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Rabbi Michael Beals October 12, 2024
Temple Beth El Newark, DE
YOM KIPPUR – COPING WITH OCTOBER 7TH
Gut yontev.
I have been delivering High Holy Day sermons for 28 years. I normally love writing them. But this year, this particular sermon has given me a lot of trouble. I put it off until last, and not just because this is the last of my five high holy day sermons of 5785. There’s more to it. It’s the difference between sympathy and empathy.
I’ll explain. Up until five years ago, when I got to the Yizkor service, I understood losing a loved one theoretically. Afterall, like almost all of you gathered here today, I, too had lost grandparents. But on that first Yizkor after June 3, 2019, the date I lost my beloved father, the words of Yizkor took on a totally new resonance, and pathos for me. It hurt. Before then, I imagined the pain of others, and from a place of deep sympathy, I tried to extend comfort from the bimah to those remembering loved ones. But after I lost my father, I went from the less-taxing modality of sympathy to the far more draining, demanding modality of empathy. I, too, like many of you, now understood
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what it was like to lose someone who helped shape me, who was there for me from the moment I was born, who shared and shaped so many of my life’s experiences.
The same goes for the Eileh Eskarah – Martyrology section of our services today. As we thumb past the readings dealing with the Roman persecution and Akiba’s Last Stand, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust – I intellectually understood these losses. I was able to express deep sympathy for those who survived the Shoah, or the CHILDREN of survivors, but it was more of an in-my-head experience.
Then right as we prepared for the celebration of Simchat Torah last year, with our klezmer bands, and song line-ups to complement our Torah dancing circles, we got the news – OCTOBER 7th!!
It was like a punch in the stomach. But so much worse, because the pain has been unending. I am indebted to the Shalom Hartman Institute for providing poetry to help mark this first year tragic anniversary. My pain, and perhaps, yours too, is partially captured in the poem, Cleared for Publication, by Israeli poet Dael Rodrigues Garcia. But first a note on the poem’s title.
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“Cleared for Publication” is a term used by the Israeli media to announce that the names of the soldiers who have fallen in battle can now be made public. This only happens after their families and close relatives have been personally informed. During the recent war, the news frequently began with these words for many weeks.
Cleared for publication:
That our hearts are broken
And in hidden places
In empty rooms
Thousands of sobs
Are choking silently.
Cleared for publication:
That open season was declared upon us
We were plundered in the dark
Of the most precious of the precious.
It is already cleared for publication:
That the magical shining light
Of our beloved’s face is extinguished.
However, beneath the same soil
A stubborn plant is sprouting
Sending roots without end
Tightly grasped with love.
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I wish every journalist covering the violence in the Middle East was required to attend a Yizkor service, such as ours, before writing a single word. I feel there is such a lack of context, making IDF actions in Gaza, Southern Lebanon, and the West Bank appear baseless and cruel, and creating a dangerous, anti-Semitic environment for us living outside of Israel, especially for those of our children and grandchildren attending university.
As this is the moment right before Yizkor, would you please join me in a piece written Rabbi Karen Reiss Medwed, for the Rabbinical Assembly. I will ask you to respond with the words “we remember” after each post-October 7th memory:
The infant nursing in its mother’s arms. We remember
The one sacrificed on the bed. We remember
The families wrapped in each other’s arms in a final embrace
at home, who were killed and set afire We remember
The life partners killed hiding their children beneath their
own bodies We remember
Those who were out for day trips and were murdered
on the road We remember
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The children and young innocents who were slaughtered
before their time We remember
The parents murdered in front of their loved ones We remember
The innocents dancing their final dance We remember
The peace-loving youngers who were viciously
captured, raped, and killed We remember
The cyclists on a never-ending trip We remember
The vacationers in their tents, in the desert, or on the beach We remember
The foreign workers who remained alongside their elders We remember
The agricultural workers from around the world We remember
The musicians whose music went silent We remember
The elders and founders We remember
The artists whose works remain forever incomplete We remember
The passers-by who encountered evil We remember
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The philosophers whose last page will never be written We remember
The security forces; and the Police; and the town security teams, and the military observers; and the IDF
Who fought - few against the many
Who stood and delivered
Who saved lives
And who fought ‘til the bitter end, ensuring more innocents survived We remember (nizkor)
I have such mixed feelings since October 7th. I am angry that we went from world-wide sympathy for the Jewish-people’s largest post-Holocaust pogrom to demonstrations against Israel in the matter of weeks. I question the accuracy of the 41,000 dead reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, which is a sanitized way of saying “Hamas.” Hamas is invested with dragging Israel’s legitimacy and good name in the mud. So they place their missile launchers, and command-and-control operations in mosques, hospitals, schools, all places which should be off-limits to violence. When Israel responds to the sources of violence arrayed against them, civilians die. Israel looks bad. Hamas rejoices.
