I meant to post this weeks ago. Some people might be wondering how the Jewish community in particular is responding to the mosque planning to be built by Ground Zero. Below are two statements delivered by two rabbis with completely different points of view.
The first one, in favor of the mosque, is by Union for Reform Judaism president Eric Yoffie. In the interest of full disclosure, I know Rabbi Yoffie personally, and I think he is aware by now that I am completely in disagreement with most of the Reform movement’s official political positions, this one included (which is why I left the movement not too long ago). Incidentally, if you have the time, I recommend linking to the original URJ site and reading the posted comments to this piece.
Silence is not an Option: Jews Ought to Support Construction of Muslim Community Center
September 14, 2010
By Rabbi Eric Yoffie
The plan to build a community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan has ignited a storm of controversy that has engulfed not only the religious world but all of America. As we gather here a few days after the 9th anniversary of 9/11, I would like to share with you a few thoughts about what this issue means to us as Reform Jews.
An interesting question for me from the very beginning of the crisis has been: Where are our people? Polls indicate that 70% of Americans oppose the building of the mosque at the current site. (I have no numbers on Canadians.) A poll of New Yorkers indicates that 40% of Jews in this city oppose the mosque.
On the one hand, many of our rabbis have spoken eloquently on this subject in their Rosh Hashanah sermons; others, I am certain, will address the issue on Yom Kippur. Overwhelmingly, these sermons have been supportive of the Cordoba House project. On the other hand, many of you in this room and other Reform leaders as well have told me that your fellow congregants are not necessarily in favor of building the mosque at the current site. It has been suggested to me that if a secret ballot were conducted in your synagogues, as many as half - if not more - of the members might oppose the mosque. You have confirmed that feelings run very deep on this issue, and you have suggested the Reform sentiment might be more divided than some suppose.
With these divisions in mind, let us see if we can move away from the heated emotions that have characterized the debate and let us analyze closely the various arguments being put forward.
When this issue exploded in the press, the Union convened two conference calls with the rabbis and presidents of our congregations in New York City and the surrounding area. We thought that we had fairly clear policy, but when local concerns are involved, it is always best to consult, if possible, with local leaders. A reasonably strong consensus emerged from those calls, expressing the view that this was an issue of religious freedom and it required our support. We issued a statement supporting the building of the community center/mosque at the current site, and noting that our commitment to religious freedom made such support essential.
It is natural that religious freedom should be our central concern. Jews have been denied religious freedom as we now understand it for most of our history. In the modern period, we have struggled to win that freedom in country after country. America was different because the free exercise of religion is guaranteed by the constitution, and barring a compelling state interest, it cannot be denied to Jews or to anyone else. Nonetheless, even here our rights have not come without struggle.
After World War II, when Jews moved out of urban areas, suburb after suburb attempted to prevent Jews from building synagogues within their borders. Appeals were made to zoning laws and land use laws as a means of keeping Jews out. But invoking constitutional guarantees, we fought these restrictions, and virtually everywhere, we won.
So of course we care deeply about religious freedom and the right of religious groups to build congregations in the places of their choosing. We know what religious freedom is about, and we do not deny others the rights that we have demanded for ourselves.
At this point, virtually everyone - even most of the opponents of the mosque - has conceded the constitutional argument. Yes, they acknowledge, the sponsors of the mosque have a legal right to build. The argument they make instead is that the sponsors of the community center/mosque have the right to build, but should not exercise that right.
Two primary reasons are given for this claim. The first is the need to be sensitive to the concerns of the victims’ families. The problem, of course, is that most of the families support the building of the mosque. Mayor Bloomberg of New York suggests they are virtually unanimous in that support.
But absent precise data, let us assume that some do not support it. We do not want to challenge these family members. We do not want to debate them. We do not want to do anything to intensify their pain. The ADL says they are entitled to their prejudices, and perhaps they are.
