The Shofar, Temple Beth El’s monthly publication, keeps community and temple members up to date on what’s going on. Take a look at this month’s Shofar to see what’s coming up or browse through the archives to see all that we’ve done!
| LETTER FROM |
| THE RABBI |
Honoring the Divine Image—An Inconvenient Truth: Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger and Ali Abu Awwad
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger is a member in good standing of the Rabbinical Council of America, the leading Orthodox institution in the US. Born in New York, he moved to Israel as a young man and lived in Alon Shvut where he received Smicha at Yeshivat Har Etzion, in Gush Etzion (an area just outside of Jerusalem recaptured in 1967 after a massacre of 127 Jews a day before Israel declared independence in 1948). His credentials as a rabbi, an educator, and religious thinker are impeccable.
His choice to leave the comforts of the United States and to live in Gush Etzion, which was settled by the same voices that established “Gush Emunim,” the ultranationalist Orthodox settler movement (founded by Zvi Yehudah Kook, the son of the influential Rav Kook) that became an extreme voice for settlements in Israel during the seventies and eighties and even sparked a Jewish terrorist organization, demonstrates his ardent Zionism. His move to the Gush in 1983 was “out a deep sense of the fact that Jewish destiny has come to a deep consummation, and I wanted to be part of the Jewish destiny…In front of my eyes, I saw the fulfillment of 2,000 years of Jewish dreams and hopes, and the resilience of a people, after so much destruction. I saw the triumph of the spirit, the fulfillment and consummation of our people, and I saw tremendous justice in it. I saw the triumph of the human spirit. I saw justice all around me.”
This hard-right, pro-settler worldview makes it all the more fascinating that after a stint teaching in Dallas when he
returned to Alon Shvut in 2014, his interactions with local Palestinians, particularly Ali Abu Awwad, a West Bank
Palestinian militant-turn-nonviolent peace activist, transformed his thinking. Awwad led Schlesinger to recognize
that Palestinians love the land they inhabit every bit as much as he does. He writes:
| “I heard stories that were so different from my stories, stories that created strange unfamiliar narratives from the same building blocks as my own narrative, but which I could not reject out of hand. The stories I heard—of deep connection to the land, of exile, of suffering, of humiliation, of loved one lost in the conflict—were authentic and they were real. Never before had I heard such stories. And they affected me deeply.” Meeting My Palestinian Neighbors For the First Time |
It was the humanity of the Palestinians that led him to build a new organization, Roots שורשים جذور , together with Awwad. He states in a video on his website that
| “For all these years, the Palestinians for me were like the grey, drab senior that passes in the background of the movie, my movie, my Jewish movie, but they are not part of the plot. They were transparent, or I was blind. I lived as if my story, my Jewish story, was the only story in the land. There was no other story, no other people. Today, I hope that I know better….I know that there are two peoples in the land, two stories in the land, and to live your life as if there’s only one story is to mistake part of the truth for the whole truth. I DON’T WANT TO BE THERE ANY LONGER.” |
One might argue, “This is all fine and good, but this video was produced before October 7th when thousands of Palestinians invaded, raped, pillaged, and murdered over 1200 Israelis and kidnapped 250 more, is he still so positive about coexistence?” Here is what he wrote just a couple of days ago, as we enter the month of Adar:
| The pain of the Jewish People at this juncture in time is exceedingly great. We are bent under the weight of tragedy, mourning and trauma. But I refuse to let our pain close off my heart from the pain of the Palestinian People who are undergoing tremendously difficult ordeals at this time. There is no competition of suffering, one people’s suffering cannot be compared or ranked in relationship to the other people’s suffering. They are both immeasurable. And they are both terrible. One people’s pain does not undo or cancel out the other people’s pain. I have room in my heart to feel both, the pain of my people, the Jewish People, and the pain of the Palestinian People. And that makes the burden even heavier. But I believe that this very heavy burden is the key to a better future for both Jews and Palestinians. If a critical mass of people on both sides could only feel the pain on the other side, then we would be well on our way to solving this conflict for both sides. Today is the first day of the Hebrew month of Adar just as we are now standing at the beginning of the Muslim both of Ramadan. May we all find the resources to somehow make for ourselves a joyous Adar and a blessed Ramadan. It all depends on us and on no one else. |
Many of us feel that the earth is crumbling from under us. Perhaps voices like that of Hanan Schlesinger, or of his Ali Abu Awwad, will remind us that, as I am apt to write, the sun is still , שורשים جذور inspiring codirector of Roots shining on rainy days, whether we are able to see it or not. Remember, it took the Israelites 400 years of misery to leave Egypt, and it took Jews 2000 years of exile to reestablish a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel. Or as Unitarian thinker and abolitionist Theodore Parker wrote in 1858 when he assailed the evils of American slavery: (copied a century later by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.)
| “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.” (Parker, Ten Sermons of Religion, p. 48). |
May the wars end! Both Domestic and Foreign! Sha’alu Sh’lom Y’rushalayim, Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
Blessings,
Rabbi Jonathan Klein
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