Rabbi’s Blog

El gran abogado romano y figura política Cicerón describió la memoria como “el tesoro y guardián de todas las cosas” (siglo I aC) Ningún otro animal lleva en su cerebro tantos recuerdos de tal complejidad. Ninguna otra criatura viva en la tierra puede revisar regularmente esos recuerdos para la felicidad, para la seguridad y para la realización de tareas complejas. A través de los siglos, los seres humanos han inventado maneras de preservar y manejar la memoria: a través del lenguaje mismo, a través de canciones y poemas, de la escritura, de la impresión,  de diccionarios y enciclopedias, de la fotografía, grabaciones de sonido, videos y las últimas computadoras conectadas al Internet.

Con cada invención, desde el principio de la escritura hacia adelante, los críticos advirtieron que nuestros poderes internos de memoria se debilitarían. Esta preocupación -positiva y, más aguda, negativa- ha sido fuertemente expresada desde la creación de Internet. Yo, por ejemplo, a menudo llamo al iPhone que llevo por todas partes mi “cerebro externo” o mi “memoria externa.” Me da acceso a información que no tengo que mantener en mi cabeza – pero también a veces me preocupa que está disminuyendo mi capacidad de recordar.

La memoria nos permite recordar el pasado y, sobre la base de esa experiencia, contemplar el futuro. La memoria inmortaliza el conocimiento humano. (Véase Michael S. Malone, El guardián de todas las cosas, 2017)

Sin embargo, a pesar de tantos recursos de memoria disponibles para nosotros, estamos presenciando el abandono de la memoria histórica por un gran número de personas. Debido a que no saben nada de la realidad del pasado, es fácil hacerles creer historias que no tienen ninguna base en la realidad. Un demagogo inteligente puede captar la atención de estas personas y persuadirlas a tratar con desprecio a las instituciones humanas complejas como la democracia, instituciones que han sido cuidadosamente construidas por visionarios capaces de transar en la forma que la realidad exige.

La ignorancia histórica – el rechazo de la memoria – no es el camino judío. Somos la gente del libro. Ese libro no es sólo la Torá; son las leyes y prácticas, creencias y costumbres que se desarrollaron a partir de la Torá a través de los siglos y en muchas tierras. Durante gran parte de ese tiempo, la conciencia judía no tenía mucha “historia” como la conocemos. En vez de la historia, se centró en el nacimiento del pueblo de Israel, el Éxodo, la tierra de Israel, el exilio, los sufrimientos en tierras extranjeras y las esperanzas mesiánicas de regreso.

Pero en el siglo XIX, cuando el odio a los judíos comenzó a amenazar nuestra propia existencia, esa ausencia mental histórica, mentalidad histórica ausente, tuvo que ser reemplazada. El filósofo Emil Fackenheim llamó al abrazo del sionismo moderno y a la creación del Estado de Israel como nuestro “retorno a la historia”, lo que significa que los judíos encontrarían una manera de ser independientes, no sujetos a los caprichos de otros.

Sin embargo, los primeros oponentes del sionismo, judíos y no judíos, y algunas personas hasta hoy, se oponen a la refundición de la fe judía en el marco del nacionalismo político. En un mundo sin odio a los judíos, podríamos estar dispuestos a considerar ese argumento, pero a la luz del Holocausto, el antisemitismo asesino que lo precedió y que ahora ha regresado sólo 70 años después, es una receta para el suicidio judío .

Toda la idea del retorno de los judíos a la historia es muy desafiante. Merece una atención seria. Durante mi residencia de invierno aquí este año, mi tema de educación de adultos será justamente eso: el “Retorno Judío a la Historia”, centrado en el sionismo y la creación y la realidad existencial del Estado moderno de Israel. Esta es información importante para todos nosotros a medida que vemos más y más ataques contra el derecho de Israel a existir, ataques que son  llamados poco disfrazados a un segundo Holocausto.

Por ahora, quiero centrar nuestra atención en los aniversarios que refuerzan los recuerdos que los judíos modernos de fe necesitan tener. Así como tikkun olam – la reparación del mundo – requiere tikkun ha-nefesh – la reparación del alma, así también el individuo judío, especialmente en este Día de Expiación, necesita que el pueblo de Israel sea completo. La mayoría de las oraciones de este día se centran en el individuo; ellos dicen “yo” – yo. Pero nuestras oraciones en este día también hablan de nuestra identidad como grupo, como ahnu ah-meh-kha – somos Su gente – somos Tu gente.Las oraciones de hoy hablan por nosotros como individuos y como miembros del pueblo judío histórico.

Tres importantes aniversarios que se celebraron durante el año pasado centran en la creación y la seguridad de Israel destacan la historia de nuestra gente en el siglo XX: la Declaración de Balfour, emitida hace 100 años el 2 de noviembre de 1917; la votación de la ONU  para la partición de Palestina (como se llamaba hasta 1948) ) hace 70 años, en noviembre de 1947, con la intención de crear un estado judío y un estado árabe; y la Guerra de los Seis Días en junio de 1967. Todas estas son historias significativas de victoria para nosotros, y cada uno tiene sombras y luz.

La Declaración Balfour fue el primer reconocimiento importante del sionismo por parte de una gran potencia mundial. La declaración llegó en el tercer año de la Primera Guerra Mundial. Fue en forma de una carta del Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores británico, Arthur Balfour, a Lord Walter Rothschild, un líder de la comunidad judía británica, pidiéndole que transmitiera una declaración a la Federación Sionista. En el comunicado, el gobierno británico se comprometió a apoyar “el establecimiento en Palestina de un hogar nacional para el pueblo judío”.

Algunos historiadores dicen que el gobierno británico emitió la declaración por razones menos idealistas. Sin embargo, galvanizó el movimiento para llevar a los judíos a la patria. La Liga de las Naciones dio efectivamente el control de Palestina a los británicos, ordenándoles que prepararan a los residentes judíos para el autogobierno, o por lo menos alguna medida de autonomía, mientras protegían “los derechos civiles y religiosos de las comunidades no judías existentes en Palestina.”

Durante los 26 años del mandato, cuando los británicos llegaron a darse cuenta de la importancia del petróleo árabe para abastecer a la flota (entre otras razones), redujeron el apoyo británico a la inmigración judía en el Mandato Palestino y cada vez más incitaban a los árabes en su oposición a menudo violenta al Yishuv, la comunidad judía palestina.

En este cambio de política, el ascenso de Hitler en Alemania no tuvo ningún papel. A pesar de los cada vez más desesperados intentos de los judíos, especialmente en Alemania y Polonia, de escapar de Europa, los británicos siguieron reduciendo el número de judíos permitidos a ir a Palestina.

Sin embargo, no debemos subestimar el enorme impacto que la Declaración de Balfour tuvo tanto en los judíos como en los árabes de entonces y ahora. Recuerdo haber hablado con una mujer que nació en los Estados Unidos justo después de que se emitiera la Declaración de Balfour. Ella me dijo que sus padres la nombraron Aviva, que significa primavera – primavera, porque, según ellos, era “primavera para el pueblo judío – la temporada de primavera para el pueblo judío”.

Casi todos los gobiernos árabes, con la excepción temporal del rey Abdullah, gobernante de Transjordania, que debía su trono a los británicos, se opusieron a la Declaración de Balfour.

En los últimos meses, grupos árabes en Inglaterra han pedido al Parlamento británico que rescinda la Declaración y se disculpe con los palestinos y los otros árabes por lo que ellos llaman un gran error histórico. Hasta el momento, los británicos han resistido la demanda, aunque la hostilidad del líder del Partido Laborista británico, Jeremy Corbyn, hacia el sionismo, y hacia los judíos, nos pone muy nerviosos. Aún así podemos celebrar el centenario de la Declaración Balfour.  Celebramos el centenario de la Declaración de Balfour. Es un hito importante en el retorno vital de nuestra gente a la historia.

El segundo aniversario que necesitamos asegurar  que esté implantado en nuestra memoria fue en 1947, hace setenta años, cuando la ONU votó por poner fin al mandato británico para Palestina y dividir la tierra al oeste del río Jordán para crear un estado judío y un estado árabe palestino. Esa decisión, por un voto de 33 a 13, tomado el 29 de noviembre de 1947, después de un feroz debate, condujo al establecimiento del estado judío  el 15 de mayo de 1948.

En el debate que precedió a la votación, los delegados árabes a la ONU prometieron “un verdadero baño de sangre”. Y 70 años después, todavía anuncian que esperan destruir a Israel. Hoy, la población de Israel supera los ocho millones; en 1947-48, eran 650.000, entre los cuales había muchos supervivientes de los campos de concentración nazis. Hace setenta años, los nuevos israelíes tuvieron que buscar armas. Ya no. Lamentablemente, la preparación israelí a lo largo de las décadas –que lo ha convertido en una fuente deseable de armamentos para países de todo el mundo– ha sido una necesidad vital para la supervivencia.

El paso de setenta y un años ha entorpecido la emoción de 1947-1948. Hillel Halkin,  novelista y crítico israelí nacido en Estados Unidos (que era consejero del grupo juvenil de Naomi cuando estaba en la escuela secundaria), recapturó esa emoción cuando escribió (en 1997):

Una gran aventura. No lo habría perdido para el mundo. No ha habido nada parecido en la historia humana. Un pueblo pequeño y antiguo pierde su tierra y olvida cómo hablar su idioma; vaga indefensamente durante cientos, miles de años en todo el mundo con su Dios y sus libros sagrados; encuentra contumelia, persecución, violencia, desposesión, destierro, asesinato en masa; se niega a darse por vencido; se niega a entregar su fe; sigue creyendo que algún día será devuelto a la tierra que perdió; logra, al fin, a fuerza de sus propios esfuerzos, contra todas las probabilidades, reunirse de los cuatro rincones de la tierra y regresar a esa tierra; aprende de nuevo a hablar el idioma de sus viejos libros; aprende de nuevo a portar armas y defenderse; arranca su nuevo/viejo hogar de la gente que lo había reemplazado; se atrinchera; construye; fructifica; fortifica; repulsa a los enemigos que la rodean; crece y prospera frente a todas las amenazas. Si no hubiera sucedido, ¿podría haberse imaginado? ¿Alguien habría creído posible? (“Cartas a un Amigo Judío Americano”, Mosaic Magazine, 13/11/14, extraído de Cartas a un Amigo Judío Americano: Una Polémica Sionista, JPS, 1997)

Nunca debemos olvidar – una milagrosa liberación nacional sólo tres años después de que se conocieran los horrores del Holocausto. ¡Esto es algo que la memoria judía vital nunca debe olvidar!

El tercer aniversario es el de la Guerra de los Seis Días, hace 51 años, en junio de 1967. Israel estaba rodeado de vecinos árabes hostiles que, con la intención de llevar a cabo sus amenazas de empujar a Israel al mar, comenzaron a movilizar sus ejércitos. El presidente Nasser de Egipto botó a las fuerzas de paz de la ONU fuera de la zona de amortiguación del Sinaí. Bloqueó el Golfo de Eilat, cortando los suministros de petróleo de Israel. Ese bloqueo fue un acto de guerra, internacionalmente reconocido como tal, pero a pesar de las promesas de Estados Unidos de romper el bloqueo, no pasó nada. Entonces Israel tomó represalias. El 5 de junio, en cuestión de horas, los aviones de las Fuerzas de Defensa de Israel destruyeron la fuerza aérea egipcia en el suelo y ocuparon la Península del Sinaí hasta el Canal de Suez.

El rey Hussein de Jordania fue engañado por Nasser para entrar en la guerra desde Cisjordania, que habían ocupado desde 1949. Los israelíes habían prometido no atacar a las fuerzas jordanas si Hussein los mantuviera fuera de la batalla, pero ignoró las súplicas israelíes.

Los sirios, cuyos morteros bombardearon los kibbutzim israelíes en el norte de Galilea desde el Golán, pensaron que podían tomar esa parte de Israel, que sólo tiene cinco millas de ancho y 15 millas de largo (el “dedo” de Galilea) pero de importancia crítica a los israelíes porque es la fuente de más de la mitad del suministro de agua de Israel. En el último día de la guerra, las excavadoras y los tanques armados israelíes tomaron el Golán, logro ayudado por el hecho de que un espía israelí llamado Eli Cohen había identificado las fortificaciones del Golán de antemano. (Se hizo amigo del Ministro de Defensa de Siria y lo persuadió de que plantara árboles para ocultar las posiciones ocultas desde el sol caliente!)

Los rusos, que habían planeado las defensas del Golán, estaban avergonzados y encontraron una manera de castigar a los israelíes. A través de su muy efectiva máquina de propaganda, invirtieron la narración que describió a Israel como el valiente David de pie frente al gigante Goliat árabe. A partir de entonces, se convirtió en el Goliat Israel golpeando a los pobres palestinos. Y esa narrativa, creada en 1967, sigue siendo increíblemente efectiva. Ha sido incorporado a los colegios americanos, donde el nombre sionista es ahora un insulto.

Recuerdo vívidamente la Guerra de los Seis Días. Naomi y yo vivíamos en Camp Lejeune, Carolina del Norte, donde yo era el capellán judío. Todavía no teníamos un televisor, y la estación de radio local sólo llevaba música country. Nos acurrucamos frente a la diminuta pantalla de televisión de un amigo. Estábamos tan asustados; parecía que el fin había llegado para el joven estado judío. Pero en su lugar, fuimos testigos de una victoria milagrosa. Y Israel fue magnánimo en la victoria. El general Moshe Dayan dio el control del Monte del Templo de Jerusalén a la autoridad religiosa musulmana, el Waqf, y ofreció retirarse de Cisjordania y Gaza a cambio de la paz.

En unos meses, los árabes se negaron. Anunciaron los tres “No”, ahora infames y totalmente obstruccionistas, de la conferencia de 1967 en Jartum, en la que rechazaron cualquier tipo de trato con los israelíes, ¡que habían ganado la Guerra de los Seis Días! – “No” al  reconocimiento de Israel, “no” a negociaciones con Israel, “no” a la paz con Israel.

Ahora, más de 50 años después, sin acuerdos fronterizos legales, tenemos a los colonos, con su posición extremista de que la tierra de Israel pertenece exclusivamente a los judíos de Israel, no a los árabes que son ciudadanos israelíes o los palestinos de lo que ahora es Cisjordania o los nietos palestinos de los que huyeron en 1948. Ellos (los únicos “refugiados” de tercera generación en el mundo) se convirtieron en palestinos, paradójicamente, beneficiándose a lo largo de los años de la empresa sionista.

Naomi y yo hemos estado yendo a Israel por muchos años. Dirigimos clases de confirmación y viajes para adultos desde la década de 1970 en adelante. Hubo serias preocupaciones de seguridad en cada uno de nuestros viajes. Cuando Naomi trabajaba para la United Jewish Appeal como directora del North American Jewish Forum,  programa que combinaba a jóvenes líderes judíos con sus contrapartes israelíes y como directora estadounidense de Partnership 2000 que vinculaba comunidades judías estadounidenses con regiones de Israel, viajó a Israel cinco o seis veces al año. Cada una de sus visitas me hizo consciente de los peligros que podría enfrentar: atacantes suicidas en restaurantes o misiles Scud de Iraq. Naomi tuvo que llevar una máscara de gas en esa visita, al igual que todos los que pasaron tiempo allí.
Fuimos con nuestros hijos y nietos hace unos años para celebrar nuestro 50º aniversario de bodas. Este verano, dos de nuestras nietas estuvieron en Israel en viajes patrocinados por el campamento. Revisamos las noticias cuidadosamente todos los días. Y eso fue solo por cinco semanas. Traten de imaginarse viviendo en un kibbutz o pueblo israelí cerca de la Franja de Gaza cuando los locos de Hamas disparaban 70 cohetes al día contra ellos, junto con globos y cometas e incluso algunos drones que transportaban artefactos incendiarios, muchos de los cuales causaron incendios devastadores. Mientras tanto, en Galil, se les dijo a los residentes israelíes que se quedaran cerca de sus refugios antiaéreos y habitaciones seguras.

