Saturday, October 05, 2024

The Sermon Every Jew But Me Heard Every Week


One supposedly ubiquitous aspect of millennial Jewish upbringing that I do not at all relate to is the storyline where their Jewish education was a completely uncritical and unsophisticated "Israel right-or-wrong" drumbeat, one which eventually shattered upon the reality of going to college or meeting Palestinian friends or visiting Israel and the occupied territories. This story is omnipresent amongst Jews of my generation, and it just never resonated with me. I never felt like my Israel education was so inflexible, and so I never had the experience of it crashing into the real world.

The synagogue I grew up in was, admittedly, in many ways atypical. It wasn't especially liberal (no more so than is normal for a Jewish congregation, anyway), but its location in the DC suburbs meant it did have quite a few genuine experts on Israel and the Middle East (well beyond the armchair experts I imagine one can find in any synagogue pew). Their views were by no mean unchallengeable and the environment was certainly unabashedly "pro-Israel", but it did mean we perhaps avoided some of the more nakedly crude manifestations of pro-Israel politics.

This apparent idiosyncrasy in my upbringing has really jumbled my ability to connect with the zeitgeist. On the one hand, I hear the aforementioned tales of Rabbis giving these near-comical caricatures of the "true" contours of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and I can't help but be skeptical -- that's certainly not how I remember it. On the other hand, you hear it often enough and you have to think that maybe I'm just the weird one. While I certainly wouldn't characterize myself as detached from the organized Jewish community, it is the case that my connection to a synagogue has been sporadic in my adult life (if only because I moved around so much) -- so I have little in the way of comparison to juxtapose against the synagogue I grew up with.

But the imminent arrival of a little one in our family has finally prompted us to begin synagogue shopping in earnest, and over the high holidays we've been surveying various congregation's services. One congregation in particular checks a lot of our boxes -- a vibrant community, lots of young families, excellent early childhood resources, and we were excited to try out their services for the first time.

At the same time, I was seeing a flurry of posts and resources talking about how anti-Zionist or Israel-critical Jews were struggling to find welcoming Jewish communal spaces -- where could they go to high holiday services where they wouldn't be bombarded with hasbara defenses of the war in Gaza? And I will admit -- I was feeling skeptical. "Bombarded"? Come on. My own experiences made me exceptionally dubious that there would be much beyond the anodyne and unobjectionable. There'd probably be an Israeli flag on the bimah, and a prayer for the state of Israel, and statements of concern for the hostages and spiking antisemitism on college campuses. If that's what passes for an unwelcoming atmosphere, I'd say deal with it.

And so I attended services, which were quite lovely, and then the Rabbi stood to give his sermon. And it didn't take long for me to realize "oh, so this is the sermon that every Jew of my generation but me is talking about."

My first thought -- since I was synagogue-shopping and so had recently seen exactly how much it costs to join a synagogue -- was "I could just subscribe to Commentary and save a lot of money!" The second thought was to remember all the wonderful programs and suddenly understand why people join megachurches ("I may not agree with the pastor's politics, but my goodness what a preschool!"). I asked my wife her thoughts, and she said "honestly, I just tuned him out" (probably another regular facet of Jewish experience that I don't relate to -- the Rabbi at my childhood synagogue may well be the single most compelling orator I've ever met in my life).

In terms of the sermon itself, I'm not going to go to deep into the substantive details. The nicest thing I could say about the speech was that it was, at best, a good twenty-plus years out of date in speaking of an Israeli government that of course wants nothing more than peace, but alas must deal with the reality that the Palestinians will settle for nothing less than maximal and total victory. This does not, to say the least, aptly characterize the current Israeli government; much of the ideology the Rabbi imputed to Hamas and Hezbollah resonated just as strongly with Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, or yes, Netanyahu -- all of whom have proven entirely willing to sabotage prospects of peace for a chance at complete and utter dominion between the river and the sea.

At root, the sermon read as an attempt to rally a wavering audience to continue to back a war without end whose suffering has been immeasurable, because the belief that a peaceful solution can be achieved is just so much Western naivete. And it was made worse because the sermon did contain the periodic rhetorical gestures in a liberal direction -- a concession that the occupation is a problem here, a willingness to admit Bibi hasn't been perfect there. Hearing such sentiments expressed as brief asides amidst a sea of "we are fighting a culture of death" jeremiads made me understand why so many of my peers view such positions as meaningless smokescreens -- they were not actual concessions; they were balms meant to reassure the audience of its own virtue. And more broadly, if this was the Israel-outlook that I was exposed to as a teenager, then I absolutely would've gotten clobbered when reality hit in adulthood.

