[Previous sermon: "October 21, 2005"] [Next sermon: "Thanksgiving 2005"]

Vayera - November 18, 2005

I am going to take a risk here. I say a risk because risk involves consequences. This week in the news, we learned that preaching even on social justice issues that question the administration, not necessarily partisan politicking, can raise suspicion within the IRS as to a congregation's tax exempt status. Reverend George Regas, the rector emeritus of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena California, preached his criticism of the Iraq war and tax cuts two days before the 2004 election, which inspired the ire of the government. It is troubling that the IRS would target a congregation whose leader gave an anti-war, anti-tax cut sermon, while at the very same time congregations within our own community shamelessly endorsed candidates on a certain side of the aisle suffered no similar recourse. All that being said, I will preach on, as I always have, interpreting the values of our tradition through the lens of our present day challenges.

While we danced with our sacred scrolls on Simchat Torah this year, our country commemorated a tragic milestone. As of October 25th, 2000 members of the United States Armed Forces personnel had been killed in Iraq since the invasion in 2003. More than seven times that number had been wounded, including 7100 injured too badly to return to duty. And those numbers don't include thousands injured in accidents. In the same breath, we must note that Iraqi civilian fatalities are thought to be between 26,000 and 30,000 since the start of the war. The American public has already spent $200 billion to fund this war. And according to the New York Times, about $5 billion is being spent each month to keep it going. On this Shabbat especially, when we read the story of the Akeda, the binding of Isaac, a story that implies the question of what is an appropriate sacrifice, we are called upon to be introspective. Poet, Wilfred Owen, also saw the parallel between the Akeda and the Great War, the war of his own time and of which he was a veteran. His poem is called The Parable of the Old Man and the Young:

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went;
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together;
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father;
Behold the preparations, fire and iron;

But where the lamb for this burnt-offering ?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps;
And builded parapets and trenches there;
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son. When lo! An angel called him out of heaven;
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad;
Neither do anything to him. Behold;
A ram, caught in the thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son;
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Owens words are as relevant in these dawning years of the twenty first century as they were in the early twentieth. Two thousand of the seed of America and tens of thousands of the seed of Iraq have been sacrificed for today's war. And aside from the political fact that in wartime the old men make the choices for the young, the question with war is perennially whether the goals are attainable and worthy of the ultimate sacrifices of life. A fierce debate broke out this week, when House Representative John Murtha from Pennsylvania, a high ranking democrat, demanded we pull our troops out on a six month timetable. As a Vietnam veteran, his statement about the nature of the sacrifice and the goals we can achieve, is weighty and symbolic.

He's an "old man" who, as a young man, saw combat. His conclusion is that our presence in Iraq has not promoted the goal of democracy but rather has united an insurgency against us. Publically decrying our continued presence in Iraq didn't have consequences for Murtha from the IRS. Instead the President's press secretary simply attacked him ad hominem, dismissing his opinion as a caricature of the policy positions of Michael Moore. To be fair, if Murtha's position is symbolic, so is the response. If there is no intelligent way to explain a counter-argument, just attack the attacker.

This week, our Reform movement is meeting in Houston for its biennial convention, with a proposed resolution regarding the war in Iraq. In some ways, it is a mirror of the back peddling many Senators are trying now to do, Senators who now question a war upon which they previously voted yes. It is worthy of note that in September of 2002 before the war began, the Reform movement put out a position paper exploring the insights from our Jewish tradition as they related to questions of war today. The paper points out that Jews are obligated to defend innocents as it says in the book of Leviticus' command not to stand idly by as a neighbor bleeds.