Ese es el punto: los israelíes enfrentan el peligro, el peligro existencial, todos los días. Sí, Israel tiene las fuerzas militares más poderosas de Medio Oriente, pero ni eso ni la barrera de separación pueden detener a todos los bombarderos suicidas decididos o los cohetes o los artefactos incendiarios enviados por fanáticos cuyo principal objetivo no es la estadidad palestina sino la destrucción de Israel.
Un país debe defenderse y proteger a sus ciudadanos. Es su obligación. ¿Quién sino el gobierno de Israel protegerá a los judíos de Israel? Encuestas recientes entre los jóvenes en Estados Unidos muestran que no se sienten cómodos con la idea de un estado judío porque tienen una aversión a los “límites grupales duros”. Son más espirituales y menos étnicos. Pero, si se eliminan los límites, ¿quién protegerá las vidas de estos idealistas con ojos estrellados? Los idealistas pueden despreciar el nacionalismo, pero hasta ahora solo el estado nación tiene el poder y la responsabilidad de proteger a sus ciudadanos. Y, como judíos, miembros de ahm yisrael, el pueblo judío, no solo debemos entender esto, sino defender esta convicción vigorosamente.

Este no es el lugar ni el momento para debatir la sabiduría de las políticas perseguidas por el actual gobierno israelí. Así como podemos estar en desacuerdo con las políticas de una u otra administración en Washington y aún ser patriotas estadounidenses, también podemos criticar las políticas de Israel. Pero creo que debemos hacerlo con mucho cuidado para no sonar como si estuviéramos criticando la legitimidad de Israel, su derecho a existir.

¡Son nuestra gente! Sus enemigos cercanos, que ahora incluyen un Irán casi nuclear, los amenazan existencialmente. ¿Nos atrevemos a no apoyarlos? ¿No tenemos recuerdos comunales de 1967, de 1947-1948, de 1917, de los años catastróficos de la locura nazi? ¿Cómo podemos permanecer en silencio cuando el sionismo se asemeja al nacionalismo blanco americano, cuando Israel es rutinariamente condenado en los pabellones de las Naciones Unidas, cuando el antisemitismo asesino aparece en Francia, en Inglaterra, en Bélgica, en Charlottesville e incluso en las declaraciones de los candidatos que ahora se postulan para un cargo público en nuestro propio país?!!!

¿Cómo podemos decir que somos judíos religiosos si no comprendemos la situación que amenaza a nuestro pueblo en Israel y, finalmente, nos amenaza también?

Cuando Mahmoud Abbas, jefe de la Autoridad Palestina, da la bienvenida a “cada gota de sangre judía derramada en Jerusalén”, ¿cómo no podemos estar asustados? ¿horrorizados? ¿aterrorizados?

Ustedes pueden preguntar, ¿por qué estoy ofreciendo un análisis tan oscuro en este día más sagrado de nuestros días? ¿En un día en que somos llamados para buscar nuestras almas y librarnos de nuestras fallas personales?

Todo se reduce a la cuestión de lealtad a uno mismo, a nuestra gente y a Dios. Y en este día más sagrado, ¿por qué? Consideren esto. Cuando el Sumo Sacerdote se preparaba para entrar en el Lugar Santísimo en Yom Kippur, expió primero por sí mismo, luego por su familia y luego por toda la nación. Todos estos fueron las condiciones previas para el perdón de Dios. Así es con mi caso para Israel en este día. Es un paquete. Los individuos como somos, nuestras familias y nuestra gente, el pueblo de Israel, en conjunto unidos por los lazos de la historia, la memoria, la fe y la necesidad.

Una última cosa. El problema que he planteado aquí es la supervivencia judía. Aquí en Puerto Rico y en el continente, tal vez menos, no hay una gran amenaza para los judíos, al menos en estemomento. Pero lo nuestro es solo una parte de una imagen más amplia, y si estamos comprometidos con la supervivencia judía no podemos ignorar el resto de la realidad judía y tomaremos este análisis y esta advertencia muy seriamente.

Esta prescripción se aplica a aquellos de nosotros nacidos como judíos ya aquellos de nosotros que se convirtieron en miembros de la comunidad del Pacto por elección. Estos valores judíos pertenecen a cada uno de nosotros aquí; esta fe judía es nuestra – judíos por nacimiento y judíos por elección; estas memorias judías son tuyas y mías. Juntos, nos presentamos ante Dios como judíos, entrados y sellados en el Libro de la Vida -esperamos- con fuerza y valor para afrontar el desafiante año que nos espera. Que podamos estar con Dios y que Dios esté con nosotros siempre.

Amén

The great Roman lawyer and political figure Cicero described memory as “the treasury and guardian of all things”(1st century BCE).  No other animal carries in its brain so many memories of such complexity. No other living creature on earth can regularly revisit those memories for happiness, for safety and for the accomplishment of complex tasks. Over the centuries, human beings have invented ways to preserve and manage memory: through language itself, through songs and poems, in writing, printing, dictionaries and encyclopedias, photographs, sound recordings, videos and the latest computers connected to the internet.

With each invention, from the beginning of writing onward, critics warned that our internal powers of memory would be weakened. This concern –positive and, more acutely, negative – has been strongly expressed since the creation of the internet. I, for example, often call the iPhone I carry everywhere my “external brain” or my “external memory.” It gives me access to information I don’t need to keep in my head – but it also sometimes worries me that it’s diminishing my ability to remember.

Memory enables us to remember the past and, based on that experience, to contemplate the future. Memory immortalizes human knowledge. (See Michael S. Malone, The Guardian of All Things. 2017)

Yet, despite so many resources of memory available to us, we are seeing the abandonment of historic memory by vast numbers of people. Because they know nothing about the past’s reality, it is easy to get them to believe stories that have no basis in fact. A clever demagogue can capture these people’s attention and persuade them to treat with contempt complex human institutions like democracy, institutions that have been painstakingly built up by visionaries capable of making the compromises that reality demands.

Historical ignorance – rejection of memory – is not the Jewish way. We are the people of the book. That book is not only the Torah; it is the laws and practices, beliefs and folkways that developed from Torah over the centuries and in many lands. For much of that time, Jewish consciousness did not feature much history as we know it. It focused instead on the birth of the people Israel, the Exodus, the land of Israel, exile, the sufferings in foreign lands and messianic hopes for return.

But in the 19th century, when hatred of Jews began to threaten our very existence, that historical absentmindedness, mentalidad historica absente or distraccion historica, had to be replaced. The philosopher Emil Fackenheim called modern Judaism’s embrace of Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel our “Return to History,” meaning that Jews needed to find a way to be independent, not subject to the whims of others.

However, early opponents of Zionism, both Jews and non-Jews, and some people even today, object to recasting Jewish faith into the frame of political nationalism. In a world without Jew-hatred, we might be willing to consider that argument, but in the light of the Holocaust, the murderous anti-Semitism that preceded it and which now has returned only 70 years later, it is a recipe for Jewish suicide.

The whole idea of the Jewish return to history is very challenging. It deserves serious attention. During my winter residence here this year, my adult education theme will be just that: the “Jewish Return to History,” focusing on Zionism and the creation and existential reality of the modern State of Israel. This is important information for all of us as we see more and more attacks on Israel’s right to exist, attacks which are barely disguised calls for a second Holocaust.

For now, I want to focus our attention on some anniversaries that reinforce memories which modern Jews of faith need to have. Just as tikkun olam – the repair of the world – requires tikkun ha-nefesh – the repair of the soul, so too does each individual Jew – especially on this Day of Atonement – need the people Israel to be complete. Unlike the prayers we read and sing on Shabbat, all of which are expressed as we, most of this day’s prayers are focused on the individual. They say “I” – yo. Yet our prayers on this day also speak to our identity as a group, as ahnu ah-meh-kha – we are Your people – somos Tu gente. Today’s prayers speak for us both as individuals and as members of the historic Jewish people.

Three major anniversaries in the year just passed focus on the creation and security of Israel. They highlight our people’s history in the 20th century: the Balfour Declaration, issued 100 years ago on November 2, 1917, the UN vote for the partition of Palestine (as it was known until 1948) 70 years ago, in November 1947, calling for the creation of a Jewish state and a Arab state; and the Six Day War in June 1967. All these are significant stories of victory for us, yet each one has shadows as well as light.

The Balfour Declaration was the first important recognition of Zionism by a major world power. The declaration came in the third year of World War I. It was in the form of a letter from the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, to Lord Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, asking him to transmit a statement to the Zionist Federation. In the statement, the British government committed itself to support “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Some historians say that the British government issued the declaration for a variety of other less noble reasons. Nevertheless, it galvanized the movement to bring Jews back to the homeland. The League of Nations did indeed give control of Palestine to the British, mandating them to prepare the Jewish residents for self-government, or at least some measure of autonomy, while protecting “the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

Over the 26 years of the mandate, as the British came to realize the importance of Arab oil for fueling the fleet (among other reasons), they reduced British support for Jewish immigration into Mandate Palestine and increasingly abetted the Arabs in their often-violent opposition to the Yishuv, the Palestinian Jewish community.

In this shift of policy, the rise of Hitler and his Brown Shirts in Germany was ignored. Despite increasingly desperate attempts by Jews, especially in Germany and Poland, to escape Europe, the British kept lowering the number of Jews allowed to go to Palestine.

Nevertheless, we must not underestimate the enormous impact the Balfour Declaration had on both Jews and Arabs then and now. I remember talking with a woman who was born in the United States just after the Balfour Declaration was issued. She told me that her parents named her Aviva, meaning spring – primavera – because, they said, it was “springtime for the Jewish people – la temporada de primavera para el pueblo judio.”

Nearly all the Arab governments opposed the Balfour Declaration. The only and temporary exception was King Abdullah, the ruler of Transjordan, who owed his throne to the British.

In recent years, Arab groups in England have called upon the British Parliament to rescind the Declaration and to apologize to the Palestinians and the other Arabs for what they call a great historic error. So far, the British have resisted the demand, although the hostility of the British Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to Zionism – and to Jews – makes us very nervous. Still we are able to mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. It is a major milestone in our people’s vitally necessary return to history.

The second anniversary we need to make sure is planted in our memory came in 1947, seventy one years ago, when the United Nations voted to end the British Mandate for Palestine and partition the land west of the Jordan River in order to create a Jewish state and a Palestinian Arab state. That decision, by a vote of 33 to 13, taken on November 29, 1947, after fierce debate, led to the establishment of the Jewish state on May 15, 1948.

In the debate preceding the vote, the Arab delegates to the UN promised “a veritable blood bath.” And more than 70 years later, they are still announcing that they expect to destroy Israel. Today, Israel’s population is over eight million; in 1947-48, it was 650,000, among whom were many survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. Seventy one years ago, the new Israelis had to scrounge for weapons. Not anymore. Sadly, Israeli preparedness over the decades – which has made them a desirable source of armaments for countries around the world – has been a vital necessity for survival.

Seventy one years have dulled the thrill of 1947-1948. Hillel Halkin, an American-born Israeli novelist and critic (who was Naomi’s youth group advisor when she was in high school), recaptured that excitement when he wrote (in 1997):

A great adventure. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. There’s been nothing like it in human history. A small and ancient people loses its land and forgets how to speak its language; wanders defenselessly for hundreds, thousands, of years throughout the world with its God and its sacred books; meets with contumely, persecution, violence, dispossession, banishment, mass murder; refuses to give up; refuses to surrender its faith; continues to believe that it will one day be restored to the land it lost; manages in the end, by dint of its own efforts, against all odds, to gather itself from the four corners of the earth and return to that land; learns again to speak the language of its old books; learns again to bear arms and defend itself; wrests its new-old home from the people who had replaced it; entrenches itself; builds; fructifies; fortifies; repulses the enemies surrounding it; grows and prospers in the face of all threats. Had it not happened, could it have been imagined? Would anyone have believed it possible? (“Letters to an American Jewish Friend,” Mosaic Magazine, 11/13/14, excerpted from Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist Polemic, JPS, 1997)

We must never forget – a miraculous national liberation only three years after the horrors of the Holocaust became known. This is something that vital Jewish memory must never forget!

The third anniversary is that of the Six Day War, 51 years ago in June 1967. Israel was surrounded by hostile Arab neighbors who, intent on carrying out their threats to push Israel into the sea, started mobilizing their armies. President Nasser of Egypt threw the UN peacekeepers out of the Sinai buffer zone. He blockaded the Gulf of Eilat, cutting off Israel’s oil supplies. That blockade was an act of war, internationally recognized as such, but despite US promises to break the blockade, nothing happened. So Israel retaliated. On June 5th, in a matter of hours, the planes of the Israel Defense Forces destroyed the Egyptian air force on the ground and occupied the Sinai Peninsula up to the Suez Canal.

King Hussein of Jordan was tricked by Nasser into entering the war from the West Bank, which Jordan had occupied since 1949. The Israelis had promised not to attack the Jordanian forces if Hussein kept them out of the battle, but he ignored Israeli pleas.

The Syrians, whose mortars had been shelling the Israeli kibbutzim in the northern Galilee from the Golan, thought they could take that part of Israel, which is only five miles wide and 15 miles long (the “finger” of the Galilee) but critically important to the Israelis because it is the source of over half of Israel’s water supply. On the last day of the war, Israeli armored bulldozers and tanks took the Golan. It helped that an extraordinary Israeli spy named Eli Cohen had identified the Golan’s fortifications in advance. (He befriended the Syrian Defense Minister and persuaded him to have trees planted to shade the otherwise-hidden positions from the hot sun!)

The Russians, who had planned the Golan defenses, were embarrassed and found a way to punish the Israelis. Through their very effective propaganda machine, they reversed the narrative that described Israel as the brave David standing up to the giant Arab Goliath. From then on, it became the Goliath Israel beating up on the poor Palestinians. And that narrative, created in 1967, is still incredibly effective. It has been mainstreamed in American colleges, where the name Zionist is now an insult.

I vividly remember the Six Day War. Naomi and I were living at the Marine Corps base in Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, where I was the Jewish chaplain. We didn’t have a television set yet, and the local radio station carried only country music. We huddled in front of a friend’s tiny TV screen. We were so scared; it looked like the end had come for the young Jewish state. But instead, we witnessed a miraculous victory. And Israel was magnanimous in victory. General Moshe Dayan gave control of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount to the Muslim religious authority, the Waqf, and offered to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza in return for peace.

Within months, the Arabs refused. They announced the now-infamous, totally obstructionist three “No’s” of the 1967 conference in Khartoum in which they rejected any kind of deal with the Israelis – who had won the Six Day War! – No recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no peace with Israel.

Now, 50+ years later, with no legal border arrangements in place, we have the settlers, with their extremist position that the land of Israel belongs exclusively to the Jews of Israel, not to the Arabs who are Israeli citizens or the Palestinians of what is now the West Bank or the Palestinian Arab grandchildren of those who fled in 1948. They (the only third-generation “refugees” in the world) became Palestinians, paradoxically enough, by benefiting over the years from the Zionist enterprise.

Naomi and I have been going to Israel for many years. We led Confirmation class and adult trips from the 1970s on. There were serious security concerns on every one of our trips. When Naomi was working for the United Jewish Appeal as director of the North American Jewish Forum, a program that matched young Jewish leaders with their Israeli counterparts and as US director of Partnership 2000 that linked American Jewish communities with regions in Israel, she traveled to Israel five or six times a year. Every one of her visits made me conscious of the dangers she might encounter: suicide bombers in restaurants or Scud missiles from Iraq. Naomi had to carry a gas mask on that visit, as did everyone who spent time there.

We went with our children and grandchildren a few years ago to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. This summer, two of our granddaughters were in Israel on camp-sponsored trips. We scoured the news carefully every day. And that was only for five weeks. Try to imagine living in an Israeli kibbutz or town near the Gaza Strip when Hamas crazies fired 70 rockets a day at them, along with balloons and kites and even a few drones carrying incendiary devices – many of which caused devastating fires. Meanwhile, in the Galil, Israeli residents were told to stay near their bomb shelters and safe rooms.

That’s the point: Israelis face danger – existential danger – every day. Yes, Israel has the strongest military forces in the Middle East but neither that nor the separation barrier can stop all the determined suicide bombers or the rockets or the incendiary devices sent aloft by zealots whose primary goal is not Palestinian statehood but the destruction of Israel.

A country must defend itself and protect its citizens. That’s its obligation. Who but the government of Israel will protect the Jews of Israel? Recent polls among young people on the mainland show that they are uncomfortable with the idea of a Jewish state because they have an aversion to “hard group boundaries” altogether. They are more spiritual and less ethnic. But, if boundaries are abolished, who will protect the lives of these starry-eyed idealists? Idealists may scorn nationalism, but so far only the nation-state has the power and the responsibility to protect its citizens. And, as Jews, members of ahm yisrael, the Jewish people, we must not only understand this but defend this conviction vigorously.

This is not the place or time to debate the wisdom of the policies pursued by the current Israeli government. Just as we may disagree with the policies of one or another administration in Washington and still be American patriots, so we can also criticize Israel’s policies. But we must never criticize the Jewish state’s legitimacy, its right to exist.

