Civility and the high holy days - The Jewish Standard

This week we begin the countdown to Rosh Hashanah. On July 23 we communally commemorated Tisha B’Av, the date, according to our tradition that marked the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE and of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Many other Jewish moments of devastation, including the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and the deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942 all have been associated with this date.

The Shabbat that follows Tisha B’Av is called Shabbat Nachamu, the Sabbath of Comfort. The rabbis who established the cycle of haftarah readings after the exile that followed the destruction of the Second Temple chose selections from the Prophet Isaiah to be read on the seven Sabbaths between Tisha B’Av and Rosh Hashanah. These haftarot of consolation, unlike the majority of haftarah selections throughout the year, are not directly connected to the themes of the Torah portions they accompany. Rather, they are a vehicle for teshuvah in its literal sense, as a liturgical vehicle by which we can turn ourselves away from despair and toward hope.

This year in particular, I find this tradition especially salient. We soon will mark the third anniversary of October 7, 2023, when Simchat Torah, one of the most festive days on the Jewish calendar, marked the beginning of a time of despair for Jews worldwide. The war that Hamas began on that day has brought death, despair, and devastation to Israelis, Arabs, and Iranians. It has sparked a recurrence of the cancer of antisemitism worldwide, and most shocking for many of us, across America as well. Like cancers that recur in the human body, the cancer of antisemitism has returned in a more virulent form than I have ever experienced in my 78 years of life.

Rosh Hashanah and Pesach are, for me, the two greatest moments of celebration and times for offering gratitude on the Jewish calendar. In that spirit, I want to offer four questions that each of us individually, and all of us as a community and a people, can ask ourselves over the next six weeks, as we prepare ourselves for the awesome task that our rabbis called “cheshbon hanefesh” — an accounting of the soul.

The four questions I am asking myself this year were inspired by two thoughtful theater productions that I saw in the Berkshires this summer.

My first three questions arose when I saw a troubling but challenging play, “The Zionists: A Family Story” that the Barrington Stage Company produced earlier this summer. The playwright, S. Asher Gelman, based “The Zionists” on the conflict playing out in his own family’s divergent positions and actions, reflecting their opposing views on their relationships with Israel. As someone who defines himself as a chovevi Tzion, a lover of Zion, “The Zionists” bothered me deeply, because it made me confront the reality that individual Jewish families and the family of Israel, writ large, do find ourselves, today, torn asunder by the events of these past three years, and often are incapable of finding a way to listen compassionately to what others are saying and feeling about Israel.

Differences over Israel’s actions and inactions are not new. The Zionist movement and the Israeli governments over the 78 years since the founding of the state have always reflected divergent views. What is new, and has been intensifying over the last decade, in both Israeli society and within the American Jewish community, has been an inability to dialogue respectfully. I believe that too many of us today, like the family portrayed on that stage, too often allow our passionate opinions about Israel’s actions and inactions to consume us, leaving no place or space for compassionate understanding of the voices of others. Even, as the playwright makes us confront, our mothers and our brothers, our fathers and sisters, our children and grandchildren.

Question one:

How can you and I find a way in the year ahead to engage in respectful dialogue with our fellow Jews who hold divergent views on both Israel’s actions and upon our personal relationship with the Jewish state, where half of world Jewry lives?

In Tractate Shavuot of the Talmud we are taught: kol Yisrael arevim zeh b’zeh — all Jews are responsible one for the other.

Over the ages this teaching has been understood as a two-way street. Every Jew has the right to call upon both the community and individual Jews for help. Conversely, the community, and each of us, has a responsibility to respond to our fellow Jews with the biblical response first spoken by Abraham and later by Moses, and echoed by Jews ever since: Hineni! Here I am!

Question two:

As we prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur each year, I ask you all to join me in taking time in these weeks between Tisha B’Av and Rosh Hashanah to take a personal inventory of how well I have fulfilled my responsibility to give tzedaka, to perform acts of chesed, and to work for the well-being of our fellow Jews, our fellow Americans, and all humankind.

To me, the greatest tragedy portrayed in “The Zionists” was the three siblings’ inability to hear the pain and the passion of their family members. While the content of this play focused upon the inter-relationship, and lack thereof, between American Jews and Israel, what evolves throughout the play is the lack of a loving relationship between the siblings. The three grown children are connected to each other through their parents but have no true relationship with each other. They are each incapable of hearing the pain or the passion of each other. They are each incapable of forgiving each other for past transgressions, whether accidental or intentional.

The message of Yom Kippur is that before we can ask God for forgiveness and atonement, we must both ask forgiveness from those whom we have wronged or hurt and forgive all who have hurt us.

Question 3:

As we approach the Days of Awe, how can each of us and all of us take the biblical imperative Sh’ma! both literally, and more importantly, seriously, by really listening to each other, and hearing both the opinions and the pain of each other.

Another Berkshire theater experience I had earlier this summer, was attending Berkshire Theatre Group’s production of a new play called “The American Five.” Those American Five are Coretta Scott King, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, Clarence Jones, and Stanley Levison. Levison, working with A. Philip Randolph, who is not a character in the play, were the main organizers of the 1963 March on Washington.

In the play, four African Americans are portrayed as putting their personal lives on the line and thereby changing the course of 400 years of African American history. The one Jewish American character in the play, Stanley Levison, says directly a number of times that he is there to help, because of his Jewish responsibility to perform tikun olam, the repair of the world.

While the historic figures portrayed in the play were real people, they were not alone in their efforts. The partnership of African Americans and Jewish Americans played a critical role in the civil rights movement.

I walked out of the play feeling that this moment in American history, which I remember watching on television as a teenager, was truly a 20th-century manifestation of the teaching of Hillel found in Pirke Avot 1:14

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

If I am only for myself, what am I?

If not now, when?

My fourth question for myself and for each of you this year is: How can we as an American Jewish community in the year ahead, while we continue to stand up against antisemitism, still remain strong against the hate that has re-risen against others here in America?

One final thought for the approaching new year of 5787 is found in another of the teachings of Hillel: “That which is hateful to you do not do unto another! That is the essence of Torah! Now go and learn! (Talmud: Shabbat 31A)

May each of us go forth in the year ahead and truly treat others with the respect and love we desire for ourselves. May we learn to listen to each other with compassion. May we all in the year ahead learn the significance of our communal name Israel, given to Jacob in Genesis 32 and whose etymology means God Wrestler. May we then learn from Jacob/Israel’s encounter with his brother Esau how we can turn confrontation into reconciliation and wrestle together with the questions facing us individually and communally.

Neal Borovitz, rabbi emeritus of Temple Avodat Shalom in River Edge, is a former chair of Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey.

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