This week we read the double portion, בהר בחקותי / Behar–Behukotai, concluding the book of ויקרא / Vayikra / Leviticus. These two פרשיות / parshiot focus extensively on ארץ ישראל / Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, and on what it means for the Jewish people to live in, and steward, a sacred land. We encounter laws requiring the land to rest every seventh year and the return of ancestral property during the Jubilee year every fiftieth year. We also read the powerful blessings and curses associated with life in the land. Taken literally, these blessings and curses can seem to present a simple system of reward and punishment that’s difficult to fully embrace. When religion is reduced to a kind of spiritual transaction—where actions automatically produce exact outcomes—we risk oversimplifying both faith and human experience.
The Torah’s vision is far deeper. With power comes responsibility, and our actions carry consequences, both good and bad. At the same time, we must be careful not to interpret suffering as divine punishment for specific behavior. Such thinking leaves us vulnerable to believing tragedies like the Holocaust or October 7 happened because of the victims’ actions. That approach not only removes responsibility from perpetrators of evil but also places blame on those who have already suffered unimaginable pain. We also cannot deny that our actions matter. What we do affects the world around us. Acts of goodness shape society for the better, while wrongdoing leaves damage in its wake. The challenge is finding the balance: recognizing that our choices carry real consequences without reducing human suffering to a simplistic theology of punishment.
The Jewish people experienced both profound blessing and profound challenge with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. After centuries of longing, Jewish sovereignty was restored in our ancestral homeland. At the same time, self-governance brought with it the burdens and complexities of political power in a world still deeply shaped by antisemitism. Many hoped Israel could simply function like any other nation, yet the reality has proven far more complicated. The blessing of national independence carries with it the burden—and sometimes the curse—of governing.
This tension is increasingly visible within the Jewish community itself. Many Jews see Zionism as inseparable from Jewish identity, while others insist that moral and ethical concerns must be paramount in evaluating the actions of the state. Too often these perspectives are presented as mutually exclusive: one side accused of overlooking moral failings, the other of holding Israel to impossible standards.
This week, my Facebook feed has been filled with debate surrounding graduating students at the Jewish Theological Seminary protesting President Isaac Herzog serving as commencement speaker. Once again, the conversation has been framed as a clash between uncompromising Zionism and uncompromising moral critique. But this framing is itself flawed.
Zionism is not devoid of morality, nor is moral concern incompatible with support for Israel. The modern State of Israel is a democratic state governed by laws and shaped by moral aspirations, even as it struggles—as all nations do—with the realities and imperfections of governance. Israel has made mistakes, just as every democracy has. Yet the global fixation on Israel often subjects it to standards rarely applied elsewhere. A nation cannot survive on idealism alone while ignoring reality. To be a Jew is to support the State of Israel and to hold ourselves and others to moral standards. It is to recognize that love of Israel and ethical responsibility are not opposing values, but intertwined obligations.
Ultimately, to be a Jew is to live within the tension of blessing and curse, independence and responsibility, power and accountability. That tension is not a contradiction to resolve, but a reality we are called to navigate with honesty, humility, and faith.
