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A Year of Jewish Ethics #8: War and Peace

The word Shalom is probably the most widely-known Hebrew word, among Jews and also people who aren’t Jewish. Shalom means peace, and because of that Shalom is also the word for greeting someone and saying goodbye. Shalom means not just peace but wellbeing and wholeness, so when we see someone we are expressing our hope that they are well and whole, and we leave we wish them a blessing of peace.

Shalom is even part of the name of our holiest city, Yerushalayim, Jerusalem, the City of Peace. Shalom is central to the Jewish view for humanity and for our holy land.

And at the same time, Judaism is not pacifist. War is sometimes unavoidable and sometimes necessary. One question we can ask is how Judaism views that necessity.

One response is in the midrash about the reunion between Yaakov and Esav. Yaakov returns toward home after 20 years of separation from his brother Esav, who at the time wanted to kill him. So Yaakov is afraid this is still the case, particularly after hearing that Esav has 400 men with him. The Torah says that "Yaakov was very afraid and he was troubled", vayira Yaakov m’od vayeitzer lo (Genesis 32:8).

The midrash picks up on the two descriptions for Yaakov’s fear, and explains it like this: Yaakov was afraid that Esav might kill him, and he was troubled that he might have to kill Esav.

Between this verse and the brothers’ actual reunion, there is the famous story of Yaakov wrestling at night with a being. This being is often called an angel, but in one midrash, the being is described as a representation of Esav and his might. In the course of the fight, Yaakov is given a new name, Yisrael, which has inside it the word sar which means "power" or "rule." And at the end of the fight, in the morning, Yaakov is limping.

These two midrashim suggest a view of war: that being powerful is necessary, and that even justified killing is wounding to one’s soul. War can be necessary for survival, and survival is important not just in itself but in order to continue the covenant the Jewish people are charged with following. Killing in war is never desired, whether the people who die are innocent or enemies. Going to war ought to be sobering, never triumphalist, even when it’s unavoidable or the cause is just. A people who fights will be defined by that fighting, as Yaakov was renamed Yisrael, and they will always have something to heal from, as Yaakov did.

And shalom must remain a goal and a hope, embraced even when shalom between particular nations isn’t likely in the short-term. That is one of the reasons why the essential part of every Jewish service, the Amidah, always concludes with prayers of shalom.

A Message for the Start of Chanukkah 5785 (2024)

This is the note I sent our synagogue community today, before the first candle of Chanukkah. Chag Urim Sameach!

Dear Friends:

Tonight begins Chanukkah, the festival of light and miracles and hope.

This year Chanukkah comes at a time of ongoing war in Israel, and at the end of a difficult year for Jews everywhere. Hostages are still captive in Gaza for 446 days. In America we are in an uncertain period of anticipation, between elections and inaugurations. Each of us has what is going on in our own lives. And to boot, Chanukkah is beginning at the end of Christmas Day.

So what can we make this year of our festival of light, miracles, and hope?

Chanukkah is easily the simplest of our holy days, and at the same time rewards a deeper dive. What could be simpler than one light sparking another, one light joining next to another, light that refuses to run out or to succumb to darkness? So simple -- yet so hopeful, even miraculous.

Dig a little deeper, and there is more. In the earliest telling of the Chanukkah story, in the book of First Maccabees, the rededication of the altar in Jerusalem took place on the exact anniversary of its defilement by the emperor Antiochus. The legend of the miracle of eight days of oil required someone to have enough hope to squirrel away a cruse of pure olive oil to begin with, to hide it close enough to be discovered yet out of sight of the oppressor. To me, hope is the capacity to know that something better is real as long as it ought to be, even when today it isn’t real and even when you don’t know when it might be.

And the whole story of Chanukkah is set in an era that is the first precursor of our own. The Hellenistic world revolutionized by Alexander the Great, by Greek-inspired culture and philosophy. Judaism was transformed in the centuries before and after the revolt of the Maccabees at time, even during the revolt itself. Judaism was translated into Greek language and in conversation with Greek philosophy; forced to grapple with questions of power, both ethical and strategic. Jews in Judea and Egypt and throughout the Middle East were often adapting and sometimes fighting to make our place as a unique nation in a world defined by a dominant empire and its culture.

Sometime during Chanukkah, give yourself the gift of a deeper dive, into the nature of hope and into the world of the Chanukkah story that is so relevant for us.

It is still a miracle to live as Jews in our age. To live in an era of freedom and strength like Jews have never known before. Which Jews have helped build in America and still do, for ourselves and everyone, and which Jews have created and still create in the Land of Israel.

It is still a miracle to be able to create and reenergize a modern Jewish culture and a modern Torah, to bring our rich legacy to bear on the most contemporary challenges from war and peace to majorities and minorities.

It is still a miracle that there are small cruses of oil everywhere. Sources of light and energy, hidden away to be rediscovered when we need them. Reserves of friendship and community, of wisdom and resilience.

Chanukkah is for the times when we wonder if there will be enough of these to last even through today. It is a reminder for each of us to be that cruse of oil for someone else close to you or simply in our community, when they are going through a tough time. Each of us is here to light the next candle -- to help one person not have to shine alone, to help a few people with commitment become a group or a movement.

This year Chanukkah begins as Christmas Day ends, and then the two seasons run alongside each other. That’s part of the origin story of Chanukkah too. It’s no accident that on the Jewish calendar the festival begins on the 25th of the month of Kislev, or that Christmas is the 25th, both originally in dialgoue with an existing holy day. Since the very first Chanukkah in 164 B.C.E., Chanukkah has been a time to reflect on our relationship to the larger world we’re in. For the members of our community who have both celebrations in your lives -- thank you for being part of Beth Abraham, and thank you for bringing something of Judaism to the people you’re connected to who might be less familiar with us.

This year we light our candles knowing that there are still hostages hidden in the dark tunnels under the Gaza Strip. Israeli, Jewish, American, and from other nations. May the merit of our deeds during Chanukkah hasten their freedom and restore them to light, to their lives, and to their loved ones. We pray that the night skies of the Holy Land be lit only by candles, and no longer with rockets.

The word Chanukkah means dedication. Each night as we light our candles, let us rededicate ourselves -- to someone, to some worthy action we can take individually or through our gifts of tzedakah. May all the lights in our windows and from our souls join together and radiate, showing and reflecting the light of the Divine One throughout the world.

Chag Urim Sameach – A Joyous Festival of Lights,
Rabbi Jon
Dear Friends:

Tonight begins Chanukkah, the festival of light and miracles and hope.

This year Chanukkah comes at a time of ongoing war in Israel, and at the end of a difficult year for Jews everywhere. Hostages are still captive in Gaza for 446 days. In America we are in an uncertain period of anticipation, between elections and inaugurations. Each of us has what is going on in our own lives. And to boot, Chanukkah is beginning at the end of Christmas Day.

So what can we make this year of our festival of light, miracles, and hope?

Chanukkah is easily the simplest of our holy days, and at the same time rewards a deeper dive. What could be simpler than one light sparking another, one light joining next to another, light that refuses to run out or to succumb to darkness? So simple -- yet so hopeful, even miraculous.

Dig a little deeper, and there is more. In the earliest telling of the Chanukkah story, in the book of First Maccabees, the rededication of the altar in Jerusalem took place on the exact anniversary of its defilement by the emperor Antiochus. The legend of the miracle of eight days of oil required someone to have enough hope to squirrel away a cruse of pure olive oil to begin with, to hide it close enough to be discovered yet out of sight of the oppressor. To me, hope is the capacity to know that something better is real as long as it ought to be, even when today it isn’t real and even when you don’t know when it might be.

And the whole story of Chanukkah is set in an era that is the first precursor of our own. The Hellenistic world revolutionized by Alexander the Great, by Greek-inspired culture and philosophy. Judaism was transformed in the centuries before and after the revolt of the Maccabees at time, even during the revolt itself. Judaism was translated into Greek language and in conversation with Greek philosophy; forced to grapple with questions of power, both ethical and strategic. Jews in Judea and Egypt and throughout the Middle East were often adapting and sometimes fighting to make our place as a unique nation in a world defined by a dominant empire and its culture.

Sometime during Chanukkah, give yourself the gift of a deeper dive, into the nature of hope and into the world of the Chanukkah story that is so relevant for us.

It is still a miracle to live as Jews in our age. To live in an era of freedom and strength like Jews have never known before. Which Jews have helped build in America and still do, for ourselves and everyone, and which Jews have created and still create in the Land of Israel.

It is still a miracle to be able to create and reenergize a modern Jewish culture and a modern Torah, to bring our rich legacy to bear on the most contemporary challenges from war and peace to majorities and minorities.

It is still a miracle that there are small cruses of oil everywhere. Sources of light and energy, hidden away to be rediscovered when we need them. Reserves of friendship and community, of wisdom and resilience.

Chanukkah is for the times when we wonder if there will be enough of these to last even through today. It is a reminder for each of us to be that cruse of oil for someone else close to you or simply in our community, when they are going through a tough time. Each of us is here to light the next candle -- to help one person not have to shine alone, to help a few people with commitment become a group or a movement.

This year Chanukkah begins as Christmas Day ends, and then the two seasons run alongside each other. That’s part of the origin story of Chanukkah too. It’s no accident that on the Jewish calendar the festival begins on the 25th of the month of Kislev, or that Christmas is the 25th, both originally in dialgoue with an existing holy day. Since the very first Chanukkah in 164 B.C.E., Chanukkah has been a time to reflect on our relationship to the larger world we’re in. For the members of our community who have both celebrations in your lives -- thank you for being part of Beth Abraham, and thank you for bringing something of Judaism to the people you’re connected to who might be less familiar with us.

This year we light our candles knowing that there are still hostages hidden in the dark tunnels under the Gaza Strip. Israeli, Jewish, American, and from other nations. May the merit of our deeds during Chanukkah hasten their freedom and restore them to light, to their lives, and to their loved ones. We pray that the night skies of the Holy Land be lit only by candles, and no longer with rockets.

The word Chanukkah means dedication. Each night as we light our candles, let us rededicate ourselves -- to someone, to some worthy action we can take individually or through our gifts of tzedakah. May all the lights in our windows and from our souls join together and radiate, showing and reflecting the light of the Divine One throughout the world.

Chag Urim Sameach – A Joyous Festival of Lights,
Rabbi Jon

A Prayer For All of Us Who Are Mourning A Year After October 7

A year of mourning has a rhythm, supposedly
A bass line laid down by Sages
To help the heart re-pace itself
So the heart can help the body
Metabolize absence
Let go the face, the name,
The vocal signature
Let them travel the neuron network pathways
For 7 days, for 30; 11 months, a year
Find their way to the assembly point
At the node of peaceful memory

That’s the rhythm, more or less
So the body can metabolize its absences
So the soul
Which loves to climb the Babel Tower every day
Stalking truth and peace to the heavens
Can crumple
Can fold up neatly like a fan
For a time
And still remain a soul

7 days and 30, 11 months, a year
From: There are no words, ein milim
To words that are approximate and fumbly, but mostly they will do
To when it’s finally fine to sort of say: How are you
To someone who could answer on some days
Or not yet quite.

That’s the rhythm we require.

So how do we uncrumple
When the soul so capacious is not so much folded
Crumpled
As: scrunched
Like the draft of a Shana Tova card, too sappy or superficial, tossed in the can

How when yahrzeit and shiva are scrambled
When after Shmay Rabbah, the critics overpower
The comforters’ Amen
When you’re mourning and still searching for survivors

When you can’t tell about the New Year challah if it’s raisins in there, or if it’s stones

The heart was not meant to beat this fast
To meet our distant cousins at all once
To learn the names of all those new places and all the new vocabulary, the nuance
   of ne’edarim shvuyim and chatufim
Or in the age of the first flowering of redemption, to repurpose a prayer
   for captives in the hands of medieval bandits

It is difficult for the heart, kasheh m’od la-lev
For the heart – for the body --
To mourn so many people and so many dreams
All at the same time

One heart can’t do this by itself
It takes our many hearts.

Our souls are rolled up like the priestly blessing
Inscribed 2500 years ago and hidden
In a crypt on the hill ignoring the Valley of Gehenna below
Staring rather toward Zion
Waiting for the bored youth who will discover it on a field trip
And bring it to the place where the delicate foil
Can be unfurled
Will be restored
Will call out once again:

And grant, you, peace.
V’yasem l’cha shalom.

*****

Some of the references:
yahrzeit -- Yiddish word for the anniversary of someone's death
shiva -- Hebrew for seven, the traditional mourning period after a funeral
shmay rabba -- "God's great name", a phrase in Kaddish, the prayer said by mourners
Shana Tova -- "A Good New Year", a greeting for Rosh Hashanah
The new vocabulary mentions words used for people who are captive or missing
The last part refers to the actual discovery of a scroll/amulet containing words similar to the Torah's priestly blessing of peace 

D'var Torah for Balak: Saying We Are Blessed

It's Friday and here is my current draft of a D'var Torah for Shabbat morning on Parashat Balak, Numbers 22:2-25:9:

In the parasha this week, an enemy of the Jews asks a man of powerful words to curse Israel. To say bad things about us in a way to bring us harm.

And it doesn’t work.

Balak, the king of Moav, fears that Yisrael is going to conquer his land, which is just across the Jordan River east of Eretz Yisrael -- but he has no actual justification for that fear. He doesn’t seem to know that the Divine regards his people as a kind of cousin-people to Yisrael, and even though they are presumably pagans and aren’t necessarily all that friendly, there is no reason why Yisrael and Moav can’t coexist. Which doesn’t prevent Balak from spreading this libel to others and from trying to enlist Bil’am, a sorcerer from the region who has the power of blessing and cursing, and in the Torah those are the kind of words that make things happen, sometime immediately.

It doesn’t work, and the Torah has a lot of fun with both Bil’am the sorcerer and Balak the king, making them look foolish and giving us some laughs at their expense. Bil’am has of course the talking donkey, who sees Divine messengers better than Bil’am does, and Balak looks ridiculous running Bil’am around to different places hoping if they find the right scenic overlook Bil’am will be motivated to issue the curse.

In the end not only does Bil’am not curse Yisrael, but in fact blesses us. I’m not sure we really needed Bil’am’s blessing, but Balak thinks it’s powerful and tells him basically to stop talking -- if you can’t say something bad about someone don’t say anything at all.

One of the remarkable things about this parasha is where it is in the Torah, in particular at this point in Sefer B’midbar (the book of Numbers). We have been reading about problem after problem. The past four weeks have been complaints about hunger, and thirst, and inadequate battle readiness, and unfair leadership, and plagues, and leaders at their wits’ end. A lot of people have died. This is the Torah speaking about us. This is Divine word and it’s not been terribly complimentary about us. Some years it’s fun to read those stories at arms’ length and really revel in how wise and the Torah is about group dynamics and political processes. This year not so much, it’s been very on the nose.

My point is that the Torah and Moshe himself say some pretty horrible things about our people, and they are frustrated words and include some pretty accurate criticisms, and in fact we are bogged down in the midbar (wilderness), not getting anywhere. And then the Torah switches it up. Just when you could think it would be the perfect time for outsiders to pile on and their curses would work at a time of our weakness and weariness -- the Torah says no: We are blessed. You can’t curse us. You can try. But no matter where you position yourself, you can’t curse us. You can want to, you can pay someone to, it just doesn’t work. This people is blessed.

And for a couple chapters it’s not even a struggle. Even a donkey can figure it out, can cut through the political dynamics and the money being spent and say -- don’t go that way. This people is blessed, and there is nothing you can do or say that will change that.

This year, people began trying to curse us since before the sun even set on October 7. I remember talking about this in the fall, it was Parashat Lech L’cha when the Torah first says to Avraham that he will be blessed and through his descendents all people will be blessed, and in my D’var Torah just three weeks after October 7 I was already talking about how we needed to hear those words, because so many people were saying the opposite, about Israelis and about Jews here. It felt so unrelenting already back then, and it has continued these past nine months.

So it’s important now to listen as the Torah says we are blessed, and this is not only the Divine point of view or our point of view but also an outside point of view -- if not an enemy leader, at least a powerful religious figure outside of our own.

It is Bil’am the foreign sorcerer who says: Mah tovu ohalecha Yaakov mikenotecha Yisrael. How good: all the places you live, Yisrael, and the places you gather to pray, all the places where you draw in the Shechinah and where you find shalom with yourself or with family, and where you connect among yourselves.

Every time we walk in here the first thing we do is to sing the words of an outsider who blessed us. Who affirmed for us our sense of being blessed or our dream of being blessed.

Now I have to say it is not enough to be blessed from the outside, to have some relief from those trying to curse us, and it’s not enough even to hear words of Divine blessing. We need to bless ourselves and each other.

We have spent these nine-plus months reacting to the curses of others --  pushing back on them; our mood and sense of wellbeing defined by them. When we have heard a blessing we have felt better -- whether from the president of the United States, or seeing our symbol projected in light in Berlin!

We have been in a pattern dictated in this country by the attempted curses of other people, and in Israel profoundly shaped by that dynamic as well.

But being Jewish today means being able to say our own blessings about ourselves in our own words, from our own observations and convictions.

On Monday I participated in a siyyum, a completion of a one-day worldwide reading of the Tanakh, the whole Bible, which was organized by the Goldberg-Polins, the family of Hersh who is a Yerushalmi still captive in Gaza. His parents, Rachel and Jon, said that while they and other hostage families have been tirelessly speaking to the outside world, and lobbying their own Israeli leaders and powerful people around the world for the hostages’ release, they also decided it was important to spend a week flooding the world with Torah u’mitzvot.

So they organized this Torah study. They dedicated a new Torah scroll. They had an evening of song and music at Tachana Rishona. They declared two days of service, invited people to make food packages with Leket Yisrael, and to post on one webpage acts of chesed people would be doing this week all over the world. There are at least 200 things pinned to that page, mitzvot of all kinds from taking the challah offering from bread to opening up one’s swimming pool to lots and lots of feeding to reaching out to call friends to cultivating patience to driving Palestinian children to and from medical appointments in Israel.

At the online siyyum, with about two hundred people, Jon and Rachel spoke about their faith, their conviction that Hersh and the others will come home and lead good lives, and they spoke those words toward him. They talked about how the Bible is showing them right now how to be resilient and hopeful. They talked about the importance of peace and safety for Jews and for all people.

This is how we are a blessing. It’s not a one-dimensional thing. It’s so much richer than the one word curses or the short phrase curses that the Balaks have been trying to get repeated over and over, from hill to mountain. And no one can say it quite like us. Bil’am says Ma tovu -- we say Hinei mah tov umah naim, shevet achim gam yachad: look how good and how more than just good, what we are all together.

