My Sermon August 1, 2014 at Tree of Life Morgantown

My parents were natives of The Bronx, in New York City. My father arrived in Baltimore at eighteen in 1940, and served four years in the US Army before returning. My mother came to Baltimore at the time of their marriage in 1947. My parents’ families go back to Poland and Russia, where they had different names than the ones used now. I lived in Baltimore until I was almost twenty-three, except for one summer at the beach in New York, and another in Europe after college. Since then I’ve lived in New Orleans, back in Baltimore, briefly in Atlanta, then six years in Miami and twenty-five in eight different apartments in Los Angeles.

I lived with Rabbi Joe at my last address in the Los Angeles area. We moved together to Crescent City, California at the beginning of 2010, and to Morgantown just over two years ago.

Our  parsha this week is Devarim, the beginning of Deuteronomy and the book’s name in Hebrew. Moses speaks words (Devarim) to the Israelites as they are about to enter the Promised Land. He already knows he is not going with them. Most of the generation that left Egypt has died. He is telling the young folk the story of the lives of their people. I’ve just given you a hint of the story of my people. Moses’ emphasis is on the role of God in what has happened, the good and the bad.

Do I think God had a hand in the events of my life? Yes. I see God in how things have worked out for me. Can we, as Jews, trust that God is with us? I trust it, even if I can’t explain why my life has been this good.

Rabbi Joe conducted two unveilings last weekend for people in the Jewish community, Harold Klein and Hilda Rosenbaum. They both lived a long time. They had loving families, and a close group of friends. One might say they were blessed. Yet this stand is dedicated in memory of Hilda’s daughter, who died at age seven. Can you call someone “blessed” who lost a young child? At the cemetery where Harold Klein is buried , I noted a gravestone with a marble angel next to it, for a child who died at less than a year old. Another tombstone was for a 26-year old who died in Vietnam. Were these families blessed? 

When is a life a good one? When does one get to say their life has been blessed?
I can only say for myself that I have avoided most of the awful things that happen in many lives.

You may have heard that there is a war raging between Israel and Hamas. The news Wednesday is that Israel bombed a U.N. School, killing sixteen. Israel says it didn’t mean to hit the school. After the last war, Hamas demanded concrete, banned by Israel because it could be used to make explosives, in order to rebuild. Israel relented, and instead of building housing, Hamas built tunnels to attack Israel. This is not a way to create trust.

Ali A. Rizvi, who describes himself as a “Pakistani-Canadian writer, physician and musician” wrote an article for Huffington Post Monday Called “7 Things To Consider Before Choosing Sides In The Middle East Conflict.” One of his questions is “Why does everyone keep saying this is not a religious conflict?” He quotes Deuteronomy 1:8 from this week’s parshah. The Reform translation says “ See, I place the land at your disposal. Go, take possession of the land that The Eternal swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to assign to them and to their heirs after them.” In Deuteronomy 2, verse  34, describing the battle against King Sihon of Heshbon, Moses says “… we captured all the towns, and we doomed every town-men,women and children-leaving no survivor.”
Rizvi also includes verses from the Quran that are critical of Christianity and Judaism, to show that there is a religious element to the Hamas side of this conflict.

I have long found Deuteronomy problematic. We talk a good game about Judaism being a religion of peace, just as Moslems say Islam is a religion of peace. Yet , in their pure and ancient forms, they are not. I believe the current conflict is about the direct threat to Israel from Hamas rockets and tunnels, but the lack of effort by the Netanyahu government to make peace on the West Bank, to stop the spread of settlements, comes from the more religious elements in Israel, an important bloc. Clearly they have no intention of giving up land to an Arab state, and I believe they look to this weeks’ parshah for justification. Of course, they don’t have a Moses who hears God’s voice directly. They’re making it up.

What can we do? As American Jews, we have a stake in the future of Israel. As moderns, horrified by the last century’s experience with Holocaust, expulsions and ethnic cleansing, we have to make our voices heard. We must work here to help create a just and lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors, to leave American politics out of this conflict, and do what is right for everyone.

We are left with the unOrthodox task of picking what we want from the Torah. We do not believe in annihilation of our enemies, as described in Deuteronomy, but, as Moses did, we can tell the stories of our people to the next generation, and make a decision to understand the past and resolve to work for peace for the future.