By Rabbi Daniel G. Zemel
The approaching Days of Awe are like no others in my memory. The past year was without doubt the most challenging and painful year for world Jewry since World War II.
I will not list here the travails that have befallen Israel since October 7. We all know they are legion and that the country so many of us have loved is deeply wounded and in dire need of healing. The savage destruction wrought by Hamas will linger in Jewish memory forever. Israel’s response has also been heartbreaking. To a large number of us, many of Israel’s wounds are self-inflicted, brought on by the worst government in the nation’s history, one that combines stunning incompetence with Jewish messianic authoritarianism. The death and destruction in Gaza seems motivated more by revenge than by a coherent strategy that would bring home the hostages and lead to a better future for Israelis and Palestinians. We entered the current year as a deeply divided people, driven apart both in the United States and in Israel—where it matters most— by this same insidious government. We end this year with the same divisions, which perhaps have been exacerbated by our widely divergent views on Israel’s policies and leadership.
In the U.S., Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks and its treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank unleashed an anti-Israel, anti-Zionist tsunami that too often was a façade for antisemitism. There are legitimate ways to protest the actions of any government, and those of you who pay attention at Micah know that condemnations, and strong ones at that, of Israeli government actions and policies are not unexpected from this quarter. My love of Israel is undiminished. But that which we love causes the most pain, and Israeli government policies have too frequently caused me pain.
As Israel’s attacks in Gaza intensified, so, too, did the antisemitism in our own country. The past year offered us too much evidence to support the wry observation: “You don’t have to be an antisemite to be anti-Israel, but it sure helps.”
It was when I read the text messages shared among deans at Columbia University that I realized how pervasive antisemitism has become. Three (now resigned) leaders of one of the greatest universities in the world were removed from their posts and placed on leave after displaying their own blatant antisemitism and unsuitability for academia.
The Columbia example is one of many. It seems that any number of universities have lost track of their purpose— to cultivate reasoned debate, the exchange of ideas, and passionate argument. There is a huge difference between peaceful, reasoned protest and hate speech, bigotry, and intimidation. Universities are there to encourage discussion, to provide forums for the free and respectful exchange of opinions. You defeat an idea you hate with a better idea, not with vandalism, violence and hateful rhetoric.
We need our places of learning to be open to ideas and debate. When a culture is more concerned with “trigger warnings” than about hearing arguments that make you cringe, we are in trouble. I remember going with a Hillel group as an undergraduate to hear the notorious, hate-filled demagogue, Meir Kahane, speak. He was invited by a right-wing Jewish organization on campus. Emotions in the standing-room-only auditorium were on overdrive. Protestors picketed outside. Tension was palpable. No one sought to prevent him from speaking. At the end of his address, Kahane was peppered with animated rebuttals from students and faculty alike. It was a memorable and valuable evening. For the first time I experienced a Jewish extremism that I had never known to exist.
In 1790, George Washington penned a famous letter to the Jewish community of Newport, R.I. He wrote that “the Government of the United States… gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” The Bill of Rights, with its guarantee of free speech, had been drafted and was in the process of being adopted by all of the states. Washington understood that it would be up to the government to provide a free, open and safe public square. Free speech has limits, to be sure. You cannot shout “fire” in a crowded movie theater. You cannot incite a riot. But our nation’s laws encourage tolerance. So do our Jewish values. There is an ancient rabbinic principle that governed the proceedings of the Sanhedrin, the rabbinic tribunal of seventy sages. In open debates, the youngest spoke first so as not to be intimidated or influenced by the more experienced elders.
Where, I wonder, is tolerance, an open mind, the spirit of real debate?
I sometimes sound like a broken record (even to myself), but the liberalism that was the product of the European Enlightenment is under real threat from the extremes on the left and the right. The far right is afraid of a free mind as well as diversity of any flavor. The far left is trapped in a philosophy based on the absolute moral correctness of the oppressed, even if it springs from a fictive narrative. Both have retreated to a kind of tribalism.
Those on the reactionary right seek to ban books and to foist onto the country a militant Christian nationalism that is at odds with the freedom from religious coercion that was a founding principle of this country. Those on the radical left are unable to distinguish between Israel as a nationstate that pursues policies they abhor and Zionism as the idea that the Jewish people have the right to self- determination in a nation-state.
When intolerance is on the rise, Jews pay a price.
We enter this Holy Day season not only to be together and draw strength from our community, but to affirm timeless truths that have sustained us for generations. We live by our values, which are enshrined in books. We study, analyze and debate those books unceasingly. Our most essential values affirm that life is worth living, that this life is THE life that we are granted by a transcendent, unknowable God and that our commitment to justice, freedom and fairness for all people is unshakeable.
Even if much of the world is blasting another message, the core of our story, the lessons it teaches, and the values we live by do not and will not change.
I look forward to seeing you as we enter 5785. Shanah Tovah.
This article originally appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of the Vine.