They are our people! Their nearby enemies, now including a nearly nuclear Iran, threaten them existentially. Dare we not support them? Have we no communal memories from 1967, from 1947-1948, from 1917, from the catastrophic years of Nazi madness? How can we remain silent when Zionism is likened to American white nationalism, when the fiercely and boisterously democratic State of Israel is called an apartheid state and routinely condemned in the halls of the United Nations, when murderous anti-Semitism appears in France, in England, in Belgium, in Charlottesville, and even in the statements of candidates now running for public office in our own country?!!!

How can we truly be religious Jews if we do not grasp that the situation which threatens our people in Israel ultimately threatens us as well?

When Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, welcomes “every drop of Jewish blood spilled in Jerusalem,” how can we not be unnerved? horrified? terrified?

You may ask why I am offering such a dark analysis on this holiest of our days? On a day which calls upon us, as individuals, to search our souls and rid ourselves of our personal failings?

Here is the answer I telegraphed to you in the sermon I gave last night: To fix the world that threatens our people, to do tikkun olam, we must first perform tikkun ha-nefesh. We must prepare ourselves with the sense of pure purpose and confidence that comes from embracing our faith and our people, from knowing our history and internalizing it. Our faith, our Judaism, works best for us when we embrace our people’s memories, learn its lessons and values and make them the innermost core of our souls.

It comes down to a question of loyalty to self, to our people and to God. And on this holiest of days, why? Consider this. When the High Priest prepared to enter the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur, he atoned first for himself, then for his family and then for the entire nation. All these were the preconditions for God’s forgiveness. So it is with my case for Israel on this day. It’s a package deal. Individuals as we are, our families and our people, the people Israel – altogether bound together by the bonds history, memory, faith and necessity.

One last thing. The issue I have raised here is Jewish survival. Here in Puerto Rico and on the mainland, perhaps less so, there’s not much of a threat to Jews – at least at this point. But ours is only one part of a larger picture, and if we are committed to Jewish survival we cannot ignore the rest of Jewish reality and we will take this analysis and alert very seriously.

This prescription applies to those of us born as Jews and to those of us who became members of the Covenant community by choice. These Jewish values belong to every one of us here; this Jewish faith is ours – Jews by birth and Jews by choice; these Jewish memories are yours and mine. Together we stand before God as Jews, entered and sealed in the Book of Life – we hope – with strength and courage to face the challenging year ahead. May we be with God and may God be with us always.           

Amen   

Cuando tenía nueve años, fui contratado para cantar la voz de varón alto en un coro que acompañaba al cantor en los servicios de High Holy Days en las sinagogas ortodoxas. Hasta el día de hoy, todavía recuerdo mucho de la música que cantamos: los pasajes de unísono, las armonías, mis pequeños solos y sobre todo la música excitante de las oraciones que tenían un estribillo repetido al final de versos poéticos. Mientras aprendía la música en aquel entonces, no sabía el significado de las palabras. Pero ahora, cuando me encuentro cantando las palabras en mi cabeza, me “conecto” y pienso en lo que significan las palabras. Una de estas melodías estaba pasando por mi mente cuando comencé a prepararme para estos High Holy Days. Las palabras la-b’rit ha-beit: Mirad al pacto, (Oh Dios), v’ahl teifen la-yetzer – No te distraiga con nuestras imperfecciones. Una oración a Dios: Hiciste un pacto con nosotros: Serás nuestro Dios y seremos tu pueblo. No nos juzguen duramente incluso cuando nuestros defectos testifican en contra de nosotros. Cuando hacemos esta petición nos estamos comprometiendo a enfrentar nuestras fallas e imperfecciones.

¿Como hacemos eso? ¿Cómo nos medimos? ¿Por cuáles normas?

¿Debemos confiar en nuestra intuición, nuestra intuición? ¿Qué pensamos de nuestro sentido común, nuestro sentido común? En estos tiempos, el sentido común y la intuición no son claros y no son universales. Se han astillado en innumerables alternativas, cada uno adaptado a los gustos y creencias particulares de alguien. Todo es discutible, desde las creencias de la gente hasta la realidad objetiva. La simple verdad de una persona puede ser una falsa noticia para otros, o ser descartada como argumento tendencioso tendencioso – por una causa sospechosa – que es aún peor que los hechos alternativos. (Carina Chocano, “No Prob”, The New York Times, 23 de julio de 2017)

Intuitivamente, buscamos información que confirma lo que ya sospechamos, o tememos o simplemente conocemos. Para un ejemplo extremadamente extraño pero cierto, recuerden al hombre que odiaba tanto a Hillary Clinton que creyó en una noticia que leyó en el Internet alegando que estaba dirigiendo un centro de pornografía infantil en el sótano de una pizzería en Washington, DC.  La historia por supuesto era ridícula, pero este hombre estaba intuitivamente seguro de que tenía que ser verdad. Así que manejó su carro por cinco horas, a 358 millas de su casa en Carolina del Norte, armado con un rifle AR15, una pistola calibre .38 y un cuchillo para rescatar a los niños de la prisión de su sótano. Sólo que no había niños y no había sótano. Fue arrestado, un engañado, víctima de noticias verdaderamente falsas en Internet donde personas inescrupulosas inventan historias de conspiración que se vuelven virales y se cree que son ciertas.

Estoy seguro de que todos ustedes recuerdan y se horrorizaron con un ejemplo local de cómo la intuición defectuosa puede llevar a conclusiones peligrosas. Debido a que la recuperación del huracán María había sido tan lenta, la gente comenzó a buscar a alguien a quien culpar. El Nuevo Día publicó un ensayo de uno de sus escritores de opinión culpando al “judío”. ¡El judío! Como si todos los judíos pensaran como uno. ¡Como si todos conspiramos contra la sociedad!
¿De dónde podría ser que esa mentira, esa estupidez ha venido? Solo desde la mente de una persona cuyas repugnantes creencias antisemitas anulan todos los aspectos de la verdad objetiva. Con base en sus prejuicios extremistas de larga data, su intuición simplemente le dijo que los judíos eran responsables y que no dudó en expresar sus opiniones impresas. Afortunadamente, sus comentarios llenos de odio fueron abrumadoramente rechazadas por los puertorriqueños de todas las perspectivas. Que sus opiniones no se basaran en hechos no evitaba que fueran peligrosas.

En el brillante análisis de los psicólogos Daniel Kahneman y Amos Tversky, cuyo trabajo recibió el Premio Nobel, encontramos que las personas toman decisiones basadas en la evaluación subjetiva de las probabilidades. Esa es una manera elegante de decir que las personas actúan con opiniones que creen que son ciertas, aunque las opiniones no tengan ninguna base en la realidad. Para decirlo simplemente, nuestra intuición no funciona para nosotros. Es engañada por lo que ellos llaman “sesgo de confirmación”. Traicionamos nuestras propias capacidades objetivas. Cometemos los mismos errores que antes. (Véase Michael Lewis, “Cómo dos psicólogos pioneros dieron vuelta el mundo de la ciencia de la decisión”, Vanity Fair, 14 de noviembre de 2016 y Ben Yagoda, “Your Lying Mind”, en The Atlantic, septiembre de 2018)
Entonces, ¿cómo sabemos lo que es correcto? Si no debemos confiar en nuestra intuición, ¿cómo debemos tomar decisiones?

Entonces, ¿cómo podemos cambiarnos, cómo podemos crecer moralmente? ¿Cómo podemos hacer nuestros patrones de comportamiento mejores, más humanos, más parecidos a la imagen de Dios en la que somos creados? ¿Dónde podemos buscar herramientas para compensar el mal sentido común y la intuición que nos llevan a tomar malas decisiones?

El fundador del movimiento Musar en el judaísmo, el rabino Israel Salanter, nacido en Lituania en 1810, encontró una respuesta que puede funcionar para nosotros. Musar significa comportamiento ético. Rabí Salanter enseñó que el estudio de nuestros textos sagrados no debe ser un fin en sí mismo, sino que tiene que resultar en un comportamiento ético.

Retirarse de la sociedad para estudiar no le haría un santo judío; te convertiría en un idiota judío. Un idiota, en el significado griego original de la palabra, describe a una persona totalmente egoísta que ignora los asuntos públicos, las preocupaciones y los problemas, sin prestar atención al caos exterior. Según las enseñanzas de Musar del rabino Salanter, los buenos judíos no deben ser idiotas. Deben participar plenamente en los asuntos de la comunidad. Es lo que hacemos lo que cuenta.

Hay un pasaje notable en el Talmud donde los Rabinos retratan a Dios diciendo: “No me importa si ellos creen en Mí o no, siempre y cuando guarden Mis mandamientos”.

Lo que nos lleva de vuelta al problema de cómo sincronizar nuestras acciones con estándares que son más confiables que la intuición, que ahora aprendemos es muy poco confiable. Rabí Salanter y sus seguidores establecieron un camino espiritual para el desarrollo personal y el desarrollo personal. Es un programa de tres pasos.

Primero: estudio de textos importantes.

Segundo: evaluación sistemática de nuestro comportamiento.

Y tercero,

Diligente práctica de nuevos hábitos de pensamientos y acciones. (Ver servicio de la tarde de Mishkan HaNefesh Yom Kippur, nota de la página 354.)

Este es un programa que conecta la reparación del mundo exterior – tikkun olam – con la reparación de nuestro mundo interior del ser – tikkun ha-nefesh. La justicia social descansa en la conciencia espiritual.

Una vez más preguntamos, “¿Cómo?”

La primera parte de este programa de tres partes es estudiar textos importantes. Entre los textos de estudio más importantes están las oraciones que estamos leyendo hoy y las oraciones de nuestro siddur del Shabat, textos que ustedes encuentran con regularidad. Mi maestro Henry Slonimsky dijo que si quieres conocer los valores judíos, lo que hay en el alma judía, es mejor buscar en el siddur, nuestro libro de oraciones, que buscar en nuestra Biblia. “La Biblia es demasiado grande”; lo que necesitamos día a día “ha sido sacado de [la Biblia] en nuestro libro diario de oraciones y hecho nuestro propio, una expresión más personal … de sufrimientos judíos, necesidades judías, esperanzas y aspiraciones judías … El alma judía se refleja allí … el alma del individuo en la tristeza privada y el alma del pueblo en nuestras cargas históricas, heroica pasión y sufrimiento, nuestra fe inalterable a través de los siglos “. (Henry Slonimsky,” Prayer “, en Essays, 1967)

Y especialmente los refranes repetidos que permanecen en nuestras mentes: avinu malkeinu, evocando la justicia de Dios y el amor por nosotros, o el versículo que cité antes, la-b’rit ha-beit – mirar al pacto. Pero ahora, no es sólo una súplica a Dios para que nos juzgue misericordiosamente, es un recordatorio para nosotros mismos de mirar al pacto como guía que compensa la intuición fallida. V’ahl tefen la-yetzer – y no dejarnos rendir a la tentación de renunciar a nuestros esfuerzos por repararnos. La-b’rit ha-beit – mira al pacto – v’ahl tefen la-yetzer – no te metas en tentación. Aveinu malkeinu – nuestro padre, nuestro soberano.

Con estas frases en nuestras cabezas podemos evaluar nuestro comportamiento: ¿Cómo nos medimos en cuanto a la vara de la altura de las expectativas de nuestras responsabilidades en el pacto? ¿Somos compasivos como Dios es compasivo? ¿Somos misericordiosos como Dios es misericordioso? ¿Somos justos como Dios es justo? ¿Somos bondadosos y amables como Dios es bondadoso y amable? Para caminar en los caminos de Dios, para guardar el pacto, para resistir la tentación, debemos ser guiados tanto por avinu malkeinu, misericordia y justicia, como por la-b’rit habeit v’ahl tefen la-yetzer – no debemos ceder a la tentación de abandonar el esfuerzo de cambio.

Teniendo en cuenta avinu mal’kei-nu – Atributos de Dios de la justicia y la misericordia – comiencen por memorizar las dos primeras palabras – la-b’rit ha-beit. Recuerden su significado y díganlos a sí mismo. Son la señal para revisar su propio comportamiento. Digan las palabras en voz alta conmigo ahora en hebreo, inglés y español: la-b’rit ha-beit – look to the covenant – mira al pacto!

A menos que completemos los dos primeros pasos – la atención deliberada a nuestros textos importantes y la evaluación sistemática de nuestro propio comportamiento individual, el tercer paso – la práctica diligente de nuevos hábitos de pensamiento y acción – no se puede tomar. Esta es la parte más difícil: cambiar para mejor quiénes somos.

Podemos disculpar nuestro fracaso diciéndonos, no puedo cambiar aunque reconozco que necesito hacerlo. Estoy congelado como estoy.

¡Pero lo que ha sido congelado puede descongelarse! (Jefe de Justicia de Israel, Miriam Naor) Lo que está congelado también puede descongelarse!

Rosh Hashaná nos lleva a apreciar el mundo en el que estamos. Yom Kippur nos llama a responder adecuadamente: la b’rit habet – mira al pacto y no te metas en tentación – Mira al pacto y no ceda a la tentación .

Cuando estos valores forman parte de nosotros, parte de nuestro ser íntimo, entonces podemos ser testigos de Dios, las manos de Dios. “Cuando las personas son misericordiosas y prestan ayuda amorosa, ayudamos a dar forma a la mano derecha de Dios, y cuando las personas luchan la batalla de Dios y aplastan al mal, ayudamos a dar forma a la mano izquierda de Dios”. (Slonimsky, “Oración”, 1967)

Consagrados al servicio de Dios día a día, decisión por decisión, acto por acto, somos testigos de Dios, manos de Dios, y así nos reparamos y ayudamos a reparar nuestro mundo. Que seamos dignos.

When I was nine years old, I was hired to be the boy alto in a choir that accompanied the cantor at High Holy Day services in Orthodox synagogues. To this day, I still remember a lot of the music we sang: the unison passages, the harmonies, my little solos and especially the rousing music of prayers that had a repeated refrain at the end of poetic verses. While I learned the music then, I did not know the meaning of the words. But now, when I find myself singing the words in my head, I “connect” and I think about what the words mean. One of these melodies was running through my mind as I began preparing for these High Holy Days. The words la-b’rit ha-beit: Look to the covenant, (O God), v’ahl teifen la-yetzer – Do not be distracted by our imperfections. A prayer to God: You made a covenant – a contract –with us: You will be our God and we will be Your people. Don’t judge us harshly even when our failings testify against us. When we make this appeal we are committing ourselves to face our failings and imperfections.

How do we do that? How do we measure ourselves? By what standards?

Should we rely on our intuition, nuestra intuicion? How about what we think of as our common sense, nuestra sentida comun? In these times, common sense and intuition are not clear and they are not universal. They have been splintered into countless alternatives, each one tailored to someone’s particular tastes and beliefs. Everything is debatable, from people’s beliefs to objective reality. One person’s plain truth may be fake news for others, or dismissed as someone’s tendentious pleading argumento tendencioso – for a suspicious cause – which is even worse than alternative facts. (Carina Chocano, “No Prob,” The New York Times, July 23, 2017)

We intuitively tend to look for information that confirms what we already suspect, or fear or just know. For an extremely bizarre but true  example, remember the man who hated Hillary Clinton so much that he believed a news item he read on the internet claiming that she was running a child pornography ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. The story of course was ludicrous, but this man was intuitively certain that it had to be true.  So he drove five hours – 358 miles from his home in North Carolina – armed with an AR15 rifle, a .38 caliber handgun and a knife to rescue the children from their basement prison. Only there were no children and there was no basement. He was arrested, a dupe, a victim of truly fake news on the internet where unscrupulous people make up conspiracy stories that go viral and are believed to be true.

I’m sure you all remember and were horrified by a local example of how flawed intuition can lead to dangerous conclusions. Because the recovery from Hurricane Maria has been so slow, people began to look for someone to blame. El Nuevo Dia published an essay by one of its op-ed writers blaming “the Jew.” The Jew! As if all Jews think as one. As if we all conspire against society!

Where could such a lie, such stupidity have come from? Only from the mind of a person whose repugnant anti-Semitic beliefs override every aspect of objective truth. Based on her long-held extreme prejudices, her intuition just told her that Jews were responsible and she didn’t hesitate to express her opinions in print. Fortunately, her hate-filled ranting was overwhelmingly rejected by Puerto Ricans of every perspective. That her opinions weren’t based on facts didn’t keep them from being dangerous.

