Sermons

Values Nation
Rosh HaShanah 5771
by Rabbi Sim Glaser

I was blessed with the opportunity to study at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem this summer, along with over a hundred other rabbis from around the world.

Israel, like every other country I’ve visited, has baggage. This came right home to me as I loaded my baggage into the back of a multi-passenger cab at the airport bound for Jerusalem the Friday afternoon I arrived. Three minutes into the trip, another passenger, an Orthodox woman’s cholent, tumbled into the rear compartment dousing only one suitcase in the cab, that of the Reform Rabbi from Minneapolis. I thought to myself: Is this a political statement?

I arrived in my hotel room that afternoon with, unfortunately, no Shabbat dinner plans. Great, I’m stuck in Jerusalem on a Friday night, I’m hungry, nothing is open and to add insult to injury, the room smells like cholent. That’s the bad news. The good news? Not a bad recipe!

So maybe you think I’m going to be speaking about Israel this morning. Really I want to talk to you about cholent. There was a time in our history as a people where I could get up here and not need to explain to the congregation what cholent is. My computer, for example did not recognize the word cholent no matter how I tried to spell it. Cholent is an old dish, usually prepared as a stuffed kishke – another bygone Jewish word - meaning intestine. It is made of vegetables, beef, beans, barley, or any number of other things, it simmers for 12 hours, and can sit on a low flame the entire Sabbath so no one has to prepare food the whole day. It isn’t always the healthiest of meals. It is mixed up, there are 736 different recipes for it, and the Jewish community eats it less and less frequently with each ensuing year. But the flavors blend magnificently even if it can take centuries of cooking to get it there. If you’ve ever had a good cholent, vegetarian or otherwise, it can be a spectacular eating experience.

With a metaphor like that how can I not talk about Israel? Tasty and engaging, thousands of years in the making, an extraordinary number of ingredients, huge diversity of recipes for its creation, and tragically, the Jewish people are increasingly distancing themselves from it.

Too many Jews, worldwide, are taking Israel off their menus. Off their travel plans, off their children’s options for high school programs.

Some are, plain and simple, losing touch, some aren’t even taking the time to establish a relationship. And there are those who characterize Israel as a burden for the “trouble” it stirs up in their Jewish lives.

Some in the diaspora Jewish community find themselves jumping to defend Israel with regard to Israel’s relationship with the Palestinian people. We are understandably very sensitive about Israel and the precarious position she is in, surrounded by enemies, criticized by the nations, frustrated at decades of peace negotiations with the Palestinian people.

A joke going around Jerusalem when I was there tells of the three Israeli guys who land at Charles De Gaul airport and the authorities question them: Name? Moishe. Age? 32. Occupation? No we’ll only be here for three days.

An award winning film Lebanon is in the theaters now. The entire film takes place inside an Israeli tank during the 1982 Lebanon war. I am sure it is well made, but I’m scared to see how it will add to the world’s diminishing regard for the Jewish state.

We live in an era of growing global distaste for and discomfort with the state of Israel. In a world where particularism is suspect and universalism is embraced, the very nature of a Jewish state is being questioned. For us as Jews and for humanity in general this should be cause for great alarm.

I contemplated many important ideas in my ten days at the Hartman Institute, learning from scholars and sages, rabbis, politicians, even military personnel. But if I had to summarize the new idea, the hiddush, paramount in importance was the lesson that our old ways of thinking about Israel are no longer very useful. Israel’s public image, one of its most vital assets, is not at its highest point. Who are Israel’s ambassadors to the world? We are.

The topic advertised for the seminar was Engaging Israel, and my expectation was to come away with a gloomy sense of Israel’s future. Instead I was inspired to vision along with Israelis and my rabbinic colleagues about all that Israel is and all that Israel can be.

Last year a book came out called Start Up Nation detailing Israel’s incredible achievements in the world of electronics, science, technology, agriculture. Israel has more companies on the tech oriented NASDAQ Stock Exchange than any country outside the US.

Among my favorites? The video pill you can swallow to take  pictures of your insides (only a Jew could have invented that), electric cars in development with battery changing stations along all the major highways, drip agriculture that has helped drought plagued nations, instant messaging, computer chip technology, semiconductors, software, and an amazing openness to partner with foreign investors. A society in which entrepreneurship is encouraged, and results of brave forays into bold new ventures are rewarded, not stifled.

