Author: Nicole Feldman

I once had a teacher with a comic strip in their classroom that said “as long as there are tests there will always be prayer in school.” This has always made me laugh because it’s so relatable. Think about all of the times we had our tests returned to us and we sat there saying to ourselves: “please let it be an A, please let it be an A, PLEASE LET IT BE AN A.” As we aged, we turned this truism into many other places like medical tests, phone calls from relatives and so much more.

We quietly utter prayers to ourselves time and again because deep down inside we have fears and think that these moments of “prayer” and reflection could alter the reality sitting there before us. In the תלמוד/Talmud, there is actually great concern about such prayers as they’re an example of a ברכה לבטלה/Beracha L’Vatelah/wasted blessing. The rabbis talk about the idea of praying for a pregnant woman to be carrying a certain gender, or for the screams we hear when we’re not home to not be from our own houses (ברכות נד:ב). All of these are examples of things that have already occurred, the decision has already been made, this is the same thing as our prayers in school or our spontaneous prayers today for all sorts of issues.

These prayers may be “wasted prayer” but we need to lean into the act of prayer a whole lot more. We need to incorporate prayer into our daily lives. There’s a very interesting read on this week’s פרשה/Parsha/portion: עקב/Eikev by the Ben Ish Chai, an Iraqi scholar from 1835 – 1909. In דברים י:י”ב/Deuteronomy 10:12 we read:

וְעַתָּה֙ יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל מָ֚ה ה׳ אֱלֹקֶ֔יךָ שֹׁאֵ֖ל מֵעִמָּ֑ךְ כִּ֣י אִם־לְ֠יִרְאָ֠ה אֶת־ה׳ אֱלֹקֶ֜יךָ לָלֶ֤כֶת בְּכׇל־דְּרָכָיו֙ וּלְאַהֲבָ֣ה אֹת֔וֹ וְלַֽעֲבֹד֙ אֶת־ה׳ אֱלֹקֶ֔יךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ֖ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶֽׁךָ׃

“And now, O Israel, what does your God ה׳ demand of you? Only this: to revere your God ה׳, to walk only in divine paths, to love and to serve your God ה׳ with all your heart and soul.”

This פסוק/verse has been used to talk about everything that’s known to God, aside from fear of God, in many sources. This means God knows everything and all is predetermined, aside from our faith and our belief in God.

For now, let’s look at the viewpoint that the Ben Ish Chai favored which is that the verse needs to be read a bit differently; we should not read it as מה/Mah/what, but as מאה/meah/one hundred. That would mean that the verse would read: “And now, O Israel, your God ה׳ demands 100 of you? Only this: to revere your God ה׳, to walk only in divine paths, to love and to serve your God ה׳ with all your heart and soul.” If we read it that way, the question of what is this “100” is answered right after as fear and love and service are the answer. The Ben Ish Chai, and others, hold that this alludes to the idea that God requires us to each make 100 blessings a day.

This concept seems daunting at first glance but perhaps it doesn’t need to be… perhaps it’s aspirational rather than reality. Perhaps we have an obligation to stretch and reach to be cognizant of God and all our myriad blessings as often as humanly possible. Perhaps we need to find opportunities in our daily lives to connect with ourselves, with those around us, and with God. Perhaps we can rise to the occasion to sanctify the ordinary and make it sacred. Perhaps we can hear these words and find blessing all around us. If God is asking for 100 blessings a day from us, we can and should meet God in the world and find those blessings.

