On Friday night, I decided to give a High Holy Day length sermon about Israel and what is going on on our college campuses. I wanted to both give some context to what we are seeing, to tell a bit of my own story with progressive causes and to remind college kids to be proud of their Jewish identity and of their support for the Jewish state. We’re working on putting together some video highlights from the sermon but enough people have asked me to post it that I thought I should.
See below:
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Israel, our Campuses and More
After graduating from college, I made the decision to work in Washington D.C. for a small non-profit organization in the progressive world. It was an exciting time to be in DC where I had the opportunity to meet so many incredible advocates for social justice including Rabbi David Saperstein, who became my mentor and who introduced me to my wife Shara.
In that year, I became an activist for progressive causes – I learned so much about the important ways in which government makes a difference in people’s lives and about the structural impediments for so many in our world.
But on one occasion during that year, I saw something in the streets of DC that was deeply disturbing.
It was a Friday morning. As I was walking to my office on 19th street, I saw crowds of people gathering in Dupont Circle. I saw strange flags that I’d never seen before and banners with the names of labor unions including the AFL-CIO and SEIU – and then I started to hear the chanting –
“Judaism yes, Zionism no! Judaism yes, Zionism no!”
I was shocked. Here were progressive and liberal groups and organizations – many of whom I had worked with and supported– here they were in the middle of Washington D.C. protesting against the very existence of Israel – declaring that Judaism was fine, but Israel –the Jewish state – and the yearning for that Jewish state, well that was immoral and unjust.
It turns out that this rally that I witnessed over twenty-five years ago in our nation’s capital was the launch of a national anti-Zionist movement – one that that we are now seeing erupt all over our nation’s college campuses.
It is an anti-Israel movement that perceives itself to be a call for justice – it perceives itself to be liberal and progressive and anti-racist—it perceives itself to be about empowerment and inclusion.
But this movement is based on a history of manipulation and coercion – its roots are from authoritarian regimes that have sought to delegitimize the Jewish state.
The framing of anti-Israel rhetoric through the lens of social justice has its roots in the Cold War when the Soviet Union and the United States sought to increase their sphere of influence in the middle east. In the sixties and seventies, the Soviets increasingly sought to gain the support of Arab nation by isolating Israel.
In 1975, the Soviet Union supported a UN resolution equating Zionism with racism – making the perverted argument that the Jewish dream of having a nation of our own, the dream of having a place where we could be safe and secure, a dream that other peoples have had realized time and again, that Zionism was somehow bigoted and xenophobic. The resolution passed in 1975 and although it was finally rescinded in 1991, it presented a case to be made that Israel was illegitimate and oppressive.
It was in 1997, six years after the Zionism is Racism resolution was rescinded, that the United Nations formed the World Conference on Racism, which was to be held in Durban, South Africa in 2001. The aim of the Durban conference was to create a comprehensive framework for addressing racism, racial discrimination and related intolerance.
The Jewish delegation that attended the 2001 conference was initially excited about what they hoped would be a meaningful opportunity to address racism throughout the world. Although they were somewhat wary of a growing anti-Israel sentiment, they felt that there were enough other issues that they would be okay.
What these Jewish organizations found in Durban was anything but okay.
At Durban, Israel became a pariah state – a state that was responsible for apartheid and genocide. At Durban, hate literature was distributed that included caricatures of Jews with hooked noses, Palestinian blood on hands, surrounded by money, and Israelis wearing Nazi emblems.
It was at Durban where Israel was defined by the global left as being an oppressor, a tyrant, a white colonial power whose only interest was its own territorial expansion. It was at Durban where the cause of human rights became centered around Israel as an abuser – it was at Durban where peace between Israel and the Palestinians was rejected in favor of arguing against Israel’s very legitimacy.
At Durban, the conflict was no longer about peace – the new conversation about Israel was the destruction of Israel as a nation-state.
After Durban, everything in the United States started to change. In 2002, Students for Justice in Palestine was founded and in 2005, the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement was founded. In those same years, the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace which had been founded in the nineties, began to gain adherents.
The message of these groups was the same neo-liberal message formulated by the Soviets in 1975, the same message codified at Durban – Israel was a colonial power full of white foreigners who have no right to be in Palestine. Israel was an oppressor, a persecutor – a human rights abuser who has no legitimacy – forget the fact that Israel is the only democracy in the middle east, forget the fact that Israel grants more rights to its minorities than any nation in its region and beyond, after Durban, Israel was now to be defined as an anti-liberal white colonial bully.
It was at this point that the anti-Israel rhetoric infected progressive movements and causes. In 2014, after Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, the Black Lives Movement was founded. Two years later, in 2016, the Movement for Black Lives Matter issued a charter making ugly accusations against Israel and suddenly creating an anti-Israel plank in the civil rights community. Jews who were allies with BLM and who cared deeply about fighting against police brutality suddenly found themselves left out of the movement.
The anti-Israel plank was expanded from the realm of racial justice to the fight for gender equity and equality. In 2017, the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated, millions of women, including my wife Shara and so many other members of this congregation, marched in NY and Washington DC to make it clear that women’s rights were not to be trampled. It was the largest single day protest in our nation’s history.
But then, one of the group’s leaders, Tamika Mallory, began speaking out in horrific ways about Israel and Jews and allied herself with the antisemite Louis Farrakhan. One of the other movement’s leaders, Linda Sarsour, began to use her role in the movement to connect women’s issues to the plight of Palestinians – glorifying female terrorists, calling them resistance fighters, attacking Israel and making Israel the demon against women’s rights.