But the reason I loved Start Up Nation and couldn’t put it down was because it didn’t read like the newspapers. It was about the positives - the innovations Israel has brought to the world. And that was refreshing.

We, as a people, are traditionally much better at chronicling our national disasters than boasting about our achievements. This is nothing new. Look at the bible. Endless descriptions of national disasters - over half our holidays chronicle threats, attempted annihilations and survival against all odds, disasters and overcoming adversity. The classic definition of the Jewish holiday: “they tried to kill us, we survived, lets eat!” Purim, Hanukkah, Tisha b’Av, Passover, Sukkot, not to mention the most well attended holiday of the year - ten days from now in which we perform a thorough examination of our deepest most profound personal disasters... and then, of course, we eat.

The way we have been dealing with this for the last 62 years is to fall back on the typical defense: “Israel is the reaction to the Holocaust” “Israel is the only safe haven for the Jewish people”. Not only is the world uninterested in our survival story as the raison d’etre for the state of Israel, for the Jewish people, here and even in Israel itself this is no longer a sufficient narrative. While for many of us this narrative strikes deeply, I don’t believe our own children will continue to be are inspired exclusively by that story.

I believe we are at the point in human history where we as Jews, and people as a whole are going to join together with those who mission is to redeem humanity and contribute to the greater good of all people everywhere, and I think a close examination of the state of Israel – not the one you get from the newspapers – reveals that this is right where Israel is today and will be tomorrow.

We have to rewire the conversation that is taking place about Israel. Yes, we can talk non-stop about Kassam rockets landing in S’derot, the threat of a nuclear Iran, the mounting Hezbollah armaments in Lebanon, the security fence, the overbearing hegemony of the Orthodox rabbinate government and the infringed rights of non-traditional Jews.

Are those important issues? Of course they are. They’re critical. But as Tal Becker , who co-authored Torat haneshek – the IDF’s Military Handbook for soldiers, told us in no uncertain terms, the instructions cannot only be for the soldier on how they are to fight, but also they need to know what they are fighting for!

This summer up at Teko I led a program in which I listed for the young campers all the remarkable things Israel has invented and promoted and stood for over the last many decades. Resettlement of the Ethiopian Jews, the worldwide embrace of drip agriculture technology, cell phones and instant messaging. As I spoke I noticed that one of our Israeli scouts, Ruven, who was with us for the whole summer and brought vibrant Jewish dance and music and stories to the kids, was looking at me with chin dropped. I thought, uh-oh, I must have got some facts wrong here. But he said to me afterwards – Thank you for doing that. I hardly ever here anyone outside of Israel talking about the good things any more. All you hear is the criticism and defense.

It is time for the Jewish people to renew our celebration of Israel and the Jewish people world-wide as a “Values Nation”, just as we ourselves, the Jewish people around the world, are a values nation and have always been one!

How can a people that represents less than .25% of the worlds population be so hugely represented in the media? Why does Israel grab so much attention and attract criticism? Well, excuse the chauvinism, but maybe it is because deep down the world is aware that Israel, and the values espoused by Judaism are central to the workings of the world.

Let’s talk about country that models national health care for all its citizens. Let’s talk about a free press where opinions of West Bank Arabs and dissenting Jewish and non-Jewish writers are constantly represented? Let’s talk about Arab Knesset members, Druse Knesset members, sitting rows away from right wing haredi ultra-Orthodox Jews, all shouting at each other in a democratic miracle.

Let’s talk about the military’s complete embrace of gay soldiers. It’s not a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, it’s an “it doesn’t matter” policy. There are gay and lesbian soldiers, some of whom come from neighboring Arab villages where their sexual orientation is anything but accepted, fully welcomed into the Israeli military.

Let’s talk about pulling out of the Gaza strip as a historically unprecedented strategy for peace. How about being the only country in the middle east with women graduating with advanced MD degrees?

On a tiyyul up north we visited a Jewelry and glass-ware factory outlet where they bring in teenagers from broken homes, street crime and addiction issues into a vibrant workplace in which the teens are offered counseling while they learn a trade and acquire purpose for their young lives. This is not business as usual in this troubled world.

