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October 21, 2023
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parashat Noach
The Paradox of Forever Love
October 21, 2023 — 6 Cheshvan 5784
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
I would like to start with something lovely, the most beautiful words in the world: I love you forever. Think of the people and places that have inspired these magical words.
I have a question. How long is forever? How long do we get to keep who and what we love forever?
This past Monday, our beloved friend and teacher in Jerusalem, Micah Goodman, was speaking to 100 Conservative Rabbis about what is going on in Israel, and he said something about forever love that is so quintessentially Micah. I had never heard it before. But once he said it, it was obviously true.
Micah observed that there is a paradox about what we love forever. Namely, if we assume that what we love forever, we will have forever, then we will not have it forever; we are at serious risk of losing it. But if we worry that what we love forever we may lose, it may not last forever, and if we work hard on preserving it, there is a higher chance that we can hold onto it. If we assume it, we lose it. If we don’t assume it, if we worry that we could lose it, we have a higher chance of keeping it.
The most obvious example is marriage. When a couple gets married, they pledge to love one another forever. What all of us who have been married for any length of time know is that this pledge is not self-executing; it cannot be sustained by the power and beauty of the chuppah; it must be sustained by both spouses investing in their marriage every day. It must be sustained by both spouses making their marriage their highest priority. Taking a marriage for granted, taking anything for granted, puts what we love in grave jeopardy.
Micah’s lens for understanding Israel today is the paradox of forever love. He put it this way: in Israel’s 75 years, there have been four generations of Israelis. The first generation of Israelis knew what a miracle Israel is, how essential Israel is, how vulnerable and fragile Israel is, and what Jewish life would look like without Israel: namely, October 7. Namely, pogroms and massacres. Namely, the Holocaust. Namely, people love dead Jews. Namely, capitals and campuses convulsing with hatred of the Jewish people and the Jewish state. This first generation of Israelis got this in their bones and gave their life to preserving the fragile and essential miracle of Israel forever. The second generation also got it, but a little less. The third generation also got it, but a little less. The fourth generation, this generation, lost it. Lost how precious and how fragile. Took the miracle of Israel for granted. That is why, when Hamas was planning the October 7 invasion, Israelis were busy fighting with each other in Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv about praying on Yom Kippur: with a mechitza, without a mechitza, secular and religious Israeli Jews spitting and screaming at each other. And now tragic because, according to Micah, the fourth generation forgot the paradox of forever love. We only keep forever what we worry about losing.
The good news, Micah pointed out, is that since October 7, this current generation has woken up and now realizes that Israel is fighting for its life. Israelis are coming together, the spirit of altruism is soaring, and as Micah put it, what we have now is a generation that has the resources and strength of the fourth generation, and the acute, intense awareness of fragility of the first generation.
At one particular point, in his talk, he stopped. He was temporarily at a loss for words. That never happens. And he did what I had never seen him do. He wept.
Then he explained why he was weeping. He said he had just gotten off a zoom call with his students, Israelis in their 20s and 30s, who are now mobilized right outside of Gaza. He said that in their ordinary lives they are doctors and poets and scientists and businesspeople and singers and musicians. Many of them kissed their spouses and children good-bye to be on the front lines. They told Micah that they don’t know if they will return alive after the battle. But they are at peace going into Gaza not knowing, because, they said, it is not about us. It is about Am Yisrael, the Jewish people. If Israel is to be Israel, a place where Jews can live in peace, October 7 can never happen again, and they are prepared to devote their lives to making that happen. Micah observed that they are anashim kedoshim, holy people. That is when he wept.
What we love forever we only get to keep forever if we worry about losing it and do the hard work to not lose it.
But it is not only Israeli Jews who are fighting to keep Israel. It is also American Jews who must fight now to keep America as a safe place for the Jewish people. Obviously, there is no comparison between the sacrifice of Israeli Jews who are going into Gaza, and what we need to do to face local hatred in downtown and campus rallies. No comparison. That said, there is a second front of this war. It is a two-front war. The second front is the hatred against the Jewish people and the Jewish state that is raging here.
This is real. Families in our community have reached out to me to say that their children are afraid to be Jews in America today. That is in Newton, the safest place for the Jewish people in the history of the Jewish people. And yet, some of our families are wondering whether they should take the mezuza off their door. At some level, I understand where this anxiety comes from. It’s not without a basis in reality.