And we don’t have to be perfect to bless ourselves nonetheless. The whole book of Numbers is still there, all the problems, and in fact immediately after the Bil’am-Balak story the Torah brings us back to ground level and more trouble with Israelite behavior. Rabbi David Kasher proposes that this was going on while Balak and Bil’am were watching from above. But still, says Rabbi Kasher, Bil’am proclaimed that we are blessed.

We are quite good at criticizing ourselves in real-time as Am Yisrael, and we don’t hide away the self-critical parts of the Torah either. But criticisms are not curses. As Rabbi Kasher says, they do not destroy our covenant or block Divine love for us, and they do not prevent Bil’am from noticing that we are blessed.

It would be great to have others stop trying to curse us. But mah tov, how good, if we would also bless ourselves and each other. Mah na’im, how delightful and how sweet we are, just here today on Shabbat. What are the good things you have to say about yourself as a Jew right now? What are the things you are proud of when you look out on your people, your community, your fellow Jews? Say it, and your heart becomes a mountain, and all of us will blessed.

Shabbat Shalom.

Serious Chanukkah: Cultural Integration, Freedom, War and Power Then and Now

You can read below or download this as a Word document here.

 

 

 

I love Purim and Chanukkah. It’s true that these are not the major Jewish chagim, and not in some sense as important as Passover/Pesach.

But I have come to love them more and more because they are set in worlds I recognize as more contemporary than the major festivals. Their stories have more texture than the descriptions of the Torah. While there are miracles associated with Purim and Chanukkah, these stories are not driven by Divine voices and direct Divine intervention. I love these festivals because they are about Jews very much like us, at least in the themes they faced in their lives as Jews. I am probably a Purim person most of all, because that story is set like my own life in the Jewish Diaspora, but right now it’s almost Chanukkah time, and I am thinking about Chanukkah in a particular way now in December 2023 because of the war between Israel and Hamas. Chanukkah is among other things about a war in the Land of Israel. So some of the things I’ll talk about today I have talked about year after year, and some things are coming to me just this year. We’ll see when anyone listens to this or reads this in the future how much of it still resonates.

So at the end of my talk, you might not think that Chanukkah is as important for Jews as Christmas seems to be in the Christian-majority part of the world of today. But I hope I’ll persuade you not to downplay Chanukkah as merely a minor festival, and that you’ll think of Chanukkah in fact as something very important to mark at this time of year.

This talk is almost everything I probably think about Chanukkah other than the purely individual spiritual dimension. That part is very important and powerful, and not minor in Judaism either – the subject of another and much shorter talk, which I know others could teach far better than I in any case.

What is the purpose of this talk? What do I hope you’ll learn?

On both Chanukkah and Purim we say a blessing that is only said on those festivals, giving thanks for miracles that happened to our ancestors, nissim l’avoteinu, bayamim ha-haym bazman hazeh. That last phrase translates as “in those days at this time.” Which can mean that the miracles happened to our ancestors back then at this time of year -- or it can mean that those same miracles or happening are timeless, they are of that time of the past and also of this time.

Our holy days have stories, and one of the things those stories do is to remind us that the history of the holy day isn’t locked in the past. The story reverberates today, it has echoes still today and actually can affect our today; it can pre-echo today. I mentioned war in Israel as one of those echoes but I’ll offer more. The ritual telling of stories help us see the present as another chance to get a good look at dilemmas that first presented themselves in the past. Not just dilemmas that recur, but hopes that recur, and challenges and triumphs. The stories point out themes of today and affirm: That’s really important, it’s always been important.

The stories can also pick out for us things in our current reality and say: Pay more attention to this. Look at what happened at the time of the original story, and also at the ways we’ve retold the story in other generations, and you can get clues that might help you today. Or at least you can hear more options. One of the themes of Chanukkah is how Jews live in a world with a majority culture, an imperial culture. There were options pursued by different groups back then, or evaluations made about different options back then, and maybe some of those options we aren’t considering enough today, or maybe we should think about what those options looked like to generations from then up through now.

Of course at the same time, a story from a different era can’t tell us in detail what to do, about war or integration for instance. And we shouldn’t be limited to what our tradition tells us; we have to look at these things along with our tradition and see if we have something new to add to the interpretation for own day and the future, as all our generations have added and passed down to us.

So our Chanukkah story, however we tell it, cannot give us specific guidance for our day, and you might therefore wonder as I have why bother to add historical detail when we could tell a simple story. Mostly, I want to tell the story of Chanukkah in a certain way in order to affirm the agenda that comes from the original story. If you’ve been thinking already this fall about war, Jewish power, wealth, freedom, anti-Semitism, Chanukkah can say: Yes, those are important; you’re right to be focused on them right now. And if you haven’t been thinking about all of those, Chanukkah is a reminder to take eight days and do so.

Different generations seem to get the Chanukkah they need, or to make Chanukkah a bit in our image. For Jews in America in the modern age, Chanukkah has been about religious freedom. For Jews of the past century, Chanukkah has been about military heroism, certainly in Israel but also here. There’s a spiritual Chanukkah, about finding more hope than you realized was possible, and such Chanukkah might have been invented or brought to the fore during the early centuries when Jews couldn’t think about either military action or religious equality, and it means something different in our modern spiritual age.

I think the Chanukkah we need in 2023, in 5784, is about freedom, power, corruption, integration or assimiliation, authenticity, wealth, hope – all of the above. It’s probably the Chanukkah we have needed for a long time and for the foreseeable future as well.

One caveat: I am going to tell more history than you’ve probably heard in connection with Chanukkah, but I am not a historian. Knowing a bunch of history isn’t the same as being a professional historian. Academic historians have responsibilities not to let biases or contemporary agendas drive their findings, and when they have a question they are supposed to find the answer whatever interest it might or might not have for today. I have agendas, which I’ve told you. I’m interested in the history of the period of Chanukkah because of the themes I am interested in and how we live them today. I’m sure I have gaps in my knowledge. I am intrigued most by interpretations by historians that speak to those agenda, and I have no way of my own to assess debates between scholars in scholarly terms, so I could be relying on interpretations that suit my story but aren’t considered the best in the field. So if you’re interested in this history as history, by all means read or look for more.

So, let’s get into the story of Chanukkah.

First is the historical context, which those of us who learned about Chanukkah originally as kids might not have learned or wouldn’t have understood. The events of the Chanukkah festival specifically took place in the first half of the second century B.C.E., in the 160s. This would be a bit more than a century and a half after Alexander the Great, who came to power in Macedonia and Greece and then conquered much of the Middle East. It’s also about two hundred years before the end of the life of Jesus. This is about four hundred years after Jerusalem was conquered and the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians.

The Chanukkah story occurred in the middle of a period that is described variously as the Hellenistic period, because of the empire and culture of the time; or the Second Temple period or the Intertestamental period. Both of these latter terms describe the centuries between the end of the history recorded in the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible, and the events of the New Testament or Christian Bible.

The geographical focus of the Chanukkah story is an area called Judea in Greek, which translates the Hebrew word Yehudah, or Judah as we say in English. This is a fairly small area of land including the city of Jerusalem and extending around it and toward the Mediterranean coast, a small part of what is today Israel and the West Bank.

The simplest version of what happened is this, and it is based on a contemporary source from the time that we have in Greek and came to be called the First Book of Macabees:

A new emperor, Antiochus IV, came to power, ruling the mostly Asian section of Alexander the Great’s original empire. We term that part the Seleucid Empire, and in some tellings you hear the rulers called the Syrian-Greeks. Antiochus took over the Temple in Jerusalem, plundering it and replacing the sacrifices there with sacrifices to Zeus or perhaps other pagan gods. He is said to have considered himself a god, and he was known as Antiochus Epiphanes, god-made-manifest. Antiochus issued decrees outlawing the practices of Judaism, including circumcision, and ordered the burning of copies of the Torah. His officials went around the territory of Judea and in public squares demanded that Jews come forward and make pagan sacrifices.

They came to the town of Modi’in, which is in the foothills of Judea, roughly halfway between today’s Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. One source says the date on the Jewish lunar calendar was the 25^th of Kislev. An elder of a priestly family named Matityahu (Mattathias) was asked to come and make this sacrifice but he refused. When another Jewish was brought up to make the sacrifice, Matityahu came up and killed him as well as the imperial official, and proclaimed that anyone who was ready to stand in rebellion against these decrees should come with their family, and they headed into the hills.

The family of priests was known as Chashmonai or Hasmoneans; they were a group of priests different from the Jerusalem priests about whom I’ll talk more in a while. Among Matityahu’s children was Yehudah or Judah, who was known as Maccabeus or Maccabee, apparently meaning “hammer.” He became the military leader. Nowadays Jews often refer to the whole group as the Maccabees, which is like naming your team after your captain.

Many people joined the rebels. For a few years the rebels fought a guerilla war, coming out of the hills to attack imperial forces. Eventually they gathered the numbers and strength to mount a campaign on Jerusalem and recapture the city and the Temple. They purified the Temple and rededicated the altar – Chanukkah is the Hebrew word for “dedication.” This was also the 25^th of Kislev, the anniversary of the start of the uprising in Modi’in. The Chashmonaim called an eight-day celebration, to make up for and imitate the fall pilgrimage of Sukkot, which could not have been celebrated at the Temple that year. Sukkot was also when King Solomon had dedicated the original Temple around 800 years before. The Hasmoneans established this as a festival for all generations.