Again, I was not prepared for this. In fact, I had a different blog post ready to roll that was all about there being a spectrum of Jewish opinion out there and the broad tent had room for a variety of voices. The week before I had just been invited to give a talk at the Eastside Jewish Commons, and nobody had any qualms about my own harsh critiques of the Israeli government (and indeed on the bulletin board in the space I saw a posting for the Center for Jewish Non-Violence, advertising its work of "co-resistance and solidarity against Israeli occupation and apartheid." I was planning to buttress that experience by reference to my High Holiday experience, which (I was already drafting in my mind) was a High Holiday experience, not a Bibi Netanyahu appreciation tour.

Now, to be sure, I'm still not convinced my initial instincts regarding communal pluralism were fully off-base. Leaving aside the wrongness of making judgments off of an n of 1, even at this very synagogue, the other Rabbi had just written a column about the importance of choosing peace even as her colleague was delivering an ode to the virtues of war. So one might say that Jews engaging in aggressive pro-war politicking is just as much part of a pluralism as Jews organizing to demand a ceasefire is. And again, as much as people say that any "whiff" of dissent results in an insta-purge from mainline Jewish spaces, I feel like I have dissented more than a whiff and I remain unpurged. So what am I doing that's so special? 

But nonetheless, I had a prediction of how I expected the High Holidays to go, and it was falsified. I could have just kept that to myself, of course -- none of you would have been the wiser. But it felt more honest to relay the experience.

19 comments:

PHN said...

https://forward.com/opinion/451724/dear-american-jewish-boys-please-take-your-oedipal-rage-and-find-another/

Will said...

you are your own god, especially once you become a father. Teach your child whatever you want, mold him/her to be whoever you want. Don't visit church, you don't need it.

Megan Grace said...

David! First off Mazel tov! Second, I have been wanting to hear you speak in Portland for ages now and you just now mention your engagment at the EJC last weekend only after the fact?? I understand your family is growing and the school year has started though so I'll try to be understanding. At any rate I'm not too surprised that Rabbi is a bit out of date in his commentary. And yes even though it could be one of two synoguges you and your wife were visiting, that Rabbi will be retiring within the next year or so. I hope you two find a good fit!

Alex I. said...

I'm curious as to how other temples have dealt with the last year. Since moving to the PNW over 8 years ago, I've gone to high holiday services at Temple Hirsch Sinai. The sermons themselves have always had a somewhat progressive bent-- they've emphasized Jewish refugee experiences, for instance, in the context of the demonization of immigrants in today's politics.

After October 7, their response sounded somewhat familiar notes-- that Jewish tradition compels efforts to protect the innocent, but that Israel holds itself to a unique level of accountability and is facing unique barbarism, etc. etc. It's curious in that this response is preemptive-- on October 8, 2023, the congregation was declaring that of course Israel will conduct its response justly and will do its best to avoid unnecessary casualties. Missing is... any evaluation of whether it will actually do so. By my estimation, it's pretty clear that it hasn't.

I think if that's the approach taken at this congregation, it's a safe bet that the vast majority of congregations are similarly uncritical. It's an odd tack-- typically in the case of the US, for instance, leftists will declare that America's actions are terrible and responsible for all evil, while reactionaries will claim that any action America takes is justified by virtue of being America.

Right wing synagogues take the same approach as American right wingers with respect to Israel. But plenty of more progressive synagogues take this odd preemptive approach-- Israel's actions are righteous not simply by virtue of being Israel, but because... we know that they'll behave righteously in the future? It creates an odd dissonance where they're self conscious enough to acknowledge that war crimes are bad regardless of who commits them, but not self conscious enough to countenance the idea that "their" side actually has to actually... not commit war crimes to get this benefit of the doubt.

Art Vandelay said...

Oh, for crying out loud! Is the unwavering support for Israel from American rabbis in their sermons really so terrible? Do you think those sermons are any less nuanced than the "Palestine right-or-wrong" drumbeat pushed by typical American imams in sermons at their mosques?

Are these pro-Israel sermons any worse than literally everything every American rabbi has to say about WW2? That war resulted in hundreds of thousands of German civilians being killed by Allied bombing, thousands of German women being gang-raped by Soviet soldiers, 14 million Germans being ethnically cleansed from Eastern Europe and hundreds of thousands of additional German civilians being killed in the course of that ethnic cleansing. Yet all American rabbis have to say about WW2 are nakedly crude manifestations of pro-Allies sentiments. It's utterly impossible for anti-Allies or Allies-critical Jews in America to find welcoming Jewish communal spaces. It was utterly impossible 80 years ago for American Jews to go anywhere for high holiday services where they wouldn't be bombarded with defenses of the war against Germany.

It's bizarre for someone to mock the opinion that the belief that a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict can be achieved is just so much Western naivete just a few months after writing this about the war in Afghanistan:

https://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2024/02/learning-right-wrong-lessons.html

Why is it so ridiculous to believe that peace with the Palestinians in Israel is impossible if you also believed that peace with the Taliban in Afghanistan is impossible?

