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Home Sermon given December 4, 1999
(These remarks a dedicated in memory of my grandmother, Stella Samson, and in memory of Philip Barshop and Winnie Ozer.)
Those of you who have received and read your Temple bulletin for the month of December may have noticed that on the front cover the title of my talk for this evening was listed as "American Jews in Israel: Old Perceptions Confront New Realities."
And if you ventured further in the bulletin to page two, the title reads there: "American Jews AND Israel: Old Perceptions Confront New Realities." Now, how am I going to resolve this typographical dilemma?
Is one title correct, the other wrong? Shall I be like Solomon and split my comments in two: American Jews in Israel? American Jews and Israel?
Alas, while one of the titles was correct, I will take the speaker's prerogative and change the title of my talk altogether!
So, as not previously advertised, tonight I shall address the topic: A New Covenant Between the Jewish People of North America and Israel...Please Sign on the Dotted Line!
And, of course, before one would be inclined to sign a document with such a heady title, a little background, some facts, and not too many figures, might be useful.
I'll start with some background.
Two weeks ago, I returned from Israel. There were two distinct purposes--the first, to participate in the Jewish Federation's Community Mission to Israel. My wife Leslie, me, and 19 other members from the Jewish community participated on the twelve-day mission. Following the conclusion of the mission, I remained in Israel with Leslie, and six other San Antonians for the 67th Annual General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations--the first GA to be held in Israel, and the first to be sponsored with CJF's new corporate partner, the United Jewish Appeal. This is where the New Covenant comes in, but I'll deal with that later.
More than any other of my previous trips to Israel, on this particular journey, I was challenged both on the mission, and at the GA, to seriously consider the changing nature of the relationship between Diaspora and Israeli Jews.
Never before, for example, had I imagined that American Jews are perceived to be more "Jewishly educated" than many of their Israeli counterparts.
Never before, had I read articles in the Hebrew and English press, or participated in discussions which seriously questioned the fundamental relationship between Jews here and Jews in Israel.
Yet with all of this searing introspection and soul-searching, often before, but on this visit more so than ever before, I witnessed the extraordinary and unique achievements Diaspora Jews, and American Jews most especially, have created through our participation and partnership with the Jewish Agency for Israel. The Jewish Agency receives and administers the dollars we contribute and allocate overseas through the Annual Federation Campaign.
During the mission, our group visited three sites to view programs sponsored and administered by the Jewish Agency. In Tiberias, we spent several hours at the local absorption center. This center, which houses some 400 olim (recent immigrants to Israel), is remarkable because of its residents. We found there, not intact families, who came to Israel as a unit, rather we visited teenagers from the Former Soviet Union--all of whom have come to Israel without their parents--on a special program called SELAH--a Hebrew acronym meaning "Children Before Parents."
For those of you who are my contemporaries in age, imagine back to your last years of high school. You voluntarily agree to leave the home of your parents, your siblings, your school, and many of your friends. In doing this, you must travel thousands of miles to a new country, learn a new language very different from your native tongue, and in total, begin a new life. Believe me, this is not a summer hiatus to Greene Family Camp.
And this is what the SELAH program is all about. Jewish teenagers moving from the FSU to Israel without parents, family and friends. Thankfully, the Jewish Agency prepares these teenagers for the transition by providing Hebrew language training, courses on Jewish history and culture, and by offering an array of counseling services and psychological screening prior to allowing the teenagers to emigrate to Israel. All of this done in space leased by the Jewish Agency in public schools in a number of cities in the Former Soviet Union. For those of you who visited Russia or Ukraine just several years ago, could you ever imagine such occurrence?
So, why don't parents join their children in Israel? Some cannot leave because they have elderly parents for whom they must care for--some have jobs they cannot or will not leave--others are simply not ready to make the transition.
During our visit to the absorption center in Tiberias, we met with nearly a dozen teenagers. Of the group, a handful had been in Israel for two or three months. Some had arrived less than two weeks before our visit. We divided into two groups and asked what seemed like hundreds of questions about their new lives. Each of our discussion groups had the benefit of program counselors, wonderful individuals in their early 20s who had made Aliyah within the last five years. Fluent in Hebrew, Russian and English, they bridged the language gap between these newest arrivals, and us, the inquisitive visitors.