Nonetheless, while their personal pain needs to be understood and respected, they are not entitled to determine public policy. Public policy needs to be determined by what is legal and what is right, and by that alone. We need to say to the families: We can sympathize with your anger and understand your pain, but this is not a decision that you should make.
The second reason given for not building on the current site, even if the right to do so exists, is that Ground Zero is hallowed ground.
This is true, it seems to me. Ground Zero is a mass grave, the site of an atrocity - there is a sense in which it is a sacred place, for Americans and for others. One can reasonably argue that anything that detracts from the memory and the message of the site is out of place there, and that a place of worship - any place of worship - might do that.
With this in mind, the analogy that we have heard most frequently is the Auschwitz analogy. A convent of Carmelite nuns was planned for Auschwitz - in that area of the camp where most of those exterminated were not Jews. Nonetheless, Pope John Paul understood that the presence of a convent anywhere in Auschwitz would be offensive to Jews, and he instructed the nuns to move to a site outside the grounds. From this, many have concluded that the Cordoba House should be moved as well.
Yet in fact the lesson is exactly the opposite. The convent was initially to be on the grounds of Auschwitz, while the Cordoba House was never to be located at Ground Zero. The convent was moved off the grounds, but nearby; the mosque is near Ground Zero but not on the site. Just as there is nothing inappropriate about the convent being located close to Auschwitz, so there is nothing inappropriate about the community center/mosque being located close to Ground Zero. Some experts have suggested that the convent is now closer to Auschwitz than the Cordoba House will be to Ground Zero, but I have been unable to verify exact distances. Nonetheless, let me say this very bluntly: The Auschwitz example is being misused to appeal to the deep emotions that Jews appropriately have about the Holocaust in order to lead them to a mistaken conclusion about the mosque.
And the other problem with the hallowed ground argument is this: It is being made by those who don’t understand the Twin Towers area and don’t understand New York. We are talking about one of the busiest and most congested urban areas in the country - one in which this particular building would not normally attract any interest at all. It is two and a half blocks from Ground Zero and might as well be 100 miles from Ground Zero. As others have pointed out, retail stores, strip joints, office buildings, and other places of worship are to be found there, all part of the general frenzy that is downtown New York. That is why as this center has been discussed for the last year all parties - right, left, and center - were supportive and found no reason to oppose it.
In short, I find nothing compelling about those who argue that the right to build this mosque should not be exercised by those who are planning it. And in my view, none of these arguments makes any sense unless you hold that all Muslims are somehow to be held responsible for the actions of a few. That is really the claim here, acknowledged or not.
And by the way, I am not one who says that the perpetrators of the 9/11 atrocity were men who happened to be Muslims. This is too simple. They were adherents of a radical Muslim group; their ideas were shaped and their actions motivated by their understanding of Islam. We oppose their ideas, just as we oppose religious extremism in all forms, and we are committed to combating them.
But the point is that we do not tar all Muslims with the brush of extremism because extremist strands of Islam exist in their midst. To do so is to engage in the kind of stereotyping that has plagued us as Jews throughout our history, and that we reject, categorically and unequivocally.
There are several other points that need to be clarified.
It has been suggested in many circles that the battle over the mosque is simply another round in the culture wars between liberals and conservatives - and in these wars Reform Jews should be reluctant to reflexively side with one camp or the other. It is obviously true that more liberals than conservatives support Cordoba House, but that is far from the whole story. Mayor Bloomberg supports the mosque and he is an independent. Governor Christie of New Jersey supports the mosque and he is a conservative Republican. Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian, said the following: “The justification to ban the mosque is no more rational than banning a soccer field in the same place because all the suicide bombers loved to play soccer.” Josh Barro, writing in the on-line edition of the conservative magazine National Review, argues the conservative case for the mosque. Conservatives, he said, believe that private property should be used as the owners see fit; they also believe that using arcane land use laws to oppose construction for private purposes is a misuse of government prerogatives. According to Barro, for conservatives “the proper question is not ‘Why here?’ but ‘Why not here’?”
And what of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf?
While I do not know him personally, he has worked with our Commission on Interreligious Affairs and with the RAC. He has addressed groups of Reform rabbis. He is a Sufi and a moderate by any definition. What is happening now is that many are searching through his 30-year activist history to find things he has said that could discredit him. And let me say clearly: he has said things that I oppose and find offensive. But if he is not a fitting partner for dialogue then there are no such partners. And I am distressed by those in the Jewish community who continue to believe that we should only talk to and approve for dialogue those who agree with us on every point and who have never made a problematic statement about Judaism or Israel. We don’t need dialogue with those people. We need it with people like Imam Rauf, who are reasonable, sensible, and courageous - even though, to be sure, we often don’t agree.
Finally, many of you have asked me about the role of ADL in this controversy.
ADL is an important organization that is vital to our future - an organization that we need to fight for Jewish rights and to oppose discrimination in all forms, against us and against others. Abe Foxman is an extraordinary and dedicated Jewish public servant, who has served our community with great distinction and to whom we are appropriately grateful. To suggest that ADL is somehow anti-Islam in its outlook is absurd.
But ADL made a very serious error here. At precisely the moment when the American people were teetering, torn between the clamoring voices of bigotry and the sensible voices of calm and reason, ADL entered the argument, urging understanding for those with prejudice in their hearts. It was surely not intentional, but the effect of their statement was to open the floodgates and lend weight and legitimacy to those whose primary concern was not Ground Zero or the victims’ families but, instead, inciting hatred against American Muslims. With all of its experience in the politics and the dynamics of bigotry, ADL should have seen this coming.
This phenomenon, in fact, is the most troubling aspect of the crisis: Most of what we’ve witnessed in recent weeks has nothing whatever to do with location-specific issues related to the World Trade Center site. Most of what we’ve witnessed is an orgy of hatred against Muslims and a concerted effort to exclude a group of our fellow citizens from our neighborhoods and to limit their ability to worship as they choose in America. Don’t misunderstand me: I am not suggesting in any way that everyone who is uncomfortable about the mosque is a bigot; that is surely not the case, and that is why I have responded to the arguments, one by one. But when we listen to the public debate, it is too often true that the voices of bigotry are setting the tone.
As Reform Jews, we need to oppose this bigotry with all of our might. We need to affirm that we will not tolerate efforts to keep Muslims out of our neighborhoods - because we know better than anyone that everywhere is somebody’s neighborhood. If we were silent here, a century of work for interfaith relations would be for naught. If we were silent here, we would be casting aside those fundamental values of tolerance, compassion, understanding, and religious freedom that we have affirmed again and again from our earliest days as Reform Jews.
I am proud to say, however, that we in the Reform Movement have not been silent, and our rabbis and congregations have not been silent. I am proud as well that most of the Jewish community has not been silent either. As Jews, we sympathize with the victims of terror, and we fight religious fanaticism wherever it is found, but we remember, now and always, both the lessons of our own history and what this great country is all about.
The second piece, against the mosque, is a sermon delivered by a rabbi in Atlanta. It has been making the email rounds; at least two people, on both sides of the political aisle, have emailed it to me. I do not know Rabbi Shalom Lewis, but I am with him 100%.
EHR KUMT
First Day of Rosh Hashanah 2010
Many years ago a Chasid used to travel from shtetl to shtetl selling holy books. On one occasion he came to a wealthy land owner and asked if he would like to purchase a book of Torah teachings. The banker agreed and not only purchased the book, but paid for it with a hundred ruble note. He then began to chat with the Chassid and offered him a cigar, taking one also for himself. The Chassid noticed that the banker proceeded to rip a page from the holy book he had just bought and holding it to the open flame on the stove, used the page to light his cigar. The Chassid said not a word but simply drew out from his pocket the 100 ruble note he had just received from the banker, held it over the stove as well and used it to light his cigar.
