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| Home > About Us > Rabbi > Sermons > 5764 YK Eve |     |
| For The Sin We Have Sinned Against Y0u by Rabbi Ari Mark Cartun |    |
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Al Chet she-chatanu l'fanecha For The Sin We Have Sinned Against Y0u I hope you all had a good summer vacation. And I hope that, wherever you were on July 12, you got to hear the Torah portion at services that morning. It was Parashat Balaq that week, a story of how the Israelites were marching up the east side of the Jordan river, defeating all who marched out against them. Though Israel did not wish to become embroiled in battle with any of the peoples on the east side of the Jordan river, only asking for free passage to Cana'an, the Moabites and Midianites nonetheless banded together to fight Israel. Before the battle, King Balaq of Moav hired a prophet named Bil'am to curse Israel, and thereby weaken Israel enough for them to defeat Israel in battle. Bil'am, was, indeed a prophet, who at first responded that G0d would not let him curse anyone unless G0d personally wished those people to be cursed. After consulting G0d, Bil'am understood that G0d did not want Israel cursed. Just the opposite. So Bil'am informed King Balaq that he could not curse Israel. Balaq did not give up, and offered Bil'am tons of money and prestige if he would curse Israel. So Bil'am asked G0d again, and heard G0d saying, "Go with them, but only say what I tell you to say." Well, to make a long story short, G0d showed Bil'am what an ass he was for going to try to curse someone for profit. G0d made Bil'am's ass—the one he was riding on—tell Bil'am personally who the real ass was. I heard this parashah read while I was in Jerusalem, in a small synagogue of Jews from Arab countries that I happened into by accident. They honored me with an aliyah, and I got to bless G0d for the reading of the story of the talking ass. And here I am, braying to you about it tonight. The end of the story is that Balaq paid Bil'am to say bad things about Israel, but G0d turned those curses into blessings. Bil'am began his speech this way: (Numbers 23:7-9), "Balaq, king of Moav, brought me from Aram…saying, "Go, curse Jacob for me, denounce Israel. But how can I curse those whom G0d has not cursed? How can I denounce those whom YaHuWH has not denounced?… Hein: Am l'vadad yishkon, uvagoyyim lo yit'chasheiv. See–it is a people who will live alone, not counted among the nations…. (24:5) Mah tovu ohaleycha Ya'akov, mishk'noteycha YisraEl: How good are your tents, Jacob, your settlements, Israel!" I have condensed Bil'am's words. He said much more about us that is wonderful to hear, but I want to focus on these two prophecies: the last line, because it is familiar, and the first because it is the one of the most perplexing in the Torah. How is being called "a people who will live alone, not counted among the nations" a blessing? I guess one way to understand that is that we are a unique people. I don't have to give you a sermon on that. We all know that being unique is what being a Jew is all about. Still, there is another meaning to being a people who will live alone. But first, let me ask you about your last summer's travels, or travels past.
