Question 8: Hatred or Grief?

This is a lightly adapted version of words I shared with my synagogue this Shabbat. As a pulpit rabbi, I lead a diverse community with a number of viewpoints and values, and these words reflect an effort to engage as much of my community as I can in this horrifying moment. If you’d like, you’re also welcome to watch this recording of a Moment of Collective Mourning that I led for the Hey Alma community yesterday.

On Wednesday morning I made a spreadsheet. There were a few columns, none particularly notable.

Name

Family/Friends

Family/Friends Location

Notes

Latest Update

As best I could, I began to fill it out. The member of my synagogue with 2 nieces on the front lines. The member whose friend was murdered. The member whose friend’s son was taken hostage. The member whose cousin happened, thank heavens, to be away from her kibbutz when it was attacked. The member with countless relatives called up from the reserves. And next to these horror stories, the logistics. When was the last time either the cantor or I had reached out? Did one of us actually get to speak to them, did we connect by text or email, or had we just left messages?

As I typed in each name and status update, I felt a simultaneous pull in two directions— utter grief at the number of congregants in my relatively small shul with a lot of reason to fear for family and friends, and, at the same time, a little loosening of my own tension as I got a little bit more organized. The chaos of figuring out a response settled just a bit as I could point to a list and a date and say “yes, I spoke to this congregant and their sister is ok.” “Yes, I got an email back from this congregant.” 

Organization makes things calmer. It’s a best practice that in times of trauma, you try to keep your children on a schedule. There should still be meal times, and bed times. The same is true for adults. Some of us may remember articles in the early days of COVID lockdown about how it was best to have a “commuting” ritual like sitting on the couch with a book, taking a walk around the block, or doing the crossword puzzle.

When we read the Torah each year, we do so in an organized manner, going from start to end, and, in the beginning, we first encounter a very organized creation story as God places orders and the universe literally lights up. וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר׃   Elohim said “let there be light, and there was light.” God saw that the light was good and separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness night. And there was evening, and there was morning. One day. 

One day where the only divisions in the entire universe were  between light and dark, and God and everything else. One day with seemingly only one being in power. One day with order drawn into existence.

Of course, things do get more complicated on day two, with the separation of the waters and the creation of sky. Many of us know the story at this point. Three more days of creation, and then, on day 6, us. Human beings. Two, we assume, given the story of Adam and Eve. But actually, in this first creation story of Genesis Chapter 1, there are no numbers. It’s just humans, created as a category in a very orderly fashion after the rest of the land animals. And, with the ordered creation complete, God sits back to rest. 

Now there’s a whole second creation story, but today I just want to focus on this one. And at this moment I want to take us back to before the orderly fashioning of everything in its neat categories. 

See, the very, very beginning of the Biblical story is not ordered at all. The very, very beginning is chaos. The start of our story is not “Let there be light” but rather the earth unformed and void— tohu vavohu— an infinitely interpretable darkness of nothingness.

In the beginning of God’s beginning to make heaven and earth, according to our text, there was the deep — the t’hom— a depth, often assumed to be a watery depth, existing, somehow, out of time. And, in the beginning, a wind or spirit of God —a Ruach Elohim— hovered atop the deep.

It’s a beautiful image, if you think about it. I imagine a black night sky set over a nearly infinite lake. No stars yet, or light to see them by. And yet, there in the darkness, the tiniest of ripples above the surface of the water. Commentators look at this ruach quite differently from one another. Ibn Ezra, a 12th century commentator with a penchant for grammar analysis, says that the Ruach’s function was to dry up the waters of the deep, but haEmek haDavar, who wrote in the 19th century, said that the Ruach was simply hovering calmly. So which was it? Did God create by destroying water that was already there, or did God just flutter atop the depths? In Bereishit Rabbah, an early midrash, Ben Zoma asserts that it was the latter, that God’s spirit hovered like a bird above its nest “‘The spirit of the Lord was blowing’ is not written,” he says, “ but rather, ‘was hovering’ – like a bird that flaps its wings—they touch [the nest] but do not quite touch.” 

And so there was perhaps a gentleness to the chaos before God’s orderly assembly of existence. 

Beginning on Saturday morning, and every day of this terrible week, I certainly experienced chaos. Organizing and sending emails to my synagogue community on Shabbat (and a holiday no less), checking in with beloveds in my own lives, juggling vigil planning and Shabbat planning, calling and emailing congregants for whom the grief is particularly personal. And I’m sure many of you have had similar weeks as you’ve checked in with friends and family and held this terrible time in your own way. 

I want to say that sometimes chaos does actually need to precede order, that when we are in the midst of unfolding trauma— and, sadly, we are— it is too much to expect any sort of response beyond horror in the many ways that horror manifests for each of us. It’s not surprising to me that it took until Wednesday morning— 5 days after the shock of the initial attacks— to think to make a spreadsheet. And indeed, it has been easier in the last 3 days to breathe as I can look at the orderly list and say “yes, I’ve been in touch.” Order helps me to ground, as it can help many of us to ground. This week, order has allowed me to make enough space within myself to feel more fully, and to grieve. 

There is so much to grieve right now.