This simple, little tale reflects a profound divergence of values. Our sympathy clearly and instinctively is not with the banker but with the pious Chassid. None of us would come to the defense of the banker. None of us would claim moral supremacy for the banker. None of us would justify his boorish deed. As the sages of the Talmud would say – “Pshita – It is so obvious.” Sadly though our planet is immersed in perversity where morality is not so manifest – where the book burner is a hero and the pious one, a villain.
I thought long and I thought hard on whether to deliver the sermon I am about to share. We all wish to bounce happily out of shul on the High Holidays, filled with warm fuzzies, ready to gobble up our brisket, our honey cakes and our kugel. We want to be shaken and stirred – but not too much. We want to be guilt-schlepped – but not too much. We want to be provoked but not too much. We want to be transformed but not too much.
I get it, but as a rabbi I have a compelling obligation, a responsibility to articulate what is in my heart and what I passionately believe must be said and must be heard. And so, I am guided not by what is easy to say but by what is painful to express. I am guided not by the frivolous but by the serious. I am guided not by delicacy but by urgency.
We are at war. We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn’t know it from our behavior. During WWII we didn’t refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters. We didn’t call the Gestapo, militants. We didn’t see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors. We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault. We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people. We did not apologize for Dresden, nor for The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein, nor for D-Day.
Evil – ultimate, irreconcilable, evil threatened us and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral clarity and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake. It was not just the Sudetenland, not just Tubruk, not just Vienna, not just Casablanca. It was the entire planet. Read history and be shocked at how frighteningly close Hitler came to creating a Pax Germana on every continent.
Not all Germans were Nazis – most were decent, most were revolted by the Third Reich, most were good citizens hoisting a beer, earning a living and tucking in their children at night. But, too many looked away, too many cried out in lame defense – I didn’t know.” Too many were silent. Guilt absolutely falls upon those who committed the atrocities, but responsibility and guilt falls upon those who did nothing as well. Fault was not just with the goose steppers but with those who pulled the curtains shut, said and did nothing.
In WWII we won because we got it. We understood who the enemy was and we knew that the end had to be unconditional and absolute. We did not stumble around worrying about offending the Nazis. We did not measure every word so as not to upset our foe. We built planes and tanks and battleships and went to war to win….. to rid the world of malevolence.
We are at war… yet too many stubbornly and foolishly don’t put the pieces together and refuse to identify the evil doers. We are circumspect and disgracefully politically correct.
Let me mince no words in saying that from Fort Hood to Bali, from Times Square to London, from Madrid to Mumbai, from 9/11 to Gaza, the murderers, the barbarians are radical Islamists.
To camouflage their identity is sedition. To excuse their deeds is contemptible. To mask their intentions is unconscionable.
A few years ago I visited Lithuania on a Jewish genealogical tour. It was a stunning journey and a very personal, spiritual pilgrimage. When we visited Kovno we davened Maariv at the only remaining shul in the city. Before the war there were thirty-seven shuls for 38,000 Jews. Now only one, a shrinking, gray congregation. We made minyon for the handful of aged worshippers in the Choral Synagogue, a once majestic, jewel in Kovno.
After my return home I visited Cherry Hill for Shabbos. At the oneg an elderly family friend, Joe Magun, came over to me.
“Shalom,” he said. “Your abba told me you just came back from Lithuania.” “Yes,” I replied. “It was quite a powerful experience.” “Did you visit the Choral Synagogue in Kovno? The one with the big arch in the courtyard?” “Yes, I did. In fact, we helped them make minyon.” His eyes opened wide in joy at our shared memory. For a moment he gazed into the distance and then, he returned. “Shalom, I grew up only a few feet away from the arch. The Choral Synagogue was where I davened as a child.”