Hein: Am l'vadad yishkon, uvagoyyim lo yit'chasheiv. See–Israel is "a people who live alone, not counted among the nations…. We are Jews, and more of us have gone to other places in Europe and Asia and Africa, the three continents at the navel of which Israel sits, than have gone to Israel. We have left Israel alone, and not counted it among the nations. So I say, Al Chet she-chatanu l'fanecha b'n'tishat acheynu v'achyoteynu b'm'dinat YisraEl For The Sin We Have Sinned Against Y0u by Abandoning Our Brothers and Sisters in the State of Israel In fact:
Hein: Am l'vadad yishkon, uvagoyyim lo yit'chasheiv. See–Israel is a people who live alone, not much visited by Liberal Jews, and not counted among the other nations that Liberal Jews liberally visit. Israelis are aware of this, and feel abandoned by American Liberal Jews. In solidarity with them, I am adding a new Al Chet to our congregational confessional: Al Chet she-chatanu l'fanecha b'n'tishat acheynu v'achyoteynu b'm'dinat YisraEl For The Sin We Have Sinned Against Y0u by Abandoning Our Brothers and Sisters in the State of Israel Yes, I am about to give a sermon that will highlight our collective guilt, something that, for those of you who know me, I seldom do. Usually I give feel-good talks, and I will again tomorrow morning. But this is a case of life and death, and so I will say what I I have to say. Tomorrow you will have a chance to respond to my talk in the afternoon discussions. But now, I say in the words of the last Haftarah that is read every year before Rosh haShanah, "L'ma'an Tzion lo echsheh, ul'ma'an Yerushalayim lo eshkot: for Zion's sake I will not be silent. For Jerusalem's sake I will not be quiet. (Isaiah 62:1). How can I ask you to visit Israel, to put your lives on the line in order to get that kind of visceral understanding of your homeland that will tie you inexorably to its future and welfare? I can because I have been to Israel three times in the last year and a half, during intifada activity, and during the brief respite this summer. The rest of my family have gone with me twice during the same times. I would go tomorrow if I could. In fact, there is a teen trip for 11th and 12th graders leaving in December, and one of my daughters may participate. This trip will not go to the big cities. It will go to the Galilee and the Negev, out of reach and so far off the radar screen of the murderers. So I think I walk the walk as well as talk the talk. But why should you go? Because if you don't go you won't care enough about what happens to your brother and sister Israelis. It is hard for someone who has never visited Israel to really understand Israel. I know, because—and here is tonight's little secret—before I went to Israel for the first time in 1970, I was a typical American Reform Jewish AntiZionist. Israel was a strange concept to me. I thought the best thing in the world would be a bi-national state, not a Jewish state. I didn't speak Hebrew, I didn't know anything about Israel's history or the Zionist movement, and if I ever gave visiting Israel a real thought, which I did not because the farthest away from home I had ever been was Albuquerque, I would have feared to be seen as an uneducated Jew. But then I found myself in Rabbinical School in Jerusalem. I met the people of Israel, and they were warm and welcoming of me, even though I was a total Israel novice. I was taken around the country by tour guides and random strangers who loved every inch of the land, and who showed me that history was not measured in the span of a few centuries, as it is for us Americans, but in the complex depth of millennia. And all of a sudden my Jewish identity took root in the soil in which Jewish identities first grew. Israel was no longer just an idea. It was all these people that I knew, places that I loved, cities and hills on which my ancestors, hundreds of generations ago, walked, talked, loved, gave birth, and conceived of this momentous experiment called ethical monotheism. I have been in love with Israel, warts and all, since that year. If I could have finished Reform rabbinical school in Israel back then I would never have come back. Since that time I have been up and down with Israel's wars and peace treaties, and with all the other social upheavals in Israel. I have been there and back a dozen times, celebrating and mourning and celebrating. But now, 33 years later, Israel is in danger of disappearing slowly, of evaporating away, due to a demographic time bomb. Already more Israelis and recent immigrants to Israel are coming to American than are going to Israel from all over the world. Why? The constant economic pressure of an economy shaken by two earthquakes, the hi-tech bust, and the disappearance of tourism, is one reason. And the war is a second one. Palestinian Arabs know this. They also know that in less than thirty years, due to their birthrate, they will outnumber Israeli Jews, and so, if there is no two-state solution soon, Israel will be outnumbered in its own land. So that is why the murderers bomb us. They want no part of a two-state