Congregation Emanu-El of Westchester: Sermon Archives

KOL NIDRE
October 1, 2006

These are the lyrics of a song sung at the Israeli front in the days of the Yom Kippur War: 1973. Sung by a father to his daughter : "I promise you my little girl that this was the last war. I promise you my little girl that this was the last war."

July 11, 2006 was a quiet day in Kiryat Shmoneh, an Israeli immigrant town on the Lebanese border. July 11 was a quiet day. Together with congregants on a tour of Israel I had found pot sherds at the archeological site of Biblical Tel Dan, rafted down a tributary of the Jordan River and enjoyed Israel's national food, hummus and pita.

Now our bus navigated the sun drenched streets of Kiryat Shmoneh. Was it a premonition that prompted me to unfold a letter, the vellum faded with time, and to read aloud.

Dear Folks,
I can imagine what a letter means to you, in case you have been reading the papers concerning Palestine. It is true that there has been and is trouble in Palestine. It is likely to continue for a long time. The Arabs are now more aroused than ever. And any peace I believe, will be only temporary. We heard plenty of shooting while we were in Jerusalem, and sometimes were quite close to it, but at no time were we in actual danger. It is not very easy to travel around to all parts of the country, the Arabs making it a policy to shoot from the hills and caves and mountain-sides, which Palestine provides in plentiful number.

The letter was signed, "Fondly, Sam" and written July 20, 1936 aboard the ocean liner Lloyd Triestino. It was written by my father on his first trip to the Holy Land. Trouble in Palestine. But that was 70 years ago. Not today. Not on July 11, 2006 in peaceful Kiryat Shmoneh. No, no, not today.

But wait for tomorrow. July 12. July 12, when war once again plundered Israel and within four days Kiryat Shmoneh acquired the ignominous title, Katushya Capitol of Israel, having received 150 direct hits.

Retreating to Jerusalem I wandered the lanes of the ancient city, walking in the footsteps of history. Tucked into a display case in the Israel Museum I discovered a brick bearing the Roman Numeral X. Found in the north of the city the brick marked the Roman Tenth Foreign Legion. Titus, Vespasian, a Temple destroyed, martyrdom at Masada. I continued my journey, stopping at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. My hand traced the imprint of crosses incised in the stairwell by Crusader's swords that caused blood to flow in the streets of Jerusalem. Further on. Into the heart of the Old City. A Sephardic synagogue built in the wake of the Inquisition when Jews lost their lives at the stake. Then a military museum including rifles dating to the 1930's, the time of my father's visit, the Arab attacks. Along the street I passed a gray haired man, his sleeve rolled up, exposing the indelible blue tattoo on his arm. And, not far from the city, children played with the fragments of katushyas.

As CNN, BBC, Sky television inundated Jerusalem with reports of war I reflected on our long history of travail. Not that Jews have a patent on suffering. Hardly. Just look at our world today. But certainly that black thread of war and persecution always weaves its way through our remarkable but checkered history. We have survived, have thrived, but have also known persecution. "I promise you my little girl that this was the last war."

Not yet my little daughter. Not yet. While war raged I sat with my friend Gideon, an Israeli guide, under an orange tree in the courtyard of the American Colony Hotel, the last notes of the Muslim call to worship drifting on breezes from a nearby mosque. Gideon had come to discuss strategy. "Dan, if they bomb Ben Gurion Airport we need to find a way for you to leave Israel. Perhaps through Amman, or Cairo." At that time neither plan appealed to me. Not as an American, a Jew.

A small sparrow nesting in an olive tree flew out of its nest and soared above the beige stone walls of the American Colony but I, I felt trapped --- and if I was trapped how much more so Gideon. A reason to appreciate, even more, the great gift of living in America.

As Gideon outlined his plan my thoughts returned to a conversation I had had that morning with Levi Hershkowitz the landscape architect who designed the Valley of the Lost Communities at Yad Vashem, the memorial to the Holocaust. Giant stones, are stacked precipitously inwards, as if they would fall at any moment. Written on each stone is the name of a village inhabited by the Jews of Europe - until World War II. Vertical lines over run the walls of stone. They are the marks of the stonecutter's chisels.

Shortly after construction of the Valley of the Lost Communities a visitor, scanning the panorama of lines, up and down, up and down asked Levi what they represented. Levi had not thought of symbolism but he replied "Those lines are the bars on the barracks of the concentration camps." This became Levi's interpretation until another visitor suggested, "I believe those lines represent the vertical black and white stripes of the inmates prison clothes." In subsequent years more tourists came and went, among them a shriveled woman accompanying a gathering of Holocaust survivors. She interrupted Levi's explanation: "Sir, with all respect I was in a concentration camp. More than that. I was herded into a gas chamber. Death hovered above but at the last moment we were freed. I don't know why. As I rushed to the exit I gazed at the walls of the gas chamber. They were covered with vertical lines. From finger nails scratching in desperation; scratching for release. Sir. That is the real meaning of those lines."

