Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine

Rosh Ha-Shanah sermon presented by Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah to Sukkat Shalom on 3rd October 2024 / 1st Tishrei 5785.

We have gathered here this Rosh Ha-Shanah morning to mark the New Year for years. What will the New Year bring? We are concerned about the future for so many reasons – not least, because of the ongoing catastrophe of October 7 and its aftermath. But before we can look forward, we must look back, reflect on the past year, and consider the legacy of past years. Engaging in this process also includes interrogating the most precious and sacred legacy bequeathed to us, the Torah. I will turn to our Rosh Ha-Shanah portion in a moment. But first, let me begin with an experience I had ten years ago now.

In 2014, after a SodaStream Store opened in Brighton – SodaStream being an Israeli eco-company with its factory in the West Bank – the local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign staged a picket. Inevitably, a section of the local Jewish community decided to undertake a counter-protest. One Shabbat afternoon, after finishing my teaching, I went into the store to find out how the staff were dealing with the protesters. Doing so, involved walking through the two camps; the one waving Palestinian flags, the other waving Israeli flags. After I left, I decided on a strategy: to step between the binary. And so, I ordered both flags. I also created a placard for wearing front and back, with the words Anti-Israel, Anti-Palestine, crossed out in favour of Pro-Israel, Pro-Palestine. The following Shabbat, I returned to the EcoStream store, where I attempted to speak to both sets of protesters. I'm sure you can guess the reaction of both sides. Those bearing Israeli flags, could only see that I was holding a Palestinian flag. Those holding Palestinian flags, could only see that I was holding an Israeli flag. 

I love Israel, which I first visited as a 23-year-old in 1978, and I'm also deeply committed to the Jewish values of justice and peace. So, for me, there is no contradiction between being pro-Israel and pro-Palestine. On the contrary. From my perspective as a Jew who has dedicated their life to the Jewish people, taken Jewish ethical teachings to heart, and does what I can to practice what I preach, being pro-Israel involves being pro-Palestine. We read in the book of Deuteronomy: Tzedek, Tzedek tirdof, ‘Justice, Justice you shall pursue’ (16:20). Justice for Israel and Justice for Palestine. Pursuing Justice, demands acknowledging the right of both sibling peoples to be treated justly. 

Sibling peoples. The tragic irony of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that there are so many similarities in the historical experiences of the Jewish and Palestinian peoples; both marginalised and persecuted, both exiled and dispersed. Of course, the establishment of the modern State of Israel empowered the Jewish people, while the Palestinians’ longing for self-determination continues to be thwarted by an Israeli government that is determined to crush their aspirations. The as yet unresolved conflict between sibling peoples goes back to Abraham. In the Torah portion we read this morning from Genesis 21, the two sons of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac are separated from one another because Abraham’s wife, Sarah, is determined that Ishmael, the product of the union of Abraham with her Egyptian servant, Hagar, ‘shall not inherit with my son, with Isaac’ (21:10b). Abraham’s sons divided because inheritance cannot be shared.

But this is not the whole story. When God told Abraham, to listen to Sarah's voice, ‘because in Isaac seed shall be called to you’ (21:12b), God added: ‘and also the son of the slave woman I will place as a nation because he is your seed’ (21:13). Two sons of Abraham. Two inheritances. And Ishmael’s mother, Hagar also received this Divine message. We first meet Hagar in Genesis 16, when unable to bear children, Sarah – at that time called Sarai – implored Abraham – at that time called Abram – ‘go, I pray you, to my servant; it may be that I am builded up through her’ (16:2b). The first recorded surrogacy arrangement went disastrously wrong. Once Hagar was pregnant, Sarai was jealous of her and treated her harshly. Hagar’s response was to flee to the wilderness. There a messenger of God found her by a fountain of water, and spoke with her. Enquiring why she was there, Hagar told the Divine messenger that she was in flight from her mistress. The Divine messenger then urged her to return, telling her that her seed would be greatly multiplied, and that she would bear a son and call him Ishmael, ‘because the Eternal has heard your affliction’ (16:11). Ishmael in Hebrew, Yishma-Eil, means ‘God shall hear’. These promises are repeated in an abbreviated form in our Rosh Ha-ShanahTorah portion Genesis 21, where we read that when banished with her son to the wilderness, a Divine Messenger called to Hagar from heaven, and told her that God ‘has heard the voice of the lad where he is’ (21:17b), and ‘will make him a great nation’ (21:18b).