solution. They want it all to be a fundamentalist Islamic state. They want all the Jews out, or dead. Here is the point: If we do not both go there, and speak up when we hear patently false anti-Israel rhetoric, we are contributing to helping them get that Islamic state. We are helping those who murder us kick our brothers and sisters, our relatives, our people, out. And it won't be pretty, because they won't be kind. Maybe you don't feel that Israelis are your brothers and sisters. Many of us don't know Israelis. We only see them on television, either riding in tanks through Arab areas, or scurrying about in panic after a bombing. It is not easy to relate to people we don't know. It is especially hard if we are Jews to relate to Israelis unless we have been there, for Jews are always more critical of other Jews than anyone else is. And here is another little secret for this year of secrets: we resist identifying with Israelis out of our pain at the many ways Jews who have acted holier than thou and more educated than thou have put us down in our lives. I will conduct a discussion group tomorrow afternoon to deal with those of us who feel that way. If you are not a Jew, or were not brought up as a Jew, it is also difficult to relate to Israelis as kin. One of the last things that people who convert to Judaism begin to do is feel a kinship with Jews all around the world. Judaism is more than an ideology. It is Jewish community, local and world-wide. This feeling of kinship with Jews everywhere is something that grows near the end of their studies with me. I let them know that they will truly be Jews when the newspaper appears different to them. One day they will find that Jews News pops out of the paper at them; all of a sudden they will pay attention to the radio or television when Jews News comes on. Only at the end comes an awareness that Israel stories are stories about them; that when people demonize Israelis, they are demonizing all Jews. Unless we have been to Israel or have Israeli friends, Liberal American Jews have a hard time taking Israel's side. We Liberals are so defensive about being seen to be rah-rah supportive of any government's policies that we add that baggage on top of our secret hurts as Jews. This leads to our total disconnect from Israel. Additionally, as most American Jews have never been to Israel or studied Israeli history, most of us are unable to comprehend the enormity of the anti-Jewish activity going on in the rest of the world under the name of AntiZionism. Liberal Americans—we here are overwhelmingly Liberal Americans—tend to think that when people demonize Zionists and Israelis it has nothing to do with Jews. We think it's just disagreement with Israel's policies, but that's never how the discussion is framed. I have been to too many panel discussions where the next issue is the American Jewish lobby, or the Jewish-owned media, or other paranoid slanders right off the pages of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols, by the way, are constantly quoted in official Arab national and independent news media as being not the Czarist racist propaganda hoax that it was, but being the actual truth about a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. Just last year Egyptian Television ran a soap opera based on the Protocols! You will also find paraphrases and elaborations from it on most of the websites of Islamic Anti-Israel organizations. It even infects the educational materials of most of the Arab countries, as well as their popular music. Many of us feel that if we were to support Israel at all we would be supporting all of Israeli government policies, many or most of which we differ with at best, or feel are ineffective, self-defeating, and/or downright immoral. I strongly disagree with many Israeli strategies and practices, and some other time I'll give you my idea of how I would how I would handle things if I were Israel's Prime Minister. But here is the real point, especially for a Liberal: I can also give you my idea of how I would differ from the current officeholder of our Presidency. But how I differ would depend on where I was and to whom I was talking. Let me explain. Those of us who have traveled outside our own country and engaged in a political discussion with local people have found ourselves standing up for aspects of our country's policies that we would never stand up for at home. This is because at home, our position is more nuanced, and more in context, whereas outside America, we find ourselves with only black or white, pro or con, patriotic or anti-patriotic choices. The same problem besets us when standing up for our relatives in Israel when we are outside of Israel. Outside Israel, we are only able to sound pro or con the whole thing. Inside Israel, or among people who care about Israel, our positions can be contextually nuanced. I could tell you of the political "discussions" I have had in Israel with my friends. My friends range from the Director of Rabbis for Human Rights, one of the groups that put their bodies in the way of the