Menu
Menu
July 8, 2023
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parashat Pinchas
July 8, 2023 — 19 Tammuz 5783
Beautiful, Broken and Ours
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
What do we do with something that is beautiful, broken, and ours? I want to tell you a story that captures beautiful, broken and ours. The story flows from this black and white photograph that was shared at Hartman two weeks ago by Rabbi Rani Yeager. Rabbi Yeager is the rabbi of a congregation in Tel Aviv called Beit Tefilah. He is also a senior faculty member of Hartman. The photograph is of his mother as a very young child, her siblings, and her parents, Rani Yeager’s grandparents. His mother was named Hertzelina by her Zionist parents. Two things about this photograph are striking.
One, the date. This photograph was taken in 1944, in Bulgaria. In 1944 the Nazis were intensifying their efforts to murder Jews. In 1944 the cattle cars to Auschwitz were going full-time. In 1944, other countries like Hungary gave up their Jews to the Nazi death machine. And yet, the second remarkable thing about this photograph is that the members of his family are smiling. Why, in 1944, was this family of Bulgarian Jews smiling?
Rani Yeager’s answer is that ordinary citizens of Bulgaria refused to be Nazi accomplices. Ordinary citizens of Bulgaria protected their fellow Bulgarian citizens who were Jewish. Leadership started at the top. The head of the Bulgarian church said, publicly and clearly, that if you cooperate with Nazis, and send Jews to their deaths, you will be officially excommunicated by the Bulgarian Church. Bulgarian citizens so resisted Nazi entreaties that Albert Eichmann penned a memo saying that the hunting of Jews was not having traction in Bulgaria because Bulgarian citizens were not cooperating.
Rani Yeager’s grandparents, mother, uncle and aunt were protected during the Holocaust by the decency and humanity of ordinary Bulgarian citizens, and they came to Israel after the Shoah singing the Bulgarian national anthem in their hearts.
Rani Yeager carries around this photograph which captures Israel for him.
Beautiful. His grandparents in that photograph could never have dreamt what Israel would be at 75. How advanced. The science. The technology. The start up nation. The beautiful buildings. The culture. The renaissance of Hebrew literature and learning. Its military strength. The fact that Israel has fulfilled its mission of being a safe haven for the Jewish people, whether for Jews of Arabs lands in the 1940s and 50s, Ethiopian Jews, Russian Jews, French Jews today. The air is crisp, the buildings are golden, the Israeli people are diverse and resilient, on Friday and Shabbat you can feel the holiness in the air in Jerusalem. Even painful moments like the demonstrations over judicial reform show the strength of Israel’s democracy. Beautiful.
And broken. Rani Yeager owes his own life, the life of his parents, the life of his children, to what he calls a coalition of the good, the ordinary citizens of Bulgaria who refused to do the Nazis’ bidding back in the 40s. Today he is particularly anguished by the pogroms committed by settlers on Arab towns as retaliation for the terrorism that claimed the lives of four innocent Jews who lived in Eli. How could Jews, who have been the victims of pogroms, commit pogroms? How could the government of Israel not unambiguously condemn this violence and hatred? How could ministers like Smotrich and Ben Gvir say that terrorism is when Arabs kill Jews, not when Jews kill Arabs?
So deeply anguished, what is Rani Yeager to do? He shared that he has always served in his miluim unit, military reserves. But he considers this government’s failure to condemn and crack down on Jewish pogroms such a violation of Jewish values and human rights that he considers this an illegitimate government, his phrase, illegitimate government, and for the first time in his life, he is giving real consideration to not continuing with miluim. At 52 he is no longer required to do miluim. He has always chosen to do miluim even though not required out of love. But the current government is so antithetical to his values that he cannot serve in good conscience. On the other hand, he cannot not serve, especially since his 18-year old son will begin his military service next year. How can he not serve when his son is about to serve? What about those in his command if he stops his service? But how he can serve when his government nods and winks and permits Jewish terrorism?
We do not share the particulars of Rani Yeager’s family story. But many of us share his welter of emotion when it comes to Israel, especially this past week.