The story of a cruse of oil for the Temple lamps with enough for one day, but which lasted eight days, didn’t come for a few hundred years and I’ll talk later about why.

The version of Chanukkah in First Maccabees is basically the traditional Jewish story. It is about religious freedom and national liberation from a tyrannical empire, and the idea that a small dedicated force with right on their side can defeat any empire. Which is a tremendously important message, for Jews in particular but for the ages, and this dimension of the story has been adopted beyond Jews as well. This is the part of Chanukkah we talk about all the time and I hardly need to expand on why at least for now.

The book of First Maccabees also widens the frame, and gives a window into a key division within the Jews of Judea in that time. Before Antiochus, there were Jews who advocated giving up the specific, unique Jewish ways of living and wanted Jews to adopt the Hellenistic culture entirely. First Maccabees certainly exaggerates this as a stark dichotomy between Hellenizers and faithful Jews. What the book says is that the Jews who supported Hellenization reached out to Antiochus, who responded or took advantage of the situation to take more direct control. Hellenizers among the Jews are in this version largely responsible for bringing on the persecutions.

To get into this part of the story, we have to back up from the revolt of the Maccabees, back to Alexander the Great and even before.

Before the Hellenistic period, Judea and the nearby areas were part of the Persian Empire. The Persians had generally let each nation within the empire live according to its own culture and govern itself, so long as they supported the empire. When Alexander the Great conquered Jerusalem, in the later 300s B.C.E., he continued that policy in Judea. Later Jewish legends say that Alexander came to Jerusalem and honored the High Priest at the time, and offered the Jews autonomy in return for fighting in his wars and paying taxes to the empire. Whether Alexander actually came to Jerusalem who knows, but that was the policy he followed.

When Alexander died, his generals divided up his empire, and Judea was on the border between two parts – the empire of Ptolemy, centered in Egypt, with a new capital in Alexandria; and the empire of Seleucus, centered in Syria, with its new capital of Antioch. Judea was for about a century and a half part of the Ptolemaic empire, but really both empires continued the policy of cultural autonomy in return for taxes.

Sometime during the following century, so now we’re talking about the 3^rd century B.C.E., the Torah was translated into Greek, a translation known as the Septuagint. The Greek-speaking Jews particularly in Egypt needed a version of the Torah for themselves that they could understand. What is at least as remarkable as a Greek-language Torah is what is revealed in a fictional story that was written about the creation of the Septuagint, a story written sometime in the aftermath of the Hasmonean revolt.

The story is known as the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates. It is part of a set of writings that came to be called pseudepigrapha. It was probably written sometime within a few decades after the revolt of the Maccabees, as strife between the Jewish kings of Judea and the Hellenistic emperors after Antiochus was still ongoing. Which is why it is such a remarkable book, because it’s about how Torah and Hellenistic culture flowed together.

In this fictional book, Aristeas the narrator presents himself as a pagan emissary of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the emperor who was at the time finishing the project of the great library in Alexandria. The king had a librarian named Demetrius, and gave him a budget for buying books encompassing the wisdom of the entire world. Aristeas is in the room when Demetrius was giving the king a report – that he had collected 200,000 books of the 500,000 he intended to procure in total. But there was one book that he couldn’t get, the Torah of the Jews, because it was in a different language and used a different script. The king drafts a letter to the high priest in Jerusalem about creating a translation of the Torah into Greek.

Aristeas tells King Ptolemy that it is hyprocritical to make this request while holding tens of thousands of Jews as captives in war, and he advocates for their emancipation. One of Aristeas’ arguments to the king is that the Jews are governed by the same God as the king; that YHWH is just another name for Zeus, who upholds your kingdom. The king agrees, and he drafts a communication to the high priest Elazar, explaining the emancipation order and asking for a team of six scholars from each tribe to come down to Egypt to translate the Torah. He sends Aristeas and one other aide to Jerusalem with gifts and a payment; the gifts include a solid gold table that the king hopes will be useful to the priests in the Temple.

Aristeas describes the scholars who were sent back from Jerusalem as steeped in both the Torah and Greek learning, men of virtue and noble parentage who spoke without pride and listened well and answered any question thoughtfully and carefully. They were basically the ideal student of Plato, and Aristeas says that the high priest Elazar was afraid that they would be so impressive that the king would insist on keeping them in Alexandria, because it was his reputation that if he met a man of excellence, prudence, and wisdom he would consider him indispensable as an advisor to the kingdom.

One of the most remarkable parts of the Letter of Aristeas is the banquet that the king prepared to welcome the seventy-two guests. First, the hosts were interested to know the special rules of eating that the Jews would require. Aristeas explains what he learned from the Jews about the details of kashurt: for instance that the split hoof and chewing the cud represent memory and thoughtful reflection; that wild animals are forbidden to eat in order to teach Jews how not to be vicious and destructive.

This way of interpreting kashrut, as a symbolic way of cultivating our minds, is a hallmark of the integration of Judaism and Greek thought. Aristeas presents a defense of kashrut that is contemporary for his time. In the Torah, kashrut is at least partly about obedience to the Divine for its own sake and the separation of Jews from others. In the Letter of Aristeas, the author has a pagan narrator Aristeas give an unabashed, positive presentation of kashrut as a perfect philosophical way of eating which the Jews can teach others.  And kashrut will actually help the pagans and Jews eat together; the king’s stewards study the laws of kashrut and prepare a kosher banquet that lasts for seven days.

Each day the king asks ten of the scholars from Jerusalem a question about how to rule wisely. For instance, the king asks: “What is the essence of kingship?” And the scholar replied, “To rule oneself well and not to be led astray by wealth or fame to immoderate or unseemly desires, this is the true way of ruling if you reason the matter well out. For all that you really need is yours, and God is free from need and utterly benign. Let your thoughts be such as become a man, and desire not many things but only such as are necessary for ruling.” The king asks similarly about truth, beauty, honor, preserving power, friendship, kinship.

The king turns to his own philosophers and says that these Jewish scholars are superior, because they gave spontaneously all their wise answers, on all kinds of questions of philosophy and politics.

After the week-long banquet, the scholars are brought to a special house on a nearby island, and treated to the same food and comforts as the king. Each morning they would come to the court and then go back to the island to write. At the end of seventy-two days they produce their translation. It is read before the king, who states how impressed he is and expresses his astonishment that no historian he knew had ever mentioned anything about what was in the Torah. He presents each of the scholars with lavish gifts and sends them home along with an open invitation to return to him again anytime they wish.

The Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates purports to tell about things that happened about a century before the Hasmoneans not in Judea but in nearby Egypt nearby, and if that were the case it might be only partly relevant to the world of the Chanukkah story. Again, the Septuagint was not commissioned by the emperor but created within the Jewish community. But it’s quite likely that this story was written down after the Maccabean revolt, in the same general time period as the books of Maccabees. All these books were created for both a Jewish audience and an audience of educated, Hellenistic gentiles, and they present different pictures of the relationship of Judaism and Hellenism.

To Jews living in the aftermath of Antiochus, the Letter of Aristeas says: Even with the political persecutions we have experienced, and the ongoing conflict, we have a place among the high cultures of the world, and we should regard our own Jewish culture as impressive and a guide to modern living. And there are men of culture and power who will respect and admire us if we are willing to present our Torah in their language.

To gentiles, the books says:  The laws of the Torah can be understood as a very concrete and practical path to the same learning that you value and to the virtues in life that you hold as the highest. We are not divided from you by our unique customs, or by the traditions we have which come from a long ago past. In fact we can even sit and eat together, and our customs could unite us if you actually study them with us.

And we know that at times in the 250 years between the persecutions of Antiochus and the destruction of the Temple, there were Jews and Hellenists and later on Romans who came together in this way. Who were fascinated the conversation between Judaism, Jewish practice, and philosophy. Josephus, the great Jewish intellectual of the first century C.E., was one of those people, and when he wrote his history of the Jews, he went straight from Alexander the Great to the story of Aristeas to the Maccabees. It was all part of the same picture for him. He didn’t want to give Antiochus the only word, nor the Jews who wanted to give up everything Jewish, nor the Jews who wanted nothing to do with anything Greek.

The First Book of Maccabees does not go into any of this, and conveys in its opening a suspicion of Jews who wanted to Hellenize. In the polemic there, these Jews were ready to give it all up and appealed to Antiochus as an ally. Not far from the Temple, these Jews helped get a gymnasium built, and this not only represented Greek values of physical excellence, and the beauty and perfection of the human body, but also forced the conflict between traditional Jews and Hellenists out in the open. A nude Jewish man would be seen to be circumcised, which to a Hellenistic mindset would be not just different but a desecration of the human body as a perfection. In that time period a procedure was developed for young Jewish men to have the visible evidence of circumcision altered, an incredibly painful procedure. Brit milah, circumcision, would be one very major dividing line between Jews keeping and rejecting tradition in their contemporary world.

The Hasmoneans present themselves in First Maccabees as devoted to God and the covenant, and continuing a long line of faithful Jews in the face of both foreign danger and local idolatry.

But even the Hasmoneans at the time of the revolt were not pure traditionalists, and they did not entirely reject Hellenism. We know this at least from the fact that many of them had Greek names or nicknames along with their Hebrew names, including of course Judah Maccabeus himself, and many of the descendants of Judah and his brothers came to be known by their Greek names primarily.