bulldozers coming to raze the homes of suicide bombers, to gun-toting settlers who live among the Palestinians, to the Arab-Israeli director of a Labor Party think tank. Believe me, left, right, and center, none of us likes much of what the Israeli government is doing, all of us for very different reasons. But that is no reason not to stand for the health and safety of the people related to you and me by four thousand years of kinship and history. Inside Israel we take our relative political positions. Outside Israel, we are on the same team, with only slightly different emphases. That is because we all want to make sure there will be an Israel for us to disagree about. Let me quote UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan's speech last week about his own agency, but his words also apply to Israel: "It may not be perfect, but it is precious." So I ask you today to speak up for Israel; to learn about Israel's point of view; to learn to see the situation on the ground in Israel. And don't worry about sounding like an Israeli patriot. There are much worse things to worry about. I heard an American woman, who described herself as a pacifist, describe the murderers of innocents and children as "resistance bombers." I was on a panel with her, and I turned to her, and in public, I said, "How dare you call yourself a pacifist if you honor murderers by calling them "resistance bombers?" I can tell you that I have no moral qualms about stating unequivocally that I see ZERO moral equivalence between people who intend to kill innocent civilians, and those who are only intending to kill those people who intend to murder the innocent civilians, before they can kill. I mourn the deaths of those who are hurt and killed because they were nearby the murderers when they were killed, and I am not sure whether targeted assassinations are effective or self-defeating. But I do not feel that killing those who intend to murder your family before they can carry it out is in any way immoral, and if you asked me to, I would pull the trigger myself to keep them from recruiting and sending other murderers against my family. And Israelis are my family. Can you say that, that Israelis are your family? If you cannot, you need to get over there and meet the relatives. Afterwards you will never again be cavalier about their fate and welfare. I can also tell you that Israel's existence and self-defense is not the origin of every problem in the universe, as it is being portrayed, in weird contexts. If you don't read the Jewish Bulletin, which is now called, "J," you might not have known that the San Francisco Women Against Rape declared themselves to be an Anti-Zionist Organization, and had come out with a policy that all rape crisis counselors had to participate in political discussions taking a stance against Zionism. This was on their hotline volunteer applications, and speakers were constantly brought in to take this stance in organizational meetings, so much so that Jewish volunteers felt intimidated to voice any support of Israel. But, organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council, Jewish volunteers and supporters of the rape crisis center, as well as Shalom Bayit, the Jewish domestic abuse prevention organization, stood up until the San Francisco Women Against Rape leaders backed down. If you only listen to the American media, you will never know, because the American media is "fair and balanced," meaning each side is always equally to blame. They can almost never write an article about antiJewish terror without bringing up some unrelated Jewish act, in text or as the picture, for fear that they will be labeled as biased pro-Israel. The only way you can ever really know what this is all about is to go to Israel, and see the situation for yourself. And so I exhort you today to be as brave as a blockade runner. Go to Israel. If you feel you must leave the children behind and go yourself, then go yourself. If you feel you must leave your partner behind and go yourself, then go yourself. If you feel you need me to take you there, then I will take you there. I can., at least, help connect you with a tour, or help you plan an independent trip. I could not raise a tour of Israel last year because of the fear factor, but maybe I will this year if enough people ask me. Already some have been asking. I could take families, or adults alone. Or both. I would just have to carve out the time between bar and bat mitzvah weeks. I can promise you that if you go, you will "deepen your understanding of yourself as a Jew and as a human being." I am quoting Adam Rosenzweig, a member of our congregation, and a High School Senior at Foothill Middle College, who traveled to Israel last summer for his first time. He subsequently wrote an article about his trip, and I want to quote a little from that article: "I know that most of my feelings about Israel came out of a historical awareness. I understood the importance of a Jewish State because I knew Jewish history. But this was still just a conviction based on theory. I believed in