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A world without love by Peter and Gordon
Please lock me away And don't allow the day Here inside where I hide With my loneliness I don't care what they say I won't stay in a world without love There was once a man whose adolescent son had fallen into sinful ways. The boy would stay out late at night, carouse with Gentiles, and chase after girls. He even spoke to his mother and father with disrespect. Finally, at a complete loss as to how he might lead his son back to the proper path, the father went to speak to the Baal Shem Tov. “Rebbe,” he said, “I am at my wits’ end. My son has fallen into such evil that I fear for his soul. He has completely abandoned the teachings of our faith, and his behavior is disgraceful. I have threatened to beat him or to throw him out of the house, but nothing seems to work. How can I convince him to change his ways?” The Baal Shem Tov replied: “Love him more.” “But he deserves no love!” the father answered. “That is all the more reason to increase your love for him,” the Besht insisted. “Do you think God loves us because we deserve it? No. Love is the very essence of life. It is the light that illuminates the path to God. If you would have your son follow that path, then you must be such a light unto him. Love him more.” In the Talmud, Rabbi Simlai declares: The Torah begins with an act of lovingkindness and the Torah ends with an act of lovingkindness.” In the Book of Genesis when Adam and Eve are naked, God clothes them. At the end of Torah when Moses dies, God buries him. A midrash adds that the middle of the Torah also includes acts of lovingkindness. When Abraham is in need of healing after his circumcision, God visits him.[1] Judaism is about love. If that sounds strange to you, I get it. How often do we hear that Christianity is about love but Judaism is about….. well it’s about….something else …. like law or justice, or whatever. In the past Christian anti-Judaism was about the supersession of a loveless Judaism by a loving Christianity.[2] American Jews long ago began to define Judaism as whatever they thought Christianity was not, perhaps out of their anxiety about assimilation. Since Christianity was about love, Judaism wasn’t. Since Christianity places an emphasis on feeling, Judaism was more about action and ritual. Since Christians were so focused on belief, Judaism played down faith. Because Christianity stresses divine grace, many Jews believed that Judaism doesn’t have a notion of grace. In actuality, grace, in Hebrew chesed, is foundational to Jewish theology and spirituality. The gift of life, God’s love and the gift of Torah, is grace -- not something we have earned but a gift. In the same vein, we often hear that whereas the God of the New Testament is a God of love and mercy and grace, the God of what Christians refer to as the Old Testament, is an angry, vindictive and bloodthirsty God.[3] The truth is Judaism is a religion of love and law, of action and emotion. In fact, Jewish liturgy reminds us every day, dare I say multiple times a day that Jewish law itself is a manifestation of divine love.[4] Twice a day we recite the Shema in which we declare God’s love for us and then we recite words that come right out of the Book of Deuteronomy: וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכׇל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ׃ And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your might (Deut. 6:5) Judaism is built on the idea that God loves us. It’s a reciprocal love. We see that in the blessing that appears just before we recite the Shma: ברוך אתה ה' הבוחר בעמו ישראל באהבה Blessed are You Adonai our God, who lovingly cares for the people Israel. Rabbi Akiva said: Even more beloved is the human being, for it was made known to him that he was created in the image of God. In other words, God didn’t just create us in God’s image but God let us know that God did that.[5] Some Jewish thinkers go further. When you love someone, said Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, you don’t tell them unless you want to be in a relationship with them. That is God’s hope – that God’s love for us will be reciprocated by us. That’s what we recite in the Shema – we attest to God’s vast love for us, and then take upon ourselves the charge to reciprocate that love.[6] Many of us struggle with ambivalence and uncertainty about ourselves, about our worth and lovability. God is not ambivalent. God loves us more than we love ourselves.[7] Despite the fact that God loves all of us, it doesn’t mean we are all the same. In one Mishnah we read: Adam was created singly to proclaim the greatness of the Blessed Holy One, for a human being stamps many coins with one die and they are all alike one with the other. But the King of Kings, the Blessed Holy One, has stamped all of humanity with the die of the first man, and yet not one of them is like his fellow.[8] The message here is that there has never been and never will be in the history of the cosmos another human being just like you. And that simple fact testifies to the glory of God. We are all valuable and we are all distinctly unique. That is why each of us matters. It was said of Reb Simcha Bunem that he carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one he wrote: Bishvili nivra ha-olam—“for my sake the world was created.” On the other he wrote: V’anokhi afar v’efer”—“I am but dust and ashes.” He would take out each slip of paper as necessary, as a reminder to himself. While these two statements might seem like a contradiction, Jewish tradition tells us that knowing we matter is not pride. Pride would be the insistence that we have earned all of the worth we have, or the pretension that we matter while others do not. Knowing our worth is not vanity. Vanity would be the insistence that our worth is something we ourselves have achieved. Similarly, knowing our talents and abilities is not arrogance but self-awareness.[9] Being humble does not mean feeling incompetent or inferior to others. Humility has nothing at all in common with self-hatred or self-loathing. To see ourselves as worthless, is to grant ourselves license to behave in vulgar and abject ways. As Maimonides said: If one has a base view of oneself, one will readily do base things.”[10]. As the Hasidic master Rabbi Zadok Ha-Kohen of Lublin once said: Just as a person believes in God, one must also believe in oneself.”[11] Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, a 20th century teacher of Mussar, a movement focusing on virtue-based ethics and personal transformation, wrote that to be conscious only of our shortcomings is a prescription for failure and despondency. Woe to a person who is unaware of their shortcomings, because they will not know what to work on. But even greater woe to a person who is unaware of their virtues, because they don’t even know what they have to work with.[12] Whether we think too much of ourselves or too little, we all too frequently end up thinking only of ourselves. As the 12 Step slogan goes: Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself. It means thinking of yourself less. Just as no human being can confer God’s love upon us, so also can no human being take it away.[13] This afternoon we will talk about the story of Jonah. The assumption we often make is that Jonah is read on Yom Kippur because it is a story about the power of repentance. Threatened with obliteration for their sins, the people of Nineveh heed Jonah’s warning: they repent and change their ways. But another reason we read Jonah is because he is an ambivalent prophet; a man called by God, given a mission and he refuses to do it. It is only reluctantly, kicking and screaming that he finally responds to the summons to fulfill God’s word. In a way we are all Jonah. Each of us has things often deeply consequential things, we’re called upon to do that we’d simply rather not. So, like Jonah we run away from our calling. On Yom Kippur we acknowledge that painful reality, both to God and to ourselves, and stand ready to respond to God’s call.[14] Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik wrote: to be created in the image of God is to be assigned a specific task by God. Rabbi Soloveitchik believed that each of us is given a distinctive mission and the moment into which we are born is reflective of the assignment God has in mind for us.[15] In some sense Rabbi Soloveitchik adds, we are not free to accept or decline our mission. We are sometimes called to a task that is overwhelming or exhausting or that seems like a fool’s errand, and yet we are not free to walk away. This was a hard lesson for Jonah to learn. We read this story in part because it is also our story. We read this story on Yom Kippur to remind ourselves that although we have the ability to turn away, religiously (Jewishly) speaking we don’t have the right to do so. Jewish tradition makes a simple but audacious claim: despite our conflicting impulses, we remain capable of choosing the good – and the height of good is love. Judaism is not naïve about who and what we are, so it isn’t that we will choose the good, but rather we can choose the good.