Rabbi Yair Robinson, Congregation Beth Emeth
Years ago, long before October 7th, when I was taking a confirmation class to New York City, one of my students approached to ask a question. This student was—and is—an empathic and considerate person who cared deeply for the Jewish value of tikkun olam—repairing the world, and strives to lives those values. She approached me on the subway as we were traveling to Friday night services. She asked, “do I have to love Israel?”
There were a lot of things I could have said in that moment that would have all been wrong. How could I simply say ‘yes,’ when I myself have often spoken out against Israeli governmental polices that I have long found abhorrent: upholding the Orthodox stranglehold on marriages and divorce, trapping women in abusive relationships; the mistreatment and neglect of the Bedouin community and Arab citizens; allowing the haredim to avoid military service, stressing the rest of the country economically and socially; and letting West Bank settlers to run roughshod over their neighbors.
On the other hand, how could I say, ‘no?’ Israel is our longed-for home, a shelter for so many Jews around the world, the only place where we as a people can be in the majority, a place that has been, truly, “the first fruit of our redemption” as a people? Problematic and imperfect? To be sure, but also one of the few places where we can be ‘normal.’
After a half-a-second I told her that we need to be in relationship with Israel. That sometimes Israel will disappoint us, but it’s ours, and it won’t fix itself unless we commit ourselves to her and her people—who are our people. We do need to love and be in relationship with our fellow Jews. As we have seen, no one will save or protect us like one another, despite all of our differences and challenges.
In a world that insists on all answers being either ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ I continue to insist on that nuance: that if we truly love Israel, we must be willing to challenge her policies when they are wrong, and that we are still obligated to be in relationship with one another. Only then, I believe, will the hope of two thousand years truly flourish.
Rabbi Peter H. Grumbacher, Rabbi Emeritus, Congregation Beth Emeth
Look around you. What are the stories that have been impacting your People for more than two years? Perhaps the calm of Jews walking down the street in Brooklyn, in London, on university campuses? Nowadays, those stories would be considered fantasies, wishful thinking at best. No, we read about hatred that is spewed against us, reminiscent of almost a century ago, and thinking about it, reminiscent of far too many incidents across the centuries.
Let me ask you, to where did our English people go when England kicked us out in 1290? In 1939, where did the 800 Jews find refuge when the ship, the Saint Louis, was refused landing in one port after another and had to return to Germany? Would the Holocaust have happened had there been a Jewish state? Probably, but surely the number of our People murdered would have been far fewer.
Let me ask you, where did the Soviet Jews go in the 1980s once the Kremlin permitted them to leave? Yes, many came to the United States, but they had the chance to emigrate to Israel, and many did. And in the middle of the 20th century, when Arab countries kicked out their Jews who had lived there for centuries, where did they go if not Israel? And the Ethiopian Jews? And, today, many French Jews?
You, who are Jewish and proclaim yourselves to be anti-Zionists, have the right to view the response of Israel to the October 7th tragedy as overkill. But if you had any true knowledge of history and what Israel means to us, you hopefully would realize that joining with the enemy, whose anti-Zionism can indeed be translated as antisemitism, is, as they say and have said forever, not good for the Jews! Not good for you!
If the government of Israel’s deeds today are hostile to your values of justice and righteousness; if you see ploughshares being turned to swords and this offends you, speak up and write and protest vehemently, but do not cast away the baby with the bath water. There are thousands upon thousands of Israelis who have joined in various locations crying out loud that they cannot and will not condone the bloodshed and destruction heaped upon Gaza, nor the disgusting actions of the West Bank settlers against innocent Arab farmers. And they will be heard, God-willing, in the next election.
So, once you have learned Israel’s history, and once you get a grasp of what has been the mission of the terrorist neighbors of Israel for almost eight decades if not longer, perhaps your perspective will change. No one is asking you to be complacent; the Prophets of Israel condemned those who went against the moral and ethical principles of the Torah. But I and others are, in fact, asking you to reconsider your misguided view.
