jewish texts on fair voting and just elections

preparing for a planned response

In ear­ly March 2020, before the Coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic lock­down began here in New York City, I was approached by T’ru­ah:

T'ruah logo

the invitation

I’m reach­ing out with what I hope might be a fun vol­un­teer project with T’ru­ah. We’re putting togeth­er a group of… peo­ple who can craft what we’re call­ing non-rapid response state­ments and oth­er mate­ri­als– basi­cal­ly, to look at some of the most like­ly sce­nar­ios that might hap­pen (we’ve done some of this work already, but there’s more to do) and pre-craft some Jew­ish and human rights lan­guage to respond. That is, when some­thing dra­mat­ic hap­pens (God for­bid a vio­lent inci­dent, or new leg­is­la­tion, or some­thing else either in the US or in Israel), we want to be able to be a moral voice, includ­ing hav­ing some thought­ful and deep Jew­ish lan­guage ready to go. Some­times, this might mean a state­ment of our posi­tion and oth­er times, it might mean a text study. For exam­ple, when the impeach­ment hap­pened, we quick­ly threw togeth­er some texts for study; dit­to on the acquit­tal. Oth­er times, we have a more clear state­ment of what our posi­tion is. The goal of these is both to mod­el a moral rab­binic voice (and to be heard in news sto­ries, etc.) and to give rab­bis in the field mate­r­i­al that they (you) need to talk with/teach their com­mu­ni­ties.
So here’s the ask– like I said, we’re putting togeth­er a small (8−10) group of peo­ple who can iden­ti­fy some of these key oppor­tu­ni­ties and start to craft some language/identify some sources that we would use if the oppor­tu­ni­ty arose…. We’ve ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled a first meet­ing (via Zoom) for Thu, March 12 at 2PM (we hope you can make this time, but if you can’t, it’s not a deal break­er. At this meet­ing, we will iden­ti­fy a few of the top oppor­tu­ni­ties for response and divvy sev­er­al of them out to pairs of peo­ple to work togeth­er (so it’s a chance to work with an old/new friend–or even if there’s some­one you want to bring in, that’s great too) and to take a few weeks to draft some lan­guage and/or text sug­ges­tions. We’d come back togeth­er after Pesach to look these through, give feed­back & iden­ti­fy new oppor­tu­ni­ties. I would imag­ine the com­mit­ment being about a quar­ter­ly meet­ing, plus some writ­ing with a part­ner in between (but it can be some­what flexible).

I accept­ed the invi­ta­tion. On the des­ig­nat­ed date, we gath­ered and dis­cussed the pos­si­ble sit­u­a­tions fac­ing us.

our agenda

Goals:

  • Iden­ti­fy the top areas for which we need to pre­pare responses
  • Deter­mine what kind of response(s) might be need­ed (state­ment, prayer, text sheet, some­thing else)
  • Assign pairs to start work­ing on pri­or­i­tized responses

Check-in/in­tro­duc­tions

Review of goals/why we respond:

  • Moral voice–model for Jew­ish community
  • Give rabbis/cantors/other Jew­ish pro­fes­sion­als lan­guage they can use
  • Give rabbis/educators mate­ri­als they can use in their own communities
  • Sup­port rabbis/cantors through dif­fi­cult moments

Review of poten­tial situations

Like­ly scenarios:

  • White nation­al­ist ter­ror­ist attack on:
    • Syn­a­gogue /other Jew­ish institution
    • Immi­grant community/business
    • Black church
    • Mosque
  • Attack on synagogue/Jewish com­mu­ni­ty by anti-Israel terrorist 
  • Elec­tion:
    • Trump re-elect­ed
    • Demo­c­rat elect­ed, peace­ful transition
    • Demo­c­rat elect­ed, Trump refus­es to leave, or elec­tion goes to Supreme Court or oth­er chaos
  • Annex­a­tion of all or part of West Bank
  • New vio­lence with Gaza
  • New war with Iran 
  • Third intifa­da 
  • Coro­n­avirus out­break becomes more serious/mass clo­sures in US
  • Mass shoot­ing in a school/movie theater/other com­mu­nal space
  • Trump drops dead of heart attack or oth­er nat­ur­al causes
  • Trump assas­si­nat­ed
  • What else?

What kind of respons­es might each of these need?

  • State­ment
  • Prayer/other litur­gy
  • Text sheet
  • Webi­nar
  • What else?

Note, that while “Trump drops dead of heart attack or oth­er nat­ur­al caus­es” was men­tioned as a pos­si­bil­i­ty, at that ear­ly date, none of us imag­ined the extent of death and destruc­tion COVID-19 would cause. The day of our Zoom meet­ing Gov­er­nor Cuo­mo announced restric­tions on mass gath­er­ings and closed all Broad­way the­aters. Eight days lat­er, on March 20, he man­dat­ed a state-wide lock­down and all our T’ru­ah plan­ning paused.

At the end of June, our group was recon­vened in order to devel­op mate­ri­als specif­i­cal­ly relat­ed to the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial election.

my chevruta

I was paired with Ed Stafman, who I’d not met out­side of our Zoom gath­er­ings. In 2000, fol­low­ing the Bush/Gore elec­tion, Ed was a lawyer on a case involv­ing a local Repub­li­can super­vi­sor of elec­tions act­ing in con­cert with local Repub­li­can offi­cials to achieve a par­ti­san advan­tage in that elec­tion. Since then, he stud­ied in the ALEPH Rab­binic pro­gram and became the rab­bi (now emer­i­tus) of Con­gre­ga­tion Beth Shalom of Boze­man MT, Mon­tana. He is cur­rent­ly run­ning to rep­re­sent Dis­trict 62 in the Mon­tana House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. We were tasked with prepar­ing a selec­tion of texts that col­leagues could use in their con­gre­ga­tions and/or organizations.

I have been polit­i­cal­ly active my entire life, but I had not stud­ied Jew­ish texts relat­ed to elec­toral pol­i­tics. I used the search tools avail­able to me and reached out to friends and col­leagues for leads, but came back emp­ty-hand­ed. Ed pro­ceed­ed sim­i­lar­ly, though he still has his rab­binic library with­in arm’s reach. Ed dis­cov­ered R. David Markus’ ALEPH senior teshu­va on “The Jew­ish Duty to Vote”. A brief, pop­u­lar ver­sion was lat­er pub­lished at the blog of Rab­bis With­out Bor­ders and his own blog. We invit­ed R. Markus to join us in updat­ing his work and he gra­cious­ly engaged with us.

the result of our effort

While the con­ver­sa­tion has shift­ed some­what from pro­tect­ing the vot­ing process, our efforts remain help­ful in clar­i­fy­ing a num­ber of the issues involved. On Octo­ber 14, T’ru­ah announced:

Elec­tion Day is three weeks away, but we already know we are unlike­ly to have clear elec­tion results on the night of Novem­ber 3. Between expect­ed delays in count­ing mail-in bal­lots, attempts to dis­pute elec­tion results, and politi­cians who pre­fer to serve their own egos rather than the demo­c­ra­t­ic process, we are look­ing at an entire elec­tion season.

That is why, today, we are pleased to unveil T’ruah’s online Elec­tion Cen­ter.

While T’ruah: The Rab­binic Call for Human Rights is a 501(c)(3) and does not con­duct par­ti­san polit­i­cal activ­i­ties in sup­port or in oppo­si­tion to any polit­i­cal can­di­date, you can find a vari­ety of help­ful mate­ri­als at the Elec­tion Cen­ter site. These include:

  • What cler­gy and con­gre­ga­tions can do
  • Text stud­ies
  • Prayers
  • Webi­na­rs
  • Divrei Torah
  • Protest plac­ards

The doc­u­ment Ed and I pre­pared is under the Text stud­ies sec­tion. You can down­load and print a PDF of it here. Or, you can review the doc­u­ment and all its relat­ed text here.

​Jewish Texts On Fair Voting And Just Elections

In the form we know them today, pop­u­lar elec­tions – where all adult cit­i­zens vote for their lead­ers – are the prod­uct of west­ern democ­ra­cies. In west­ern democ­ra­cies, as time has passed, mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy has allowed for wide­spread cam­paigns and for hun­dreds of mil­lions of votes to be cast and counted.

Although Jew­ish tra­di­tion long pre­dates west­ern democ­ra­cy, over an extend­ed time, Jew­ish tra­di­tion takes an increas­ing­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic approach to choos­ing lead­ers. That tra­di­tion evolves along a clear path from Moses’ appoint­ment by God to a Jew­ish duty to vote for gov­ern­men­tal lead­ers and even assess tax­es. It fol­lows, there­fore, that for this duty to vote to be mean­ing­ful, the elec­tion must be just and votes must be fair­ly counted.

The Jew­ish trend towards demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions is root­ed in the notion that we view gov­ern­ment as a human part­ner­ship with God. Where Torah pre­dicts that Israelites would want civ­il rulers instead of priests and prophets, Moses told the peo­ple: “[B]e sure to place over your­selves the king that God elects for you” (Deut. 17:14–15). Tanach records that God chose the first king, Saul (1 Sam. 9:16–17). The sec­ond king, David, how­ev­er, was cho­sen by God but con­firmed by “all of Israel’s elders” (2 Sam. 5:3). The third king, his son Solomon, ruled in David’s blood­line but “all the peo­ple” togeth­er rat­i­fied his acces­sion (1 Kings 1:39). This demo­c­ra­t­ic shift becomes clear in the Tal­mud, which opined that not even God would select rulers with­out con­sult­ing the peo­ple (B.T. Bera­chot 55a).

With the destruc­tion of Jew­ish sov­er­eign­ty in the Land of Israel, the role of the peo­ple in select­ing their lead­ers and sup­port­ing sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment slow­ly expand­ed and extend­ed. It began with the propo­si­tion that civ­il gov­ern­ment is impor­tant. Thus, as in ancient days, we still “pray for government’s wel­fare, for with­out fear of it [we] would swal­low each oth­er alive” (M. Avot 3:2). The duty to cre­ate and sup­port gov­ern­ment was so impor­tant that it became one of the few duties that Jew­ish law rec­og­nizes for all, Jew and non-Jew alike (B.T. San­hedrin 56b). To R. Moses Mai­monides (the “Ram­bam,” 1135–1204), the pur­pose is to ensure pub­lic order (Mish­neh Torah, Melachim 9:14); the Tal­mud extends the pur­pose to include all social wel­fare (B.T. Avo­dah Zara 4a). This is even more evi­dent today where pub­lic safe­ty, health, social equi­ty, the rule of law – the very fab­ric of life in an inter­de­pen­dent world – require wise, effec­tive and demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly account­able government.

When Jews elect­ed tax col­lec­tors to remit Jew­ish tax­es to sec­u­lar author­i­ties, Moses Isser­les (the “Rema,” 1520–1572) held that all tax­pay­ers were to assem­ble and vote “for the sake of heav­en” (Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mish­pat 163:1). Declin­ing to vote means ignor­ing Torah’s notion of human part­ner­ship in the “heav­en­ly” work of gov­ern­ment. Some 200 years lat­er, R. Moses Schreiber Sofer of Press­burg (the “Chatam Sofer,” 1762–1839) held that tax­pay­ers who didn’t vote for­feit­ed their rights to shape elec­tion out­comes and were bound by those out­comes. Both based on the impor­tant call to vote and the bind­ing nature of elec­tion out­comes, the Chatam Sofer nec­es­sar­i­ly assumed that votes would be count­ed in a fair and just elec­tion process.

While these author­i­ties did not them­selves estab­lish a duty to vote, the Jew­ish focus on col­lec­tive action – in polit­i­cal lan­guage, “the social con­tract” — so high­ly val­ues the pub­lic inter­est as to com­pel indi­vid­ual behav­ior that serves the com­mon good. As Shlo­mo ben Meiri (“Rash­bam,” 1080–1174) held, this social com­pact oblig­es Jews to hon­or the realm’s civ­il laws in exchange for the realm’s ben­e­fits and pro­tec­tion (comm. B.T. Bava Batra 54b). By choos­ing to live some­where as cit­i­zens, we bind our­selves to a con­tract with that society.

Jew­ish choice of res­i­den­cy also trig­gers a duty to help pro­vide the ben­e­fits of soci­ety, lest anyone’s non-par­tic­i­pa­tion cause what econ­o­mists call free rid­ing. (If any­one could take a pub­lic good with­out giv­ing, then all would have the same incen­tive – and the pub­lic good itself could dis­ap­pear.) For this rea­son, Jews must not only pay for pub­lic ben­e­fits they receive (B.T. Bava Batra 8a), but also direct­ly help as need­ed to serve the pub­lic (B.T. Bava Met­zia 108a).

While in tal­mu­dic times the main con­cerns for col­lec­tive action were flood con­trol, pub­lic trans­porta­tion, civ­il defense and pub­lic health, in our day these con­cerns devolve main­ly on gov­ern­ment. It is via gov­ern­ment that Jews ful­fill their civic duty to com­mu­ni­ties where they main­tain res­i­dence and cit­i­zen­ship – not only by pay­ing tax­es, but also through pub­lic ser­vice and espe­cial­ly by vot­ing. The impli­ca­tions are pro­found. The real “Jew­ish issue” is government’s effec­tive­ness to per­form its pub­lic duties. Under­stood prop­er­ly, government’s whole agen­da – pub­lic health and safe­ty, social pol­i­cy, crim­i­nal jus­tice, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and more – is a “Jew­ish issue.” All are nec­es­sary con­cerns of Jew­ish vot­ers as Jew­ish vot­ers. That is the Jew­ish com­mit­ment to our nation, tra­di­tion and val­ues – what­ev­er our per­son­al pol­i­tics and par­ti­san­ship may be.

This Jew­ish require­ment to hon­or the social con­tract strong­ly implies a duty to vote, which in turn, implies a right to a fair and just process that allows for and counts those votes accu­rate­ly. Indeed, in the Rama’s view, an election’s legit­i­ma­cy depends on uni­ver­sal notice of the elec­tion and the cor­re­spond­ing full and fair oppor­tu­ni­ty for all eli­gi­ble vot­ers to cast bal­lots. Indeed, even before the advent of mod­ern elec­tion mechan­ics, halachi­cal­ly it was well-set­tled that an election’s legit­i­ma­cy would be under­mined – and its out­come thus unen­force­able – if the elec­tion was inad­e­quate­ly pub­li­cized or some vot­ers inhib­it­ed eli­gi­ble oth­ers from vot­ing. So also held R. Yechezkel Lan­dau (the “Noda b’Yehuda,” 1713–1793) and the Chatam Sofer.

It fol­lows that in this mod­ern era of com­plex elec­tion mechan­ics – any of which can and often do sup­press vot­ing or raise rea­son­able pub­lic ques­tion about the fair­ness of elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion – the spir­i­tu­al duty to vote nec­es­sar­i­ly requires that elec­tion pro­ce­dures be fair.

This result accords with mod­ern Israel’s sta­tus as a demo­c­ra­t­ic state, reflect­ing its con­tin­u­a­tion of Jew­ish com­mit­ment to the pub­lic good and fair elec­tions. Indeed, after the found­ing of mod­ern Israel, the Lubav­itch­er Rebbe (Igrot HaKodesh, at 32) and the Cha­zon Ish both urged all eli­gi­ble vot­ers to vote (albeit for spec­i­fied can­di­dates). So impor­tant was the elec­toral fran­chise that at least one promi­nent Israeli rab­bi wouldn’t receive con­gre­gants on elec­tion day until they vot­ed. To them, it was obvi­ous that Jews must vote.

This result also accords with the views of con­tem­po­rary pro­gres­sive Jew­ish move­ments that deemed vot­ing key to democ­ra­cy and urged reforms against vot­er sup­pres­sion to ful­fill the verse (Lev. 19:15): לֹא־תַעֲשׂוּ עָוֶל בַּמִּשְׁפָּט לֹא־תִשָּׂא פְנֵי־דָל וְלֹא תֶהְדַּר פְּנֵי גָדוֹל בְּצֶדֶק תִּשְׁפֹּט עֲמִיתֶךָ — “Do not ren­der an unfair deci­sion, do not respect the poor or favor the mighty.” This verse inspired the Con­ser­v­a­tive Movement’s Rab­bini­cal Assembly’s call for fair elec­tion mechan­ics to enforce the prac­ti­cal right to vote and have each vote count­ed, and its lat­er res­o­lu­tion demand­ing elec­tions in which “all eli­gi­ble vot­ers… have free and equal access to cast their bal­lots and all votes should be count­ed equally.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, the Reform Movement’s Cen­tral Con­fer­ence of Amer­i­can Rab­bis (“CCAR”) adopt­ed a 2001 res­o­lu­tion call­ing for elec­tion reform after the dis­put­ed U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 2000. The CCAR nar­rat­ed a soci­etal “eth­ic of polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion [that] has guid­ed Jews” and that ren­ders anath­e­ma to Jew­ish thought what the CCAR called undue bar­ri­ers to vot­ing. The CCAR held a 2010 sym­po­sium on this sub­ject, in which lead­ing Reform rab­bis offered case stud­ies of Jew­ish reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pat­ing in the civic sphere.

Judaism’s wis­dom tra­di­tion teach­es that “You do not need to fin­ish the work, but you are not free to desist from it” (M. Avot 2:16). Maybe no sin­gle elec­tion will fix the nation’s fate, but every elec­tion is impor­tant – and Judaism’s val­ue of col­lec­tive action man­dates Jews to pitch in. That demand, in turn, implies a right to an elec­tion that is just and where the votes are fair­ly counted.

Pre­pared by R. Mark Hurvitz and R. Ed Stafman, with spe­cial thanks to R. David Markus, whose 2014 rab­binic teshu­vah on these mat­ters pro­vid­ed much of the research and thought sup­port­ing this paper.

Resources in order of their appear­ance in the doc­u­ment above (apolo­gies for the odd for­mat­ting… the text appears cor­rect­ly for­mat­ted in the PDF):

Deut. 17:14–15

“When you come into the land that YHVH your God is giv­ing you, and you pos­sess and set­tle it, and say, ‘I will set over me a king like all oth­er nations around me,’ be sure to place over your­self the king YHVH will elect for you….כִי־תָבֹא אֶל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶר ה‘ אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לָךְ וִירִשְתָה וְיָשַבְתָה בָה וְאָמַרְתָ אָשִימָה עָלַי מֶלֶךְ כְכָל־הַגויִם אֲשֶר סְבִיבֹתָי. שום תָשִים עָלֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ אֲשֶר יִבְחַר ה‘ אֱלֹהֶיךָ בו….

1 Sam. 9:16–17

‘To-mor­row about this time I will send thee a man out of the land of Ben­jamin, and thou shalt anoint him to be prince over My peo­ple Israel, and he shall save My peo­ple out of the hand of the Philistines; for I have looked upon My peo­ple, because their cry is come unto Me.’ And when Samuel saw Saul, the LORD spoke unto him: ‘Behold the man of whom I said unto thee: This same shall have author­i­ty over My people.’כָּעֵת מָחָר אֶשְׁלַח אֵלֶיךָ אִישׁ מֵאֶרֶץ בִּנְיָמִן, וּמְשַׁחְתּוֹ לְנָגִיד עַל‑עַמִּי יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְהוֹשִׁיעַ אֶת‑עַמִּי, מִיַּד פְּלִשְׁתִּים: כִּי רָאִיתִי אֶת‑עַמִּי, כִּי בָּאָה צַעֲקָתוֹ אֵלָי. וּשְׁמוּאֵל, רָאָה אֶת‑שָׁאוּל; וַיהוָה עָנָהוּ–הִנֵּה הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר אָמַרְתִּי אֵלֶיךָ, זֶה יַעְצֹר בְּעַמִּי.

2 Sam. 5:3

“All the elders of Israel came to [David] before God, and anoint­ed David as King of Israel.”וַיָבֹאו כָל‑זִקְנֵי יִשְרָאֵל אֶל‑הַמֶלֶךְ … לִפְנֵי ה‘ וַיִמְשְחו אֶת‑דָוִד לְמֶלֶךְ עַל‑יִשְרָאֵל

1 Kings 1:39

And Zadok the priest took the horn of oil out of the Tent, and anoint­ed Solomon. And they blew the ram’s horn; and all the peo­ple said: ‘Long live king Solomon.’וַיִּקַּח צָדוֹק הַכֹּהֵן אֶת‑קֶרֶן הַשֶּׁמֶן, מִן‑הָאֹהֶל, וַיִּמְשַׁח, אֶת‑שְׁלֹמֹה; וַיִּתְקְעוּ, בַּשּׁוֹפָר, וַיֹּאמְרוּ כָּל‑הָעָם, יְחִי הַמֶּלֶךְ שְׁלֹמֹה.

B.T. Bera­chot 55a

“R. Yochanan said: the Holy Blessed One pro­claims three things: famine, plen­ty and a good leader.… A good leader, as in (Ex. 31:2): God spoke to Moses say­ing, ‘See I called by name Bet­za­lel son of Uri.’ R. Yitzchak said: We mustn’t appoint a leader for a com­mu­ni­ty with­out con­sult­ing it, as in (Ex. 35:30): ‘See, God called by name Bet­za­lel.’ The Holy Blessed One said to Moses: Moses, do you think Bet­za­lel suit­able? [Moses] replied: Ribono shel Olam, if You think him suit­able, all the more do I! [God] said to [Moses]: All the same, go con­sult them. [Moses] went and asked [Israel]: Do you think Bet­za­lel suit­able? They replied: If the Holy Blessed One and you think him suit­able, all the more do we!”אמר רבי יוחנן שלשה דברים מכריז עליהם הקב“ה בעצמוואלו הן רעב ושובע ופרנס טוב. … פרנס טוב דכתיב (שמותלא:ב) (ויאמר) ה‘ אל משה לאמר ראה קראתי בשם בצלאלוגו‘ אמר רבי יצחק אין מעמידין פרנס על הצבור אלא אם כןנמלכים בצבור שנא‘ (שמות לה:ל) ראו קרא ה‘ בשם בצלאלאמר לו הקדוש ברוך הוא למשה משה הגון עליך בצלאל אמרלו רבונו של עולם אם לפניך הגון לפני לא כל שכן. אמר לו אףעל פי כן לך אמור להם הלך ואמר להם לישראל הגון עליכםבצלאל אמרו לו אם לפני הקדוש ברוך הוא ולפניך הוא הגוןלפנינו לא כל שכן.

Mish­na Avot 3:2

R. Chan­i­na, assis­tant to the priests, said: Pray for the wel­fare of the gov­ern­ment, since but for the fear of it men would swal­low each oth­er alive.רבי חנינא סגן הכהנים אומר הוי מתפלל בשלומה של מלכות שאלמלא מוראה איש את רעהו חיים בלעו.

B.T. San­hedrin 56b

It was taught in a Barai­ta: Just as Israelites were com­mand­ed to estab­lish courts in each and every province and each and every town, so to were Noahites com­mand­ed to estab­lish courts in each and every province and each and every town.כשם שנצטוו ישראל להושיב בתי דינין בכל פלך ופלך ובכל עיר ועיר כך נצטוו בני נח להושיב בתי דינין בכל פלך ופלך ובכל עיר ועיר

Ram­bam, Mish­neh Torah, Melachim 9:14

How must the gen­tiles ful­fill the com­mand­ment to estab­lish laws and courts? They are oblig­at­ed to set up judges and mag­is­trates in every major city to ren­der judge­ment con­cern­ing these six mitzvot and to admon­ish the peo­ple regard­ing their observance.A gen­tile who trans­gress­es these sev­en com­mands shall be exe­cut­ed by decap­i­ta­tion. For this rea­son, all the inhab­i­tants of Shechem were oblig­at­ed to die. Shechem kid­napped. They observed and were aware of his deeds, but did not judge him.A gen­tile is exe­cut­ed on the basis of the tes­ti­mo­ny of one wit­ness and the ver­dict of a sin­gle judge. No warn­ing is required. Rel­a­tives may serve as wit­ness­es. How­ev­er, a woman may not serve as a wit­ness or a judge for them.וְכֵיצַד מְצֻוִּין הֵן עַל הַדִּינִין. חַיָּבִין לְהוֹשִׁיב דַּיָּנִין וְשׁוֹפְטִים בְּכָל פֶּלֶךְ וּפֶלֶךְ לָדוּן בְּשֵׁשׁ מִצְוֹת אֵלּוּ. וּלְהַזְהִיר אֶת הָעָם. וּבֶן נֹחַ שֶׁעָבַר עַל אַחַת מִשֶּׁבַע מִצְוֹת אֵלּוּ יֵהָרֵג בְּסַיִף. וּמִפְּנֵי זֶה נִתְחַיְּבוּ כָּל בַּעֲלֵי שְׁכֶם הֲרִיגָה. שֶׁהֲרֵי שְׁכֶם גָּזַל וְהֵם רָאוּ וְיָדְעוּ וְלֹא דָּנוּהוּ. וּבֶן נֹחַ נֶהֱרָג בְּעֵד אֶחָד וּבְדַיָּן אֶחָד בְּלֹא הַתְרָאָה וְעַל פִּי קְרוֹבִין. אֲבָל לֹא בְּעֵדוּת אִשָּׁה. וְלֹא תָּדוּן אִשָּׁה לָהֶם:

B.T. Avo­dah Zara 4a

Alter­na­tive­ly, just as in the case of fish of the sea, any fish that is big­ger than anoth­er swal­lows the oth­er, so too in the case of peo­ple, were it not for the fear of the rul­ing gov­ern­ment, any­one who is big­ger than anoth­er would swal­low the oth­er. And this is as we learned in a mish­na (Avot 3:2) that Rab­bi Ḥan­i­na, the deputy High Priest, says: One should pray for the con­tin­ued wel­fare of the gov­ern­ment, as were it not for the fear of the gov­ern­ment, every man would swal­low his neigh­bor alive.דבר אחר מה דגים שבים כל הגדול מחבירו בולע את חבירו אף בני אדם אלמלא מוראה של מלכות כל הגדול מחבירו בולע את חבירו והיינו דתנן רבי חנינא סגן הכהנים אומר הוי מתפלל בשלומה של מלכות שאלמלא מוראה של מלכות איש את רעהו חיים בלעו

Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mish­pat 163:1

It is nec­es­sary to assem­ble by writ of elec­tion all tax­pay­ers and prompt them to speak accord­ing to their judg­ment for the sake of heav­en, and then we fol­low the major­i­ty. But if a minor­i­ty refus­es [to fol­low] the major­i­ty, it is per­mis­si­ble to force them, even by order of star wor­ship­pers (i.e. non-Jews), to pay their share to the tax col­lec­tor select­ed. If one boy­cotts and refus­es to offer one’s opin­ion (i.e. vote), then it is dis­re­gard­ed and the opin­ions of the major­i­ty remain­ing decide the matter.יש להושיב כל בע“ב הנותנים מס ויקבלו עליהם שכל אחד יאמר דעתו לשם שמים וילכו אחר הרוב ואם המיעוט ימאנו הרוב יכולין לכוף אותן אפילו בדיני עכו“ם ולהוציא ממון על זה והם צריכין לתת חלקם והמסרב מלומר דעתו ע“פ החרם בטילה דעתו ואזלי‘ בתר רוב הנשארים האומרים דעתן.

Shlo­mo ben Meiri (Rash­bam), Comm. B.T. Bava Batra 54b

All the tax­es and fees and cus­toms that kings are accus­tomed to enact in their king­doms are the law! For every per­son of the king­dom accepts upon them­selves, of their own free will, the laws of the king. There­fore, it is com­plete­ly set­tled law.
והאמר שמואל דינא דמלכותא דינא — כל מסים וארנוניות ומנהגות של משפטי מלכים שרגילים להנהיג במלכותם דינא הוא שכל בני המלכות מקבלים עליהם מרצונם חוקי המלך ומשפטיו והלכך דין גמור הוא ואין למחזיק בממון חבירו ע“פ חוק המלך הנהוג בעיר משום גזל.

B.T. Bava Batra 8a

Rav Yehu­da says: All of the city’s res­i­dents must con­tribute to the build­ing and upkeep of the city gates [le’aglei gap­pa], and for this pur­pose mon­ey is col­lect­ed even from orphans. But the Sages do not require pro­tec­tion and are there­fore exempt from this pay­ment. All of the city’s res­i­dents must con­tribute to the dig­ging of cis­terns [lekarya patya], and for this pur­pose mon­ey is col­lect­ed even from the Sages, since they too need water. The Gemara com­ments: And we said this only when the peo­ple are not required to go out en masse [be’akhluza] and do the actu­al dig­ging, but are oblig­at­ed mere­ly to con­tribute mon­ey for that pur­pose. But if the peo­ple are required to go out en masse and actu­al­ly dig, the Sages are not expect­ed to go out with them en masse, but rather they are exempt from such labor.אמר רב יהודה הכל לאגלי גפא אפילו מיתמי אבל רבנן לא צריכי נטירותא הכל לכריא פתיא אפילו מרבנן ולא אמרן אלא דלא נפקי באכלוזא אבל נפקי באכלוזא רבנן לאו בני מיפק באכלוזא נינהו:

B.T. Bava Met­zia 108a

“Rav Yehu­dah said: When the riv­er requires dredg­ing, those dwelling on the low­er reach­es must aid the upper inhab­i­tants, but not vice ver­sa. But it is the reverse in respect to rain water [in a drainage ditch].”אמר רב יהודה לכריא דנהרא תתאי מסייעי עילאי עילאי לא מסייעי תתאי וחילופא במיא דמיטרא.

Lubav­itch­er Rebbe

In response to a let­ter ask­ing about the halacha of vot­ing for an Israeli civ­il gov­ern­ment. the Lubav­itch­er Rebbe replied on 5 Kislev 5709 (Decem­ber 7, 1948) that vot­ing is halachi­cal­ly manda­to­ry to ensure the elec­tion of the most reli­gious can­di­dates run­ning for office. Schneer­son, Igrot HaKodesh, at 32.

“[Some­one] asks about the issue of par­tic­i­pat­ing in elec­tions for the gov­ern­ment in the Land of Israel. Cer­tain­ly it is oblig­a­tory for all eli­gi­ble to vote not to give up this [vot­ing] right. All who par­tic­i­pate must try to [elect] the most reli­gious par­ty, but not for one whose inter­est is to cre­ate con­tro­ver­sy and sow dis­uni­ty through advo­ca­cy in the [mere] name of Torah. May awe in God stoke the pride of our broth­ers in Israel liv­ing in the Holy Land, may it be built and com­plet­ed, and in all the lands of exile. May they mer­it the com­ing of the Redeemer… who will gath­er us to the Holy Land, may it be built and com­plet­ed, from all nations in which we were scattered.”[פב‘‘פ] שואל על אודות ההשתתפות בענין הבחירות לממשלה בארץ ישראל. בודאי חובה על כל אחד ואחד שראוי לבחור לא יותר על זכותו זה. ועם מי להשתתף צריכים להשתדל להשתתף עם חבורת היראים יותר אבל לא עם אלו אשר כל ענינם הוא לעשות מחלוקת ופירוד לבבות ודוגלים בשם התורה. והיראת השי‘‘ת ירים קרן אחינו בני ישראל ד‘ עליהם יחיו באה‘‘ק ת‘‘ו ובכל מדינות הגולה ונזכה לביאת הגואל צדק משיח צדקנו אשר יקבצנו מכל ארצות פזורנו לאה‘‘ק ת‘‘ו.

R. Avro­hom Yeshaya Kare­litz (1878−1953, the Cha­zon Ish):

The Gedolim’s View On Vot­ing In the Israeli Elections

Many years ago, Rab­bi Shi­mon Soro­ka, a leader of Zeirei Agu­dath Israel in Israel and a vice may­or of Bnei Brak, came to Bal­ti­more to solic­it funds for the upcom­ing Israeli elec­tions. As a yeshi­va bochur who was the head of Pirchei Agu­das Yis­roel of Bal­ti­more, I was zocheh to accom­pa­ny him on his vis­its in Bal­ti­more. He relat­ed to me the sto­ry of a Bnei Brak res­i­dent, who took it as a giv­en that he shouldn’t vote. He did, how­ev­er, pose the ques­tion to the Cha­zon Ish. The Cha­zon Ish answered him very firm­ly that, in fact, he must vote.

On Elec­tion Day, the Cha­zon Ish met this same Jew in the street. “Did you vote yet?” inquired the Cha­zon Ish.

No,” was the response.

Why not?” per­sist­ed the Cha­zon Ish.

I don’t have the three Israeli pounds to pay the poll tax,” was the answer.

The Cha­zon Ish would not give up. “Do you own a pair of tefill­in?” he continued.

Of course!” answered the Jew.

Well, go and sell your pair of tefill­in and use the funds to pay the poll tax so that you can go and vote,” said the Cha­zon Ish.

The Cha­zon Ish lat­er explained to Rab­bi Soro­ka that wear­ing tefill­in is a mitz­vah, but vot­ing in the elec­tion is also a mitzvah.

I’m not wor­ried that this Jew will not put be putting on tefillin,”explained the Cha­zon Ish. “If need be, he’ll bor­row a pair. I am afraid that he won’t per­form this oth­er mitz­vah – vot­ing in the election.”

