[Previous sermon: "Vayeshev - December 24, 2005"] [Next sermon: "Vayikra - March 31, 2006"]
Vayakhel Pekudei - March 24, 2006
While our pundits prognosticate on the popularity polls of our President and the effects thereof on the mid-term elections here in the United States, there is an election which is pressing more immediately on my mind. On Tuesday, Israel will hold Parliamentary elections. Now I will state the obvious for you: at stake in these elections is a general referendum on the direction Israel will take in pursuing its security and its relationship with the Palestinians and the land they currently both occupy. If you don't find this is personally important, allow me to provide you the hard numbers.
In the world, which has 6.5 billion people, only 13 million are Jews. We are a small family in the large circle of humanity. One million of those Jews are scattered around the continents of the world, six million, nearly half of our small family, lives here in America and the rest, six million strong, live in Israel. If the fact that the destiny of nearly half the Jews of the world is being decided in these elections doesn't move you, let's take it less globally, and more personally. Recall the movie "Six Degrees of Separation" which explored the idea that people we think are strangers are really connected to us if only we learn the points at which our lives intersect. And that if we did look, we would find that there are never more than six people that stand between us and any other person on the planet.
Between most of us Jews here and the Jews who live in Israel, there is only at most two degrees of separation. Think about it: we either personally know someone who lives in Israel, or we know someone who knows or has relatives in Israel. Moreover, we know their joys and we feel their pains. For the past 3years, I have had to catch my breath each time I come in late to hear a report on the radio about a suicide bombing, hoping it didn't happen in Israel. Lately, the unfortunate news is that its been American victims in Iraq, members of my other family.
On this Shabbat, we are called by the example of Moses to make an honest accounting, as reflected in Pekudei, the second of the two parshiyot we read which conclude the book of Exodus.
In the first parasha, Vayakhel, the Tabernacle's materials have been collected from those whose hearts are moved to give, the artisans have been commissioned to execute the plans, but before the work began to construct the Tent of Meeting, in the opening verses of Pekudei we learn that Moses meticulously inventoried all the precious metals. He did so in order to later provide this public accounting of exact weights and measures of gold, silver and copper employed for the construction of God's dwelling place among the people. Why? To assure the Israelites that the gifts they had given had been properly allocated, and to prevent rumors from arising that perhaps something dishonest happened between the time the gift was given and the sanctuary's completion.
In this spirit, I hope we will be able to take an honest accounting of Israel's prospects for security and peace in order to understand the results of the referendum in the elections next week and to be a support to her in the future. Since its birth and most intensely in the last 15 years, Israel has been fighting two wars- a war on the ground and a war of ideas. The war on the ground exists because a group of people deny Israel's right to exist and their sole purpose is to rid the Middle East of the blight of the Jewish State through acts of terror. These people are willing to die for the cause and willingly give their own lives in order to maximize on Jewish deaths. It is an impossible war to win.
The war of ideas is a related war. Instead of seeing Israel as a democratic nation struggling mightily to deal with very complicated historical, demographic and border issues while fighting acts of terror, some nations and leaders choose to view her as an imperial aggressor oppressing innocent Palestinian victims. Some European countries especially prefer that picture of Israel because at some level, if Israel is now an oppressive regime abusing her power, that fact relieves them of a more than half a century burden of Holocaust guilt. But this war of ideas is being fought not only abroad. It persists in this country, as many liberal religious groups such as the UCC and the Presbyterian Church have been pursuing divestment in Israel as economic leverage to force a peace deal with the Palestinians and to sanction Israel for the measures she has taken to prevent terrorism, most of all the separation fence along the West Bank.
I have read the Presbyterian overture and admire the very lofty, idealistic values for promoting a peace we would all hope could be achieved one day. But at the same time, it essentially ignores the violence against Israeli citizens that was regularly perpetrated before the separation wall went up and it draws a moral equivalency between bulldozing a house and killing a human being.Truth be told, Israel is still the only nation which still has to prove to the world community its right to exist and its sovereignty to protect it borders and citizens, despite the United Nation's mandate for its creation.
But more than that, while many of us on the left hoped it was not so, over the last 15 or so years, it has become painfully clear that Israel does not have a partner with whom to sit across the table and talk about peace. If we are taking stock and looking realistically about Israel's situation, we need to shatter that myth. We need to let go of the idea that there is a road map that leads to peace... at least right now. The heartbreaking truth is that the Palestinians have yet to organize themselves into a recognizable political entity which will choose credible leaders who represent the genuine interests and needs of the general population of the Palestinian people.
Nor has even a person stepped forward in whom the Palestinians themselves place enough confidence that they would be willing to make the necessary sacrifices for peace, and follow that leader's mandate for such a cause. The handshake on the White House lawn between Rabin and Arafat was all about that hope we had that such a person and political structure existed. Regretfully, it was precisely the corruption rampant within Arafat's Fatah movement which has now led the Palestinians to elect an even worse political adversary for Israel, Hamas, a simultaneously humanitarian and terrorist organization. But here's the rub. And I bristle even as I say it, if that is all the Palestinians can produce right now, then Israel must choose to wait.
But let me clarify. Waiting does not mean Israel should be paralyzed. Israel simply has to bide her time for the kind of peace we all thought was visible on the horizon. And that will mean Israel will need to continue to make tough, less ideal decisions which protect itself and its citizens. While no Israeli thinks the separation wall is a permanent solution, no one can deny how effective it has been in preserving life. And when the time for peace comes, Israel will gladly lay down arms and knock those same barriers down. In the meantime, what positive is there to see right now in an Israel which is divided by a wall from enemies with whom there are no immediate prospects for peace?
What can be our tikvah, our hope and prayer for Israel? The latest polls from these elections is that finally Israel seems to be galvanizing around her political center instead of being directed, or even worse paralyzed, by the right and left wings of all stripes. As a colleague of mine recently observed, who would have thought Ariel Sharon would be considered an Israeli hero? He earns that title for the way that he decided to look honestly and realistically at Israel's situation, and shatter myths on both sides of the fence. First the myth of the Israeli right who believed in Greater Israel, borders extending and encompassing the historical land in the West Bank.
And second, the myth of the Arabs whose only vision of their homeland of Palestine is as a replacement for Israel. Sharon's policy of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, a platform on which now his successor in his Kadima party, Ehud Olmert is running with regard to the West Bank, was undesirable to the extremists on both sides, but met a real need in the political center of Israel for security and self-preservation in the absence of the violence ending, the only necessary pre-condition for peace. And it looks as if Kadima will win a decisive majority on Tuesday, with the easy ability to form a coalition government which will move forward with future disengagement from the albatross of the West Bank and its settlements.
This reading of the political reality in Israel isn't the beautiful happy ending like the one which ends our Torah portion this week: that God is so pleased with the finished tabernacle that upon its erection God's cloud comes immediately to settle upon it. L'havdil, the matzav, the situation in Israel now is a far cry from where we'd like this story to be: an Israel, living peacefully and prosperously with her neighbors. But our prayer and our hope together is that the Israel of the political center will be the rudder to stay the course and keep our people safe in their land until the fortuitous opportunity arises for that wonderful dream we call peace.
AMEN.
Rabbi Batsheva Meiri