So I do NOT trust that 41,000 death count, a number which does not distinguish between Hamas terrorists and civilians.
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But I am a Jew. I believe that every person is created b’tselem Elohim, in the image of God. How can I but mourn the death of so many Palestinian Gazans, Palestinian West Bankers, and now Southern Lebanese? How do I both stand with Israel and stand with humanity?
My colleague, Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt, understands this stress. He shared this story:
Geula Cohen, who was a member of Knesset with the Likud party and is the mother of Tzachi Hanegbi, was asked how she would react if her son were captured during the War with Lebanon in 1982. She said, “I would stand outside the Knesset and demand that the government do everything it can to gain his freedom. And then I would go and take my seat at the government table and say, ‘Don’t listen to those people outside.’ This captures the essence of the dilemma facing Israel today.
I think this story also captures the essence of the dilemma we Jews are facing today, outside of the State of Israel. How do we both support Israel, and still remain true to our sense of sorry by the loss of so many civilains? Rabbi Weinblatt suggests we need to change the narrative. Rather than yelling “Bring them Home,” the rabbi suggests we should be shouting: “Let them go,” in reference to the 100 hostages who still remain trapped by Hamas in Gaza. The subtle change helps underscore who is responsible for the suffering.
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Context is everything. Avi Melamed, a speaker recently brought to us by the Jewish Federation of Delaware, explained that the violence wrought by Hamas in Gaza against Israel, wrought by Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel, and wrought by the Houthi in Yemen against Israel, all come from the same source – the genocidal theocratic mullah-dominated regime in Iran, whose principle goal, since taking power in1979, is the complete destruction of Israel – all with the goal to coax their hidden messiah out of hiding and on to the world state.
As this is Yom Kippur, my job is not only to comfort you as you contemplate the loss of more than 1,200 of our people in one day of unspeakable violence, not only to challenge the one-sided press which demonizes Israel and fans the flames of anti-Semitism by not providing context, but also to inspire you and give you hope.
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Let’s talk of inspiration and resiliency. In this painful year, alongside the loneliness and sorry, the strength of the Jewish people was rediscovered. Our Jewish community in Delaware, alone, has raised more than one million, seven hundred thousand dollars, to date, in support of our brothers and sisters in Israel. Those funds have gone to help the bereft families of hostages, the families of those murdered, and for the tens of thousands displaced both in the south and in the north of Israel. Others have left their jobs here in the States and gone to Israel on short-term trips to see to the tasks normally done by Israelis who have been called up to defend their country. And Israelis themselves, from less impacted parts of their country have also given so much to their fellow countrymen in this time of need.
A beautiful poem which speaks to this resiliency and willingness to help is called “A Coat of Many Colors,” written by the Israeli poet, Racheli Moskovitz.
My son returned from battle, his duffel bursting
With things that I had not packed for him.
Socks donated by the Jews in Argentina.
A quilted blanket smelling like someone else’s home
A blue towel from a family from the Moshav
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Tzitzit from Jerusalem.
A fleece jacket, gifted by a high-tech company,
A scarf knitted by an elderly lady,
Undershirts purchased by on-line shoppers,
A sheet that was given to him by a friend,
Gloves bought by teenage girls,
A jacket from the closet of someone who
Came and requested to give.
I spread out all those garments
And weave together a new coat of many colors.
See, Yosef, your brothers were there for you.
Let me end this pre-Martyrology, pre-Yizkor sermon with a message of hope. Accompanying hope is the belief in miracles. Afterall, just the fact that Israel exists at all, is quite a miracle. It was David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of Israel, who said: “In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.”
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So even if peace does not seem possible today, we must continue to hope for a lasting and just peace, for not only Israel, but for her neighbors as well. That is why in our liturgy, when we recite the Kaddish Shalem, after the words: “may God make peace over Israel,” we add, v’al kol yoshvei teyvel, “and all who dwell on earth.” We must remember that Israel’s national anthem is Ha Tikvah, the hope, a hope which has lasted for more than two thousand years, a hope for a better reality, for a better future, which must include the return of the hostages in Gaza.
I will close with a poem of hope, called Horizon, written by Israeli poet, Gali Ravitz, who is not only a poet, but also a therapist and holistic trainer, who makes her home in Ganei Tikvah (a town which means “Gardens of Hope).
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This is a period
In which, it is hard to speak
Of horizon.
It seems that there is not anything “on the horizon.”
And yet,
When I close my eyes
At night,
before sleep
I remember my dreams
And the places I wanted
to be in.
My children, my loves
And I become weightless
like a seagull
soaring very high
Drawing me a line
and fly in its direction.
May the new year, 5785, be a better year for the State of Israel, for her neighbors, and for kol yoshevi teyvel, and all who dwell on earth, v’imru, and let us say “amen.”