Debbie Greniman's blogspot
Sunday, December 27, 2015
History and Truth in Jacob’s Last Words to Simeon and Levi (Gen. 49:5–7)
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Sunday, August 19, 2012
The Image of God, between Nahalin and Bat Ayin
The night before, a taxi carrying a family from the Palestinian village of Nahalin -- mother, father, and young children -- was firebombed just below the Jewish settlement of Bat Ayin, not far from Jerusalem, a few kilometers from the city of Efrat in Gush Etzion. It's not new that Palestinians are the targets of attacks by Jewish extremists, in many places in the territories and in that particular spot, where a tree-covered hillside overlooking the road makes for easy rock or firebomb-throws and quick getaways. This time, however, the attack was more than usually successful. Of the six people who emerged from the flaming vehicle, five were hospitalized with burns all over their bodies.
On the initiative of Gadi Gevaryahu and the Tag Meir Forum that he founded, a small group of us, including several settlers who live in the area, turned out to pay our respects at the site of the firebombing and then to visit some of the injured family members at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. Tag Meir translates roughly as "Tag of Radiance," a play on what the extremist settlers refer to as their Tag Mehir / "Price-Tag" activities -- burning mosques, destroying tress and crops, or attacking Palestinians and IDF installations -- in response to perceived threats or acts of violence.
In the hospital, we found our way to the mother's room and were welcomed by her father, standing by her bedside. She is a young woman, younger than my daughter, though her children are older than my grandson. She was "moderately" injured. Her face is covered in burns, one eye half-closed, her hands swathed in bandages. She speaks no Hebrew; her father, a little. One might have expected hostility, but he was clearly moved by our visit. We left chocolates, flowers, and good wishes for the oncoming Eid, the Muslim festival at the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
Her brother-in-law, at the other end of the same ward, pulled a sheet over his face and refused to see us. Perhaps because he was sleeping. Perhaps because he didn't want to speak to Israelis.
From there we went to see her child, far away in the pediatric wing of the hospital. The child himself -- a four-year-old boy, his burnt face a reflection of his mother's -- was sedated and unaware of our visit, but the uncle standing near welcomed us warmly, as did the hospital staff. We left toys and chocolates; the flowers, for which there was no room in this pediatric intensive care unit, became a gift to the nurses.
On the way home, we learned that three Palestinians teenagers had been beaten up -- one within an inch of his life -- by a mob of Jewish teenagers in the heart of downtown Jerusalem the night before.
The next day, in the synagogue, I heard the following verses chanted from the Torah:
And you shall tear down their altars, smash their monuments, burn their asherim with fire, cut down the graven images of their gods, and destroy their name from that place.
You shall not do so to the Lord, your God.
(Deuteronomy 12:3-4)
Rashi, in his comment on verse 4, quotes the following midrash: "Rabbi Ishmael said: Would it enter your mind that the Israelites would tear down the altars [of God]? Rather, [the meaning of“You shall not do so” is that] you should not do like the deeds of the nations so that your sins would cause the sanctuary of [i.e., built by] your fathers to be destroyed. — [Sifrei]" (thanks to the Chabad website and Judaica Press for the English translation).
The relevance of R. Ishmael's comment needs, I hope, no explaining. But the verses raised a different thought in my mind. The only thing said in the Torah to be created "in the image of God" is a human being. The defacement of the human faces of the mother and son we visited at Hadassah is a defacement of the divine image. So, too, the boy repeatedly kicked in the head as he lay on the ground in Zion Square in Jerusalem, until he lost consciousness and stopped breathing.
You might ask why I haven't written something similar in the wake of the many fearsome terror attacks perpetrated against Jews by Palestinians. Do I feel more for Palestinians than for Jews? That is an utterly heartless question. Palestinian terrorists and their supporters need to make their own accounting before God and humanity. When my fellow Jewish Israelis perpetrate acts of terror or mob violence that -- for me -- evoke memories of what my parents told me of their experiences in Europe in the 1930s, it is I and we who must take responsibility and make an accounting. It is I and we who must ask whether our sins are endangering our sanctuary.
(No, we're not Nazis -- I won't go to jail or even risk public approbation for saying this.)
Our police can stop a kid carrying an illicit beer bottle in Zion Square, but evidently they can't show up in time to stop a lynch. Supposedly, we need our army in the territories to stay in control, but they, too, can't be relied upon to stop terror attacks against Palestinian civilians. We need to call them to account. We need them to show their strength in protecting all those who live under our governance.
You may also ask where are the Palestinians coming to visit Jews injured by acts of Palestinian terror. I respond with the father's wish, standing by his burnt daughter's bedside, on the eve of the Eid and of Ellul, our month of repentance, for us all to live as neighbors.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Why I Am a Religious Woman
As I was preparing a sign to take to last night's demonstration in Jerusalem against right-wing thuggery, it occurred to me that I've been doing this for a long time. Not often enough, I admit, but I started going to demonstrations (against the Vietnam war) in high school, and I'm now well up in my sixth decade.
So where has it gotten me, all this demonstrating? Has it had an effect? Is the world a better place?
With age, I become more skeptical. The world -- the human world -- doesn't seem to be showing any less warts than it did 40-odd years ago. Or 4000-odd years ago, when the Torah had G!d declaring that "the inclination of the human heart is wicked from its youth." Is peace in the Middle East possible? Can humans learn to live together tolerantly, without exploiting, shunning, wounding and killing? Can religion inspire without giving way to obscurantism? Can the natural world survive us?
No, as I grow older, I tend more toward the perspective of Ecclesiastes, though perhaps there are some new things under the sun. Our urge to mass slaughter and environmental destruction have not changed much, but our ability to make good on them has grown.
Do I think G!d will save (the state of) Israel? Did G!d do that in the past? No, I think G!d's pretty much put that in our hands. And our hands are shaking a lot, lately. Messiah is something accomplished by humans of faith, who can produce good leaders (who stay good) and follow them in good directions. Think about it.
So if I think our efforts are unlikely to redeem the world, and more likely to make us look like laughingstocks in a world that glorifies money and power, why am I still at it?
That, my friends, is faith. I believe in the Torah's commands to do good and be just, however short I fall. I believe we are commanded to keep trying, tenaciously, no matter what. Even if there's little hope of success. Even if they laugh at us or throw things at us. That, too, will keep happening. The world hangs between destructive and constructive forces. We are commanded to keep trying to tip the balance, and to create faith communities for that purpose.
I believe, too, in the extraordinary power of art, in the inspiration to beauty rooted in Spirit, in truths that lie beyond what we can intellectualize. It's not just the hand of the artist, natural or human; it's our eye -- our senses and mind -- programmed to receive and recognize all this, to be inspired and, sometimes, to inspire. To see and, sometimes, to be changed.
There's a spiritual dimension to human relationships, too -- to our ability to connect, communicate, empathize, share and help. And somehow, from what I have seen, those relationships grow best in communities that create common ground and prioritize connecting, communicating, empathizing, sharing and helping in light of a common purpose.
Do you need to be a religious Jew, or a religious person, to believe in all this? Well, no. Sometimes religion can distract from these very purposes. There are many paths of truth, of the same spirit that shows itself in art and in relationships. There are also many paths that lead astray, and even some of them have sparks of spirit in them.
To me, though, it is faith that keeps turning me toward the big issues, bringing them into focus even in the cacophony of religious voices pointing in several different directions. It is faith that keeps directing me to go back and try again. That spirit that shows itself in the pursuit of the good, the just and the holy, in bringing communities together, and in the appreciation of beauty -- my word for it is G!d, though some have other words for it. And I've found nothing better than a community of faith to create and bind human relationships, by rooting them in the joint pursuit of the holy. Ultimately -- because I do live in a community -- it is religion that holds it all together for me.
And that's why you'll still find me at another demonstration -- for a cause that may not be identified with religion.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Why I Support Israel's Tent Protesters -- And Why You Should, Too
Sunday, April 4, 2010
How long will we keep hopping between two opinions?
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Maternal Wisdom and Solving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
I often think that word “solution” should be expunged from the language. I do mean that, among other things, in the sense of “solving the Israel-Palestine problem.” Speaking of “solutions” indicates that there is a definable, condensable problem, to which there is some kind of unique “solution” out there, which, if we could only get everyone to see it, could turn a hopelessly muddled situation into a good, well ordered reality. The American-style “can-do” mindset sets us to thinking that if there’s a problem, then of course we MUST and CAN solve it. But jumping too quickly to “solutions,” clever as we think they are, tends to pull our eyeball off the problems, which meanwhile languish and fester in all their knotty complexity.