Your attack on defending the practical necessity of the occupation obscures the question of why the occupation shouldn't simply be defended as an end in itself. What makes you certain that Israel is "too big"? It's just 10 miles from Saudi Arabia, an 830,000 square mile country that bans all Jews from citizenship. The 4 Arab countries bordering Israel had 100,000 Jews 80 years ago. That number is now down to 32! Just how bad do things have to get for Jews in the Arab world before you conclude that Israel has zero obligation to let go of any land it currently has?

Art Vandelay said...

John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, believes Israel actually has conducted its response justly and done its best to avoid unnecessary casualties:

https://www.newsweek.com/israel-implemented-more-measures-prevent-civilian-casualties-any-other-nation-history-opinion-1865613
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286

David Schraub said...

You know, I was just reading one of those foolish "Palestine-right-or-wrong" columns today, and thinking to myself that one of the curses of the pro-Palestine movement coming into political maturity is that they, too, will be cursed with highly publicized columnists making arguments exactly as idiotic as the most blinkered right-wing Zionist writing for JNS. I confess, though, that it didn't occur to me that "may we be as dumb as our most mindless enemies" wasn't something to aspire to (though I may have somehow underestimated the point further if the lesson you drew from my Afghanistan post was "just keep on fighting wars forever!").

With respect to defending the "occupation" on its own bottom, there are many people who believe -- as you apparently do -- that there should be but one state from the river to the sea (many of them are currently in encampments). While a one-state solution isn't my preference, I can't say that such a state would be intrinsically unjust, so long as it offered equal citizenship and voting rights to all those who permanently reside within its borders. But if you're not willing to offer equality of citizenship, then you're just endorsing explicit apartheid. That's the ultimately very simple choice: Israel can be Jewish, democratic, or rule the entirety of the land from the river to the sea -- pick two. If retaining the land is a must-have for you, then the only question left is if you prefer to jettison the Jewish or the democracy. It sounds like you'd rather let go of the latter, and then what you have is an explicit and unabashed apartheid regime.

PHN said...

Thanks for sharing those links, Mr. Vandelay. I do think the images of all the rubble in Gaza are upsetting, but then I remember that the IDF reports that Hamas’s terror tunnels are everywhere, totaling a greater distance than the NYC subway system. How’s the IDF supposed to destroy those tunnels without damaging anything above them? And since the terrorists are purposefully embedding themselves amongst dense civilian populations, how’s the IDF supposed to fight them without hurting anybody else? Susie Linfield put it nicely and bluntly in an interview recently: Hamas WANTS Gazan civilians to be killed.

I am no admirer of Netanyahu nor his coalition, but I think these questions need to be answered before people accuse the current Israeli government of being equally as bad as Hamas.

Art Vandelay said...

Whoever said that the typical American imams giving "Palestine right-or-wrong" sermons at their mosques are “mindless”? The point is simply that their congregants don't mind such sermons so why should you be bothered by the mirror image at your shul?

The point about Afghanistan is that you weren't so naive as to believe that a peaceful solution between the Taliban and Afghan government was possible. You weren't so naive as to believe that the Taliban would ever be willing to give up its war against the Afghan government. Why is it any more ridiculous to believe that the Palestinians will never give up their war against Israel's very existence? How could someone who's such a hard-eyed realist on Afghanistan be so hopeful about peace when it comes to Israel?

And the rabbis dismissing the possibility of peace in their sermons at least have far better evidence for it than you do for your claim that the Dobbs majority specifically *hoped* that Ashley's situation would happen as a result of their decision.

The problem with the people at the encampments is that they’re pigs. 49 Muslim-majority countries isn't enough for them. In contrast, defending the occupation as an end in itself is simply a demand for basic equality for Jews in the Mideast. Democracy could most easily be maintained with permanent occupation by getting rid of all the Palestinians in the West Bank. Even if Israel allowed them to stay, it's utterly lame to casually dismiss it as "apartheid" when Israel itself is a bantustan for Jews. Apartheid within a larger system of apartheid is nothing to panic over.

If Israel can't maintain a permanent occupation and also be a democracy then that merely proves that Jews face a tradeoff between democracy and basic fairness and equality within the Mideast. It's a lot easier to bash permanent occupation as an end in itself if you just pretend that that tradeoff doesn't exist.

Art Vandelay said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
David Schraub said...

I like how your brilliant plan counter to the democracy/Jewish state/river to the sea trilemma is to advocate a bit of mass ethnic cleansing. There's no apartheid if the other ethnic group is just expelled en masse! Way to cut through that Gordian knot, brah.

I can, admittedly, now better understand why you find it so hard to perceive that some people might not enjoy shrinking to the level of their most morally bankrupt and obtuse opponents. When you basically agree with their moral bankruptcy, but just have a different ox you wish to gore, the familiarity must be quite comforting.