And while we don’t know for sure, some form of Jewish rationalism beyond the Letter of Aristeas seems to come from this general time period. Some scholars, admittedly a minority, suggest that even biblical books like Jonah and Job were finished during this period – books that are philosophical and have a universalist outlook about the Torah and the Divine. Certainly we know that a kind of Judaism based on interpretation and debate about texts eventually became the major form of Judaism, and to some degree the prototyping of this kind of Judaism was occurring in small groups during this period of time. Josephus says that a group with this philosophy called the Pharisees began in the decades following the Chanukkah story; they believed in broad interpretation of the Torah and norms beyond the literal words of the Torah.

In the debate between the authors of First Maccabees and the Letter of Aristeas, I’m obviously putting my finger on the scale. But more important is to show you that even very soon after the events of Chanukkah itself, Jews were actively debating how the ideas of Torah and Hellenism could be synthesized, or whether that synthesis could work at all. And it clearly was not a yes or no question, as it is not today.

The other theme I want to talk about is power. Chanukkah is obviously a story about a revolution through war, even in the version we tell kids. But there is much more about power than just the uprising against an unjust authority, and for that we begin with another source from the era, which is known to us as the Second Book of Maccabees.

Second Maccabees has a more elaborate preface to the persecutions of Antiochus. It begins a bit earlier during the high priesthood of Onias, which is a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Choniyo or Choniyahu or possibly Yohanan, which is the origin of the name John. A lower official named Simon, which is the Greek for Shimon, had a conflict with Onias, and when Simon did not prevail he sent word to an imperial official that the Temple in Jerusalem had a great treasury stored up. So the imperial government sent someone to confiscate the money, but Onias refused and according to Second Maccabees this imperial official was stricken with a plague. Onias prayed for his healing and all was well, for a time.

But Simon, again this is a Jew within the Temple administration, continued to conspire against Onias, and when the new king Antiochus IV took over, he replaced Onias as high priest with his brother Jason. Jason was known primarily by his Greek name, at least in the text, which also identifies him as the builder of the gymnasium in Jerusalem. Second Maccabees says that at this time the priests were not even offering their sacrifices, preferring instead to go and wrestle at the gymnasium.

Jason was in turn betrayed by Menelaus, brother of Simon if you can keep track, whom Jason had sent as an emissary to the king. Again, he was a Jewish priest known by his Greek name. Menelaus bribed the king and procured the high priesthood for himself. He had Onias killed, and Jason launched his own bloody rebellion within the Jews of Judea. Eventually Antiochus himself came to the Temple and the takeover began as well as the other decrees about which I have spoken. According to Second Maccabees, Judah Maccabee was in Jerusalem at this time, and escaped the bloody power struggle to get to the outlying areas and organize the revolt.

This is a sordid tale of wealth and political power. In Second Maccabees the catastrophes of Antiochus did not original in a cultural conflict within the Jews so much as a power struggle within the nation, which fed on and fed into the cultural conflict.

Judah Maccabee’s war led to one particular new insight about Torah and fighting. Initially, Antiochus’ forces knew to attack on Shabbat, because of laws that would prevent the Jews from taking up arms. But soon the Hasmoneans and their comrades decided that the Torah could be set aside when life was at stake, and they introduced into Jewish law what we now call the principle of pikkuach nefesh docheh et HaShabbat: preserving life sets aside Shabbat and Shabbat laws. Antiochus was initially surprised by the Jews’ willingness to fight on Shabbat, so this made a difference in battle. For the long term, this change in the law came to represent the ability of Jews to reason with Torah more generally, to interpret and to assert ourselves as the ones who give life to the Torah beyond just the literal text.

After the story of Chanukkah itself and the rededication of the Temple, the war with the forces of Antiochus did not end. The Seleucid forces were not driven out of Judea, and in fact returned in the immediate aftermath to Jerusalem. But within five or ten years, the Hasmoneans were high priests and kings of Judea, and their dynasty lasted almost a century. A good of that century was continued war, and sad to say there was a good deal of infighting within the Hasmonean dynasty at many points. Much of what we might know about the Hasmonean dynasty comes from the writings in the first century C.E. of Josephus, so more than a century after the dynasty’s end. Josephus was a Jewish rebel leader who defected to the Romans, so he is not a detached source or always trustworthy. But at least in his telling, the kingdom of the Hasmoneans is not a model of self-rule or of wise rule, and some of the particular flaws of their kingship are worth noting today.

As priests, kohanim, the Hasmoneans maybe could have been expected to be the opposite of the corrupt priests such as Jason and Menelaus. On the whole, they did avoid the kind of blatant financial corruption of the earlier period. However, the fact that they became kings at all represents a problem within Judaism. It’s not the modern problem of church and state, so to speak, which wouldn’t have been a concept at that time. Though in a way it is actually that problem. The biblical and later Talmudic traditions are very cautious about the limits of priests’ authority beyond ritual, teaching, and stepping in at times to bridge gaps in public administration. In the Bible the key example of priest as public official is Ezra, who when the Jews returned from Babylonian exile was a priest and a scribe and a national leader for a time. According to the Bible, the only true Jewish kings must descend from David. So the choice of the Hasmoneans to call themselves kings at times is somewhat suspect. It’s not clear what being a provincial king meant at that time and not clear that all the Hasmonean rulers called themselves kings. But some of them certainly did.

There is archaeological evidence that at times the Hasmonean leaders strengthened Jerusalem’s defenses and advanced the economic development of Judea and the area. Josephus’ history suggests that the kings did not spend all their time in Jerusalem, as many of them engaged in military campaigns all over what we would today call Israel and even into Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Some of that was defense – the Seleucid empire did not stop its military operations in any of those areas, including Judea. Some of the Hasmonean’s military activity was expansionist. While there was Jewish history already by then in all the areas that had been part of biblical Israel, much of the population outside of Judea at the time was non-Jewish. In particular, a few decades after Judah Maccabee, King John Hyrcanus conquered Idumea, Greek for Edom, the land of Esau, and he forced the people there to convert to Judaism. He also destroyed in Samaria the longtime sanctuary of the Samaritans, a non-Jewish people north of Judea with a complicated relationship to Judeans and Judaism. These conquests and conversions did not lead to peaceful relationships, and in the next century it was an Idumean named Herod who would be installed by the Romans as the king over Judea.

Josephus says that the Hasmoneans allied themselves at different times with a mostly priestly group called the Saducees, who were associated with the operation of the Temple and a narrow, literal reading of the Torah, and sometimes with the Pharisees with their more interpretive and adaptive approach. It’s really not possible to know whether this is what happened, since we have few other sources from the Hasmonean era about Pharisees and Saducees. According to both Josephus and the much later Talmud, the conflict between king and Torah came to a head during the reign of Alexander Yannai. Josephus says he turned on the Pharisees because they refused to stand up for him sufficiently against a citizen who had slandered him and called on him publicly to king only and not high priest. The Talmud says quite the contrary, it was because the Pharisees were too afraid to hold Yannai accountable to the law that they lost their influence. Both of these are secondary sources from later, but they both suggest that the rule of at least one Hasmonean ruler was hardly one of principle guided by Torah. They didn’t plunder the Temple treasury, but they used the other religious leaders of the time for their own benefit and their own interests.

The Hasmonean rulers were always entangled with foreign powers and often dependent on them, even though their rule was based on a rebellion against imperial authoirty. The initial establishment of their kingdom depended on an alliance with the Roman republic, which was in the process of rising in the 2^nd century B.C.E. At different times Hasmonean rulers made other alliances and often needed to pay tributes or taxes -- even allying sometimes with the Seleucids, whose rulers after Antiochus Epiphanes were not as crazy or evil as he had been. Finally, the end of Hasmonean self-rule came in 63 B.C.E. About one hundred years after Yehuda Hamacabi had led the Jews back to reclaim Jerusalem, the Roman general Pompey came to the Temple Mount. He had been enlisted to help settle a war between two Hasmonean brothers fighting each other for the throne, Hyrcanus and Aristobulos, but instead Pompey seized an opportunity for himself. The Hasmoneans continued as Roman puppets governing locally under them for a time. But the Romans were happy to pit Jewish and Idumean notables against each other, which led soon to Herod and eventually to the revolts and destruction of the next century and the end of the Second Temple.

It's fairly easy to point out the failures and flaws of the Hasmoneans as rulers, and no one could point to them or their century of Judean independence or partial independence as a model for today. They were not regarded as heroes after they were gone; at least we have no evidence that they were. From Josephus and from the New Testament we know that Chanukkah was celebrated, so their history was not not forgotten.

We do know that sometime after the Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E., the new Jewish leaders, the Rabbis, downplayed Chanukkah and the story of the Hasmoneans as much as they could. While Purim has a small tractate in the Mishnah and the Talmud, Chanukkah has no book in the Mishnah and basically one page in the vast Talmud. The rabbis living under Roman and Byzantine rule did not want to encourage anyone to rebel as the Hasmoneans did, even though the Temple Mount had been turned into a pagan shrine once again. Military power was not something they wanted to promote. The rabbis may have viewed the Hasmoneans as catastrophic leaders, and certainly portrayed them as anti-Torah. It was in the Talmud, hundreds of years after the events of Chanukkah, that the rabbis first tell the story of the miracle of the oil that was only supposed to last one day but lasted for eight. They substituted spiritual for military power – in the words of the biblical prophet Zechariah, “Not by might and not by power, but only by My spirit, said the Lord of Hosts.”