 

 

The watch words of our people are the words of the שמע/Shema and they’re found in this week’s פרשה/Parshah: ואתחנן/VaEtchanan (דברים ו:ד). In the תורה/Torah there are many peculiarities in the way the words and letters are written. Sometimes it’s a matter of how they’re laid out and sometimes it’s the unique way a word is spelled. There are times where whole verses are bracketed with letters, and there are times when letters are extra big or extra small. In the case of the שמע, the verse is bookended by two large letters. In the word שמע the letter “ע” is extra big and in the word אחד the letter “ד” is also extra big. The two words look like this שמע and אחד. While the most realistic reason for this is that there’s a concern that the letters could be mistaken for look-alike letters. A “ד” could be mistaken for a “ר.” An “ע” could be mistaken for a “צ” or perhaps for its partner silent letter “א.” Any of these mistakes would cause a total misread of this major central verse of our people. In the case of the “ד” if it were mistaken as a “ר” the word would not be אחד/Echad/One but rather אחר/Acher/Other. God would not be One but rather God would be “other…”

In looking for other, more poetic, reasons for these enlarged letters, we can find deeper value and meaning. For instance, if we take these two large letters and put them together, “עד,” we would have either “Eid” or “Ad.” “Eid” means witness and “Ad” means forever. Let’s take the word as being “עד” a witness. When we say the שמע, we’re testifying to the unity of God. When we say the שמע, we’re standing with fellow Jews from before us, with us and those who will come after us. When we say the שמע, we’re pledging allegiance to our people and to God. It’s a powerful lesson for all of us to understand.

But what does it actually mean to be a witness? In עשרת הדיברות/Eseret HaDibrot/The Ten Commandments/Statements we learn in the ninth (דברים ה:יז) that we shall not bear false witness. We shall not lie about what other people do. But there’s a deeper false witness and that’s the institution of the עד זומם/Ed Zomem/”Scheming Witness” that’s explained in the תלמוד/Talmud in מסכת מכות/Maseket Makot. It’s there we learn about these extra awful false witnesses that are considered scheming, not because they’re lying about what they saw, but they’re lying because they were not even present at all. When I was learning this part of the תלמוד, we took to calling them non-present scheming witnesses. These extra terrible people are considered bad because they were not even there… they didn’t even show up in the first place. The punishment they receive is whatever punishment they were trying to have placed on the person they were testifying against.

So, when we put this all together, we see a picture of what we as Jews need to do when we live by the שמע… we need to show up and be present. We need to stop phoning in our Jewish lives and begin to show up in person and for real. We need to be active and engaged so we can testify we are, indeed, active and engaged and thus thriving. To say the שמע without actively being a part of our people is to be an עד זומם, a non-present witness that has no ability to testify about any of this at all. The שמע is thus calling on all of us to be good upstanding witnesses about God, the תורה, the Jewish people and about our relationship to all the pillars of our religion.

This past week I was looking through a drawer at home and came upon a piece of paper that was folded up. I opened the paper and discovered the last birthday letter my dad wrote to me. He had typed it out as his penmanship was not so good and had handed it to me on our birthday (we shared the same one) not knowing it was the last time we would celebrate together. I sat on the floor dumfounded and amazed. I thought of how he must have felt while he wrote the words. I wondered if he was thinking that it may be the last time he would write me a card on our birthday. I wondered if he was crying when he wrote it or if he was smiling. I wondered all of this, and I treasured that moment sitting there and reading these words from my dad to me.

As Jews, we have a tradition called ethical wills. The idea is that we sit down and write our story, our ethics and our values and bequeath those items to our loved ones. This is not some new age idea but something that’s preserved from generations back. While we might see the origin of this practice in יעקב’s/YaAkov’s/Jacob’s assembling his sons and speaking to them on his deathbed, the better origin is the entirety of the book of דברים/Devarim/Deuteronomy, which we begin this week. For some time, the Jewish People have held the belief that the entire book of דברים is משה’s/Moshe’s/Moses’ ethical will to our people. It’s filled with his parting words and his memories. He retells our story to our people and recaps many of the מצות/Mitzvot in this final book of the תורה/Torah. It is, in fact, the origin of the ethical will. I never had the chance to sit with my dad and ask him to write his ethical will. I regret that lost opportunity. This letter I rediscovered allowed me the beautiful opportunity to connect and reconnect and learn from my dad in a way I didn’t know I could.