[16] God loves us but God’s love is mediated and experienced, at least initially, through the love shown to us by human caregivers. We need parents and caregivers to bolster our sense of dignity and self-worth.[17] Our parents’ love is something that helps us create who we are. Ideally, they teach us how to love, how to mourn loss, how to form real and enduring relationships; how to live peacefully with others; and how to learn and grow from our experiences.[18] Having said this I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that many of us did not experience anything like that growing up. While love and nurturing builds us up, neglect and abuse tear us down. If good care can help us mature into loving people, poor, indifferent, or abusive care can damage or stunt us in countless ways.[19] As philosopher Natalia Marandiuc writes: “It is not the case that the human self gives rise to love, but rather that the love that comes from others gives rise to the self.” If we look at the Torah a little bit closer, we will see that it isn’t just about God’s love or individual love. We are commanded to love our neighbor and the stranger as well[20]. The Hebrew word ger is translated as “stranger” “sojourner” “alien” or “foreigner. In the Torah this word ger refers to a non-Israelite resident of the land who has no family or clan to look after him, and who is therefore vulnerable to social and economic exploitation.”[21] We have a name for folks like that today-- immigrants. It may be hard enough to love a member of our own community, but we are asked to do more; to love the stranger like a neighbor. When it comes to loving our neighbor, the Torah is not unique. All over the ancient Near East evidence has been found of concern for the widow, the orphan and the impoverished. It is rare however, to find the stranger included in such lists outside of the Torah.[22] In Exodus we read: You shall not oppress a stranger for you know the feeling of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.[23] The Torah’s charge is based on empathy. Since you know what it feels like to be a stranger, you must never abuse a stranger. Exodus teaches the baseline requirement: not to oppress the stranger, while Leviticus magnifies the demand. Not only must we not oppress the stranger, we must actively love him:[24] When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him.” The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your native-born; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Lord am your God.”[25] It’s one thing to not oppress the foreigners living among us. It’s quite another to actively love them.[26] In any case, the Torah could easily have responded differently to the experience of the Israelites as slaves in Egypt. Instead of learning the lesson of how to treat the stranger, the Torah could have instructed the Israelites that the lesson to learn is-- since you were treated so horribly you don’t owe anyone anything.[27] Instead, the Torah teaches us that demonizing and dehumanizing immigrants and foreigners is an abomination. We are told the highest achievement of which we are capable is to live with compassion. This is considered nothing less than walking in God’s own ways. I started this sermon by singing an excerpt from the classic tune by Peter and Gordon, A World Without Love, written by Paul McCartney and released in 1964. There are hundreds or more likely thousands of songs about love. Many of those songs are about romantic love. What struck me about this song was the title, A World Without Love. Although this song is about romantic love, as I read and listen to the news, I can’t help but think that those who are attempting to create a world without love, don’t just hate others, they hate themselves. Love is a choice we make in a world that is inundated with both beauty and barbarism. On any given day we may dance with joy and recoil in horror. We see signs of moral progress in one corner and symptoms of decay in another. We see some who revel in killing innocent people and others who risk life and limb to save perfect strangers.[28] Creating a world with love is a challenge but if we know we are created with love, for love; that we are always already loved; that we don’t earn God’s love but rather strive to live up to that love, we can achieve love. To be human is to grow in love, love for friends, family and community; love for humanity, especially the vulnerable and downtrodden; and ultimately love for all creation. In short, we need each other.[29] The kind of world we inhabit depends to a great extent on the choices we and others make. To paraphrase the Torah: Choose life, but more importantly, choose love. So, I wait and in a while I will see my true love smile She may come, I know not when When she does, I'll know, so baby, until then Lock me away And don't allow the day Here inside where I hide With my loneliness I don't care what they say I won't stay in a world without love [1] Shai Held. Judaism is About Love (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, c2024) 225 [2] Ibid. 4 [3] Ibid [4] Ibid [5] Ibid. 23 [6] Ibid. 24 [7] Ibid [8] Ibid. 25 [9] Ibid. 32 [10] Commentary to Mishnah Avot 2:18 [11] Ibid. 33 [12] Ibid [13] Ibid. 34 [14] Ibid. 35 [15] Ibid. 36 [16] Ibid. 7 [17] Ibid. 79 [18] Ibid. 94 [19] Ibid [20] Lev. 19:34; Deut. 10:19 [21] Ibid. 180 [22] Ibid. 181 [23] Ex. 23:9 [24] Ibid. 181 [25] Lev. 19:33-34 [26] Ibid. 181 [27] Ibid. 189 [28] Ibid. 6 [29] Ibid. 379-380 Jerusalem of Gold by Naomi Shemer
Avir harim tzalul kayayin Vereiach oranim, Nisa beru'ach ha'arbayim Im kol pa'amonim. Uvetardemat ilan va'even Shvuyah bachalomah, Ha'ir asher badad yoshevet Uvelibah chomah. Chorus: Yerushalayim shel zahav Veshel nechoshet veshel or Halo lechol shirayich ani kinor. (x2) The song I just sang Jerusalem of Gold, was written by Naomi Shemer and sung by Shuli Natan at the Israeli Music Festival on May 15, 1967, shortly before the Six Day War. Only 3 weeks later, the Israel Defense Forces captured the eastern part of Jerusalem and the Old City from the Jordanians. The words of the song describe: The mountain air is clear as wine and the scent of pines Is carried on the breeze of twilight with the sound of bells. And in the slumber of tree and stone captive in her dream The city that sits solitary and in its midst is a wall. Jerusalem of gold and of copper, and of light Behold I am a violin for all your songs. One of my early memories as a child is of a phone call my mother made to Israel during the Six-day war. She was trying to reach her sister -- trying to reach her because back then you didn’t just dial the number and automatically reach your party. It was a bit more complicated. To make an international call, one first had to dial zero to get an operator who would then help you. You could also ask to speak to an overseas operator and then give that person the number you were calling. While I don’t remember exactly what happened, my recollection is that a few hours later, the operator called back and let my mother know the call went through and she could now talk with her sister. Whatever the actual chain of events that resulted in my mother speaking with her sister Rachel were she made the call because one; she wanted to make sure my aunt and her family were ok; and two, she wanted to ask my aunt to put her two children David and Michal on a plane – to come and stay with us in the United States till the war was over. In a typical Israeli response, my aunt said no. Her children would stay in Israel. While it was hard to get news from Israel in a timely manner in 1967, by 1991 and the start of the Gulf War, much had changed. CNN was the first network to broadcast a war. It was the first real war that had live satellite coverage and the first-time viewers could watch a war unfold live.[1] So, when a scud missile landed on the block near where my Aunt Rachel and Uncle Tzvi lived in Tel Aviv, their son David -that same David now living in the United States- watched it land, recognized where it landed and called to check on his parents. It was all pretty much instantaneous. Today, not only can we reach folks in Israel in an instant, we now have multiple ways in which to contact our family and friends there—by phone, text, email, and apps on our phones like Whatsapp. There was a lot of that going when on Oct. 7th 2023, Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups infiltrated 22 Israeli towns and army bases, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 240 hostages. The militants crossed into Israel by land, sea and air and the attack included breaching the border fence, disabling radar and communications towers, firing thousands of rockets toward cities as far away as Jerusalem and seizing military bases. More than three dozen Thai guest workers were killed and hundreds of civilians, homes, and buildings were burned.