So, two brothers divided in order to ensure that the inheritance due to Isaac as the son of Abraham and Sarah was not shared. But Ishmael was also due an inheritance. Given that the Torah relates the account of our beginnings as a people, it is remarkable that Hagar is given a voice, and that the text makes it clear that, as Abraham’s son, Ishmael was also the heir of a Divine inheritance. But this is indeed what the text says. And it's not only a story in the Torah that is read as part of the annual Torah-reading cycle. Genesis 21 is the traditional portion for the first day of Rosh Ha-Shanah. Liberal Jews only mark one day, so Genesis 22, traditionally the portion for the second day, is often the Liberal portion of choice, although nowadays, many congregations read the two chapters in alternate years. Liberal practice apart, Genesis 21 is read today in orthodox congregations the world over, including by fundamentalist Jewish settlers on the West Bank. Determined to keep what they understand to be ‘Biblical’ Israel for themselves, and seeing themselves as ‘Torah-true Jews’, fundamentalist settlers ignore not only the ethical teachings of the Torah, they also ignore those parts of the story of our ancestors that don't reinforce their supremacist narrative. Of course, this has been the situation since Israel's victory in the 1967 ‘Six Day War’, and the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank of the Jordan fifty-seven years ago. But now we are in the midst of the crisis precipitated by the Hamas massacres in southern Israel on October 7. That horrifying assault which included the murder of 1200 people and 250 more being taken into captivity into Gaza, has left Israelis deeply traumatised, and the retaliatory war that followed, continues to have devastating consequences for the people of Gaza. And not only for Palestinians in Gaza. The tightening of the IDF grip in the West Bank combined with an escalation in settler violence has made the lives of all Palestinians unbearable.

We all know this, of course. But where will it lead? Separated as children, the Torah relates that Isaac and Ishmael did meet again. We read in Genesis 25 (8-10): 

Abraham expired, and died in a good old age, full of years; and was gathered to his people / Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him in the cave of a Machpelah, in the field of Ephron, the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre. / The field which Abraham purchased from the children of Heit; there was Abraham buried, and Sarah his wife.

Sarah died first, then Abraham. Do we have to wait for the passing of another generation before steps are taken back from the brink and towards a just and peaceful resolution? How many more people have to die?

One of the ways I try to remain positive in the face of the ongoing catastrophe is by looking beyond the abyss of the present to a possible future in which a confederation of states, Israel, Palestine and Jordan, work together for their mutual benefit. A few years ago, I attended a New Israel Fund breakfast meeting with representatives from Friends of the Earth Middle East, an organisation that encompasses Israel, Palestine and Jordan, and is based in Tel Aviv, Bethlehem, and Amman, respectively. One of the major initiatives of Friends of the Earth Middle East is around water, and indeed, the organisation regards climate change with its attendant water shortages as a major contributor to regional insecurity. Water knows no national boundaries. With the river Jordan reduced to a trickle, all three nations face the threat of drought with apocalyptic consequences, if they don't cooperate together to conserve and share water.

The philosopher Martin Buber, best known for his book, I and Thou, was passionately committed to a version of Zionism in which both peoples thrived on the land. Buber articulated the essential equality between the Israeli and Palestinian claims to the land in an open letter that he wrote to Mahatma Gandhi in 1939 before the outbreak of the Second World War. Buber wrote to Gandhi in response to Gandhi’s position that ‘Palestine belongs to the Arabs.’ Let me quote from Buber's letter:

I belong to a group of people who from the time Britain conquered Palestine have not ceased to strive for the concluding of a genuine peace between Jew and Arab.

By a genuine peace we inferred and still infer that both peoples together should develop the land without the one imposing its will on the other…. We considered it a fundamental point that in this case two vital claims are opposed to each other, two claims of a different nature and a different origin which cannot objectively be pitted against one another and between which no objective decision can be made as to which is just, which unjust... 

… We considered and still consider it our duty to understand and to honor the claim which is opposed to ours and to endeavor to reconcile both claims. 

Eighty-five years have passed since Buber wrote that letter. Despair, generated by the horrors of October 7, and the devastation wrought on Gaza and its people by Israel's ongoing war against Hamas, may make us feel that it could take another eighty-five years, at least, for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples to commit to a plan that is capable of reconciling their mutual claims to the land ‘between the river and the sea’. But today is Rosh Ha-Shanah. A new year has begun, and we are challenged to revive the spirit of Hope within us. The early rabbis regarded Rosh Ha-shanah as harat olam, the ‘birthday of the world’.  Indeed, the new year date, 5785, takes us back to the birth of the world on the basis of the chronologies in the Book of Genesis. Of course, the world did not come into being 5785 years ago, but the fact that we begin our calendar, not with our first ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, but rather with Creation, reminds us that our God is, as the traditional blessing formula puts it, Melech ha-olam, ‘Sovereign of the universe’; the One God of all peoples. May the universalist message of Rosh Ha-Shanah inspire us with a vision of a future of justice and peace, so that we may continue the work of tikkun olam, repair of the world, in the year that lies ahead. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah