What would you do if you were a sickly gay boy growing up in Chillicothe, in Southern Ohio in the 1960s? You might become a hairdresser in the big city- Columbus. And if that were not enough? You might move to Los Angeles and become a Jew. Unlikely? That's what my friend David Fyffe did.
When I first met him at Beth Chayim Chadashim, probably in 1986, when I first joined that temple for gay men and lesbians, David introduced himself. He told me I was handsome, and that he was HIV positive. He was blind. "Figures," I thought. Of course the one who can't see me thinks I'm handsome.
He eventually regained some limited vision through a new kind of operation. He walked up to me at the first service he attended after his operation and asked if I had seen the really hot guy in this month's Playgirl. I hadn't. "How did you know I was Barry?" I asked. " I just knew that's what you looked like, even before I could see you."
We couldn't be a couple. I had given up being gay a few years before , from pure terror about AIDS, and was just taking baby steps to come out again. And here was someone HIV positive talking to me. I visited his apartment on Formosa Avenue in West Hollywood, and it was even more chaotic than mine, with everything randomly strewn all over everything. Neither of us would be housekeepers.
In the early 1990s, when I didn't have a car, I would see David on the bus on Santa Monica Boulevard or Fairfax Avenue. We would get into long discussions about the nature of God, the reason for Good and Evil existing in the world, or sometimes just about friends, ex-lovers, and who had died recently. David was modest, but he did brag that he was the last survivor of two different AIDS support groups at temple. The threat of disease and death was hard, but the loss of so many friends in their twenties and thirties was devastating.
We both assuaged our consciences by volunteering to be parachaplains- rabbis without the title who would visit Jewish patients at smaller hospitals that couldn't afford to have a rabbi on staff. I visited Hollywood Community Hospital, just off Vine Street, for several years. They had a dedicated AIDS ward - mostly hospice care, until better meds came out and people stopped dying. David also volunteered at a hospital.
Arlan Wareham showed up at temple in the mid-90s. There's a long, interesting story about how Arlan came to BCC, and eventually decided to be a Jew. He was smart, handsome, funny. I thought we might be a couple, but something held me back. I just couldn't see us together. Then one day David came to me and told me he had a new boyfriend- Arlan. It all fell into place. Arlan and David. Of course!
They had a grand wedding at BCC- not in any way legal in the 1990s, but that didn't stop Rabbi Lisa Edwards from blessing their union, nor did it stop their many friends from celebrating. I remember mostly that they made their own chuppa or wedding canopy.
They settled in San Bernardino County, where Arlan came from, but drove in sixty miles to services every week. I should have apologized for laughing in their face when they told me in 2005 that they were moving to Israel. Arlan admitted that it seemed crazy. It wasn't.
I last saw Arlan and David face-to-face in 2007, when a group of us from BCC toured Israel and visited them at their home in Tzfat, a medieval town in Galilee, where most of the residents were Orthodox. David fit right in with his long unkempt beard, plain white shirt and navy pants. Even the tube for his insulin pump, if you didn't look too closely, could have been tzitzit, the ritual fringes worn by Orthodox men. Arlan and David showed us where a missile from Lebanon had damaged their house.
They decamped for Eilat on the Red Sea, warmer and more resort-like than Tzfat. Arlan kept up a presence on Facebook and a blog. I didn't hear much from David. He was on Facebook, but didn't post much after 2011. This year, Arlan's posts grew more dire. David's mind and body were shutting down. David Fyffe died this week in a hospital in Beer Sheva, Israel. He was fifty-nine.
I remarked to Arlan a few weeks ago how fortunate they were to live in Israel, where medical care is better than in the United States, and covered by the government. They were blessed in their lives. I do sometimes go off into magical realism, where I attribute good events to God. David did that, too, but he also made good decisions - leaving his family in Ohio, becoming a Jew, falling in with many friends at BCC, finding and keeping Arlan. Despite being HIV positive for thirty years and suffering from periods of crippling depression, he managed to keep going when others didn't.
David was a holy man, a deep thinker, a crazy wonderful friend. He is survived by his husband Arlan Wareham and members of his biological family in Ohio. People who attended BCC before 2005, and other still remaining AIDS activists from Los Angeles will also mourn his passing.
Arlan Wareham has a blog: http://www.arlansday.blogspot.co.il
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Liberation +70
Yesterday was the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Nazi
concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau by advancing Soviet troops.