How Gedolei Yis­rael Viewed Elec­tions in Israel

He adds that he heard from Har­av Yitzchak Flakser, zt”lR”M in Sfas Emes, who was a neigh­bor of the Tchebin­er Rav, that on the morn­ing of Elec­tion Day, he heard peo­ple argu­ing out­side the Rav’s house. They argued that if the Tchebin­er Rav didn’t have to go to vote, then why did they? Reb Yitzchak shared what he had heard with the Rav, who told him to go out­side and tell the peo­ple there that he had already vot­ed. Reb Yitzchak was stunned. “Reb­bi, ad kedei kach [to such an extent?]” and the Rav replied, “Ya, ya, ad kedei kach.”

The meshamshim recall how the Rav was adamant that every­one go vote, includ­ing his gabba’im, and even the Reb­bet­zin — and they trav­eled to Tel Aviv, where they were reg­is­tered as res­i­dents. That day, he didn’t take kvit­lach [which were con­veyed through the gabba’im]. When peo­ple came to him with kvit­lach, he said, “Go vote.”

Har­av Weber, who was then a bachur, relates that only he remained in the Rav’s house while the oth­er gabba’im went to their places of res­i­dence to vote.

The Rebbe said to me, ‘The truth is it was very hard for me to send all the gabba’im away,’” Har­av Weber recalls. “‘But I had no choice, because the elec­tions are such a great mitz­vah I could not hold them back!’ He waved his two holy arms in the air and said ‘Aza groiseh mitz­vah!’ with reverence.”

If the Belz­er Rav, who knew what a mitz­vah means, said of elec­tions “Aza groiseh mitz­vah!”— dare we doubt it?

Chatam Sofer, Choshen Mish­pat 116

An elec­tion’s legit­i­ma­cy can be under­mined – and its out­come thus unen­force­able against non-vot­ers – only if the elec­tion is inad­e­quate­ly pub­li­cized or some vot­ers inhib­it eli­gi­ble oth­ers from vot­ing… once a pub­lic announce­ment issues for an elec­tion, all who choose not to vote give up their rights to cast bal­lots and are treat­ed as if they appoint­ed those who do vote as their prox­ies to decide the election.

The Rab­bini­cal Assem­bly (“RA”)

The RA urged reforms against vot­er sup­pres­sion to ful­fill the verse לֹא־תַעֲשׂוּ עָוֶל בַּמִּשְׁפָּט לֹא־תִשָּׂא פְנֵי־דָל וְלֹא תֶהְדַּר פְּנֵי גָדוֹל בְּצֶדֶק תִּשְׁפֹּט עֲמִיתֶךָ — “Do not ren­der an unfair deci­sion, do not respect the poor or favor the mighty. This result impelled what the RA called fair elec­tion mechan­ics to enforce the prac­ti­cal right to vote and have each vote count­ed. Rabbinicalassembly.org/resolution-election-reform?tp=270, quot­ing Lev. 19:15; see also “Res­o­lu­tion on Vot­ing Rights in the Unit­ed States” (2014), avail­able at http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/story/resolution-voting-rights-united-states?tp=1355. Sim­i­lar­ly, the RA advo­cat­ed pub­lic financ­ing of cam­paigns to equal­ize polit­i­cal influ­ence, based on the Deuteron­o­my ban on par­tial­i­ty in judg­ment. See Rab­bini­cal Assem­bly, “Res­o­lu­tion on Cam­paign Finance Reform in the Unit­ed States,” avail­able at http://www.-rabbinicalassembly.org/story/resolution-campaign-finance-reform-united-states?tp=378.

Cen­tral Con­fer­ence of Amer­i­can Rab­bis (CCAR), “Res­o­lu­tion on Elec­tion Reform” (2001)

The pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 2000 exposed numer­ous flaws in the Unit­ed States’ elec­tion pro­ce­dures. Across the nation, polling mech­a­nisms, the design of elec­tion bal­lots, vot­ing rules, hours, and allo­ca­tion of finan­cial resources vary sig­nif­i­cant­ly between states and local­i­ties. In many juris­dic­tions uti­liz­ing old­er types of vot­ing equip­ment (such as punch card machines) bal­lots are dis­qual­i­fied at sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er rates than in juris­dic­tions employ­ing more accu­rate and reli­able equip­ment (such as opti­cal scan machines). In some states, it has been found that old­er machines are con­cen­trat­ed in poor­er areas and result in sta­tis­ti­cal­ly high­er rates of dis­qual­i­fied votes for cit­i­zens of col­or, who tend to reside in these precincts. More­over, due to the lack of leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ti­za­tion for fund­ing of elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion, offi­cials in many states and local­i­ties do not have the resources to hire ade­quate num­bers of elec­tion work­ers and con­duct mean­ing­ful vot­er edu­ca­tion pro­grams. Final­ly, in some instances, efforts to purge inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers from reg­is­tra­tion rolls (includ­ing those who have died, moved, or been sen­tenced as felons) have result­ed in the mis­tak­en elim­i­na­tion of ful­ly eli­gi­ble vot­ers from reg­is­tra­tion rolls. Elec­tion laws that place high bur­dens of proof on the vot­er, com­bined with inad­e­quate checks and bal­ances in these sys­tems in place on Elec­tion Day, have made it dif­fi­cult for such aggriev­ed vot­ers to obtain redress.

Many cit­i­zens are par­tic­u­lar­ly embit­tered over the alleged dis­en­fran­chise­ment of cit­i­zens of col­or dur­ing the 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. While the events in the state of Flori­da have received the most atten­tion, the phe­nom­e­non is not lim­it­ed to that state in par­tic­u­lar. Along with the dis­qual­i­fy­ing of thou­sands of dis­put­ed bal­lots, there are unan­swered ques­tions about both access to the polls and the fair­ness of pro­ce­dures for count­ing of votes. Many cit­i­zens of col­or har­bor lin­ger­ing resent­ment over this process, and echo the sen­ti­ment of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Lewis (D‑GA), who remarked, “I thought this was behind us.” Alle­ga­tions of vot­er dis­en­fran­chise­ment remind us of the vital impor­tance of our government’s oblig­a­tions to vig­or­ous­ly enforce vot­ing rights laws and ensure that all Amer­i­cans have free, unfet­tered access to ful­fill their right to a secret ballot.

Our tra­di­tion teach­es us that the process of choos­ing lead­ers is not a priv­i­lege, but a col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty. The Sage Hil­lel taught “Al tifros min hatz­ibur, Do not sep­a­rate your­self from the com­mu­ni­ty” (Pirke Avot 2:5). Rab­bi Yitzhak taught that “A ruler is not to be appoint­ed unless the com­mu­ni­ty is first con­sult­ed” (Baby­lon­ian Tal­mud Bera­chot 55a). This eth­ic of polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion has guid­ed Jews to enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly par­tic­i­pate in the Amer­i­can elec­toral process and is epit­o­mized by our tra­di­tion­al­ly strong vot­er turnout. Jews also have placed a pri­or­i­ty on vot­er edu­ca­tion and reg­is­tra­tion efforts. In the past elec­tion cycle, the Reform Move­ment, through the Reli­gious Action Cen­ter, took a lead role in this effort by pub­lish­ing a “Get Out the Vote Pro­gram Plan and Action Man­u­al,” joint­ly with the Recon­struc­tion­ist, Con­ser­v­a­tive, and Ortho­dox Move­ments. More­over, giv­en our his­tor­i­cal role in the civ­il rights strug­gle, alle­ga­tions of vot­er dis­en­fran­chise­ment com­pel us to speak out. It is our duty to ensure that all cit­i­zens are afford­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote and have their votes counted.

In order to restore con­fi­dence in the integri­ty and fair­ness of our nation’s elec­tion process, gov­ern­ment agen­cies at the fed­er­al, state and local lev­els must work togeth­er to eval­u­ate the var­i­ous com­po­nents of our elec­toral sys­tem. They should take any nec­es­sary and appro­pri­ate steps to strength­en and/or change pol­i­cy at the fed­er­al, state and local lev­els to ensure that all per­sons wish­ing to vote are giv­en a mean­ing­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so, and all votes deter­mined to be valid in accor­dance with estab­lished fair stan­dards are count­ed accord­ing­ly. Con­gress and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies should assess approach­es that aim to ensure fair­ness with regard to cast­ing and count­ing of votes, includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, the imple­men­ta­tion of a uni­form nation­wide poll clos­ing time and uni­form stan­dards for count­ing dis­put­ed bal­lots with­in indi­vid­ual states. Gov­ern­ment agen­cies at the fed­er­al, state and local lev­els should also eval­u­ate and under­take mea­sures aimed at expand­ing vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, increas­ing vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion and ensur­ing equal access to the polls for all Amer­i­cans. Such mea­sures could include, but are not lim­it­ed to, week­end vot­ing; mail-in bal­lots; estab­lish­ment of Elec­tion Day as a hol­i­day; and same-day vot­er registration.

For the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, the events sur­round­ing the 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion must be seen as a clar­i­on call to civic duty. The impe­tus now exists for us to redou­ble efforts, indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, to increase vot­er reg­is­tra­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion, and engage in leg­isla­tive advo­ca­cy to ensure that vital elec­tion reform pro­pos­als are afford­ed seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion by our nation’s elect­ed officials.

There­fore, the Cen­tral Con­fer­ence of Amer­i­can Rab­bis resolves to:

• Call on fed­er­al, state and local gov­ern­ments to vig­or­ous­ly enforce vot­ing rights laws and to ensure that all Amer­i­cans have free, unfet­tered access to ful­fill their right to a secret ballot.

• Sup­port leg­is­la­tion at the fed­er­al, state and local lev­els to ensure fair­ness with respect to the cast­ing and count­ing of votes.

• Sup­port the replace­ment of unre­li­able and out­mod­ed vot­ing equip­ment with more accu­rate and reli­able equipment.

• Urge the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to pro­vide finan­cial assis­tance to state and local gov­ern­ments to imple­ment improve­ments in their elec­tion systems.

• Call on the Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Jus­tice and oth­er appro­pri­ate gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies to con­duct a prop­er and thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion into the deeply trou­bling alle­ga­tions of vot­er dis­en­fran­chise­ment dur­ing the 2000 pres­i­den­tial election.

• Encour­age fed­er­al, state and local gov­ern­ment agen­cies to under­take mea­sures aimed at expand­ing vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, increas­ing vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion and ensur­ing equal access to the polls for all Americans.

• Call on our mem­ber rab­bis to take a lead­er­ship role with­in their con­gre­ga­tions and com­mu­ni­ties in spon­sor­ing non­par­ti­san vot­er reg­is­tra­tion and vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion drives.

Mish­na Avot 2:16

Rab­bi Tar­fon said: the day is short, and the work is plen­ti­ful, and the labor­ers are indo­lent, and the reward is great, and the mas­ter of the house is insistent.רַבִּי טַרְפוֹן אוֹמֵר, הַיּוֹם קָצָר וְהַמְּלָאכָה מְרֻבָּה, וְהַפּוֹעֲלִים עֲצֵלִים, וְהַשָּׂכָר הַרְבֵּה, וּבַעַל הַבַּיִת דּוֹחֵק:

judaic presidential campaign buttons for 2020

This year there were no Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry cam­paign but­tons. The large field of Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry can­di­dates pro­duced a num­ber of but­tons. How­ev­er, it appears that only the cam­paigns of Mike Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, and Eliz­a­beth War­ren pro­duced but­tons aimed at the Jew­ish community.