[2] As we approach the first anniversary of these horrific events, I want to take a step back. I want to take a closer look at some of the disinformation that has been out there, most of it before October 7th, but which has been broadcast much more loudly and frequently since October 7th. We’ll start with Zionism. Zionism is the Jewish movement for self-determination in the Land of Israel. It is the ancient longing of the Jewish people to return to their, to our ancestral homeland. That longing has been a constant theme for the past 2500 years[3] perhaps most famously conveyed by Yehuda HaLevi, the 12th century Rabbi, poet, and philosopher who lived in Muslim Spain. My heart is in the east and I am at the edge of the west. Then how can I taste what I eat, how can I enjoy it? How can I fulfill my vows and pledges while Zion is in the domain of Edom? And I am in the bonds of Arabia. Going back even earlier to the Tanakh, Zion is the name of a hill in Jerusalem as well as the name of the city itself. It is also the name of a Jebusite fortress that King David captured in the 10th century BCE. The term Zion also shows up in one of the more well-known of the psalms, 137: By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, sat and wept, as we remembered Zion. When a Jew dies, mourners are comforted with the words “May God comfort you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.” Few terms however, are more loaded, misunderstood, or abused than Zionism. Depending on how you use it, the word has become a kind of political litmus test: a badge of pride or an insult. And how you use it, or if you use it at all, tends to indicate how you feel about Israel.[4] In her book Jews and Power, Ruth Wisse frames it this way. Zionism is the solution to Jewish powerlessness; Israel is the guarantor of the Jews’ safety. This term Zionism has always been a bit controversial, but the tone of the conversation about Zionism took a sharp turn in 1975, when the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, declaring Zionism a form of racism. Resolution 3379 went further than any other previous anti-Israel initiative. Whereas prior UN resolutions had stated that racism should be eliminated, the new message was that if Zionism is a form of racism, then it and the state it created must also be stamped out.[5] The resolution never defined Zionism nor did it explain how and why Zionism is a form of racism. Of the thousands of independence and nationalist movements in the world, including Palestinian nationalism, only the Jewish movement has ever had a UN resolution condemning it. The resolution was repealed in 1991 but the damage was done. [6] The modern-day Zionist movement picked up steam in the 1880s. Against a backdrop of violent pogroms and rising antisemitism, waves of Zionists; waves of Jews, immigrated to Palestine.[7] Rural collective communities and urban communities were established in towns built on land purchased – legally purchased, from absentee Ottoman landlords. Many early immigrants found life very difficult and returned home. But many others stayed, purchasing more land, negotiating with the Ottoman authorities and promoting immigration into the growing Jewish community.[8] My great grandfather Avram Yitzhak made his way to Palestine in the early 1890’s and was one of those Zionists who stayed, although my understanding is it took him a few trips back and forth to his home Neshvitz in Belarus, before he permanently settled in Palestine. Avram Yitzhak was a member of the Bilu, which stands for Beit Ya'akov Lekhu Venelkhah, Let the House of Jacob Go.[9] Up until this time, Jews went to Israel for religious reasons and they mostly relied on the charitable contributions of Jewish organizations for their survival. The members of the Bilu, however believed that it was not only time for Jews to live in Israel, but to make their living there as well. Making a living meant farming and owning a piece of land. Despite what many protesters are yelling about Jews stealing land, that is not what happened. Land was purchased and those purchases took place in sparsely populated areas. As a matter of official Zionist policy, the Jews did not purchase land occupied by fellahin, or Arab farmers. Only if a fellah left his place of settlement was there an offer to buy his land.[10] Much of the land purchased was uncultivated, malaria-infested swamps, rocky, or sandy land. It’s a very well-known story about the Jews draining the swamps to rid their towns of malaria. My grandfather Eliezer was one of those responsible for bringing Eucalyptus trees from Australia to drain the swamps in his town of Hadera, where he grew up -- the town my great grandfather helped to found and where my great grandmother died of malaria. Jewish organizations were willing to pay exorbitant prices. For example, rich black soil in Iowa sold for $110/acre while Jews paid $1,000/acre for arid and semi-arid land in Palestine.[11] By 1947, Jews owned 463,000 acres of land in Palestine. Some of that land was purchased from the government, some from churches, and some from Arab landowners. Far from being built on stolen land, Israel is the only state built partly on purchased land. The rest of the land that became part of Israel came from public lands previously part of the Ottoman Empire.[12] Well, some might argue, if the Jews legally bought land, they didn’t legally settle on the land. They were settler colonialists. This is another of the chants heard in protests this past year that Israel is a “settler colonial enterprise.” Colonialism is when a country or empire imposes control and power over other peoples or territories by establishing colonies. Settler colonialism is a specific type of colonialism in which foreign settlers aim to replace the Indigenous population. This “replacement” of the Indigenous population happens in a multitude of ways including genocide and ethnic cleansing. The Zionist movement in the 1880’s didn’t start as an attempt by an empire at colonial expansion. It was a voluntary movement by European Jews fleeing religious and political persecution.[13] Jews are not settler colonialists because they are indigenous to the land of Israel and they never had the goal of eliminating the Arab population living in the region. They accepted the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan, which divided British Mandatory Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. Historian Barbara Tuchman once described Israel as “the only nation in the world that is governing itself in the same territory, under the same name, and with the same religion and same language as it did 3,000 years ago.”[14] In addition, while European settler colonialists settled colonies to enrich their motherlands, and maintained a connection to their home countries to which they could return if they so wished, Jews who came to Palestine had no motherland in Europe to enrich.[15] Then there is that word Palestine. A popular meme on social media that has been making the rounds since last Xmas is that Jesus was a Palestinian. Although many Palestinians today are Christians, Jesus himself was not one.[16] He was born to Jewish parents in a place called Judea, not Palestine. He lived as a Jew, and he died as a Jew. In the time of Jesus, Palestine didn’t exist. In the second century, Judea, which was the epicenter of large-scale Jewish rebellions against Roman rule, was renamed Syria Palaestina—later simply Palaestina—by the Romans a full century after the death of Jesus. The assertion that Jesus was Palestinian is often made in an effort to negate Jewish history, to insist that only Palestinians, and not Jews, have a claim to the land.[17] This absolutist claim provides a seedbed for the radical belief that Jews do not deserve a country of their own in even a part of their ancestral homeland. Jesus may not have been a Palestinian Jew, but you know who was – my mother. As her passport affirmed, Aliza Blumrosen was born in Palestine, before the establishment of the state of Israel. As author Dara Horn writes: The through line of anti-Semitism for thousands of years has been the denial of truth and the promotion of lies. These lies range in scope from conspiracy theories to Holocaust denial to the blood libel to the currently popular claims that Zionism is racism, that Jews are settler colonialists, and that Jewish civilization isn’t indigenous to the land of Israel. These lies are all part of the foundational big lie: that anti-Semitism itself is a righteous act of resistance against evil, because Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist. Today, the big lie is winning.