He paused for a moment and once again was lost in the past. His smile faded. Pain filled his wrinkled face. “I remember one Shabbos in 1938 when Vladimir Jabotinsky came to the shul” (Jabotinsky was Menachim Begin’s mentor – he was a fiery orator, an unflinching Zionist radical, whose politics were to the far right.) Joe continued “When Jabotinsky came, he delivered the drash on Shabbos morning and I can still hear his words burning in my ears. He climbed up to the shtender, stared at us from the bima, glared at us with eyes full of fire and cried out. ‘EHR KUMT. YIDN FARLAWST AYER SHTETL – He’s coming. Jews abandon your city.’ ”
We thought we were safe in Lithuania from the Nazis, from Hitler. We had lived there, thrived for a thousand years but Jabotinsky was right -- his warning prophetic. We got out but most did not.”
We are not in Lithuania. It is not the 1930s. There is no Luftwaffe overhead. No U-boats off the coast of long Island. No Panzer divisions on our borders. But make no mistake; we are under attack – our values, our tolerance, our freedom, our virtue, our land.
Now before some folks roll their eyes and glance at their watches let me state emphatically, unmistakably – I have no pathology of hate, nor am I a manic Paul Revere, galloping through the countryside. I am not a pessimist, nor prone to panic attacks. I am a lover of humanity, all humanity. Whether they worship in a synagogue, a church, a mosque, a temple or don’t worship at all. I have no bone of bigotry in my body, but what I do have is hatred for those who hate, intolerance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated.
Today the enemy is radical Islam but it must be said sadly and reluctantly that there are unwitting, co-conspirators who strengthen the hands of the evil doers. Let me state that the overwhelming number of Muslims are good Muslims, fine human beings who want nothing more than a Jeep Cherokee in their driveway, a flat screen TV on their wall and a good education for their children, but these good Muslims have an obligation to destiny, to decency that thus far for the most part they have avoided. The Kulturkampf is not only external but internal as well. The good Muslims must sponsor rallies in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square, in the UN Plaza, on the Champs Elysee, in Mecca condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent. Thus far, they have not. The good Muslims must place ads in the NY Times. They must buy time on network TV, on cable stations, in the Jerusalem Post, in Le Monde, in Al Watan, on Al Jazeena condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent – thus far, they have not. Their silence allows the vicious to tarnish Islam and define it.
Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil.
I recall a conversation with my father shortly before he died that helped me understand how perilous and how broken is our world; that we are living on the narrow seam of civilization and moral oblivion. Knowing he had little time left he shared the following – “Shal. I am ready to leave this earth. Sure I’d like to live a little longer, see a few more sunrises, but truthfully, I’ve had it. I’m done. Finished. I hope the Good Lord takes me soon because I am unable to live in this world knowing what it has become.”
This startling admission of moral exhaustion from a man who witnessed and lived through the Depression, the Holocaust, WWII, Communist Triumphalism, McCarthyism, Strontium 90 and polio. – Yet his twilight observation was – “The worst is yet to come.” And he wanted out.
I share my father’s angst and fear that too many do not see the authentic, existential threat we face nor confront the source of our peril. We must wake up and smell the hookah.
“Lighten up, Lewis. Take a chill pill, some of you are quietly thinking. You’re sounding like Glen Beck. It’s not that bad. It’s not that real.” But I am here to tell you – “It is.” Ask the member of our shul whose sister was vaporized in the Twin Towers and identified finally by her charred teeth, if this is real or not. Ask the members of our shul who fled a bus in downtown Paris, fearing for their safety from a gang of Muslim thugs, if this is an exaggeration. Ask the member of our shul whose son tracks Arab terrorist infiltrators who target – pizza parlors, nursery schools, Pesach seders, city buses and play grounds, if this is dramatic, paranoid hyperbole.
Ask them, ask all of them – ask the American GI’s we sit next to on planes who are here for a brief respite while we fly off on our Delta vacation package. Ask them if it’s bad. Ask them if it’s real.