That view of Hasmoneans power, as fundamentally a disaster for the Jews in real-world terms and as spiritually corrupt, made sense for the many centuries before the modern era. For us, we have to find a different way to understand how self-determination, war, international relations and alliances, relations with the other peoples of the land, and power and wealth more generally affect Jewish freedom, wellbeing and Torah. The Hasmonean century doesn’t teach us how to; more how not to. That century does remind us very powerfully that there is no talking about Jewish freedom, safety, and Torah without taking into account all of those same things – self-determination, war, international relations and alliances, relations with the other peoples of the land, power and wealth. All of which affect each other in ways that are hard to predict and are intertwined, as hard to see clearly and sort out and solve as a Rubik’s cube. In that we are every bit the heirs of the Hasmoneans, the heirs of their dilemmas, and we pray we will learn from their failures and deal with the complexities with more wisdom in our own time. We know how many lives are riding on this, right this month of Chanukkah 5784 and in the years and decades to come, in Israel, Palestine, the United States and every place where Jews live.

And that is what I have to say this year about Chanukkah in a serious vein. I haven’t said anything much about the story of the miracle of the oil, beyond how late that part came into the tradition of Chanukkah. I have arrived at a view that I think our Talmudic rabbis had, which is that the storing and finding of the oil to begin with is as significant as the eight nights of light. Someone in the time of Antiochus had to imagine that within a few years, or decades, someone else would know to look and dig up this precious resource near the Temple, more valuable than any of the money that so many had fought over inside. Someone had to hope we would continue to dig up the many-layered story around Chanukkah and find an energy in it.

No historical analogy is perfect. Even if it were, the past is not doomed to repeat, nor are the good things from the past guaranteed to repeat. So we need to find an energy from digging up these stories. From the fact that our ancestors also faced similar dilemmas of freedom, power, adaptation and integration as we do, and that they did it with their backs to the wall far more than ours, and that they bothered to write a lot of it down for us. Then we need to find energy from the hints and resonances in the stories of the past that might fire our own insight, or our own commitment to expand the circle of those who are thinking about these themes, who are working on them, from one to two people, to seven to eight, and beyond. On Pesach we tell of liberation and redemption past, and then we ask what now. The values and dilemmas are framed for us, and then it’s in our hands to turn that into a charge and ask what’s next to do.

So too that’s my hope ultimately in conveying a longer, grown-ups’ story of Chanukkah. That is can be a gift of energy from our past that powers us through the Antiochus part, through the corruption of the early priests, past them toward the courage and rededication of the Maccabees, and finally toward each other -- confident that we can find a bit of insight and then more, hopeful that more of us and then even more of us will shine light toward a better ending to all the layers of the story that was begun long ago and continues now, in those days at this time, bayamim ha-hayim bazman hazeh.

Partition Day: November 29, 1947

On this day in 1947, November 29, the United Nations approved a plan for the partition of British-governed Palestine into three areas: an Arab state, a Jewish state, and a UN-governed enclave encompassing Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The entire area would be joined in an economic union.

The Jewish Agency, which was the official Jewish leadership of the territory, immediately accepted the proposal. The Arab Higher Committee in Palestine as well as the Arab League of other nations all rejected the proposal, because of the Jewish state.

The Arab State of Palestine would have come into existence in 1948, had the Arabs decided to accept the UN plan and proclaimed the state.

Partition was no one’s ideal – not the Jews, not the Arabs within Palestine, not the surrounding Arab countries, not the British. It was the least bad solution the UN could come up with.

No Jew or Muslim believed they should give up Jerusalem, as all would have been required to do. No one by 1947 was interested in a completely joint, binational governing mechanism, which had been discussed at various times within the British administration but not implemented, and among Jewish-Arab groups like Brit Shalom that had dissipated years earlier. The Arab leaderships in and around Palestine rejected the Jewish return to the land entirely. The Jews did not love the partition in principle. They were concerned about whether the small amount of land dedicated to the Jewish state would be defensible and could sustain the population. There were Jewish groups opposed to partition who had militias. The main difference the Jewish Agency Executive fought back against those militias for the most part in their attempts to sabotage the UN plan.

So partition was the UN’s proposal. The Jews’ representatives accepted the UN partition plan, and the Arabs rejected it. The Jews would have abided by the terms and map of the plan and were prepared to up until the moment of the British withdrawal, even after months of fighting, had the Arab armies not invaded.

When the new phase of fighting broke out beginning November 30, 1947, while the British were still present and then beginning their withdrawal, the Jews’ objective was to secure the areas assigned to the Jewish state, plus an open road linking Jewish areas assigned to the prospective state with Jewish areas in Jerusalem. Jewish Jerusalem was very quickly under a complete siege, with little food and water as well as bombardment and terror attacks. The road from Jewish areas on the coast went through a narrow pass in the hills that was controlled by the Arabs and frequently blocked.

The Arabs’ objective was to take over all of the territory, including that assigned by the UN to the Jewish state.

Today could have been a national celebration for Israelis and Palestinians, the 76^th anniversary of a world-changing event. So many lives and communities could have been saved. If only. Instead there was a war, and the map changed because of who won or lost which battles in which areas.

There is much more to say also about what drove the parties’ considerations in 1947-1948, who prevented a Palestinian-governed state even in 1948, and the displacement of both Palestinians and Jews in the territory and throughout the Middle East in the immediate aftermath. But today 76 years ago, it all could have been prevented.

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A few connected and somewhat-connected links:

Here’s a glance at partition proposals from 1937 to 2008. The video is from 2019, so the “proposal” at the end is not something I’m endorsing here; it seems like a very bare minimum. I really recommend the Unpacked series of educational videos and podcasts. They are from a Jewish-Israeli point of view, self-critical about and within that point of view, embrace complexity and value coexistence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kYWII25cxM

This is an account of the Abbas-Olmert negotiations of 2008, and an indication of how serious and close to agreement they were and where the major problems ended up remaining: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/magazine/13Israel-t.html

Here is the very long August 1947 report of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). It’s illuminating for its detail about the nature of the land and the conflict to that date:
https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/NL3/729/28/PDF/NL372928.pdf?OpenElement

O Jerusalem! is a classic book about 1947-1948, from the partition vote through the war. The focus is on Jerusalem and the voices are local Jewish and Arab, with also some detours to the "halls of power". I imagine there is better history and historiography since its publishing, but it's solid and fair and descriptive. https://bookshop.org/p/books/o-jerusalem-larry-collins/7488416?ean=9780671662417

You Are Not Alone, You Are a Blessing

This is the D'var Torah I plan to give tomorrow in services, October 28, 2023 for Parashat Lech L'cha, the opening of the saga of Sarah and Avraham, three weeks after the Hamas attacks of October 7 and as the war continues in Gaza.

Who said the Torah had to be divided into 54 roughly equal sections? Why aren’t we able to stay with Bereshit and Noach for longer -- to talk not just about the Creation, the Garden of Eden and the Flood, but Cain and Abel, the giants, the rainbow, the Tower of Babel and subsequent spreading out over the globe. If it were up to me I would stretch those out for a few weeks. We could easily catch up later and read all of Leviticus in just three weeks.

This is what I think every year. But if you’ve been tracking my Divrei Torah since we started the Torah again, a week after October 7, you’ll know how much I haven’t wanted to have Avraham and Sarah in my face, just yet. Dreading them, really. Sarah and Avraham are about a burst of spiritual excellence into the world, they are a vanguard of new consciousness and beginning to build a community around that.

I have not this week wanted to be told to look hard for those things, or to tell you to. I don’t feel ready for excellence. And so I have said two weeks ago and last week. 

And most of all, I just want in my words and my actions to help take care of us who are here -- here dealing with everything, in Israel and our own lives; here displaced from homes in Israel, here connected to what’s happening in any way.

But Torah is wise, and so too the rabbis who made this schedule and did not base it on any week’s events, so here we are. 

Our Torah reading starts (Genesis 13:1) with a call to Avram, Lech L’cha, and an implicit call to Sarai, Lechi Lach. Go, you -- go as you, from where you are to a new place I will one day show you. You will be a great nation, blessed, a blessing for all the families of the earth. And those who bless you will be blessed. Now be a blessing.

It is good to hear that again right now. I think left to ourselves we might not be saying this, that we are a blessing, and so many people are hollering the opposite at us. But the Torah says -- You will be a great nation, a blessing, and those who bless you will be blessed.

Well this whole Torah reading, it could be ripped from the headlines. Avram and Sarai are called and arrive in the Land of Israel. But soon there’s a famine, and immediate exile. Sarai is taken into captivity in Egypt, and then she is rescued. 

Avram and his nephew Lot, their shepherds quarrel, and they end up partitioning the land they have just come back to. Lot goes to live in the area of S'dom, and Avram stays in the central mountains.

There is a regional war, and Lot is taken captive, along with others and their property, and Avram launches a military operation to get them back. 

One of the kings, the King of Shalem which may be Jerusalem, offers to reward Avram with riches in appreciation of liberating his captives, but Avram refuses to take any more than what he needs to pay his men and their expenses.

When God appears to Avram one night, God says: Don’t be afraid. I am protecting you. But Avram says: I am walking alone. Ani holech ariri. How do I know this future will actually happen. (Genesis 15:2)

And God shows him the stars of the sky and repeats the promise, and God asks Avram to arrange a sacrifice, and puts Avram into a deep sleep, and tells him that his people will endure a long difficult oppression, 400 years, and then the promises will be fulfilled.

