Cowardice, Bravery, & B’shalakh

It’s been over a month since I’ve written.

I got sick (better now!).

But the whole world is sick.

(And the Whole World is sick.)

This past Monday morning I heard about the scathing report that came back from the Justice Department on the Uvalde, Texas school shooting that happened in 2022.

I was disgusted to hear about the utter failure of local police to prevent the deaths of 19 children.

Disgusted to hear again that 400 law enforcement officers stood around for 77 minutes before deciding to go in and help!

Disgusted that children acted like adults, calling repeatedly for help, while the adults outside acted like children, unwilling to go inside and help while they knew what was happening!!!

Disgusted to hear about the cowardice of those police who knew what kind of rifle they were dealing with

—and decided that their own lives were more important than the lives of the children.

Disgusted to hear about the cowardice of our American politicians not to side with what can be the only right thing to do:

—to ban automatic assault rifles of the kind used continuously around the country in these mass shootings.

—to prevent such guns from getting into the hands of those still barely adults—let alone anyone at all.

I am disgusted at the cowardice of these same politicians to even watch the videos of dead children, some of whose faces are blown off.

Because they must know that if they saw the images, they couldn’t live with themselves—

—they couldn’t live with their political decision to allow such things to continue to happen.

—how much they have allowed their hearts to harden for their own political and economic gains.

I’ve been thinking a lot about bravery and cowardice.

Because I’ve also been afraid.

When the report came out about the women and girls that were raped by Hamas, I was too afraid to read about it or see the pictures.

I was too afraid to look at the photos of the beheaded babies.

And I have asked myself, “Do people really need yet one more rabbi talking about Israel/Palestine?”

And, “Do I even have something special and different to say?”

Yet week after week, I listen to sermons that leave me frustrated, angry, and disgusted.

Rabbis too afraid to even mention Palestinian lives lost—if they in fact care.

If they have even a little doubt that Israel is fighting a just war in a just way.

It’s hard to tell by their silence, but the stakes are high.

The risk of being attacked, “canceled” or blacklisted as a rabbi for speaking one’s mind is very high.

People are so angry that they are ready to misinterpret anything you say.

And it’s frightening.

But I’ve been thinking of what is required of me in this moment in time.

I’ve been thinking of how I will feel if I do not speak my conscience.

Isn’t that what I was taught by my Communist upbringing?

To be brave?

I do not want to be a coward.

This week in Torah, the Israelites finally walk to freedom.

They walk through the famous split sea, the “wall of water” to their left and to their right.

As the Egyptians pursue them one last time, Pharaoh’s heart is hard as a rock (it’s God’s fault here).

When the Israelites reach the other side, they sing the famous Song of the Sea/Shirat Hayam, rejoicing at their freedom.

Miriam the Prophetess leads the women in dancing as she plays her timbrel.

Pharaoh and the entire Egyptian army have drowned as the walls of water collapse on them, purposefully preventing them from reaching the Israelites.

Immediately afterwards, as the Israelites begin to roam through the desert, they struggle with their fears around survival.

Will there be enough food and water?

But then God makes manna fall from the sky, and gives Moses the power to draw clean water from a rock.

There is enough for everyone, even double on Fridays for Shabbat!

This is a biblical story that has given Jews the strength to go on in spite of discrimination and oppression over millennia.

It gave enslaved Americans the hope and the strength to continue on.

It gave later generations of Black Americans the courage to continue to demand freedom and equality.

But I think it’s important to note that when the Israelites get to the other side, now free, they do not look back.

They do not see the utter destruction left behind, of bodies floating in the sea.

And perhaps they don’t have the courage.

Perhaps the pain would be too great, after everything they’ve gone through.

Perhaps their own pain is too deep and overwhelming to see the pain of others.

As I thought about it, it seemed similar to the situation in Israel proper at the moment.

On Israeli TV, numbers of dead Palestinians are posted, but no images are shown of the suffering Gazans are experiencing.

What they see on Israeli news is destroyed and empty buildings, but no people, dead or alive.

Much like what happened during the Iraq War, they only read numbers and hear rockets flying.

According to stories I’ve read and heard, Israelis near the border with Gaza have become immune to the sound of rockets flying and bombs falling.

At best, they can only wonder if people are dying on the other side.

On the other hand, they can imagine, and perhaps rejoice secretly, that Hamas is being wiped out with each bomb that falls, and each Israeli soldier dead.

And their own pain is so deep, the situation so dire, that out of self-protection, they close and harden their hearts to the “other” who is suffering.

It takes great courage to look at images of flattened buildings, and especially injured and dead children.

But Jewish tradition teaches that we are never to rejoice at the death of another, even the enemy.

Today, as in the past, Jews worry about the survival of our people.

Today, many Jews cling to Israel as a symbol of the survival of our people.

They see the mass demonstrations in support of Palestinian rights and the rise in antisemitism around the world as proof that we need Israel in order to survive.

But the cost of survival should not be the utter destruction we are seeing in Gaza.

After the Egyptian army drowns in the sea, those who are actively pursuing the Israelites, God doesn’t order the destruction of the civilian Egyptians left alive.

Perhaps because God has already caused so much destruction and suffering, having killed so many baby boys.

Perhaps God realizes in the moment that this time, maybe, just maybe, he’s gone too far.

And that it’s time to stop.

Because war has never, ever, been a path to peace.

Committing injustice against another, even if injustice has been committed against you, has never, ever, been a path towards justice.

It just leaves more pain and destruction in its wake.

I don’t pretend to have the answers.

I just wish us all the courage to soften our hearts and look at the destruction, death and suffering that has happened and is happening.

I wish us the courage to soften our hearts to the suffering of that which is not “ours.”

Only then will we finally find a path to a lasting peace.

And say Amen.