Turn! Turn! Turn!
As the Ten Days of Teshuva come to a close, the Jewish people stand at a diplomatic crossroads. For two years, an open wound has bled daily. The hostages are not home. Too many IDF soldiers have come home in body bags. Homes in the Gaza Envelope and in the country’s north are still uninhabitable. The brokenness is overwhelming.
Pain, as Rabbi Alan Lew reminds us in This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, can be a catalyst for transformation. “The nature of our pain points us to the nature of the transformation we need to make.”
Our pain is twofold: we are hurt by and in a conflict with no seeming end in sight, and we are in denial of Israel’s imperfect response to the conflict.
We cover ourselves in the tallis of righteousness, doubling down on talking points that haven’t worked in decades because we believe in our hearts that our cause is just, that am Israel is merely responding to the rough environment, the proverbial villa in the jungle.
But long before the State of Israel was established, one of the moral backbones of the Zionist movement, Judah Magnes, challenged us to remember that for the Jewish people high ends will never justify low means.
Israel is not perfect, because Israel is a country filled with human beings, both ordinary and extraordinary, resilient and flawed.
It is perfectly apt, then, that our tradition recognizes humanity’s imperfections, our annual cycle returns us, year after year, to a time of reflection, to Ten Days of Teshuva, that we may try, again and again, to be better.
There is a common refrain that rises against returning to the negotiation table with the Palestinian Authority and its representatives: we have tried this before. Look at 1948. Hear the three “no’s” of Khartoum. See what happened after Oslo. We have tried everything.
And yet, the nature of our pain leads us to the nature of the transformation we need to make.
Have we tried everything? Have we recognized the nakba? Or have we merely decried the lack of recognition for the displacement of Mizrachi Jews from Arab countries? Have we acknowledged the suffering of the Palestinians? Or have we merely required they recognize ours?
We have tried everything. Except for what we know works. We know what works because less than a decade after the Holocaust, the State of Israel – the political embodiment of am Israel – began the process of mutual healing with West Germany.
The people responsible for the “crime of crimes” – the murder of 6 million of ours – began the long road to repentance and repair, helping funnel the funds necessary for the sustenance of the Jewish state, and becoming one of our most staunch allies on the world stage.
Their teshuva was anchored in acknowledgment of their wrongs, feasible reparations, and a commitment to a culture of commemoration. Ours can, too.
The Talmud tells us that “In the place where the penitents stand, even the righteous cannot.”
We are all created in the image of the divine. We are all flawed and we all make mistakes.
It is the penance, the acknowledgment that we caused harm, and the commitment to not repeat the harm, that defines our teshuva.
As we gather in synagogues around the world to chant the Viddui, our communal confession, let us look at the nature of our pain. We and our ancestors have sinned. We have transgressed.
We have tried everything, except acknowledgment, reparations, and commemoration.
We have tried everything, except coming to the negotiation table as two peoples, both created in the image of the divine, with an equal right to pursue the path of self-determination.
We have tried everything, except what we know works in conflict resolution, promoting a parity of esteem, a mutual respect built on acknowledgment and recognition.
Palestinians need to acknowledge the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, our displacement and our suffering as a wandering people, and hear about the antisemitism which drove the early Zionists to seek a state of our own – to join the family of nations, in charge of our own destiny.
And Israelis need to acknowledge Palestinian identity, the trauma of the nakba, the terror of military administration and occupation, and the aching desire to take their place on the world stage, to achieve liberation and with it the responsibilities of a nation like any other.
We have already achieved national mutual recognition. Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat exchanged letters of recognition more than 30 years ago. Because 40 years after Ben Gurion declared independence – without waiting for the world’s permission – the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization did the same.
Two states already exist, in name if not on the ground.
As we walk into synagogue on Yom Kippur 5786, let us remember: the nature of our pain leads us to the nature of the transformation we need to make.
The horrors of antisemitism inspired Theodor Herzl to reignite the dream of self-determination for am Israel.
It is time we recognized Zionism requires us to extend that dream to the Palestinians.
This conflict will not be solved through force. Enough blood has been spilled. It will not be solved by clinging to maximalist fantasies of uprooting the other. Israelis and Palestinians are not going anywhere.
We and our ancestors – and our neighbors – have sinned. We have transgressed.
And we can make teshuva. Now, before it is too late.
May we usher in a year of peace by recognizing Palestinian national aspirations, beginning the process of penance for the harm we caused their people in the pursuit of securing our own national aspirations, and may we work together to commemorate the tragic events which hurt both peoples between the river and the sea, allowing our pain to pave the way for the peace we all deserve.
