Reclaiming our honor

This week we began to read the Book of Exodus in the Torah cycle, but the harrowing events of the week keep taking me back to the story of the rape of Dina in the Book of Genesis. Dina, as we know, had her honor sullied by Shechem, son of Hamor. Her brothers, led by Shimon and Levi, took their fearful vengeance by tricking the men of Shechem into circumcising themselves and then, as the men were recovering from the painful surgery, storming the town and slaughtering them. Jacob, upon hearing of the massacre, rails against his sons: "You have made me odious among the inhabitants of the land!" And they respond: "Should our sister be treated like a whore?"

There's an obvious answer to that rhetorical question, and it resembles the answer to the response I hear when questions are raised about the Gaza offensive: "Should we let them shoot rockets at our cities?" No, we could not overlook the rape of our sister; no, we cannot pass over the rocket attacks on our cities. But did that make it right, good or wise to massacre the men of Shechem? And does it make it right, good or wise to bomb Gaza to its foundations?

The raid on Shechem resulted in the destabilization and flight of Jacob's family, turning what was supposed to have been a homecoming into a renewed exile. And now comes an eerie link with this week's reading. Jacob's response, "you have made me odious among the inhabitants of the land," is echoed by the complaint of his descendants, slaves in Egypt, to Moses: "You have made us odious to Pharaoh and his courtiers!"

Coming from slaves, of course, this is an absurd complaint. Odious is exactly what they already were. They had no need to fear becoming odious; Jacob did. In fighting for their sister's honor, Dina's brothers lost their own. It was only to be regained on the long road out of Egypt.

Yes, there was and is a call to reclaim the honor of Sderot and Ashkelon, to repel the violence perpetrated against our cities and our citizens. But by fighting kill with overkill, we lose what we seek to regain.

States are charged with wielding violence to protect their citizens. Their responsibility is to wield minimum violence for maximum effectiveness. In Gaza, I fear, we've done the opposite: maximum violence with minimum effectiveness, leaving our cities still open to violence, our captive Gilad still in enemy hands.

The time has come to regain our lost honor and our hope. But, as the Israelites learned on the way out of Egypt, sometimes there are no shortcuts. If we want to keep moving out of exile rather than back in, we'll need to take not the short road of overkill, but the long road of wisdom.

He Lived

"He lived" -- these are the opening words of this week's Torah portion and the title by which it is known. "Jacob lived for seventeen years in the land of Egypt, and the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were a hundred and forty-seven years. And the days of Israel drew near to death, and he called for his son Joseph ..."

"He lived" -- the expression alerts us that Jacob/Israel was nearing the end of his life, that he was on the cusp, between life and death, soon to pass over. The events of the last week have reminded us constantly how delicate that cusp is, how easily a human being can be swept over from one side, irretrievably, to the other. Indeed, as he contemplates his end at the age of 147, Jacob/Israel recalls the death of Rachel, so unexpected, and she still so young, when they still wanted more children together. In compensation, his first act on his deathbed is to adopt Joseph's two sons, as if they had been born to him by Rachel.

And Jacob/Israel recalls his twenty years as a bereaved father. For all those years of guilt and grief, he knew that his beloved son Joseph had died by violence, and that he, as a father, had failed to protect him.

Joseph, we know, was miraculously "brought back to life" for his father. In the end it was all a big mistake, a big lie; Joseph had been alive all along. In days of grief, we fantasize that our loved one will still walk in the door, laughing, alive. But the fathers and mothers of the young men killed this week know that, for them, there will be no resurrection. As do the relatives -- mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers -- of the hundreds of human beings whose lives were ended by our attacks, and those who were killed by theirs. They are all irretrievably dead. When the slide show on the news site is replaced tomorrow by another, and the talk moves to "solutions," they will still, irretrievably, be dead.

Two of the soldiers in our household are home today for the weekend, and the debates are on, passionately. Israel cannot tolerate Hamas's rockets, insists the younger generation. We have to do what we have to do. We ourselves are willing to lay down our lives for this -- the protection of our people. Israel's army is the most moral in the world. They invited our attack; what country in the world would put up with eight years of cross-border rockets? It's hard to argue with them.

It's also hard to argue with dead bodies, the bodies of those who were killed because they had nowhere to go, in teeming Gaza, to dodge our bombs, even when our army took the "moral" step of warning them to get out of the way. I can tell you this: The propaganda machine is working hard and well on our side. The only way to overcome the threat Hamas poses to Israel is to break them by violence, for all the horrendous cost. And possibly the only way for the Labor party and Kadima to overcome the Likud in the forthcoming election is by proving that Israel can "do it right" this time -- can fight effectively, to win, to restore our national pride.

For some reason there seems to be no doubt that our bombs and our soldiers have the potential to achieve a clearcut victory over the many-headed hydra of terrorism, and that the human cost is inevitable. If we control the territory, we CAN beat back terror, say my sons. Look what we (meaning they and their fellow soldiers) are doing in the West Bank.

Perhaps they are right, and Israel is doing what it has to do. But did it have to come to this? Was there something we could have done, much farther back, to play things out differently? Are there Josephs among us, able to see fifteen years into the future (not to speak of 150 -- which is surely the time-frame contemplated by our foes) and plan for the different scenarios that might transpire?

We live -- at a cost in death and destruction, to our side and to theirs. Is this the inevitable price of history moving on? We live. Is there a way for us to live into the future, so that we live, and they live?

Joseph and the Business Cycle

It occurred to me that the Torah portions for last week and this week -- Miketz and Vayiggash -- are uniquely relevant to the financial crisis, which the press highlighted as the sea change of the year just ended.

Last week, Pharaoh had his famous dreams of the fat cows and the skinny ones, and the fat ears of corn and the skinny ones. Unlike many national leaders of the modern period, Pharaoh took notice of his disturbing dream, sensing its hint of trouble brewing for his prosperous kingdom. He searched for a person in his kingdom -- any person, even a jailbird! -- with the ability to interpret the disturbing sign, and so was Joseph brought before him. The amazing thing that happened there was not only that Joseph dared speak truth to power -- but that power was able to hear the truth.

And the truth was that no matter how secure the boom times might appear, they would inevitably be followed by bust (business cycle, anyone?). Joseph didn't need to be a prophet to arrive at that thought; he needed common sense and -- just as important -- the sense to heed it. Perhaps even more than that, he needed the sensitivity and intuition to hear the stirrings of Pharaoh's own mind and soul, the sense to agree with them, and the courage to speak them aloud in a society where it seemed that the boom time would last forever.

So what's the lesson for 2009? First, to all of us: Dare to speak to truth to power, and dare to trust common sense. Second: Power, keep your ears open to hear the truth. And third: Power, seek out those with the keen intellect, intuition and ability to sense the undercurrents to overt reality, and to suggest wise and prudent courses of action.

Sound obvious? So why are the bombs falling again in our part of the world? Is there no one with the ability to spy out a wise and prudent course of action in dealing with our enemies? Must it always come down to brute violence? (To be sure, sometimes it must; I'm not saying our army should be disbanded, but that there might be craftier and more prudent ways of outmaneuvering our enemies.)

Joseph -- a story for our time.