Sermon for Yitro

Written by Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah Monday, 20 February 2006

No Place Like Home:
Exploring the Gulf Between Israelis and Palestinians

On Tuesday, February 14th, Members of Parliament voted for a total ban on smoking in public places by a majority of 200: 384 for the ban; 184 against: A historic decision. As I was rejoicing in this new development, a vision of die-hard smoking MPs huddling in groups outside the Palace of Westminster floated into my mind – reminding me of the small cluster of rabbis and rabbinic students that congregates to smoke outside the side door at the Leo Baeck College. It is hard to be on the outside – in other contexts, I know the feeling very well – but how wonderful to realise that from the summer of 2007, all those who do not want to breathe in toxic smoke as they enjoy a cup of coffee or a glass of beer, will be able to do so in a smoke-free environment.

As you’ll be aware the last minute lobbying prior to the vote revolved around the proposal to exempt private members clubs. I thought it was faintly embarrassing that the Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, was supporting this amendment – although she voted with the majority in the end. Of course, she has a duty to represent the Working Men’s Clubs in her constituency – but her first responsibility was to do what she could to ensure that the health of all those who work in these establishments is no longer put at risk.

I wanted to comment on this historic moment – but, believe it or not, this is not going to be a pious sermon from a non-smoker – whom I might add, has never smoked a cigarette of any kind in her entire life! But there is a sub-text that I think is very important and highly relevant to all of us – smokers and non-smokers alike. Underlying the discussion of whether or not people should be allowed to smoke in ‘public’, there is an assumption that it is not legitimate to extend the anti-smoking ban to the genuinely private sphere – that is, to people’s homes. So, while it is now no longer considered permissible for parents to hit their children – whether in public or in private – It is okay to subject them to cigarette smoke, and the dangers of passive smoking at home.

The new anti-smoking legislation made me think about this spilt between ‘public’ and ‘private’, and linked in with some other thoughts that had been going round my head about the meaning of home after seeing the new Steven Spielberg film, Munich, the evening before during my day off. Slated in the Jewish press, and with very mixed reviews elsewhere, I just had to see Munich for myself – and anyway, I’m a fan of Steven Spielberg: To my mind, an individual who can make ET and Schindler’s List and be responsible for gathering together the most significant archive to date of Shoah testimonies is quite an exceptional person – and that was reason enough for me to want to view his latest production.

As you may be aware, Munich is based on a novel called Vengeance that fictionalises the Mossad operation to assassinate the Black September terrorists responsible for killing the Israeli team of eleven athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. I’m not going to get into the main issue taken up by the Jewish press, about the veracity of the portrayal of the top-secret mission. Who knows what actually happened? The five men involved – three of whom died in action – and Mossad, presumably. On the question of whether or not the film was even-handed in its treatment of the Israeli and Palestinian ‘sides’ – I think it was – and indeed, the presentation of the Israeli agents was not only sympathetic, but also portrayed the diversity and complexity of Israeli opinion, in quite a sophisticated manner. To give you an example: After the first successful assassination, the agents gather in a street bar for a celebratory drink – but then argue about whether it is right to celebrate, and even equivocate over the distinction between ‘celebration’ and ‘rejoicing’ as one of their number quotes the midrash about God admonishing the angels, who rejoiced when Pharaoh’s chariots were drowned in the Sea of Reeds following the Exodus from Egypt (Bavli: M’gillah 10b)

Munich is an action thriller with a difference – especially for a Jewish audience. But what interested me most about Munich was something else. A few critics have noted that throughout the film there is a recurring motif: Home. At first glance, the references to the significance of home to both Israelis and Palestinians – and, in particular, as the film presents the theme, to Israelis – might seem to add a gloss of Hollywood sentimentality. On one level, it does; on another level, however, the refrain exposes the real tragedy at the heart of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians – at least from the perspective of the Israelis. In one scene, the principal Jewish protagonist among the Mossad agents, in the guise of being a German internationalist revolutionary, talks with a Palestinian on a stairwell in a terrorist safe-house in Athens. Maintaining his disguise, during their conversation, the Israeli says in uncomprehending tones, something, like – ‘but how can those old olive trees in that dusty, bit of ground mean so much to you?’ To which, the Palestinian responds, saying something like – ‘that’s what you internationalist revolutionaries, who’ve got a home to go to, don’t understand; we want to live in our own home.’