[18] While Dara Horn’s words ring true, I would like to end with a more hopeful message – a message written by the former chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Jonathan Sacks of blessed memory: To be a Jew is to be an agent of hope. Every ritual, every command, every syllable of the Jewish story is a protest against escapism, resignation and the blind acceptance of fate. Judaism, the religion of the free God, is a religion of freedom. Jewish faith is written in the future tense. It is belief in a future that is not yet but could be. We have returned to the cisterns, to the market and to the market-place A ram's horn calls out on the Temple Mount in the Old City. And in the caves in the mountains thousands of suns shine - We will once again descend to the Dead Sea, by way of Jericho! Chorus: Yerushalayim shel zahav Veshel nechoshet veshel or Halo lechol shirayich ani kinor. x2 L’shana tova tikatayvu, May you be inscribed for a good year and thank you to Dr. Bill Liss-Levinson for these words -- “May we all find the inner and communal strength to meaningfully fulfill our roles and responsibilities, bringing more Torah, love, peace, compassion, justice and understanding into the world.” [1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/01/politics/wolf-blitzer-gulf-war-iraq-kuwait-cnn/index.html [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/07/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-attack.html [3] https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/zionism-what-the-heck-is-it [4] Daniel Sokatch. Can We Talk About Israel? (Bloomsbury, 2021) 35 [5] https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/is-zionism-white-supremacy [6] Ibid [7] Daniel Sokatch. Can We Talk About Israel? (Bloomsbury, 2021) 40 [8] Ibid. 41 [9] Isaiah 2:5 [10] https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/19th-century-immigration-to-the-land-of-israel [11] https://www.israelanswers.com/blog/was-israel-founded-stolen-land [12] https://www.futureofjewish.com/p/the-myth-of-no-peace-on-stolen-land [13] https://www.jta.org/2024/08/25/ideas/a-literary-critic-on-why-the-settler-colonial-framing-is-deadly-for-israel-and-palestine [14] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/jewish-history-jesus-settler-colonialism-claims/677149/ [15] https://www.ajc.org/translatehate/settler-colonialist [16] Erasing Jewish History Will Not Help Palestinians - The Atlantic [17] Ibid [18] The Return of the Big Lie: Anti-Semitism Is Winning - The Atlantic Spirit in the Sky (Norman Greenbaum)
When I die and they lay me to rest Gonna go to the place that's the best When I lay me down to die Goin' up to the spirit in the sky Goin' up to the spirit in the sky (spirit in the sky) That's where I'm gonna go when I die (when I die) When I die and they lay me to rest I'm gonna go to the place that's best A wealthy chassid once boasted to his Rebbe that he has a separate house where he resides only on Passover, and no chametz ever enters the house. In this way he is absolutely certain that he is in complete compliance with the Torah requirement to be free of all chametz on Passover. The Rebbe however, was not at all impressed. “What you are doing is actually contrary to the wishes of the Torah. The point is precisely to have chametz all year round, and to dispose of it on Passover. Not having the need to search after chametz and clean the house thoroughly defeats the purpose.”[1] In this story chametz is a symbol representing the yetzer hara, the evil inclination; the drive to gratify our physical impulses. Instead of battling his yetzer hara, and overcoming his desire to have chametz on Passover by removing it from his house, the man just moves into his other house that is already free of chametz. In rabbinic thought every human being has two inclinations or instincts, one pulling upwards, the other pulling downwards—the good inclination or yetzer ha tov, and the evil inclination, the yetzer hara. Judaism says that everything God creates is good including the yetzer hara. What draws us to the evil inclination is our impulse to self-alienate. When we separate ourself from others, the world and even ourself, we are more likely to be drawn to do bad things. The following parable is a good example: Once two men were traveling together on a boat….One man casually took out a hand drill and began to drill a hole under his seat. The other man was startled and asked him: “What are you doing? Don’t you know that you’re going to sink the boat?” The first man simply replied, “What, I’m not drilling on your side. What’s the big deal? It’s not my problem.” The man drilling is incapable of seeing how his actions are affecting someone else – someone sitting right beside him. This blindness to the interests of anyone or anything else around ourself, and even to our own greater self-interests beyond the moment, is the yetzer hara, the evil inclination, because it usually results in negative outcomes. So, how is this evil inclination that we all have, not so bad? Well, sometimes in order to achieve a goal we have to be pretty focused on ourself and driven by our own needs. The rabbis would say: If not for the yetzer hara, no one would build a house, marry, have children, or engage in a trade.[2] The point is to not repress the yetzer hara in each of us, but to suppress it. We should be aware of those thoughts and feelings, and then control them so that they do not run amok and become part of our character. As Judaism teaches, we either become our mind’s master and the master of our evil inclinations, or it masters us.[3] In Pirket Avot, Ben Zoma asks: Who is mighty? One who controls his evil inclination.[4] Having a yetzer hara is part of being human but we all must work diligently to rid ourselves of it. Not to have chametz i.e. a yetzer hara, is to be an angel and we are asked to be holy humans not angels.[5] This is in part what makes us different from animals. Humans unlike animals, have the capacity through self-reflection, to improve themselves.[6] In teaching Bali the place command which he did very well until recently – but that’s another story -- Bali has certainly improved himself. But it wasn’t his choice. It was mine. He may do it to make me happy but he didn’t do it to improve himself. Humans also have the capacity to think about the goal and purpose of their existence. While it’s true that not all humans take the opportunity to reflect on the purpose of their existence, they have the ability to do so. Animals do not. Humans can also reflect on the consequences of their actions and have the capacity to control their anger.[7] Yeah, I know, that’s a hard one to swallow, but what I said was we have the capacity to control our anger. I didn’t say we always succeed at it, because we don’t. Humans also have the capacity to forgive.[8] Again, we have the capacity but do we forgive? A human being has the ability to choose between right and wrong. A human being has the ability to be charitable, to sacrifice of him and herself and of their belongings to help other humans, even strangers. A human being has the ability to be compassionate.[9] If you think about it, human beings may be the only living creatures that are truly free.[10] Even animals in the wild are not truly free because they are controlled by their bodies and can’t make a free choice. If an animal is hungry, it must search for food. An animal can’t one day decide to fast as many of us have chosen to do over the next 24 hours—although Bali seems to occasionally make that choice. The ability to defy a bodily desire is unique to humans. It is only fear of retribution that will keep an animal from fulfilling a bodily drive. If a jackal is foraging for food and spies a carcass being feasted on by a huge tiger, it will stay away for fear the tiger will eat him as well. If you take all the traits unique to man and group them together, the sum total of these are what can be referred to as the spirit. Those who put these capacities to use can be called spiritual people. Those who put these capacities to use set aside their personal will and adopt the Divine will. Again, this is something beyond the reach of any living thing other than man.[11] Much of what I have just described comes from the writings of Rabbi Abraham Twerski of blessed memory. Rabbi Twerski was an Orthodox rabbi, the descendant of several Hasidic dynasties. He was also a psychiatrist and a respected authority on addiction who was drawn to the 12-step approach central to Alcoholics Anonymous. Rabbi Twerski believed spirituality was not so easy to define, but a starting point might be to explain what spirituality is not. Spirituality is not withdrawing from society and isolating oneself as a recluse, eating the bare minimum to remain alive and sleeping on the ground, spending the entire day in prayer and meditation. So, what is Rabbi Twerski’s definition of spirituality? -- becoming the best person you can be by thinking about a purpose in life—by thinking about how you can improve yourself and become a better person. Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham in their book The Spirituality of Imperfection describe it this way: Truth, wisdom, goodness, beauty, the fragrance of a rose – all resemble spirituality in that they are intangible, ineffable realities. We may know them we but can never grasp them with our hands or with our words. [12] Like love, spirituality is a way that we “be.” Spirituality is also a paradox in that what underlies it is the sense of incompleteness. To be human is to be incomplete, yet yearn for completion; to be uncertain but long for certainty; to be imperfect yet long for perfection; to be broken yet crave for wholeness.[13] The Lizensker Rebbe, Yosef Meier Mayer, who passed away a few years ago, once said: Only God is perfect. Man’s actions must be basically defective in part. If one believes his good deed or holy study to be thoroughly pure and perfect, this is a sure sign that they are thoroughly bad.