Did anyone imagine in the 1920’s what Europe would look like in the 1940’s. Did anyone presume to know in the coffee houses of Berlin or in the opera halls of Vienna that genocide would soon become the celebrated culture? Did anyone think that a goofy-looking painter named Shickelgruber would go from the beer halls of Munich and jail, to the Reichstag as Feuhrer in less than a decade? Did Jews pack their bags and leave Warsaw, Vilna, Athens, Paris, Bialystok, Minsk, knowing that soon their new address would be Treblinka, Sobibor, Dachau and Auschwitz?
The sages teach – “Aizehu chacham – haroeh et hanolad – Who is a wise person – he who sees into the future.” We dare not wallow in complacency, in a misguided tolerance and naïve sense of security.
We must be diligent students of history and not sit in ash cloth at the waters of Babylon weeping. We cannot be hypnotized by eloquent-sounding rhetoric that soothes our heart but endangers our soul. We cannot be lulled into inaction for fear of offending the offenders. Radical Islam is the scourge and this must be cried out from every mountain top. From sea to shining sea, we must stand tall, prideful of our stunning decency and moral resilience. Immediately after 9/11 how many mosques were destroyed in America? None. After 9/11, how many Muslims were killed in America? None. After 9/11, how many anti-Muslim rallies were held in America? None. And yet, we apologize. We grovel. We beg forgiveness.
The mystifying litany of our foolishness continues. Should there be a shul in Hebron on the site where Baruch Goldstein gunned down twenty-seven Arabs at noonday prayers? Should there be a museum praising the U.S. Calvary on the site of Wounded Knee? Should there be a German cultural center in Auschwitz? Should a church be built in the Syrian town of Ma’arra where Crusaders slaughtered over 100,000 Muslims? Should there be a thirteen story mosque and Islamic Center only a few steps from Ground Zero?
Despite all the rhetoric, the essence of the matter can be distilled quite easily. The Muslim community has the absolute, constitutional right to build their building wherever they wish. I don’t buy the argument – “When we can build a church or a synagogue in Mecca they can build a mosque here.” America is greater than Saudi Arabia. And New York is greater than Mecca. Democracy and freedom must prevail.
Can they build? Certainly. May they build? Certainly. But should they build at that site? No -- but that decision must come from them, not from us. Sensitivity, compassion cannot be measured in feet or yards or in blocks. One either feels the pain of others and cares, or does not.
If those behind this project are good, peace-loving, sincere, tolerant Muslims, as they claim, then they should know better, rip up the zoning permits and build elsewhere.
Believe it or not, I am a dues-paying, card carrying member of the ACLU, yet from start of finish, I find this sorry episode disturbing to say the least.
William Burroughs, the novelist and poet, in a wry moment wrote – “After one look at this planet, any visitor from outer space would say – “I want to see the manager.”
Let us understand that the radical Islamist assaults all over the globe are but skirmishes, fire fights, and vicious decoys. Christ and the anti-Christ. Gog U’Magog. The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness; the bloody collision between civilization and depravity is on the border between Lebanon and Israel. It is on the Gaza Coast and in the Judean Hills of the West Bank. It is on the sandy beaches of Tel Aviv and on the cobblestoned mall of Ben Yehuda Street. It is in the underground schools of Sderot and on the bullet-proofed inner-city buses. It is in every school yard, hospital, nursery, classroom, park, theater – in every place of innocence and purity.
Israel is the laboratory – the test market. Every death, every explosion, every grisly encounter is not a random, bloody orgy. It is a calculated, strategic probe into the heart, guts and soul of the West.
In the Six Day War, Israel was the proxy of Western values and strategy while the Arab alliance was the proxy of Eastern, Soviet values and strategy. Today too, it is a confrontation of proxies, but the stakes are greater than East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel in her struggle represents the civilized world, while Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, Iran, Islamic Jihad, represent the world of psychopathic, loathesome evil.
