On the Power of Self-Evident Truths
The Educational Bookstore in East Jerusalem was packed this week in response to a police raid. Photo by Oren Ziv
Dear friends,
Yesterday a few people saw my name in the NY Times in print so tiny that the page could contain all 350 rabbis who signed an add titled “Jews say no to ethnic cleansing.” When they reached out to congratulate or challenge me on it all I could do in reply was to quip: “I really had to think hard on whether I support ethnic cleansing or not.” Any denials of that phrase have been undone by the explicit dream of our president. So, no matter what you think about the practicality, political calculations, or even the ethics of this "plan," supporting it means you're willing to entertain what is known as ethnic cleansing as an option. Which I am not.
Ethical decisions on the political front have, in a way become much easier of late. I don’t feel the weight of complexity like I did a year ago. Here’s another simple one: Earlier this week the Israeli police raided two branches of a world-famous Palestinian bookstore in East Jerusalem, arrested the owner and his nephew, and seized a selection of books — including a children’s coloring book and a book by Chomsky. Some of those books, believe it or not included the word Palestine in the title(!), much like a few of the books in the bookstore in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. Still, somehow, I hesitate to support arresting the owners of Lofty Pigeon Books on Church Avenue, and confiscating those books.
On this side of the world, last weekend I heard from a worker fixing a leak in my bathroom that “everyone got deportation orders.” This is the general state of affairs in our city. Though this may be troubling on the practical front, since the city will grind to a halt without the immigrants who keep it running, there’s a more important aspect to it: Jewishly speaking, like both examples above, there is absolutely no question where to stand on this issue.
These are three issues that for Jews are literally no brainers, because they are baked into our bodies through trauma and collective and family memory. We viscerally oppose ethnic cleansing because we were “cleaned out” of Israel several times in our history as an attempt at cultural genocide, and then forcibly removed from most places we lived in. We oppose confiscating books because the books of the people of the book have been burned and confiscated countless times. And we oppose deporting refugees and other poor people desperately seeking survival and better life because that is the story of every Jew.
It feels silly writing down these self-evident truths. It’s like saying that a tree opposes being transferred to a dark basement, or that an apple is against a ban on watering fruit trees. The first of the Ten Commandments, which we read this Shabbat doesn’t just say “I am YHVH your God,” but continues “who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.” The memory of our oppressions is our most primal animator. This is both our beauty and our tragedy.
We may or may not like that fact. We may hate ourselves for being so deeply attached to our history. We may want to run away from ourselves, like Jonah running away from God. But we will fail. We are Jews like trees are trees, and that means that just like we breathe air, we oppose certain political actions. The current alien behaviors of large parts of our people will be corrected in time. בזאת אני בוטח, as the Psalmist sang, “in that much I have full trust.” Our work is to be who we are, and speak the obvious when our lips are so moved to do.
One way to do that today is to order a book from The Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha