It is the end of one year, and the beginning of the next. This day marks, of course, the end of 5784 by the Hebrew calendar, and the beginning of 5785. We celebrate with apples and honey, honey cake,and prayers to express our hope that the next year will be sweet. But this Rosh Hashanah also marks the end of a year of brutality and death in Gaza and looks forward, with the State of Israel’s escalation of its war into Lebanon, to twelve more months of bitterness.

How, I wondered, as I made my way to Rosh Hashanah services, to hear the sounding of the shofar and welcome the new year with my landsmanner, my kin, could I face the coming twelve months with anything resembling hope.

The rabbi’s Dvar Torah (her discussion of the weekly Parsha, or Torah portion) focused on the reading for Rosh Hashanah. In it (Genesis 21:1-34), Abraham, at Sarah’s urging, expels his son Ismail and his mother Hagar into the desert to face an uncertain future. This is the traditional, and mythic rupture between the People of Israel (Am Yisroel) and the Arab people who would, many, many years later, hear the words of their Prophet Muhammad.

One does not have to take the story literally to understand its importance in how we have narrated the relationship – both interconnected and difficult – between our two peoples over the millennia. Judaism and Islam are Abrahamic traditions, and our communities have always been kin (literally descended from kinsmen, according to the legend). This is a matter of fundamental agreement, and we only really differ in the details like which son was bound for sacrifice at Mount Moriah and whether Abraham actually cast out Ismail and Hagar or really escorted them to what would become the site of Mecca and maintained an ongoing paternal relationship.[i]

It makes sense; the descendants of Ismail, whom God promises will be the father of “a great nation” (Genesis 21:18, also Genesis 17:20), and neighboring cultures, like the Midianites (who are also, according to the Torah, descended from Abraham, through Ketubah), were a constant presence in Israelite life in the bronze age and iron age. It probably is fair to say that our relations with each other were not always friendly, but that is characteristic, after all of kin.

Moreover, the cultures of the ancient Levant, based on pastoralism and trade, seem to have had a high degree of mobility and interconnectivity. That memory is preserved in the Torah itself where, for example, Abraham originates in Ur, at the mouth of the Euphrates in modern Iraq and maintains family connections there even after he travels to Canaan. Both his son Yitzhak and his grandson Yakov find wives in the camps of their kinsmen (Bethuel and Laban) in Padan Aram in northern Mesopotamia, now Syria. And the Prophet Moses sojourns in Midian during his exile from Egypt and marries Zipporah, the Midianite daughter of Jethro.

These Biblical legends document one of the realities of life in the ancient Levant: the ongoing, likely continuous interactions and cultural borrowings between the region’s cultures. Indeed, there is even a strong consensus that even the name of the Israelite God, Yahweh, was originally the name of an Edomite sky deity.[ii]

Jewish tradition holds that Ismail was the founder of a great nation of twelve tribes, equal to the nation of Israel, which also consisted of twelve tribes: “And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee; behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation.” (Genesis 17:20) God makes an explicit Covenant with the descendants of Yitzhak (Genesis 17:21), but that does not, of course, preclude the possibility that he could also make a separate deal with the descendants of Ismail. Indeed, God’s original Covenant is with Abraham and his descendants even before the births of either Ismail or Yitzhak, so they are also both inheritors of with Covenants of their own.[iii]

They are brothers and, despite Sarah’s enmity and Abraham’s acquiescence to her demands, they do not seem to have a particularly adversarial relationship. Far from it, in fact. Moreover, the rabbi tied her Dvar Torah together with a reference to Chapter 25 of the book of Genesis, which narrates the death of the Patriarch of the Israelites and Ismailites:

And Abraham expired, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people. And Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre; the field which Abraham purchased of the children of Heth; there was Abraham buried, and Sarah his wife. (Genesis 25: 8-10)

In my readings of the Torah in all the years of my life, the real impact of these verses never really hit me, but on Rosh Hashana the rabbi made a startling observation. While they might have been separated for decades, Yitzhak, the patriarch of the Jews, and Ismail, the patriarch of the Arabs, came together as a family to perform one of the most sacred of all rituals in both Judaism and Islam – the burial of their father. Whatever else happened along the way, in that moment they were reconciled.

The Torah is not a history textbook, of course. All but the most fundamentalist Jews know that it is our ancestral literature, reflecting the times in which it was written (according to the Orthodox Union) and the audience for whom it was written. The Torah, and the Tanakh broadly, contains 613 mitzvahs, but many of these cannot even be observed (where, for example, would I find dolphin to build a Mishkan?), and it is not meant to a step-by-step guide to being a Jew. The stories of incest, murder, cheating, adultery, genocide, and general bad behavior are not meant to be models for behavior, no matter what some Evangelical Christians and militant Zionists might want to believe. They are the stories of our distant ancestors.

But the Tanakh does contain stories that highlight how deeply fallible people can still be capable of redemption. David murdered Uriah the Hittite so he could sleep with Batsheva, but he is also “the beloved of God” who sang the Psalms; Moses was disobedient at Meribah and was punished by not being allowed to enter the Promised Land, yet he remained God’s Prophet and the deliverer of the People of Israel.

