Rosh Hashanah, 2009

Do you remember that great action film from the 80’s called Lethal Weapon? The movie starred Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. Mel Gibson played a borderline insane cop.
The funny thing is that at the time we all thought that Mr. Gibson was just acting the part of someone crazy. But that was before he was pulled over late one night on a Santa Monica highway for suspicion of drunk driving and when questioned by a Jewish Sheriff he accused the Sheriff and his fellow Jews of being responsible for the first two world wars, the great depression, AIDS, teenage pregnancies, the rise of Islamic terrorism, the collapse of the gold monetary standard, nuclear proliferation, and the 43 year Stanley Cup famine of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Ok. Maybe he didn’t say that.
But I had to get that in.
So, I don’t like Mr. Gibson anymore.
But I did like his sidekick, Danny Glover. Glover played the smart, reasonable family man who tried to keep Gibson in line. And the impressive thing is that Danny Glover – unlike Gibson - was really acting, because he’s really not that smart, and reasonable.
You see, Jane Fonda and Danny Glover have all been added to my unlikable list because they endorsed the boycott of the Toronto International Film Festival. This past year the organizers of the festival decided that they would spotlight films from one city every year. The first city chosen was Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv was a great choice because it has a deep history of art and creativity. Theatre, music, museums, and galleries are all staples of life in Tel Aviv. I say this because Tel Aviv isn’t on the same standing as Belize, or Dubai - I wouldn’t want you to think that Tel Aviv was some kind of cultural backwater.
It was a sound choice.
When Tel Aviv was announced, the boycott proclaimed: "Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages."
In an open letter – "The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation" – the signatories condemn TIFF for showcasing Tel Aviv, comparing it to a "white-only Johannesburg during apartheid." Shockingly, Jewish intellectuals – like Naomi Klein, and Daniel Boyarin – signed it too. So please note that the protesters aren’t objecting to the festival's future home, which is being built on destroyed First Nations villages.
I read the letter and I thought – Tel Aviv?! The 1947 United Nations partition plan legally awarded Tel Aviv to Israel more than six decades ago. But that’s no longer acceptable - Tel Aviv is now an illegal Jewish settlement.
It’s tempting to ignore it, but the rhetoric is too loud to turn away from: complaints against the ROM for showing the Dead Sea Scrolls; "Israel Apartheid Week" at York University; CUPE locals calling for a boycott of Israeli academics; and the latest Pride parade featuring a float that attacked gay-friendly Israel for apartheid policies. And now the film festival is the newest target for those who want to treat Israel as a pariah, demonize its existence, and smear its supporters.
The festival, they say, is in the pocket of the Jews. Their open letter specifically mentions the names of "Sidney Greenberg of Astral Media, David Asper of Canwest and Joel Reitman of MIJO Corporation,"
But by mentioning the names of all ‘those Jews’, we know that this isn’t just about a film festival. They say the festival is in the “pockets” of the Jews. Just like they say the governments are, and the banks, and Wall Street and the media.
And you read this letter, and you say to yourself, hello my old friend. I’ve seen you before.
Anti-Semitism has been called the oldest hatred in the history of humanity. And this summer – after I put aside the sermon I had been writing to write this one – I asked myself why. And I realized that anti-Semitism isn’t a kind of ‘Ground Hog Day’ that every generation of Jews experience – it’s not the same thing over and over again.
And let me tell you how.
What’s not well known is that the most thriving and earliest Jewish European community in the world, and the largest Jewish settlement in Europe - was in the Rhine Valley. The community stretched all the way from Trieste to Cologne along the river. To this very day there is a Jewish cemetery, and amongst all the tombstones is one that dates back nearly 1000 years ago. And even more remarkable is that it has a story written on it.
The tombstone marks the grave of a 12 year old Jewish girl. The engraving on the stone tells us that she committed suicide. And unlike the suicides in other ancient cemeteries that are pushed to the edge of the grounds – this one stands in very the middle.
All because everyone understood why.
In 1096, as the Crusaders were making there way to Jerusalem to free it from the hands of the infidel Muslims, they raped, murdered and pillaged there way through the Rhine Valley, literally laying waste to the entire Jewish settlement. They thought it was reasonable punishment for a people who killed their G-d.
The Jews of Mainz ran to the church and begged the Bishop to let them in to save them from the hordes. And the Bishop said, “Only the converted can be saved.”
The Jews ran from the church. This 12 year old drowned herself to avoid the rape and murder that was sure to come her way. And as the murders unfolded, the murderers carried the cross of the church with them.
This anti-Semitism is the earliest kind. It is the anti-Semitism that comes from religious hatred. It is the kind of violence and persecution that comes not because people can’t find a way to live with each other, but because their faith commands them to. They were told that we killed Christ. They were told that we were preventing the 2nd coming. Conversion or death was the only solution.
This kind of anti-Semitism persisted for another 700 years in Europe. A theological anti-Semitism, we were condemned by faith.
And suddenly, in the 1800’s it disappeared.
In the middle of the 19th century, the western world had turned its back on religion and the church, and instead it had fallen in love with the magic of science. Science, it was believed, would save the world. The radical sciences of biology and chemistry promised the world an incredible future. As human healthcare became scientific the deep hatred of the Jew changed into a scientific obsession. Measurements of Jewish heads, noses, arms and shoulders were taken so that anyone could be proven to be Jewish by measuring their nose. The Nazis believed that we were not just a faith, but a race. As the Nuremburg laws proved, anyone with even a quarter of Jewish blood in them was poison to human progress.
The propaganda art shows it best: Jews are pictured with sinister big noses, dark eyes and large ears. Rats are often in the background. At all costs, Germany had to be cleansed of the Jew. Kafka, Einstein and Freud were removed from school curriculums. Jewish teachers and professors were fired. Jewish lawyers were banned from courts. Jewish doctors banned from touching a German patient.
From that point, the Germans scientifically classified the people who were killing the well being of the Aryan race: they called them todehuellsen; broken humans. Minderwertig – humans of low value. And they had the worst for the Jew; untermench – the sub-human, worthless.
In the hallways of the United States Holocaust museum, I read what Anja Tudelsman wrote about her sister; “I can remember that Irma—unlike my other younger siblings—developed late. She learned to walk late, she always had to be carried around and be fed. She was a pretty child, such a pretty child with big, dark-brown eyes. In 1935 the Nazis came for her with papers saying that the State was taking her into custody. My parents were allowed to visit her in the beginning. But a little after that, the next time I heard about Irma was in 1945. I was told she had died. Irma had arrived in a Jewish children’s ward with thirteen other children—the youngest was probably three, and Irma was the oldest at thirteen. There they were subjected to illegal human medical experiments. Apparently the children, the victims, were horribly starved, reduced to mere skeletons. In the end, most of them died of exhaustion and hunger, and doses of medicines, or they were given a lethal injection. When the Nazis came to take her away, one of them told my father that she was worthless - that’s what they called her. That was the official term.”
When the Nazis had come for Irma, it wasn’t the end. It was just the beginning. The Nazis did what they did because they believed that it was right. Not because G-d told them, but because their science had. We were condemned by science.
So where to do we find ourselves now? The anti-Semitism we see, and that our children face in their universities, is not from a church, and it’s not from scientists. So just how do people hate Jews these days? This summer I figured it out.
3 years ago when I was in Israel on a conference I took a free day and visited a friend of mine who is a high ranking officer in the Israeli army. This was the winter just prior to the last Lebanon war, and unknown to me plans were abuzz for the invasion. My friend – who shall go nameless – works in the Kiryah, a large tower plunked in the middle of Tel Aviv that functions as the headquarters for the Israeli army and army intelligence. In case you ever want to find it, it’s next door to the Strauss ice cream factory.
His job these days is in targeting.
The Israeli army has plans for every kind of operation you can imagine. They have scores of pre-chosen targets. If a plan is requested for operation, the targeting committee opens the file and reviews the targets. Some targets might be no longer valid, some new targets might be more effective.
And my friend, as he walked me through his office showed me what was next door to him. “Machlakat Hu-keet – legal division”. As he said to me, “Israel is the only country in the world that goes to war with lawyers.”
Before any target is made operational it is first approved by the commanding officer. It is then passed through the legal division to make sure that it is not a violation of International law. Then, and only then, does it go into action.
And yet, despite that a bomb is never dropped without a legal ok, in 1982 Ariel Sharon was put on trial in Belgium for war crimes.
In 2003 General Amos Yaron was put on trial in Holland for war crimes.
And in 2006 General Doron Almog was forced to flee Britain just after landing in London. He had been tipped off about a surprise warrant for his arrest issued by a British court. The charge: war crimes.
We live in a world, in a time and place that now believes that law will save us; that the rule of international law, of conventions, and protocols will organize a safe world for us. In another time people thought that science would do that. And before that people thought that the church would do that.
So, before we were infidels and Christ-killers. And then we were vermin and poison. And now, now we’re criminals. Aggressors.  Persecutors. Occupiers. And they hold us to a standard that no other nation or people are ever held to.
Did you ever hear of Russian, Chinese or North Korean officials being tried in absentia anywhere in the world? You haven’t. And that’s why this is anti-Semitism.
But the secret to what will save humanity from its hatred will not be a church, or science or even law alone. The real secret is what we find here this morning. When we will stand to hear the shofar blown.
Our tradition tells us that we blow the Shofar to remember “Eemo Shel Sisera – the mother of Sisera”. Sisera was one of the most hated Generals of ancient Jewish history. He had inflicted much death and destruction on our ancient people. Eventually, he was killed. And our tradition tells us that Sisera’s mother waited by her window for days for him to return. But he never did. And when she finally realized that he was dead, and never to return she began to cry.
And it is for her pain – like the pain of the mothers of the countless millions who have died only because of human hate and fear – that we blow the shofar. In remembering her pain, we hope that no mother will cry over a dead child again.
A while ago I visited a shiva house and had a chance to meet a child survivor of the Shoah, of the Holocaust. I discovered we had a common experience of living in Israel. He had moved there in the mid-70’s for a year. I had lived there for nearly 7 years.
In our conversation he asked me if I ever felt afraid being a Jew? And I told him no. I told him that for as long as I can remember that I’ve walked everywhere with a kippah on my head. And never once, did it ever cross my mind that I might be in danger, or someone might say something hateful to me.
He told me that I’m not just a Jew, but an Israeli.
But he admitted to being just a Jew. To this very day, he won’t wear a kippah outside his house, he is still mindful of an accent he might have, he is fearful of anti-Semitism. And who could blame him? This man saw his family murdered and annihilated only because they were Jews.
As for me, all I have ever known is a world that was in awe of Jewish power. I was born 6 months before the outbreak of the 6 day war, I came of age when Israeli F-15’s bombed the Iraqi nuclear plant at Osirak. I moved to Israel, studied, and lived there as one of the people. So, in my life I’ve had no reason to think that catastrophically things could happen to us, because armed with a homeland filled with planes, and tanks and guns we could do what no other Jewish generation in 2000 years could.
The child survivor told me a story of his time in Israel. An Israeli friend sent him to a man who lived in east Jerusalem, which is the old Jordanian side of the capital. They both had an interest in film and photography and this man had a well regarded slide show of city images.
After watching it the artist then begins to talk about the Jews and how they need to be sent back from where they came from. Our child-survivor-now-adult leaves the house without saying a word. The next day he calls the Israeli who sent him to the anti-Semitic artist. He asks him, “Did you know this guy is an anti-Semite?”
And the Israeli answers, “Yeah, but so what? He’s a great artist.”
And I’ve always thought the same thing – as in, who cares what they think. But maybe it’s time to start thinking. Maybe this criminalization of us will work like the other approaches did. Maybe it’s time I learned to be afraid.
Maybe.
And through this all – the boycotts, the petitions, the apartheid conferences, the trials, and accusations – through it all you get the nagging sense that people believe that the world would be a better, safer place if the Jewish state would just disappear.
But trust me, it ain’t happening.
The Book of Exodus, in describing the garment that was made for the High Priest to wear in the Temple, we are told that his robe had bells on it so that people would know that he was coming. And the Lubavitcher Rebbe saw this as a lesson that a Jew should go out into this difficult and at time hateful world proud and confident, trying to spread the message.
Believing that we will not disappear.
Believing that the world still desperately needs our message.
Because on a majestic night nearly 4000 years ago today, our G-d promised our forefather Abraham that his people would be made in to a 'great nation.' That pledge by the Almighty was repeated to our forefathers and remains a solemn oath. My friends, we are the most blessed generation in the last 2000 years of our people. We should thank G-d for being that privileged generation that has an Israeli Air Force that could knock out Iraq's nuclear reactor and Syria's as well, and we should thank G-d for living in a great country. 'Hashem oz l'amo yitain. Hashem yevorach et amo bashalom.
The L-rd has given strength to His people. May He now bless us with peace.'
Amen.