As Jews, we care deeply about progressive causes—the fight against racism and gender inequality, the fight against homophobia, the fight against sexual abuse, the fight for reproductive freedom – these are causes that we are passionate about, causes that we have long joined coalitions to work on…but suddenly, suddenly, we have found ourselves shut out of these coalitions, and worse, these coalitions have now identified Israel and the Jewish support for Israel as their primary enemy.
As all of this has taken place, our college campuses—which have long been historic homes for causes of justice—our college campuses have been infected with some of the most fervent anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and yes, antisemitic rhetoric.
And it is not simply students—but professors as well—at Columbia University, 100 professors recently signed a letter that identified October 7th as a legitimate military expression of resistance.
I walked through Kibbutz K’far Azza—I saw with my eyes the indiscriminate murder of kids, the burning of people in their homes, I saw with my own eyes the terror—October 7th was not some random event in the larger context of war. October 7th is not explained by Israeli aggression or Israeli oppression. October 7th was evil incarnate – it was pure evil.
And yet, on college campuses today, students are yelling for 10,000 more October 7ths to happen.
I have a son who is heading off to college next year. He is going to a school with a small number of Jewish students – and I must tell you – while I was nervous about that before – today, I find myself grateful. The schools where anti-Israel and anti-Semitic events are taking place are the schools with large Jewish populations – they are the schools where Jews are easily identified – is it any wonder why?
I want to be clear this evening – Israel is not a perfect nation – it’s current government is one that I have personally critiqued – it is a far-right wing extremist government that has handled the war in Gaza poorly – Netanyahu must do more to develop a day-after plan – he must do more to create alliances with moderate Arab states – Israel must do more to deal with Palestinian suffering and come to terms with what it means to be both Jewish AND democratic. I’m not alone in this critique. Turn on Israeli television and you will see these same critiques and these same arguments. Israel should be critiqued—It must me critiqued.
But there is a difference between critiquing AND calling for Israel’s destruction, there is a difference between asking Israel to do better and asking Israel to cease to exist.
That is the call from these protests—that is the call from Students for Justice in Palestine, that is the call from Jewish Voice for Peace, that is the call from BDS—and you cannot tell us otherwise – the protestors cannot tell us that they are advocating for peace and a two-state solution and a way for Israel and Palestine to co-exist.
The calls from these protests are clear – there is no legitimacy for Israel – there is no future for a Jewish state in the middle east. In their words—”from the river to the sea”, in their words, the entirety of the land must be Palestine.
Haviv Rettig Gur is an Israeli commentator and political thinker that I have been listening to for the past six months. He has argued that when it comes to the stories we tell, we have a right to tell our own. I have a right to tell my story—to tell my own narrative—but I do not have a right to tell yours. I do not have a right to tell another people’s story. I need instead, to listen to that story, to truly hear it and to understand it, and when I don’t understand it, I need to listen better.
Today, there is an unwillingness for so many to understand our story – we are not a white colonial power that came from Europe to take over an indigenous population’s land.
We are refugees—who have suffered antisemitism for centuries, who were nearly wiped out in Eastern Europe, and who came back to our historic homeland as a means of survival. We came to that land at a time in which it was transforming – a time in which an empire was crumbling and populations were shifting – we came not only from Europe but from the middle east as well, from places where we were exiled and forced out—Zionism was never racist—it was never directly about tranferring another people or moving another people.
Zionism was a dream for a people who had no place to go, it was a dream to return to their own homeland, from which they were exiled time and time again. Zionism never sought the eradication of another people – it sought the return to a homeland for a people who were being annihilated, hated and oppressed time and time again.
Importantly, there was another people in that land – and it is a people with their own story – a story that many Israelis have actually heard and listened to – it is the Israeli hearing of the Palestinian story that produced the peace movement, that led Yitzhak Rabin to shake hands with Yassir Arafat, that led so many Israelis to support Oslo and Camp David, it was listening to the Palestinian story that produced the new Israeli historians such as Benny Morris and Tom Segev, historians who sought to help Israelis understand the pain of another people. It was listening to another people’s story, not trying to tell that people’s story that allowed so many Israelis to work towards a day when two people can live together.
There is not listening to our story taking place on college campuses today – the story that these protests are telling about Jews is wrong – the story that they are telling about Israel is wrong.
As Haviv Rettig Gur says — I have a right to tell my story. I do not have a right to tell yours You have a right to tell your story, but you do not, you do not, have the right to tell mine.
When I came to Washington DC as a college graduate twenty-five years ago, I was so excited about the future and about the role I could play in changing the world. That rally that I saw in Dupont Circle was but one blip in an otherwise exciting and inclusive time; where I felt that my Judaism was the very center of my connection to progressive causes and to social justice – to everything that kids on college campuses seem to care about
Today, as I think about my own sons and their involvement with these same causes, about their place on college campuses, I am afraid.
This is scary time to be Jewish – a frightening time to be supportive of Israel – it is a time we could not imagine just months ago…
And yet, we know that coming together in places like this, in supporting our synagogues and our Jewish institutions—if there was ever a time to make sure you belong to and support a synagogue, it is now.
Today, I wrote a letter to our students on college campuses in which I let them know that I am here in any way—they can call me, text me, and reach out—and I reminded them that their support for Israel and their pride in being Jewish is just—that they should take great pride in what is means to be a Jew—
To be a Jew means that you care about this world, that you care about injustice and you care about freedom and you care about disenfranchised – to be Jewish means that you recognize the necessity of fighting for a better world –
The truth is – Israel has always yearned to be at the very center of this fight—Israel yearns to be a light unto the nations, in a time when nations find themselves in much darkness. Israel is the great inheritor of the prophetic tradition, which calls out inequality and oppression
In my letter to our students, I told them to be proud to be a Jew, proud to have a Jewish state –
May Israel find peace, security and support in a world that needs her more than ever.
Shabbat Shalom
