Hitzonim | Outsiders

A note on language: In this post I am critical of the state of Israel. I would like to make three prefatory and related comments: First, we must always distinguish the modern nation state of Israel from the people of Israel. Israel is not Judaism; Israel does not speak for Jewish people. Second, I use “we” language to motivate my critique. In this post I motivate my critique, in part, by appeal to Torah. It should be said that I am not “Torah observant,” for whatever that might mean to anyone. We’ve got some candles, some seders, eight crazy nights, and a mezuzah.

The Torah is something like the hard core of a moral discourse that stems from it for thousands of years. I say “we” in the sense that I’d call the Torah “ours.” While maybe confusing for some, I am comfortable stipulating that the Torah is “we” regardless of whether one practices. The state of Israel cannot be justified by appeal to Torah; yet, political leaders can be critiqued by appeal to the Law (and the prophets, I guess, yeah, moreso the prophets). It’s something like, we don’t get Abraham’s land because the Bible cannot be allowed to justify any claims, but we can strive to have Abraham’s hospitality because our interpretive tradition informs our moral discourse, which is very unlike a claim to the land.

The authority that we may place on the Torah is the authority over the moral discourse we choose to have in light of it

-hitzonim

The Torah claims for its authority nothing other than the authority we confer on it in our traditions, and we must not confer such authority that it displaces, occupies, or engages in mass murder and starvation. The authority that we may place on the Torah is the authority over the moral discourse we choose to have in light of it, and that discourse must be historically and academically informed before it can be applied in our lives. The Torah gives us traditions to consider and stories to tell, not facts of that matter that Moses schlepped to the 21st century.

And third, this is a story that centers me because as a Jew, Israel has flung us smack dab into a campaign of ethnic cleansing, and when chasing authoritarian fever dreams, Bibi has made us out to be terrorists, and if that’s happening in my name, we’re going to clear our name. A personal blog is personal. We must protect our personal spaces to process safely. No, the Palestinians are not afforded safety. Yes, this amplifies my privilege. These are the great moments of dissonance where atrocities play on while I write at home.

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“What draws you to Judaism?”

My right foot bobbed nervously, flexing my ankle; my right knee, crossed over my left leg, right knee hinged slightly.

“Social justice. It’s in our family–public servants, a lawyer, union lawyers no less, social workers, a public school teacher, clergy, a judge. It’s that. It’s in my family, and it’s in me.”

“You weren’t raised Jewish?”

“No. I mean, that’s the story, right? Finding our family in my adolescence. I didn’t–we didn’t, I didn’t know. But now we know, and it’s like, well, I was a philosophy and religious studies major, so I’ve thought about it and the connections; I’ve sort of structured my life around the promise of the meaning that I hope to make of it all. The pursuit of justice. Repairing the world, Tikkun Olam. It’s just part of me, and I’m part of it, and so, yeah, that’s what draws me to it, I guess. It is in me. It is me.”

The Reform rabbi made a joke about philosophy, “A lot of people Kant get into it.” I was invited to join a conversion class.

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My understanding of our people’s, our people’s… I guess religion or whatever, but our traditions, peoplehood, our ethnoreligious identity, my understanding is studied. Intellectual, I guess. Maybe to overcompensate for not being raised Jewish, I consume everything I can find at the intersections of my deep interests: The history of Second Temple Period Judaism, Jewish Apocalyptic Literature, and the composition of the gospel accounts within the broad framework of the Hellenistic Judaism of the first and second centuries CE.

But before all this, I applied the same intellectual rigor to learning the blessings, customs, rites, and so on. Ate in the sukkah, lit candles on Shabbat, drank all the Pesach wine, even sat on this side of the mechitza for awhile. Dated, fell in love, broke up, felt uncomfortable with the nationalist fervor I saw after we bombed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Saw people make aliyah. Deeply felt experiences that are not only mine to tell, and so, I do not violate the respect I’d ask to be extended in either direction.

My understanding of all this is mostly studied, theory, if you will, and a little praxis. Friday nights with our boys and a few thrown together festive meals with friends. It’s definitely theory, though. This is good and this is bad. Here is the bad, I am ignorant to some of the nuance. The nuance comes from our lifeworld, and for most Jews, the genesis of our lifeworld was at least Sunday school if not Hebrew day school, b’nei mitvah and whatnot, but the nuance is what happens in the in-between spaces of those other things. I just don’t have the nuance. That’s the bad, in so far as I continue to feel like an imposter in our own community.

The good, because there is good, in the good, my understanding of our people is grounded in the shit you get out of a book, and goddamn if we’re not people who love a book–Yochanan ben Zakkai, Akiva, Yehudah ha-Nasi, Nachmanides, the Rambam, Rashi, or Philip Roth, it doesn’t matter. So I’m social justice, and I’m crossed legs, and I’m faking it at shul, and I read books. In those books are our idealized values. T’filah, tzedakah, t’shuvah.

Pikuach nefesh, the cherishing of a life, allows us to override any other mitzvah if it is violated in the act of saving a life. Indeed, to save our own lives as well. When fasting on Yom Kippur, should your physician advise you to, you are not merely permitted to be exempt from the fast but you are commanded to do so. It is a mitzvah to eat.

Pikuach nefesh and tzedek tzedek tirdof haunt us.

We are commanded to exempt ourselves from a fast when it bears on our health, and yet, we are actively starving Gazans. The codes of our ethics exempt us from voluntary fast, yet we impose starvation on others. Does the wickedness not upset you?

Tzedek tzedek tirdof presents the horrors of the genocide in its most stark terms because its place in Torah instructs us to pursue justice as a condition for remaining in the land. That you may thrive in the land, says the Torah, when you pursue justice. Tzedek tzedek, justice justice, why repeated? To emphasize that in the pursuit of justice, we must pursue it in just ways. These are the conditions to thrive in the land: Pursue justice and do so by just means. We have not, are not, doing either, neither justice nor its just ways. For how many thousands dead before we serve justice? 1,000 no; 5,000, no; 10,000, no; 12, 15, 18–not 18, no chai here–20,000, no; 30–tzedek tzedek tzedek tzedek…

Bibi said today Israel will occupy from the river to the sea. For whose genocide does this foretell?

“What draws you to Judaism?”

For a while I thought it was the promise of the meaning I hope to find here. Maye I did. It’s not the same meaning I see my blue-starred siblings posting as their profile frames and endless words about hostages without a single letter of indiscriminate killing, mothers without a hospital, and naked men at gunpoint.

I’ve been far too quiet, too. Clouded by my own insecurity to remind our siblings of that centuries long moral discourse. Ultimately, that’s where we’ll find the meaning. It is that meaning which demands ceasefire now.