(RNS) — The news of Israel’s unprecedented attack on Iran’s nuclear and military sites that killed some of Iran’s most powerful men — military and nuclear leaders — arrived late Thursday (June 12) in the U.S. I realized, as I tried to get some sleep between watching CNN, that, as Jews prepared for Shabbat on Friday and wished each other “Shabbat shalom,” there will be no shalom this evening, nor in the days that lie ahead.
With my lack of sleep, it did not take much for a text message to awaken me.
It was from a rabbinical colleague.
“Jeff, what should I preach tonight? Yes, of course, I will offer prayers for peace. But, what else?”
For years, Iran has been threatening to wipe Israel off the map. Late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini and former President Ahmaninejad had repeatedly said that “Israel must disappear from the map.”
Thus far, those efforts have come in the form of its franchise operations: Hamas, the Hezbollah, the Huthis, among them. (I have often wondered if the American supporters of Hamas realize that they are simultaneously serving as cheerleaders for Iran.)
That violence is not only aimed at Israel but at the entire world. Iran’s growing nuclear capabilities — which it has refused to diminish, which it has falsely claimed was for peaceful purposes — have put the entire world at risk.
Therefore, Israel has lived up to the rabbinic dictum: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill them first,” (Talmud, Sanhedrin 72a).
The “you” of that passage was not just Israel; it was the entire free world. I agree with the Christian thinker Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr wrote that modern culture has been completely oblivious to the abiding mystery of evil in human life, and especially, in the political realm.
We have never had the luxury of ignoring that evil; we have even less of that luxury today.
What should we preach tonight? It is a good question.
Let’s go to the weekly Torah portion, from the Book of Numbers. This is one of the richest in the entire Torah. The Israelites start their trek into the wilderness. They complain about the quality of the food. They get nostalgic about Egyptian slavery, and they actually want to go back to the good old days. Aaron and Miriam complain about Moses’ leadership.
All good. But, I am going somewhere else, to the haftarah.
The haftarah is the prophetic reading for the week. It is usually the “ugly cousin” of the Scripture readings. In many Reform congregations, it is left unread, except when a bar or bat mitzvah kid chants it beautifully at their ceremony.
And, no one ever preaches on it.
Except, maybe this week.
The reading is from the prophet Zechariah. It is the story of the High Priest Joshua, who served in the ancient temple that had been re-built after the Judeans returned from Babylonian exile.
The passage portrays Joshua standing before the Accuser (Satan), dressed in filthy garments, with the Accuser ready to accuse him.
OK, let’s go to that word, Satan. In the Hebrew Bible, Satan is not evil. He is merely God’s adversary — a minor actor in God’s drama.
But when Jews lived under Persian domination, Satan would undergo a makeover. They encountered Zoroastrianism, which taught about the cosmic struggle between a god of light/god of good, and a god of darkness/god of evil. Christianity “loved” Satan — all the way to Dana Carvey as Church Lady on SNL, blaming it all on “Satan!”
Where do we hear about “Satan” these days? Persia became Iran, whose leaders decry America as the “great Satan,” and Israel as “the lesser Satan.”
So, what does God’s angel tell the Accuser?
“The LORD rebuke you, O Accuser; may the LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! For this is a brand plucked from the fire.”
Joshua is a survivor. He had experienced the worst national catastrophe the Jewish people had ever experienced — the destruction of Jerusalem, the burning of the temple and the exile in Babylon.
Jerusalem had burned, and Joshua was that brand plucked from the fire, as if from a fireplace.
You know that image of “a brand plucked from the fire”? Jews often describe Holocaust survivors that way, and Joshua was an ancient survivor of the Holocaust of his time.
I think of Holocaust survivors and their children and their grandchildren. How easily they could have abandoned their faith in God, Judaism and humanity (in fact, some did).
But, most did not. They committed themselves to making the world better.
Rabbi Judith Schindler is the daughter of the late Rabbi Alexander Schindler, the former president of the Reform movement, a refugee from the Holocaust and the subject of an amazing new biography. Judy Schindler is the daughter and granddaughter of survivors — brands plucked from the fire.
These are her words, found in the 2014 collection, “God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors”:
I’d love to sleep soundly, but I can’t. I pray that I can use my extra hours to honor the memories of those who died by creating a society that honors diversity and by tending to the altar of my people in order to keep the flames of Judaism and Torah vibrant so that they can forever warm and bring light to our world.
She is saying: I could have wallowed in the pain. I could have become a nihilist. Alternatively, I could want to just get a good night’s sleep.
But, no: I have work to do. I have to honor my family, and my extended family, by repairing a broken world.
Israel is a nation of survivors: Yes, of the Holocaust, and also of anti-Jewish violence in the Middle East, whose descendants are now the majority of Israelis.
And, Israel is a survivor nation, a nation that can teach the world about the dignity and purpose of survival itself.
We are not the first Jews to live through this kind of apprehension and anxiety. On the night of the Exodus itself, our ancestors experienced a “night of watching.”
These are our nights of watching.
Not only Israel.
The entire world.
One last thing.
The haftarah ends with these famous words:
“Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit — said the LORD of Hosts.”
Over the years, many have interpreted that text as a critique of war. We have said that it is not military might, nor human power, that prevails. Rather, the true “weapon” is the spirit of God.
Perhaps that will be true — someday.
But as for now, in the real world of evil actors, we need military might.
So, yes, also a prayer:
May God spread over us all a sukkat shalom, a shelter of peace, remembering that the very nature of the sukkah is its shakiness, its vulnerability and its temporary nature.
We get it.
We all get it.
