Betwixt and Between

Every season of the Jewish year brings with it a certain sentiment: renewal on Rosh Hashanah, repentance on Yom Kippur, playfulness on Purim. Today is the eleventh of the forty-nine days between Passover and Shavuot, the counting of the Omer or sefirah (counting), that measures ancient Israel’s liberated march out of Egypt toward becoming a nation at Mount Sinai, by way of receiving God’s most sacred possession, the Torah. Given that backdrop, we would expect our mood to reflect a combination of anticipation, love, and joy. The cry of “Let my people go!” has been fulfilled, and now we anticipate the intimacy of being God’s treasured people. It should be the most joyous time of the Jewish year.

Which is why it so interesting and unexpected that the Rabbis assigned these weeks a somber if not sorrowful mood. In traditional communities, there are no weddings during these weeks. While customs differ widely, there are all also those who do not purchase new clothes, shave, or get haircuts during this time of year, all actions understood to be signs of luxury and indulgence. The Talmud (Yevamot 62b; also Midrash Genesis Rabbah 61:3) explains that it was during these weeks just prior to the failed Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans, that 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s students perished, bequeathing the Jewish people a period of mourning for the generations to follow. This window of time ostensibly reserved for the building up of national identity is now forever linked with vulnerability, loss, and sorrow. A sense of opportunity is mixed with a sense of anxiety, joy mixed with sorrow, side by side, all at the same time.

From our ancient roots right up to the present, this balancing act between power and powerlessness, opportunity and anxiety, is the hallmark of this season. Monday night we will gather as a community to observe Yom HaShoah, a day devoted to remembering the six million men, women, and children who perished at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. We who live in the extended shadow of the darkest hour of Jewish if not all human history know well our obligation to remember, to bear witness, to live up to the commandment of “never again,” all the more so in these decades witnessing the passing of the survivor generation. We know the atrocities that humanity is capable of inflicting, we know what it means to sit helpless as the world watches, and we stand nervously vigilant lest the ancient hatred of anti-Semitism rear its ugly head.

And yet, we also know that by a fluke of history, just a week after Yom HaShoah, we will celebrate Yom HaAtzma’ut, Israel’s Independence Day, having also observed Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, on the day before. If Yom HaShoah is all about the perils of powerlessness and victimization, then Yom Ha’atzmaut is about Jewish self-determination, sovereignty, and the right of Jews, as my dear friend Dr. Ken Stein teaches, “to be the subject of their own sentence rather than object of someone else’s.” From exile to homecoming, victims to victors, to be a free people in our own land is the promise, the power, and the miracle of the modern State of Israel that we celebrate on Israel’s Independence day and every day. Destruction and rebirth, sorrow and gladness, the retreat of God’s presence and God’s bold re-assertion into Jewish history. The days between Yom HaShoah and Yom HaAtzma’ut are, to say the very least, a roller coaster ride.

It is a ride, to be sure, that we are not only on  at this time of year, but that exists at the very heart of our Jewish condition. More than any other generation, contemporary Jewry shuttles between anxiety and self-assurance, unease and confidence. No different than the Israelites of old, we are an emancipated people, able to freely express our faith, living through a time when Jewish engagement is a loving and voluntary choice that anyone can make. The unprecedented blessings of American Jewry are compounded by the presence of the modern miracle that is the sovereign State of Israel. First and foremost, a Jewish homeland, but also a formidable actor on the world stage, an innovator in too many fields to count, and a daily fulfillment of the prophetic challenge to be a light among nations. We live in a time with more blessings and opportunities than can be counted.

And there is also anxiety.

There are bad actors on the world stage – in Israel and in the states, in Europe, and elsewhere. Iran’s nuclear ambitions are an ongoing existential threat to our Jewish homeland. With two delicate exceptions, Israel’s neighbors do not recognize her right to exist. Beyond the physical threats, Israel faces charges and challenges on the stage of public opinion that no other nation would countenance. Here in the states, swastikas are spray-painted on the walls of JCCs and synagogues, while hate speech infects webpage after webpage. On campus after campus, our children face the challenge of BDS, and here in this city, in our paper of record, a convicted terrorist can publish an op-ed, having been described as a “leader” and “parliamentarian.” From the alt-right to the liberal left, on the continent, campus, and beyond, with the scar of the Shoah ever-present and ever-felt, and our own demographic problems to worry about, is it at all hard to understand why contemporary Jewry is anxious about its present and future? Given all our exposed nerves, can we really be blamed for being a tad twitchy, a bit touchy when it comes to the safety and security of our people?

Earlier this week, a congregant and friend asked me a question that I have never been asked before. Having heard me speak of the challenges facing American Jewry, the plight of the Syrian refugees, the relationship of American Jewry to Israel, and my recommendations regarding outreach, conversion, and mikveh, my congregant asked, “Rabbi Cosgrove, is there a thread? Is there a thread that ties it all together?” Am I, like a frog jumping from lily pad to lily pad, simply responding to the immediate issues of each day, or is there a framework by which to understand my recommendations for the community?