The great Sephardic scholar Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon, who was famous for being a translator of Jewish texts from Arabic into Hebrew, and for being a physician, wrote of the most famous ethical wills. In his will he wrote: “Avoid bad society, make thy books thy companions, let thy book-cases and shelves be thy gardens and pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. If thy soul be satiate and weary, change from garden to garden, from furrow to furrow, from sight to sight. Then will thy desire renew itself, and thy soul be satisfied with delight.” He wrote a great deal about the importance of books and of learning. This excerpt from his will recalls to me the days of going through my dad’s belongings. His library was the most daunting task. His books were sacred to him and I’ve kept many of them. In fact, we now have a bookcase in our home library filled just with his books. Having been raised in that mentality, books are immensely sacred to me.

We are the “people of the book”, and as such, our books are not only holy, they’re also our lifeline and our birthright. At the root of our people is our relationship with our central book, the תנ”ך/TaNaKh or the Jewish Bible. We focus on the תורה or the Five Books of Moses most of the time, but the תנ”ך is composed of 24 books. This Saturday night and Sunday morning, we’ll read the words of the saddest and darkest, איכה/Eicha/Lamentations. This book, which was written about the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE by the Babylonians, begins with the profound question of איך/Eich/How. How did this happen? How tragic is this? How profound is this loss? How do we move forward? How??? How??? How??? In our grief, we’re often stuck with questions like “who,” “what,” “where” and “when.” We are often stuck with the hurt of the “why.”

It’s when we begin to unravel the “how” that we begin to grieve and we begin to live. The “how” is not the mechanics of how someone died, or how a tragic event occurred, but it’s the “how” of how are we going to move forward? It is the “how” of how did someone live their life and how can it still impact us. It’s the “how” of how do we continue to find meaning in a world that’s so painful for us to live in. Our answers to these, and other questions, are found in the words and testaments of those who came before us. The answers are found when we look for our loved ones in all we do. Our grief is not overcome by this but rather managed. Our grief is still immense and still unresolved, but when we find our loved ones lives as a guiding light, we find ourselves able to see HOW we can continue to go on.

This שבת/Shabbat, we’ll be observing the second of three שבתות/Shabbatot/Shabbats that are part of the three weeks of mourning for the Jewish People. Each summer, we grieve and mourn as a collective. Certainly, each of us has a different take on what we’re mourning. Certainly, it’s clear that grief is an immensely personal endeavor, but we’re also intimately aware of the need and power of communal grieving. It’s been less than two years since we were thrown into this continuing cycle of the stages of grief with the terror and savagery unleashed on our people on October 7, 2023. To add to our grief, we were met not with open arms, love and support, but with condemnations, antisemitism and violence around the world and here at home. We witnessed too many people celebrating the “freedom fighters” who terrorized, maimed, raped, mutilated, kidnapped and murdered people simply because they were Jews or associated with Jews.

Every time we feel we can move forward in our grief, something comes along and pulls us backward. Two employees of the Israeli Embassy were murdered at a Jewish Museum in Washington DC. The Jewish governor of Pennsylvania had his house vandalized on Passover. People in Colorado who were running to raise awareness for the plight of the hostages were attacked with crude Molotov cocktails. These are not the totality of what has happened. We’re all too familiar with the plight of our college students. We’ve seen too many demonstrations across the US and the world against us and our homeland, and it’s been awful. Just this week on the Isle of Rhodes, a place many of our members trace their roots to, Israeli youth were harassed and chased at knifepoint by people who claimed to be supporters of the Palestinians. Please read the Times of Israel article here https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-teens-say-anti-israel-mob-armed-with-knives-attacked-them-on-rhodes/ to learn more about the attack. This was on the heels of a cruise ship from Israel that wasn’t allowed to dock in Greece because of protests against Israel. There’s so much to grieve, to throw our hands up about, and to wonder why this is how things are.

The rabbis of the Talmud and other texts made clear that while the outside enemy, the Romans and before them the Babylonians, were responsible for the destruction, but that we, the Jewish People, needed to see ourselves not as blameless but as having work to do. The rabbis blamed us for having been weak, too enmeshed in infighting, too committed to a black and white worldview, and so much more. The blessing they gave us was to allow us to grow and change because of the destruction. They enabled us to see that we too have agency and need to be aware of how we use our agency.

