(RNS) — Sometimes, I need to remind myself precisely why I love Israel and the Jewish people.
Yes — even me.
Let me offer you two recent stories that explain this deep, passionate love. In both cases, it’s not just who we are. It is about who we care about.
The first story is about Majdal Shams, the Druze village in the north of Israel that was the target of Hezbollah rockets. Twelve children were killed.
A sidebar about the Druze.
They are one of many ethnic groups that comprise the luscious braided challah that is Israel. They speak Arabic. Their esoteric religion contains elements of Islam, Christianity, Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, as well as several other philosophies. Their precise religious practices remain a zealously guarded mystery. It is impossible for an outsider to convert to the Druze religion.
The Druze are intensely loyal to the countries in which they live. That has included Israel, and the Druze have been brave soldiers in the IDF and have contributed to Israeli society on many levels.
Immediately after the savage attack on Majdal Shams happened, a friend texted me: “Do you think that Bibi will respond as quickly as he did after October 7?,” referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
My response to my friend: “Rest assured. Bibi will be right there.”
I was right. Netanyahu, and the rest of the Israeli public, saw this attack for precisely what it was — not an attack on the Jews, but an attack on the Jewish state, which is an ethnically diverse country.
An attack on any square inch of Israeli territory, no matter who lives there, is an attack on the entire country and an attack on all citizens. Hezbollah did not care whom they were attacking; they only cared about what they were attacking, i.e., Israel.
Please note, as well: Hezbollah is not a Palestinian group. Neither are the Houthis. Neither of them care anything about the Palestinians. They are Iranian proxies (as is Hamas), and their only goal is the destruction of Israel.
Not only Israel, but the entire West as well. That is the depth of this struggle. Those protesters in Washington last week who championed Hamas and its struggle, and who hideously defaced monuments, should know, as Netanyahu said in his speech to Congress, that they are the willing dupes of Iran. If that sounds like a throwback to 75-year-old conversations about the former Soviet Union and Stalin, so be it.
Which brings me back to the Druze and their religious philosophy. They have a particular fondness for, and veneration of, the biblical figure Jethro, whom they call Shuaib.
Jethro was the father-in-law of Moses and a Midianite priest. In some rabbinic traditions, the sages imagine that he joined the Jewish people through conversion. In any case, he is my favorite person in the Torah — a thorough mensch who represents a universal ethic of care, compassion and justice.
How fitting that the Torah portion in which the Ten Commandments are revealed bears his name — Yitro.
The precise military aspects of Israel’s response to the attack on Majdal Shams is still emerging. Whatever that turns out to be, one thing is clear: An attack on Israel is an attack on all Israelis.
Jethro/Yitro/Shuaib would have understood. Very well.
The second reason for my ever-renewed pride in Israel is what happened at Sde Teiman, a detention facility in the south. There have been reports of abuse of a Hamas detainee, and IDF soldiers have been arrested, which has led to protests from some far-right politicians.
I applaud the arrests, and I applaud the investigations.
Why? Because Israeli nationalism was never intended to be jingoistic. Quite the contrary. Like the best of all nationalisms, it was intended to contain moral critique within its footprint. That was the Judaism of the prophets, and their rabbinic heirs — and Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and others too many to name. It is called speaking truth to power. It is why the Christian writer Frederick Buechner once quipped: “There is no record of anyone inviting a prophet home to dinner more than once.”
“Ah, there you go again, Jeff, with your typical liberal stuff. Don’t you realize that Israel is fighting a war, and that these kinds of excesses will happen in wartime?”
Got it. I agree with the words of the Bible’s Book of Ecclesiastes — “So don’t overdo goodness (al tehi tzaddik harbeh, “don’t be overly righteous”) and don’t act the wise man to excess, or you may be dumbfounded.” Because, as the author of Ecclesiastes had already told us, “there is a time for war and a time for peace,” and this is a time for war.
But we need to balance that with the words of that notorious leftist, Moses Maimonides. (I am grateful to my friend and teacher, Donniel Hartman, for teaching this lesson when I was at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem recently.)
Here is Maimonides, as he wrote in the Mishneh Torah, Laws Pertaining to Slaves:
It is permissible to have a Canaanite slave perform excruciating labor. Although this is the law, the attribute of piety and the way of wisdom is for a person to be merciful and to pursue justice, not to make his slaves carry a heavy yoke, nor cause them distress. He should allow them to partake of all the food and drink he serves.
Let’s unpack this. Maimonides was writing in the Middle Ages, more than a millennium after Israelites would have had Canaanite slaves. The whole discussion, therefore, was theoretical.
But here is what Maimonides was saying: Yes, it is technically permissible to make a slave perform excruciating labor, but, nevertheless, you shouldn’t, because Jewish piety and wisdom demand that you be merciful and just.
Or, as Yossi Klein Halevi puts it in “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor”:
When my son was about to be drafted into the army I told him: There are times when as a soldier you may have to kill. But you are never permitted, under any circumstances, to humiliate another human being. That is a core Jewish principle.
Sometimes, we Jews and our external critics perceive Jews to be too insular, clannish and tribal. Sometimes, we sense that we can overdose on the first part of the rabbinic adage: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? — pursuing self-interest and self-protection — ignoring the second part: “And if I am only for myself, what am I?”
I have lived my own life as a moral shuttle between those two positions. (My most recent book illustrates that tension.)
So does Israel, and so does the entire Jewish people.
That is why Israel is Yisrael, the ones who struggle with God and with meaning itself.
We would not have it any other way.
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