[14] Some describe the difference between religion and spirituality this way. Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell; spirituality is for those who have been there.[15] Rabbi Twerski described spiritual growth as being different from physical growth in that it never comes to completion and it can sometimes feel like you have regressed rather than progressed.[16] One of my favorite parables describes this regression very well. The parable states: “The closer you get to the light the more obstacles there are.” The analogy provided to demonstrate this parable is an army attacking a castle. Successful in their battle to get closer and closer to that castle, once the army was virtually on its doorstep, well—that was the moment when the enemy poured boiling oil down on them in order to deter their entry. That isn’t to say the army didn’t eventually conquer the castle, but in order to accomplish that task they needed to be vigilant in their efforts. As I mentioned above, spiritual people set aside their personal will and adopt the Divine will. This concept, this belief, is the cornerstone of the 12-Steps. For instance, Step 2 states: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. As Jews we may find this statement uncomfortable. We may hear it as being saved by something or someone outside of ourselves. We may hear it as salvation in a Christian sense, with someone redeeming us. But, Step 2 says “could restore us” not will restore us. Moving from potential to actual depends on us. Moving towards sanity you simply have to take one step that moves you outside the trap of yourself, of total self-involvement.[17] The 12-Step program requires the surrender of one’s will and accepting the will of God—or more generally a higher power. It requires searching out one’s character defects and correcting them. It requires making amends to those we may have offended. It requires helping others. It requires rigorous honesty. It provides a method whereby a person can become truly spiritual.[18] Without spirituality a human being is motivated and driven by all the animalistic emotions for maximum comfort and pleasure—the goal being self-gratification. [19] If you are of the belief that the 12-Steps are Christian, please understand there is nothing more Jewish than the 12-Steps. As Rabbi Twerski has written: The twelve-step program appeared to have its roots in the Oxford Group [a Christian organization], but I have quipped that if Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, were alive today, I would have him sued for plagiarism, because everything in the twelve-step program seems to have been taken from the Talmud and Mussar writings.[20] Mussar, dating back to the medieval period, is a Jewish spiritual practice focusing on virtue-based ethics and personal transformation. Judaism is a spiritual approach to being a human being in the world, but Judaism does not close itself off to outside disciplines of knowledge and wisdom. In Pirkei Avot the Ethics of the Fathers, the same rabbi Ben Zoma, who asked: Who is mighty, also asked: Who is wise? One who learns from all men.[21] One of the lessons we can learn from Judaism and spirituality is that Judaism makes room for doubt. Doubt is not the opposite of faith. That would be complacency or hubris, acting as if we have it all figured out. The opposite of faith therefore is not having the courage to remain open-minded and to continually ask life’s most important questions. Judaism also leaves room for us to cultivate our own relationship with God. Truthfully, there is no one Jewish way to believe in God. The only real dogmas in Judaism are that God can never be a human being and that there is one God alone. We are still responsible for doing our own spiritual digging, by learning and reflecting on our own experiences as they relate to spiritual ideas and practices. One of the key words of this High Holy Day season is Teshuvah, repentance. The word comes from the verb root meaning “to return.” It is the process by which spiritual transformation or change happens. Change can occur in our character, in our behavior. We can’t change what was done but we change the present. If we can come clean, then the past becomes a stepping stone to success, rather than ending in failure. The truth is if we are unable to change and our character is hopelessly trapped by its early development and past deeds, what point would there be to the future? As the Chassidic master Reb Nachman of Bratslav once noted: If we are not better tomorrow than we are today, then why have tomorrow?[22] Teshuvah is an action not a thought or feeling. We can certainly think we’d like to change or be sorry for what we’ve done in the past, but until we actually do something about it, we have not done teshuvah. Step 4 of the 12-Steps mirrors this process of teshuvah. In Step 4 we take a moral inventory of ourself, looking at people, institutions, systems and even ideas we resent. Cheshbon ha nefesh an accounting of the soul, is a very Jewish concept. This is the way Judaism views the Step Four inventory. The entire month of Elul just before Rosh Hashanah is devoted to a piercing moral scrutiny.[23] The philosopher Martin Buber once said: “You cannot find redemption until you see the flaws in your own soul…. whoever shuts out the realization of his flaws is shutting out redemption. We can be redeemed only to the extent to which we see ourselves. Facing who we are and who we have become is the most difficult task of recovery and spiritual renewal. But it is also a turning point. It puts us in the direction we are going-- home to ourselves and a loving God.”[24] Recognizing the magnitude of Teshuvah, the Talmud stands in awe of those who sincerely go through its process, declaring: “Even the most righteous among us cannot stand in the place where one who has done Teshuvah stands. [25] In his parting words to the Israelites in the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses says: This instruction (the Torah) which I enjoin you this day is not too baffling, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens….No, the thing is very close to you in your mouth and in your heart…..[26] Throughout these last chapters of the Torah, Moses uses the phrase היום today, this day, over and over again.[27] Moses is telling the Israelites to focus on today, not yesterday or tomorrow. All of us can face the challenges of just one day. It’s only when we add the burdens of yesterday and tomorrow that we break down. Right now, those burdens of yesterday and particularly tomorrow are as difficult as they have ever been to ignore. But, in the words of another 12-step slogan, Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift. That’s how we live spiritually – one day at a time. Oh set me up with the spirit in the sky (spirit in the sky) That's where I'm gonna go when I die (when I die) When I die and they lay me to rest I'm gonna go to the place that's the best Go to the place that's the best G’mar Chatimah Tova [1] Abraham Twerski, Twerski on Spirituality (Shaar Press, c1998), 11. [2] Genesis Rabbah 9:7 [3] Paul Steinberg, Recovery, the 12 Steps and Jewish Spirituality (Jewish Lights, 2014), 42 [4] Avot 4:1 [5] Abraham Twerski, Twerski on Spirituality (Shaar Press, c1998) [6] Ibid. 14 [7] Ibid. 15 [8] Ibid. [9] Abraham Twerski, Teshuvah Through Recovery (Mekor Press, c2016) 58 [10] Abraham Twerski, Twerski on Spirituality (Shaar Press, c1998) 15-16 [11] Ibid. 77 [12] Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection (Bantam Books, 1992), 15 [13] Ibid, 19 [14] Ibid. [15] A well-known 12-Step slogan [16] Abraham Twerski, Twerski on Spirituality (Shaar Press, c1998) 195 [17] Kerry M. Olitzky and Stuart A. Copans, Twelve Jewish Steps to Recovery (Jewish Lights, 2009) 9-10 [18] Abraham Twerski, Teshuvah Through Recovery (Mekor Press, c2016), 60 [19] Ibid, 61 [20] Ibid, 86 [21] Pirkei Avot 4:1 [22] Paul Steinberg, Recovery, the 12 Steps and Jewish Spirituality (Jewish Lights, 2014) 82 [23] Kerry Olitzky, Recovery from Codependence, (Jewish Lights, c1993) 29 [24] Ibid, 34 [25] BT Brachot 34b [26] Deuteronomy 30:11-14 [27] Abraham Twerski, Twerski on Spirituality (Shaar Press, c1998),, 327 A sermon delivered at Shabbat evening services on May 3rd, 2024 and Sunday morning May 5th, 2024 at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Rutland