We must mourn the terror victims and all our people who’ve had their worlds upended. We must grieve the loss of life and innocence, and the pain we’re in. We must not give an inch to the perpetrators or pardon anything they’ve done to our people. At the same time, we must be willing to mourn the cost of being Jewish and having a Jewish State. We must mourn that our people are the ones in charge who are making hard choices that have awful consequences for others. (This is not to say the actions aren’t necessary, but that the outcomes of those actions have an effect, and we should feel a sense of bewilderment and grief because the outcome for others is so awful). We must mourn that sometimes we hear words from people on our side, and from our leaders, that don’t sit well with us.

We all know words aren’t empty and meaningless. In this week’s פרשה/portion: מטות – מסעי/Matot Masei, there’s a great deal of information about oaths and the need not to take them, and when they are taken, the need to follow through on them. Why is this so important? Because words have meaning and value and cannot just be rattled off. The Talmud goes to great lengths to discourage people from taking oaths, because in the end words have meaning and it’s dangerous to allow words to just be thrown around.

We mourn all these things. We mourn a world that just won’t let us be who we are. We mourn a world that doesn’t want to allow us the basic rights all other people have. We mourn our people who have been lost or have had their lives irreparably damaged. We mourn the number of people who died defending our country. We mourn the hurt and destruction that’s been necessitated in our defense of our homeland. We mourn the words used by some of our leaders in defending our people. We mourn that with independence, comes a great deal of hard choices. We mourn that the world simply doesn’t look the way we wish it did.

A number of months ago I attended an interfaith clergy meeting and experienced my worst nightmare. I came with an open heart and open mind. I came for dialogue and with the hopes of building bridges. As the meeting went on, somehow the subject changed to college campuses and to Israel and the conflict. I took a deep breath and got ready for what would come next. Finally, I said “this is getting uncomfortable” out of exasperation and that had no impact on the room. After I held up the white flag, one of the ministers in the room explained that her friend works in Gaza at a hospital where “Hamas ‘supposedly’ hides.” Another minister explained he took classes on this in seminary and that a rabbi and teacher in the seminary explained that “the creation of the State of Israel made the Jewish people a violent people.” He also told me originally religious-minded Jews were not in favor of the creation of the modern state of Israel. Thankfully, the meeting ended shortly after. I stood my ground the entire meeting and never gave them an inch. Before leaving, they asked me if I would be open to coming back and I said the following: “so long as you agree that the Jewish people have the right to a nation on their ancestral homeland then perhaps I will…”. Unfortunately, they didn’t answer my question.

Something that’s come back time and time again when I recall that meeting is the false charge that Israel made the Jewish people violent. I’ll give them a bit of ground on that charge, but not for their intended reason. Prior to 1948, the Jewish people were perpetually without defense. The Jewish people were the great eternal wanderers and had no place to call home. Prior to 1948, we were susceptible to expulsions, inquisitions, crusades, pogroms, othering, genocide and so much more. Prior to 1948, we had no means to defend ourselves and so the image of the helpless Jew was the predominant way we were seen throughout the world. When we began to return to our homeland, we built means of self defense in the form of militias, namely the Irgun and the Haganah. These two groups differed in tactics and in philosophy but at the core was a deep conviction that we needed to defend ourselves. In May of 1948 when the State of Israel came into creation, these militias were merged to form צה”ל/TzaHaL/the IDF. We chose the name IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, to assert that our army existed for the sole purpose of defense and not to make war. One can assert that this is propaganda, but when we dig deep into history, we find few if any cases of Israel and the IDF initiating wars with its enemies. The IDF has always maintained a defensive posture and it’s for this reason that Israeli soldiers have never been deployed anywhere other than in their own neighborhood of the Middle East. We’re not an army that makes war but rather one that ends them with the sacred act of defending our people.