The rabbi’s Dvar Torah suggested that the story of Yitzhak and Ismail meeting to perform a solemn duty at the Cave of Machpelah (in what is today the West Bank), is really about how brothers, separated for years, can be reconciled. The Torah does not tell us the means, but it does suggest, in this mythical example, that it is possible. Or, at least, that it should be possible.

That, perhaps, that is a model that we should emulate and, in doing so, redeem ourselves and secure a new year without bitterness.

Apples and honey.

3 October 2024

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Antisemitism is real, and overt manifestations of it have intensified over the last year. But it is an egregious mistake to believe that antisemitism is a product of anti-Israel politics. It should go without saying that criticism of the State of Israel is not, in and of itself, antisemitic unless you believe that the State of Israel and the Jewish people are one and the same. This premise, in fact, could be antisemitic.

Antisemitism has a very long history, and it was not invented by critics of the State of Israel. It is deeply embedded in Euro-American culture and in the history of Christianity (which, after all, forms the foundation of Euro-American culture). It is pervasive in our culture and has been for millennia. As a deeply rooted cultural narrative, it can appear on the left as well as the right, in the rhetoric of critics of the State of Israel as well as its supporters. Donald Trump can be the best-possible supporter of Israeli interests while preemptively blaming “the Jews” for his election defeat.

Indeed, the intensification of antisemitism in the last year is part of a trend that has been gathering steam for many years now. It behooves us to remember that, even before the War on Gaza, antisemitic terrorists (inspired by President Trump) were murdering Jews in Pittsburgh, Poway, and elsewhere, redhat demagogues were appropriating the Yellow Star in their opposition to mask mandates, and that casual antisemitism which reinforces our exclusion from “secular” cultural citizenship in myriad microaggressions was utterly pervasive. I remember armed security guards and metal detectors as High Holiday services long before the War on Gaza.

None of this started on 7 October 2023.

Make no mistake; one can be an antisemite and a critic of the State of Israel because antisemitism is such an unacknowledged and uninterrogated fixture in our culture, but it does not follow that one must be an antisemite to be a critic of the State of Israel, no matter what the Zionists say. Correlation is not causation, and it is worth noting that a good many people in the pro-Palestinian movement are Jews who are committed to their culture, community, and traditions. Some are even Israelis.

So don’t let the accusations of antisemitism leveled by the State of Israel and its proxies stop you from advocating for peace, human rights, and the freedom and autonomy of the Palestinian people. At the same time, don’t let your advocacy of Palestine blind you to the fact that antisemitism is real, pernicious, and pervasive.

4 October 2024

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One of the many connections between toxic masculinity and tribal nationalism is this: In either case, one does not have to do anything to belong to the gens except to be born. There are so obligations, in masculinist thinking, associated with being male or being a member of a national tribe. Membership is conferred by birth – solely by genealogy and/or genetics. One cannot join either community by embracing certain values, ideas, beliefs, or taking on obligations, once can only be born into it. And, as a coherent volk (menfolk or folk community) defined solely by biology, life is a zero-sum game against any other competing volk.

Thus, the biological boundaries that define men, according to toxic masculinity, must be defended against any force that might subvert them – gender critiques, transgender people, gender reassignment therapies. Similarly, the boundaries of the tribal volksgemeinschaft must be defended by prohibiting exogamy (often called miscegenation) and establishing geographical, geopolitical, and biological dominance over the immediate others.

To imagine gender or community belonging discursively would be to both make the boundaries permeable and subject to critique and transformation and thus also to demand obligations, responsibilities, and agency. The question would not be “are you a man?” or “are you an American?” or “are you a Jew?” But “how are you a man?” “How are you an American?” “How are you a Jew?” And those are questions, in all their breadth, richness, and complexity, that neither toxic masculinists nor tribal nationalists or willing to contemplate. It would demand actual work.

 Last winter, I heard a conversation between two sports fans on the train platform. One was wearing a New York Jets cap, and the other was wearing a New Jersey Devils toque (a stocking cap). Their conversation was very animated and all about the various strategic decisions of the teams they followed. The Jets fan asked the Devils fan about a recent trade. The Devils fan replied “well, it was a tough decision, but we think this will be better for the team in the long run.” To be clear: he was speaking as if he was party to the decision just because he was a fan and wore a toque, and his interlocutor accepted it in the same spirit.

This is tribal nationalism. You don’t actually have to do anything to be a member of the volk; you just have to wear the cap and you can claim all of its achievements and history as your own.

5 October 2024

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[i] I prefer the Muslim version; Abraham doesn’t come off as so much of an asshole.

[ii] According to the Torah, the Edomites themselves are descendants of Abraham, through Esau, Yitzhak’s eldest son, whom he passed over in favor or Yakov. The Tanakh does seem to be replete with stories of elder sons getting screwed by their fathers.

[iii] As far as I know, the Quran doesn’t mention a Covenant with Ismail, since the important thing is God’s revelation to Muhammad. Having said that, according to Muslim tradition, the Prophet was a direct descendant of Ismail and Abraham, and thus an inheritor of the Covenant.