Month: May 2019

May Peace Burst Forth Like Sunshine

~ slfuchs ~ Leave a comment

Pastor John Danner and I comparing our prayers to place on the “Path to Peace” wall separating Israel from Gaza.

At 8 PM on the eve of Israel’s Day of Remembrance, a siren sounds, and the entire country stands still.

The siren sounds again at 11 AM and once again the entire nation pauses in its tracks to honor the memories of her soldiers killed in defense of the State.

It is a moving and necessary commemoration.

It is moving because Israel is a small country — small enough that there is not a family who has either lost someone dear or is closely connected to others who have. It is necessary because each of those privileged to live in this tiny land needs to acknowledge at what great cost Israel has thwarted the concerted attempts of its enemies — enemies that surround it on every border — to destroy it.

Hopefully too this solemn day reminds us of the horrible cost of all war. War has no victors, only victims.

As an ancient people and as a modern nation, Israel takes no delight in the death of its enemies.

  • There is empathic pity in the Book of Judges for the sorrow of the mother of Sisera, the fearsome Canaanite chieftain dispatched by Yael in (chapter 4 in the Book of Judges).
  • At our Passover Seders we diminish our joy by taking a drop of wine (wine in Jewish ritual is a symbol of joy. It never symbolizes blood) out of our cups for each of the ten plagues Egypt suffered.
  • The Talmud recounts that after the Egyptians were drowned in the sea, the angels began to sing praises to God. God silenced them saying it is not right to sing praises when “My creatures” are drowning. (B. Sanhedrin 79b)

Memorial Day in Israel also adds urgency to the quest for peace.

One of the most touching stops on our visit was to Netiv Ha-Asara, a settlement that sits on the edge of the Gaza Strip. A day earlier our visit to that place had been cancelled because Hamas shot hundreds of rockets at Israel over the  weekend. But with the signing of a cease fire and a return to quiet on the border, we could thankfully reschedule our visit.

There we learned firsthand of the pressure under which the residents live. They never know when with only seconds of warning they must stop what they are doing and scurry to the bomb shelters which are part of the construction of every  home, school and building in the area.

Still the residents insist on living normal lives.

Tsameret, a graphic artist in the area has initiated a remarkable project, Path to Peace. She is decorating the ugly separation wall, so necessary to protect Israel from infiltration by terrorists, with messages of peace and hope. She invites visitors like us to write our prayers and hopes for peace on tiles she has decorated with symbols and messages of peace. The peace messages are visible to those on both sides of the wall.

Our prayer is that Tsameret’s vision will one day become a reality, and we will see a time when Jews and Arabs live in peace, harmony and mutual cooperation. It seems a Quixotic vision.

But then again, it is no more Quixotic than Theodor Herzl’s vision of a Jewish State seemed in 1897 when he proclaimed prophetically, “If you will it, it is no dream.”

May peace burst forth like sunshine!

Vickie putting her prayer tile on the Path to Peace wall.

We Go Together in Israel

~ slfuchs ~ 4 Comments

xNCTouR7QfqQSsMjqmk5LgAt the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem

As Christians and Jews we are on this journey together.

In the best of all worlds, I would not have chosen for us to travel to Bethlehem on Yom Ha Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.  Nor would I have picked that day to walk the Via Dolorosa and visit the Stations of the Cross where, according to Christian tradition, Jesus stopped before his crucifixion.

Although I would have chosen another day, those are vital spots for us all to visit. 

The next day we did what I would have wanted to do on Yom Ha-Shoah, visit Yad Va-Shem, Israel’s memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.  On Yom Ha-Shoah I am sure Yad Va-Shem was overrun with visitors. And the day after when we visited, it was very crowded too.

In Bethlehem I recalled the memory of my 1975 attendance at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve (See my essay, “Andrea”) and my last tour of the Via Dolorosa in 1996.

I had a special reason to hire a Palestinian Christian guide to take me on a personal tour of Via Dolorosa that year. My good friend and tennis partner Rev. Steve Hancock had invited me to speak from his pulpit at the Second Presbyterian Church on Good Friday.

Now, Rabbis being invited to preach in churches is not unusual, but in those days a rabbi speaking in a Church on Good Friday was all but unheard of.

Why? Good Friday is the day the most anti-Jewish passages from the Gospel of John are read in churches. Historically Good Friday was the day when Christian preachers incited the population to pogroms against Jews in Eastern Europe and other places.

Good Friday was a day when Jews hid in fear of their lives.

It was not a day when Jews were welcomed to deliver sermons in Christian pulpits. It was also not a day when Christian Pastors followed their own worship by attending Passover Seders as Rev. Dr. John Danner and Rev. Deborah Kunkel of our partner church, Sanibel Congregational UCC did as most welcome guests this year.

How glad I am that we live in these days and not those.

But no one should ignore the ominous events of recent days. The shooting in Poway, California at a Chabad synagogue came six months after the horrible attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Ours and many other congregations hire off duty police as a security detail during our worship services.

A few days ago, the International Edition of the New York Times published the most blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon one could ever imagine.

It depicted a blind President Trump with a kipah on his head led by a dog with a Jewish star around its neck, a dog with the face of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

That the New York Times published such a thing is an abomination. Their apology and their withdrawal of the cartoon do not undo the damage. These gestures are too little and too late.

But the trip shared by Bat Yam Temple of the Islands and Sanibel Congregational UCC is right on the money.

We know that anti-Semitism in particular and hatred in general are on the rise around the world.

We also know that our job is to understand, respect and affirm our legitimate differences.

But we also have the sacred obligation to forge our shared values into a force — greater than the sum of its parts — that works to build a better world for our children, grandchildren and all the generations to follow.