the theory of Israel, and what it stood for; but I had not experienced the Jewish State for myself yet. This for me, was the main reason I went on [this Israel trip] this summer. I had to see it for myself." Adam experienced "A blur of some of the greatest memories I will ever have, decorated with faces, tastes, sights, smells, and stories that some would never believe, but that anyone would treasure. I spent a week on an Israeli Army base. I led Shabbat services above the Kotel, [the Western Wall] at sunset. I snorkeled in the waters of Eilat. I stood on top of a mountain (after climbing it) where I could see four countries. I visited the most recently excavated sections of the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. I ate shuarma [Shwarma is Arabic for what Greeks call a gyro] in Acco. I ate shuarma in Tel Aviv. I ate shuarma just about everywhere I could. "Being in Israel was an experience that didn't just give me great pictures and life-long friends (though it did that as well). Being in Israel shaped who I am today. It expanded who I am as a Jew, as a Zionist, and as a human. I always felt that I knew Israel. I knew the name. I knew the history. But now I have a face to put with the name. I have a personal and spiritual connection to the land, which before was only philosophical. I have Israel." Now listen to Adam's parents' decision making process to send him or not: "Raising a child with a Jewish soul has always been our highest priority as parents. We wanted to root our son in Judaism's historical, cultural and religious traditions so that he would always feel that he was a part of something larger than himself. Attending Camp Young Judaea from the earliest age became the linchpin in this strategy. And, from the earliest age, Young Judaean campers look forward with great anticipation to their "rite of passage" summer in Israel. It is the deliberate and purposeful culmination of a camp program which unabashedly cultivates the next generation of American Zionists. For our son, the strategy worked. He has a deeply-rooted identity as a Jew and passion for Israel. We had long anticipated the Young Judaea trip to Israel, but, when the registration materials for the trip came in the mail 8 months in advance, it was a painful, but unequivocal decision—our son was not spending his summer vacation in a war zone. How ironic to have achieved our highest objective as parents only to deny him this culminating experience. Even still, we held out hope throughout the year that perhaps things would calm down, that something would change to help us change our mind. Long discussions with Young Judaea trip organizers alleviated some concerns -- the itinerary included only 4 days out of 5 weeks in the cities. At no time would they be in downtown Jerusalem or downtown Tel Aviv. They spent most of their time in the Negev and in the Galilee and each evening, trip leaders cleared the next day's itinerary with Israeli security officers. Finally, the kids were not allowed "off campus" from their kibbutz accommodations in their free time. And, with less than a month to go before the trip, the political situation did appear to be quieting down (mostly as a result of American invasion of Iraq.) After 8 months of agonizing over this situation, we decided Adam could go with the other 109 Young Judaea kids whose families had come to the same conclusion. We are thrilled that Adam got to have this experience. The emotional, intellectual and spiritual growth the trip provided will resonate with him for a long time. It was a life-changing experience for him. But, would we make the same decision again? We don't know, but we're not off the hook: Adam's plan after he graduates high school in June is to spend it in Israel." ### Remember what Bil'am said: Mah tovu ohaleycha Ya'aqov, mishk'noteycha YisraEl: How good your tents are, Jacob, your settlements, Israel? Bil'am saw this 3300 years ago. And Adam saw it last summer. Every one of us in this congregation needs to see how good Israel's cities, towns, farms, archaeological sites, parks, malls, beaches, and public works are. Is it Eden? Nowhere is Eden. But is it wonderful? Everyone who goes there sees what the country has become, and what it will remain, and into what it could grow, if only given a chance to live in peace with its neighbors. When you go you will be warmly and heroically welcomed, by "relatives" you never knew you had. But if we Never Visit; If we Never read Israeli sources; If we Never talk with Israelis; If we Always jump to support the Opposing Side because our Liberalness makes us always say that both sides are to blame; then we will have contributed to the weakening of Israel. We will be contributing to the attack on Israel. And saying nothing is just as bad as putting Israel down. Our silence speaks as loud as words of condemnation, for those who know we are Jews will assume that if we stand silently by while Israel is demonized in our presence, while we do nothing to contradict it, that we agree with the demonization, and that we also await Israel's downfall. So