And suddenly I understood the real meaning of being trapped.

In the days remaining in Jerusalem I often reflected on Levi's story and remembered a previous trip I had taken; not to Israel but to a town 60 kilometers from Prague, Czechoslovakia. The town of Terezin. In the 1800's there were homes, taverns, a post office, a bank and a brewery but in World War II Terezin was converted into a so called model concentration camp which foreigners could be shown. Actually. Jews began their journey in Terezinstadt then were shipped east --- Terezin was a tunnel without an outlet. All that survived from the camp were poems written by children, 15,000 children, of whom only 100 came back.

In the ghetto at Terezin,
It looks that way to me,
Is a square kilometer of earth
Cut off from the world that's free.

When I toured Terezin the town was deserted. The village square was green but empty. No one returned after the war. No one lives there, but close your eyes and you see ghostly faces, gaunt, exhausted, eyes full of fear. And if you listen, really listen, you can hear the most ominous sound of all --- the sound of silence. The silence of Jews unable to speak up on their own behalf, the silence of a world that refused to speak up for those who were trapped. And how little we have learned from that time when a world turned away. How little we have learned from that time of silence.

This year, on April 30, 50,000 people gathered at the National Mall in Washington, DC in support of the people of Darfur. Elie Wiesel, the voice of the Holocaust generation spoke. "My name is Elie Wiesel. I as a Jew am here because when we needed people to help us, nobody came."

And that, my friends, that, for me, explains July 12; explains why Hezbollah's constant provocation brought Israel to war. Was the war handled well? I can not answer. I do not believe war ever spawns resolution - but neither does passivity, neither does silence. Israel did not want this war. Obviously dialogue is preferable ---- but how do you speak with adversaries who do not want to accept your very existence. Who wish not a change of borders but wish your annihilation. It is not an issue of Israel pulling out of West Bank settlements, and the tallest barrier walls will not protect against acts of violence. Israel's foe is irrational resentment. This feeling, pervading certain elements of the Muslim world, is only the most recent in a long legacy of those who employ hatred for its own sake. It is one more manifestation of anti-semitism.

"I promise you my little girl that this was the last war."

War impacts on the generations of young Israelis. These are the words of the Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai:

"In this summer of wide open hatred -
I think of children growing up half in the ethics of their fathers
And half in the science of war.
And my ears invent, every day, the footsteps of the messenger of good tidings."

Children growing up half in the ethics of their fathers, and half in the science of war. Some years ago the author Leonard Fein elaborated indirectly on Amichai's verses: (Quote is based on a remembrance of Rabbi Harry K. Danziger. It is not verbatim.)

There are two kinds of Jews. One wants an Israel which is capable of defending itself and strong enough to defeat any enemy, an Israel that is tough enough to do what has to be done for its survival. The other Jew wants an Israel which is a beacon of justice and righteousness, which affirms the humanity of all, friend and enemy, which prides itself on its civility and its compassion.

And the trouble is, Fein went on, the trouble is most of us are both kinds of Jews.

These thoughts remain with me. Of suffering, of being trapped, of the folly of silence. And I offer a prayer: "May the day come that Jew and Arab will sit together under their vine and under their fig tree; not necessarily out of love but because they either survive together or perish together. And on that day there will be heard throughout the land the sound of singing: "I promise you my little girl that this was the last, the very last, war."

An epilogue.

On one of my many visits to Israel I sat with a farmer, Nahum Ashkenazi in the Galilee enjoying apricots from his orchard. His family had settled in Israel in the late 19th century.

"Nahum," I asked, " why did your family migrate from Russia to Palestine?"

He smiled. "We lived in a tiny Russian village and one Passover, over a hundred years ago, after we had recited `Ha Shanah Ha Ba B'Yerushalyim," (Next year in Jerusalem), my great grandfather, Yehudah, summoned the family back to the Seder table and spoke. 'Every year we pray that this will be the year the Messiah will come. Tonight I realized that if the Messiah ever comes he will not come to Russia, he will come to Israel.' And with those words my ancestors moved to Israel."

Well, the Messiah still has not come to Israel, or to the world, but in the meantime we can not sit and wait. We are challenged to take our fate in our own hands and move forward.

That is my reflection from this summer in the land of Israel.

Amen.