January 27 is not an anniversary I usually note. This year, because it was seventy years ago, and the number of survivors is rapidly dwindling,
it's been a bigger deal.
It occurred to me, maybe for the first time now, that this event happened only four years and nine months before my birth. The same amount of time as a current eight-year old is removed from the events of September 11, 2001. Will these kids study 9/11 in school when they are older, or will it be pushed under the rug, as the Holocaust was for many of us?
My father was a World War II veteran. He fought in the Pacific. My sister and I asked him lots of questions, but he clearly did not want to talk about his experiences. In public school, we never talked about World War II. Even in high school, in both American and World History, our teachers expressed (probably fake) regret that we ran out of school year after World War I. At the fancy private university I attended, history classes talked about the rise of the Nazis to power, but skirted over the systematic murder of Jewish Europe. One of my fraternity brothers, a pre-med named Peter, had Holocaust survivor parents. They, like everyone else, would not tell him their experiences. He wrote a nearly book-length paper for a history class on the how the Nazis seized power. This was just before William Shirer's massive tome on the same subject.
I posted Tuesday on Facebook about how the liberation of Auschwitz was so close to the time of my birth. I got several responses from former public school classmates. One told me she also was not taught about The Holocaust; another said her father was with a US Army unit that liberated Buchenwald, and her father made sure she knew all about it.
I remember finding out in Jewish religious school that one of my friends was born in a refugee camp in Europe in 1950. I asked him why his family was still there nearly five years after the end of the war. He said "They had nowhere else to go." Since then I've met many Jews born between 1946 and 1950 in refugee camps in Europe. Many of them describe parents who refused to talk about their experiences, or had feelings of alienation when classmates went to visit aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, when they had none. One woman, born in Sweden and raised in Tel Aviv, told me she used to hear people scream in the night. She and her friends called these people "Mi Sham" ("from there") although, because no one would speak of their experiences, the kids didn't know where "there" was.
Many Jewish people I know still distrust the United States government because it refused entry to Jewish refugees from Europe, and because it wouldn't bomb the railroad entrances to the camps. Those on the left don't trust the government to run a war competently,or stand up for civil rights for Jews, gays, African-Americans, or Moslems. They identify with oppression, with not having a voice.
On the right, friends have become hyper-Zionists. They believer the rhetoric of Moslem extremists, Iran and the Palestinian Authority needs to be taken at face value, because we didn't believe Hitler would actually do what he did, even though he made his intentions clear. A right-wing American friend living in Israel believes Israel or the US should bomb Iran's nuclear facilities because they threaten the US and Israel.
On my grandfather Sam Polk's last trip to Baltimore in 1974, he and I visited his cousin, Rabbi Mendel Poliakoff. The Rabbi's daughter had just gotten married, but it was the same weekend a closer cousin in my grandmother's family got married in New York. My grandfather wanted to express his regret for missing the wedding in Baltimore. For some reason, they got into a heated argument about Vietnam. I, veteran of anti-war marches, and not exactly a child at twenty-four, stayed out of the discussion.
"We have to stop the Communists, because we didn't stop the Nazis," said Rabbi Poliakoff. My grandfather answered "What if we are the Nazis in this case?"
In the Talmud, there are often discussions of interpretation of Biblical passages.
"Rabbi X says because of thus and so it should be like this. Rabbi Y says because of that and this, here is a different interpretation. Rabbi Z says Rabbi X and Rabbi Y are both correct. The contradiction can be explained like this..."
Here too, the people on both sides, the hawks and doves, the liberals and conservatives are both coming from the same place. We live with the mistakes of the 1930s and 1940s, with the ghosts of ancestors and cousins we will never meet. We know or knew survivors, with their tales of horror. We read books about great heroes, political weaklings, mobs of people hating other people, our people particularly, and we want to make sure that doesn't happen again.
A gay friend on Facebook yesterday, not Jewish, expressed his fear of the rhetoric coming from Republicans and some Evangelical clergy. Ben Carson was widely reported saying that a baker forced to make cakes for a same-gender wedding might poison the cake. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said that, in the light of court approval of same-gender marriage, there should be a constitutional amendment to not allow such marriages. Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and other candidates have made anti-gay statements. My friend is afraid of what will happen if these people come to power.
