March 15, 2024 / 5 Adar II 5784
Words of Torah from Israel – First, excertps of a letter entitled ‘Living’ written by my friend Rabbi Chaya Rowen Baker (find the full piece here), followed by this week’s ‘Torah for this Hour’ shared by Rabbi Nava B. Meiersdorf. Chaya is a friend of longstanding, a Ramah Poconos alumna, and the new dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem. Nava is a new friend – we met this past December and shared dinner and conversation – and is the campus rabbi at Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center. I find their words to be beautiful and moving. I hope you will as well.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David
The sense of profound sadness and intense dread in which we are all wallowing has yielded a change in how we speak to one another. It has become pretty much taboo to greet one another with any phrase using the word “good”: morning, evening, afternoon, week, month. The greeting Shabbat Shalom is widely used and said intentionally, and the common greeting for ending a conversation has become besorot tovot (we should hear good news). If you make the mistake of asking someone any version of mah shlomkha (“How are you?”) the answer will seldom be the standard “fine” or “great” or even “OK.” Even though normally both the question and the answer are mere pleasantries, at this point in Israel if you ask Mah nishma? (“How’s it going?”) you will likely receive the person’s explanation of how they came to develop the answer they give.
Because we are most definitely not OK.
How are we? …
A refreshing agility of thought is surfacing in Israel. We have lost faith in constants; while terrible and disconcerting, this is also humbling. We all know in theory that reality can change in a moment, but for us in Israel radical and instantaneous change has become part of our daily routine. As a result, many of us are reconsidering truths and cultural norms, rearranging priorities, as our values take on new proportions and perspectives. Israelis are finding renewed appreciation of one another, bringing to the fore values of devotion, dedication, selflessness, and mutual support. Classical political “Right” and “Left” are wavering. While obviously not all change is desirable, I find this reexamination of paradigms to be inspiring and liberating.
The biblical verb for changing one’s mind stems from the same root as the word nehama (“comfort, consolation”), as in Genesis 6:7: ki nihamti ki asitim (“for I regret that I made them”). The rabbinic verb for reconsidering is nimlakh, from the same root as melekh (“king”). Our heritage conveys the important message that flexibility of thought and ability to change paradigms are divine traits, charged with connotations of leadership and consolation…
We are still in the thick of a difficult war. At this moment 136 abductees are still being kept hostage in Gaza. Even now, four months into the war, Hamas continues to fire missiles at civilian populations in Israel. Its military power has been diminished but not annihilated. Israeli evacuees still cannot return safely to their homes. Our soldiers are fighting a battle unprecedented in its complexity, because the enemy does not distinguish between civilians and soldiers—neither among us (every male over eighteen is a potential soldier, and all civilians are a fair target) nor among their own people. They disguise themselves as, are embedded in, and hide behind civilian populations. The IDF aims to fight only against military combatants, not civilians, but sometimes it is hard to tell the difference, especially when our soldiers find a weapon stash under a baby’s crib, or when missiles are launched from within a school or a hospital.
The IDF strives to hold itself to a high moral standard and to condemn any wanton malice—a difficult task when faced with such criminal warfare. I have heard firsthand from soldiers who wrote letters of apology on the walls of ruined Gazan homes, although unfortunately there are those who fall short of that standard. In what seems to be a redefining moment in the IDF ethos, its challenging mission is to save Israeli lives while upholding its commitment to morality of the highest standard, inspired by the sanctity of life.
Sanctifying life means recognizing the value of Palestinian lives, too; acknowledging them as parents, as siblings and spouses, as home owners, as people who need stability, security, and faith in the good, just like anyone else. Gazan families are suffering terribly, too, many of them also displaced from their homes, in mourning, and afraid. It is hard for some of us—even for peace activists—to summon such compassion at this point in the war. It is also hard for us, knowing that the lives of our relatives serving in the war are put at greater risk for the sake of protecting Hamas’s human shield. That, too, is a part of how we are. Some Israelis are capable of such magnanimity. Others are still very much inside their shells, too fraught with pain to think about others’ well-being right now…
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Rabbi Chaya Rowen Baker is Dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary (SRS) in Jerusalem. Ordained by SRS in 2007, Rabbi Rowen Baker served as the rabbi of Kehillat Ramot Zion in French Hill, Jerusalem, for sixteen years and headed practical rabbinics training at SRS for seven years. Rabbi Rowen Baker was the first Masorti rabbi—and the first female rabbi—ever to be invited to teach Torah at Beit Hanasi, the Israeli President’s residence.