In their brilliant analysis, the cognitive psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, whose work was awarded a Nobel Prize, found that people make decisions on the basis of subjective assessment of probabilities. That’s a fancy way of saying that people act on opinions which they think are true even though the opinions have no basis in reality. To put it simply, our intuition doesn’t work for us. It is misled by what they called “confirmation bias.” We betray our own objective capabilities. We make the same mistakes as before. (See Michael Lewis, “How Two Trailblazing Psychologists Turned the World of Decision Science Upside Down,” Vanity Fair, November 14, 2016 & Ben Yagoda, “Your Lying Mind,” in The Atlantic, September 2018)

So how do we know what’s right? If we shouldn’t rely on our intuition, how should we make decisions?

How, then, can we change ourselves, how can we grow morally? How can we make our behavior patterns better, more human, more like the image of God in which we are created? Where can we look for tools to compensate for the faulty common sense and intuition that lead us to make bad choices?

The founder of the Musar movement in Judaism, Rabbi Israel Salanter, born in Lithuania in 1810, came up with an answer that can work for us. Musar means ethical behavior. Rabbi Salanter taught that study of our sacred texts must not be an end in itself but instead had to result in ethical behavior. This teaching echoed Hillel’s advice not to separate from the community. (Pirke Avot 2:5)

Withdrawing from society to study wouldn’t make you a Jewish saint; it would make you a Jewish idiot. An idiot, in the original Greek meaning of the word, describes a totally self-interested person who ignores public issues, concerns and problems, paying no attention to the chaos outside. According to Rabbi Salanter’s Musar teachings, good Jews must not be idiots. They must be fully involved in community affairs. It’s what we do that counts.

There’s a remarkable passage in the Talmud where the Rabbis portray God as saying, “I don’t care if they believe in Me or not, so long as they keep My commandments.”

Which brings us back to the problem of how to synchronize our actions with standards that are more reliable than intuition, which we now learn is very unreliable. Rabbi Salanter and his followers laid out a spiritual path for self-improvement and character development. It’s a three step program.

First: study of important texts.

Second: systematic evaluation of our behavior.

And third,

Diligent practice of new habits of thoughts and actions. (See Mishkan HaNefesh Yom Kippur afternoon service, page 354 note.)

This is a program that connects the repair of the external world – tikkun olam – with the mending of our inner world of being – tikkun ha-nefesh. Social justice rests on spiritual awareness.

Again we ask, “How?”

The first part of this three-part program is studying important texts. Among the most important study texts are the prayers we are reading today and the prayers of our Shabbat siddur, texts you encounter regularly. My teacher Henry Slonimsky said that if you want to know Jewish values, what’s in the Jewish soul, it’s better to look in the siddur, our prayer book, than to search in our Bible. “The Bible is too grand”; what we need day by day “has been squeezed out of [the Bible] into our daily prayer book and made our own, a more personal expression … of Jewish sufferings, Jewish needs, Jewish hopes and aspirations… The Jewish soul is mirrored there… the individual’s soul in private sorrow and the people’s soul in our historic burdens, heroic passion and suffering, our unfaltering faith through the ages.” (Henry Slonimsky, “Prayer,” in Essays, 1967)

It is especially the repeated refrains in the prayers that linger in our minds: avinu malkeinu, evoking God’s justice and love for us, or the verse I cited earlier, la-b’rit ha-beit – look to the covenant. Only now, it’s not only a plea to God to judge us mercifully, it’s a reminder to ourselves to look to the covenant for guidance that compensates for failed intuition. V’ahl tefen la-yetzer – and not let ourselves surrender to the temptation to give up on our efforts to repair ourselves. La-b’rit ha-beit  — mira al pacto – v’ahl tefen la-yetzer – no te metas en tentación. Aveinu malkeinu – nuestro padre, nuestro soberano.

With these phrases in our heads we can evaluate our behavior: How do we measure up to the expectations of our covenant responsibilities? Are we compassionate as God is compassionate? Are we gracious as God is gracious? Are we just as God is just? Are we kind and loving as God is kind and loving? To walk in God’s ways, to keep the covenant, to resist temptation, we must be guided both by avinu malkeinu, mercy and justice, and by la-b’rit habeit v’ahl tefen la-yetzer – we must not give in to the temptation to abandon the effort to change.

Keeping in mind avinu mal’kei-nu –God’s attributes of justice and mercy – start by memorizing the first two words – la-b’rit ha-beit. Remember their meaning and say them to yourself. They are the signal to review your own behavior. Say the words out loud with me now in Hebrew – la-b’rit ha-beit, English – look to the covenant, and Spanish– mira al pacto!

Once we complete the first two steps – purposeful attention to our important texts and systematic evaluation of our own individual behavior, we can take the third step – diligent practice of new habits of thought and action. This is the hardest part: changing who we are for the better.

We may excuse our failures by saying to ourselves, I can’t change even though I recognize that I need to. I’m frozen the way I am.

But that which has been frozen can be thawed! (Israel’s Chief Justice Miriam Naor)

Lo que esta congelado tambien puede descongelarse!

Rosh Hashanah gets us to appreciate the world we are in. Yom Kippur calls us to respond to it properly: la b’rit habet – mira al pacto y no te metas en tentacion – Look to the covenant and don’t give in to temptation.

When these values are part of us, part of our innermost being, then we can be God’s witnesses, God’s hands. “When people are merciful and render loving help, we assist in shaping God’s right hand, and when people fight the battle of God and crush evil we assist in shaping God’s left hand.” (Slonimsky, “Prayer,” 1967)

Consecrated to God’s service day by day, decision by decision, act by act, we are God’s witnesses, God’s hands, and thus repair ourselves and help to repair our world. May we be worthy.

Feliz año nuevo dulce y tranquilo.

Como hice en el servicio de anoche, los saludo nuevamente esta mañana con mi deseo para el nuevo año: Que éste sea un año bueno para todos nosotros, un año de salud y felicidad, de crecimiento espiritual y moral, un año de satisfacción , del cumplimiento y de la paz – la más rica de las bendiciones de Dios – en un mundo que nos envía tantas señales mezcladas.

Nuestra oración hoy es y’hee ra-tzohn mil’fa-neh-kha Adonai eh-lo-hei-nu vei’lo-hei avo-tei-nu v’eemo-te-nu sheh-t’ha-deish aleinu shanah tovah u-m’tukah – Que sea Su voluntad, nuestro Dios y Dios de nuestros antepasados, que nos bendiga con un año bueno y dulce.

Uno de los libros más vendidos en el continente norteamericano en la pasada primavera fue el Ferrocarril Subterráneo de Colin Whitehead. Es su sexta novela publicada, la primera en hacerse famosa. Ganó el Premio Pulitzer y el Premio Nacional del Libro en 2016, y le consiguió una invitación para dar el discurso de apertura en la ceremonia de graduación de la Universidad de Connecticut. Habló con los graduandos y sus familias como autor, contándoles la historia de una historia.

El Sr. Whitehead dijo esto: Cada cuento bueno tiene tres partes. Parte I – Acto I, introduce los personajes principales y nos proporciona la información de fondo que el autor quiere que sepamos. Establece el escenario para la segunda parte, el Acto II.
El Acto II es donde comienzan las complicaciones – las complicaciones. Se describen eventos inesperados, imprevistos y preocupantes, que desafían a los personajes que nos interesan en el Acto I.
El Acto III, dijo Whitehead, es donde todo el caos y la confusión del Acto II se resuelve: los malos son castigados y los buenos triunfan.

Por supuesto, el discurso del señor Whitehead fue más largo. Era rica en ilustraciones que atrajeron a su público. Al final de sus comentarios a los graduados, dijo: “Felicitaciones por terminar Acto I. ¡Bienvenidos a las complicaciones!”
Pero hay un problema con hacer que la vida suene como una novela que termine “vivieron felices para siempre”. En la vida real, “felices para siempre” simplemente no existe. No hay “feliz para siempre”, “vivieron felices para siempre” raramente sucede. Las complicaciones no desaparecen. Cambian y se vuelven más complicados y desafiantes.

La verdadera realidad rechaza promesas que no puedan ser mantenidas: el fin del mal, por ejemplo; o la eliminación del dolor y el sufrimiento; la luz del sol en lugar de sombras. Las mejores novelas llegan a su fin, pero – mientras que se resuelven algunas complicaciones – está claro para el lector que hay más complicaciones por delante.
Nuestra fe judía reconoce lo complicadas que son nuestras vidas y hace una promesa que necesitamos escuchar hoy en este Yom HaDin – El Día del Juicio – El Dia del juicio – ¡No estamos solos! ¡No estamos solos!
Ahora, tú puedes preguntar: ¿Cómo puedo decir que no estamos solos cuando, de acuerdo con la liturgia tradicional, entramos en la presencia de Dios sin escolta, solo en este día. Así es como la oración lo describe: B’ein meilitz yosher mul magid pesha – no hay abogado defensor para refutar las acusaciones contra nosotros. (Musaf en el segundo día de Rosh Hashaná, después de U-n’taneh tokef)
Ésa no es la forma en que nos imaginamos una sala de un tribunal. Sí, está el juez, pero también hay abogados defensores, fiscales, a menudo un jurado; y los procedimientos son muy lentos. Los juicios duran días, semanas, meses! ¡Aqui no! No según la oración.

Y sin embargo, no estamos exactamente solos. Nuestras oraciones hablan por nosotros. Son como testigos de los personajes. Exhortan al Santo a recordar la fidelidad de Abraham, para tener en cuenta en nuestro nombre la disposición de Isaac a obedecer a su padre, a acreditarnos con la lealtad persistente de Jacob – todos los patriarcas quieren transferirnos, darnos , sus descendientes, el beneficio de su mérito.

Pero el mérito de nuestros antepasados puede suplicar por nosotros solamente hasta cierto punto, porque Dios es el Juez supremo.. Dios es el testigo. Dios es el fiscal, la autoridad que nos convoca a los tribunales. Y Dios es omnisciente. Dios no lolvida. No tenemos a nadie excepto a nosotros mismos a quien culpar por nuestras acciones, nadie más. No podemos transferir la responsabilidad de nuestros fracasos a otros.

En el momento en que estamos ante nuestro Creador en el juicio, es como si estuviéramos solos en el mundo – cada uno de nosotros solos, cada individuo solo. Todos nosotros somos responsables de todo lo que hicimos o no hicimos. (Rabino Shlomo Wolbe – 1914-2005) ¡Si tomamos el concepto literal o figuradamente, es asustadizo!

Entonces, ¿cómo puedo afirmar que “no estamos solos?”

Para mí, la respuesta surge cuando consideramos el carácter del Juez. Sí, Dios es el juez majestuoso, el Soberano sentado en un alto y exaltado trono – ha-melej ha-yoshev ahl kisei ram v’nisah – y hoy es el día del Juicio Final!

Pero eso no es toda la historia. Una de las oraciones iniciales de Selihot, al comienzo de estos Días de Temor, describe un aspecto muy diferente de Dios: ¡Dios, el Soberano, está sentado en el trono de la misericordia! Eil melekh yoshev ahl keesei rahamim – rahamim – misericordia.

¿Recuerdan la explicación de los rabinos de los diferentes nombres de Dios que aparecen en las dos historias de creación en Bereshit / Génesis? El nombre Elohim describe la calidad de justicia de Dios; el nombre Adonai denota la calidad de misericordia de Dios. Si Dios gobernara el mundo únicamente por el estándar de la justicia, los seres humanos no durarían por mucho tiempo. Pero si Dios gobernara el mundo solamente por el estándar de la misericordia, los seres humanos tomarían tal ventaja que pronto habría caos. Así que Dios mezcló los dos: la justicia templada por la misericordia y la misericordia endurecida por la justicia.

Apliquen esa lección al concepto de Rosh Hashaná como el Día del Juicio: Aparecemos ante el trono de la justicia, pero sabemos que Dios nos juzgará con misericordia, que Dios es el Amigo detrás de los fenómenos, el amigo leal que está con nosotros pase lo que pase (como dije en mi sermón de anoche).

¿Cómo podemos estar tan seguros de que la misericordia ganará? Aquí, en el santuario, durante estos Días de Asombro, al mirar hacia atrás sobre el año y tratar de evaluar nuestros propios defectos y buenas acciones, es difícil para nosotros recordar que Dios nos está juzgando a través de los prismas tanto de amor y como de misericordia Y el prisma de la justicia estricta a la misma vez. Sabemos que un padre amoroso está inclinado a perdonar. Y sin embargo, la gente objetiva y justa sabe que el mal debe tener consecuencias.

Así es como creo yo que podemos reconciliar la justicia con la misericordia: Llamamos a Dios avinu malkeinu – nuestro Padre, nuestro Soberano. Decimos la frase tantas veces que lo damos por sentado. Sin embargo, también llamamos a Dios “soberano del universo” y pensamos en Dios como divino. Estos no son términos que usamos para los padres (aunque a veces queremos que nuestros hijos piensen que somos – o incluso, nosotros mismos, olvidamos que no lo somos). Los términos avinu – padre – y malkeinu – soberano – parecen una contradicción. Pero no lo son. El Santo, el Gobernante Divino no es un padre humano ni una madre y no está sujeto a limitaciones humanas. Al decir estas palabras – avinu malkeinu, al cantarlas – estamos retratando “un poder en el universo que une perfectamente el amor, la comprensión, la misericordia y el perdón con absoluta imparcialidad y una evaluación objetiva de nuestras virtudes y nuestros defectos”.

Rabí Ismael dijo: “Una vez entré en la parte más interna del santuario … y vi a Adonai sentado en un trono alto y exaltado. Dios me dijo: “Ismael, hijo mío, bendíceme.” Le respondí: “Que tu voluntad sea que tu misericordia venza a tu ira … para que te hagas cargo de tus hijos según el atributo de la misericordia” (Berakhot 7a)

“En Rosh Hashaná estamos llamados a juzgarnos con amor [y misericordia]; para amarnos a nosotros mismos, y también [a la vez] para enfrentar la verdad acerca de nuestras deficiencias y graves fechorías. “Tratamos de juzgarnos a nosotros mismos de la misma forma en que imaginamos que Dios nos juzga. “Aquel que no puede ser engañado por evasivas o excusas, Aquel a quien somos responsables; Él que nos estima por lo que somos y por todo lo que podemos ser “.

Es por eso que nuestra tradición nos invita a saludar este día con solemnidad y alegría, [seriamente pero con optimismo, llenos de esperanza], sabiendo que en este día contemplaremos asuntos de vida y muerte, [y también] … estamos celebrando “la creación del mundo y nuestro propio renacimiento moral [y espiritual?] “. (Jerome Bruner, de Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, 1986, p. 51, citado en Mishkan HaNefesh, servicio de la mañana de Rosh Hashaná, página 105)

Una imagen final: Una de las esculturas más conocidas de los tiempos modernos – tan conocida y tan icónica una imagen que a menudo olvidamos que es de hecho una escultura – es la imagen del pop art de Robert Indiana que murió el pasado mes de mayo. LOVE es cuatro letras rojas de metal—LOVE– con dos letras colocadas encima de las otras dos, con la O inclinada y apoyada por las otras, para hacer un cuadrado interdependiente. El original está en la ciudad de Nueva York. Hay un duplicado en Filadelfia. Un sello postal con la imagen fue publicado por el Servicio Postal de Estados Unidos.

Hay una versión hebrea, usando las cuatro letras aleph, hei, vet, hei – ahavah – en el Museo de Israel en Jerusalén.

Todo el mundo ama el AMOR porque es tan optimista, aparentemente tan sencillo y tan sólido. Pero aparentemente el mismo escultor no estaba totalmente satisfecho con el AMOR como su versión del mejor futuro de la humanidad. Así, casi 40 años más tarde, Robert Indiana creó una segunda escultura pop, en forma de la primera – cuatro letras, dos colocadas encima de las otras dos – pero esta vez la palabra que representa es HOPE–ESPERANZA. En esta escultura también, la letra O se inclina hacia delante, impulsándonos a esperar la promesa de un mundo más pacífico y mejor.

Mi esperanza es que nos inspiremos a entrar en el nuevo año con confianza – confianza, optimismo – optimismo, amor – amor, alegría – alegría y esperanza –esperanza!
Amén

Feliz nuevo año dulce y tranquilo.

As I did at the evening service, I greet you again this morning with my wish for the new year: May this be a good year for all of us, a year of health and happiness, of spiritual and moral growth, a year of satisfaction, of fulfillment and peace – the richest of God’s blessings – in a world that sends us so many mixed signals.