now I will give you five things each one of us can do, in our own way, to make a difference. #1 Read or listen to some publication or broadcast that will give you Israeli points of view. How can we stand up for ourselves if we can't hear ourselves think? How can we expect to translate Israel's soul searching, Israel's struggle to find a path out of this mess, to ourselves and to our families, much less to our coworkers and acquaintances, if we never hear Israel speak, if we only listen to opinion filtered through American angst? And how can we be satisfied that we have made a correct judgement on this issue unless we have heard Israel speak? We would never want to have our point of view represented to others by people who never consulted with us first. So why would we feel justified judging Israel without having considered Israel's point of view? #2 Go there. There are lots of trips going, long and short, from the Jewish Federation, from National Organizations, from local organizations and congregations. Rabbi Lewis is leading a trip from Kol Emeth leaving on November 9. The High School trip leaves December 18. Details are on our website. And the local rabbinic community is working to cross-list all the tours that are going, and all the financial aid available. I can promise you that one of the strangest things you will see there is what you never see on American TV: people walking around on the streets, taking buses, going to restaurants and shopping—being normal. Normal is not newsworthy, but that's what most of Israel is most of the time. Considering that all of Israel is the size of the Bay Area, there is less of the kidnapping and rape and child abductions and murder and accidental death there each day in the news than there is here. Go there. Stay in the smaller places, if you will. But go there and see what is good and normal and everyday about Israel, so that you have an idea of what it looks like when it is happy, not just when it is distraught. #3 Help Israel's economy. You will if you go there, but even if you do not go, you can buy Israeli products, which are available everwhere, and on the web. You can also stand up against boycotts of Israeli products, such as the successful revolt against the Rainbow Grocery boycott in San Francisco last spring. You can also contribute to a range of Israeli causes. I will list just a few. Along with supporting local Jewish agencies, the Jewish Community Federation has been, for over a decade, the leader in allocating money directly to Israeli social service agencies that promote democracy, human rights, tolerance, and other worthy causes such as battered women's shelters, educational programs that introduce Jewish and Arab Israelis, especially teachers, to each other. Two other groups allocating money directly to these kind of agencies are the New Israel Fund (www.nif.org/) and the Abraham Fund (http://mpdn.org/abraham.htm). If you wish to give directly to help those who are hurt by terrorist attacks, you can give to Israel's Magen David Adom (www.magendavidadom.org/). Our congregation is cosponsoring a fundraiser for Magen David Adom on December 1. Or you can give to ZAKA. ZAKA is an organization of volunteers who pick up the body parts for burial at the risk of their own lives from a second bomb. (www.us-israel.org/jsource/orgs/zaka.html & www.zakaisrael.org/). #4 You can get involved in groups who are doing something. You can start by becoming involved in our congregational Israel Action Committee, to help learn and plan educational events. You can support the groups trying to get Israelis and Palestinians to move past the stranglehold of the extreme minority that militate against any settlement. They are trying to give a larger voice to the two-thirds silent majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians who would prefer a two-state solution, now, roughly along the lines of what Clinton and Barak offered three years ago to Arafat, may his name be blotted out. Two of these efforts are proceeding side by side. One, composed mostly of Israelis and Palestinians, is headed by Ami Ayalon, former head of Israel's Shin Bet Security Service, and Sari Nusseibeh, the President of East Jerusalem's Al-Quds University. This is called the "Voice of the People." (http://www.mifkad.org.il/eng/). Another organization doing the same thing, but with a larger group of Israelis and Palestinians organizing the effort, and a larger group of Americans and other non-Middle Easterners participating, is OneVoice (www.silentnolonger.com). Both of these groups, OneVoiced and Voice of the People are trying to get the silent majority to vote on a peace plan, by mail, in person, by phone, by fax, and by email, bypassing the political entities that are too beholden to their narrow political bases to allow them the room to really negotiate. Once Israelis and Palestinians have voted on this plan, these organizations will present it to both leaderships, proving the desire for a peaceful two-state solution. Many of our congregants have already signed up with these organizations. Others