Muscular Judaism and the Right to Sing Hebrew Songs

This week, we read the final chapters of Bamidbar, the double Torah portion Mattot-Masei. It’s the end of a book that has held our wandering, our rebellion, our fears, our growth. But it doesn’t end sweetly. It ends with war. With revenge. With land division. With last words. With death. And somehow—also—with a trembling readiness for what comes next.

I’ll admit: I often look for the light in our sacred texts. I search for the ideas that might build a better world. That instinct has only intensified over the past 657 days, when every corner of the world feels like it’s on fire and the world’s gaze toward Jews has become colder, harsher, and more suspect. But this week’s Torah portion resists comfort. The words burn too hot.

God says to Moshe, “Take vengeance—nekamah—on the Midianites for the children of Israel. Then you will be gathered to your people” (Num. 31:2). Not tzedek. Not justice. Nekamah. Vengeance.

And it breaks my heart.

It breaks my heart that this was among God’s final instructions to Moshe. That before Moshe could die in peace, he had to prepare his people for war. Ir breaks my heart that this violence wasn’t framed as righteousness—but as revenge. It breaks my heart because I recognize that terrible, reactive feeling.

There is something unbearably human in the Torah’s choice of nekamah—a raw, reactive hurt that demands an answer. We see it in Torah. We see it in ourselves. And I see it in me.

Eleven years ago today, I was sitting in a radio station green room, trembling. I had just returned from leading a rabbinic mission to Israel, a trip that began in peace and turned overnight into fear. The moment we landed, missiles began to fall from Gaza. The Summer of 2014. I’ll never forget standing outside the Knesset the day after we landed, looking up at a puff of smoke in the sky. The Iron Dome had just intercepted a rocket above our heads. I felt small. I felt breakable. I still do.

That experience shaped me deeply—but the real shattering happened the day after I returned.

I was scheduled to appear on NPR’s Forum with host Michael Krasny. The plan was to speak after a Palestinian-American professor from UC Berkeley named Dr. Hatem Bazian. I wrote him the night before: I wished we could sit together, not back-to-back. I hoped we could share coffee after Ramadan. I wrote:

“I pray we have the opportunity to reject the worldview that says we can’t see the Divine in each other’s eyes.”

I meant it. I still do.

But then I listened to his interview as I awaited my turn on air. Krasny asked him, “When will the rockets stop?” And his answer wasn’t, “When we negotiate a peace.” It wasn’t, “When we reach a two-state solution.” He said: “When the occupation ends.” Krasny, knowing his history, countered, “But Israel withdrew from Gaza unilaterally in 2005. There is no occupation of Gaza.” Bazian responded, “When the occupation of 1948 ends, the tunnels and rockets will end.”

And my heart broke again. Because 1948 is not an occupation. It was the return of my exiled ancestors to our homeland. It was rebirth.

It’s my birthright. My people’s safety. My children’s dignity.

In that moment, something inside me changed. I still believed in dialogue. But my faith in the simplicity of peace—in the naïve hope that “if only we talked enough, peace would come”—died.

That’s what makes this week’s Torah portions so hard. Because I now read God’s command to Moshe not as an aberration—but as an honest window into what it means to be a Jew in a dangerous world. Vengeance isn’t the goal of Judaism. But neither is denial.

And so, when I read “Nekamah/Revenge”, I feel a deep empathy for the biblical soul. For Moshe. For the people. For their pain. Their grief. Their exhaustion. I feel it in my own bones.

Let’s be clear: I don’t want vengeance. Not then. Not now. But I understand it.

And the Torah understands it too. It is a word-choice based in the heat of earned fear and experienced trauma. But the reality is responding to is not in the distant past, to our great distress.

The world too often demands we choose between idealism and realism. But Torah insists we carry both. That we yearn for peace and prepare for war. That we teach our children to emulate the model of Aaron the High Priest, who was “Ohev Shalom v’Rodef Shalom—a lover and pursuer of peace” — and also prepare them to fight for their survival (a less discussed additional function of the ancient priests). That is the Torah’s truth. That is our people’s story. That is the soul of Muscular Judaism.

Max Nordau, one of the early Zionist thinkers, coined the term “Muskeljudentum”—Muscular Judaism. He wasn’t just talking about physical strength. He meant a Judaism that is unapologetically alive. A Jewish people that no longer cowers. A Jew who sings and protests and builds and defends. A people that feels its trembling and its resolve.

We need that today more than ever.

Because just yesterday, fifty young Jewish campers from France were kicked off a plane. Their director was beaten and handcuffed. Their crime? Singing Hebrew songs. Loving Israel out loud. Even if they were being disruptive, as campers can sometimes be, nothing justifies the airline staff responding to their behavior with the words, “Israel is a terrorist state.”

(I recall a Shabbat walk home from shul in Berkeley with my daughter, many years ago, being accosted by a neighbor with the same acontextual accusation. It must have been my kipah that “triggered” the abuse. I, just as viscerally, remember my daughter asking if we should run away.)

And here we are, thousands of miles away, watching it happen again and again. On campuses. On airplanes. In rallies. In social media campaigns that cloak anti-Zionism in the language of justice while erasing Jewish lives.

Yes, we still reach for peace. We still open our hands. We still build interfaith missions. We still drink coffee and break bread with clergy from every tradition. We are still who we are. But we are also the children of survivors. Again. We are the bearers of history. Again. We are the living proof that Jewish self-defense is not a sin. It is a sacred obligation.

And so, when I look back at the poem I wrote 11 years ago—sitting with a trembling cup of coffee just before that pivotal radio interview—I feel something new. I wrote then:

“…Why do I tremble?
I’m not under threat, am I?
An interview doesn’t save anyone… does it?
We’ll be fine, won’t we?…”

No, we won’t always be fine. And no, the words we speak are not enough. Not when hatred is armed and we are questioned for protecting ourselves.

Friends, we must teach the truth: that Zionism is not supremacy. Zionism is Jewish dignity. Jewish safety.

Anyone who denies that is not a critic. They are an antisemite.

The Torah portion this week is not a call to cruelty. It’s a recognition of pain. And it’s a warning: Peace cannot be built on Jewish silence or erasure.

We must be strong. Strong enough to protect. Strong enough to hope. Strong enough to cry. Strong enough to sing.

Even when our voices shake.

So yes, Mattot-Masei is hard to read. But we must read it. And feel it. And grow stronger from it. Not with hatred in our hearts, but with clarity in our souls.

Let us remind ourselves and our children: Od lo avdah tikvateinu—We have not lost our hope.

Not even now.
Especially not now.

And if they try to stop us from singing Hebrew songs— then let us sing them louder.