As Israel, imperfect as she is, resists the onslaught, many in the Western World have lost their way displaying not admiration, not sympathy, not understanding, for Israel’s galling plight, but downright hostility and contempt. Without moral clarity, we are doomed because Israel’s galling plight ultimately will be ours. Hanna Arendt in her classic Origins of Totalitarianism accurately portrays the first target of tyranny as the Jew. We are the trial balloon. The canary in the coal mine. If the Jew/Israel is permitted to bleed with nary a protest from “good guys” then tyranny snickers and pushes forward with its agenda.
Moral confusion is a deadly weakness and it has reached epic proportions in the West; from the Oval Office to the UN, from the BBC to Reuters to MSNBC, from the New York Times to Le Monde, from university campuses to British teachers unions, from the International Red Cross to Amnesty International, from Goldstone to Elvis Costello, from the Presbyterian Church to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
There is a message sent and consequences when our president visits Turkey and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and not Israel.
There is a message sent and consequences when free speech on campus is only for those championing Palestinian rights.
There is a message sent and consequences when the media deliberately doctors and edits film clips to demonize Israel.
There is a message sent and consequences when the UN blasts Israel relentlessly, effectively ignoring Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, North Korea, China and other noxious states.
There is a message sent and consequences when liberal churches are motivated by Liberation Theology, not historical accuracy.
There is a message sent and consequences when murderers and terrorists are defended by the obscenely transparent “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
John Milton warned, “Hypocrisy is the only evil that walks invisible.”
A few days after the Gaza blockade incident in the spring, a congregant happened past my office, glanced in and asked in a friendly tone –
“Rabbi. How’re y’ doing?”
I looked up, sort of smiled and replied – “I’ve had better days.”
“What’s the matter? Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?” he inquired.
“Thank you for the offer but I’m just bummed out today and I showed him a newspaper article I was reading.
“Madrid gay pride parade bans Israeli group over Gaza Ship Raid.” I explained to my visitor – “The Israeli gay pride contingent from Tel Aviv was not allowed to participate in the Spanish gay pride parade because the mayor of Tel Aviv did not apologize for the raid by the Israeli military.”
The only country in the entire Middle East where gay rights exist, is Israel. The only country in the entire Middle East where there is a gay pride parade, is Israel. The only country in the Middle East that has gay neighborhoods and gay bars, is Israel.
Gays in the Gaza would be strung up, executed by Hamas if they came out and yet Israel is vilified and ostracized. Disinvited to the parade.
Looking for logic?
Looking for reason?
Looking for sanity?
Kafka on his darkest, gloomiest day could not keep up with this bizarre spectacle and we “useful idiots” pander and fawn over cutthroats, sinking deeper and deeper into moral decay, as the enemy laughs all the way to the
West Bank and beyond.
It is exhausting and dispiriting. We live in an age that is redefining righteousness where those with moral clarity are an endangered, beleaguered specie.
Isaiah warned us thousands of years ago – “Oye Lehem Sheh-Korim Layome, Laila v’Laila, yome – Woe to them who call the day, night and the night, day.” We live on a planet that is both Chelm and Sodom. It is a frightening and maddening place to be.
How do we convince the world and many of our own, that this is not just anti-Semitism, that this is not just anti-Zionism but a full throttled attack by unholy, radical Islamists on everything that is morally precious to us?
How do we convince the world and many of our own that conciliation is not an option, that compromise is not a choice?
Everything we are. Everything we believe. Everything we treasure, is at risk.
The threat is so unbelievably clear and the enemy so unbelievably ruthless how anyone in their right mind doesn’t get it is baffling. Let’s try an analogy. If someone contracted a life-threatening infection and we not only scolded them for using antibiotics but insisted that the bacteria had a right to infect their body and that perhaps, if we gave the invading infection an arm and a few toes, the bacteria would be satisfied and stop spreading
Anyone buy that medical advice? Well, folks, that’s our approach to the radical Islamist bacteria. It is amoral, has no conscience and will spread unless it is eradicated. – There is no negotiating. Appeasement is death.
