As a rabbi taking in the near-catastrophic – and utterly miraculous – story of Flight 1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, I find myself with a preacher’s problem: Of the ten thousand ways into this story, which one do I choose tonight?
For many, and I would put myself on this list, grateful as I am for the story’s ending, I find myself returning to the horror of it all: the terrifying plunge of thousands of feet; the panic in that cabin; the trauma carried by every passenger and crew member who, for those interminable moments, believed they might be living the final minutes of their lives. And then, I pull the camera back and am shaken by the repeated realization that we live in a time when such terror can be directed at my people. I am chilled by the realization that an attack of this kind – with the identification of a willing terrorist, his recruitment and training, and his placement into a position to inflict catastrophic harm – could only have been conceived and cultivated over years. Relieved as I am at the outcome, I cannot help but consider everything that had to go wrong for the plane ever to reach that moment: failures of intelligence, lapses in screening, breakdowns in communication and oversight. Failures that allowed hundreds of innocent people to come within a hair’s breadth of catastrophe.
And yet, dark as my thoughts turn, I know this is also a moment of profound gratitude – for the heroism, the miracles, and the individuals without whom we would all be speaking about this flight very differently today. I think of Captain Smit Machchhar, horrifically wounded by his attacker, who nevertheless managed to unlock the cockpit door. I think of Yaniv Hayun and Asaf Rajuan, passengers who rose from their seats, rushed toward danger, entered the cockpit, and helped wrestle the attacker to the ground. And I think of the pilots aboard that plane who somehow took control of an aircraft that had plunged thousands of feet, stabilized it, and brought 180 souls safely to the ground. Jewish tradition teaches that one who survives mortal danger is obligated to bensh gomel, to offer the blessing of personal thanksgiving – Ha-gomel l’hayavim tovot, sheg’malani kol tov – thanking God for having brought us safely through danger, for the gift of life restored. This is such a moment. We dare not deny ourselves the right – and the obligation – to give thanks. For human courage, for divine providence, and for those rare and extraordinary moments when the two seem to meet.
I feel all these things, all at the same time. Perhaps you do, too. I suspect we will for some time to come. But over these past few days, I want to name one other observation – small, a bit delicious, undoubtedly fleeting – but clarifying all the same. These past few days, the conversation about Israel has changed, at least for a moment. I have loved the memes and videos making their rounds. An airline seating chart that lets you choose your premium seat not merely by legroom, window, or aisle, but by proximity to an Israeli. A viral video of a Venezuelan declaring that Israelis are his new safety measure. A mock-up of an airline safety card instructing passengers that, in case of an in-flight emergency: Stay calm, and locate the nearest Israeli. They are funny. They are irreverent. And after everything we have lived through, there is something wonderfully cathartic about them.
And, I believe, there is something subtler and more significant at hand. For the first time in a very long time, the world has stopped talking about Israel and started talking about Israelis. Yaniv and Tzvika, who rushed the cockpit. Dr. Shota Musayev, the dentist who treated the wounded pilot. Tali, who first realized something was wrong and called for help. Ohr, who helped restrain the attacker, to name only a few. Are they religious or secular? Sephardic or Ashkenazi? Right or left? Likud voters or the opposition? Nobody knows. More importantly, nobody cares.
They are simply . . . Israelis.
The shift in language is as subtle as it is startling. It prompted me to realize that one of the quiet but pernicious features of how the world and media and sometimes we Jews talk about Israel is the way every distinction is flattened. There is so much talk about Israel that we forget about Israelis. Israel becomes the Israeli government; the Israeli government becomes every Israeli; the actions of extremist settlers in the West Bank – reprehensible as those actions are – are made to stand for an entire society. Government, country, people, ideology: all collapsed into one undifferentiated entity.
To collapse a people into a monolith – to take the feature of one and assign it to all – is one of the elemental building blocks of hatred and prejudice. Philosophers call it essentialism; psychologists speak of the “out-group homogeneity effect.” We experience ourselves as individuals – complicated, contradictory, capable of disagreement – but we imagine those on the other side as uniform and interchangeable. One Israeli becomes all Israelis. One Jew becomes the Jews. One Muslim becomes Islam. The act of an extremist becomes the character of a nation. The policy of a government becomes the moral identity of every citizen. It helps explain the effort to brand Israel’s prime minister a war criminal, an accusation that all too easily metastasizes to include not merely one leader or government but an entire people, nation, even the very project of Jewish self-determination. The individual disappears, and in his or her place stands a category. It is among the oldest and most reliable tools of hatred, employed by every hater from the bully at the back of the classroom to the bully pulpit of City Hall. Take the actions of one, attach them to the many; turn complexity into accusation and accusation into identity; repeat the caricature often enough until it passes for truth.
And that is why this week has been so clarifying – and refreshing. For a moment, the categories cracked open. The abstractions have names: Yaniv, Tzvika, Shota, Tali, Ohr. Not symbols. Not representatives of a government. Not avatars of somebody else’s politics. Israelis. Human beings. Individuals.
Nor is it at all surprising that some public figures who are so quick to weigh in on Israel and international affairs, so quick to tout their efforts to fight antisemitism, have yet to find the words to praise the Israelis who helped thwart this attack, not even the Hindu Indian pilot who saved the day. Why not? Because doing so would require acknowledging the clear and present danger of terror directed at Israelis and Jews. Because doing so would require naming Israeli courage and heroism for what they are. Because doing so would require something more basic still: recognizing that there is such a thing as Israelis. Not a monolith, not a single political identity, but millions of diverse human beings. Religious and secular, Jewish and Arab. Right and left, old and young, native-born and immigrant. Soldiers and protesters, believers and skeptics, people who agree about almost nothing except, perhaps, that they belong to the same impossibly complicated national story. Israel is not one thing because Israelis are not one thing. It is a country of millions, each person carrying a set of convictions and contradictions of their own – a truth that is so darn inconvenient for those who reduce people in order hate them. And perhaps that is what these few extraordinary minutes aboard an airplane have forced the world, however briefly, to see.
I have very low expectations of the haters. This news cycle will pass. The memes will fade. And sooner or later, if it has not happened already, the tide will turn and the old habits of accusation and venom will return. But let us in this room, as this festival of Shemini Atzeret teaches, breathe this moment in, linger in it, and learn from it. Let’s hold onto its clarity for as long as we can – certainly through the Israeli elections a few weeks away. We in this room should not make the same category error we so readily condemn in others: flattening the discourse, confusing Israelis with Israel, and Israel with the policies of any particular Israeli government.
We can love Israelis, argue passionately about the government that leads them, and still pray with all our hearts for the safety and flourishing of the state of Israel. It is what we ask for in the Hashkiveinu prayer: not that the night be free of danger, but that we be guarded through it. That somehow – with courage, by providence, under God’s shelter of peace and by the hands of those who rise when called – Israel and its people will make it safely home.