Our prayer today is y’hee ra-tzohn mil’fa-neh-kha Adonai eh-lo-hei-nu vei’lo-hei avo-tei-nu v’eemo-tei-nu sheh-t’ha-deish aleinu shanah tovah u-m’tukah – May it be Your will, our God and God of our ancestors, to bless us with a good and sweet year.

One of the bestselling books on the mainland recently was Colin Whitehead’s Underground Railroad. It is his sixth published novel, the first to become famous. It won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 2016, and it got him an invitation to give the commencement address at the University of Connecticut. He spoke to the graduating seniors and their families as an author, telling them the story of a story.

Every good story, he said, has three parts. Part I – act I, introduces the main characters and provides us with the background information that the author wants us to know. It sets the stage for the second part, Act II.

Act II is where the complications – las complicaciones – begin. Unexpected, unforeseen and troubling events are described, all of which challenge the characters who captured our attention in Act I.

Act III, Mr. Whitehead said, is where all the chaos and confusion of Act II is resolved: the bad guys get punished and the good guys triumph.

Of course, Mr. Whitehead’s speech was longer. It was rich in illustrations that engaged his audience. At the end of his remarks to the graduates he said: “Congratulations on finishing Act I. Welcome to the complications!”

But there’s a problem with making life sound like a novel that ends “they lived happily ever after.” In real life, “happily ever after” simply doesn’t exist. There is no “feliz para siempre.” “Vivieron felice para siempre” rarely happens. Complications don’t go away. They change and get more complicated and challenging.

True reality rejects promises that cannot be kept: the end of evil, for example; or the elimination of pain and suffering; sunshine instead of shadows. The best novels come to an end, but – while some complications are resolved – it is clear to the reader that more complications lie ahead.

Our Jewish faith recognizes how complicated our lives are and it makes one promise that we need to hear today on this Yom HaDin – the Day of Judgment – El Dia del juicio: We are not alone! No estamos solos!

But how can I say that we are not alone when the traditional liturgy for Rosh Hashanah says that we come into God’s presence unescorted, each of us very much alone on this day: B’ein meilitz yosher mul magid pesha – There is no defense attorney to rebut the accusations against us. (Musaf on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, following U-n’taneh tokef)

That’s not the way most of us picture a courtroom. Of course there’s a judge, but there are also defense attorneys, prosecutors, witnesses for and against, often a jury. And the proceedings are usually very slow-moving. Trials can go on for days, weeks, months! But not here! Not on Rosh Hashanah. Not according to the traditional liturgy.

And yet we are not alone. Our prayers – the words of our mouths, the words of our hearts, the words of our thoughts – speak for us. They are our character witnesses. They urge the Holy One to remember the faithfulness of Abraham; to take into account Isaac’s willingness to obey his father; to credit us with the persistent loyalty of Jacob – all the merit of the patriarchs can be transferred to us to plead on our behalf.

But the merit of our ancestors can plead for us only so far, because God is the ultimate Judge. God is the Witness. God is the prosecuting attorney, the authority that summons us to court. And God is all-knowing. God does not forget. We have no one but ourselves to blame for our actions, no one else. We cannot shift the responsibility for our failings to others.

At the moment we stand before our Creator in judgment, it is as if we are alone in the world – each of us alone, each individual alone. We each are responsible for what we did and what we did not do. (Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe – 1914-2005) Whether we take the concept literally or figuratively, it’s scary!

How, then, can I assert that “We are not alone?”

For me, the answer emerges when we consider the character of the Judge. Yes, God is the majestic judge, the Sovereign seated on a high and exalted throne – ha-melekh ha-yoshev ahl kisei ram v’nisah – and today is Judgment day!

But that’s not the whole story. One of the opening prayers of Selihot, at the beginning of these Days of Awe, describes a very different aspect of God: God, the Sovereign, is seated on the throne of mercy! Eil melekh yoshev ahl keesei rahamim – rahamim – mercy.

Remember the Rabbis’ explanation of the different names of God that appear in the two creation stories in Bereshit/Genesis? The name Elohim describes God’s quality of justice; the name Adonai denotes God’s quality of mercy. If God governed the world solely by the standard of justice, human beings wouldn’t last for long. But if God governed the world only by the standard of mercy, human beings would take such advantage that soon there would be chaos. So God mixed the two: justice tempered by mercy and mercy stiffened by justice. (See Bereshit/Genesis Rabbah xii.15)

Apply that lesson to the concept of Rosh Hashanah as the Day of Judgment. We appear before the throne of justice, but we know that God will judge us with mercy, that God is the Friend behind the phenomena, the loyal friend who is with us whatever happens (as I said in my sermon last evening).

How can we be so sure that mercy will win out? Here, in the sanctuary, during these Days of Awe, as we look back over the year and try to assess our own flaws and good deeds, it’s difficult for us to remember that God is judging us through both the prisms of love and mercy AND the prism of strict justice at the same time. We know that a loving parent is inclined to forgive. And yet objective, fair-minded people know that wrongdoing must have consequences.

So here is how I believe we can reconcile justice and mercy: We call God avinu malkeinu – our Parent, our Sovereign. We say the phrase so often that we take it for granted. Yet we also call God “ruler of the universe” and think of God as divine. Those are not terms we use for parents (although sometimes we’d like our kids to think we are – or even, ourselves, forget that we aren’t). The terms avinu – parent – and malkeinu – ruler – seem like a contradiction. But they are not. The Holy One, the Divine Ruler is neither a human father nor mother. God is not subject to human limitations. In saying the words avinu malkeinu, in singing them, we are portraying “a power in the universe that seamlessly unites infinite love, understanding, mercy and forgiveness with absolute fairness and an objective assessment of our virtues and our flaws.”

Rabbi Ishmael said: “I once entered the innermost part of the sanctuary … and saw Adonai seated upon a high and exalted throne. God said to me, ‘Ishmael My son, bless Me.’ I replied, ‘May it be Your will that Your mercy conquer Your anger … in order for You to deal with Your children according to the attribute of mercy’.” (Berakhot 7a)

“On Rosh Hashanah we are called upon to judge ourselves with love [and mercy]; to love ourselves, and also [at the same time] to face the truth about our shortcomings and grave misdeeds.” We try to judge ourselves as we imagine God judges us. “The One who cannot be fooled by evasions or excuses, the One to whom we are responsible and accountable; the One who cherishes us for who we are and all that we can become.”

That’s why our tradition bids us greet this day with both solemnity and joy, [seriously yet optimistically, filled with hope,] knowing that on this day we will contemplate matters of life and death, [and also that] … we are celebrating “the world’s creation and our own moral [and spiritual?] rebirth.” (Jerome Bruner, from Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, 1986, p. 51, cited in Mishkan HaNefesh, Rosh Hashanah Morning Service, page 105)

A final image: One of the best known sculptures of modern times – an iconic image that began as a series of paintings – is by the pop artist Robert Indiana, who died this past May. LOVE is four red metal letters –L O V E – stacked two letters on top of two, with the O leaning forward, resting upon and supported by the V and the E below to make an interdependent square. The original is in New York City; his LOVE sculptures are installed in public spaces worldwide. A postage stamp with the image of his LOVE painting was issued by the U.S. Postal Service.

The artist also created a Hebrew version for the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. It uses the four letters aleph, hei, vet, hei to make the word ahavah – love.

Everybody loves LOVE because it is so optimistic, seemingly so simple and so solid. But the sculptor himself apparently wasn’t totally satisfied with LOVE as his ultimate version of humanity’s best future. Nearly 40 years later, Robert Indiana created a second pop sculpture shaped like the first – four letters, two on top of two – but this time the word he depicts is HOPE, the value he called “love’s close relative.” In this sculpture too, the letter O leans forward, propelling us to look forward to the possibility of a more peaceful, better world.

My hope is that we will be inspired to enter the new year with confidence – confianza, optimism – optimismo, love – amor, joy – alegría and esperanza— hope!

Amen

Shanah tovah – ¡Feliz Año Nuevo! Luego de un año muy difícil, es mi honor y privilegio una vez más estar frente a ustedes, miembros y amigos del Templo Beth Shalom de Puerto Rico, como lo he hecho durante los últimos ocho años, y saludarlos al comenzar nuestro nuevo año judío 5779. Vivimos en una época de mucha incertidumbre – social, política, cultural y económica. Así que mi oración para el próximo año es sincera y seria: Que sea Tu voluntad, Dios nuestro y Dios de nuestros padres y madres, que seamos renovados por un año bueno y dulce. Feliz año nuevo, dulce y tranquilo!

Invito, animo e insto a que participen en todos nuestros servicios de los High Holy Days: mañana por la mañana (hoy, en el calendario judío) para el servicio del primer día de Rosh Hashaná, seguido por Tashlikh en la playa; la liturgia alternativa hermosa para el segundo día de la fiesta, “En el balance”, nuestro servicio más personal, que leeremos el martes por la mañana; Shabbat Shuvah y el sábado por la mañana; y los servicios para Yom Kipur por la noche, mañana y tarde. Escuchen las llamadas del shofar, canten las melodías de la temporada. Sean una presencia importante, una parte vital de nuestra congregación en la oración. Fortalezcan su propia fe y renuévense mientras comencemos el nuevo año.

Esta fue mi invitación para ustedes por el último Rosh Hashaná. El huracán María impidió no solo las palabras y oraciones; Devastó la isla del encanato. Ha tomado casi un año para restaurar la energía eléctrica a Puerto Rico, y todos saben que es peor de lo que era antes. Debido al impacto del huracán, todos los problemas que enfrenta Puerto Rico se han vuelto más difíciles de resolver.

Además, estamos en medio de una época de pesadilla nacional. Cada año nuevo promete desarrollos desconocidos y difíciles de predecir, lo que un político (Donald Rumsfeld) llamó “lo desconocidos conocidos”. Pero en este último año, particularmente desde enero, nos hemos enfrentado a lo que sólo se puede describir como “lo desconocido desconocido”- cosas que no habríamos podido predecir. No son sólo las consecuencias catastróficas de María; escuchamos ecos inesperados de tiempos oscuros, el regreso de recuerdos y comportamientos que pensábamos que estaban guardados en la biblioteca de los malos tiempos. Tantas expectativas de normalidad se han desvanecido. Se reportan tantos nuevos atropellos, y vienen tan rápido que estamos siendo seducidos para bajar nuestras expectativas y nuestros estándares. La nueva aspereza, la descarada mentira, el odio, el fanatismo y el antisemitismo han comenzado a constituir una nueva normalidad. Tenemos la “sensación de vivir dentro de un chiste que ha perdido el control”. (James Poniewozik, New York Times, 5 de septiembre de 2017) Sigmund Freud escribió sobre “la civilización y sus descontentos”. Considere nuestros descontentos actuales. Nuestros descontentos, nuestras quajas.

La civilidad ha sido sustituida por el insulto, el respeto por el desprecio, la tolerancia por el fanatismo, la verdad por la invención y el engaño, la humanidad por el chovinismo, la privacidad por la exposición, la modestia por el exhibicionismo, el logro por la celebridad, la vergüenza por la desvergüenza y los puentes por paredes. El resultado es que cuando una figura pública es corrupta o inepta, nos encogemos de hombros; y si esa figura pública atrapa adecuadamente, ofrecemos alabanza y suspiro en alivio. Y después de tantos estallidos de rabia blanca, neonazi y parafernalia y lemas de Ku Klux Klan, nos estamos volviendo cansados, tentados sólo a decir: “¿Qué hay de nuevo?” Vamos a sobrecarga cognitiva – sobrecarga cognitiva. Así que hacemos caso omiso de la indignación del día, el último insulto a nuestra democracia, a los estándares de nuestra civilización, a nuestra propia inteligencia.

Este es el fenómeno descrito por el gran filósofo-realista Daniel Patrick Moynihan, que también sirvió en el Senado de los Estados Unidos, como “definir la desviación hacia abajo – definiendo la desviación hacia abajo”. Lo escribió hace 24años, pero comenzó mucho antes, en los trastornos de finales de los sesenta, cuando el asalto a la verdad, al significado de la verdad, a cualquier tipo de expertiz fue despreciado como el elitismo de hombres blancos tanto muertos y como vivos.

Estos ataques fueron intensificados y radicalizados por los llamamientos a la política de identidad hecha tanto por los extremistas de la derecha como por los de la izquierda desde los años ochenta. El efecto fue discutiblemente desorganizado y sin guía en muchos casos, sin embargo fue claramente intencional.

(Para aquellos que buscan socavar la estructura existente, vean Democracia en Cadenas: La Historia Profunda del Plan Stealth de la Derecha Radical para América, de Nancy MacLean, revisado por Heather Boushey en The New York Times, artículo del 20 de agosto de 2017 titulado “La regla de la minoría – cómo el economista James McGill Buchanan estableció el plan del juego para la derecha radical.” Steve Bannon se describe como “virulently anti-establishment, particularmente” anti “la clase política permanente.” Paul Farhi, “Cómo Breitbart se hizo un voz dominante en los medios de comunicación conservadores “, en The Washington Post, 27 de enero de 2016. Bannon, hasta hace poco el principal asesor del presidente, dijo a Ronald Radosh, reportero de The Daily Beast, en 2013 (según informó Ryan Lizza en The New Yorker del 14 de noviembre de 2016): “Soy leninista, Lenin quería destruir el Estado y ese es mi objetivo también, quiero que todo se derrumbe y quiero destruir todo el establecimiento de hoy”. Bannon sostiene que no recuerda la conversación, pero Radosh confirmó su informe en un artículo de la Daily Beast del 27 de agosto de 2016.)

Lo que estos extremistas buscan es destruir la confianza de la gente en el gobierno, desacreditar las instituciones gubernamentales y fomentar un modo de pensar y actuar que desconecte el comportamiento de las consecuencias en la vida real. Justo antes de morir en el 2003, el Senador Moynihan, en cuanto a la campaña política y cultural contra el gobierno y contra la verdad, dijo: “Todo el mundo tiene derecho a su propia opinión, pero no tiene derecho a sus propios hechos.” (Anteriormente, por James Schlesinger, 1980, y Bernard Baruch, 1950) ¡O sus “hechos alternos”!

El asalto a la verdad no es nuevo. Cuando los nazis lo usaron en los años 30 y 40, lo llamamos la GRAN MENTIRA. Cuando la máquina de propaganda soviética torció la verdad, ellos mismos la llamaron DEZINFORMATSIA – desinformación. Hoy, la Rusia de Putin disemina abiertamente, en línea y por pirateo muy sofisticado de sitios occidentales. RT (la televisión rusa poseída por el gobierno) incluso se mostraba en los monitores de video en las estaciones subterráneas de Path, los trenes que llevan a miles de viajeros de Nueva Jersey a Nueva York todos los días, propaganda rusa gratuita, cortesía de la (engañada) Autoridad Portuaria de Nueva York y Nueva Jersey!

La manifestación del año pasado en Charlottesville fue un punto de inflexión, una nueva baja. Un desfile de antorchas, como los de los nazis en los años 30, las banderas de la esvástica, los salmos de Hitler, los cantos del libro de juguete nazi “sangre y tierra”, “los judíos no nos reemplazarán”. Hombres enmascarados armados con rifles semiautomáticos frente a la calle de la sinagoga donde, adentro, los adoradores estaban en las oraciones de Shabat. Como precaución, habían evacuado los pergaminos de la Torá, y cuando terminó el servicio, todos salieron por la puerta trasera. ¡En Estados Unidos! ¡En 2017!
Y la única mujer asesinada por el ataque automovilístico, Heather Heyer, asistente legal de 32 años de edad, que fue descrita en un sitio web alt-right como “un gasto innecesario de espacio”, una versión americana de la clasificación nazi de “vida indigna de vida “- Lebensunwerte Leben” – para ser desechada como basura.

Revoltoso y aterrador – para los judíos, para cada grupo minoritario, para el futuro norteamericano como una democracia en la que la ciudadanía no se basa en la raza o el color, la fe o la orientación sexual.

Pero entonces, para que el presidente abdique el papel de presidente de todo el pueblo, afirmar la equivalencia moral entre los neonazis y el KKK y los que salieron a defender la democracia, una escandalosa falta de decencia básica y un descarado rechazo a la presidencia deber. (una paráfrasis de Susan Bro, la madre de Heather Heyer). Hacerlo es como decir que hay dos lados de la historia del Holocausto, uno de los cuales sería la afirmación de que no sucedió. ¡Discutir! ¿Discutir? ¿Debemos discutir si la Segunda Guerra Mundial sucedió o no? ¿O si la Declaración de Independencia fue escrita o no? ¿Deben los supervivientes del Holocausto verse obligados a debatir si han sufrido o que todas sus familias han sido asesinadas? Algunas preguntas son engañosas. Algunos asuntos no son “issues” que tienen dos o más lados; no están abiertos para discusión e interpretación.