Let’s talk about a country that prosecutes its own soldiers for ethical and moral misconduct. Or the IDF army base we also visited that recruits soldiers from difficult backgrounds and psychological problems and trains them to become meaningful members of Israeli society after their military service.

The biggest Israel story - the flotilla incident - grabbed the attention of world this year. Critics rushed to condemn Israel for the Gaza blockade and an allegedly cruel interception of a peaceful mission. The world hastened to characterize Israel as an oppressive regime that denies Palestinians their right to security and stability.

The greatest irony of Gaza is that, in fact, the preservation of life has always been of paramount importance to the Jewish nation. Israel was founded on the principle of saving life, and was never intended to be at the expense of others. Peaceful coexistence with Arab communities has always been critical to Israel’s founders.

In the flotilla incident what certainly did not make the international news is the history of the blockade itself and the fact that it was the sake of a single Jewish life – that of the soldier Gilad Shalit – that Israel originally imposed its blockade on Gaza. The intent of spending millions of dollars and deploying thousands of soldiers, which in turn subjected Israel to international condemnation, were carried out for one life. For a single soul. The condition for the lifting of the blockade has continued to be the return of a single Jewish body and soul intact and unharmed, a condition unfulfilled to this very day.

Warfare make the headlines, but the deeply held Jewish values that inform Israel’s conduct does not. We, as Israel’s global representatives have to make that known.

We have always been a people that walked this earth promoting great ideas. We came up with the western system of justice, the humane treatment of workers and animals, of captives; the sharing of wealth and tithing. The constant vigilance about human suffering, no matter who, no matter when.

The great Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig warned us, long before the establishment of the state of Israel that with power comes immense challenge. It was pointed out by a young biblical scholar at Hartman this summer that should Israel succeed in being a long standing moral ethical force for goodness in this world, it will be the first Jewish civilization ever in history, biblical history included, to do so. Ever.

We are a “cholent” of voices on the subject of Israel, even in this congregation. There are ardent Zionists, there are those who have mixed feelings about Israel’s role in their lives, many of us have traveled and celebrated Israel for decades.

I know the world wants to talk about Israel’s difficulties, and we, the Jewish people, tend to gravitate toward our collective pain. But I’m suggesting it is time to change the conversation. It’s time to talk about the Values Nation with the same pride in which we herald the technological accomplishments of the “start up nation”.

We should add to the mournful melody of the precarious fiddler on the roof a counterpoint in a major key conveying Israel’s splendid achievements in the worlds of sciences, arts, human rights, social programs. Or maybe on that roof should stand an energy generating windmill that has been producing megawatts of energy in the Golan since 1993 – the largest of its kind in the middle east. Or perhaps, pitched on that roof should be a tent hospital like the ones that saved thousands of lives after the Haitian earthquake.

Alright, so I know rabbis aren’t supposed to promote excessive pride and self adulation at this introspective, self-correcting time of year. But I believe it’s time for the Jewish people to stop dwelling exclusively on our tsurus and re-imagine ourselves in a new light. On a personal and on a national level. What essential gifts do you bring to your world? What do you believe in? What do you stand for? Who are you? Let us, this year, in every sense of the word, return to the land of our soul!

We have moved from the little boy in the ghetto with his hands raised above his head in surrender - our ultimate moment of our oppression and subjugation, to the three soldiers standing at the Western wall after the 6 day war - our classic moment of achieving control over our destiny – and then on to an impressive while challenging state of power in the present day.

That third picture is increasingly deteriorating in the American Jewish consciousness. And the only way you can place that image in your head is to grab your scotch guarded cholent resistant suitcase and go to Israel. Rabbi Zimmerman and Cantor Abelson are leading a family trip next summer. One of many Israel trips Temple Israel has made and will make in the years to come.

Which brings me back to the suitcase. So I went and had it steam-cleaned by a lovely little laundry not two blocks from my hotel. As thrilled as I was at the convenience, when I went to pick it up there was still cholent in the zipper teeth. I said: “mah yesh po? - what’s this about?” and the laundryman replied: “zeh achi tov sheh efshar achshav.  It’s the best we could do right now”.

Barb and I are still trying to get the cholent out of the suitcase. It appears that a little of Israel will remain with us always. So what else is new? Plus, it’s a nice bag. It holds four thousand years of stuff. And you don’t abandon a suitcase like that.