What can we do seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz? I feel powerless. All I do is write this blog, letters to the editors of different papers decrying anti-gay rhetoric, attempts to keep people from voting, the loosening of the few restrictions on gun ownership, or the apparent takeover of West Virginia by the management of coal, oil and gas producers. My big worry is not from the Moslems, here, in Iran, or Palestine. I worry more about a fascist takeover of the United States. In West Virginia, there is such a palpable hatred of President Obama because "He wants to take our guns away," or "He's making war on coal," or "He's a secret Moslem" or not as often spoken, "He's pro-choice and gay friendly," and, (of course), half African-American. Irrational hatred is frightening.
The whole world is on edge with the terror attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris, with attacks on Jews throughout Europe, apparently from Moslem youth, with the continuing uncertainty in the Middle East, and with what I see as inflammatory rhetoric from the Republican Party in the United States to outreach those who hate anyone they see as "other."
It occurred to me, maybe for the first time now, that this event happened only four years and nine months before my birth. The same amount of time as a current eight-year old is removed from the events of September 11, 2001. Will these kids study 9/11 in school when they are older, or will it be pushed under the rug, as the Holocaust was for many of us?
My father was a World War II veteran. He fought in the Pacific. My sister and I asked him lots of questions, but he clearly did not want to talk about his experiences. In public school, we never talked about World War II. Even in high school, in both American and World History, our teachers expressed (probably fake) regret that we ran out of school year after World War I. At the fancy private university I attended, history classes talked about the rise of the Nazis to power, but skirted over the systematic murder of Jewish Europe. One of my fraternity brothers, a pre-med named Peter, had Holocaust survivor parents. They, like everyone else, would not tell him their experiences. He wrote a nearly book-length paper for a history class on the how the Nazis seized power. This was just before William Shirer's massive tome on the same subject.
I posted Tuesday on Facebook about how the liberation of Auschwitz was so close to the time of my birth. I got several responses from former public school classmates. One told me she also was not taught about The Holocaust; another said her father was with a US Army unit that liberated Buchenwald, and her father made sure she knew all about it.
I remember finding out in Jewish religious school that one of my friends was born in a refugee camp in Europe in 1950. I asked him why his family was still there nearly five years after the end of the war. He said "They had nowhere else to go." Since then I've met many Jews born between 1946 and 1950 in refugee camps in Europe. Many of them describe parents who refused to talk about their experiences, or had feelings of alienation when classmates went to visit aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, when they had none. One woman, born in Sweden and raised in Tel Aviv, told me she used to hear people scream in the night. She and her friends called these people "Mi Sham" ("from there") although, because no one would speak of their experiences, the kids didn't know where "there" was.
Many Jewish people I know still distrust the United States government because it refused entry to Jewish refugees from Europe, and because it wouldn't bomb the railroad entrances to the camps. Those on the left don't trust the government to run a war competently,or stand up for civil rights for Jews, gays, African-Americans, or Moslems. They identify with oppression, with not having a voice.
On the right, friends have become hyper-Zionists. They believer the rhetoric of Moslem extremists, Iran and the Palestinian Authority needs to be taken at face value, because we didn't believe Hitler would actually do what he did, even though he made his intentions clear. A right-wing American friend living in Israel believes Israel or the US should bomb Iran's nuclear facilities because they threaten the US and Israel.
On my grandfather Sam Polk's last trip to Baltimore in 1974, he and I visited his cousin, Rabbi Mendel Poliakoff. The Rabbi's daughter had just gotten married, but it was the same weekend a closer cousin in my grandmother's family got married in New York. My grandfather wanted to express his regret for missing the wedding in Baltimore. For some reason, they got into a heated argument about Vietnam. I, veteran of anti-war marches, and not exactly a child at twenty-four, stayed out of the discussion.
"We have to stop the Communists, because we didn't stop the Nazis," said Rabbi Poliakoff. My grandfather answered "What if we are the Nazis in this case?"
In the Talmud, there are often discussions of interpretation of Biblical passages.
"Rabbi X says because of thus and so it should be like this. Rabbi Y says because of that and this, here is a different interpretation. Rabbi Z says Rabbi X and Rabbi Y are both correct. The contradiction can be explained like this..."
Here too, the people on both sides, the hawks and doves, the liberals and conservatives are both coming from the same place. We live with the mistakes of the 1930s and 1940s, with the ghosts of ancestors and cousins we will never meet. We know or knew survivors, with their tales of horror. We read books about great heroes, political weaklings, mobs of people hating other people, our people particularly, and we want to make sure that doesn't happen again.
