communities, and yes, even prayed together. We gathered for a peace rally and service at the southern end of the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

We encountered an Israel also celebrating diversity. We visited a thriving Arab Jewish village outside of Jerusalem and learned from an Israeli Arab woman what can be accomplished when Arabs and Jews work side by side. We toured communities of the ultra-Orthodox living next door to secular Kibbutzim and sharing facilities. Schools overflowing with beautiful little Ethiopian children singing Hebrew songs. Young soldiers and students of Russian origin from earlier Aliyot. Jewish Immigrants from all over the world continue to travel to Israel to make their lives there.

A critical part of our mission was to say: “We are with you; we have not forgotten you.” You would not believe how important that message was. We knew that tourism was down, but were not prepared to see the commercial center of Jerusalem so deserted. Empty restaurants, shops and hotels; walking along the mall on Ben Yehuda street you are normally shoulder to shoulder in the crowd of tourists, teenagers and merchants, but it was now eerily spacious. we stayed at the King David Hotel for two of our three nights and when we went north they told us to simply leave our bags in our rooms and to pick them up the next day because nobody would be using the rooms in between.

Our absence is heard loudly there. Our non-presence is deafening. It looks, smells and sounds like apathy and fear, and thus I expected from Israelis a polite scolding. I expected to be blamed for not supporting Israel in its critical hour of need.

Instead, we experienced a constant display of appreciation. Knesset speakers, Kibbutzniks, Orthodox worshippers at the Western Wall, families in Tiberias, even the parents of slain soldiers thanked us again and again for being so courageous in coming. Sings outside the windows announcing “Sales for brave tourists.” When a sixteen-year-old girl, only two years away from army duty, thanked me for coming to Israel to visit, I felt ashamed.

On the eve of our flight, there were two terrorist actions and friends and family asked: How can you go? The response was—how can we not go?

Many have asked: How safe is it to go to Israel now? Well, my colleague and new friend since the Israel trip, Rabbi Aaron Brusso from the Adath, employs a fitting analogy: Imagine a cable channel that only broadcasts drunk driving accidents in the US. A foreigner watching would assume that America is a dangerous country, where it is unsafe to drive anywhere. This is pretty much the one-dimensional view that the world is seeing Israel.

One of the strangest experiences is being in Israel and watching a CNN report about Israel. My room was on the sixth floor of the King David Hotel, overlooking the walls of the old city and the great golden dome of the Mosque of Omar. A magnificent picture postcard view. I had CNN on and they were airing a debate between Israeli and Palestinian diplomats. To my astonishment, I realized that the backdrop of the debate and my window view were virtually identical, and I started looking around the hotel room for cameras and diplomats. Watching international televised reports of the situation in Israel on the TV screen one could only assume that you walk out of your lodging into a country in turmoil. That no one leaves his home, that the streets are not safe.

But let me tell you what CNN is not reporting because it is not newsworthy: Life continues in Israel. Children are going to school. Young men and women attend the universities. The Sochnut, the Jewish agency, is still in business helping people sculpt their lives there. Kibbutznikim are farming fields and working the chicken coops. Shopkeepers are operating their stores and, yes, the empty restaurants are still frying their falafel.

Just to remind myself that this was, in fact, the same Israel being reported on the international news, I ventured to the Ben Yehuda Mall and saw the shrine to the kids who died when a terrorist exploded himself there just 36 hours earlier. The shop directly across the way had already repaired the glass façade. The street had been entirely cleaned. Two blocks away, bricklayers were busily repaving Zion Square.

The greatest tragedy of Israel right now is not exclusively in the conflict that takes its shape in outbreaks of violence. It is also Israel’s loneliness. Tourism is down some 93%. The Christian groups so prevalent during December in Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem were nowhere to be seen. Tour guides were complaining that they had hardly worked in over a year.

Okay, so given the headlines, Israel doesn’t rank as the #1 vacation spot for the average traveler, but one had to ask: Where are we? Where are the Jews? Why have we dropped off the radar screen with the rest of the tourists, as though Israel meant no more to us than to anyone else?

As part of our mission, we were honored to hear from members of the Knesset, including Natan Scharansky, and talk about the political climate in Israel, like the transition from the Barak government to that of Ariel Sharon. How it happened, and what it has meant to the people. The incredible frustration that grips a nation that, at one time, was willing to offer compromise in the extreme, only to be rebuffed by the incompetent, ill-equipped, self serving leadership with which the Palestinian people are currently burdened and also frustrated by. We happened to be in Israel at a time during which Israeli patience with its negotiating partners has simply run out. Israel was tired of waiting for the world’s approval for its every action and reaction.

And even as that promise of peace seems to be fading from the popular mindset, we saw, as we toured the Sovev Kinneret region, our sister community surrounding Lake Tiberias in the North, the children in the classrooms displaying their songs and skits and holiday preparations with constant references to the dream of Shalom. The middle school and high school kids threw us a welcoming reception at the Tiberias community center with a wonderful concert, folk dancing and food—always there was food. A hit song in Israel right now that the teens were dancing that evening is Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu—Salaam, Salaam—Peace will soon come to us—sung in Arabic and in Hebrew. Children in one of the schools our Federation helps fund had finger-painted paintings about peace, but what the Yeladim, the children, were most proud of was that they had scanned them into the computer themselves and set their theme to music for a multi-media display that we would be able to see.

