If, like me, you have been studying news channels, social media, commentaries, and whatsapp with friends in Israel throughout the past days and nights, you too may share my heartbreak. We watch rocket fire and extremist violence from afar and worry for family, friends, our State, as well as for the future of collaboration, neighborliness, justice and peace within towns and cities across Israel and the Palestinian territories. Most Israeli academics, politicians, Jewish organisations and citizens alike agree that this is a complex conflict, with a wide range of views on how, why, when and where it started. The answers to those questions may never be fully known, or agreed upon. But now is not the time to try to unpick the threads of this conflict.
Now is the time to stand firmly with Israel and her citizens. Terror, violence, extremism and mob destruction is indefensible and must be stopped. It only serves to harden hearts and solidify fear and mistrust. Our prayers are with those who hide in bomb shelters, and try to protect themselves in open fields as rockets rain down on them. Our hearts are with the parents whose children are traumatized by sirens going off all night. At the same time, just as God cried when the Egyptians drowned in the sea, we empathise with the average Palestinian citizens whose lives and livelihoods are lost in this conflict that is being waged by their leadership.
So much seems to have been lost already this past week: trust between Jewish and Muslim neighbors who have lived and shopped together for decades, joy due to reemerging from Covid, partnerships between doctors of different faiths who worked heroically side by side during the pandemic, faith in the governing institutions on both sides, and more.
But in this slow and steady march toward Shavuot and the deep reconnection with God at Sinai, we remember that hope is not lost. Hope is there, waiting for us at the top of the mountain. Despair will not get us to the top of the mountain; only hope and yearning for shalom, for wholeness, will carry us there. Hope and Peace are the paths forward; the ways toward God.
This Shabbat, we will gather tonight and tomorrow morning as a community to pray for peace in Israel, and, as Rabbi Marc Baker of CJP said in the rally for Israel this morning, ‘give each other a virtual hug.’ We will gather our collective sighs and transform them into prayers for shalom and tikvah, peace and hope. I look forward to seeing you there online.
With tikvah,
Rabbi Marcia Plumb