Suspicion about the possession of non-conventional weapons that threaten civilian populations might justify the use of preemptive action as outlined in the Talmud. But that such a policy decision needs to be tempered with vigorous attempts to resolve conflicts non-militarily, as described in our Jewish legal codes. The paper spoke about the need to protect civilians, to protect on the basis of bal tashchit the environmental and economic infrastructures that would allow civilian life to resume as soon as possible after warfare, the protection of captives and the obligation of the judges and leaders of the community to be forthright people who would neither lie nor mislead. In the end, the URJ paper supported military action by the US- even unilateral action if necessary based on these Jewish values- but only in the context of four propositions. First, that international cooperation was to be explored. Second, that non-military solutions must be pursued to resolve our conflicts with Iraq. Third, that if international cooperation through the UN were to fail, the US was to seek cooperation with other nations. And fourth, that the President seek Congressional approval of the use of force, if such action was to be taken.

Based on a bi-partisan US commission appointed by the President, we know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction stored in Iraq; that there was no attempt by Saddam Hussein to purchase uranium from Niger; there were no ties between September 11th and Saddam Hussein, and that there were no ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The burden of intelligence and reasonable knowledge upon which preemptive action was taken and all non-military options passed over were simply erroneous, and we will debate until the coming of Elijah its intentionality. While the current URJ resolution before the assembled in Houston acknowledges all this, and resolves that we cannot change the facts of the past, it suggests the following in the interest of the future. First, it commends the service women and men and demand that they receive the appropriate gear to protect their lives as they pursue their mission and that adequate funds be made so that Veterans wounded receive the highest quality care and support. Second, that the Bush administration immediately provide more transparency regarding all aspects of the war and a clear exit strategy, tied to the December 15 parliamentary elections which should empower Iraq for more self-determination.

And third, that Congress be the oversight mechanism for the war and its expenditures, promote withdrawal as soon as it is feasible and ensure that the financial burden of the war fall not just on the poor and on future generations, but be shared equitably. The resolution also calls upon a bipartisan commission to be established to determine lessons learned from this war, that nations in the region be allies in assisting stability remain in Iraq and it condemns all violations of the Geneva conventions including torture that have happened during the war and those who would use opposition to the war in Iraq as justification for anti-Israel efforts.

In my opinion, where this resolution stops short is in calling for accountability for those who are responsible for endangering our own service personnel by not armoring them properly or those who made policy decisions regarding torture which violated our American and Jewish values. Where this resolution stops short is in calling for accountability for an administration who misread the intelligence and therefore mislead the American public into war.

Where this resolution falls short is in calling for our country work internationally to restore our credibility on the world stage by acknowledging that we refused to sacrifice ram of pride and chose our own sons, destroying our seed and theirs one by one. It is mind boggling to me that our country has not reached its threshold for pain and suffering. What will it take for us to see that like Abraham, this war will never be a fair sacrifice. And what will it take to anger us, if not the lives of 2000 of our young women and men? In my mind, to be credible, the resolution that comes from our movement, which is supposed to be based on the Jewish moral values that are our lives and the lengths of our days must both acknowledge that the Administration did not act in accordance with those values in going into this war, and demand that adequate Teshuvah be made.

Without saying it, the rabbis of the Midrash implicate Abraham in Sarah's death. Even if he did not murder his own son, his sinister act of stealing their child to kill him, a supposed act of faith, brought Sarah to such horror that her life left her. Everyone comes out damaged from the Akeda, Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, even us as we read it.

Chaim Guri, an Israeli poet, expressed this in his poem Heritage where he writes: Isaac, they say, escaped the sacrifice. He lived long and with luck til he grew weak in the eyes. But he bequeathed to his offspring, that hour of his life. And when they are born, in their hearts is a knife. The knife in our hearts is the knowledge that we are all capable of reliving the Akeda, of sacrificing others in our own mistaken pursuits. If our Torah teaches us anything about sacrifices, it is that we lose something. The only way we come out ahead, is if we gain something more important from having made our sacrifice. The only thing America now has to gain, is in the process of Teshuvah. Not of just exiting Iraq, and not just of making good on our aspirations of their freedom and stability. But of looking into our own backyard and restoring integrity to our leadership and to our mission as a nation.

Rabbi Batsheva Meiri