A gay friend on Facebook yesterday, not Jewish, expressed his fear of the rhetoric coming from Republicans and some Evangelical clergy. Ben Carson was widely reported saying that a baker forced to make cakes for a same-gender wedding might poison the cake. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said that, in the light of court approval of same-gender marriage, there should be a constitutional amendment to not allow such marriages. Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and other candidates have made anti-gay statements. My friend is afraid of what will happen if these people come to power.
What can we do seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz? I feel powerless. All I do is write this blog, letters to the editors of different papers decrying anti-gay rhetoric, attempts to keep people from voting, the loosening of the few restrictions on gun ownership, or the apparent takeover of West Virginia by the management of coal, oil and gas producers. My big worry is not from the Moslems, here, in Iran, or Palestine. I worry more about a fascist takeover of the United States. In West Virginia, there is such a palpable hatred of President Obama because "He wants to take our guns away," or "He's making war on coal," or "He's a secret Moslem" or not as often spoken, "He's pro-choice and gay friendly," and, (of course), half African-American. Irrational hatred is frightening.
The whole world is on edge with the terror attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris, with attacks on Jews throughout Europe, apparently from Moslem youth, with the continuing uncertainty in the Middle East, and with what I see as inflammatory rhetoric from the Republican Party in the United States to outreach those who hate anyone they see as "other."
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Israel
Note: I am in a same-gender marriage to Rabbi Joe Hample, spiritual leader of Tree of Life, a Reform synagogue in Morgantown, West Virginia. I am publishing this without showing it to the Rabbi. The opinions here are my own, not his. Nor do they necessarily represent the views of members of Tree of Life.
Rabbi Joe sermonized about Israel on Yom Kippur. He called for a separation of the Jews and Arabs in Palestine with the establishment of an Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza. It was brave of him to say that when the government in Israel seems to be opposed. Still, if Israel is to remain a Jewish state, the Arabs need to have their own government.
Since then, the world has seen the rise of militants in Iraq and Syria, failing governments in Yemen and Libya, and Arab attacks on Jewish civilians in Israel, particularly in Jerusalem. This past Tuesday, November 18, two Arabs attacked a group of Orthodox Jews at morning prayer in Har Hof, a West Jerusalem neighborhood favored by English speakers from the United States and Britain. People were shot, stabbed and hacked with a meat cleaver in the middle of their prayers. Ultimately, a police officer, an ethnic Druze, shot and killed the two attackers. The policeman himself died of injuries.
Israel annexed all of Jerusalem after the Six-Day War in 1967. Many in the Arab community, who were the majority in that area before 1967, are not happy to be in a Jewish state. They have the rights of citizenship, but Israel is clearly set up for the benefit of Jews. The definition of "Jerusalem" has been expanded to include all the land up to Hebron. Jewish-only settlements have been built on land the Arabs want for their own state.
Until the attack this week, I had the impression, from visiting Jerusalem in 1985 and 2007 and from talking to friends and reading about Israel, that religion was not an issue between people. There was a "live and let live" attitude. Tensions were worse between the so-called "Ultra-Orthodox" and "secular" Jews. I use quotes because many in both camps object to those terms. Some pundits think these killers were inspired by ISIS to kill Jews at prayer, and that is possible. Tension may be high because some Jews are demanding the right to pray on the Temple Mount, site of Solomon's temple, but the site of a mosque since the seventh century. After the 1967 conquest of East Jerusalem, the Temple Mount was placed under Moslem jurisdiction and Jews could visit, but not pray. Maybe it shouldn't be a big deal, but I don't see the point of Jews praying there if it affronts Muslim sensibilities. Our prayers, as Jews, have not depended on being at the Temple Mount for almost two thousand years. As a liberal, Diaspora Jew, I say "Let them have it."
Speaking of liberals, the rhetoric from friends on Facebook has been hysterical and not helpful. People are quoting from sources without investigating them. I mean from "TheRightScoop.com or well-known haters like Pamela Geller or Michelle Malkin. People I know buy whatever these horrible people are saying about how "Liberals hate Israel."I won't even repeat what they say about Islam generally. In the past, I've asked well-meaning people not to post from people like Mike Huckabee, Glenn Beck, or Ben Carson. When I read something, I consider the source before I consider their arguments. If it's Cal Thomas (who appears in the Morgantown Dominion-Post) or someone who I know is racist and homophobic, or if it comes from an unreliable source like Fox News, I ignore it. Yes, CNN, The Washington Post and even the New York Times have been unreliable. My readings on Israel are likely to come from Ha'aretz, a liberal, English-language paper from Israel that provides a variety of opinions directly from Israel. I follow Ha'aretz on Twitter. My few Israeli friends are people who have moved there from the United States. I don't often agree with them.