I’m rehashing this conversation right now in response to this week’s פרשה/parsha/portion: פינחס/Pinchas. It’s one of the few פרשה’s to be named for a person, in this case פינחס. But it’s a bit troubling to understand the praise of פינחס because his action was one of violence. At the end of last week’s פרשה we find this episode of rebellion of our people. The details don’t matter but what does matter is that פינחס acted as a zealot and put an end to the rebellion through violently killing. The question that needs to be addressed is why does God commend him at the beginning of this week’s פרשה? In the תלמוד/Talmud we find the rabbis had issues with this as he took matters into his own hands. They question the greatness because the people he killed could have killed him in self-defense and they wouldn’t have been guilty of anything. It asserts that a בית דין/Beit Din/Court would not have permitted this.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explained in his book Morality that this was a case of morality and national need being in conflict. פינחס acted on our national need and cast morality to the side. God seemed to not take notice of this when God gave פינחס the ברית שלום/Brit Shalom/Covenant of Peace in this week’s פרשה. God seems to be praising the actions rather than condemning them but perhaps that’s not right. Perhaps God saw that this action prevented worse things from happening. Perhaps we need to look at the word שלום as being the specific covenant that was being made. פינחס needed something to counteract his rage. He needed something to assert that this is just not how a society can be run. We need to act with a court without zealotry. Perhaps the ברית שלום was to teach פינחס, and the rest of us, that we all need to pursue the peaceful course at any time that we can.

Where does this leave us with regards to the meeting I attended, and the charges lobbed against Israel and us? Many of us have posed for pictures with Israeli Soldiers. Many of us have IDF shirts and hats we proudly wear. At our summer camps we do army activities where we do “basic training” for the IDF. Many of us of send money to help Israeli soldiers and their work. Is this us glorifying violence? Is this us being a violent people? The answer is a resounding no. We don’t wear this clothing and show this support because we want the army to harm other people. We don’t have this affinity because of some violent urge within ourselves. We have this love and adoration for the sole reason that we know our history of being defenseless and we know what it means to be Jewish in the world today. We know we have no choice but to defend ourselves. Today we take pride in knowing we don’t seek war and don’t want war but we’ll be able to hold our own in any war brought our way. Our affinity for the IDF and for Jewish self-defense is not a sign of a violent people but a sign of a people who, like all people, demand the world respect our presence and our existence. We demand that we have the same rights as the rest of humanity, and we’ll defend that right. That’s not a violent declaration but one of resolve and one of love for our people.

Carrie, Galit and I arrived back home this week from our month at camp. Ayelet will be there for another month since it’s her last year as a camper. I want to thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to go to camp each summer. It might sound crazy to have a rabbi in his mid-forties spend four weeks each summer at a summer camp, but it’s so important. Each summer, I’m immersed in a laboratory of Jewish life. Each summer, I get to experiment and learn new approaches to Jewish prayer, teaching and observance. Each summer, I get to connect with colleagues and deeply connected lay leaders. Over our time together we brainstorm, problem-solve, and explore how to make our communities stronger and more connected. Each summer I have the chance to learn and prepare for the upcoming year. I spend a great deal of time at camp strategizing for my year of speaking and teaching. In addition to all these professional gains I amass each summer, I’m also able to spend a great deal of time on my own growth as a person and as a Jew. I get to work on my spirituality. I get to learn for the sake of learning. I get to connect with friends. I get to create art, climb the climbing wall, hike, swim and more. I also have the opportunity to spend meaningful and irreplaceable time with Carrie and Galit. And while Ayelet is in a cabin each summer, I get to see her every day and spend precious moments with her as she continues to grow and develop into her own Jewish person. All I can say are two important words: thank you.