oppose them as naïve. You can read their material and decide for yourself. Or you can get involved with the regular political parties in Israel who have their own plans for the future: Likud, Labor, Meretz, etc. Not that I don't have an agenda, but it is more important to me that we are all involved according to our political persuasion than that you join what I join. You can find the names and url's of these organizations on our website in the text of this talk after the holy day, or by searching any search engine on the web. Last, at #5, you can support our congregation's new Israeli Reform sister congregation: Kehillat Sulam Ya'akov (Jacob's Ladder") in Zichron Ya'akov. This relationship is just starting, and you can help build it. Our sister congregation relationship is designed to aid the development of Liberal Judaism in Israel, and to make the relationship between us and Israel a personal one. Why are we doing this in Zichron Ya'akov? One reason is that you have never heard of it, and in these times, no news is good news. It is off the radar screen, and it is gorgeous. Many of my friends and I love to visit there, and dream of retiring there, just because of how wonderful a place it is. Zichron Ya'akov is uphill from the coast, ten minutes from the Mediterranean beach resort in which my family and I spent the summer of 2002. It is a really nice small town where the Orthodox and Reform get along, and with affordable housing. Many Israelis who work in Haifa and, to a lesser extent, Tel Aviv, are moving there for the peace, security, and affordability. The congregation is half Israeli-born, and half "Anglo-Saxonim," that is, people born in English speaking countries. Their weekly email bulletin is in English. We are aware that Zichron Ya'akov is a place most people would not normally base themselves in, especially if they were taking trips to Israel for the first time. We can, however, arrange for the local congregants to host us for Shabbat, and we have contracted with a travel company to take us wherever we want to go. I and several friends have done this recently, getting a car with a tour guide to take us around the country on personally-created tours. So though Zichron Ya'akov is not the center of anyone's standard itinerary, it becomes a convenient place to tour from, being right on the coastal road. One last thing. It is also only fifteen minutes from the Caesarea golf course, one of only two in Israel! There is also horseback riding in the Carmel mountains, sailing, hiking, and more. Zichron Ya'akov is also the center of Israel's wine industry, and, like here, there are wineries and wine tours, of tradtional wines, like Carmel, and many newer boutique wines. ******* I told you five things you can do. Doing any of these five things would make a huge difference. It would at least be doing something, putting some good in the world. So, now, I will sum up. We cannot revive Israel's hi-tech and tourist economy on our own. But we can help. We can do our small parts for the tourist economy by going there. We can also buy Israeli goods and fight boycotts of Israeli goods. And we can contribute to those organizations which do good in Israel, and which are suffering the Israeli government budget cuts that come as a result of the embattled economy. We cannot personally fight the war of weapons, but we must fight in the war of words. We must school ourselves in what is true, and stand up to be counted when Palestinian mass murderers are compared to Israeli soldiers shooting back. We can do something, or we can do nothing. If we do nothing, we will know forever that while all this was going on that we did nothing to stop it. Edmund Burke, an 18th century British statesman and political thinker, said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Al Chet she-chatanu l'fanecha b'n'tishat acheynu v'achyoteynu b'm'dinat YisraEl For The Sin We Have Sinned Against Y0u by Abandoning Our Brothers and Sisters in the State of Israel
Al Chet she-chatanu l'fanecha she'af pa'am ei'nenu ba'im l'artzenu For The Sin We Have Sinned Against Y0u by never coming to our homeland
Al Chet she-chatanu l'fanecha she'af pa'am ei'nenu qor'im mim'korot YisraElim For The Sin We Have Sinned Against Y0u by never reading Israeli sources
Al Chet she-chatanu l'fanecha she'af pa'am ei'nenu medabrim im acheynu v'achyoteynu haYisraEliim For The Sin We Have Sinned Against Y0u by never speaking with our brother and sister Israelis
Al Chet she-chatanu l'fanecha b'zidud acherim v'lo b'zidud atzmeinu For The Sin We Have Sinned Against Y0u by always taking the other side and never taking our own
Al Chet she-chatanu l'fanecha she'einenu yod'im aych l'dabber b'ad YisraEl. For The Sin We Have Sinned Against Y0u by not knowing how to speak on Israel's behalf. Al Chet she-chatanu l'fanecha she'einenu m'nas'im l'da'at aych l'dabber b'ad YisraEl. For The Sin We Have Sinned Against Y0u by not even trying to know how to speak on Israel's behalf.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing.”
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