Future-Proof Your Soul

I have been trying to figure out if there is anything I can say or do that might move the American rabbis I know toward openly and forcefully condemning Benjamin Netanyahu’s relentless assault on the Israeli people, on Israel’s democracy, and on Zionism itself.  Thus far, I have failed spectacularly.

Now granted, I am not an important person, and by “important person” in the American Jewish synagogue world, I mean big fat donor.  I am just an ordinary person, fired up about the horrific abuses to which Bibi continues to subject the Israeli people.  Whether it is his calling Israeli patriots who took to the streets pre-October 7th to protest his assaults on democracy, “traitors” or his horrific use of two murdered Israeli children–the Bibas brothers–as political props (against the expressed wishes of their sole surviving parent, their father), Bibi has engaged in one offensive, outrageous, cruel act after another.  All in service of keeping himself in power.  Full stop.

And yet, the American rabbis I have reached out to have offered not a word of public criticism of Bibi. My own rabbi–who at least met with me in person–fell back on the tired response of the complex obligations of being a synagogue rabbi. On the bright side, I suppose, he appreciated my acknowledging that I have the luxury of being full-throated critical of Bibi and his government because I don’t have those obligations.  The flip side, of course, is that I don’t fancy myself a leader–and a moral one, at that.

I cannot help but recall my father, z”l, offering his simple but ultimately true critique, “Ach, American rabbis aren’t rabbis. They’re fundraisers.”  He forgot, “and cowards, hiding behind convenient excuses to avoid speaking truth to power.”  In my last email to a group of rabbis, I  asked them to look to their future selves and ask if those selves would be proud of  how their current selves have acquitted themselves in this moment.  I know that my outreach fell on deaf ears and blind eyes, but I’m the idiot who keeps trying.  I’m desperate for someone in the rabbinic community I have some acquaintance with to step forward and be a person I can respect in this moment, someone who represents me, my people, and Jewish values in ways I can embrace and admire, and for which I can be grateful.

It seems instead that these rabbis are all choosing to fall back on cheap excuses that absolve them of the obligation, IMHO, to put something at risk on behalf of the Jewish people, on behalf of Israel, to show those of us watching that they aren’t just performance artists, polishing their weekly sermons while the world and the people they claim to treasure and love are abused, abandoned and mocked by their own leaders, in the cruelest twist on the Zionist dream that even the giddiest Jew-haters could never have envisioned.

While 70% of Israelis want Bibi to resign, 0% of the American rabbis I’ve reached out to seem at all inclined to echo what Israelis themselves say they want.  And what they so rightly deserve.  There is an appalling dissonance between rabbinic rhetoric about love for Israel and for the Jewish people, and actually loving Israel and the Jewish people. Demonstrating that love would require voicing fierce opposition to the forces within Israel–its own leaders–who are seeking to undermine and destroy everything that is good–even noble–about the nation and the people only some of us seem actually to love.

I am failing miserably in my version of advocacy, but I’m ok with that.  Not because failure is ok.  It’s not.  It’s awful.  But because I have spoken truth time and time again–in word and in deed–to the people within my own community who claim the mantle of some kind of power.  I have not moved them even an inch toward where I stand, but I know in my bones that I stand on the right side of Jewish history, of true love for Israel, and of what Zionism was meant to be.  And if another sea ever parts for us, I know that I will be standing on the far shore, distant from our Pharaoh. I will be standing with those who didn’t forget who we are, who we were, and who we were meant to be.