June 14, 2025
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parshat Beha’alotecha
Goats Are Us
June 14, 2025 – 18 Sivan 5785
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
How did you sleep on Thursday night? When I first learned that Israel’s war with Iran had begun in earnest, I, like so many of you, did not sleep much at all. Because of the 7-hour time difference between Boston and Israel, in the early hours of Friday morning I was able to reach Micah Goodman, our beloved teacher and friend who lives in Kfar Adumim, twenty minutes outside of Jerusalem. What Micah had to say was both inspiring and concerning at the same time.
First the inspiring part. Micah shared that Israel’s attack on June 13 exceeded its wildest dreams. As Micah put it, the start of the war was all of Israel’s best military victories—the Six Day War, Entebbe, the destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor in Osirak in 1981, the exploding pagers that crippled Hezbollah—all at once. Using intelligence, covert operations, Mossad agents on the ground in Iran and drone technology, Israel was able to eliminate Iran’s leading generals and nuclear scientists in their homes, in their beds, in targeted attacks, in which Israel did not also kill their families. Why were Iran’s leading generals and nuclear scientists at home, in the first place? Why weren’t they in a bunker? Micah answers his own question by observing that we cannot prepare for something that has never before happened in history. What Israel accomplished on June 13 had never before been accomplished in the history of war, the kind of chutzpah, planning, skill and savvy that allowed these targeted assassinations. Add to that Israeli fighter jets that evaded Iranian air defenses, allowing Israel to attack more than 100 sites. Micah observed that Israel’s morale is very high.
But there is a but. Micah and his wife and their teen-age daughters, like so many Israeli families, spent their night in a bunker. Shul throughout Israel has been cancelled. Micah’s public lectures for next week have been cancelled. All public events have been cancelled. Since the airport is closed, Israelis are worrying about food. Where will their food come from? Israel imports much of its food supply. He went to the grocery store on Friday morning, worried about whether his family will have enough food, and the store was jam-packed with nervous grocery shoppers, and the shelves were largely empty.
So there is edge in Israel. Iran remains formidable. The Houthis remain formidable. There still is Hamas. There still is Hezbollah. While the beginning of the war could not have gone any better, where it will go next, nobody knows. There is what Micah calls “radical uncertainty” about what this war will mean for Israel’s future and for the region.
What do we do with this complex picture? How do we understand and respond to it? What does it mean to us? What does it ask from us?
There is a text that speaks so powerfully to this moment, and it is the text we read on our holiest day, Leviticus 16, the Torah reading for Yom Kippur. The reading tells us that Aaron as the High Priest takes two goats. They look the same. They are the same age. And randomly—totally randomly—these two identical goats are assigned radically different fates. The Torah goes out of its way to emphasize randomness. The biblical word for random, for lottery, is goral. Listen to the biblical Hebrew of verse 16:8. You will hear goral three times in one verse. V’natan Aharon al shnei haseirim goralot goral echad la’adonai v’goral echad la’azazel. Aaron shall place lots upon the two goals, one lot is marked for the Lord and the other lot is marked for Azazel.
This lottery shapes the life of each goat. The goat whose lot is marked for God, goral la’adonai, is slaughtered. The goat marked for Azazel is set free in the wilderness.
Being holy to Adonai, being fated to God’s service, is beautiful. Powerful. Holy. And sometimes deadly. No one knows this better than Israeli soldiers and their families.
Last month Shira was on a CJP mission in Israel. She shared that her CJP group had just met with a family from Brookline that had made Aliyah. She heard from their 23-year-old daughter who told her Aliyah story. She fell in love with and married a young Israeli man. They were fabulously happy. They were deeply in love. He died in battle in Gaza. She is now a 23-year-old widow who has lost the love of her life. If she had stayed in Brookline, she would be figuring out which weekends she would be spending in the Cape.
One goat is devoted to God’s service and dies. The other goat is set free and lives.
The story of these two goats is profoundly our story, the story of the Jewish people in the 20th and 21st century. We live here, in America, most of us, because our ancestors came to America. Our Israeli brothers and sisters, most of them, live in Israel because their ancestors made Aliyah. In other words, where we live, where Israelis live, is due to the happenstance of where our ancestors happened to have moved when they were lucky enough to get away from the killing fields of Europe.
This is not theoretical. This is real. This is us. I was with a family just this week whose beloved father and grandfather passed away. This incredible man somehow, through a thousand miracles, survived the Holocaust. After the Shoah was over, he came to America to rebuild his life, to get married, to build a family, to create generations of children and grandchildren, to build a business. Meanwhile, some of his family that survived the horrors of Europe made Aliyah. So you have cousins from the same family who live in Israel or in New Jersey and Massachusetts based on the decisions made by ancestors. Goral. Happenstance.
And, as was the case with the goats, that bit of happenstance makes all the difference.
Israelis experienced the beginning of the war in bunkers. We read about the beginning of the war on our screens.
Israelis are sending their children for their third and fourth and fifth tours of duty as the IDF is doing a big mobilization. We read about it.
Israelis are worrying about when the retaliation will happen and what it will look like. We read about it.
Israelis are exhausted from one intensity after the other. We read about it.
Israelis are always in the throes of history. We get to hit pause.
The goats are not only animals in some ancient Yom Kippur ritual. Due to happenstance, Israeli Jews and American Jews always have very different lived experiences, especially in the tumultuous months after October 7, especially now. The goats are us.
Now what do we do about it? I would offer that we American Jews have five duties.
We have the duty to acknowledge that we are watching this drama, not living it.
We have the duty to care. Israelis are our family. It is personal.
We have the duty to love. Israel is not perfect, obviously, any more than our parents, children or siblings are perfect. But we love our family because they are ours. We love Israel because it is ours.
We have the duty to help. Here is our question What can I do to help Israel now? Whether it is money, or time, or advocacy, what can I do to advance the Israel that I believe in.
We have the duty to show up. The airport is closed now. It won’t always be closed. When it is no longer closed, show up for Israel. Show up in Israel. This is our family. This is our story. This is a modern miracle. And we get to be alive to participate in it.
There is a place, in great films, for both best actor, and best supporting actor. Israel is on the main stage. What it did on June 13 is like a James Bond movie, but it’s real. And the story is not over. The story is just beginning, and all expectations are that it will be difficult. Can we show up for Israel as best supporting actor? The holiest word in the world is the preposition “with.” Let Israelis know that, in the ongoing drama of the Jewish story, we are deeply with them. Shabbat shalom.