Los enemigos de la democracia han descubierto cómo explotar los valores democráticos. Ellos abogan por la “libertad de expresión” para ocultar su objetivo de eliminar cualquier discurso que rechacen. Vladimir Lenin, el diabólico fundador de la Unión Soviética, describió esta técnica. Dijo: Los capitalistas nos venderán la cuerda que usaremos para ahorcarlos.

Y si no lo descubrimos–pronto, estaremos todos en difidultades. “La tolerancia hacia los intolerantes no puede ser infinita o se arriesga la erradicación de los tolerantes”. (Atribuido a Karl Popper, “La Sociedad Abierta y sus Enemigos”, 1945, en Anna Sauerbrey’s How Germany Deals with Neo Nazis, The New York Times 8 / 21/17)

Esto no es exclusivamente un problema norteamericano. Afecta a todos y contribuye al caos político y cultural que estamos viviendo hoy. No piense que Puerto Rico se librará de los efectos devastadores de la turbulencia actual. ¿Hay alguien en Washington que quiera proteger a Puerto Rico?

Lo que me lleva a mirar muy específicamente a esta congregación en Rosh Hashaná. Cuando nuestro nuevo año comienza, cuando entramos en el año del 50 aniversario de la existencia del templo Beth Shalom, les pregunto a todos: ¿Qué nos pueden enseñar nuestra fe y los grandes temas de estos días de temor? ¿Cómo pueden ayudarnos a lidiar con el aterrador mundo que nos rodea?

Cuando los nazis comenzaron su persecución de los judíos alemanes en la década de 1930, las víctimas no sabían cómo responder. La gran mayoría de los judíos alemanes estaban muy asimilados. Se consideraban a sí mismos como Deutschen der Mosaischen Glauben – Alemanes de la Fe Mosaica. Sabían muy poco acerca de las creencias, los valores y las percepciones judías. Así que estaban indefensos, y cualquier orgullo judío que tuvieran no era sólo frágil sino hueco.

No compartimos esa falta de conocimiento. Así que muchos miembros de TBS han llegado al judaísmo como adultos y su introducción a las riquezas de nuestra fe se presentó a un nivel adulto a las personas ansiosas por aprender y absorber! Además, nuestra educación regular de adultos de la tarde de Shabat – a la que muchos de ustedes asisten – continúa reforzando y ampliando su conocimiento básico y compromiso.

Ahora, nuestro conocimiento judío puede no ser capaz de cambiar el mundo, o de arreglar nuestras dificultades, pero puede equiparnos, cada uno de nosotros, para entender mejor cómo hacer frente a los desafíos que enfrentamos.

Los temas de Rosh Hashaná nos presentan un mapa cósmico, una guía espiritual del universo y nuestra propia relación con él y con el Creador de todos. Qué apropiado es el día en que nuestra tradición dice que es el cumpleaños del mundo. Hayom harat olam! Hoy el mundo nació – y en este día, podemos nacer de nuevo, no como bebés sino como purificados almas renovando nuestro compromiso con el judaísmo y con la vida.

Así que permítanme reintroducirlos a los temas de Rosh Hashaná. Están encabezados por los mismos nombres de estos días santos: Rosh Hashaná es Yom HaZikkaron – El Día del Recuerdo – El Día del Memoria; Yom HaDin – El Día del Juicio – El Dia del Juicio; y Yom Teruah – El Día de Sonar el Shofar – El Dia del Shofar.

Yom HaZikkaron nos recuerda del poder y de la importancia de recordar. De todas las criaturas vivientes, sólo los seres humanos son capaces de procesar recuerdos complejos y abstractos. Rosh Hashaná, Yom HaZikkaron, describe dos tipos de recordar: Dios se acuerda de nosotros, y recordamos lo que Dios nos pide. En la lectura de la Torá del primer día, Dios recuerda a Sarah – Va-Adonai pah-kad et Sarah (Beresheet /Génesis 212: 1). Dios se acuerda de todo, se nos dice. Ustedes saben cómo los Rabinos del Talmud describieron este día en el cielo (Rav Kruspedai, en nombre de Rav Yohanan, Talmud de Babilonia, Rosh Hashaná 16b):

Tres libros se abren en Rosh Hashaná – uno para aquellos que son completamente malvados; uno para los que son perfectamente justos; y uno para aquellos en el medio. Aquellos que son justos están inscritos y sellados instantáneamente para toda la vida. Los que son malos están inscritos y sellados instantáneamente para la muerte. Aquellos que están en algún punto intermedio todavía no son juzgados en los días entre Rosh Hashaná y Yom Kipur. Si, al final de los Diez Días de Penitencia, se encuentran dignos, están inscritos en el Libro de la Vida. Si no son dignos, están inscritos en el Libro de la Muerte.

Creo que la mayoría de nosotros estamos “en algún punto intermedio”, así que aunque no creamos literalmente en los libros celestiales de vida y muerte -o las escalas de juicio de Dios- cada año estos Diez Días, comenzando con Rosh Hashaná y concluyendo Yom Kippur, debe ser un tiempo para una introspección moral seria y una determinación de cambiar para mejor, para hacer teshuvá, para volver a Dios, que, según nuestra tradición, está tan ansioso de arrepentirnos de que el Santo nos encontre a mitad de camino para darnos la bienvenida de nuevo! Dios no es neutral; sino “más bien,” Dios es nuestro Amigo.

No puede haber una sociedad viable sin el recuerdo de las experiencias grupales. Tampoco una vida individual puede tener valor sin memoria. La mayor tragedia del Alzheimer es vivir sin memoria. Somos la gente del libro – uno de los muchos significados de ese término es el recuerdo de la Torá, por lo que me refiero a aprender y comprender e internalizar las enseñanzas en nuestros textos sagrados. Recordar nuestra historia y nuestros valores y cómo aplicarlos a nuestras vidas nos ayuda a enfrentar el futuro, incluso si nos ayuda a evaluar nuestro pasado, nos ayuda a ver quiénes hemos sido y cómo hemos actuado en el año que acaba de concluir.

Los libros abiertos de Dios nos recuerdan lo que hemos hecho y lo que no hemos hecho. También son una metáfora para el segundo tema de Rosh Hashaná – Yom HaDin – el Día del Juicio. Dios nos juzga sobre la base de todas las pruebas. No se oculta nada. Dios recuerda las cosas que nos gustaría ser olvidado. V’zokher kol ha-nish’ka-caliente. Permanecer en el juicio significa que hemos tenido opciones en el último año; nos han dado el libre albedrío. Esa es nuestra enseñanza. Nuestras opciones son reales. Ciertamente hay limitaciones a nuestra capacidad de elegir: Las circunstancias que enfrentamos, nuestro propio ADN (AND), nuestra herencia genética.

Pero no somos marionetas (marionetas) en las cuerdas de Dios. Uno de los personajes ficticios de Isaac Bashevis Singer sugiere que para que tengamos libre albedrío, Dios debe esconderse del mundo. Depende de nosotros, y así seremos juzgados. No somos prisioneros del destino, y no en confinamiento mental solitario.

El tercer nombre, el tercer tema de Rosh Hashaná entonces sigue lógicamente. Yom Teruah – la explosión electrizante del shofar es sonada para sacudirnos fuera de nuestra rutina diaria, a menudo-irreflexiva. La autoevaluación es muy difícil. El shofar suena. Dios está escuchando. Dios está esperando a que cada uno de nosotros se mueva. Escuchamos el sonido. ¿Podemos salir de nuestro letargo, de nuestra servidumbre adictos a las rutinas mundanas de nuestras vidas?

Todo esto es muy serio. A la luz de nuestras crisis multifacéticas personales, nacionales y globales que tiene que serlo.
Pero nuestra tradición nos enseña que Rosh Hashaná no sólo es serio; también es alegre. ¿Como puede ser? El shofar se suena en tiempos de peligro, pero también se suena para alabar a Dios con alegría. Así que sentimos dolor y pesar al enfrentar nuestras fallas, pero también sentimos alivio y alegría mientras celebramos nuestra habilidad para comenzar de nuevo.

Y, y sabemos en nuestros corazones que el Juez de este día está lleno de compasión maternal y paternal. Oramos al Eil Malei Rahamim – Dios lleno de misericordia y compasión por nosotros, asegurados que hay esperanza para la verdadera justicia en nuestro mundo defectuoso. Así que nuestro saludo de ‘shanah tovah’ no se dice con miedo. No importa lo aprensivos que sean los acontecimientos actuales, damos la bienvenida al nuevo año con alegría. Y así, con el corazón lleno, les deseo a todos SHANAH TOVAH!

I OFFERED THIS PRELUDE IN SPANISH BEFORE I BEGAN THE FORMAL SERMON ITSELF IN ENGLISH (the full text will be available in Spanish translation on the TBS website):

My friends, we have come through a hard year, a year of physical destrction by Hurricane Maria, a year of trauma and disappointment for this beloved island. We gather together as a community, individuals and families, to seek consolation, to renew our resilience and to look ahead with hope for a better year. So ….

Shanah tovah – ¡Feliz año nuevo! After a very difficuIt year, it is once again my honor and privilege to stand before you, members and friends of Temple Beth Shalom of Puerto Rico, as I have in past years, and to greet you as our new Jewish year 5779 begins. We live in a time of much uncertainty – social, political, cultural, environmental and economic – an “age of enormity” (Isaac Rosenfeld). So my prayer for the coming year is heartfelt and earnest:

May it be Your will, our God and God of our fathers and mothers, that we be renewed for a good and sweet year.

Feliz nuevo año, dulce y tranquilo!

I invite, encourage – even urge – you to participate in all of our High Holy Day services: tomorrow morning (today, in the Jewish calendar) for the service for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, followed by Tashlikh at the beach; the beautiful, alternative liturgy for the second day of the holiday, “In the Balance,” our most personal service, which we will read on Tuesday morning; Shabbat Shuvah and Saturday morning; and the services for Yom Kippur evening, morning and afternoon. Hear the calls of the shofar, sing the melodies of the season. Be an important presence, a vital part of our congregation at prayer. Strengthen your own faith and renew yourself as we begin the new year.

This was my invitation to you for last Rosh Hashanah. Hurricane Maria prevented not only the words and prayers; it devastated la isla encanta.
It has taken nearly a year to restore electric power to Puerto Rico, and everyone knows it’s worse than it was before. Owing to the hurricane’s impact, all the problems facing Puerto Rico have become much harder to solve.

On top of this, we are in the midst of a time of national nightmare. Every day promises unknown, hard-to-predict developments, what one politician (Donald Rumsfeld) called “the known unknowns.” But since the beginning of 2017, we have been confronted with what can only be described as “unknown unknowns” – things that we could not have predicted. It’s not only the catastrophic aftermath of Maria; we hear unexpected echoes of dark times, the return of memories and behaviors that we thought were safely shelved in the library of the bad old days. So many expectations of normalcy have been dashed. So many new outrages are reported, and they come so fast that we are being seduced into lowering our expectations and our standards. The new coarseness, the brazen lying, hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism have begun to constitute a new normal. We have the “feeling of living inside a joke that’s gone of control.” (James Poniewozik, New York Times, September 5, 2017) Sigmund Freud wrote about “civilization and its discontents.” Consider our current discontents. Nuestros descontentos, nuestras quajas.

Civility has been replaced by insult, respect by contempt, tolerance by bigotry, truth by fabrication and deceit, humanity by chauvinism, privacy by exposure, modesty by exhibitionism, achievement by celebrity, shame by shamelessness, and bridges by walls. (David Friend, “The 1990s Gave Us the Trump Teens,” The New York Times, September 1, 2017, adapted) The result is that when a public figure is corrupt or inept, we shrug; and if that public figure fumbles through adequately, we offer praise and sigh in relief. And after so many outbursts of white rage, neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan paraphernalia and slogans, we’re becoming jaded, tempted just to say, “So what’s new?” We go on cognitive overload – sobrecarga cognitiva. So we shrug off the outrage of the day, the latest insult to our democracy, to our civilization’s standards, to our very intelligence.

This is the phenomenon described by the great philosopher-realist Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who also served in the United States Senate, as “defining deviancy downward – definiendo la desviacion hacia abajo.” (The American Scholar, winter, 1993) He wrote it 24 years ago, but it started much earlier, in the upheavals of the late 1960s, when the assault on truth, on the meaning of truth, on any kind of expertise was scorned as the elitism of both dead and living white males.

These attacks were intensified and radicalized by appeals to identity politics made by both right and left extremists from the 1980s on. The effect was arguably unorganized and unguided in many cases, and yet it was clearly intentional.

(For those who seek to undermine the existing structure, see Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, by Nancy MacLean, reviewed by Heather Boushey in The New York Times Book Review article of August 20, 2017 entitled “Minority Rule – How the Economist James McGill Buchanan laid out the game plan for the radical right.” Steve Bannon describes himself as “virulently anti-establishment, particularly ‘anti’ the permanent political class.” Paul Farhi, “How Breitbart became a dominant voice in the conservative media,” in The Washington Post, January 27, 2016. Bannon, until recently the president’s senior advisor, told Ronald Radosh, a reporter for The Daily Beast, in 2013 [as reported by Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker of November 14, 2016]: “I’m a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon claims he does not recall the conversation, but Radosh confirmed his report in a Daily Beast article of August 27, 2016.)

What these extremists aim for is to destroy people’s trust in government, to discredit government institutions, and to encourage a mode of thinking and acting that disconnects behavior from consequences in real life. Just before he died in 2003, Senator Moynihan, viewing the startling success of the political and cultural campaign against government and against truth, said: “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but they are not entitled to their own facts.” (Earlier, by James Schlesinger, 1980, and Bernard Baruch, 1950) Or their “alternate facts”!

The assault on truth is not new. When the Nazis used it in the 1930s and ‘40s, we called it the BIG LIE. When the Soviet propaganda machine twisted the truth, they themselves called it DEZINFORMATSIA – disinformation. Today, Putin’s Russia disseminates disinformation openly, online, and by very sophisticated hacking of Western sites. RT (the government owned Russian Television) was even being displayed on the video monitors in the underground stations of the Path, the trains that take thousands of commuters from New Jersey to New York every day, straight-out Russian propaganda free, courtesy of the (duped) Port Authority of New York and New Jersey!

Last year’s demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia was a turning point, a new low. A torchlight parade, like those of the Nazis in the 1930s, swastika flags, Hitler salutes, chants from the Nazi playbook “blood and soil,” “Jews won’t replace us.” Masked men armed with semi-automatic guns loitering across the street from the synagogue where, inside, worshipers were at Shabbat prayers. As a precaution, they had evacuated the Torah scrolls, and when the service was over, they all left through the back door. In America! In 2017!

And the one woman killed by the automobile attack, Heather Heyer, a 32-year old legal assistant, who was described on one alt-right website as “a waste of space,” an American version of the Nazi classification of “life unworthy of life” – Lebensunwerte Leben” – to be discarded as basura.

Revolting and frightening – for Jews, for every minority group, for the American future as a democracy in which citizenship is not based on race or color or faith or sexual orientation.

But then, for the president to abdicate the role of President of all the people, to assert moral equivalency between the neo-Nazis and the KKK and those who came out to defend democracy: What a shocking lack of basic decency and a shameless rejection of presidential duty! (a paraphrase of Susan Bro, Heather Heyer’s mother) Doing so is like saying that there are two sides to Holocaust history, one of which would be the assertion that it didn’t happen. Discuss! Discuss? Should we discuss if World War II happened or not? Or if the Declaration of Independence was written or not? Should Holocaust survivors be forced to debate whether or not they suffered or that their entire families were murdered? Some questions are phony. Some matters are not “issues” that have two or more sides; they are not open for discussion and interpretation.

Enemies of democracy on college campuses and in arguments about internet content have figured out how to exploit democratic values. They plead “free speech” in order to conceal their goal of eliminating any speech they reject. Vladimir Lenin, the diabolical founding father of the Soviet Union, described this technique. He said: The capitalists will sell us the rope we’ll use to hang them.

And if we don’t figure that out, and soon, we’re all in trouble. “Tolerance toward the intolerant cannot be infinite, or the tolerant risk eradication.” (Attributed to Karl Popper, “The Open Society and its Enemies,” 1945, in Anna Sauerbrey’s How Germany Deals with Neo Nazis,” The New York Times 8/21/17)

This is not exclusively an American problem. It affects everyone and contributes to the political and cultural chaos we are experiencing today. Has Puerto Rico will be spared the devastating effects of the current turmoil? Is there anyone in Washington who wants to protect Puerto Rico?