Sarai tries to speed up the process, by offering Hagar, her servant, to have a child for them. But the two women quarrel, and Hagar is banished, until an angel comes to her and tells her that her son will be great, though she Hagar will have to return to the home and suffer in the meantime. 

God appears again to Avram and repeats the promises, about the land and their future people, gives him the covenant of circumcision, brit milah, announces the birth of child to Sarai, and changes their names, to Avraham and Sarah, bringing the soft sound of God’s own name into theirs.

Lech l’cha. Lechi lach. Go, you. Be blessed, others will be blessed by you. Those who bless you will be blessed. Now be a blessing.

Ani holech ariri. But I am walking alone. So says Avram to God; so many of us feel this week.

Lechi lach. Lech l’cha. Go, you; you are a blessing.

There are types of interpretations of the words Lech l’cha in our commentaries, and they are based on the ambiguity of a prefix, of the lamed in l’cha. One interpretation says: Go for you, and the other says: Go to you. 

Rashi says go for yourself -- go because it’s good for you, and it will bring you benefit. A lot of the chasidic writers jump off and say further -- go toward what’s good for you. Go there because there is good for you. Go and become a blessing.

This is a hard one right now. Go toward this land of Israel which is good for you? it is, fundamentally, but so much is not good in living there just right now. It’s dangerous.

And go, us, and become more of a blessing? That is so hard right now, there and here.

And yet many people are doing it. In small acts of chesed, in remaking old connections, so people will not have to say ani holech ariri, I am walking alone. By picking up something to read or a podcast to listen to, to be better grounded. I am tremendously impressed with the response of Jewish leaders and alumni around some universities, where we are replying and standing up with strong and thoughtful statements and actions, not sinking to the level of the intimidations our students feel or the extreme and sloppy statements of opposing groups. Students feeling very alone are feeling a bit less ani holech ariri.

The second interpretation is that Lech l’cha means go to yourself. Right now one of the most important things we can realize is that a lot of the things we need are in us already. It’s not that we know everything, that we’re all political scientists, and it’s not that any of us know the future and what the fighting will mean for Israel or for Jews.

But each of us knows something enough to say a comforting word to someone. Each of us can find a feeling that is authentic, a truth that is true in our core and generous to a person who needs us. Each of us knows something about we feel blessed to be Jewish at this time in our lives and our history. It doesn’t have to be the same for all of us; far from it. And from those things you know, none of us have to say ani holech ariri, I am walking alone.

Lechi lach, lech l’cha, go to yourself because that’s what you have. Sarai and Avram, when they first got the lech l’cha call they were already on the way, they knew something about why they were going even though they didn’t know the whole thing and God wasn’t telling it all to them.

And some of what it means collectively to go to ourselves is to go to our Torah, which is the repository of all our souls and all our stories. I read out to you what’s in the whole week’s parasha because we already have been in some of these places already. We walk with our generations. We have their experiences, their wisdom about the things recorded in the parasha. We are blessed through them -- we are not alone.

I still hope to meet Sarah and Avraham as our avatars of spiritual excellence, maybe this week while their story is still before us in the weekly parasha and for sure sometime soon, as long as we meet in this House of Sarah and Avraham, this Beit Avraham v’Sarah. 

But even this week, the call of L’chi lach, lech l’cha is emphatically for us. When we might say ani holech ariri, I am walking alone -- we are not. Go as you are now, from where you are to a new place I will one day show you. You will be a great nation, blessed, a blessing for all the families of the earth. You are a blessing. you are a blessing. And those who bless you will be blessed. It's good to hear those words again. Now be a blessing.

Shabbat Shalom.

My American Tale -- What's Yours? (Or, Why Is Yaz on Masada?)

This is the D'var Torah I gave for Parshiyyot Chukkat-Balak 5783, July 1, 2023.

This is a picture of me at the age of 17 on top of Masada in Israel, wearing a baseball cap that says “YAZ”. I remember asking someone to take this picture, and to get me and the Yaz cap and as much of Masada behind me in the phot as possible – hence the odd composition. I was on my end-of-11th-grade trip with the Alexander Muss High School in Israel program, and getting this picture was significant to me at the time for reasons I cannot remember.

But now, this photo stands for a whole story of who I am, which I focus on especially on the Shabbat leading into Independence Day and the first Shabbat that my daughter is in Israel for her very first time.

The Yaz hat I had for about nine months, and I wore it a lot even before Israel. I got the cap I think on the bridge between Kenmore Square and Fenway Park in probably August of 1983, when our family went to a Red Sox game during Carl Yastrzemski’s final season.  Yaz merch was everywhere. It’s a white kind-of-painter’s cap and by the first couple weeks of Israel it had become a bit discolored under the rim with sweat from our hikes. The cap came to an untimely end a week or two after Masada when our group was on a long bus ride and I was in front telling jokes on the microphone (we used to trade that off during our tiyyulum, our excursions from our base) and my friend Judy became carsick and needed to stop the bus and run off. I got out of her way, but didn’t get the last bit of the very top of my head out of the way quite in time. End of Yaz cap!

Masada is half of what’s important about the Yaz cap. Being at Fenway during Yaz’s last season is the other important part. When I was 1 to 3 years old, before I can even remember, my family lived in Rockport, Massachusetts. My father had recently completed his medical training and wanted to practice in a small town, and my mother did not want to live in a small town -- so they made a deal that they would try it for two years. Dad found a practice looking to add two young doctors in Gloucester. We lived there, but after the two years, Mom called it off.

What I do remember, for as long as I can remember anything, is that every year after the experiment ended we would make a summer trip out East -- a week in Utica, New York, with Dad’s family (Utica, a/k/a the Garden of Eden and the founding spot of all civilization, in Savett family lore), and a week on Cape Ann on the ocean down the street from where we had lived. And one of those days was always spent in Boston, often split between visiting our cousins and doing something in the city. Over the years growing up, we went to the Bunker Hill monument, the Freedom Trail, Lexington and Concord, the USS Constitution, Faneuil Hall, the North End. I grew up when Schoolhouse Rock was new on Saturday morning TV, so none of this Hamilton-The-Revolution’s-Happening-In-New-York garbage -- it was the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock and the Boston Tea Party.  I was fascinated for a time with how it wasn’t Paul Revere or William Dawes but Col. Prescott who actually rode out to announce the “British are coming!” I did not like reading Thoreau and Emerson in high school – but I did love that I had actually been to Walden Pond. The Boston history and landscape seeped into me, along with the ocean in Rockport, as a second home and as a central part of my own story and history.

So I wore the Yaz hat to connect me to my Boston, American-history roots, and I wore it on Masada as we sat as a group and debated as though we were the Zealots making our last stand against the Romans -- should we resist or flee or take our own lives. I wore it as we hollered into the canyon as Israeli soldiers do, shenit m’tzadah lo tipol, Masada will never fall again. I added a few weeks onto my HSI trip to stay in Israel longer, and the moment I landed back in the U.S. I started to plan for getting back to Israel in college.

I wrote about that day on Masada for my college essays-- it was in a way both Yaz and Masada who got me back to Boston, to Harvard. I loved living there, walking the streets of our colonial founders each day with the signs of how many hundreds of years ago a particular path or road was first laid down. In the middle of that time I did fulfill my intention of going back to Israel (without the Yaz cap). Yet on the heels of a year when I was convinced I would make aliyah, I returned to Boston and found myself surprised to discover that I was deep down an American and I couldn’t give that up, and I didn’t want to.

And so, about a century after my great-grandparents came to the U.S. and Canada in flight from the czar, and had become Americans as my family had become Russian or Lithuanian or Ukrainian or Latvian some generations earlier for the very same kind of reason after living somewhere else -- I made a choice to be American.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. The Declaration begins in this passage, and in the famous passage that follows, by announcing the choice of the people of this country to become Americans and not British. And at the same time words like necessary and impel and duty suffuse the opening lines as if to say -- we choose to become who we had no choice to become. That is how it felt to me and how it feels to me, as I think about choosing to be American and feeling compelled to make that choice.

And it’s important to declare the causes of that publicly, for me and for others of us who are American Jews. And I find myself this time of year when I have a kid in Israel and so many people I know are spending time there -- I find myself feeling like a “decent respect to the opinions of Jews and Zionists” requires me to declare why here and not there. Respect to Jews and Zionists here, in this room and this community as well as in Israel. For me, living in the land of Yaz is something I can’t separate from the part of me tied to the land of Masada, and my American-ness and my Zionism are so tightly connected.

Last fall when I was in Jerusalem, I brought with me the journal I kept from my year in college there. I read to myself the statements of the me who was declaring why he couldn’t live here and had to live there, and the values I thought were at stake in becoming an Israeli Conservative Jew in the religious peace movement. I took a walk with myself and talked to myself in Hebrew about whether I could have become anything like this version of me, with whatever strength of moral character and whatever leadership it has taken decades to develop, if I had made aliyah. Who can know.

But I think not. I have spoken to you on many Shabbatot before Independence Day about this and written about it -- you can check out the USA page on rabbijon.net so I’ll just summarize it here. I discovered, back in the fall of 1988, that I was American to the core, that American ideas and the paradigm questions and American politics were all I wanted to think about and talk about and study. And it was not only my Boston marination, but my Judaism and my Torah that were making me American.

