This website may not work correctly in Internet Explorer. We recommend switching to a more secure modern web browser such as Microsoft Edge which is already installed on your computer.

View this website in Edge.

Rabbi Jonathan Keren-Black 2024 RH sermon

Rabbi Jonathan Keren-Black

Shall not the God of heaven do justice? Abraham argues to God in our powerful portion today on this first day and this first shabbat of the new year.

But how can even Abraham, the first human being with his wife Sarah to recognise the One Power of the universe, and to have the symbol of God, the letter heh, added to their names – how can even Abraham question God?

Well – our tradition, through Abraham, through Rebbeca, through Moses, teaches us we can all question God.  Indeed that is what our name means.  Not Jew, or Jewish, which derive from Judah and Judea, the names of the land where the largest tribe of Judah lived, with Jerusalem as its capital and where the Temple was built.  No – in Hebrew we call ourselves Yisrael – as indeed we do every time we say the Sh’ma – Sh’ma, Yisrael – listen up, you Jewish people!  The Eternal One is our God – the Eternal God is One!

Yisrael means ‘one who struggles with God’, and the word first appears when Abraham and Sarah’s grandson Jacob struggles with the angel. He has finally decided to return to his parents and his twin brother Esau, having become rich and numerous with four wives and at least thirteen children and many grandchildren and great grandchildren – and huge flocks and herds.

When Jacob struggles overnight with the angel – or is it his conscience? – and the dawn eventually breaks, the angel says ‘you will no longer be known as Jacob – you will now be known as Yisrael – one who struggles with God – for you have struggled with God – and people – and prevailed!

Jacob’s twelve sons become the heads of twelve clans – the sons of Jacob are better known as the Children of Israel – the Israelites, and, with a bit of adjustment, the clans become the twelve tribes of Israel!  When they conquer Canaan, it becomes known as the land of Israel. And eventually, after the death of King Solomon, the kingdom splits into two, and the northern part is named the Kingdom of Israel.

So our name defines our task, our world view.  To struggle with God.  But what does this mean?  Life is full of tricky challenges.  Often, our choices are not clear-cut, not binary.  Choosing the right thing to do; what, as it were, God wants us to do – therein lies our struggle, not against but with God – perhaps even alongside God.  God works through us – we are God’s tools, God’s fingers and voice.  Collectively our tradition sees us as a kingdom of priests, and a light to the nations.  Life is a challenge – every day is a challenge.  And often we fall short, make the wrong choices, or simply fail to achieve our target, and miss the mark.  This – in terms of the High Holy Day liturgy – is ‘khet’ – not so much a sin, but a falling short in our struggle with and for God.

Rosh Hashanah starts the ten days of penitence, concluding with Yom Kippur, most solemn and holy day of the year.  In the ten days, we start in earnest to consider and examine our lives. We are supposed to look back over the past year in particular, asking ourselves what we have done wrong, where we have failed ourselves, our families and friends, our colleagues or employers or employees.  For someone like me who can barely bring yesterday to mind, it can be helpful to ask those around us to give us some gentle feedback, over the coming week. In this ten days, we should not only try to be penitent, to resolve to change, and not to repeat our past mistakes and behaviours.  We should also do our utmost to apologise to those we may have hurt, upset or offended.  If we have caused damage, we must make every effort to fix it.  Only after doing this sincerely and fully will we be ready to stand before God at Yom Kippur and seek divine forgiveness and the new start we so much desire.

During this ten day period, on 7th October, we also mark the anniversary of the tragedy of the Hamas attack on the Nova Music Festival in the latest iteration of Israel, the State that carries that name.  We mourn the 1200 innocent deaths that occurred there, and the taking of 250 innocent hostages, many of whom have died, over 100 of whom are still being held, all of whom, with their families, have been damaged and traumatised beyond imagining.  October 7th sparked the terrible year for Israel and her neighbours which is unfolding on the other side of the world, even as we sit here in peace and safety, and which may continue for many more months or years yet.