The Trump cam­paign has pro­duced a huge amount of swag, but no but­tons relat­ed to the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. The pri­ma­ry Jew­ish Trump sur­ro­gate group: “Jews Choose Trump” has pro­duced bumper stick­ers, tote bags, hats, kip­pot, and tee shirts. How­ev­er, the pri­ma­ry item at their Web site is a face mask with their logo.

jews choose trump mask
jews choose trump mask

Third par­ty but­ton mak­ers have pro­duced a wide vari­ety of pr0-Trump Jew­ish themed but­tons. One depicts Trump as Daniel in the lion’s den. A sec­ond pairs Trump with Cyrus the Great, hint­ing at the rebuild­ing of the Tem­ple in Jerusalem, Anoth­er dis­plays the Amer­i­can flag atop the Dome of the Rock… renamed Trump Tow­er. Per­haps the strangest of them has Trump with raised fist and a crown of thorns that holds up an Israeli flag with the Hebrew text (trans­lat­ed): “Hear o Israel, God won”.

Trump with crown of thorns
Trump with crown of thorns
Date:2020
Size:7.62
Pin Form:clasp
Print Method:cel­lu­loid
Textשמע ישראל, האל ניצח

The Biden cam­paign, on the oth­er hand seems to be more restrained. The Jew­ish Demo­c­ra­t­ic Coun­cil of Amer­i­can, which seems to have replaced the Nation­al Jew­ish Demo­c­ra­t­ic Coun­cil, has a vari­ety of Jew­ish-themed swag (sim­i­lar objects as the Jews who choose Trump… minus the kip­pot), but no but­tons. Only the region­al Michi­gan Demo­c­ra­t­ic Jew­ish Cau­cus has but­tons avail­able. Their but­tons are, by far, more sub­tle than the pro-Trump buttons.

B“H 2020

Date:2020
Size:5.6
Pin Form:clasp
Print Method:cel­lu­loid
TextB“T
2020

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jack­et you no longer wear or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lying around that you do not feel emo­tion­al­ly attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point, they will all go to an appro­pri­ate muse­um. You can see all the but­tons shared to date.

Posted in cross-posting, judaica, lapel buttons, politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

for multiple transgressions of…

…it’s time to boost this up to the top

The words of Amos, who was among the writ­ers of Tel Aviv, which he saw, con­cern­ing Israel in the days of Cas­tro, Sartre, Rus­sell and all the rest…

The fol­low­ing text appeared in the Octo­ber 1968 edi­tion of Mid­stream mag­a­zine. It was dis­trib­uted very wide­ly as a long leaflet in the late 1960s. Jay tracked down a copy for me. Con­sid­er­ing that it’s over forty years old and there are no copies of it on the web, and the author is now dead (August 4, 2009 יד אב תשסט), and that it’s still a very good piece I have tak­en the lib­er­ty of offer­ing it here (with links to help make clear some of the ref­er­ences as well as sub­head­ings to break up the con­tin­u­ous text.

Jay and I were among the many young Jews who were touched by what Kenan had to say. We dis­trib­uted the arti­cle as wide­ly as pos­si­ble in the late ’60s. Among oth­ers who were so touched and have now writ­ten appre­ci­a­tions of Kenan are J. J. Gold­berg in the For­ward and David Twer­sky at the JTA.

With very few updat­ed ref­er­ences, this Let­ter is, sad­ly, as time­ly now as it was then… and wor­thy of being read by a new generation.

A Letter to all Good People

To Fidel Castro, Sartre, Russell and All the Rest

By AMOS KENAN ז“ל

I am for Cuba. I love Cuba. I am opposed to the geno­cide per­pe­trat­ed by the Amer­i­cans in Viet­nam. I want the Amer­i­cans to get out of Viet­nam immediately.

But I am an Israeli, there­fore I am for­bid­den to take all these stands. Cuba does not want me to love her. Some­one has decid­ed that I am per­mit­ted to love only the Amer­i­cans. I don’t mind so much that some­one, espe­cial­ly the good peo­ple every­where, have decid­ed to out­law me. I shall be able to get along with­out their help. But I do mind that I am not per­mit­ted any longer to love and hate accord­ing to my feel­ings, and accord­ing to my polit­i­cal and moral incli­na­tions, and that I am refused invi­ta­tion or even admit­tance to par­ties held by the good peo­ple. I am not per­mit­ted any longer to toast jus­tice with a glass of cham­pagne. I am not per­mit­ted to eat caviar and denounce the Amer­i­cans. I am not per­mit­ted to stroll in the sun-drenched streets of Havana, arm-in-arm with my erst­while good friends from St. Ger­main, Via Vene­to and Chelsea, and cel­e­brate the mem­o­ry of Che Gue­vara, cast­ing a threat­en­ing look at impe­ri­al­ism. I am also final­ly and absolute­ly for­bid­den to sign peti­tions of all sorts for human rights and for the release of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers from the jails of reac­tionary regimes. I am not “In,” I am “Out.” For me the par­ty is over. Period.

This sit­u­a­tion dri­ves me slight­ly out of my mind. There­fore I wish to relate a few con­fused, dis­con­nect­ed sto­ries. Per­haps some good man will find the con­nec­tion. Here we go.

hasten to the aid of distressed vessels; or not

One day an Israeli sub­ma­rine sank in the Mediter­ranean with its six­ty-nine crew mem­bers. Its SOS was answered, among oth­ers, by the British, Turk­ish and Greek fleets. The Russ­ian navy, which was cruis­ing very close to the loca­tion, did not join in the search. Moscow Radio’s Arab broad­casts, took the trou­ble to denounce the coun­tries whose ships rushed to help the lost submarine.

It is a sacred prin­ci­ple of sea­men of all nations to has­ten to the aid of dis­tressed ves­sels. In civ­i­lized coun­tries, like Eng­land, it is cus­tom­ary to aid even an ene­my, even in wartime. The explic­it rule bind­ing on any cap­tain is to risk his life and his ves­sel in order to save the vic­tims. It is well worth not­ing that even com­man­ders of Ger­man U‑boats dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, except mem­bers of the SS, used to sur­face after sink­ing an Allied ship, sup­ply the sur­vivors with water, food and maps, and give them the cor­rect course to a safe haven. But the glo­ri­ous days of Nazi human­ism are appar­ent­ly over. The Israeli sub­ma­rine was not on a war mis­sion, and Israel is not in a state of war with the Sovi­et Union. Nev­er­the­less, Moscow Radio is of the opin­ion that any­one rush­ing to my aid in my dis­tress does not help humanity.

I am not so naive as to believe that this is anti-Semi­tism, Sovi­et style. I have nev­er believed that the Sovi­ets are guid­ed in their cal­cu­la­tions by such pow­er­ful and sin­cere emo­tions as anti-Semi­tism, which is com­mon to both the pro­gres­sive and the reac­tionary camps. I know that the Rus­sians con­duct a cool, con­sid­ered, prag­mat­ic pol­i­cy and are guid­ed by clear polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions. This was a polit­i­cal move, car­ried out as a part of a polit­i­cal game.

The mean­ing of this move can only be: Israel must be iso­lat­ed from the civ­i­lized human com­mu­ni­ty. The rules that apply to the civ­i­lized com­mu­ni­ty, rules of hon­or, con­sid­er­a­tion and mutu­al aid, do not apply to me.

the shedding of my blood is no crime

I am out. There is only one more step to the con­clu­sion: the shed­ding of my blood is no crime.

And now the con­clu­sion: A dev­as­tat­ing attack on me. Dev­as­tat­ing, but nec­es­sary and just. It is per­mis­si­ble to destroy a per­son whom it is not oblig­a­tory to save. It is a duty to destroy a per­son whom it is oblig­a­tory not to save.

For­give my bru­tal way of putting things. I can­not con­ceive of it oth­er­wise. If this was a move in a game, the game must have an object. The object is the pen­e­tra­tion of the Mid­dle East, and let us assume, for the sake of argu­ment, that this is for the pur­pose of advanc­ing world rev­o­lu­tion and the over­throw of impe­ri­al­ism. The Mid­dle East con­tains one-hun­dred-mil­lion Arabs and two-and-a-half mil­lion Israelis. There is no need for an elec­tron­ic com­put­er to prove which is the eas­i­er way out. But it is not so easy, in our enlight­ened world, to wipe out two-and-a-half mil­lion peo­ple. A rea­son and a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion are need­ed. You can­not wipe out just like that. First of all, you must out­law. In an excel­lent Czech film we have seen how the towns­peo­ple did not object to the con­fis­ca­tion of Jew­ish prop­er­ty. Those who did not oppose the con­fis­ca­tion did not oppose the depor­ta­tion, and after the deportation …

There­fore, as long as there is one good Israeli, you can­not destroy Israel. There­fore there must not be a sin­gle just Israeli in Sodom. There­fore you must not invite an Israeli Com­mu­nist Par­ty to a con­ven­tion of Com­mu­nist par­ties. There­fore you must not invite a left­ist Israeli author to a con­fer­ence of left­ist authors in Havana.

There are no more class dis­tinc­tions. There are only nation­al dis­tinc­tions. Even an Israeli left­ist is an impe­ri­al­ist. And an oil sheikh is a social­ist. The way is open.

it is permissible to compare me to the Nazis

There­fore it is per­mis­si­ble to com­pare me to the Nazis. It is per­mis­si­ble to call me a gauleit­er. It is per­mis­si­ble to mobi­lize all of the world’s con­sci­en­tious peo­ple against me – with­out them you can­not do it – and all this because there is an object loom­ing beyond the hori­zon, an object for the sake of which this tac­tic is jus­ti­fi­able and useful.

I beg your par­don. I want to tell you some­thing about myself, before I con­tin­ue with my con­fused stories.

Until quite recent­ly I also belonged to the good peo­ple. Mean­ing that not only did I sit in cafés and sign peti­tions for the release of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in coun­tries not my own. Not only did I join procla­ma­tions, after sip­ping my aper­i­tif, for the release of the down­trod­den from the yoke of impe­ri­al­ism in places I shall nev­er reach; I also did some­thing against what seemed to me to be oppres­sion and injus­tice in my own country.

After hav­ing fought as a mem­ber of the Stern Group for the lib­er­a­tion of my coun­try and the whole Mid­dle East from impe­ri­al­ism, I did not turn auto­mat­i­cal­ly from being an oppressed per­son into an oppres­sor, as hap­pens, unfor­tu­nate­ly, to many peo­ple in many places.

I am used to being called a traitor by local patriots

Dur­ing the twen­ty years of the exis­tence of the State of Israel, I helped with my pen in my reg­u­lar news­pa­per col­umn, by fight­ing against the injus­tices com­mit­ted against the Arab minor­i­ty. And not by the pen only, but also in demon­stra­tions, and also when arraigned before a mil­i­tary tri­bunal. I am used to being called a trai­tor by local patri­ots – which is a uni­ver­sal phe­nom­e­non. I shall have to get used to being called a trai­tor by my pro­gres­sive friends, too.

