Never Alone: Our Enduring Commitment to Our People and Our Homeland
by Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback
Delivered on Yom Kippur (9/16/2021)
“Mom,” I asked from the back seat of our Jeep Wagoneer, the one with the wood panels on the sides, “why is the Temple giving away Russian Jewelry?”
There was an uncharacteristically long pause and then she said, “What on earth are you talking about?”
“I saw a sign in the Temple parking lot that said: ‘Free Soviet Jewelry.’ And then the Rabbi talked about giving us some special bracelets to wear.”
She laughed and said, “You didn’t read the sign carefully enough – it says, ‘Free Soviet Jewry.’”
The year was 1979. My mom explained to me that there were Jews in Russia who had been put in prison simply because they wanted to make aliyah, to emigrate to Israel; they were called refuseniks because their request to emigrate had been refused by the Soviets. Synagogues, JCCs, Jewish Federations and other Jewish agencies around the world had come together to raise awareness about the situation and to encourage the President of the United States and members of Congress to put pressure on the Soviet government to release them so they could emigrate to Israel and live their lives freely as Jews.
It was the first time that I remember being introduced to the concept of Peoplehood. My synagogue community in Omaha, Nebraska, together with Temples all over the world, cared deeply about the plight of total strangers languishing in Soviet prisons half-way around the globe. Because they were Jews, part of Am Yisrael, part of our mishpucha, we had a special obligation to fight for their freedom.
A few weeks later at religious school, I got my “Soviet Jewelry” – a little silver bracelet with the name of a Refusnik on it along with the date of his arrest. Mine said: Anatoly Sharansky – March 15, 1977.
Sharansky would spend 9 years in the gulag, being moved from prison to prison. He endured 405 days in the punishment cell – a sensory deprivation chamber with “no light, no furniture, nothing to read, no one to talk to, and barely anything to eat.”
During all these years, what kept Sharansky going more than anything else, except perhaps the support of his wife, Avital, was the knowledge that his People were with him. When he was finally freed, Anatoly became Nata n, and Natan Sharansky became an Israeli politician, author, and human rights advocate, who most recently served as the Chair of the Jewish Agency, an organization devoted to Jewish peoplehood.
In his recent memoir, Never Alone: Prison, Politics, and My People, Sharansky describes a remarkable encounter with Nelson Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner. They met here in Los Angeles shortly after Mandela was freed from twenty-seven years of imprisonment on Robben Island.
Mandela told Sharansky that he had just read his book, Fear No Evil which told the story of his struggles against the Soviet system. Mandela said, “Boy you really suffered.”
Sharansky replied, “You suffered three times worse! Twenty-seven years!”
Mandela said, “But my people were here with me. You were alone.”
What he meant was that while Sharanksy was often in solitary confinement, not allowed to communicate with his wife or family, Mandela was met regularly with his comrades. They ran their revolutionary struggle from adjacent cells, setting strategy and making tactical decisions together. Sharansky, on the other hand, to keep from going mad, was reduced to playing chess in his head.
But Sharansky didn’t see it that way because he knew that there was a sovereign nation, with diplomats and an army, fighting on his behalf. And this reality, this precious truth, is at the heart of what Zionism is all about.
As he puts it: Zionism means “…that a country thousands of miles away, which most Soviet Jews had never visited, would never stop fighting for us; Israel made that far-fetched idea appear normal.”
Sharansky knew all about what happened at Entebbe, where one hundred Israeli commandos flew 2500 miles to rescue 94 Jewish passengers and 12 Air France crew members from PLO hijackers.
This event was seared into his consciousness. When he was in the gulag, whenever he heard a plane flying overhead, he writes that his “pulse quickened, reminding me that Israel and the Jewish people would never, ever abandon me, or us.”
Through more than 400 days of solitary confinement, more than nine years in prison, his People were with him. Am Yisrael – the Jewish People: rabbis, human rights advocates, tourists who would smuggle prayer books into the USSR along with messages for the Refuseniks as well as a nine-year-old boy in the Midwest with his little silver bracelet – we all were there with him.
But – and this hurts my heart to say – I’m not sure if we would be there for him today. This past June, Sharansky published an article with historian Gil Troy describing a changing attitude towards Jewish peoplehood and Zionism. Do we still, they ask, believe that no matter what, Am Yisrael will always stick together, never, ever abandoning one another?
It seems not, they suggest, reflecting on the language some American Jews used in response to the most recent violence between Israel and the Hamas terrorist regime. Language like describing Zionism as a “diverse set of linked ethnonationalist ideologies … shaped by settler colonial paradigms … that assumed a hierarchy of civilizations” and “contributed to unjust, enduring, and unsustainable systems of Jewish supremacy.”
Language like the CUNY Jewish Law Students’ Association issuing a statement demanding “a Palestinian right to return, a free and just Palestine from the river to the sea, and an end to the ongoing Nakba.” This statement, which one might expect to hear from a Hamas spokesperson, essentially calls for the end of the Jewish state.