But it was the one-on-one with individuals that made the trip special. Four of us had dinner with a host family outside of Tiberias. We had a quiet, serious discussion right up until the teenage daughter learned that I played the guitar and liked the Beatles as much as she did. The next moment you’re looking at two rabbis, the president and executive director of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation sitting in the Galilee with an Israeli family singing “We all live in a Yellow Submarine.” They didn’t want us to leave. And we didn't want to go.

We laughed and sang—yet we cried as well, we joined together with the Avitan family in a moving memorial service for their son Adi, a soldier missing for a year after he and two others had been kidnapped. Evidence had finally come through that Adi was, in fact, dead. We brought condolences from the Twin Cities. Our own Eddie and Doris Sherman spoke beautifully and presented a large folio of letters from our community.

You always hope that the weather will be with you when you travel. Well, it was. It rained practically non-stop while we were there, and we took full credit. “From our lakes to your lake,” we said. See, in Israel you don’t get angry at rain. You rejoice. You sing Mayim Mayim b’sasson, because the Kinneret rose eight centimeters, or about three inches while we were there. When Peter, our Youth and Camp Director, and his wife Rachel were there last week, the Kinneret rose another several inches. Yam Kinneret or Lake Tiberias supplies Israel with over 70% of its water. The rain is a blessing. Here we know from water powering electric plants. In Israel, electricity pumps water throughout the thirsty land.

But it is the blood flowing through the heart of a living Jew, the Israeli and visiting, contributing world Jewry that regularly visits that will ensure the future of Israel. Some of our hosts detected the concern in our eyes, and one young man looked at me with a typical Israeli half smirk-half smile and said: “Don’t worry, when you come back you’ll see, we’ll still be here. We’ll be all right. Israel is not going anywhere.”

I believe him completely. Israel is not going anywhere. That was the prevailing spirit over there. But I had to ask in my heart of hearts: Will it be without us, because we have too many other things on our plate to be concerned with the fate of a small Middle Eastern country of five and a half million Jewish brothers and sisters living there?

Will it be in spite of our behavior because so many of us have decided that we cannot go there, and have remained silent as to why? If so, let us understand that we have made a choice that has consequences. Our not going to Israel is having a profound effect on the country. What we are saying to the Israelis is essentially: you go through this tough time. We are not going to be there with you right now because the news has us frightened. But as soon as the terrorism ceases, we will be there again, bringing our kids for their B’nai Mitzvah, and taking our tours to the Dead Sea and Massada to celebrate the Jewish bravery of ancient times. And we will shop in your stores again, and pray at the Western Wall and we will renew our passion for Israel. When we think it is safe enough to go there.

What we learned from our brief tour was that there is, in fact, no greater commitment we can give to Israel than by going there…now. Rabbi Zimmerman and Frank Hornstein will be leading a congregational trip in June. Think about it. Better yet, talk to Rabbi Zimmerman and find out how you can come aboard.

Okay, so I know that not all of us can pick up and go just like that. So let’s talk about what we can accomplish from here.

First of all, we can educate ourselves on how to field and refute the often ignorant criticisms leveled upon Israel in editorials, newscasts and commentaries erroneously portraying Israel as a ruthless oppressor and absurd headlines that equate military actions and outright terrorism as one in the same. Let’s bone up on our history in order to understand the true relationship that the original indigenous Arabs and Jews had in that region over the course of the last century. And when we encounter the tired suggestion that we have to regard the root causes and justification for terrorism, let us respond that there is no justification for terrorism.

Second, we can have a voice in political Israel. The voice of Reform Judaism is an important voice today in Israel. Reform is the voice of religious freedom and pluralism. It is the voice of tolerance and democracy. It is a voice of Jewish unity. Five years ago there was a terrific voter turnout for the WZO elections. This time around it has been only a fraction of that, perhaps a sign of our growing apathy regarding the centrality of Israel in our Jewish lives.

Financial support still counts. Purchasing Israel bonds or buying a big ol’ grove of trees from the JNF this Tu b’Shevat still means something. And if you don’t wish to send your child to Israel this year, consider sending some of the tuition money anyway.

Above all, let us vow never to let our children forget about Israel—Im eshkaheck Yerushalayim tishkach yemini. To forget thee, oh Jerusalem, is to lose a part of myself forever.

Those Reubenites and Gadites who remained outside of Eretz Yisrael enjoyed the bounty of a land that was already suitable for farming. They also enjoyed the pride that the Jewish homeland was inhabited by their people. The people of modern Israel continue to beautify and replenish the land as each year goes by. Israel continues to bless the world with its exported achievements, has brought a thriving democracy to a part of the world that would otherwise never have known such a thing. And Israel blesses us continually as the living, breathing embodiment of Jewish values and tradition.

Think about it tonight. Are you going to be a part of Israel? Or will you remain eternally east of the Jordan?

Od yavo ha Geshem—may the rains continue to fall and our sister lake to rise.

Od yisachku yeladim b’sadot b’li pachad, v’lo yilm’du od milchama—may children continue to play in the fields without fear, and never need to learn the lessons of war.

Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu
Peace will come

Od yavo—Saalam Saalam
Peace will come.