Peo­ple close to me here once estab­lished a Com­mit­tee for a Free Alge­ria. When the Alger­ian MIG’s do appear in Israel’s skies – I say this par­en­thet­i­cal­ly – poet­ic jus­tice demands that they should first bomb the homes of the mem­bers of this Com­mit­tee. Now you can close the paren­the­ses, with us included.

Dur­ing the Six Day War, in June 1967, the bat­tal­ion I served in was ordered to super­vise the demo­li­tion of four Arab vil­lages: I con­sid­ered it my duty to desert from my unit, to write a report of this action, and to send the copies to the Gen­er­al Staff of the Army, to mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment and to Knes­set mem­bers. This report has been trans­lat­ed and cir­cu­lat­ed in the world as a proof of Israel’s crimes.

But per­mit me to con­clude the sto­ry. The action I under­took was in fla­grant vio­la­tion of any mil­i­tary law. Accord­ing to mil­i­tary reg­u­la­tions I should have been court-mar­tialed. I have no idea what would have been the sen­tence of a Red Army sol­dier were he to vio­late nation­al and mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline in such a man­ner, and I refuse to guess what would have hap­pened to him even in my worst dreams.

After return­ing to my unit, I was ordered to present myself – I, a pri­vate in rank – before the Gen­er­al com­mand­ing all the divi­sions on that front. He told me that he had read my report and con­sid­ered it his duty to inform me that what had occurred was a regret­table error which will not recur.

I disbelieved his statement that this was only a mistake

Deep in my heart I dis­be­lieved his state­ment that this was only a mis­take. I was con­vinced that who­ev­er ordered such an action did not expect such resis­tance from with­in – the men of my bat­tal­ion refused to car­ry out the order – and was alarmed at the impres­sion such an action might cre­ate abroad. But I was glad that he found it nec­es­sary to announce that this was only an error. I asked him how he intends to ensure that the ‘error’ will nev­er recur. On the spot he signed an order per­mit­ting me free move­ment in all occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries so that I could see with my own eyes that such an action had not recurred.

But since then, in all the peace-papers in the world, my report about the destruc­tion of vil­lages has been reprint­ed over and over again, as if it hap­pened only yes­ter­day, as if it hap­pened again and again, as if it is hap­pen­ing all the time. And this is a lie. It is like writ­ing that witch­es have been burnt at the stake in Eng­land – omit­ting the date.

I here­by request all those who believed me when I report­ed a crim­i­nal act, to believe me now too. And those who do not believe me now, I here­by request to dis­be­lieve my for­mer report too, and not to believe me selec­tive­ly, accord­ing to their con­ve­nience. I should also add that the town of Kalk­iliya, which began to be demol­ished dur­ing the writ­ing of my report, is now in the process of being rebuilt, after the expelled inhab­i­tants have been brought back. I know that any­one protest­ing injus­tice is some­what dis­ap­point­ed if his protest helps to rec­ti­fy the injus­tice. But what can I do if it did happen?

the less you fight me, the more you would help me fight [injustices]

This does not mean that oth­er injus­tices are not per­pe­trat­ed now. The less you fight me, the more you would help me fight them.

If the Allies had defeat­ed Ger­many in 1940, there would have been no Auschwitz death camps. And today, were any­one to claim that the Ger­mans intend­ed to mur­der six mil­lion Jews, peo­ple would have said: This is mere­ly pro­pa­gan­da. They only talked that way. They did­n’t mean it. What can we do if the threats to destroy Israel, voiced before the Six-Day War, bore no fruit?

When the Rus­sians announced con­cen­tra­tions of Israeli troops on the Syr­i­an bor­der, Prime Min­is­ter Eshkol invit­ed Sovi­et Ambas­sador Chubakhin to accom­pa­ny him on a trip to the bor­der and to see for him­self that this was not true. The Sovi­et ambas­sador declined the invi­ta­tion. What naiveté on Eshkol’s part! If the Sovi­ets decid­ed, in order to advance their polit­i­cal aims, that they need Israel troop con­cen­tra­tions, what is the use of truth? Who said that the Rus­sians are not ready to fight to the last Egypt­ian, to the last Vietcong?

On the very day that the Sovi­et ambas­sador decid­ed that he had no inter­est in the truth, on the very day that the Rus­sians denounced Israel in spite of the open threats of destruc­tion issu­ing from the rulers of Egypt, Com­mu­nist Rus­sia joined a con­spir­a­cy of genocide.

No greater dis­as­ter could befall a man of the left. Even the most left­ist of men will not con­sent to be slaugh­tered when a sword is point­ed at his throat. Even when the sword is a pro­gres­sive one, it does not make it any the pleas­an­ter. The trou­ble is that not a sin­gle seri­ous per­son in the world believes today that Israel was real­ly in dan­ger of being anni­hi­lat­ed. This is the opti­cal illu­sion of 1968.

does anybody in the world have any memory

Does any­body in the world have any mem­o­ry at all? Who does real­ly remem­ber what hap­pened yesterday?

The gigan­tic Goliath is threat­en­ing lit­tle David. The fact that Goliath is a giant, and that David is small, is only an opti­cal illu­sion. If Goliath tri­umphs and tram­ples David under his feet, it is a sign that he real­ly is a giant. But if lit­tle David beats the giant, peo­ple say: the giant David has tram­pled poor lit­tle Goliath in the dust.

I claim that Israel played the role of David. And I claim that even now, after the stun­ning vic­to­ry, she still is lit­tle David who has indeed beat­en the stunned Goliath, but Goliath still is a men­ac­ing giant. Today, no less than in June 1967, Israel is in dan­ger of anni­hi­la­tion. Unless the enlight­ened world mobi­lizes now, imme­di­ate­ly, per­haps it will be too late. But I am afraid that there are not many peo­ple in the world today who will be sor­ry if vic­to­ri­ous David is destroyed.

Many more peo­ple would have been ready to mourn the anni­hi­lat­ed, beat­en David. And here again it is only a mat­ter of a moral opti­cal illusion.

A bit­ter sus­pi­cion ris­es in me that even the most enlight­ened among the pro­gres­sive peo­ple still adhere to the Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion that they imbibed in their moth­ers’ milk: Jew, stay on the cross. Nev­er get off it. The day you get off the cross and hurl it at the heads of your cru­ci­fiers, we shall cease to love you.

An accursed peo­ple, the cru­ci­fied Mes­sian­ic peo­ple of the cru­ci­fiers of the cru­ci­fied Messiah.

a quiet, peace-loving, socialist country like Egypt…

The pic­ture which emerges today is more or less as fol­lows: A qui­et, peace-lov­ing, social­ist coun­try like Egypt, a coun­try try­ing, by means of an Ara­bic or Islam­ic social­ism, to trans­form itself rapid­ly from reli­gious feu­dal­ism into an indus­tri­al soci­ety, has been beset by a mil­i­taris­tic, cun­ning, expan­sion­ist state, which had hus­band­ed its might for years for the crush­ing and dev­as­tat­ing attack, and thanks to its tech­no­log­i­cal might has tram­pled a back­ward, help­less ene­my underfoot.

Who will believe us today, that what guid­ed us in the awful days of May 1967 was the oath to the six mil­lion? Who will believe that we tri­umphed because we had no oth­er alternative?

We have no army, no might, noth­ing. We have a nar­row coastal strip, unpro­tect­ed civil­ian cities. But on that bit­ter day when we felt that every­thing had closed around us, we knew that what had hap­pened once, what had always hap­pened, must nev­er hap­pen again. We decid­ed to resist. We decid­ed to fight in the hous­es, in the stair­wells, from street to street and from house to house. No flat in Tel-Aviv could have been con­quered with­out killing all men, women and chil­dren in it. No white flag would have been raised on a sin­gle build­ing in Tel Aviv. The con­quest of Israel would have been a very expen­sive business.

Today the Arabs boast of wag­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary guer­ril­la war­fare. They claim to have copied the Viet­cong method of war­fare and are apply­ing it in the Mid­dle East. They march with Che Gue­vara’s picture.

This makes me laugh.

Just as Che Gue­vara’s pic­ture made me laugh hang­ing in the lux­u­ri­ous salons of Montparnasse.

I have always won­dered whether Che Gue­vara had a pic­ture of Che Gue­vara hang­ing in his salon.

What is the Viet­cong? The Viet­cong is not white flags on build­ings. The Viet­cong means fight­ing to the last man. The Viet­cong of the Mid­dle East, whether those who demon­strate with Che Gue­vara’s pic­ture like it or not, are we. We are pre­pared, at any moment, to wage the bat­tle to the death.

having been morally assassinated

After hav­ing been moral­ly assas­si­nat­ed, we are pre­pared to fight for our bare ter­res­tri­al lives, even with­out the sym­pa­thy and the bless­ing of the world’s pro­gres­sive camp. After the death camps, we are left with only one supreme val­ue: existence.

Some­thing about the use of the word “we”; I am not proud of this usage. Once, when I used to say “we,” I mean we, all those who love Che, who hate France. Those who love Nâzım Hik­met and hate oppres­sion. Once I believed that the real ene­my always dwells at home, and that the only true war is a civ­il war. Gone are the days. Today, if you are ready for me to die because of Dayan, and Dayan is not ready to die with me but to fight, whom should I choose?

Our exis­tence, today, is incon­ve­nient for those who work at the glob­al bal­ance of pow­er. It is more con­ve­nient that there should be two camps, one white, the oth­er black. We num­ber, as I said before, only two-and-a-half mil­lion peo­ple. On the glob­al map, what is the val­ue of a few hun­dred-thou­sand left­ists oppos­ing the Eshkol gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and striv­ing for a gen­uine peace with the Arabs, who strive to lib­er­ate them­selves from the one-way depen­dence on Amer­i­can power?

Some­body has already decid­ed to sac­ri­fice us. The his­to­ry of rev­o­lu­tion is full of such sac­ri­fices since the days of the Span­ish Civ­il War. Once world rev­o­lu­tion was sac­ri­ficed on the altar of the “rev­o­lu­tion in one coun­try.” Today the cal­cu­la­tion is some­what subtler.

Today they try to explain to us that there is an Arab social­ism. There is an Egypt­ian social­ism, and an Alger­ian social­ism. There is a social­ism of slave-traders, and a social­ism of oil mag­nates. There are all kinds of social­ism, all aim­ing real­ly at one and the same thing — the over­throw of impe­ri­al­ism, which hap­pens to be one and indivisible.

there was only a single kind of socialism

Once there was only a sin­gle kind of social­ism, which fed on prin­ci­ples, some of them moral. On the day that moral­i­ty died there was born the par­tic­u­lar, con­ven­tion­al social­ism, chang­ing from place to place and from time to time, for which I have no oth­er name but Nation­al Social­ism.

I want to live. What can I do if Rus­sia, Chi­na, Viet­nam, India, Yugoslavia, Sartre, Rus­sell, Cas­tro, have all decid­ed that I am made all of a piece? It is incon­ve­nient for them to admit that there is an oppo­si­tion in Israel too. Why should there be an oppo­si­tion in Israel if in the Pop­u­lar Democ­ra­cies, in Cuba or Alge­ria, there is only one party?