Defining Antisemitism – Rabbi Ellie Shemtov About six weeks ago, British actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson was offered the role as the new James Bond—although at this point, it is unclear if he has accepted the role. But, whether Aaron Taylor-Johnson becomes the new James Bond, is secondary to the reaction this news received on social media. Fans of this blockbuster movie franchise threatened to boycott the next James Bond movie if Taylor-Johnson is indeed chosen to play the role. Why, you ask? Well, it’s simple – because he is Jewish. Along with the hashtag #BoycottJamesBond spreading all over social media, came comments like: “Really bad timing with Israel committing genocide in Gaza. Shame on you. I hope your company collapses.” Besides the fact that Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza, Taylor-Johnson’s detractors were not basing this potential boycott on the fact that the actor was let’s say an ex IDF soldier; or a friend of Benjamin Netanyahu; or a member of the Israeli government. It was simply because he is Jewish. James Bond, who typically plays the hero also known as 007, has suddenly become the villain. Back in November, Tom McKone wrote an op-ed piece in the Rutland Herald entitled Questioning Israel is not Antisemitic. At face value, this is a true statement that, as I noted in my response to Mr. McKone— is one with which both I and more notably, the Anti-Defamation League agree. In fact, right now most American Jews supportive of Israel, and most Israelis are quite critical of Prime Minister Netanyahu. But, as I also wrote in my response, there are times when questioning Israel is indeed antisemitic. Over the past twenty years there have been a variety of documents produced that define antisemitism, often called the world’s oldest hatred. The best-known of these was created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016. In 2021, the Nexus Document, contributed to by a broad coalition of academics, community leaders, activists, and clergy; and the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, made up of scholars in Antisemitism and related fields, also weighed in. [1] All three organizations share the view that antisemitism is essentially “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).” They agree that attributing malevolent qualities to Jews as a group, depicting Jews as disloyal or treacherous, and caricatures of Jews as grotesque are all antisemitic.[2] While the three documents differ when it comes to antisemitism and criticism of Israel, all three present certain criticisms of Israel as clearly antisemitic. Placing Israel at the heart of conspiracy theories, presenting Israel as solely responsible for global crises, attributing Israel’s actions to Jews worldwide, and any form of harm, intimidation, or abuse of a Jew because of an alleged or real connection to Israel constitute antisemitism under these definitions. All three groups agree that denying Jews the rights to self-determination, safety, security, and equality in the state of Israel is antisemitic. All agree that Jews have every right to a homeland.[3] In general, antisemitism can be hard to spot since it works slightly differently than other forms of bigotry, which see their victims as “inferior.” Antisemitism, on the other hand, sometimes see Jews as “inferior” but at other times, as “superior” -- all-powerful, capable of causing every calamity from wars to natural disasters to diseases to controlling the weather. This makes Jews the perfect scapegoat. [4] For instance, in Communist nations, such as the Soviet Union, Jews were persecuted for being “capitalists.” In capitalist nations, like Nazi Germany and even the United States during the McCarthy era, Jews were persecuted for being “communists.” [5] As Rabbi David Wolpe, a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School recently wrote: In the calculus of an antisemite, Jews are both subhuman and superhuman – vermin who control the world. Common antisemitic rhetoric places Jews at the center of conspiracies, secretly controlling anything and everything: America, the banks, the Middle East, a vast colonialist enterprise, immigration, the Federal Reserve, NATO, and even Taylor Swift’s concert tour schedule. People hate Jews because they are communists, capitalists, foreigners, residents, immigrants, elitists, have strange ways, are unassimilated, too assimilated, bankroll the left (like George Soros) or bankroll the right (like Sheldon Adelson). People hate Jews because they are weak and stateless, or because they are Zionists and defend Israel.[6] When societies change, antisemitism typically mutates to survive. As I said, though criticism of Israel is not in and of itself antisemitic, projecting antisemitic tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracies onto the world’s only Jewish state is antisemitic. Holding the world’s only Jewish state to double standards is antisemitic. [7] For instance, when ISIS bombed an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, in 2017, killing 22 people, UN Secretary General Guterres immediately “strongly condemned” the attack, and the Security Council released a statement, condemning “in the strongest terms the barbaric and cowardly terrorist attack” and extending its solidarity to the United Kingdom. That’s exactly what should have happened and post October 7th, Guterres did make statements such as these. Unfortunately, he then added that this massacre (my word not his) did not happen in a vacuum. In other words, Israel should take responsibility for their role in their citizens being raped and massacred. According to Rabbi Wolpe: Israel is the only country in the world that is routinely and widely targeted for eradication. Have you ever heard of activists angry with China targeting Chinese restaurants in Paris? I haven’t. But, when Hamas terrorists were recently arrested in Europe with plans to blow up Jewish institutions, they were not targeting Israel, they were targeting Jews. If someone is angry at Israel, they target Jewish synagogues, businesses, and restaurants — anything associated with Jews, anywhere in the world — no matter their relationship to Israel. Last week, in discussing the student protests happening on campuses all around the country, comedian Bill Maher pondered: Maybe the question today’s protesters need to ask themselves more than any other is: Why do I care so much about this particular cause? North Korea starves its people. China puts them in concentration camps. Myanmar brutalizes the Rohingya. Boka Haram kidnaps whole villages of women. The president of Burundi says gays should be stoned to death because they deserve it. Nothing? Ukraine? …..[8] According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the civil war in Syria has resulted in over 600,000 dead Syrians. 7 out of 10 Syrians require humanitarian assistance and according to the UN around 6.9 million people have been displaced. Where are the protests and accusations of genocide? Accusing Israel of committing genocide is antisemitic because it singles out Israel or holds Israel to a double standard. As Bill Maher also noted: Genocide by the way, is when you want to wipe out an entire people. That’s the stated goal of Hamas. That’s what: From the River to the Sea, means. Hamas would do that to Israel but can’t. Israel could do that to them but doesn’t. I would add, not only haven’t they, but over the years the Palestinian population has grown—a lot. If the Israelis are committing genocide over the Palestinian people, they are pretty bad at it. [9] One could also ask, what would happen if other groups were targeted instead of Jews. NYU professor Scott Galloway made the observation that if he went into the NYU square with a white hood and said: “lynch the Blacks” or “burn the gays,” his ID would be shut off by that night—and he would never work in academia again. As Dr. Galloway noted: There would be no need for the words, “context” or “nuance.” I wouldn’t be protected by terms like “First Amendment” or “free speech.” It seems that we have a double standard when it comes to hate speech as long as it is against Jews……I think what a lot of Jews are concerned with is that free speech is never freer when it is directed at Jews. [10] Ever since October 7, many have warned that anti-Zionism is the new antisemitism and that being draped in the Palestinian flag’s colors is likened to and the 2024 version of, a 1930s brown shirt. A few weeks ago, the University of Southern California cancelled the speech that was to be given by this year’s valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, a first generation South Asian-American Muslim. The reason given had to do with security concerns. Tabassum also had a link on her social media to a site that called for the “complete abolishment” of Israel and which described Zionism as “a racist settler-colonial ideology that advocates for a Jewish ethnostate built on Palestinian land.” The university has faced a tremendous amount of pushback from that decision. Meanwhile, producing not quite the same firestorm -- a theater in Philadelphia cancelled the screening of an Israeli documentary that had nothing to do with Israeli politics. The reason given: fear of violent demonstrations, and the charge that showing the movie would make the theater complicit in Israel’s crimes. A judge ordered the theater to screen the film. Last month the Playhouse Cinema in Hamilton, Ontario, called off the annual Hamilton Jewish Film Festival due to safety concerns. Some of the concerns stemmed from complaints that Israeli films were included in this year’s roundup. One of those films The Boy, is about life on the Israel-Gaza border. It was made by an Israeli filmmaker who was murdered on Oct. 7th. Wanting to avoid a politically charged event, the Brooklyn Monarch music venue canceled a performance by the Israeli hard rock band, HaYehudim. The band was told that there was a problem with the political nature of their name. HaYehudim is Hebrew for “the Jews.”