In פרשת חקת/Parshat Chukat we witness the beginning of the end of a legacy. Towards the beginning of the פרשה/Parsha we see the death of מרים/Miriam and towards the end we see the death of אהרן/Aaron. The three siblings, מרים, אהרן, and משה/Moshe had been leading our people since the days of our enslavement. This week, we start to see the beginning of that ending. With the death of מרים at the beginning, and the death of אהרן at the end, we no longer had them to lead us. In-between their deaths, we also learn of the eventual demise of משה. Our ancestors were complaining about not having water to drink and God told משה and אהרן to talk to a rock to get water from it. Instead of doing that, משה struck the rock twice with his staff. God told משה that because he didn’t have enough faith in God, he would not get to cross into the Promised Land. With that, we learn of the transition of our leadership from one generation to the next. The proper way to transition is displayed when there’s a public transfer of the power of the High Priest from אהרן to his son. This act is necessary to show that we are part of a continuing chain of tradition and legitimacy.

Each year at camp I witness the continuation of this process of generation to generation. We continue to transmit our legacy from one generation to the next. I watch as all my fears of the future are abated by the full display of joyful Judaism that Jewish Summer Camp gives us. My fears are brushed to the side each year when the campers return and say “hi Rabbi Josh” and show me I’m making an impact and transmitting my legacy to them. Each summer I’m reminded we have a bright and sunny (pardon the pun) future in our youth. We always have this same opportunity with or without summer camp. Each of us has the chance to transmit our legacies to future generations. Each of us has the opportunity to pass along the gifts we’ve inherited, or chosen, to those coming after us. This is the greatest and most attainable form of eternal life and one we all must seize the chance to have.

Click here for a video message from Rabbi Hearshen.

Wilderness and Desert are the two English words we use to translate the word במדבר/BaMidbar. Well, more accurately, in the wilderness or in the desert. Why do the Israelites spend so long wandering in the desert or the wilderness? Why does our history begin in a place that lacked so much? It’s as if we began our story with a blank canvas and have painted it ever since.

This week, we begin the fourth book of the תורה/Torah called במדבר. Again, our story only happens when we’re in a place that we have to fill with experiences and meaning. Our story only begins when we’re in a place where we can transform without others. It’s in the wilderness where the magic happened.

Sunday night we’ll celebrate the transformational moment in the wilderness where we went from being newly freed former slaves to a people in a covenantal relationship with God. We’ll stand together as we receive the תורה anew. As Jews, the תורה “wasn’t” given, but rather it “is” given. The תורה is continuously given to the Jewish people on a daily, minute by minute basis. Revelation is continual and eternal. While we celebrate the giving of the תורה on שבועות/Shavuot, it needs to be seen as the beginning of Revelation, but not the entirety of Revelation. All of this took place at an ordinary mountain in the wilderness.

I’m often asked why I spend a month every summer at a summer camp. I’m asked about why I spend “time-off” working. The answer is there’s no greater laboratory of Judaism than Jewish summer camp. There’s no better place to experience the Jewish People and Judaism than summer camp. To begin with, we transplant city dwellers into the wilderness. Every day we’re with the trees. Every night we’re with the stars. Our services are held in spaces not designed by humans, but decorated by God. We have the opportunity to experience the closest thing to the wilderness that our ancestors were in when our people formed.

Last summer, the holiday of שבועות/Shavuot fell a bit later than normal and this meant we celebrated Shavuot at camp. We were concerned about what this would mean for the campers and their fun and enjoyment, but what we actually discovered was that it was an enormous opportunity for all of us: campers and staff. On the first day of שבועות last year when we arrived at the תורה reading, I led all the campers up the mountain at camp for the תורה reading. We ascended the mountain to receive the תורה and it was majestic. Not everyone appreciated my creative flourish, but those of us who leaned into the experience were blessed with a new way of celebrating שבועות.

As I prepare to leave for my month at camp, I want to remind you that I’m just two hours away and continue to be available by email. I won’t be able to respond as quickly as I’d like to, but I will work my way through my emails as the days move along. As summer begins, I want to encourage all of us to take time outside to connect with the wilderness. Connect with the sunrises and sunsets. Connect with the stars and trees. Connect with the world as God created it, and through the creation, connect with the Creator.

Living in the Atlanta Jewish community, we’re blessed to have access to the incredible services of the Consulate General of Israel Southeast USA. Whenever we need anything at all, we make one phone call or email and it magically happens. The Consul General, Anat Sultan-Dadon, and her staff have been so incredible to OVS and the broader Jewish community. We’ve had the Consul General at numerous programs, and when she was unavailable, they sent other high placed officials to join us.