And per­haps they do have pangs of con­science. But they have made their cal­cu­la­tion and found out that I am only one, only ten, only one-hun­dred-thou­sand, and on the oth­er side there are tens of mil­lions, all led like a sin­gle man, in a sin­gle par­ty, towards the light, towards the sun. And if so, who am I?

I will tell you who I am: I am the man who will con­fuse and con­found your pro­gres­sive cal­cu­la­tions. I have too much love with this vain world, a world of caviar, tele­vi­sion, sun­ny beach­es, sex and good wine. You go ahead and toast the rev­o­lu­tion with cham­pagne. I shall toast myself, my own life, bot­tle in one hand, rifle in the other.

Beware. God is not with you.

You send Sovi­et arms to Egypt. You iso­late me. And in order to make it eas­i­er to iso­late me, you change my name. My flesh, which you eat, you call fish. You don’t want to pro­tect me – nei­ther against the Arabs, nor against the Rus­sians, nor against Dayan or John­son. More­over, when I try to call on you and tell you that I am against Dayan, against Eshkol, against Ben-Guri­on, and ask for your help, you laugh at me and demand that I should return to the June 4 bor­ders uncon­di­tion­al­ly. Hold it! I refuse to play this game. If you give me back the pis­tol with which I tried to kill you, I won’t kill you. Because I am a nice fel­low. But if you don’t give it back to me, I shall kill you, because you are a bad fellow.

why weren’t the June 4 borders peace borders on the fourth of June?

Why weren’t the June 4 bor­ders peace bor­ders on the fourth of June, but will only become so now? Why weren’t the UN Par­ti­tion Plan bor­ders of 1947 peace bor­ders then, but will become so now? Why should I return his gun to the ban­dit as a reward for hav­ing failed to kill me?

I want peace peace peace peace, peace peace peace.

I am ready to give every­thing back in exchange for peace. And I shall give noth­ing back with­out peace.

I am ready to solve the refugee prob­lem. I am ready to accept an inde­pen­dent Pales­tin­ian state. I am ready to sit and talk. About every­thing, all at the same time. Direct talks, indi­rect talks, all this is imma­te­r­i­al. But peace.

Until you agree to have peace, I shall give back noth­ing. And if you force me to become a con­queror, I shall become a con­queror. And if you force me to become an oppres­sor, I shall become an oppres­sor. And if you force me into the same camp with all the forces of dark­ness in the world, there I shall be.

There is no lack of rabid mil­i­tarists in Israel. Their num­ber is steadi­ly increas­ing, the more our iso­la­tion becomes appar­ent. Nass­er helps Dayan, Kosy­gin helps Eshkol. Fidel Cas­tro helps the Jew­ish chau­vin­ists. Who of the world’s giants cares how many more Jews, how many more Arabs, bleed to death in the Sinai sands?

there is no lack here of mad hysterical militarists

There is no lack here of mad hys­ter­i­cal mil­i­tarists. All those qui­et cit­i­zens who went out to war with KLM trav­el bags and in laun­dry trucks, who scrib­bled on their tanks: “We Want to Be Home”. All those who fought with­out anger, with­out hatred, only for their lives, are becom­ing mil­i­taris­tic, con­vinced that only Israeli pow­er, and noth­ing else in the world, will ever help us.

The only ones who are pre­pared to defend me, for rea­sons I don’t like at all, are the Amer­i­cans. It is con­ve­nient for them, for the time being. You are fling­ing me towards Amer­i­ca, the bas­tion of democ­ra­cy and the mur­der­er of Viet­nam, who tram­ples the down­trod­den peo­ples and spares my life, who oppress­es the Negroes and sup­plies me with arms to save myself. You leave me no oth­er alter­na­tive. You don’t even offer me humil­i­at­ing terms, to be admit­ted through the rear door into the pro­gres­sive orgy. You don’t even want me to over­throw my gov­ern­ment. You only want me to sur­ren­der, uncon­di­tion­al­ly, and to believe the spokes­men of the Rev­o­lu­tion that hence­forth no Jew­ish doc­tors will be mur­dered, and that they will lim­it them­selves to the dec­la­ra­tion that Zion­ism is respon­si­ble for the riots in Warsaw.

Very fun­ny. The truth is that I and Sartre, two peo­ple with the same vision, more or less, with the same ideals, more or less, and if I may be per­mit­ted the imper­ti­nence, with the same moral lev­el, more or less, are now on oppo­site sides of the barricade.

We have been pushed to both sides by the cold cal­cu­la­tions of the peo­ple who sent us or aban­doned us. But the fact remains – these are not Amer­i­cans shoot­ing Rus­sians, nor cap­i­tal­ists shoot­ing social­ists, or free­dom-fight­ers shoot­ing the oppressors.

neither do I know who shall be more lucky

It is I, shoot­ing Sartre. I see him in my gun sights; he sees me in his gun sights. I still don’t know which of us is faster, more skilled, or more deter­mined to kill or be killed. Nei­ther do I know who shall be more lucky – the one who has no oth­er alter­na­tive, or the one who acts out of choice.

One thing is clear to me: if I sur­vive, I shall mourn Sartre’s death more than he would mourn mine.

And if that hap­pens, I shall nev­er be con­soled until I wipe from under the heav­ens both the cap­i­tal­ists and the com­mu­nists. Or they me. Or each the oth­er. Or all destroy all.

And if I sur­vive even that, with­out a god but with­out prophets either, my life will have no sense what­so­ev­er. I shall have noth­ing else to do but walk on the banks of streams, or on the top of the rocks, watch the won­ders of nature, and con­sole myself with the words of Eccle­si­astes, the wis­est of men: For the light is sweet, and it is good for the eyes to see the sun.

AMOS KENAN, one of Israel’s out­stand­ing jour­nal­ists, express­es here the pro­found sen­ti­ments of much of Israel’s pro­gres­sive com­mu­ni­ty and calls for the under­stand­ing and par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Left through­out the world in achiev­ing peace in the Mid­dle East. Kenan is a fea­ture writer for Yediot Achronot, from which the above was translated.

If you own copy­right to A Let­ter to All Good Peo­ple and you do not want me the pub­lish it here, let me know and I’ll, grudg­ing­ly, remove it.


If I remem­ber cor­rect­ly, at the time it pub­lished A Let­ter to All Good Peo­ple, Mid­stream was housed in the offices of the Jew­ish Agency for Israel (the Sochnut הסוכנות) at 515 Park Ave. in New York City. That build­ing has been torn down and a new, high-rise lux­u­ry apart­ment build­ing now has the address.

at 515 Park Ave., New York City
at 515 Park Ave., New York City
the lapel button for the Radical Zionist Alliance (Los Angeles, CA)
a lapel but­ton of the Rad­i­cal Zion­ist Alliance (Los Ange­les, CA)
Date:ca. 1971
Size:2.3
Pin Form:straight
Print Method:cel­lu­loid
TextRZA

some references to the Radical Zionist Alliance

Posted in politics, who | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Preparing for ראש השנה & יום כפור

Rais­ing this to the top for the time being. Elul has begun. We turn more inward as the world toss­es in tur­moil. Our strug­gles are both inter­nal and exter­nal. Per­haps, if we can cor­rect some of our inter­nal issues, that can make us stronger to deal with oth­er exter­nal sit­u­a­tions. The side­bar to the right lists oth­er thoughts I’ve pre­pared to help our focus dur­ing this period.

A num­ber of peo­ple have writ­ten new ver­sions of the Al Chet. The sec­tion: “All set? Let’s all do the al chet” includes a series of Sur­vey Mon­key ques­tion­naires that may help each of us under­stand the tra­di­tion­al Al Chet in new ways. Read­ers of the ques­tion­naires can answer the ques­tions anony­mous­ly and can print their answers for their own, lat­er, reference.

How did the על חטא (al ḥet) begin?

I don’t know.
How­ev­er, I imag­ine it some­thing like this

[…from the archives (with minor updating)]:

Bethami knew the way down the narrow windswept alleyways of Tiberias with her eyes closed.

The lap­ping of the tiny waves of Galilee offered a con­stant guide. She had walked this path many times, since her ear­li­est years, when she went with her moth­er to vis­it the rab­bi. The paving stones had already been worn smooth by the time of her youngest mem­o­ries.
R. Ila’i greet­ed her at the door to his apart­ment.
The soft light through the win­dows reflect­ed off the white­washed walls. The cool­ness of the room, in con­trast with the humid­i­ty out­side, com­fort­ed her. He sat there, as usu­al, on a woolen car­pet in the mid­dle of the room, qui­et­ly watch­ing the pat­terns on the wall before him. Scrolls and wax tablets cov­ered with writ­ing lay on the low tables beside, and in the cub­by holes behind him.

she came today on behalf of her husband, Judah

He had recent­ly begun to suf­fer extreme short­ness of breath and intense pains in his chest. A very high-strung man, Judah had worked hard and become impor­tant in his quar­ter of the city. In his free time he orga­nized efforts to coun­ter­act the increas­ing­ly unpleas­ant decrees of the Roman occu­piers. Though his neigh­bors agreed with his efforts, Judah felt they were too slow to respond.
Betha­mi sat before the rab­bi, near his line of vision and waited.

A person’s char­ac­ter can be judged by the way they han­dle three thingsבשלשה דברים אדם ניכר
drinkבכוסו
mon­eyובכיסו
and angerובכעסו


Betha­mi under­stood the wis­dom couched in the word­play [Eru­vin 65b], she didn’t know how to express it to Judah.
The nights were already longer than the days and in the deep val­ley where they lived, below the lev­el of the great sea, this made for very lit­tle day­light. Soon R. Ila’i would meet with his clos­est col­leagues to eval­u­ate how they had spent their time since the pre­vi­ous year. He request­ed that Betha­mi invite Judah to join him.

the sun set over the steep mountain to the west and the day of pardoning began

R. Ila’i wel­comed his col­leagues, his stu­dents, his neigh­bors, and a few invit­ed guests to his home. He had put the scrolls and wax tablets into their cub­bies ear­li­er in the day. The tables, he moved against the walls. Almost every­one in the room knew the oth­ers on a per­son­al lev­el. Judah sat near Pin­has, a young man he con­sid­ered a loose arrow, a young ruf­fi­an. See­ing the fel­low there with all the oth­ers ran­kled him.
Judah had nev­er heard R. Ila’i say an unkind word or per­form a hurt­ful act, and yet, as each new arrival entered the house, the rab­bi took him aside, bowed his head, and spoke words of apology.

Many are the ways I have dimin­ished the spark of the Holy One that lives in each of you. These actions may seem too insignif­i­cant for you to have noticed them. Nonethe­less, they weigh heav­i­ly on my heart. You know that much of my day I sit here and watch the walls that now embrace us. On them, as though [l’havdil] on a pagan stage, I see the way you act with one anoth­er. I see also the pain you car­ry inside yourselves–and cause for each oth­er. Please, today, each of us is equal in our trans­gres­sions. We each have drawn the string of our bow and loosed the arrow only to miss the mark. This does not make us bad peo­ple. Our Cre­ator makes us pure. The Holy One cre­at­ed us with only the abil­i­ty to aim, not the guar­an­tee of a per­fect hit every time.