Which brings me to look very specifically at this congregation on Rosh Hashanah. As our new year begins, I ask all of us: What can our faith and the grand themes of these Days of Awe teach us? How can they help us cope with the frightening world around us?

When the Nazis began their persecution of German Jews in the 1930s, their victims didn’t know how to respond. The vast majority of Germany’s Jews were highly assimilated. They thought of themselves as Deutschen der Mosaischen Glauben – Germans of the Mosaic Faith – rather than as Jewish people living as German citizens. They knew very little about Jewish beliefs, values and insights. So they were defenseless, and whatever Jewish pride they had was not just fragile but hollow.

We – you – don’t share that lack of knowledge. So many members of TBS have come to Judaism as adults and their introduction to the riches of our faith was presented at an adult level to people eager to learn and absorb! Moreover, our regular Shabbat afternoon adult education – which so many of you attend – continues to reinforce and enlarge your core knowledge and commitment.

Now, our Jewish knowledge may not be able to change the world, or fix our difficulties, but it can equip us, each of us, to better understand how to cope with the challenges we face.

The themes of Rosh Hashanah present us with a cosmic map, a spiritual guide to the universe and to our own relationship to it and to the Creator of all. How appropriate that is on the day our tradition says is the birthday of the world. Hayom harat olam! Today the world was born – and on this day, we can be born again, not as babies but as purified souls renewing our commitment to Judaism and to life.

So let me reintroduce you to the themes of Rosh Hashanah. They are headlined by the very names of these holy days: Rosh Hashanah is Yom HaZikkaron – The Day of Remembrance – El Dia del Memoria; Yom HaDin – The Day of Judgment – El Dia del Juicio; and Yom Teruah – The Day of Sounding the Shofar – El Dia del Shofar.

Yom HaZikkaron reminds us of the power and importance of remembering. Of all living creatures, only human beings are capable of processing complex and abstract memories. Rosh Hashanah, Yom HaZikkaron, describes two kinds of remembering: God remembers us, and we remember what God demands of us. In the Torah reading of the first day, God remembers Sarah – Va-Adonai pah-kad et Sarah (Beresheet/ Genesis 21:1). God remembers everything, we are told. You know how the Rabbis of the Talmud described this day in heaven (Rav Kruspedai, in the name of Rav Yohanan, Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 16b):
Three books are opened on Rosh Hashanah – one for those who are thoroughly evil; one for those who are perfectly righteous; and one for those somewhere in between. Those who are righteous are inscribed and sealed instantly for life. Those who are evil are inscribed and sealed instantly for death. Those who are somewhere in between are not yet judged in the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. If, at the end of the Ten Days of Penitence, they are found worthy, they are inscribed in the Book of Life. If they are not found worthy, they are inscribed in the Book of Death.

I think that most of us are “somewhere in between,” so even if we don’t literally believe in the heavenly books of life and death – or God’s scales of judgment – each year these Ten Days, beginning with Rosh Hashanah and concluding on Yom Kippur, should be a time for serious moral introspection and a determination to change for the better, to do teshuvah, to return to God, who, our tradition tells us, is so eager for us to repent that the Holy One will meet us halfway to welcome us back! God is not neutral; but “rather,” God is our Friend.

There can be no viable society without the memory of group experiences. Nor can an individual life have any value without memory. The greatest tragedy of Alzheimer’s is living without memory. We are the people of the book – one of the many meanings of that term is remembering Torah, by which I mean learning and understanding and internalizing the teachings in our sacred texts. Remembering our history and our values and how to apply them to our lives helps us face the future even as it helps us assess our past, helps us look at who we have been and how we have acted in the year that has just concluded.
God’s open books remind us of what we have done and what we have not done. They are also a metaphor for the second theme of Rosh Hashanah – Yom HaDin – the Day of Judgment. God judges us on the basis of all the evidence. Nothing is withheld. God remembers the things we’d like to be forgotten. V’zokher kol ha-nish’ka-hot. Standing in judgment means that we have had choices in the past year; we have been given free will. That’s our teaching. Our choices are real. Certainly there are limitations to our ability to choose: The circumstances we face, our own DNA (AND), our genetic heritage.
But we are not marionettes (marionetas) on God’s strings. One of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s fictional characters suggests that for us to have free will, God must hide from the world. It’s up to us, and so we will be judged. We are not prisoners of fate, and not in solitary mental confinement.
The third name, the third theme of Rosh Hashanah then follows logically. Yom Teruah – the electrifying blast of the shofar is sounded to shake us out of our daily, often-unthinking, routine. Self-assessment is very difficult. The shofar sounds. God is listening. God is waiting for each of us to stir. We hear the sound. Can we move ourselves out of our addiction to the mundane routines of our lives?
All this is very serious. In light of our current personal, national and global multifaceted crises it needs to be.
But our tradition teaches us that Rosh Hashanah is not only serious; it is also joyous. How can that be? The shofar is sounded in times of danger, but it is also sounded to praise God in joy. So we feel sorrow and regret as we confront our failings, but we also feel relief and joy as we celebrate our ability to begin again.
And, and, we know in our hearts that the Judge of this day is full of motherly and fatherly compassion. We pray to Eil Malei Rahamim – God full of mercy and compassion for us, assured that there is hope for true justice in our flawed world. So our l’shanah tovah greeting is not fearful. No matter how discontented, upset and worried current events make us, we welcome the new year with joy. And so, with a full heart, I wish you all SHANAH TOVAH!

By Rabbi Norman Patz

This essay, excerpted from the 2010 monograph by Naomi Patz called “We Adopt as Our Own the Destroyed Jewish Community of Jihlava,” will appear in a forthcoming issue of the online newsletter of the Memorial Scrolls Trust in London at their request. A copy of the full monograph is in the TBS library.

WE ARE THEIR SPIRITUAL HEIRS

The Holocaust scroll in the ark of the sanctuary of Temple Beth Shalom of Puerto Rico, has been part of the congregation since August, 1967, shortly after the synagogue itself came into existence. On the 72nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, seven years ago, we rededicated the scroll in a moving ceremony. It was appropriate to choose Kristallnacht for our dedication because the synagogue of the Jihlava Jewish community – with which we have linked ourselves – was set on fire that night and destroyed.

As part of our observance, we presented to the congregation a monograph written by Naomi Patz entitled We Adopt as Our Own the Destroyed Jewish Community of Jihlava. Below are excerpts from that text (slightly edited and with citations omitted).

OUR HOLOCAUST TORAH SCROLL

AND OUR OBLIGATION

The members of Temple Beth Shalom of San Juan, Puerto Rico are honored, privileged and humbled to have one of the Czech Torah scrolls saved from the Shoah.  It is ours on long-term loan from the Memorial Scrolls Trust in London.

As trustees of this Torah scroll, we link ourselves with the six million of our people who perished in the Holocaust. Through this precious tangible connection with one community that was destroyed, we personalize a tragedy which is otherwise incomprehensible – six million people murdered only because they were Jews! – and make it our own. By using this scroll, we make ourselves the spiritual heirs of the holy Jewish community that no longer exists in the city of Jihlava in the Czech Republic. Every time we open the ark and see this Torah scroll, every time we reach out to kiss it as it is carried through the sanctuary, every time it is opened and read we carry on their tradition as the heirs of a wonderful Jewish community that is no more. We are their heirs through our memories and our deeds, by how we act and by what we do.

Many of the families of this congregation have passed through terrible times. Our faith must not falter despite the tragedies whose trauma continues to resonate in our hearts and minds. We must deny a victory of the spirit to the wicked. Instead, even as we have included the names of our beloved victims of the Shoah along with the names of the known victims from the city of Jihlava, let us continue to proclaim the possibility of goodness and affirm the potential for justice and mercy in every human being.

Though our lives are comfortable, we should not delude ourselves into thinking that this is the way others live – here in our own country or elsewhere around the world. There is much work yet to be done:  to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to bring justice and peace. We are called to perform these mitzvot, to be the bearers of light in a world that has been considerably darkened by human cruelty. The Torah – and this particular Torah scroll itself – both proclaim that message. They speak to the highest potential of the human heart. Let none of us forget that – ever.

Neither the Nazi-controlled Museum of the Prague Ghetto nor the Communist-controlled State Jewish Museum ever displayed any of the 1,564 Torah scrolls that were brought to Prague from Jewish communities throughout Bohemia and Moravia during the war. They were stored – piled up and ignored – in the disused Michle Synagogue in a Prague suburb for more than 20 years. In 1963, the scrolls were purchased from the Czech government, which was eager for Western currency and transferred to London, where custodianship of the scrolls was given to a Memorial Scrolls Committee formed at the Westminster Synagogue. From the beginning, the intention of the Memorial Scrolls Trust was to make the scrolls available to congregations around the world.  Each scroll bears a brass tablet with a number corresponding to the number on a certificate that describes the origin of that scroll and any of its known particulars. Our scroll is number 720. It is an “orphan” scroll.

What does that mean?

While 1,348 of the 1,564 scrolls that were received at the Westminster Synagogue came with a record of their provenance (the name of the exact synagogue or community from which they had been taken by the Nazis), 216 of the scrolls were “orphan” scrolls with no known connection to their past. Where the provenance of a Torah scroll is known, the congregation that has adopted that Torah can link itself to “their” martyred congregation. By learning about the people who belonged to that congregation – finding out as much as possible about their lives and their fate, and the fate of the synagogue building itself, as well as that of the congregation’s cemetery, the memory of that Jewish community will not be lost.

The situation is different with the scrolls whose provenance is unknown. As with any adoption, congregations that are trustees of an “orphan” scroll have the privilege of choosing a community with which to identify, and the opportunity to choose one that is otherwise not being remembered. We have chosen to claim the Jewish community of Jihlava as our own. We are the first congregation anywhere in the world to do so, and one of the first 10 congregations around the world to link an “orphan” scroll to an otherwise-unremembered destroyed Jewish community.

And the city of Jihlava itself? It is located in the center of the Czech Republic, astride the line that marks the frontier between the ancient “Czech Lands” of Bohemia and Moravia. Today, almost 50,000 people there. None are Jews.

For many centuries, ethnic Germans constituted the vast majority of the population, and until the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I and the establishment of an independent Czechoslovakia, the city was known primarily by its German name, Iglau.  In the period between the two World Wars, Jihlava remained heavily German; it was regarded as a German-speaking “island,” a major, free-standing part of the ethnic German enclaves in Czechoslovakia’s northern, western and southwestern border areas known collectively as the Sudetenland.

Jihlava/Iglau is an old, once-walled city. A Jewish presence there is mentioned as early as 1249. By 1345, a synagogue, school and cemetery had been established by the small Jewish community. Most of the Jewish residents were engaged in commercial activities: some were military purveyors, others were artisans, tailors or cloth and wool merchants. In 1424, the Jews were expelled from Iglau; several years later, they were allowed to return, but later they were expelled again. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Jews could enter the city as traders only during the daytime, through only one of the city’s gates and, at that, only upon payment of an entry tax. At night they had to sleep outside the city walls. Records of tax payments, business dealings between the Jewish traders and the Christian residents of Iglau, and the various privileges extended to Jews over the years are preserved in the Jihlava Municipal Archives.

The census of 1837 showed 17 Jews legally residing in the city (one-tenth of one percent of the population of 15,843), but many more lived there illegally. By 1848, there were 99 Jews listed on the town registers and, despite anti-Jewish riots in 1850, by 1863, after a period of rapid growth, the community built a large neo-Romanesque synagogue served by a full-time rabbi. At that point, the Jews of Jihlava/Iglau numbered 1,090, five percent of the city’s population. In the last half of the 19th century, Jews were full participants in the Industrial Revolution. Many of Jihlava/Iglau’s prominent textile manufacturers were Jews. Jews also ran a match factory and wood-processing factories. Jewish industrialists were also prominent in knitting and leather manufacture.

The Jihlava synagogue was torched on Kristallnacht, the night of November 9-10, 1938. Nazi troops occupied the town on March 15, 1939. The community’s rabbi, Arnold Grünfeld, was arrested immediately and taken first to Dachau, then to Buchenwald and finally, in 1941, gassed in the “Institute of Euthanasia” near Dresden. From 1939 to 1942, those Jews who had been unable to escape were sent to concentration camps, most via Terezín and then to Auschwitz. The names of some fifteen hundred Jews from Jihlava who were deported and murdered have been painstakingly retrieved in recent years by the town’s retired archivist, who has made the preservation of the memory of the Jewish community of Jihlava a sacred task. A simple monument, erected in 1997, stands at the center of the Jewish cemetery in Jihlava. Its inscription is in Czech, English and Hebrew.

As we learned more and more about Jihlava, we found a great many reasons to have selected it as “our” Jewish community, but what attracted us to the city in the beginning was the fact that it was the childhood home of Gustav Mahler. A famous conductor during his lifetime and one of the most important late romantic composers of classical music, Mahler lived in Jihlava until he was 15 years old and returned there often to visit his parents. Mahler came to the United States in 1908 to conduct the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, and returned to tour with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for the 1909-1910 season, but his stay was cut short by illness. He died in Vienna on May 18, 1911. Mahler’s ten symphonies were not well-received during his lifetime or for decades after. Only in the 1950s, with the birth of long-playing records, did classical music lovers come to understand and embrace the majestic, deeply emotional and imaginative music Mahler created. He is regarded as an important forerunner of 20th century technique of composition and an acknowledged influence on Arnold Schonberg, Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten.

Gustav Mahler considered himself to be an outsider in society, despite his successes. He said that he was “three times homeless: a Bohemian in Austria, an Austrian among Germans and a Jew throughout the world: everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.” This painful description reveals not only Mahler’s state of mind but also describes the situation of many Jews in Czechoslovakia in the period from the 1860s to 1918: striving to embrace German culture, they were never able to “become truly German in the eyes of native Germans, and they were regarded as kind of a German fifth column by, among others, the increasingly assertive Czechs.” In November 1989, a permanent exhibition called “The Young Gustav Mahler and Jihlava” was opened to promote the man the town describes as its “most significant citizen.”

As we continued our research we discovered that a remarkable number of people who were extremely accomplished in a wide range of endeavors emerged from that Jewish community. Most of them moved as adults from Jihlava to other countries, where they achieved international fame. Some were among the six million victims of the Shoah. Here are the names and a bit of information about a small number of them:

Max Breitenstein was born in 1855 in Iglau/Jihlava, attended the gymnasium there and then moved to Vienna where he went to university. Starting in his college years, he became an editor and publisher. Verlags-Buchhandlung, the small publishing company he founded became notorious in 1896 following the appearance of a slim book in the shop window of his firm. The book was Der Judenstaat. Versuch einer Modernen Lösung der Judenfrage (The Jewish State. A Modern Attempt to Resolve the Jewish Question), by Theodor Herzl. Hardly more than a pamphlet, this work aroused a storm of controversy almost without parallel in modern Jewish history. Immediately after the appearance of the first edition, of which 3,000 copies were printed, a vehement campaign was launched against Herzl and his publisher. Vitriolic attacks were launched on Herzl’s personal integrity, and the leaders of the Union of Austrian Jews and of the Vienna Jewish Community forced Breitenstein to publish National Judaism, by Chief Rabbi Moritz Gudemann, the first of many rebuttals and counterattacks against Herzl’s vision.

Carl Meinhard was born in Iglau/Jihlava in 1875. He devoted his professional career to theater and film as an actor, owner/manager, artistic director, grip, playwright and writer of film scripts. In 1922, one of his plays, a “fantastic melodrama,” ran for 66 performances in New York. Meinhard was transported to Terezín, where he became a leading figure in German theater life in the camp. Meinhard directed one of the most brilliant and controversial productions mounted there –Der Kaiser von Atlantis – “The Emperor from Atlantis” – which the SS overseers of the camp prohibited from being performed because, by a fluke, they happened to be passing by during the dress rehearsal. The opera would probably never have been performed in any case because most of the people involved in the opera’s creation, including its composer, Viktor Ullmann, were among those transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in October 1944. Ullmann died in the gas chambers there on October 16. Meinhard survived the camps and left Europe after the war for Argentina. He died in Buenos Aires in 1949.