What I've read about the community where these murders took place is that the people are at prayer. Thousands attended the funeral of the non-Jewish police officer who was killed. They are not asking for revenge. What they have done is mourn the dead, affirm their attachment to Israel, to the Jewish people and to their own families. I join with my fellow Jews in these endeavors.
I feel helpless. The Islamic world is spinning out of control. Israel, like the United States, has become more divided, more ruled by ugliness, money and thuggery than in the past. I ask that we take a step back, listen to the other side, be charitable and pray for peace with respect for everyone in the world.
Rabbi Joe sermonized about Israel on Yom Kippur. He called for a separation of the Jews and Arabs in Palestine with the establishment of an Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza. It was brave of him to say that when the government in Israel seems to be opposed. Still, if Israel is to remain a Jewish state, the Arabs need to have their own government.
Since then, the world has seen the rise of militants in Iraq and Syria, failing governments in Yemen and Libya, and Arab attacks on Jewish civilians in Israel, particularly in Jerusalem. This past Tuesday, November 18, two Arabs attacked a group of Orthodox Jews at morning prayer in Har Hof, a West Jerusalem neighborhood favored by English speakers from the United States and Britain. People were shot, stabbed and hacked with a meat cleaver in the middle of their prayers. Ultimately, a police officer, an ethnic Druze, shot and killed the two attackers. The policeman himself died of injuries.
Israel annexed all of Jerusalem after the Six-Day War in 1967. Many in the Arab community, who were the majority in that area before 1967, are not happy to be in a Jewish state. They have the rights of citizenship, but Israel is clearly set up for the benefit of Jews. The definition of "Jerusalem" has been expanded to include all the land up to Hebron. Jewish-only settlements have been built on land the Arabs want for their own state.
Until the attack this week, I had the impression, from visiting Jerusalem in 1985 and 2007 and from talking to friends and reading about Israel, that religion was not an issue between people. There was a "live and let live" attitude. Tensions were worse between the so-called "Ultra-Orthodox" and "secular" Jews. I use quotes because many in both camps object to those terms. Some pundits think these killers were inspired by ISIS to kill Jews at prayer, and that is possible. Tension may be high because some Jews are demanding the right to pray on the Temple Mount, site of Solomon's temple, but the site of a mosque since the seventh century. After the 1967 conquest of East Jerusalem, the Temple Mount was placed under Moslem jurisdiction and Jews could visit, but not pray. Maybe it shouldn't be a big deal, but I don't see the point of Jews praying there if it affronts Muslim sensibilities. Our prayers, as Jews, have not depended on being at the Temple Mount for almost two thousand years. As a liberal, Diaspora Jew, I say "Let them have it."
Speaking of liberals, the rhetoric from friends on Facebook has been hysterical and not helpful. People are quoting from sources without investigating them. I mean from "TheRightScoop.com or well-known haters like Pamela Geller or Michelle Malkin. People I know buy whatever these horrible people are saying about how "Liberals hate Israel."I won't even repeat what they say about Islam generally. In the past, I've asked well-meaning people not to post from people like Mike Huckabee, Glenn Beck, or Ben Carson. When I read something, I consider the source before I consider their arguments. If it's Cal Thomas (who appears in the Morgantown Dominion-Post) or someone who I know is racist and homophobic, or if it comes from an unreliable source like Fox News, I ignore it. Yes, CNN, The Washington Post and even the New York Times have been unreliable. My readings on Israel are likely to come from Ha'aretz, a liberal, English-language paper from Israel that provides a variety of opinions directly from Israel. I follow Ha'aretz on Twitter. My few Israeli friends are people who have moved there from the United States. I don't often agree with them.
What I've read about the community where these murders took place is that the people are at prayer. Thousands attended the funeral of the non-Jewish police officer who was killed. They are not asking for revenge. What they have done is mourn the dead, affirm their attachment to Israel, to the Jewish people and to their own families. I join with my fellow Jews in these endeavors.
I feel helpless. The Islamic world is spinning out of control. Israel, like the United States, has become more divided, more ruled by ugliness, money and thuggery than in the past. I ask that we take a step back, listen to the other side, be charitable and pray for peace with respect for everyone in the world.
Saturday, August 2, 2014
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.
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