I grieve, with my whole heart, the actions of Hamas, a terrorist organization that is in no way synonymous with the Palestinian people and that perpetuated a pogrom last weekend. I grieve the loss of innocent life in Israel— the young adults at their rave, the families in their kibbutzim, the peaceniks on the border, the bodies strewn at bus stops. I grieve the taking of hostages— some literal savtas, grandmas— and some in urgent need of medical care. I grieve the number of dead and kidnapped from whom I have a single degree of separation, and I am overwhelmed at the smallness of our community as I can count at least 3 of the dead and 6 taken. And that is for friends of friends. If I grow the circle just one more layer to those friends’ friends I run out of digits on which to count. I grieve the need Holocaust survivors had to gather in DC earlier this week to recall their terror from childhoods where events like last weekend’s happened all too often. I grieve the four cop cars parked on my shul’s block last night and the very reasonable fear that American Jews have of violence in our synagogues and community centers— a fear so worrisome that the day school where my mother works in California closed yesterday, and my mother-in-law in Israel texted me yesterday morning to tell me to be safe.

And I grieve my fear for how some Jews might receive what I’m going to say next. 

Because I also grieve the loss of innocent life in Gaza and the West Bank, and I cannot write of my grief for innocents in Israel without naming innocents in Gaza— a community that is half children and teens, and a population told to move half of itself, over a million people, in 24 hours. I grieve the hundreds of dead Palestinian children just as I grieve the horror of dead Israeli children. And I grieve the normalization of occupation. I grieve the Palestinians shot by Settlers in the West Bank without repercussion for nothing more than the crime of being Arab. I grieve the fact that one of my partner’s friends’ families who are residents of the West Bank cannot drive their Palestinian car on Israeli roads to shelter in relative safety with my mother-in-law. These things too, I grieve with my whole heart. And if you cannot understand how I can grieve all of these things, I invite you to come with me back to the beginning of the human story— to the Garden of Eden, a place of utter peace. 

You may know what I’m about to write but it is worth writing anyway. I bring us to Bereishit 1, verses 26-27, to our starting place. וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים נַֽעֲשֶׂ֥ה אָדָ֛ם בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ כִּדְמוּתֵ֑נוּ And God said, “let us make a human being in our image and after our likeness.”

And God did. וַיִּבְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים ׀ אֶת־הָֽאָדָם֙ בְּצַלְמ֔וֹ בְּצֶ֥לֶם אֱלֹהִ֖ים בָּרָ֣א אֹת֑וֹ “And God created the human being in God’s image, in the image of God created God the human.”

Before Judaism. Before Christianity. Before Islam. Before Israel. Before borders. Before war. Before even the notion of property. We were made in the divine image. All of us. And at times like this that can be a very painful truth to hold, because some of the people crafted in that divine image want to kill Jews. We have the right to defense. And we have the right to rage. But if we wish to honor our sacred source— if we wish to truly be human ourselves— we must acknowledge that the more we hate, the more hatred we will engender. 

I want to share the words of one of my congregants, Professor Mel Scult, who was a teenager when the state of Israel was created in 1948 and has a lot of family living there today. Like me, Mel condemns Hamas’s actions and is outraged at their cruelty. And, like me, Mel is concerned about the loss of innocent life in Gaza. He wrote in a message to the synagogue yesterday: “We are all tested not to be drawn into the whirlpool of vengeance. This is so difficult for Israelis at this time but also difficult for us. There is the feeling we ought to just flatten the place. Indiscriminately. But there are civilians in Gaza. Ordinary people who might not support their leaders. They will die just like those in Hamas who have led them. We must not hate Arabs. They are neighbors with whom Israel must live.” Mel went on to remind us of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s words over 80 years ago “ I object to chauvinistic feelings which are unable to comprehend the Arab side at all.” 

For us to grieve losses that are ours and that are not ours, side by side, is a method through horror that can have a profound impact. Some of us may be familiar with the Parents Circle Family Forum, a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization of over 600 families who have lost a child to the conflict. Each year the PCFF holds a tekes, a ceremony of transition from Yom HaZikaron to Yom Ha’Atzmaut, from Israeli Memorial Day to Israeli Independence day. Such ceremonies happen all over Israel, but this one is different, because this one includes the narratives not only of Israelis but of Palestinians who have lost loved ones. Over the years, the PCFF ceremony has grown from a handful of people to thousands, gathered in their grief and in hope for a society that serves all. And every year, just outside the ceremony, are protestors— Israelis so affronted by the very act of Israelis and Palestinians mourning together that they would rather protest their ceremony than attend another that might bring them comfort.

Hate is a powerful force but in time all it leads to is isolation and pain. Grief can be equally powerful and in time it can lead to communal care. Extremist governments want us to choose hate but we can choose grief. I beg us to choose grief.

I learned earlier this week from Rabbi Felicia Sol that Hatikvah was not officially Israel’s national anthem until 2004. This was news that came as a surprise to me. Having grown up singing Hatikvah at synagogue and summer camp, often during the raising of the Israeli flag, I always assumed it was the official song for the state. But, in some ways, learning that it was not, that Hatikvah—the hope— was unofficial for nearly 60 years, made me appreciate it more. Because hope is in its deepest essence not about what is but what could be. Hope is about the future we dream of. Hope is about a return to the peace of Eden, where everything is planted, and where all we need do is live. We are far from that reality, but we still have that hope. As Rabbi Kaplan wrote in 1940, “So long as there is life there is hope.”

I hope that you will join me in grieving the too many lives that have been lost this week, and the too many lives that will almost certainly be lost in the days to come. And I hope you will join me in dedicating our divinely-formed, divine-reflecting selves to the well-being of all who call the land of Israelis and Palestinians home, and to the well-being of all who dwell on earth. 

Against all odds, may it be a better week.