Ernest Sommer, born in 1888 in Iglau/Jihlava earned a doctorate in Vienna. He began his literary career during the years he worked as a lawyer. The rise of the Nazi Party in Germany informed and shaped his historical novels with thinly veiled criticism of the crimes committed by the National Socialists. In 1938, he fled to England. In 1942, he wrote “The Gaskammer” (“The Gas Chamber”), very likely the first treatment of the industrialized murder of Jews. His most famous novel, Revolte der Heiligen (“Revolt of the Saints”), first published in 1944 and then again in 1948 under the title Revolte der Wehrlosen (“Revolt of the Defenseless”), deals very directly with the mass murder of the Jews. As such, it is perhaps the earliest novel about the Holocaust. Sommer’s prescient understanding of the issues raised by the Holocaust is a truly remarkable achievement. The book is set in a Jewish work camp in occupied Poland on the eve of the genocide. The situation of the Jews in the work camp is seen in the context of the political conflict between those Nazis intent upon their extermination and those who argued that the Jews should be kept alive as long as their labor was of military and economic benefit to the German war effort. The uprising by the Jewish prisoners, which serves as the climax of the novel, allows Sommer to investigate the question of Jewish resistance and, in particular, the role played by the Jewish Council of Elders in the camp – aided by the long Jewish tradition of passive endurance to persecution – in impeding active resistance.  The novel is regarded by critics as one of the highest achievements in German-exile literature.

Perhaps the most fascinating of the world famous people from Iglau/Jihlava was Julius Tandler, who was born in 1869. He was (and still is) best known for his remarkable achievements in the field of government health services and public medicine. Both his adult life and his career were intrinsically bound up with Austria, and especially with the stormy politics and increasingly virulent anti-Semitism of Vienna. In 1910, he was appointed professor of anatomy at the University of Vienna. During the years of the First World War, he also served as dean of the medical faculty. During that time he wrote a four-volume text of systematic anatomy (published 1918-1924). In the new Austrian state, formed after the war, he became an Undersecretary of State for Public Health while retaining his position as head of the Anatomy Institute at the university. In 1920, his public health position was transferred to the City of Vienna where, under its Social Democratic leadership, he undertook major reforms to reduce poverty and disease among the poor in Vienna. As Vienna’s social welfare commissioner, Tandler saw to it that young mothers received free medical attention, parenting advice and free layettes. New day care centers, kindergartens, children’s dental clinics, playgrounds and wading pools were opened in working class neighborhoods. This was an unparalleled social welfare system that attracted international attention. Tandler and his associates on the city council provided about 64,000 cheap apartments in the decades between 1923 and 1933. These housing projects were called Volkswohnungpaläste (“people’s palaces”). His motto, “By building palaces for children you tear down prison walls,” is still a byword in Vienna’s youth welfare system. During those years, one out of four deaths in Vienna was attributed to tuberculosis. The situation was so bad that TB became known as the “Viennese malady.” Tandler developed programs to fight the spread of tuberculosis and to reduce the high degree of infant mortality in the city. Despite his social reforms – or, perhaps, in part because of them –Tandler’s institute became something of a focal point for student anti-Semitic demonstrations. It is cruelly ironic that despite his extraordinary accomplishments in the area of social welfare, he became an advocate for a policy whose first proponents had appeared in the United States in the first decades of the 20th century. In his pursuit of improving society, he called repeatedly for the legalization of euthanasia and for the destruction or sterilization of “life unworthy of life.” His advocacy of eugenics may well have helped prepare the theoretical foundation for the racially-based mass murders perpetrated by the Nazis to eliminate “life unworthy of life” and to “purify” humanity. He died in 1936 in Moscow, where he was consulting on hospital reforms. After the Second World War, the Austrian government honored Julius Tandler by naming a square in Vienna in his memory, and on the 50th anniversary of his death it issued a postage stamp to honor his achievements. There is a Tandler plaque in Jihlava.

Siegmund Werner, a lifelong resident of Jihlava and an early and passionate Zionist, represented the Jews of Jihlava at every major Zionist gathering including the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897. He was involved in the development of Zionist organizational work in Czechoslovakia from its inception and was one of the 14 members of the initial Zionist Central Committee, an ad hoc group created to implement Zionist activities there.  Werner served under Theodor Herzl as editor of Die Welt, the Zionist Organization’s weekly newsletter, and was at Herzl’s deathbed in 1904. Werner died in 1928 and is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Jihlava.

How many other Jews sons and daughters of this city might have made lasting contributions to society if they – and all the others like them throughout Europe – had not been murdered during the Holocaust?

We, the members of Temple Beth Shalom of Puerto Rico, have made ourselves the spiritual heirs of the Jewish community of Jihlava and the Torah scroll we honor and cherish in their memory. We read the names of six Jewish residents of Jihlava every erev Shabbat and Shabbat morning in our kaddish list and include all of their names in our Yom Kippur Book of Memory. In adopting this Holocaust Torah, we have undertaken a solemn obligation to embrace and celebrate our Jewish heritage – to secure its memory and to ensure our future.  We must teach Torah – the Jewish holidays, history and heritage – to our children and to theirs, so that no one will forget.

One of the songs in Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder  (“Songs on the Death of Children”) says: “In this weather, in the windy storm/I would never have sent the children out/ They have been carried off./ I wasn’t able to warn them….” His eerily prophetic song and the story of Jihlava, symbolized by our scroll, are a warning to us: Remember. Be alert. Life is precious. Don’t take it for granted. Defend freedom. Have faith in the future. Remember.

Rabbi Norman Patz
Shabbat Toledot – November 13, 2015
Temple Sholom of West Essex

NOTE: This sermon was delivered when we were first hearing the reports of the Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris. In editing my text for circulation, I have sharpened the description of the volatile domestic and international context in which anti-Semitism has returned.

Late this afternoon there was a terrorist attack in Paris that targeted at least four places, including a sports stadium and a theater. More than 100 people have been killed and many more injured. Our hearts go out to the families of the victims and our prayers for those who are struggling for their lives.

On this 77th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when the Nazi government of Germany authorized “spontaneous” attacks against German Jews, when synagogues all over Germany were burned, the plate glass windows of Jewish-owned stores shattered, and thousands of Jewish men arrested and sent to concentration camps, I want to consider the lessons: those learned and those still unlearned. With the terrorist attacks in mind, these lessons are all the more urgent and tragically timely.

Eva Noskova, the last Jew living in Dvůr Králové, the Czech town from which our Holocaust Torah comes, had an unusual memory of Kristallnacht – not of the event itself, in 1938, when she was still an infant – but of its anniversary in 2007. The Star of David monument that our congregation helped erect was finally in place on the site of the destroyed synagogue, but it was still more than three months before the dedication ceremony was to take place. Although no public attention had yet been paid to the monument, Eva was very fearful, afraid that the Star of David would be desecrated with swastikas or anti-Jewish slogans. On the morning of November 10th, very fearfully, she went to check on the monument. She was shocked – and incredibly moved – to find bouquets of flowers and more than a dozen memorial candles on the horizontal stone of the star. This, in a town where she was the only remaining Jew! In her speech at the dedication of the monument, she thanked the anonymous townspeople who honored the memory of Dvůr Králové’s vanished Jewish community and, by their actions, showed that they understood what a tragedy it was.

That spontaneous tribute, remembering the assault on the Jews of Germany and “end of the beginning” or “beginning of the end” that it was, stands in stark contrast to what we see happening today. Yes, there are Kristallnacht remembrance ceremonies, but their lessons are not reflected in the behavior of governments and nations toward Jews and toward Israel today. In fact, Jews were not even invited to participate in the Swedish town of Umea’s commemoration of the day. Why? Here is the explanation given by the commemoration’s organizer: “The Jewish community wasn’t invited because we assumed they might be uncomfortable” given how many Palestinian flags and anti-Israel banners were displayed at last year’s ceremony. This, in the Sweden that has involuntarily volunteered to be destroyed by the refugees they are welcoming in the name of humanitarianism.

Shock and regret over the attack by the Nazi government on its own innocent Jewish citizens has virtually everywhere been largely replaced by active hostility to Jews. This, only 77 years later, only 70 years after the end of World War II when the horrifying dimensions of the Holocaust were revealed. We need to examine how such a turnaround happened, and why. And to show how that turnabout distracts, how it masks the real challenges facing our society today.

When the United Nations declared that “Zionism is racism” in that notorious resolution voted on November 9, 1975 (did the delegates notice the irony that their decision was taken on the anniversary of Kristallnacht?), they were merely making official a trend in international politics that had been developing since Israel’s lightning victory in the 1967 Six Day War. Nowadays, hostility to Israel is so taken for granted that young people are surprised to learn that it wasn’t always that way.

From the end of the Second World War on, world public opinion, except of course that of the Arab states, was overwhelmingly supportive of the effort to create a Jewish state, and when Israel was established, in 1948, it was welcomed into the community of nations and celebrated as a justified triumph of the Jewish spirit after the Holocaust – and celebrated as an example of what the United Nations could achieve when its members worked together.

And through the 50s and 60s, until 1967, it was scrappy, tough little Israel fighting off the Arab hordes – David versus Goliath. But the Six Day War changed all that. Israel was perceived as no longer imperiled. And anti-Israel forces, supported by the Soviet Union and Red China, undertook to reverse the narrative – no longer Israel the David against the Arab Goliath, but the Goliath Israel versus the poor defenseless David of the Palestinians. And now it was the Palestinians who were portrayed as victims – victims of a Nazi-like Israeli monster: not only victims, but a progressive movement for liberation being opposed by the Zionists who had usurped their homeland. This effort has been totally successful. Leftist European intellectuals, who love only dead or powerless Jews, took up the new story and made it a major element of their so-called progressive-ism.

That same hostility has come to our country as well. There were contributing factors. The murder of the eleven Israeli athletes by PLO terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics brought the PLO to world attention. Then the oil embargo, which resulted from the Yom Kippur War, forced Western governments to revise their self-interests. And then came the intellectual theory of Orientalism promulgated by Edward Said, which asserted that whites had tyrannized people of color for centuries. According to Said’s theory, the struggle of the Palestinians was something far beyond a political cause; it was nothing less than a battle for redemption from 2000 years of white supremacy. (See Max Eden’s review of Making David into Goliath, by Joshua Muravchik in The Washington Times, July 21, 2014.)

And thus was created the politics of victimization. Never mind that the PLO and Hamas are homophobic, anti-women, anti-individual, anti-civil rights – they are glorified and championed by unthinking, knee-jerk do-gooders as the oppressed of the earth.

In a Rosh Hashanah sermon last year, I described this phenomenon as the “treachery of the intellectuals,” who have replaced reason and reality with the blinders of a warped ideology. This mindset with all its contradictions and hypocrisy, began with the intellectual attacks on Israel, but we now see that it has unleashed a demon, the grievance-mongering behaviors that are now creating chaos on American college campuses, where taking offense against what are characterized as “micro-aggressions” gives power to the self-labeled victims. One writer (Julie Burchill) describes these protesters as “cry-bullies.” They don’t want to debate ideas freely; they don’t want to have their convictions challenged; they only want us to feel their pain!

In this atmosphere, a subtle change has occurred, almost unnoticed. Anti-Semitism used to be directed against Jews as a religious group. Now it is directed to the nation created by Jews. After all, it is still not acceptable in democratic, Western societies to hate Jews publicly, but hatred of Jews characterized as Zionists is just fine. Yes, there are some who try to separate hostility to Israel from hostility to Jews, but the distinction is truly only semantic, not real. Certainly one can oppose various policies of the Israel government or the chokehold on religious matters of the ultra-Orthodox in Israel without being an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew – but that’s not where these people are at. Strong supporters of Israel have reached the point where we think before criticizing Israeli policies lest we give new ammunition to the haters.

Last year, Natan Sharansky, one of the true heroes of our time, analyzed the onslaught on Jews and Israel as having three parts, or three stages – three “Ds”: demonization, double standards and delegitimization.

The demonization of Jews in the 1930s in Germany set the stage for Kristallnacht. With no basis in fact, the Nazis exploited Christian anti-Semitism, exacerbated by blaming German Jews for Germany’s defeat in the First World War and Jewish “imperialist” bankers for bankrupting Germany in the 1920s. “The Jews are our misfortune,” shouted Nazi propaganda. And the civilized world ignored it. Today Israel is regarded as the world’s misfortune. You’ve heard and read the scurrilous accusations that Israel poisons Arab drinking water and Israeli doctors harvest organs from the bodies of innocent Arab civilians murdered by rampaging Israeli soldiers. This is the new version of the old blood libel.

Double-standarding Israel is as current as this week’s news. The European Union now requires labels on all imports from Israel that are “made in the West Bank.” No other country is so vilified, not China, which occupies Tibet; not Russia, which occupies eastern Ukraine; not Morocco, which occupies Western Sahara. Only Israel.

This despite the fact that a large number of the West Bank workers who produce these products are Palestinian Arabs. This is selective outrage, being used to create “legal” ghetto walls around Israel. And it is coupled with false moral outrage: Israel’s self-defense is equated with Palestinian terrorism. And no outrage – in fact, no comment at all – about the “knife the Jews” songs on the Palestinian hit parades or the films shown to young school children to inspire them to become jihadist martyrs. It is sickening.

Then there’s Sharansky’s third D: delegitimization. You Jews don’t belong here. This land is not yours. There never was a Temple in Jerusalem. Or a Second Temple. Adam and the angels built El Aksa long before you claim your Temple was here. Israel was born in the sin of driving the Palestinians from their homes.

No one seems to remember that until 1948 the name Palestinian was what everyone called the Jews living there. I’m afraid many of the children and grandchildren of people in our own congregation have no idea of that fact – or what it means.

The goal of the three Ds is demoralization, disenfranchisement from the world community and, ultimately, the destruction of Israel. This is the stark reality that we confront 77 years after Kristallnacht.

What have we learned in these 77 years? Nations that we regarded as civilized can be turned. Demagogues can create new realities for their own purposes, realties based on lies. They can subvert the principles of free speech and individual rights with fine-sounding phony appeals for justice and the end of oppression. And many innocents – and apparently there are a great many innocents, students and faculty at elite universities among them – embrace the big lie. They want to be secure and coddled and protected rather than challenged – and that makes them dangerous. They are rejecting reality when they preoccupy themselves with distracting issues such as BDS and “safe spaces.” How will these students act when they become the leaders of society in the near future? The faculty members and administrators who cave in to them are unindicted co-conspirators in undermining and destabilizing democracy at a time when our entire civilization is threatened.

What else have we learned? That Israel is still David; I wish it were as powerful as its enemies assert. Israel is on the defensive. And the Jews of Israel are our people. What’s more, Israel is the West’s canary in the mineshaft. You’ve heard me say this many times. The campaign against Israel is the first phase of attacks against the West, with democracy and human rights on the line. Look at what is happening already in Europe! In our country, phase two has already started. Its horrific salvos were the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001. We should have understood the warning when our enemies declared “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.” It’s been 22 years since the first attack on the World Trade Center and we still don’t get it. I understand why we are still shocked but why are we surprised by jihadi attacks like those in Paris a few hours ago? What is not yet clear? Are we blind?

The Torah portion for this Shabbat speaks of the birth of Jacob. Last January, when I presented a d’var Torah at the annual conference of NAORRR, the organization of retired Reform rabbis, the parashah for that Shabbat dealt with Jacob’s death. I cited rabbinic commentators Rashi and Sfat Emet, who said that when Jacob died, Jews entered into spiritual slavery, unable to see reality because they were blinded by superficiality – and that such superficiality is the experience of exile. Applying this startling teaching, I offered a contemporary application: “Too many Jews are blind to the existential realities of Jewish life. Specifically, American exceptionalism, from the immediate post-Holocaust years until the present, has blinded many Jews to the return of murderous anti-Semitism, to the powerful forces allied in working to delegitimize Israel, to the increasing and non-negotiable hostility of so many elements of Western society, especially among European and American academics, not only toward Israel but also toward Jews and Judaism itself.”

I asked: “Are we being blind to the unfolding of a new reality: the end of the brief golden age of Jews in Western society: Is that what the rabbinic commentators were warning us about? What will we do about it? What can we do about it?”

Now, this sermon has focused on the return of Western anti-Semitism and the new intolerance of which it is a part. This is a tragedy by itself. It threatens all Jews directly. But this new reality is unfolding within a larger reality: the assault of anti-Western jihadis, whether ISIS, Al Qaeda or whatever name they call themselves, on us all. Israel and Jews are not the problem. Those who concentrate on vilifying Jews and Israel are distracting the West from paying attention to the real problem. They are getting us to fiddle while Paris and Beirut – or is it Rome – the scenes of today’s attacks – are burning. We all need each other to stand and face those who want to murder us.

I am frightened for the future of our people and for the future of democracy.