Yes, the military operation in Jenin, tailored, limited, successfully focused on eliminating thousands of weapons that were hidden in mosques and other civilians places, and that have been and would be used to kill Jewish civilians, that military operation is surely morally justifiable. But it is also heartbreaking.
It is heartbreaking because no one says that the military operation fully solved any problems. At most it deferred them to another day. All commentators observe that the terrorists of Jenin will rearm.
It is heartbreaking because the lives of West Bank Palestinians are so bleak. Yes, we can point to the many problems in Palestinian leadership, the ineptitude of Fatah, the murderousness of Hamas, the rejectionism of the Palestinian street, their consistent rejection of Israel’s right to exist, their consistent use of terrorism against Israeli civilians, the profusion of violent and anarchic subgroups. Yes, we have deep admiration for the Israeli twenty-somethings who go into Jenin to search and destroy their weapons caches. How dangerous. How scary. Can you imagine if it were your 20-something going to fight armed Palestinians in Jenin? But for all our admiration of the IDF, and for all of the ways in which Palestinian leadership has failed its own people, it is still heartbreaking that Palestinian young men live in such a broken world, they see no hope for a better life, that they would prefer to die fighting Israel than to live, because they cannot imagine a life worth living for.
So, reading about Jenin this week, and terrorists who ram and stab Israelis in Tel Aviv, and pogroms committed by Jews, all conspire to make the rising generation of American Jews say: who needs this? The “ours” in beautiful, broken and ours is going to take more work for a generation that is farther removed from the Shoah, the founding of the State, 1967, and 1973. How do we make Israel, beautiful and broken, also ours, including for our children and grandchildren who may not regard it as ours—who prefer to disconnect?
Here is a move, simple to state, hard to do, that I learned from Donniel Hartman. When we feel edge and disquiet over what is broken, it is very important to continue to feel it. Pay attention to the tension. Don’t deny it. Don’t talk yourself out of it. What do we do with that edge and disquiet?
The answer is: make it better. Whenever we feel the brokenness of Israel, ask the question: what can I do, what can we do, to make it better?
Donniel tells the story of a noted American rabbi who in February, early on in the process, gave a speech harshly critiquing the current government over the judicial reform plan.
This rabbi eloquently pointed out many perils to democracy. Donniel heard the speech. He agreed with it on the merits. Afterwards, he went to the rabbi and said: I hated your speech. You hated my speech? Why did you hate my speech? I would have thought you liked my speech, that you agreed with the points I was making. Donniel said: I did agree with the points you were making, but I hated your speech because all you did was offer a critique, as accurate as it might have been. You did not offer any activism strategy. You did not offer the listener concrete things we can do to make it better. Every critique must be coupled with an activism strategy: How do we make it better?
Here is how Donniel follows his own advice. One of the significant challenges Israel faces is the plight of Arab Israeli Palestinians, these are Palestinians who live in, and are citizens of, Israel, but who have very different lives, fewer resources, less promising prospects, than Israeli Jews. How to make it better? Donniel hired as a senior leader at Hartman a Palestinian woman named Rana Fahoum. They were in dialogue one evening. Rana asks Donniel: what do you want from me? Donniel said two things. One, dual loyalty. That you are loyal to your people, the Palestinian people. And you are loyal to the State of Israel of which you are citizens.
The second, love. That you actually love the state of which you are a citizen. Rana responded: But Donniel, the state of Israel has to earn that loyalty and has to earn that love. It has not yet done so. It is far from having done so. She continued: How can we together create a society in which Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians claim each other, and both feel part of a nation that they share? How can we create a society where Israeli Palestinians are treated so fairly that of course they feel loyalty to, and they love, their state? There is so much work to be done. But creating that world is how the Hartman Institute wants to make it better. To not just say lofty words, but to do real work, Donniel committed that the Hartman Institute would evolve so that 20% of its work will be in the field of shared society, to match the fact that 20% of Israel’s citizens are Israeli Palestinians.
In other words, beautiful, broken and ours is only the beginning of the story. The next chapter must be: beautiful, broken, ours, and a little bit better. That aspiration, to make it better, and doing real work to make it so, can make Israel ours again for our next generations. Shabbat shalom.