As Jews, we recognize from our earliest memories that our experiences in America are not the same as those of our non-Jewish neighbors. We recognize the risks we take when wearing Jewish identifying jewelry that no one wearing a cross would deal with. We know what it means to show up to a synagogue or Jewish institution and wait to be buzzed in or go through security screening. The same is seldom true of our non-Jewish neighbors. We know what it means to forego many items in our institutional budgets because of the excessive costs of security we must have. I’ll again assert that few of our neighbors and their organizations deal with this in their budgeting process. To be a Jew is a gift and it’s also a constant realization that the age-old hatred called antisemitism is, has always been, and will likely always be, part of our national experience.

Last night before going to bed, I was sitting at my computer trying to figure out an article for this week. I went to a news website to clear my head and there was the report that there had been a shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum. As the hours moved on, we learned the two victims had been murdered at close range. As the hours moved on, we learned the two victims were staff members of the Israeli Embassy. As the hours moved on, we also learned they were a couple, preparing to build a life together beginning with an upcoming trip to Jerusalem to get engaged. As the hours moved on, we learned the name of the murderer who came from Chicago to kill Jews. As the hours moved on we found out he waited for police to arrive while he was being comforted by the unknowing attendees of the event and when the police arrived he admitted to being the shooter and that he did it for Gaza and Free Palestine.

We’ve all attended events with staff members from our local consulate. We’ve walked through the security. We have all shaken hands. We always know that security is not just there as some sort of prop, but are there to protect since we are all targets. The security that’s present is there because our world has been unable to shake its oldest hatred. It’s been unable to come to terms with the Jewish people having its own country in our ancestral homeland. The world has yet to be able to come to terms with our people who refuse to accept the world as it is and demand that it be better.

As the hours will move on, they’ll turn into days and those days will turn to weeks, and then months, and then years. Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim won’t be here with us as that time moves on. They won’t be able to marry, they won’t have children, and they won’t watch those children grow up. Their families will grieve and mourn and wonder why. Their families will be inconsolable and they’ll demand answers. The world will move forward and Sarah and Yaron will tragically become a political fight. They’ll lose their personhood and become symbols of what hatred and violence has brought upon us. We all must know better. We all must know the people who work on our behalf as workers for the State of Israel. Each one of them is a person. Each one of them has a name. Each one of them is someone who’s bravely defending what we love.

May we never lose sight of who these beautiful people were and who they are. May we never accept the enemy’s false narrative that Israel is the evil murderer. May we never allow their hatred to move us from our mission of being a light unto the world and driving away darkness. And may we always hold on to the greatness of hope and never give into despair.

It must have been very difficult to be a prince. Think about all of the immense amount of wealth you would have had. Think of all of the privileges you would have been given. It must have been so hard. There’s a reason that, with the advent of enlightenment, we began to see the diminishment of the monarchy and all their power and privilege. It was a corrupted system that reeked of unfairness and inequality.

One not so well-known aspect of life for some princes was the institution of the whipping boy. When a prince misbehaved, it was forbidden to harm him because he was… well… the prince. So there needed to be a stand-in in his place and that was the “whipping boy”. This unfortunate child would be beaten/whipped in place of the naughty prince. This way whenever the prince misbehaved, there would be corporal punishment, just not inflicted on him. One should wonder if seeing the other boy being hurt caused the prince any pain at all. One should question if the prince’s behavior was bettered by the fear that another could be harmed in his place.

