An American Jewish Leader’s Self-Serving Cowardice

In late July, Haaretz, a paper I read regularly, published an opinion piece by the senior rabbi of our former congregation (more on that later). Entitled This Is Not the Time for American Jews to Protest Netanyahu, it had me fairly jumping out of my skin with fury. The case made by this “prominent” rabbi was that now is not the time to protest Netanyahu’s visit to the US, his speech before Congress. He went on to describe how he had been outside the UN when Netanyahu spoke, “in proud solidarity” with Israel’s pro-democracy movement. I was there too.

I was also in Central Park, week after week, walking and shouting for the release of the hostages. I was outside the home of the UN Secretary General many Friday mornings, trying to get his attention for the hostages. I also joined a more politically focused group, started by a feisty and relentless Israeli woman I met along the way. Because I would knock on any and every door to support the Israel we need and deserve as Jews, as Zionists. I plastered and re-plastered the hostages faces all over my neighborhood and beyond. When I got tired of putting up new posters over those torn or defaced, I switched to writing You Are Loved on every poster or sliver of a poster I could find. I wound up going to the Israel march in June, but only so that I could stand in front of the barricades and show Omer Neutra’s father the hostage poster of his son taped to my shirt. My husband, who’s known Ronen for years, stood with me. We all saw each other and exchanged hands to heart. And then my husband and I left.

I’ve been to Israel twice since October 7th. We have donated significantly to provide relief to victims and survivors of Oct. 7th. And on and on. I am no hero. Just a mother and a wife.  But I know a few things the “prominent” rabbi either doesn’t know, or never knew.

I AM THE DESCENDANT OF RADICAL JEWS, OF A FAITH TRADITION THAT SHOOK THE WORLD. Judaism brought to the world a revolutionary vision of human dignity and agency. And the idea of perfecting and perfecting and perfecting an imperfect world. We are freed slaves, committed to pursuing dignity for all, to valuing all. We are commanded to prioritize the widow and the orphan. We are the people of the prophets, who spoke truth to power. WE ARE VEHICLES OF TRUTH-TELLING AND COURAGE.

And we in the Diaspora are told over and over and over that we are part of Klal Yisrael, that we are one family, one people, one heart. And yet this “prominent” rabbi insists that “In a time of war, American Jewry should think twice when weighing in on matters of Israel’s security and leadership.” Come again? American Jewry relentlessly weighs in on Israel’s security and leadership. AIPAC? American Jews take sides regarding Israel in good times and bad.

As for protesting Netanyahu’s presence in DC, this rabbi further notes that “the gains would be far outweighed by the harm inflicted on Israel’s standing in America and the world.” That line practically made me jump through the screen on which I was reading this nonsense.  Harm inflicted on Israel’s standing…in the world? Is this rabbi living in the same world I am living in? The world in which Bibi has been and always will be a self-serving megalomaniac who will make any deal that benefits him personally, no matter the harm to his nation? The Bibi who doles out hundreds of millions of shekels to the Haredim while tens of thousands of Israelis remain displaced from their homes in the north and the south?  The man who described the hostages as “suffering but not dead,” who called the pro-democracy protesters “traitors?” The man behind the appalling Nation State Law that made second class citizens of non-Jewish Israelis, including the Druze, one of whom he despicably used as a prop in his speech to Congress? The man who didn’t have the decency to thank my president for not only sending our naval assets to protect Israel, but pulling together a coalition including Jordan and Saudi Arabia to protect Israel from a terrifying barrage of missiles from Iran several months ago? That Bibi is the man we should hesitate to criticize during wartime?

I’m struggling to understand which version of Judaism this rabbi adheres to. But if I’m honest, it’s not much of a struggle. My version is messy and loud and wrestles with the internal contradictions of my tradition, but is clear on what my values and priorities are and must be. They are most pointedly not with the perfectly choreographed, polite, well-groomed version of Judaism that this rabbi preaches and embodies. We switched synagogues because as my father, z”l, would have said, that synagogue had no ta’am, no flavor. We moved to a synagogue in which the rabbi maybe doesn’t get asked to speak before a big crowd and TV cameras outside the UN, but a synagogue in which going to DC to stand with Israelis demanding better, calling out their appalling excuse of a leader, is not causing harm.  It is embodying the values our Torah demands of us.

I went to DC the day before the big protests, where our group provided the backdrop for a press conference of released hostages and hostage families, who shared their excruciating, heartbreaking stories with the assembled press. We held hostage posters high and proud behind them, channeling our own heartbreak into public advocacy. I saw and hugged Omer Neutra’s father, as well as Omer Shem Tov’s cousin, whom I met several times in New York.  The next day, the daughter of Hannah Katzir, an elderly hostage whose husband and son were murdered by Hamas, was arrested at Bibi’s speech, inside Congress.  Her crime: wearing the bright yellow t-shirt we all wore the day before, SEAL THE DEAL NOW, a message that fell on the deaf ears and blinded eyes of the worst leader in Jewish history.