[11] Jewish and Israeli businesses and restaurants have been targeted in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco. In the United Kingdom, half the publishing industry is now refusing to market the writings of identifiably Jewish authors. [12] Haviva Ner-David, a graduate of Columbia University and now living in Israel, describes herself as a pro-Palestinian activist calling for a mutual ceasefire and a return of all the hostages. Ner-David wrote an open letter to the Columbia University Gaza war protestors. Here is an excerpt: If I were studying at Columbia today, I would ask myself: Should I join your protests? After all, I, too, am pro-Palestinian. But I am also pro-Jew. And when you chant, “There is only one solution, intifada revolution!” and “From the Sea to the River, Palestine will live forever!” you are not calling, as I and my Palestinian-Israeli friends are, for peace, justice and equality for all humans within those borders. You are calling for the violent destruction of the country where we live, and the murder of its citizens — including the Palestinian ones……. And when you call out, “Say it loud and say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here!” you are fomenting violence against and silencing other Columbia students. You may disagree with them, but does that mean they have no right to inhabit your shared campus — or even live? Do you think I, an activist in the struggle for peace and equality for all in Israel-Palestine, have a right to live? While I protest many of my government’s policies now and in the past, I do not think Jews have a moral obligation to commit suicide rather than enter sometimes tragic gray areas that are part of defending a country. Turning the other cheek is not expected of anyone anywhere. Why expect it only of Jews? While you in the United States demand that we be sacrificial lambs, you inhabit and benefit from a country unequivocally acquired through colonialism and grown through slavery. This is not the case with Jews in Israel …, even if agenda-driven pseudo-historians try to convince ignorant students that it is. And so, if I were at Columbia today, I would not join your protests. Because now I know I do not have to choose sides. I do not even have to buy into the idea of “sides.” This is a battle between those who support violence and an all-or-nothing approach to this conflict, and those who want to find a way for us to all win out by sharing this land. It saddens me deeply that you are choosing — perhaps out of latent Jew-hatred — the way of violence and hate instead of cooperation and mutual understanding.[13] So, I’d like to end this morning with a quote from the Israeli novelist Amos Oz who once said: When my father was a boy in Poland, the streets of Europe were covered with graffiti, "Jews, go back to Palestine." When my father revisited Europe 50 years later, the walls had new graffiti, "Jews, get out of Palestine." Thank you. [1] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/29/penslar-define-antisemitism/ [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid. [4] https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/are-you-antisemitic [5] Ibid. [6] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/29/wolpe-hatred-jews/ [7] https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/institutional-antisemitism [8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltQQKL8HRWg [9] ibid [10] https://nypost.com/2024/04/24/us-news/jewish-nyu-professor-lashes-out-at-hypocritical-anti-israel-protesters/ [11] https://forward.com/culture/601645/the-jews-band-brooklyn-monarch-cancellation/ [12] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/03/half-of-british-publishers-wont-take-jewish-authors/ [13] https://www.jta.org/2024/04/26/ideas/an-open-letter-to-the-columbia-university-gaza-war-protesters-from-a-pro-palestinian-activist-in-israel Jewish Conspiracy Theories Glass Onion (Lennon/McCartney) I told you about Strawberry Fields You know the place where nothing is real Well, here's another place you can go Where everything flows Looking through the bent-back tulips To see how the other half lives Looking through a glass onion On November 9th, 1966, as far as speculation goes, Paul McCartney was tragically killed in a car crash on his way home from working on the Sgt. Pepper album in the studio. Wanting to save their fans from the heartache of losing Paul and dealing with the loss of their bandmate, the other three Beatles decided to conceal the truth and replaced Paul with Billy Shears, the winner of a Paul McCartney lookalike contest.[1] There is, of course, no evidence to support this story. Although Paul was involved in two car accidents around this time, multiple witnesses and Paul himself confirmed shortly afterward that he was perfectly fine. In addition, there is no evidence that a lookalike contest ever took place, and no trace of a Billy Shear ever existed. John Lennon was particularly vocal about his annoyance with those who read too much into the lyrical meanings of Beatles songs and wrote ‘Glass Onion,’ the song I began with in response.[2] The “Paul is dead” story never gained any traction until September of 1969 when an article entitled ‘Is Beatle Paul McCartney Dead?’ was published in Drake University’s student newspaper. The “Paul is dead” tale took on a new life as an international conspiracy theory.[3] While a conspiracy can be defined as an agreement between two or more parties to commit a crime, a conspiracy theory often contains a more dubious and improbable hypothesis, or an intentional lie about powerful and sinister groups conspiring to harm good people, often via a secret cabal. In other words, conspiracy theories differ from actual conspiracies in their relationship to facts, evidence, and logic.[4] These theories have been developed throughout history by individuals, religious communities, and political entities to explain negative events, find scapegoats, or fulfill paranoid fears and fantasies. A conspiracy theory is often baseless, or based on half-truths. As the Yiddish expression goes, a half-truth is a whole lie. Conspiracy theories present ideas as one-dimension; are linked to political propaganda and totalitarian ideologies and usually demonize certain groups.[5] The identity of the alleged conspirators can be specific people such as the Kennedy assassination second gunman, or they can be larger groups like all communists or Jews. These groups are generally portrayed as undeniably evil, with a willingness to stop at nothing to achieve their goal.[6] Conspiracy theories also tend to take what are often complex fundamental ideas or causes and turn them into simplified and easy-to-understand views of reality. Conspiracy theories typically lack evidence, contain distorted evidence, or are false accusations – i.e. the accusation that Jews eat matzah containing Christian blood.[7] Jews are often accused of being behind a variety of major events, such as the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, German losses during WWI; by destroying German culture), the Stock Market Crash in 1929[8], and more recently, 9/11 and COVID-19. George Soros and the Rothschilds Family are examples of specific Jews or Jewish families around whom conspiracy theories abound. Atlantic Magazine Staff writer Yair Rosenberg notes: “Anti-Semitism is arguably the world’s oldest and most durable conspiracy theory. It presents Jews as the string-pulling puppet masters behind the world’s political, economic, and social problems. For those seeking simple solutions to life’s complexities, this outlook offers a ready-made explanation --and enemy. A survey done by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2020 of US adults under the age of 40 found that 11% believe the Jews were responsible for the Holocaust, 15% believe the Holocaust is a myth or very exaggerated, and 20% think too much attention is paid to the Holocaust.[9] Arthur Butz is most well-known for his 1976 Holocaust denial work titled The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. In it, he rejects the claim that Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust and that the whole 6 million dead thing is a hoax that forced the Allies to grant Palestine to the Jews. Butz believes that Hitler simply meant to end Jewish influence and power in Germany, never to murder Jews. While the phrase Vernichtung des Judentums translates as the destruction of the Jews, Butz believes what Hitler had in mind was the destruction of Jewish influence and power, not genocide. According to Butz, Jews didn’t die en masse, they immigrated to the US and Palestine.[10] How do we know Butz’s claims are false? – Because there is a vast amount of evidence that has come from survivors, Allied forces, and even the perpetrators themselves. In a working definition, the International Holocaust Alliance defines antisemitism as A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” Some examples the Alliance provides include:
Perhaps the most famous, or should I say infamous Jewish conspiracy theory kicking around is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most notorious and widely distributed anti-Semitic publication of modern times. Although the exact origins of the Protocols are unknown, what we do know is that in 1903 portions of the work were serialized in a Russian newspaper. The intent was to portray Jews as conspirators against the state, who manipulate the economy, control the media, and foster religious conflict.[12] Although the Protocols were known from the outset to be a lie, they continued to spread all over the world. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, anti-Bolshevik emigres brought it to the West. In the US the Protocols became public knowledge in 1919. Louis Marshall, then president of the American Jewish Committee, complained that: it was distributed in every club, and placed in every newspaper. It has been received by every member of Congress and put in the hands of thousands of personalities. It is the topic of conversation in every living room and every social sphere.[13] In 1920 Henry Ford published a series of articles based in part on the Protocols in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent. The articles later became a book published by Ford entitled, The International Jew, which was translated into sixteen languages. Ford later apologized twice for publishing the book but online anti-Semites continue to use his name to promote it.[14] Adolph Hitler was introduced to the Protocols in the early 1920s, referring to them in some of his early speeches. Hitler exploited the myth that Jewish Bolshevists were conspiring to control the world.[15] Protocols continue to spread their lies, especially on the Internet, making it available worldwide, even in countries with hardly any Jews such as Japan. Many school textbooks throughout the Arab and Islamic world teach the Protocols as fact. Countless political speeches, editorials, and even children's cartoons are derived from the Protocols. In 2002, Egypt's government-sponsored television aired a miniseries based on the Protocols [16] This past summer, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. shared his thoughts about the nature of COVID-19 (Atlantic article), stating there is an argument that COVID-19 was ethnically targeted to attack Caucasians and Blacks. Kennedy went on to say that the people who are the most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese. While he wouldn’t go so far as to say the targeting was deliberate, it seems that for Kennedy, it is an open question as to whether the pandemic was engineered by a shadowy cabal to spare the Chinese and Jews.[17] Because over a million people in China have died from COVID-19 and I know several Jews just in this congregation who have gotten COVID-19 and one personal friend who died from it; Kennedy is as conspiracy theorists do, playing loosey-goosey with facts, evidence, and logic. This is not the first conspiracy theory Kennedy has touted but he has now joined the ranks of a diverse set of folks from Marjorie Taylor Green to Kyrie Irving to Elon Musk, who have “graduated from garden-variety conspiracy theories to anti-Jewish arguments.” Paraphrasing Martin Luther King, Yair Rosenberg writes: “For conspiracy theorists, the arc of conspiracy is short and bends toward the Jews.”[18] Kennedy also loses points for originality since his musings about Jews and the Coronavirus are not new. Jews have been blamed for spreading plagues for centuries, most famously during Europe’s Black Death. Then we have Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in 2018 shared her suspicions that the California wildfires were ignited by a space laser controlled by a corporate cabal, including the Rothschild banking firm, Why? Well, according to Greene, the goal was to manipulate the stock market and line the pockets of “Rothschild Inc.,”…..,” and Sen. Dianne “Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum,” both of whom are Jewish.[19] For more than 200 years, the name “Rothschild has been synonymous with two things-- great wealth and conspiracy theories about what they’re doing with that wealth. Almost from the moment Mayer Amschel Rothschild and his sons emerged from the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt to revolutionize the banking world, the Rothschild family has been the target of myths, hoaxes, bizarre accusations, and constant, virulent antisemitism. Over the years they have been blamed for everything from the sinking of the Titanic to causing the Great Depression, and—here we go again-- creating the COVID-19 pandemic.[20] Then we have George Soros. Most recently Soros has been accused of influencing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who led the grand jury indictment of a former president over a hush money payment to a porn star. What’s the evidence? Well, there is none. It’s a conspiracy theory. The theory is that he made donations to a criminal justice group Color of Change, which endorsed Bragg for DA in 2021.[21] The Hungarian-born financier, whose philanthropic organization Open Society Foundations supports freedom and democracy initiatives in over 100 countries, is frequently without any evidence to the contrary, accused of being a mastermind of international conspiracies, funding Antifa, Black Lives Matter, violent protests, fraudulent voting schemes, to name a few. In addition, the emergence of QAnon has added fuel to the anti-Soros fire, with unfounded claims that Soros is the person behind an international network of pedophiles.[22] The conspiracy theorists vilifying Soros, a man who survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary and escaped communism, are pushing the perception of a wealthy Jew working as a puppet master behind the scenes to promote a liberal agenda. In the classic conspiracy theory style, they are promoting Soros as a powerful force outside of our control acting on behalf of the global elite to keep the truth from ordinary people.[23] As the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once wrote: The hate that begins with the Jews never ends with the Jews. That may be but no other group aside from the Jews has been blamed simultaneously for being both insular and cosmopolitan; for being capitalists and behind Communist revolutions; for being subhuman but also a chosen people.[24] As I was writing this sermon a new book came out on Sept. 19th called Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. It was written by Mike Rothchild – no relation to the banking family. - In an interview with Time Magazine, Rothchild notes: There's always going to be a need for someone to blame when things go wrong—someone who has gotten too powerful, too rich, and needs to be knocked down a peg…..When you hear terms like “globalists, foreign bankers, or London financiers,” that usually has some reference to the Jews. Unfortunately, these theories travel much faster than any kind of debunking will ever be able to stop. The truth is always going to travel slower than the lies. I told you about the walrus and me, man You know that we're as close as can be, man Well, here's another clue for you all The walrus was Paul Standing on the cast iron shore, yeah Lady Madonna trying to make ends meet, yeah Looking through a glass onion [1] https://www.beatlesstory.com/blog/2022/10/28/musics-biggest-conspiracy-theory/ [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid. [4] Scott A. Shay. Conspiracy U : a case study (New York : Post Hill Press, c2021) 42-3. [5] Ibid. 13 [6] Ibid. 46 [7] Ibid. 44-5 [8] Ibid. 47 [9] Scott A. Shay. Conspiracy U : a case study (New York : Post Hill Press, c2021) 26 [10] Ibid. 57 [11] https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism [12] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion [13] Michael Hagemeister. The Perennial conspiracy theory : reflections on the history of th eProtocols of the elders of Zion. (New York : Routledge, 2022) 8. [14] https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/international-jew-1920s-antisemitism-revived-online [15] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion [16] Ibid. [17] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/rfk-kennedy-covid-anti-semitism/674727/ [18] Ibid. [19] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/marjorie-taylor-greene-kevin-mcarthy-jewish-space-lasers.html [20] https://shop.thejewishmuseum.org/jewish-space-lasers-the-rothschilds-and-200-years-of-conspiracy-theories-104347 [21] https://www.timesofisrael.com/soros-targeted-by-antisemitic-conspiracy-theories-hatred-amid-trump-indictment/ [22] https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethcohen/2020/09/12/the-troubling-truth-about-the-obsession-with-george-soros/?sh=43f543d24e2e [23] https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/trump-indictment-conspiracy-theorists-target-george-soros [24] https://www.ajc.org/translatehate/conspiracy-theory |
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