Language like that found in a recently published letter authored by over 90 Rabbinical students from a variety of seminaries that uses the word “apartheid” to describe Israel’s actions in the West Bank.
Now this is not an entirely new phenomenon. There have been Jewish anti-Zionists since before the term “Zionism” was first coined in the 19th century. That is to say, Jews who would like to imagine Judaism as purely a religion, disentangled from what it means to be part of a tribe or a people, divorced from the messy responsibilities that come with wielding power and political sovereignty.
And to be sure, the vast majority of American Jews continue to identify as Zionists, supporters of a Jewish homeland in Eretz Yisrael, a place of refuge and a cultural center for a people that has been forcibly dispersed time and time again throughout the millennia.
But a frightening and growing number of our fellow Jews identify today as anti-Zionists, characterized by Sharansky and Troy as those whose “public and communal staging of their anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist beliefs appears to be the badge of a superior form of Judaism, stripped of its unsavory and unethical ‘ethnocentric’ and ‘colonialist’ baggage.”
Now Sharansky and Troy are not in any way suggesting that it is illegitimate for Jews to criticize Israel or its policies. But there is a great divide between criticism of a governmental or military action and the claim that Israel itself no longer has the right to exist. What is most concerning about anti-Zionist Jews is their rejection of Peoplehood and the lack of support and even shame they feel regarding Israel.
Many of us have encountered anti-Zionist Jews – some of them are our children, our grandchildren, our students, co-workers or friends.
Two years ago, I spoke from this bimah about how we must respond to antisemitism. This work continues to be vital and, if history serves as a predictor for what will unfold going forward, it’s sadly work we will need to engage in for a long time.
But one could argue that the anti-Zionist Jew poses almost as significant a threat to Jewish continuity and survival. Without a sense of unified purpose and a shared understanding of why a sovereign Jewish State that can wield both political and military power is an existential necessity, how can we hope to survive as a people? And, more individually, how will, God forbid, future Natan Sharanskys, and even Jews like us in relative security in places like Los Angeles in the face of growing hostility toward our community, make it through those dark nights without a sense that there is a People worried for us and working actively for our well-being? How will we maintain the faith that no matter what, as Jews we are Never Alone because we are a part of a people that will always care for us, fight for us, and advocate for us? How will we maintain the hope – the tikvah – that somehow, some way, no matter how dark and long the night, day will come and we will endure and even thrive?
If we truly care about our People, if we truly care about Israel, then we must renew and strengthen our commitment to learning more, to supporting more, and to loving more.
For millenia, our Jewish superpower has been learning. Whatever the challenge, whatever the disruption, we studied. Now, admittedly, it was usually Torah that we were studying but it’s a strategy that has served us extremely well.
And what we need to be studying now, and teaching (in addition of course to Torah), is the history of the Zionist movement and what led to the creation of the State of Israel. Without context, without an appreciation of the incredibly painful reasons that a Jewish state is necessary, some folks conclude that mixing religion with politics is a bad idea and that the whole concept of a Jewish state is thus problematic.
Those who label Israel a “colonial” enterprise often haven’t a clue that there has been continual Jewish settlement of the land of Israel for more than three thousand years, with copious literary and archaeological evidence as proof. Yes, many Jews from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East have emigrated to Israel from the end of the 19th century to the present day, but they were quite literally returning home, most of them as refugees.
Those who describe Israel’s occupation of the West Bank as a type of apartheid need to learn more both about the history of South Africa as well as the history of Israel to realize that the label is slanderous and insulting to both South Africans who suffered under the Apartheid regime as well as to Israelis. The Occupation is a lot of things: it’s messy, complicated, and sometimes unjust. I am amongst the many Zionists who long for the day when a peaceful Palestinian state will stand alongside Israel. But to label the Occupation “Apartheid” is a form of demonization that crosses over to antisemitism.
Alongside whatever newspapers and journals you read in order to be an informed citizen of this country, as a Jew you should be reading Israeli press as well and there are excellent choices available in English including Ha’aretz, The Times of Israel, YNetNews, and the Jerusalem Post.
And these days, it’s never been easier to learn about Israel through Israeli music, television, and cinema. There are so many options that will not just entertain but truly open a window into some of the issues that Israelis are grappling with today.
The best way to learn about Israel of course is to visit. Cantor Emma and I are leading a congregational trip this coming March and April. Join us. Even if you’ve been before, I can guarantee new experiences and it will be a great opportunity to connect with members of your People, near and far.
Another way we respond is by re-doubling our support for Israel and, more broadly, for Am Yisrael – for the Jewish People. And there are many, diverse ways to do this. Just as is there is not one way to be Jewish, there is not one way to be a Zionist. And this has always been the case. The early Zionist thinkers Ahad Ha-Am and Theodor Herzl were ideological foes. David Ben Gurion who would become Israel’s first Prime Minister and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the leader of a rival Zionist party, were so at odds with one another that in the early 1930s they gathered in London for a month of mediation to try to bring about some sort of reconciliation. Golda Meir was a fierce critic of Menachem Begin and vice-versa. What all Zionists share though is the simple belief that we Jews constitute a People that has the right to realize its national aspirations in a particular place that we are bound to historically: the Land of Israel.