We all learned a great deal from the encounter. And interestingly enough, after we gained a vivid picture of the life of these new immigrants, the question posed to us was an altogether logical one--why weren't we coming to Israel to live, why don't we make Aliyah? The answer of course is not simple, nor can it be universally applied, but there is a good answer.
The reality is Israel depends on a strong Diaspora for support. But the support is not for survival--we have move beyond existential arguments about Israel--that is indeed on old perception--today, Diaspora support of Israel mutually enriches us as Jews. American Jews are keenly aware that the Aliyah of Jews from the Former Soviet Union must continue--and for a variety of reasons--be they political, economic, religious or cultural. In one group, we discussed anti-Semitism in the Former Soviet Union. While few of the teens spoke of individual acts of discrimination, several voiced fears that Jews would surely be blamed and become targets if the economic tailspin in the Former Soviet Union worsens.
We left the absorption center with our spirits elevated. Not only were these new immigrants wonderful conversationalists, they were excellent singers as well who perform in a choir, and they enlisted us in a rousing version of the Israeli folk song "Hallelujah." In defining the relationship between Diaspora Jews and Israelis--nothing seems more compelling than realizing new Jewish lives are being built--day by day, lesson by lesson, syllable by syllable, song by song and touch by touch in this absorption center and in 23 others throughout Israel. Twenty-one Jews from America, meeting a dozen new Israelis--and the link feels as if it is eternal.
A day later our group pays a visit to Hatzrot Yasaf--a caravan site (caravan is simply the Israeli term for large mobile trailers) near Nahariya on the northern coast of Israel. We encounter on this visit, a large number of new immigrants from Ethiopia--many of whom are Falash Mura, the descendants of Jews who converted to Christianity prior to or during the 1800s, and had been living apart from the Jewish community. Recognizing that many of these conversions long ago were forced or coerced, the Israeli government agreed to admit the Falash Mura, many of whom are being reunited with Jewish relatives. At this absorption center we witnessed immigrants embarking on life in Israel, learning Hebrew, learning life skills to cope in the modern Israeli society.. and the Falash Mura are beginning the process of conversion to Judaism (or from the view of many, reconversion) under the auspices of the Jewish Agency and the local religious council.
In addition to the Falash Mura, a significant number of Qara Jews are living at Hatzrot Yasaf. The Jews of Qara (a province in Ethiopia) were left behind in the 1991 airlift to Israel because their names were omitted from the Aliyah list, sparked by a local feud that had occurred years earlier. The Jewish Agency has been working to secure passage for all of the estimated 3000 Qara Jews who remain in Ethiopia.
What then is the essence of this place, Hatzrot Yasaf? What does it say about us as Jews who help support this enterprise? I noted earlier that Diaspora Jews claim a large stake in the struggle for Jewish survival, and it is expressed through the centuries-old plight of the Falash Mura, as well as the reclamation of an ancient people, the Ethiopian Jews now living in Israel.
Through the Jewish Agency, social, education, and health services are provided to 4,500 preschool children, 3,800 elementary school children, 2,350 high school students and 1,100 youth at risk. The Agency supports a network of afternoon tutorial centers for some 2500 Ethiopian children at risk, and provides full-tuition scholarships to all Ethiopian students in an academic or vocational post high school education programs. The visit made me feel that one cannot think of Jewish survival in terms of years, decades or even centuries--the struggle is truly eternal and it is constant--and our covenant, however it may strained, whenever it is tested, wherever it is assaulted, from without or within, can never be broken.
Let me take you on one last mission visit, just a day later. The locale is an unassuming apartment building on a busy Tel Aviv street--the institution is called the Public Council on Soviet Jewry and the special project it administers is called the Israel Crisis Management Center. An incident is recounted by the assistant director. On October 29, 1998, an Israeli army vehicle intercepted a suicide bomber bent on attacking a school bus filled with children. By taking the full impact of the explosion, the military escorts were able to save the children's lives. A immigrant soldier is killed, Sgt. Alexei Neikov, age 19. Alexei's parents and younger brother live in Haifa. They have no relatives to speak of, they arrived in Israel barely more than a year ago. There is no support system, very few friends or neighbors to help them through the grief.
The volunteers of the Crisis Management Center inject themselves into the lives of individuals and families who experience this kind of trauma. They help the family deal with the details of the burial. They sit shiva with them. They bring food and cook. The listen as the pain of the shattered family is voiced. And even after the initial stages of crisis, Center volunteers maintain personal contact with stricken immigrants, serving as extended family, present during the darkest hours of the crisis, and together on the long, painful road to healing.
Who performs these difficult tasks? Some are professionals, but they are very few, most are trained volunteers. And yes, some are past victims of terror who managed to survive, and who know all too well the feelings of isolation and despair that can occur in the wake of their personal misfortune.
We, the participants on the mission, sat in the small, cramped and stuffy meeting room at the Crisis Center, nearly dumbfounded as we listened intently about the work done here. I know what we were all thinking, how can one do this, almost everyday? How does one prepare to relate to the next family struck by misfortune? How can we assuage the grief they feel? How can we help to repair shattered lives?
Some of the answer lays in our obligation to perform tikkun olam--deeds to repair the world. Certainly if we are capable of repairing the world, we can repair a single life...sew together the tattered shreds of a once united family.
Can we really do it?
Are we Jews really one people? As we argue about peace and pluralism, about politics and Pollard, and on and on.
So, after the conclusion of our mission it was back to Jerusalem for the General Assembly. Three exhausting days of engaging discussion and field trips which spanned the country--all intended to explore the evolving relationship between Diaspora and Israeli Jews. The logical conclusion to this exploration seemed to be encapsulated in the theme of the GA...Many People, Many Roads, One Heart.
And on the last day of the conference, a Covenant was read at a special session of the Knesset held at the GA, a New Covenant signed by the 6,500 delegates--4,000 North American and 2,500 Israelis who participated in the GA--
Please listen to the words, and think of the 30 Jewish San Antonians who ventured to Israel last month and witnessed the essence of this covenant in places large and small, with the people of Israel who share our destiny:
"As we approach the 21st Century, we pause to celebrate and rededicate ourselves to the enduring ties that bind us together as one people.
For generations, Jews throughout the world shared the dream of a homeland for the Jewish people. Together we turned that dream into reality through the creation of the modern State of Israel, the historic homeland of the Jewish people, which we celebrate now, in its 50th anniversary year.
We embrace a common vision of caring for each other; of assuring a vibrant Israel; of enhancing Klal Yisrael through the building of dynamic Jewish communities that span the seas; of reaching out to Jews wherever they are and strengthening their connection to the Jewish people; of dedicating ourselves to the ideals of Jewish Unity and mutual respect; and of supporting those principles that have sustained our Identity from the giving of the Torah until today.
Today, we rededicate ourselves to strengthening the links between us by creating personal relationships and active involvements that will serve to draw us closer to one another.
For us, our children and our children's children, we rededicate ourselves to the spiritual and historic centrality of the State of Israel to one another. We affirm the values that have sustained us for centuries: belief in one G-d; respect for the infinite value of human life; the goal of peace; the special responsibility of Jews to each other, the shared obligation of Tikkun Olam-to help repair the world; the concepts of Klal Yisrael and Ahavat Yisrael--Jewish peoplehood and the love of that people, which has sustained us to reach this cherished day.
AM YISRAEL CHAI!
Signed this 19th day of November, the 30th of Cheshvan in Jerusalem, the Eternal Capital of Israel and the Jewish People."
I am going to leave copies of this Covenant with Rabbi Block, and I hope that when Shabbat has concluded you will join with me, and all of us who have already done so, in signing this wonderful document with the realization that the eternity of the Jewish people is within everyone of us.
Thank You for listening.
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