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Parashat Bereshit

It is only with great hesitation that I attempt to address this week's portion. The agonies shredding our beloved Eretz Israel force us to pause-to wonder aghast.

Jewish history is so full of those who have named us enemy, and our suffering at their hands so palpable still. We wish, pray, hope to avoid having to name yet another enemy, to confront yet another foe, to declare yet another irresolvable enmity.

Those Jews who are traditionalists find in this week sedra a determining call: Rashi's very first commentary on Bereshit reads: "if the nations of the world will say to Israel, 'You are bandits for you conquered the land of the seven nations who inhabited the Land of Canaan,' (Israel) will say to them, 'The whole earth belongs to the Holy One, Blessed is He. He created it and He gave it to the one who is proper in His eyes. By His wish He gave it to them and by His wish He took it from them and gave it to us.'"(Translation of Rashi from Artscroll Sapirstein Edition of the Torah with Rashi's commentary).

Rashi's question here is: Why does the Torah start with Bereshit instead of the Exodus (which, as we know, is the foundation event of rabbinic Judaism i.e. Judaism as a mitzvah-system bound up in a divinely-based legal system built predominantly around matters of responsibility and obligation). Rashi's question arises perhaps as a response to the rabbinic dictum not to publicly teach the mysteries of creation (and the mysteries of Ezekiael's vision of the Chariot and the laws of forbidden sexual relations, as related in the 2nd chapter of Mishna Chagigah).

Be that as it may, Rashi's assertion is, for the modern or post-modern Jew, less than compelling for the simple reason that in a religiously pluralistic world, recourse to G-d's word as justification for political action is, at the least, unconvincing, and, more likely, positively suspect. The various modernizing efforts over the last century and one-half to rationalize and normalize Jews in the world well illustrate, by their lack of reference to religious mandate, that general discomfort. (Think here, for example, of Zionism's use of archeology as an ideological tool, or folkloric and linguistic cataloging as part of the effort to define a Yiddish nation-without-a-state in Eastern Europe before the Shoah.)

Logically, our discomfort with this Rashi leads to our discomfort with a basic, and troublesome, theme: Choseness. If G-d can chose a people, why can not G-d chose to give that people a land? But, on the other hand, if we reject G-d giving the people a land, than how can we argue that G-d can choose a people in the first instance?

And, moreover in the world of practical politics, how do we persuade others who reject the veracity of our texts that G-d's choices, of both land and people, are valid, and binding?

Given the seemingly endless conundrums this brings up in the world, it is no wonder that, as we read Bereshit, we would like to retreat into the mystical mists and avoid the painful realities.

We know that through acts of kindness and comfort and hospitality, we help make G-d's goodness immanent. And we also know that resistance to evil, even if need be in the form of arms, brings goodness into the world. But we seek recourse to arms only with the greatest reluctance. It was this reluctance that historical defined Israel's military morality, neshek tahore, purity of arms. We now know of the unfortunate times in which the principle was honored only in the breech. But, on close examination, the exception, rare but painful and cruel, proved the rule: Israel's military, even in occupation, perhaps especially in occupation, operated on a moral level rarely if ever surpassed by other military organizations.

Israel is at a critical stage: crucial decisions will be made, I suspect, about the fate of the settlements, about the nature of Israel's relationship with the all-but-declared Palestinian state, about Israel's relationship with its non-Jewish minorities, about the meaning and reality of the Zionist enterprise over the last 120 years.

Even if we Jews cannot necessarily use our Holy Texts in our discourse with the world, let us hope that we can use those Texts, and this Rashi, with ourselves. G-d did choose us, in ways we perhaps cannot quite grasp. And with His choice comes our great responsibility, and our great burden. The painful truths of these last few weeks stare us in the face: our enemies will never be convinced that we have an absolute right, indeed a duty, to be in Eretz Israel. We hope they will eventually accept, their views to the contrary, the practical reality that we will be there. It is the duty, at least in the way Rashi would have it, for us not in the land to make every effort to ensure that those who are in the land have both our moral and material support. It is the duty of those in the land to conduct themselves in a manner in consonance with the highest values of our tradition, in a manner befitting a holy people, the bearers of G-d's name in the world. No one said being a Jew is easy, but there is no greater treasure than declaring G-d's name. Let us hope that our love of G-d, and G-d's love of us, and all humanity, overpower the rage.

Each new month brings a chance for teshuvah: our tradition teaches us to never surrender hope. As we start Bereshit, let us hope that all hearts will turn, and renew themselves.

Shabbat Shalom.

Dennis