"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?
"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?
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