The institution of the whipping boy has an antecedent in this weeks פרשה/parsha/portion in the form of the scapegoat. The ritual involved two goats being placed before the כהן גדול/Kohen Gadol and he would designate one of them for God and the other for עזאזל/Azazel. The first goat, designated for God, would be sacrificed and its blood was sprinkled. The second goat, designated for עזאזל, had the sins of all of the people of Israel confessed upon it and was then sent off into the wilderness where it was presumed to be killed in some way. The idea was that the goat for עזאזל absorbed all of our misdeeds and took them away from us. The goat suffered on our behalf. The goat was the “scapegoat.” This ritual is recalled each year during the מוסף/Musaf service on יום כיפור/Yom Kippur when we describe all the intricacies of the day. The purpose of יום כיפור is to earn atonement from our sins and find a way to move forward in a better way. This ancient ritual worked for our ancestors, but might leave us feeling a sense of lacking in current times. Today we’re deeply connected to personal responsibility and we understand people owning up to their actions and not pinning the blame on others, human or otherwise.

It’s a bit ironic that our faith birthed the concept of the scapegoat since we as a people have become the eternal international scapegoat. In every generation it seems we are there for the world to blame for all that’s wrong and bad in this world. When diseases ran rampant, we were to blame for the illness. When money was in short supply, we were to blame for the failures of businesses and banks, not to mention the governments. Following the crushing defeat of The German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, The Ottoman Empire, and all their allies in World War I, the allies leveraged an enormous amount of reparations upon the defeated entities. These reparations were catastrophic to the defeated and led to enormous problems for all of their citizens. In Germany, they found a group to blame for all of their pain: the Jews. Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists rose to power by selling this version of scapegoating. It wasn’t Germany and its allies’ fault they were suffering, it was the fault of the Jews and their allies. This lie led to the murder of six million Jews. It led to the suffering inflicted on the world with World War II and the deaths of 54 million people. This was because people couldn’t learn to look inside themselves for what was lacking and instead looked outside to place blame.

It would be wishful thinking to believe scapegoating disappeared with the end of World War II and the Holocaust. Unfortunately, we remain the convenient scapegoat around the world for all that’s wrong. Ask the college students demonstrating against us. It’s not about those suffering in Asia, South America or Africa. It’s only about the Gaza Strip. It’s not about Hamas stealing humanitarian aid for themselves or extorting Gazans to get some that they’re selling. It’s about us trying to end this war. It’s not about the hostages being tortured and killed, it’s about us trying to bring them home. Israel has become the new scapegoat. Well, perhaps we never stopped.

One day we’ll find a way to look inside of ourselves and our families and our communities and our countries. We’ll find what needs to change and be made better, rather than looking at others and blaming them. One of these days we’ll find ways to improve ourselves rather than denigrating those in our midst.

Bob Dylan wrote “Neighborhood Bully” in 1982 following the 1982 “Operation Peace for the Galilee” that left Israel occupying the south of Lebanon. The invasion took place to stop the constant attacks across the border. Israel had no choice but to take the fight to the enemy to allow for Israelis in the north to live in safety and peace. The invasion ultimately had many problems, but it was started because Israel needed to be able to defend itself from the terrorists all around it. The words of this song could have been written today because the world has learned nothing from the past. They still say “he just likes to cause war” as if Israel is the cause of all problems in the world. Israel remains the “boogyman” for the world to blame for everything. Maybe someday this song will become obsolete. Please click here to hear the song.

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man

His enemies say he’s on their land

They got him outnumbered about a million to one

He got no place to escape to, no place to run

He’s the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive

He’s criticized and condemned for being alive

He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin

He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in

He’s the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land

He’s wandered the earth an exiled man

Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn

He’s always on trial for just being born

He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized

Old women condemned him, said he should apologize

Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad

The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad

He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, the chances are against it, and the odds are slim

That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him

‘Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back

And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac

He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, he got no allies to really speak of

What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love

He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied

But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side

He’s the neighborhood bully.

Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace

They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease

Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep

They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep

He’s the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone

Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon

He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand

In bed with nobody, under no one’s command

He’s the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon

No contract that he signed was worth that what it was written on

He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth

Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health

He’s the neighborhood bully.

What’s anybody indebted to him for?

Nothing, they say. He just likes to cause war

Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed

They wait for this bully like a dog waits for feed

He’s the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars?

Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?

Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill

Running out the clock, time standing still

Neighborhood bully.