Of course around this anniversary there will be a lot of commentary, and there already have been so many words published on all aspects of the attack and its tragic and ongoing repercussions.   These words are often negative, ignorant and ill-informed or purely prejudiced.  They are often difficult to hear and read, especially when they come from other Jews such as publisher Louise Adler.

What is essential, but at the same time usually lacking, is a balanced awareness of the history.  I am therefore going to take this opportunity to set a fuller context, and even conclude on a note of possible hope.
The Peel Commission in 1937 and then the United Nations in 1947 both recommended partitioning Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish State.

On both occasions, the Jews were ready to react positvely but the Arabs rejected the proposal.  When in November 1947 the United Nations voted to accept a Jewish State in the 1947 partition plan area, Australia was the first country to vote in favour, and the final votes were 33 in favour, 13 against, and 10 abstentions.
In its declaration of Independence, Israel offered a clear hand of friendship: ‘We offer peace and amity to all neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The state of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and reconstitution of the Middle East.’

Israel could have been established alongside an equal sized and equally viable Arab state which could have retained the name ‘Palestine’, a name given by the Romans, derived from the coastal strip where the Philistines lived (the five cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gaza, Ekron, and Gat – in the area which comprises the Gaza strip, and on up towards Tel Aviv).  Instead of accepting an Arab state alongside the new Jewish one, on the day it declared its independence, Israel was attacked by five neighbouring Arab armies.

Tiny Israel fought back and won the 1948 ‘War of Independence’, then the 1956 War of attrition, the Six Day War in 1967 and the 1973 Yom Kippur War when again Egypt, Jordan and other Arab countries tried to destroy it.

I am convinced that as stated in the 1948 Declaration, and over many subsequent years, Israel truly did want to make peace with its neighbours.  Indeed it gave back the entire Sinai to Egypt in return for peace, and later made peace also with Jordan.  It is important to note that, despite all the difficulties since then, and even through this past terrible year, those peace treaties are still in place.  Clearly Israel has been ready to make significant concessions in return for peace (which, after all, is the only way to guarantee its long-term safety).

Peace with the Palestinians was so close, and Israel’s peace movement was so strong and hopeful, with the Oslo accords in 1993.  But for some never really explained reason, Yasir Arafat walked away from peace and a Palestinian State alongside Israel.  Some analysts conclude that he was simply not prepared to go down in history as the Arab who accepted a (single, small) Jewish state in the middle of the 25 or so Arab countries of the world.

On reflection, this was probably the turning point.  Israel’s peace camp was decimated – there was a feeling of hopelessness and that there was no-one to talk to on the Palestinian side.  Benjamin Netanyahu has obviously concluded that the relative peace and increasing success and prosperity that Israel was enjoying were the best they could get, and no longer believed in a two state solution.

Even when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unilaterally withdrew Jewish Israeli citizens from their homes and towns in Gaza by force in 2005, using the Israeli army, to allow the Gazan Palestinians independence, they instead destroyed the synagogues and community centres left for them, built tunnels, tried to secretly import armaments, and set up factories to make them, and we have seen the tragic results ever since.

So it appears at every step that the Palestinian leadership if not the citizens, puts eliminating the Jewish state (in which 20% are Arab Israelis, by the way) above establishing a Palestinian State for themselves.
Israel had effectively given up trying to make peace with the Palestinians.

The Palestinian Arabs, who have been misused as ‘pawns’ by the Arab world since prior to 1948 as a way of eliminating Israel either militarily or using world opinion etc, have by now become a dangerous inconvenience to the Arab world.  The continuing sore of the Palestinian issue threatens their own stability, as new generations of their people grow up believing in the ongoing injustice Israel (and the US) are perpetrating against their poor Palestinian ‘brother’ Arabs.  This was one of the causes of the 2010 ‘Arab Spring’ where the people nearly overthrew their own leaderships and had to be put down with vicious strong-arm tactics.

That is why the peace with Jordan and Egypt has been maintained, as well as developed with United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and even Sudan.

It seems that Saudi Arabia was about to normalise relations with Israel last year, and this was the likely trigger for the Hamas’ attack on Israel. Saudi Arabia is the leader of the Sunni (and usually somewhat more moderate) Arab world – very fearful about the growth and power of the more extreme ‘Shi’ite banana’ led by Iran, with Syria and of course the Iranian proxy Hizballah in Southern Lebanon and which has basically taken over Lebanon.

Israel’s struggle has, as we can readily see, been forced upon it, though we should all be troubled by the scale of destruction and innocent deaths in Gaza.  But we must bear in mind that even now Hamas both continues to hold innocent Israeli hostages, and is still continuing to fire missiles into Israel from Gaza (whilst Hizballah continues to fire from the North, and now the Iranian-backed Huti rebels from Yemen to the South have also become involved).

So what choices does Israel have, when its very existence remains under threat?

a) To make peace?  It has where it could.  Palestinians seem to have repeatedly proved that, so far, they are not interested in Israel continuing to exist. Peace is therefore not currently a choice.
b) To do nothing.  Allow continuous rocket attacks.  Families and children rushing to shelters every night when the sirens wail. Israel has basically been doing this for some years. 60,000 residents of Northern cities have been living in hotels and with families in the middle of Israel since October 7th. Which other country is in this situation, or would allow it to continue?  It was not realistic to continue to ignore the ongoing and dangerous provocation.
c) To defend itself?  This is what it is now doing – but remember that it was not having to do so before October 7th.

The bloodshed in Gaza and Lebanon is a result of the attacks on Israel.  When the enemy is patently using hospitals, schools, civilian populations as human shields, and ambulances to move fighters and weapons around, it is absolutely inevitable that there will be some civilian deaths.   But the pager attack in Lebanon was an absolutely brilliant move – no-one except Hizballah leaders were using pagers – so that is who were precision targeted.  It is a tragedy that 2 children were killed nearby.  But in terms of accurate targeting and low ‘collateral damage’ rates, amazing.  The Six Day War is always taught in military training as a brilliant example of pre-emptive strike and meticulous planning to win a war (Israel attacked the Egyptian airforce before they had even taken off!).  I have no doubt the pager attacks will be taught in the same way.  The subsequent criticism and talk of ‘war crimes’ is, I am sad to say, antisemitism coming out, as it is now perfectly politically acceptable to criticise Israel (and, they will say, Israelis are ‘Jews’ after all – even though we know that Israel and Jews are not actually synonymous).

What now? [Since giving the sermon on Rosh Hashanah, Iran launched 181 ballistic missiles against Israel, many of which were, thankfully intercepted]. Iran could, God forbid, launch nuclear weapons against Israel.  But we pray desperately that they would be stopped by anti-missile missiles.  Iran would probably be obliterated in return.  Would Russia and North Korea and then America, pitch in?  It is certainly a high stakes risk.

My hope is that Saudi Arabia will ally with Egypt and Jordan, the US, Europe, UK, Australia and the other Arab countries who already have peace or see the benefits of peace with Israel.  They have said they won’t, until Israel makes peace with the Palestinians first.

But they must now change their message.  ‘We ARE going to make peace with Israel, for the sake of the world.  We are committed to establish a peaceful (and therefore non-militarised) Palestinian State in conjunction with Israel, Jordan and Egypt and a Middle Eastern ‘Common Market’ – but the return of the hostages, the complete cessation of missiles and a real peace must come first, before that can start. Palestinian intransigence will NOT stop us making peace now. They have held too much sway for too long’.

Make no mistake – and let the world make no mistake.  Jews and Israel are not the same – but we carry the same name, and are intrinsically linked.  As the Jewish homeland, where Abraham and Sarah settled, embarks on this new year with its most painful anniversary, it continues to struggle, with God’s help, to make a better, safer world.

As individuals, as we embark on this new year, we continue to struggle, with God’s help, to make ourselves and the part of the world we live in and influence, better, safer and more peaceful as well.  Amen. Ken y’hi ratzon.

Find more Parashat Hashavua