This past Thursday night, Dave Chappelle was doing a comedy show at TD Garden. At a certain point he started doing a riff about Israel. He was vitriolically anti-Israel. He said nothing about Hamas slaughtering innocent civilians. Some of his audience told him to knock it off. That really got him going. Out came even more vitriol against Israel. That got the crowd going. They started chanting Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Jews started to leave, not out of protest, but out of fear. That was Thursday night. In Boston. The hatred against the Jewish people and the Jewish state is real.
And yet, we must never ever, never ever, never ever, never ever remove our mezuza from our door. How do we get there?
This week a rabbi in Brooklyn named Rachel Timoner, published an op ed in the Times. The title of her piece is so sad and so chilling and so where we are today. The title of her piece is: “Do Not Take Your Mezuza off Your Door.”
She writes:
During the week after the attacks, on the day of the declared jihad against the Jewish people, one congregant told me through tears that she was considering removing her mezuza from her door. This is what terrorism is intended to do: to terrify us. And to make us and the world feel that maybe, maybe we deserve it.
I said to my congregant, and I plead to all my fellow Jews: Please, please do not take your mezuza off your door. Please do not stop assembling in your synagogues to be together. Please do not take your star from around your neck. Please do not stop living as proud Jews. Please do not stop standing as steadfast supporters of our Israeli family, who feel more alone in the world now than ever. Please do not stop calling for the return of the hostages. Please do not stop giving to aid funds. Please do not stop calling Israeli friends and family, here and there. Please do not stop doing all of the Jewish things you do. Every one of them, every Jewish thing you do, matters.
How do we translate these courageous words into courageous action?
The late Rabbi Harold Kushner once observed that the single most frequently repeated command in the Hebrew Bible is “do not be afraid.” It is repeated more than 70 times. Why?
Because overcoming fear is not once and done. It is a process where in a world where the threat is great, and the worry is great, we somehow summon even greater strength and greater courage.
As you know, this past week Palestinian Islamic Jihad dropped a bomb on a hospital in Gaza killing innocent human beings. Truly a tragedy. We have film of this tragedy happening in real time which shows that it was not an Israeli bomb. It was a Palestinian terrorist bomb, apparently aimed for Israeli civilians, that instead killed Palestinian civilians.
In response, some Harvard students staged what they called a “die-in” to protest the death of innocents. So many things about this are deeply disturbing. Their hatred of the Jewish people and the Jewish state made them blind to the fact that it was Palestinians who killed Palestinians. What is also so galling is that this bomb was apparently intended for Israel, and if it had landed in Israel, and killed innocent Jews, these Harvard students would not have been staging a die-in. That kind of hatred could motivate Jewish Harvard students to take the mezuza off their door.
I got an email just yesterday from the mother whose son, who grew up here, wakes up in his Harvard dorm room and outside his window he sees all these signs, From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free. He wakes up to signs that say there should be no Israel. He wakes up to signs that say the Jewish people do not deserve a homeland. That kind of hate could bully Jewish students into silence. Fortunately, the opposite happened last Sunday night.
Last Sunday night, Harvard undergrads led a vigil for the innocent civilians slain and maimed and kidnapped and the soldiers who perished in the fight. Israeli undergrads spoke about knowing the victims. Many of our children, who grew up here and are at Harvard now, were at the rally. On the steps of Widener Library, in the heart of a campus that convulses with so much hatred, that night it also convulsed with courage, with strength, and with an abiding love of the Jewish State and the Jewish people. There were large flags of Israel on the steps of Widener Library. People were wrapped in Israeli flags in Harvard Yard. People were holding memorial candles. An Israeli undergrad sang el moleh rachamim. The crowd loudly sang Am Yisrael Chai. In the middle of Harvard Yard.
These Israelis know the truth of the paradox of forever love. If we take it for granted—it being our marriage, the State of Israel, our Jewish life in America, the alma mater we used to love—if we take it for granted, it does not last forever. But if we fight for it, if we strengthen it, if we defend it, we can hold onto it. Let’s do the work so that what we love forever we get to keep forever. Never ever, never ever, never ever, never ever take the mezuza off your door. Shabbat shalom.