On the surface: an exchange between an internationalist and a nationalist. But, of course, it isn’t: it takes place between two ‘representatives’ of two peoples for whom, in both cases, home is so important. But here’s the tragedy: The Israeli wasn’t putting on an ‘internationalist’ posture; he really, did not understand, as an Israeli, why ‘those old olive trees in that dusty bit of ground’ meant so much to the Palestinian. How could he understand? Unlike the Palestinians, most Israelis don’t even have one olive tree in one patch of ground they can point to and say, ‘I came from that place’. When Israelis and Palestinians talk about ‘home’, they are speaking about very different things: While the Palestinian can say, ‘before the Zionists came, we lived here’, and indicate a spot on the map, and recall a village, and a house and an olive tree that belonged to his or her grandparents or great-grandparents, most Israelis do not have a personal, familial connection to a particular place. So, what most Israelis have to say is more nebulous: ‘My ancestors came from here, we were persecuted and expelled; homeless, we have journeyed from place to place; vulnerable and marginal, we’ve been subjected to further persecution, again and again; and then those that hate us tried to wipe us out completely; we want to return; we want a refuge, a safe home of our own.’

Both Israelis and Palestinians want their own home – and have a right to their own home – but their existential connection to the land under dispute is radically different, and, as a consequence of this, the existential predicament of the two peoples is almost completely asymmetrical. Last week’s Torah portion, the parashah, B’shallach, related the Exodus from Egypt, the passage on dry land through the Sea of Reeds, and the beginnings of the journey in the wilderness (Exodus 13:17 – 17:16). This week’s parashah, Yitro, continues the narrative, describing how at the beginning of the third month, that’s after a journey of just over six weeks, the rabble of ex-slaves reaches Mount Sinai. The land they’re heading for is still a long way off – and little do the refugees know at this point, that because they are so ill-equipped to enter the land and create a new society, they are going to end up wandering around in the desert for forty years.

The rest of the Torah is taken up with this narrative, which provides the frame for all the laws and statutes, rules and regulations. On other occasions, I’ve summarised the long journey of our people that did not end, as expected, after forty years in the wilderness, but rather continued, to quote Leo Baeck in another context, ‘from Egypt until now’ (in This People Israel). Of course, we inhabited the land for centuries from around 1250 BCE until the fifth century CE – and even after the completion of the Jerusalem version of the Talmud in the 400s, remnant communities remained. But the reality is that since the Assyrian conquest of the ten Northern tribes in 722 BCE, most of the time, the land we call ‘home’ was colonised by foreign powers – and that reality continued right up to the establishment of the State of Israel on May 15th 1948 – the first sovereign Jewish nation since Hasmonean Judea, which lasted for just 75 years, from 140 to 65 BCE.

Perhaps, today’s Palestinians are the descendants of the Jews who never left the land – a romantic notion that may also be based in fact. But even if this is true, and the Palestinians were, originally, Jews, they are not Jews like us. Jews like us – including at least 99% of Israeli Jews – are Jews who, if they aren’t immigrants themselves, or the children and grandchildren of immigrants, are the descendants of the Jews who went into exile. Of course, large numbers of Jews like us – the exiles – actually settled down and lived in particular places for long periods of time – in Poland, for example. But those long-settled Jews, too, remained essentially strangers, living as more or less vulnerable minorities in host societies ruled by other peoples. And even when we explore our ‘roots’, and go back to Europe, for example, back to where our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents ostensibly ‘came from’, we discover that in most cases, before they were there, they were somewhere else. That’s the Jewish story ‘from Egypt until now’.

So, although the Jewish people has finally come home, inhabiting our new/old home has been – and continues to be – very challenging: The ancient sites and archaeological artefacts recalling our ancestral connection aside, we’ve had to start from scratch, and build and plant, and make it our home. It will take years, certainly many decades more, before Israelis will feel truly rooted in the land in the way that Palestinians, like their olive trees, feel rooted in the land. In the meantime, as the conflict continues between the two peoples, despite the growing co-operation between those Israelis and Palestinians who are working together to achieve a just peace, the existential gulf in understanding and experience remains: Palestinians want to return to the houses and the olive trees their families owned; after centuries of homelessness, Jews in Israel want to feel at home at last. Let us pray that both peoples can find ways of bridging the gulf between them, acknowledging each other’s experience, and sharing the land that belongs to them both. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah, Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue, 18th February 2006/20th Sh’vat 5766