WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Two astonishing Israel-related developments took place this past week, which a normal writer of weekly emails on Israel would write about.
[1] A week ago Saturday night, Jordan joined with the US and Israel in knocking down an orgy of aimed-at-Israel Iranian missiles and drones, and only moderately hated itself in the morning.
[2] Two-States-championing President Biden vetoed a venomous UNSC resolution recognizing a Pay-For-Slay-and-all (Genocide, Poison Ivy League scholars?) western Palestine Arab State. I’d have sooner expected Jordan to join the US and Israel in knocking down Iranian drones..
But over these past 24 years, none of You-Who-Put-Up-With-Me-Weekly has accused me of being normal.
Musing on Moses’ Last Thoughts
Of all the biblical images we learn as a child, the one that has come back to haunt me in my old age is that of the prophet Moses on the day of his death, standing on a mountain in Moab gazing at the Promised Land afar off. I speculate that the future that Moses was gazing toward, seeking to glimpse, was not that of the land itself but of its people. Would they pass on, generation to generation, living in that land, what had been imparted to them – the Law, Peoplehood – before they’d arrived there from the desert?
The older we get, the more we want to emulate Moses, to stand, as it were, on a mountain, seeking a glimpse of our people’s continuity between generations. The last image I have of my father, more than a half-century ago, he silently sat on a stool for an hour alone at my month-old son Jonathan’s crib. I understand now, half a century later, he hadn’t sat on a stool but stood on a mountain.
There’s a reason not in the Haggadah why tomorrow night is different from all other Jewish observances. In this instance it’s not us upon whom the observance – compare fasting on Yom Kippur, building the sukkah, lighting the Hanukkah candles – is intended to operate, to instill an impression. On this night we’re the messenger, not the recipient. We’re to tell our next generation on that day saying ….
I wonder what would have disturbed Moses, gazing from afar at the Promised Land from his mountain, most deeply, had he been able to see across three millennia and half the span of the globe to America, about attitudes here and now towards Israel. I don’t think it would have been the howling of “From the River to the Sea ….” of gentile howlers who can name neither of those bodies of water. I think it would have been the attitude of those American Jews who can name not only them but our homeland’s biblical hill country Judea-Samaria heartland, but deliberately delegitimize our Jewish people’s three-millennia claim to it by calling it “West Bank,” calling our people’s presence there “occupation” through “settlements,” and the applying of Israeli law there “annexation” [Encarta Dictionary – “to take over territory and incorporate it into another (emphasis added) political entity – e.g., a country or state”].
A 2024 occurrence of this shameful sedition was ably condemned here this winter. On 2/6/24, the ZOA issued a press release:
“ZOA Condemns URJ Head Rick Jacobs & Other Reform Jewish Leaders’ Statement Demanding a Palestinian State/etc. – Rewards Massacre, Endangers Israel, Defames Israel, Will Lead to More Anti-Israel Terror”
Here are some of the demands in the Reform leaders’ statement (ZOA’s critique lists 13 points and can be viewed at ZOA.org):
*** The Reform leaders condemned Israel’s “ongoing West Bank occupation,” demanded its end and called for “halting the construction of West Bank settlements.”
*** The Reform leaders accused Israel of “denying the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.”
*** The Reform leaders called for establishing a western Palestine “Palestinian state,” even though it will “pose serious short-term security threats to Israel,” but these “will be addressed in any peace accords.”
*** The Reform leaders also demanded “opposing any efforts toward unilateral annexation by Israel of areas of the West Bank.”
Beyond the land of Israel as the Promised Land’s centrality to Jewish peoplehood, I think if Moses could have observed the maltreatment of Jews living in exile in Christian (Pale of Settlement, Ghetto, Holocaust, Inquisition, Pogrom) and Muslim (Dhimmitude) lands throughout these past two millennia, he’d have seen as well a post-biblical Jewish people – Jewish homeland commitment. I put this reality of history this way in #1195 of 12/17/23:
Today’s Israel came into being, not “because of the Holocaust,” but as the land’s next native state after Jewish Judaea through natural fruition into statehood by its people that had never relinquished its homeland claim, including through physical presence. But I doubt there’s a Jewish homeland-supporting Jew in the world who hasn’t since 1948 justly seen today’s Israel, with its Ingathered Exiles, as national embodiment of Never Again.
If ever in our time we needed reminder that what Ben-Gurion in 1948 called the great struggle for fulfillment of the dream of generations for our homeland’s sovereign redemption is still going on in 2024, today’s constant howls of “From the River to the Sea ….” are sufficient to do it.
In a beautifully written, originally in Yiddish, book almost a century ago, The Jewish Festivals: From Their Beginnings To Our Own Day, (quoted in Verlin, Israel 3000 Years: The Jewish People’s 3000 Year Presence in Palestine, pp. 18-20) scholar Hayyim Schauss traced Passover, our people’s oldest observance, back to a later reversed pre-Exodus cause-effect relationship – Moses’ seeking of Pharaoh’s permission for Israelites to go out into the wilderness “that they might observe their feast in honor of God.” Schauss’ account continues that by still to us ancient times Passover became “the festival of the freedom of the Jewish people.” It’s still that today. Enjoy!