I was no great fan of George Bush – didn’t vote for him. (By the way, I’m still a registered Democrat.) I disagreed with many of his policies but one thing he had right. His moral clarity was flawless when it came to the War on Terror, the War on Radical Islamist Terror. There was no middle ground – either you were friend or foe. There was no place in Bush’s world for a Switzerland. He knew that this competition was not Toyota against G.M., not the Iphone against the Droid, not the Braves against the Phillies, but a deadly serious war, winner take all. Blink and you lose. Underestimate, and you get crushed.
I know that there are those sitting here today who have turned me off. But I also know that many turned off their rabbis seventy five years ago in Warsaw, Riga, Berlin, Amsterdam, Cracow, Vilna. I get no satisfaction from that knowledge, only a bitter sense that there is nothing new under the sun.
Enough rhetoric – how about a little “show and tell?” A few weeks ago on the cover of Time magazine was a horrific picture with a horrific story. The photo was of an eighteen year old Afghani woman, Bibi Aisha, who fled her abusive husband and his abusive family. Days later the Taliban found her and dragged her to a mountain clearing where she was found guilty of violating Sharia Law. Her punishment was immediate. She was pinned to the ground by four men while her husband sliced off her ears, and then he cut off her nose.
That is the enemy (show enlarged copy of magazine cover.)
If nothing else stirs us. If nothing else convinces us, let Bibi Aisha’s mutilated face be the face of Islamic radicalism. Let her face shake up even the most complacent and naïve among us. In the holy crusade against this ultimate evil, pictures of Bibi Aisha’s disfigurement should be displayed on billboards, along every highway from Route 66 to the Autobahn, to the Transarabian Highway. Her picture should be posted on every lobby wall from Tokyo to Stockholm to Rio. On every network, at every commercial break, Bibi Aisha’s face should appear with the caption – “Radical Islamic savages did this.” And underneath – “This ad was approved by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by Taliban, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, by Islamic Jihad, by Fatah al Islam, by Magar Nodal Hassan, by Richard Reid, by Ahmanijad, by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, by Osama bin Laden, by Edward Said, by The Muslim Brotherhood, by Al Queda, by CAIR.”
“The moral sentiment is the drop that balances the sea” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Today, my friends, the sea is woefully out of balance and we could easily drown in our moral myopia and worship of political correctness.
We peer up into the heavens sending probes to distant galaxies. We peer down into quarks discovering particles that would astonish Einstein. We create computers that rival the mind, technologies that surpass science fiction. What we imagine, with astounding rapidity, becomes real. If we dream it, it does, indeed, come. And yet, we are at a critical point in the history of this planet that could send us back into the cave, to a culture that would make the Neanderthal blush with shame.
Our parents and grandparents saw the swastika and recoiled, understood the threat and destroyed the Nazis. We see the banner of Radical Islam and can do no less.
A rabbi was once asked by his students…. “Rebbi. Why are your sermons so stern?” Replied the rabbi, “If a house is on fire and we chose not to wake up our children, for fear of disturbing their sleep, would that be love? Kinderlach, ‘di hoyz brent.’ Children our house is on fire and I must arouse you from your slumber.”
During WWII and the Holocaust was it business as usual for priests, ministers, rabbis? Did they deliver benign homilies and lovely sermons as Europe fell, as the Pacific fell, as North Africa fell, as the Mideast and South America tottered, as England bled? Did they ignore the demonic juggernaut and the foul breath of evil? They did not. There was clarity, courage, vision, determination, sacrifice, and we were victorious. Today it must be our finest hour as well. We dare not retreat into the banality of our routines, glance at headlines and presume that the good guys will prevail.
Democracies don’t always win. Tyrannies don’t always lose.
My friends – the world is on fire and we must awake from our slumber. “EHR KUMT.”
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