There are so many ways to support Israel culturally, religiously, and politically. What’s not an option though is apathy, throwing our hands up in frustration and declaring, “I’m done with Israel,” or concluding that somehow Israel is done with us.
Not happy with Bibi or Bennet? OK – they are merely Prime Ministers. They no more represent what Israel is or can be than the President of the United States does for this country.
Not into politics? There are many other ways to be supportive. Non-profits and NGOs in every imaginable social sector, of every political flavor: peace work and reconciliation, Palestinian rights, protecting the environment, Progressive Judaism, programs for “Lone Soldiers” who serve in the IDF without family in Israel – there is no end to the ways that we can support our People and our Homeland.
And – perhaps equally important – we must re-double our investment in Jewish education here in our local communities so that we and our children and grandchildren might become more informed and engaged Zionist Jews.
Friends – if we don’t do this work, if we won’t provide this support, who will? We have a special obligation to worry about our People, members of our extended Jewish family. And our liturgy on these Holy Days is instructive in this regard as we cry out again and again directly to God in the second person, asking for compassion and support for “Your People”:
כִּי אָנוּ עַמֶּךָ
we say: We are Your People.
וְאַתָּה אֱלֹהֵינוּ
And You, You are our God!
How can we ask God to provide support and help for our People if we do not? A friend recently put it to me powerfully this way: “During so many years when Israel only existed as an idea, our poorest ancestors put pennies they couldn’t really afford to give into Tzedakah boxes for the benefit of ‘the poor, sick, and old of Jerusalem and the Holy Land.’”
As our ancestors sacrificed on behalf of our People, for us and for the generations to come, we must do the same.
But it’s not just about learning and supporting it’s also about feeling, about loving. And we have to cultivate that connection, that bond, that love for our People and our Homeland.
How deeply do you feel it? How much is your identity wrapped up in your being part of the Jewish People?
Israeli Philosopher Moshe Halbertal describes an important measure of that sense of connection: feeling the pain of others in our group. When we hear about a rocket attack from Gaza that injures an Israeli soldier, do our hearts ache? If a fellow Jew, albeit a total stranger, is the victim of an antisemitic attack in Paris or New York, does it fill us with anguish, concern, or anger? When Israel is slandered in the media or on the floor of the United Nations, does it inspire in us a sense of outrage and concern that leads to action?
What disturbed me most about the behavior of many anti-Zionist Jews during Israel’s war with Gaza this past May was the seeming total disregard for the safety and well-being – physical, spiritual, and emotional – of their fellow Jews. Of course we should care about the people of Gaza, especially children and other innocents who have been so betrayed by their own leadership. We should care about the rights and dignity of Palestinians in the West Bank and places like Sheikh Jarrah as well. But first and foremost, we have an obligation to our own family and People who were at that very moment taking refuge in shelters as thousands of rockets rained down on them.
It’s a core Jewish value, succinctly expressed in the Talmud:
כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל עֲרֵבִים זֶה בָּזֶה
The word ערבים is so suggestive – it can mean that all Jews are responsible for each other; that we are bound up with one another; that we are “pledges” for each other. It can also mean – suggestively – that there should be affection in our hearts for one another. The message is clear: our lives are inextricably connected. We share a common history as well as a common destiny. And anti-Zionist Jews cannot escape this, even if they try. Make no mistake, for the real enemies of our people, those who in every generation seek to harm us, there are no distinctions. To them, a Jew is a Jew is a Jew.
Some of us feel this connection in our kishkes, from our childhood. Some of us come to it later in life – those righteous converts who have chosen to join our ranks. Adult B’nai Mitzvah who embrace a tradition that was for whatever reason denied them.
For me, the best way to inspire and cultivate this feeling is to actively choose to share our lives more fully with one another. By showing up for each other, spending time together, learning each other’s stories, standing together for kaddish, dancing at each other’s simchas – this is how we come to love our People.
And I very much include in this embrace Jews who are anti-Zionists, Jews who would turn their backs on Am Yisrael. We cannot give up on them for they, too, are part of our mishpucha. Our job is to engage with them all the more.
My friends – I hope to God that none of us ever has to go through what Natan Sharansky did. I pray that we’ll know safety and security here in America, throughout the Diaspora, and in Israel as well so that we can all celebrate our Judaism, our rich culture, and our national aspirations in dignity and without fear. But if we do find ourselves facing the types of challenges that so many who have come before us have faced, I hope, I hope that we would not be alone, that our People would be there with us staging rallies and protests, writing letters and circulating petitions, fighting for our freedom, wearing bracelets with our names on them.
No matter what challenges or tragedies, triumphs or celebrations come our way, may we have the gift of knowing that we never, ever have to experience them alone.