All of us will die. Some of us may die this year, oth­ers at a lat­er date, but we all will die. I can­not pre­vent the dying, none of us can, but we have the abil­i­ty to ease our path through this life.

Some of us car­ry pains that point to their end. Our anger only increas­es the pain we car­ry and con­stricts our way. Togeth­er we can release the fury that burns in our souls.

Oth­ers among us have not yet found their way; there appears no clear­ly defined trail ahead, we seem­ing­ly blind­ly hit those near­by destroy­ing the har­bor that shel­ters us. Togeth­er we can buffer your bouts and guide you toward safe paths.

Our cre­ator has set aside this day of par­don­ing for us to gath­er the spent arrows lying around the field. Come with me as, togeth­er, we search the plains and thick­ets of our lives for those words let loose with­out thought, even those acts of help­ful­ness left undone.

having begun the process, R. Ila’i closed his eyes for a moment in silence

Those in atten­dance shift­ed uneasi­ly in their places. When he opened them he looked intent­ly and per­son­al­ly at each one of them with an invit­ing smile on his face. Slow­ly, he list­ed a litany of wrongs. In every­thing he men­tioned, he spoke for all present, as though the mis­takes had been com­mit­ted not against any one indi­vid­ual among them, but against the body of cre­ation itself. Though many had nev­er heard the phras­es before, they rec­og­nized them­selves in the images evoked.

For the error we have made, which hurt You, will­ing­ly and unwill­ing­ly.
For the error we have made, which hurt You, by hard­en­ing our hearts.
For the error we have made, which hurt You, by act­ing with­out think­ing.
For the error we have made, which hurt You, by the words of our lips.

as he continued some of R. Ila’i’s colleagues began to add expressions of their own

And then his stu­dents joined in the process. For every­one rec­og­nized some­thing of him­self in the words spo­ken soft­ly, and in truth.
Judah found him­self strange­ly at ease. The bur­dens of his respon­si­bil­i­ties sud­den­ly made dis­tant as he sat among these peo­ple. Bethami’s involve­ment with the rab­bi over many years had puz­zled him. She had gen­tly cajoled him into attend­ing the gath­er­ing and he now began to feel the effort was worth­while. He looked around him and saw men like him­self: some younger and oth­ers old­er, some who made their liv­ing by their wits and oth­ers by the sweat of their brow. Each one of them shared the same bound­aries of birth and death. His dai­ly rou­tine did not bring him into close con­tact with any one of them, yet he rec­og­nized vari­a­tions of his own fail­ings and strengths in them as he looked around the room. Nonethe­less, he avoid­ed the eyes of young Pinhas.

for his part, Pinhas squirmed

R. Ila’i had met him in the mar­ket one day and invit­ed him to come for the evening. In his late teens, all he knew was that he hat­ed. He felt no alle­giance to any­thing. Only the sear­ing eyes of R. Ila’i con­vinced, almost forced him to come. He would just as soon be out­side maraud­ing as sit among all these strangers he’d seen around town. Yet, though no one held him there, some­thing drew him clos­er into the circle.

the lamps began to sputter out

R. Ila’i again closed his eyes and lapsed once more into silence. He stood, turned to Pin­has, helped raise him to his feet, and said sim­ply: “Please return in the morn­ing.” He did the same with Judah. Then his stu­dents rose and helped Ila’i’s col­leagues get up as the neigh­bors and oth­er guests also arose.

they all left the quiet of R. Ila’i’s home into the silence of the street

The three-quar­ter moon glowed through gath­er­ing clouds that had moved north through the Jordan’s val­ley. As they slept, an ear­ly, unex­pect­ed rain washed the city.



Their home had been dark, and Betha­mi asleep, when he arrived, so Judah gen­tly awoke her before he left for R. Ila’i’s in the morn­ing.
He briefly told her of the evening. At the men­tion of Pin­has, he bris­tled but noticed that he looked for­ward to see­ing the young­ster and hoped he would attend. Judah felt the heat and humid­i­ty rise as he walked to the rabbi’s house, but the dust of the sum­mer that dirt­ied his bare feet the pre­vi­ous evening on his walk had already washed into the sea. This morn­ing he heard the singing of the waves as they licked clean the edges of the city. He, also, felt clean­er when he arrived at R. Ila’i’s home.

the day was long, much of it spent in the silence of thought

R. Ila’i repeat­ed the exer­cise of the pre­vi­ous night more than once. The day­light on each man’s face brought more direct­ness to everyone’s expres­sion in a way that the dim­ness of the evening’s lamp­light dis­guised. Each time they repeat­ed the phras­es they found new mean­ings in them, saw more of them­selves in one anoth­er and, as they looked around, for­gave each oth­er for their shared shortcomings.

except for Pinhas

The young­ster arrived late in the morn­ing, sweaty and disheveled from some stren­u­ous activ­i­ty. Though they had reserved room for him, when he sat, he fid­get­ed as though he had no space. His errat­ic motions dis­turbed the seren­i­ty that had begun to emerge among the oth­ers. The man beside him tried to ignore his pres­ence but it did no good. His agi­ta­tion persisted.

R. Ila’i stood and the room turned silent

He stepped over to Pin­has, sat before him, and placed his hands on the young man’s shoul­ders. Once again, the rab­bi’s eyes bore into his. The hands on his shoul­ders were strong; yet the touch felt light. The eyes were deep and dark yet he saw soft­ness in them. Ila’i spoke:

For the error we have made, which hurt You, will­ing­ly and unwill­ing­ly.
For the error we have made, which hurt You, by act­ing with­out think­ing.
For the error we have made, which hurt You, know­ing­ly and deceit­ful­ly.
For the error we have made, which hurt You, by wrong­ing others.


As he spoke, R. Ila’i slow­ly released his grip on Pin­has. The young man felt the hands become a ten­der caress and the chaos in him began to sub­side.
R. Ila’i returned to his place and the men beside Pin­has each placed a gen­tle, restrain­ing, hand on his knee.

toward the end of the day, doves perched on the windowsill of R. Ila’i’s home

He spoke of Jonah:

We need to change. Per­haps you con­sid­er that an impos­si­ble task. You sim­ply can­not change. You can’t release the anger and get to the point of for­give­ness. That was one of Jonah’s prob­lems. He felt per­verse­ly good about his anger and resist­ed change. Remem­ber…? God cre­at­ed a plant that briefly shad­ed Jon­ah and then destroyed it? Jonah’s response was ‘I am great­ly angry, even unto death.‘
Jon­ah was so angry he could die. God dis­cussed Jonah’s anger with him:
Jon­ah said:

Peo­ple need You to clear­ly and imme­di­ate­ly pun­ish wrong­do­ing. Peo­ple can’t change, they nev­er change.

God respond­ed:

Jon­ah, I threat­ened to destroy Nin­eveh because of their actions. Some of the peo­ple were prim­i­tive, igno­rant, cru­el, bar­bar­ic and not much dif­fer­ent from their cat­tle, but they can change, they have changed. This abil­i­ty to change makes them human, that is what makes me their God, as well as yours.

Jonah’s book is about us, ordi­nary peo­ple, whose poten­tial as humans is our abil­i­ty to change, and to let go of our anger.

as R. Ila’i spoke his voice dropped to a near whisper so everyone gathered closer to him and one another

Some of the men even held each oth­er in the cir­cle with their arms on one another’s shoul­ders. As the day end­ed, the light in the room again dimmed, but this time the changed light did not dis­guise the faces of those gath­ered, it soft­ened them. A new light of for­give­ness shown from them enlight­ened them and made them feel lighter of heart.
R. Ila’i paused again…

Five days from now, when the moon fills, we begin the Fes­ti­val of Sukkot. Each one of us is a sukkah, a frag­ile, del­i­cate, tem­po­rary taber­na­cle, a booth, a dwelling place of the Divine. So, also, the soci­ety with­in which we live is such a sukkah. I can see no room for anger and hatred or destruc­tive behav­ior in our sukkot. May the effort of this day help lift the bur­den of anger from our hearts and ease the path of our lives. May the embrace we share with one anoth­er now guide us toward cre­ativ­i­ty not destruc­tion.
U’fros aleinu sukkat shlo­mecha. Spread over us the taber­na­cle of Your whole­ness, Your peace.


This but­ton, dat­ing from the 1960s stress­es the point sug­gest­ed by R. Ila’i, that all of us are con­nect­ed and respon­si­ble for one anoth­er and our actions. The more com­mon expres­sion of the idea is “all of Israel are respon­si­ble for one anoth­er — כל ישראל ערבים זה לזה” Shavuot 39a

all Israel are friends
all Israel are friends
Date:1960s
Size:3.175
Pin Form:straight
Print Method:cel­lu­loid
Textכל

ישראל

חברים

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jack­et you no longer wear, or poked into a cork­board on your wall. If you have any lying around that you do not feel emo­tion­al­ly attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point, they will all go to an appro­pri­ate muse­um. You can see all the but­tons shared to date.

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embrace the potential of each generation of seeds

Deuteron­o­my 20:19
כִּ֤י הָֽאָדָם֙ עֵ֣ץ הַשָּׂדֶ֔ה
Are trees of the field human?

In this New Year,
may we embrace the potential of
each generation of seeds to
transform the fields of our planet for good.
May these seeds yield
growth, blessing, repair, and peace.

A con­tem­po­rary view of this verse stress­es the sym­bol­ic nature of trees: “the anthro­po­mor­phic form of trees, which like peo­ple have roots (feet), a trunk (body), branch­es (hands), twigs (fin­gers), and leaves (hair).” (Prof. Shai Secun­da of Bard College)

This idea of human­iz­ing trees is at the core of the poem by award-win­ning Israeli poet Natan Zach titled “Tree of the Field.” Writ­ten after the 1982 Israeli war with Lebanon and set to music by Shalom Chanoch, it became a nation­al song of grief.

In prepar­ing this year’s card, I extend this metaphor. As the tree sym­bol­izes humans, the field rep­re­sents our nat­ur­al world, a sym­bi­ot­ic relationship.

In this year’s card the Hebrew let­ters that spell tree: עץ (in script form, with the ע invert­ed) depict the tree. Sim­i­lar­ly, the script of the let­ters that spell [grass­es of] the field: השדה por­tray the field.

A num­ber of ren­di­tions of the song are avail­able on YouTube:

Amer­i­can Can­tor Azi Schwartz:

Israeli singer Shalom Chanoch

Israeli singer Nurit Galron

initial concept

At the Jan­u­ary 2023 gath­er­ing of the Pacif­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Reform Rab­bis, I par­tic­i­pat­ed in a work­shop on cre­ativ­i­ty and the rab­binate. We were offered a prompt. Com­bin­ing Gen­e­sis 2:9 and Deuteron­o­my 20:19, I drew:

עֵ֣ץ הַשָּׂדֶ֔ה⁩ | ט֥וֹב וָרָֽע

I imag­ined the “tree of the field” as the tree of the knowl­edge of good and evil in the cen­ter of the garden.

The image and the thought were too com­plex to fit into my 4″ x 6″ format:

Deuteron­o­my 20;19 & Gen­e­sis 2:9 (over­ly complex!)

settling on simple

the cut blocks:

עֵ֣ץ
הַשָּׂדֶ֔ה⁩

the prints:

עֵ֣ץ
הַשָּׂדֶ֔ה⁩
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