Art Vandelay said...

I don't claim that my plan is brilliant. I'm simply pointing out the stakes and the choices. Ethnic cleansing isn't the same thing as apartheid, no matter how much you wish it was. Again, it's a lot easier to bash permanent occupation if you don't even acknowledge Jews' limited options for full equality and fairness in the Mideast.

According to you, our most "morally bankrupt and obtuse opponents" are ALL THE COUNTRIES SURROUNDING ISRAEL. Who knew you had such a low opinion of nearly all Arabs? And you seem to believe the appropriate response to their crimes is...absolutely nothing. As I pointed out, you already shrank to their level. You're completely fine with the ethnic cleansing of Germans from Eastern Europe after WW2. You're completely fine with the ethnic cleansing of Arabs that resulted from Israel's establishment. Get off your high horse. We're talking about a bridge that we've already crossed.

If you want to call such proposed ethnic cleansing morally bankrupt then all you've proved is that Jews face a tradeoff between moral bankruptcy and the denial of fairness and equality for ourselves in the Mideast. It's a lot easier to deride such "moral bankruptcy" if you just pretend that that tradeoff doesn't even exist.

You shouldn't find it so hard to believe that many Jews are so unwilling to abandon the fairness and equality clearly owed to them by the Arab world.

Art Vandelay said...

I take your lack of response to my last comment here as an indication that you now fully understand the tradeoffs involved in the question of continued Israeli control over the West Bank and have greater respect for those who wish to maintain permanent Israeli control. I also assume you now have greater respect for American rabbis who give those oh-so-horrible pro-Israel sermons. Defending Israel in their sermons is unifying for American Jews. Not mentioning Israel at all in their sermons might be more unifying but completely avoiding the issue could be very hard and awkward. It's impossible for rabbis to please 100% of their congregation members 100% of the time.

David Schraub said...

Nah, I was just happy to let it lie there and let the readers decide how to assess things, what with you forthrightly admitting that a bit of not-so-light ethnic cleansing was a possible necessity under your position.

Art Vandelay said...

You speak as though the ethnic cleansing I suggested as a possible strategy for helping Israel to maintain permanent control of the West Bank is just so unspeakably immoral and wrong that it couldn't possibly be justified by anything yet for some strange reason you don't just explicitly say that. Why is that? Why can't you just explicitly state here that you believe that equality and fairness for Jews in the Mideast doesn't justify ethnic cleansing? Why can't you just explicitly state that Jews will just have to put up with inequality and unfairness in the Mideast? It would make your supposed moral stand on this issue a lot more compelling. This is a weird take from a zionist who's okay with the Nakba and from a Jew who's okay with the ethnic cleansing of Germans that took place after World War 2. Get off your high horse.

David Schraub said...

Seriously? That's your gotcha? Okay. The ethnic cleansing you suggested as a possible strategy for helping Israel to maintain permanent control of the West Bank is just so unspeakably immoral and wrong that it couldn't possibly be justified by anything, and in particular can't be justified by the inequality and unfairness of there being many Arab and Muslim states in the Middle East and only one Jewish state. Done.

The only "strange reason" I hadn't said it explicitly until now is I thought it was too obvious to need saying. Mea culpa.

Art Vandelay said...

What makes it so immoral to be okay with the ethnic cleansing I suggest after you're already okay with the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing of Germans from Eastern Europe after World War 2? Can you explain that to me? If it’s so unspeakably immoral and wrong then why did the victors of World War 2 and the founders of the United Nations purposely engage in it? Maybe you know I'm right about this but just don't want to admit it because you believe “good liberals” will no longer accept you as one of them if you do so and you just rather uphold your image. Maybe you just don’t want to be seen challenging the Overton window in this country concerning what’s “fair” for Israel.

David Schraub said...

I am opposed to ethnic cleansing across the board. I'm not especially familiar with alleged ethnic cleansing of Germans after WWII, but to the extent it happened I don't endorse it. Likewise, to the extent the Nakba entailed ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, I don't endorse that either. And, for what it's worth, I oppose Hamas' attempt to ethnically cleanse Israeli Jews from Israel (since suddenly "ethnic cleansing" can't be taken for granted as a bad thing). Ethnic cleansing is bad. This isn't hard for me.

Your cynicism that everyone is secretly fine with ethnic cleansing but just puts on a show of opposition isn't realism, it's moral cowardice. You're a coward and a supporter of ethnic cleansing, and you wear the latter with the pride of any Hamasnik or White Supremacist.

I don't allow proponents of ethnic cleansing space on my site, and so further comments (including the inevitable cliched shrieking of liberal censorship/fear of confronting your clearly correct views/tacit admission of your glorious victory in argumentative battle) will be deleted.

Art Vandelay said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.