To quote and paraphrase myself from last year and a few years before:

Jewish experience and Torah were my path to America. In my mind, this is how I think about freedom and individuality: Thomas Jefferson with his self-evident truths speaks to Moshe demanding that Pharaoh let our people go. Henry David Thoreau, who would not compromise one bit with conventional society and went off to live in the woods all on his own, who went to jail rather than pay taxes that would help fund what he thought was an unjust war – Thoreau is talking to Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, who in the Talmud is banished by his colleagues after he couldn’t persuade the rest of the rabbis to set the law his way, even when God sent miracles and a voice down from Heaven to back him up.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote the classic essay on individualism, speaks with Rav Yosef Soloveitchik, who wrote about sh’lichut, one’s unique individual mission in the world.

I think about how freedom is the basic, precious truth we learn from the Exodus, and how much more precious that freedom is than what John Locke or Thomas Jefferson ever wrote about. How Torah freedom compels us to stop at Mt. Sinai and enter into covenant, and what that required stop teaches about the kinds of covenants free people in America are able to make or ought to make.

I think about how freedom is also the fundamental challenge to our humanity, even the most basic idol. It was free people after all who chose the make a golden calf and worship a thing made of gold. It was free people who imagined themselves trading the challenge of rising spiritually for the fleshpots back in Egypt and the thought of a life free of difficult decisions and moral agency. The Torah of freedom talks to the challenges today, of freedom that opens up to mere materialism, to unrestrained competition in the economy and social competitiveness. A freedom that can make everything a commodity, including ourselves — allowing our interests, our time, even our unique talents to be valued in our own eyes by what they are worth in the short term to others. All of which can disconnect us from the larger and longer stories we are part of, which we author and co-author.

I think about how the long Jewish practice of tzedakah as more like taxation than charity wants us to understand the blessing we say first thing in the morning, praising the Divine she’asanu b’nai chorin, who has made us free people. I think about how Jews have been stewards of both freedom and self-government for more than three thousand years, carrying the Exodus story and wearing it around our bodies in tallit and tefillin, running even our medieval communities in a principled self-government. How does the person who wakes up into freedom also wake up into responsibility? I want to know how freedom and responsibility are linked — in talmudic detail and American detail, in philosophical detail and political detail.

It’s because of America that Torah has had to speak to issues beyond our group and its wellbeing, and become a wisdom for this nation and the world. American has brought Torah to answer questions about totalitarianism, the nuclear age, technology, racism, human rights, compelling Jewish thinkers to explore the ethics of power and the limits of human potential. And because of America, Jews export that wisdom back to Israel, whether it’s to the Conservative and Reform communities, the religious Zionist movement, or many creative secular and non-governmental initiatives and communities and think tanks. There could be no democratic, modern Israel without the Jews and Judaisms of America.

Some look at the phrase “Jewish American,” or “American Jew,” and see a space between the words, a yawning gap between two aspects of consciousness. Or they see a dash like a minus sign, where one word or maybe both take something away from the other. I see rather a chemical bond. Not ionic – charged, each trying to take something from the other. But covalent. A sign of the energy that flows uniquely when two entities are bound together, and something new emerges that is different from either atom on its own.

The hyphen in “Jewish-American” is one of the most exciting things I know. The identity, and the specific moral dilemmas that come with the hyphen -- I wouldn’t trade that hyphen for anything.

That’s why I chose to be American, and why I had to make that choice, once thirty-five years ago and over and over again since.

So that’s my story, my journal of ideas and my photo albums. The picture I showed you might not look like it has anything to do with this American tale. But the photo on top of Masada of me wearing a cap of the great Carl Yastrzemski is one photo of an overall equilibrium of how Jewish history and American history flow toward me and within. We don’t share these stories and declarations enough of why we are here and why we are us, the way we share stories of Zionism and persecution. Last Rosh Hashanah I charged us to look ahead to this year and the coming two years after, and to make a Jewish leap of faith in American democracy. Whether right now the America you experience is more like the crises of leadership and national direction in our first parasha today, Chukkat. Or whether like in the second, Balak, you’re reassuring yourself that from ten thousand feet and from the outside, we are a beacon still or at least okay.

So on this July 4th, tell your story, at least to yourself. If you have chosen to be here, be proud you made that choice -- that you have chosen this place with the moral questions that come with this place and time. Baruch she-asanu b’nai chorin -- thank you, to the One who has made us all free in this place and this time.

This Chanukkah -- Many Ideas

I am still trying to keep on top of my many channels, between this blog and the Tov! podcast and Temple Beth Abraham's site and blog, not to mention social media. (Not complaining!) I haven't put a link here yet to the many thematic Chanukkah-related writings I've got, some of them reposts from prior years and some of them new, whether it's my own thoughts about courage or links to others. You can scroll through all of that here, for now just on Beth Abraham's site and I'll get them up here eventually too. Also related is my reflection on science and religion through the lens/light of Chanukkah via Sinai and Synapses.

Being an American Zionist

This is the text of a column i wrote in the New Hampshire Jewish Reporter for December 2021. I am posting this today on Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day.

I have been a Zionist since I was a kid. I didn’t become an American Zionist, though, until I was 22. That was when I decided not to make aliyah and make my life in the State of Israel.

I was just back from a year in Israel as a college student. In Jerusalem, I was seeing myself a few years in the future as a Hebrew speaker, a soldier, a Masorti (Conservative) rabbi, a member of Oz V’shalom, the religious peace movement. I came home and couldn’t wait to go back.

Within a few weeks back on campus, immersed more than ever in my Hillel community, I realized how American I was feeling. I had the sudden realization that the only way I would fulfill my life was an American – an American Jew and probably an American rabbi. My great-grandparents came to America as a choice, and in flight from the czar’s tyranny. I was born American – but at the age of 22 I made my choice to be an American.

And my Zionism changed, from future Israeli to American Zionist.

I want to argue that an American Jewish Zionist is a Jew rooted in America. A first-class Zionist; not a consolation prize for not having the courage to make aliyah. A full partner in the project of Zionism. A partner with a specific and essential role that is obviously different from the role of Israelis.

My American Jewish Zionism is also a religious Jewish Zionism, and I realize that’s not the case for everyone reading. But I hope my concepts are useful regardless of whether that specific profile fits.

These are some of my fundamental tenets as an American Jewish Zionist. This thinking is hardly my own, and I owe more than anyone Rabbi Donniel Hartman, leader of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

Israel is the original and ongoing land of the Jewish people. The claim is religious and historical. It may be complicated in terms of Palestinians and their claim, but the claim still stands without compromise.

It’s a fascinating dimension of Jewish life for the past 2500 years that even during the times of a center in Eretz Yisrael, or a longing for it, there have been strong centers of Judaism outside the land. The fact that Jews like me affirmatively choose to live in America as members of Am Yisrael does not undermine Israel at all. One of our roles as American Zionists is to explain this to people around us – the uniqueness of Jewish peoplehood in Israel and America.

Zionism is a movement of moral and spiritual excellence. Rabbi Hartman put it this way in an address to the 2007 Reform movement biennial: “The birth of the State of Israel provided Judaism with an unprecedented opportunity of permeating and actively shaping all aspects of society. Whether in areas of political theory or economic policy, religious practice or ethical conduct, human rights or environmental care, hospitals or army bases, classrooms or courthouses - Israel is where Jewish values meet the road.”

American Jewish Zionists should see ourselves as partners in Zionist excellence. Rabbi Hartman made two points about this in his 2007 talk. First, American Jews have unique intellectual and cultural contributions to make to Israel. If Israel is a unique lab for Jewish values, the American Jewish experience has been a longer and better-established lab around issues of religious freedom, minority-majority relationships, and ideological pluralism.

It is because we are in America that Jewish thinkers and leaders have had to formulate a Torah of concern for human beings and not just for Jews. A Torah of responsibility for the whole earth and not just the Jewish community. It is because of America that totalitarianism and technology forced Jewish thinking to ask questions about the ethics of power and the limits on human innovation. In the past few decades, Israeli and American Jewish thinkers have indeed become thought partners and innovators around all of these issues.

Hence Rabbi Hartman’s second point about the role of American Jewish Zionists as partners. He charged each of us to find that aspect of Israel and the Israeli striving for moral excellence that inspires us. It could be climate, or bioethics, or human rights, or aging… chances are the answer is a moral passion you already have here. Learn about its unique Israeli shape. Connect to the people who drive it and work on it there. Join those projects and institutions in any way that’s available – by taking a role, by contributing or investing money, by advocacy.

It is as partners that we move from vicarious spectators, and from our own inferiority complex about not being Israeli, to an affirmative Jewish identity as American Zionists. Israel needs this kind of American Zionists. It’s a responsibility, and it’s work.

The responsibility and the work do not come without trouble. Indeed, Rabbi Hartman says what Israel and the Jewish people need from American Zionists often is for us to be “the troubled committed.” We need to feel issues that trouble Israelis as our own issues. Sometimes we need to be more troubled than many Israelis are, and bring that to them.

But commitment first, as American Zionists. The troubled-ness of the noncommitted, the non-Zionist, is not likely to make a difference on any contentious issue. Not in Israel and not here among the many people around us who purport to care about what happens in Israel but have no commitment to it.

Every year especially around Chanukkah and around the Fourth of July, I reflect on my decision to embrace America and American Zionism. And I resolve to do both of those better, with more follow-through and more clarity to myself and as a teacher. For those of us in New Hampshire who will always be American, consider becoming a truly American Zionist.