It is hard not to have had mixed emotions when thinking about Israel this week. She turned 64 and it felt very good to get together with others who wanted to celebrate that fact in a public manner. On the other hand, it was difficult not to feel troubled about the current state of anti-Israel and anti- Semitic rhetoric that is being touted by radical Islamists all around the globe. In Israel the Yom HaAtzmaut celebration was preceded by Yom HaZikaron, a day of remembrance. Israel came to a grinding halt on the streets and in places of business and pleasure on that day as a siren wailed...reminding its citizens that 29,993 fellow Jews had lost their lives in order to try to secure the existence of their country.
Israelis understand that their nation is at a crossroads. They recognize that the same type of hatred for Jews is starting to coalesce in Iran and across the region today as it did during the 1930's when Hitler developed his culture of hatred into a killing machine. If you take a look at the propaganda being used by radicalized groups, it looks a lot like the depictions created in Nazis Germany. Israelis do not take threats about annihilation lightly. Many fear that the appearance of the "west" talking to Iran in order to avert the development of a nuclear weapon will end up being too little too late. Israelis who have a policy of protecting the holy places of all religions and of allowing freedom of religion within their borders, worry about the promulgation of radical islamist culture in their neighborhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is now taking hold in countries that overturned dictators during the Arab Spring uprisings. There are rumblings in Egypt about not maintaining the peace agreement that has existed for decades and moving military troops into Sinai. Yet as all of this is happening, Egyptian officials arrived in Warsaw this week as part of an attempt to calm public opinion in the West concerning Egypt's rising political forces, and explain the tenets of the various movements, "based on an aspiration to working, mutual relationships with all the world's nations."
As Jews living in Lincoln, Nebraska, we can choose to remain silent about our worries about Israel's continued existence or even pretend that there is nothing to worry about, but when the world doesn't stand up to the radical Islamists who preach the destruction of Israel and the vilification of the Jews, and when 15-25% of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims have become radicalized, I think such a choice would be wrong. We need to educate ourselves and speak out to our political representatives. When we vote, we need to use that as a platform for supporting our fellow Jews worldwide. We need to insure that our Jewish community here in America continues to support the continued existence of the State of Israel and that we are able to express why Israel matters to us and to the rest of the world.
My brother who made aliyah over 35 years ago, said it quite succinctly in a letter that he wrote me this week. "During the next four years Israel's future will be laid on the line. Jews will either continue to have a state of their own, one small safe haven in the entire world, or in many parts of the world they will go back to cowering and praying that the antisemitism will pass over their homes.
In the 1930's people predicted a disaster to Jews in Europe. A disaster in Israel is predictable now. ...You have a responsibility to history to act."
Today's Torah portion talks about a physical skin affliction that affected individuals who had a sickness in their souls that caused them to spread maliciousness through the use of words. Today we are seeing a rise in the use of malicious words against Israel and Jews and yes, even America by those who know that the values of freedom, justice, and equality are not aligned with their own agendas. Unlike those who suffered from tzaraat in the past, we have no outright physical indicators that show us what is going on inside of them. We can only listen to their words...and we should not take those words lightly. We already know what can happen when words of hate become actions of hate. Although tzaraat does not appear to manifest itself today in the way it did during the time of our ancestors, the underlying causes of that disease have not gone away.
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