Lacking a therapist’s couch, but blessed with a pulpit, my answer to my congregant and to this congregation would be that the issues on the docket of contemporary Jewry to which I, or any rabbi, respond can, more often than not, be understood through the prism of the anxieties and opportunities that are given expression at this time of year but present year-round. Yes, each issue has its particulars, but individually and collectively, they are symptomatic of the fact that we are a Jewish generation living in the dialectic of power and powerlessness, victor and victim, joy and sorrow. We are necessarily absorbed by those issues that bring to the fore the paradoxes, contradictions, and disorienting perplexities of what it is to be a modern Jew today.

Think about it. Why are our conversations about Israel so tense? Why is there so much vitriol and toxicity to the debate? I imagine that part of the reason is our struggle to reconcile the fact of Israel being a powerful, sovereign, and imperfect state that must stand in the face of a constant barrage of physical threats and public attacks. As when we break a glass at a wedding, we are both filled with joy and aware of how fragile that joy is. How much does Israel need us? How much do we need them? Do they speak for us? Do we speak for them? These are complicated questions, and they are being played out daily, whether we acknowledge them or not.

What about the present debates on intermarriage, conversion, and outreach? Why a renewed interest in the subject; it is, after all, not new. I think the reason, or at least part of the reason, is the unexpressed but ever-present truth that we know that we live in a time and place when we can opt to engage in Jewish life any way we see fit, but we, our children, and our children’s children don’t necessarily opt to do so. We are a generation sandwiched between those who lost their lives on account of being Jewish and those who are, increasingly, choosing to live beyond the bounds of the Jewish community. Our debates over the boundaries of who is and who isn’t a Jew are symptoms of much deeper, unspoken anxieties about the Jewish past and future.

What about refugees? Why do we debate their fate? On the one hand, we were once strangers in a strange land, more recently a people whom the world turned its back on. Perhaps more than any people, Jews have an obligation to aid those seeking refuge, and now that we are in a position to do so, we must do so. And yet, perhaps more than any other community, Jews stand on guard against those who would seek to do us harm, in the states, Israel, and elsewhere. We are caught betwixt and between our impulse to respond to a shared and suffering humanity and our reflex to protect our parochial well-being.

We can go down the list: relations between American Jewry and Israel, anti-Semitism, religious pluralism, BDS on campus. All of these conversations – very different in their particulars – are in some way indicative of the tensions of our age. Each one of these struggles signals that we are a people who, on the one hand, have never had it so good, and yet on the other hand, are deeply anxious for our Jewish past, present, and future. There are freedoms we enjoy that no generation before could have dreamed of, and there are freedoms of our age that may prove to be our undoing. It is a tension that perhaps cannot be resolved, but it is the age in which we live and we do ourselves a disservice not to acknowledge its nature and the complexities it brings. Vulnerability and self-assurance, anxiety and opportunity, identity formation and erosion – these are the tensions, these are the terms, the dialectic of our time.

So where do we go from here? As with all things, the first step is to name and frame the conversation. Next, knowing what we know, we must be careful to avoid the extremes. We should not schrei gevalt at every turn: the Cossacks are not coming, it is not 1938, and we don’t live in Anatevka anymore. Not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism, and not every threat is an existential one. Besides, the blessings of American Jewry and Israel are just too good to be glossed over and ignored. It is a good time, a very good time, to be a Jew, and so we must not squander the opportunity we have with infighting. We must leverage our blessings towards building up the Jewish future, defending Jewish interests, advocating on behalf of the Jewish state and working tirelessly – by way of our Jewish identity – toward the betterment of our common humanity.

As many of you may know, my teenage daughter is living in Israel this semester. We spoke the other day upon her return from a five-day trip to Poland to see the concentration camps and to learn about the Jewish communities that once were and will never again be. Back in Israel, having seen what she saw, and being struck by the knowledge that millions of beautifully ordinary lives had been lost, she paused before she hung up with us to express how very grateful she was for all the blessings of her life. It was a precious moment – the combination of bearing witness to both the horrors of the Shoah and the miracle of Israel prompting her to recognize that every moment and every blessing must be made to count.

To know that life is delicate, to stand squarely in the face of the darkest moments of Jewish history, and know that ancient hatreds still persist is sobering, to say the very least. And yet, it need not immobilize us. Quite the contrary, as my daughter taught me, it can serve to empower us. We can, if we choose, be prompted to live our Jewish lives to the fullest, treating every moment as precious and every human being with respect, and to be truly grateful for every blessing we have. For Jews, anxiety and opportunity are not opposites, they are interdependent partners, the basic elements that impel us forward. Aware of our past, eyes open to the present, and always looking to the future, as we enter this week of Yom HaShoah and Yom HaAtzma’ut, may we rise to the calling of the hour, forging a future worthy of the unrealized dreams of the six million forever in our hearts, worthy of the highest hopes of the generations still yet to come.