Stories of Violence, Stories of Hope
If you've been following news out of Israel**, you already know that a new, far right-wing coalition -- Israel's thirty-seventh government -- came to power in late December. (**If you haven't been following, I totally get it... it's been overwhelming news and very emotionally heavy; that said, as someone who cares about Jewish life, I invite you to tune in now and continue reading.)
Over the past couple of months, it has become clear that the priorities of Netanyahu's new coalition include further centralizing Orthodox control over state Jewish services, expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank and moving towards annexation of Palestinian land (without granting citizenship, of course). This government has been shockingly brazen in its aims to assert a far-right, nationalist vision of Jewish supremacy on the country. Driven by the real threat that Israeli's judiciary will lose its independence and ability to keep executive and legislative power in check, and also by internal civil rights concerns (for example, LGBTQ+ rights!), hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews have taken to the streets to protest and are beginning to organize large-scale strikes.
Last week, my daughter Yona was lucky enough to be in Tel Aviv and she attended the protests (now happening weekly, every Saturday night), where she reported Israeli flags were everywhere and the whole crowd was chanting "de-mo-krat-ya, de-mo-krat-ya." And yet, there is -- as many journalists and analysts have pointed out, and to quote NIF head Daniel Sokatch -- an "elephant at the pro-democracy protests," which is that Israel's democratic vision has never extended to the millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In the words of a statement signed by nearly two dozen Israeli NGOs today, "there can be no democracy while there is an occupation and inequality."
Given all this, it is not surprising -- as the Israeli government lurches hard to the right -- that violence has been escalating quickly in the West Bank. In recent days alone, there have been three brutal murders of Israeli Jews at the hands of Palestinian gunmen. The worldwide Jewish community is reeling and mourning; each of these losses of a human life is a loss of an entire world. I want to be clear that I condemn these acts of violence and terror against our Jewish siblings in Israel unequivocally.
Equally disturbing to me, though, is the Jewish violence that has followed these attacks, and I believe we need to be talking about this too. Several days ago, a mob of some 400 settlers launched a retaliatory attack (some news sources called it a "pogrom") against the Palestinian town of Huwara, ransacking and torching homes and cars, beating residents and terrorizing families, leaving one dead and hundreds injured. In a video that circulated online, the most troubling moment to me was watching this vigilante mob stop to daven ma'ariv (that is, to come together as a minyan for communal evening prayers). This is not my Judaism.
And yet, it is. On this -- of all weeks of the Jewish calendar year -- it wouldn't feel honest to me not to acknowledge that our tradition has a dark underbelly. The Purim story we tell in Megillat Esther -- of Vashti and Ahasverosh, Mordecai, Esther and Haman -- resolves towards a happy ending with "light and joy, gladness and honor," "merrymaking and feasting, and... sending gifts to one another." But along the way, much of the ninth chapter of the Megillah preserves a heavy legacy of violence and revenge. After Haman's genocidal plot is foiled, the Jews of Persia are given permission to fight back against their enemies. As the text says, "So the Jews struck at their enemies with the sword, slaying and destroying; they wreaked their will upon their enemies" (Esther 9:5). First, according to the Megillah, they killed 500 people in Shushan (in addition to Haman's ten sons), then another 300, and then "they disposed of their enemies, killing seventy-five thousand of their foes... That was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar; and they rested on the fourteenth day and made it a day of feasting and merrymaking" (Esther 9:16-17).
Honestly, it's hard to know what to do with this part of the story. It reads like a revenge fantasy of a victimized people: slaughtering 75,000, and then sitting down to feast and celebrate. This must be farcical exaggeration, right?! And yet, throughout Jewish history, Purim has indeed been associated with Jewish violence and with vengeance.
This summer on our Kavana-Mishkan Israel trip, we visited the grave of Baruch Goldstein, the American-Israeli physician and Jewish extremist who walked into a mosque in the Palestinian city of Hebron on Purim Day in 1994 and opened fire on worshippers, killing 29 and wounding 125 more before being beaten to death by survivors of the shooting. Seeing his tombstone made me nauseous (it calls him "holy" and says that "he gave his life for the the sake of the people of Israel, its Torah, and its land"). However, his grave has become a make-shift outdoor synagogue space and a pilgrimage site for Jews who share his ideology (and Israel's current Minister of National Security in this new ultra-right coalition, Itamar Ben-Gvir, famously had a photograph of Goldstein hanging in his office until recently).
As my colleague Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann (of Mishkan Chicago) pointed out, Jewish victimhood is real, but chapter nine of the megillah only makes sense as a fantasy while Jews are powerless. There is extreme danger in someone in power perpetuating a victim narrative and then using it to justify violence. British-American poet WH Auden expressed this well in 1939 in the following short poem:
I and the public know
what all schoolchildren learn,
those to whom evil is done
do evil in return.
Again, it is hard to pay attention to the news from Israel these days. And yet, we must, because we are living through a pivotal moment in Jewish history. Particularly as we approach this Purim -- where it is so clear that the stories we tell about our victimhood, survival, and joy are also wrapped up in violent impulses and revenge fantasies -- we must confront the violent impulses that come from within our own tradition.
Thankfully, many Jews are working to actively counter the violence. Our Israeli tour-guide from the summer, Karmit Arbel Rumbak, visited Huwara yesterday, as part of a solidarity meeting with Tag Meir (an Israeli organization that seeks to counter right-wing settler violence by battling racism and supporting democratic values). Karmit reports that she was initially afraid to make this trip, but that she felt called to be there, hoping to be part of a "wave" working in opposition to the hate and fear that the town's residents experienced last week. True to form, she managed to connect on a personal level with women, men and children of the town yesterday. She writes, "They were excited that we came to support them, and their hearts softened, and they said that they wanted us all to live in peace and security next to one another. I can't fix everything, but if I managed, at least, to counter the hatred and to enter into someone's heart a bit... then it's good that I made the trip."
As for us, we certainly can't fix everything either. But, if you care about Israel, the Jewish people, or both, now is the time to lean in, to learn more, and to speak up. I hope that we can celebrate Purim together next week and read the Megillah -- both the beautiful and the challenging parts of the story -- in the context of a loving community. And, I also hope that you will join me in finding ways to stay informed about what's happening in Israel so that we can continue to be part of this important Jewish story. One great opportunity (see below) is that Daniel Sokatch, CEO of the New Israel Fund, will be speaking here in Seattle in a few weeks. I strongly encourage you to click here to order a copy of his book Can We Talk about Israel through my favorite local bookstore (I've read it and it's excellent!), and then register to join me there (either in person or via livestream).
With wishes for a Shabbat Shalom, and hopes that peace, compassion and justice will prevail over evil and violence as we head into Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat before Purim,
Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum
