The current Israeli operations against Hamas in Gaza is named – as was pointed out to me by our older son – “Operation Cast Lead,” a direct reference to Hayim Nachman Bialik’s famous poem “In Honor of Hanukkah.” In the poem, a teacher presents his student with a dreidel made of cast lead which at the time – right after the 1903 Kishinev pogroms – was the finest kind of dreidel for which a young Jewish child could hope. Did that shetl child dare hope for liberation in a Jewish state? We can barely speculate.

The child receiving the dreidel in Bialik’s poem likely interpreted the Hebrew letters on its four sides in Yiddish, assigning each a meaning as to how many coins or nuts to put into the pot or take out. If she were really bright she may have noticed that spinning the dreidel was pretty much the same as tossing a coin. At any moment one player may be up or down but in the long run the game still offered its players the same odds. Later on, the assigned value of the ‘nun, gimel, hey & shin’ may have been reinterpreted into something that sounded right in English or even Modern Hebrew but you still put in and took out based on how the top landed after any given spin. Cast lead has been replaced by wood, plastic or even a digital image, but not much has really changed – it is still like a coin toss.

If Bialik were alive he would see that in the Hanukkah just past we are no longer cowering in a shetl, but he might also point out that in many ways we are still spinning the same dreidel and tossing the same coins – even if the materials and delivery methods have changed. Never at a loss for textual imagery, Bialik might also have called upon the story of Joseph, the first positional Jew who lead us to survival by fronting for pharaoh and doing the king’s ‘dirty work’ in containing, dislocating and bankrupting the Egyptian peasantry in a time of famine. (Genesis 47) We survived, but slavery was still ahead.

Operation Cast Lead, similar to the story of the Hebrews in Egypt or a spin of the dreidel, will prove to be another necessary but repetitive coin toss because:

Tails we lose:

Even if militarily successful, our case is well made and Israel protects civilians as much as possible, we will lose in the court of international opinion. After Joseph, the pharaoh did not like the idea that his Hebrews were getting too strong. With very few exceptions, the world is still uncomfortable with Jews who can and do defend themselves. The dearth of statements opposing Hamas and the plethora of condemnations of Israel’s self-defense does not have to be recounted here.

Hiding behind the canard of “proportionality,” Israel is called to task for finally, after years, trying to put an end to terrorism with superior force. Would the world be better off if the weaponry available to Israel were put into the hands of Hamas? Should Israel limit its response to only sending crude missiles indiscriminately aimed at densely populated Gaza City? The last greatest example of proportionality may have been the inconclusive and costly standoff of trench warfare in WWI. Should, in the name of proportionality, the Allies have reduced their forces in Europe as Hitler’s war machine was dismembered? Should the U.S.’s response to 9/11 have been limited to military use of a few commercial airliners?

No matter when or how the bombing (or even a ground invasion) of Gaza ends Israel will not, in the strict sense of the term, ‘win’. Somehow the nearly daily rocket attacks that now can reach almost a million Israelis will be brought to a halt. Even if, by some miracle, Hamas is dislodged as the rulers of Gaza (and I don’t think this is likely to happen soon) there will still be elements albeit called by other names, that will remain committed to Israel’s destruction. Remember that Hamas’s attacks from Gaza are not aimed at territory conquered in 1967 but at land within Israel’s 1948 borders. When Hamas says ‘occupied land’ they mean all of Israel.

Heads they win:

Ibrahim al-Amine, board chairman of Al Akhbar, a Lebanese pro-Hezbollah newspaper, was quoted in the New York Times (Dec 31 2008 pg A10) as saying: “Israel would be satisfied with a compromise but the Arab regimes want to finish Hamas completely.” Like Joseph for the pharaoh, Israel is being allowed to do the dirty work. The rulers of some secular (although in no way democratic) Arab countries may be more threatened by Hamas than Israel. President Mubarak of Egypt has offered to open his border with Gaza only if the Palestinian Authority takes over. Like the pharaoh of Exodus, he is concerned about Egyptians, in this case the Muslim Brotherhood, linking up with his enemies and overpowering him. It is a reasonable fear should Israel stop keeping Hamas busy on their other borders Remember that Egypt could have had Gaza back if it wanted it.

Secular leaders in other Islamic countries are also walking a fine line between appeasement of the “street” and their own need to oppose militant Islamists. While they may have to make statements in support of Hamas or take some heat for seeming to cooperate with Israel on another level they are glad to have Israel as an unintentional ‘stand in’ against challengers to their own authority. Others, like the Saudis have been using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the 60-year-old excuse as to why the unprivileged of their own countries have no freedom and only limited benefits from the great wealth their countries produce. They do not want to get caught in between Hamas and their customers (us) so it is in their interest to keep the pot ‘simmering’ without really boiling over.

Arab rulers win, maybe even along with Israel, because when Israel fights Hamas they can avoid doing battle against or openly opposing Hamas and its sponsors.

Keep spinning

There is no magic solution. I think that Operation Cast Lead will continue until Hamas is ready to suspend (because theologically they cannot ‘stop’) firing missiles at Israel because of their inability or the hope of a better deal from their fellow Muslims. As Mr. al-Amine predicts, Israel will just hope to stop the rockets and survive – until we have to spin the dreidel again.

Leave a comment; let me know what you think!

Rabbi Steve Denker

It was already a miserable year. The Vietnam War was raging with no end in sight as we all watched American cities burning on the television news. Issues of race relations were so hotly debated that almost 10 million people (13.5% of the voters) were about to cast their ballots for segregationist Governor George Wallace. Both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy had been shot dead. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the kindly vicarious pediatrician to a generation, was under indictment for conspiracy to encourage violations of the draft laws and none of us knew if student deferments would still be available for next fall’s college semester. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey’s campaign, hobbled by his association with the Johnson administration and divisions within the Democratic Party was, in the final weeks, showing signs of catching on and catching up in the polls.

Grandma was distraught, the husband with whom she had shared almost every moment for almost 50 years was now gone. The morning after Grandpa died we found out that she could barely see. They had covered up her multiple vision problems; she already had heart disease and diabetes. Who knew if she would make it?

If the 40 year old memory serves; Grandpa was buried the following Monday, Election Day was the first full day of shiva. Now it is important to understand that my grandparents, who emigrated to the United States as small children and whose educations terminated upon graduation from the 8^th grade at Lower East Side public schools, were the kind of Jews to whom Orthodoxy came naturally when they were inclined to be observant – which was not all that often. Like most Jews, they snuggled up to The Tradition when they needed its support, mainly around lifecycle events and especially around death.

Upon returning from the funeral Grandma realized she had forgotten to ask the rabbi (Orthodox of course) an important question. We got him on the phone for her. She sought a halakic ruling as to whether or not it was permissible to leave the house and break the shiva for the purpose of going out to vote. We will never know how the rabbi responded to this decidedly modern American question. What I do know is that on Election Day 1968, for the first time in my life, at the age of 17 (the voting age was 21) I entered and pulled the levers on a New York City voting machine. I was not committing fraud, nor did I violate any laws. I was simply the person Grandma chose to assist her when she left the shiva house in order to vote against Richard Nixon and lament that fact that Grandpa could not do so as well.

What made my grandmother so insistent on voting that year? She and my grandfather were fairly apolitical. They were not members of a labor union and if they participated in the Workmen’s Circle it was an attachment to Yiddish culture not socialism. I never heard them talk about civil rights or Vietnam, except to be concerned that I, their eldest grandson, might be drafted the following year. They had loved FDR and mourned Julius and Ethel Rosenberg but were committed minor capitalists, owners of a small business. They were “Sam and Rose the Tailors”! They were proud naturalized citizens; just old enough to remember their early lives in the shetl, recall the rigors of immigration and appreciate the opportunities that grew out of the tenements that were their first American homes.

Grandma left the house of mourning in order to vote because she remembered who Richard Nixon really was. She and her contemporaries were still reeling from, among other things, his 1950 California campaign for the US Senate against Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas with its red baiting, innuendos about his opposition’s disloyalty and not so covert anti-Semitism. She saw voting in general and voting against demagoguery in particular as a mitzvah that took precedence over the Laws surrounding death and mourning. Grandma was not disrespecting Grandpa’s memory, she was honoring it.

Forty years later, almost to the day, several of the great grandchildren who she never knew are about to exercise the right that Grandma and her parents crossed an ocean to attain. We owe it to her, to all of our grandparents not only to vote, but to vote wisely. If the uneducated but hard working men and women of her generation could see through the hype, scare tactics and falsehoods of the 1968 election can we who are by and large more educated and secure do any less?

This is not a partisan statement. It is merely an admonition to today’s Jews saying that when we vote (and I presume you all will) that our choices should be based on facts and not fear, informed by policy preferences and not propaganda, influenced by information not innuendo.

Israel is not an issue this year. Both candidates and parties are committed to Israel’s survival – if only as a means to their own political health. Congress will remain squarely in Israel’s corner – that’s where the real help for Israel originates – and having Israel as a ‘football’ in US politics does not, in the long run, help her cause. There are, however, real differences in policy between Senator McCain and Senator Obama on critical questions like: taxs; economic recovery; energy; reproductive rights; medical care; foreign affairs and, as in 1968, a difficult, intractable and unprecedented war. Jews may and do differ on the approach to real issues such as these. Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, we are required, maybe even commanded, to vote our considered, rational opinions.

In 1968 Grandma had a clear black and white choice. That day her side lost but by his second term the world knew that the vote I cast for her was right. This year it is not so easy. Putting aside all the pundits, propagandists and comedians there are no villains among the serious presidential and vice-presidential contenders; no commies, anti-Semites, anti-Americans or idiots. At issue is simply this: Which set of policy visions is your best bet for making the United States, in all respects, a stronger nation and healthier society that will be better for everyone, including the Jews. Is that a tough choice – well Grandma never told me it was going to be easy!

Happy Election Day!

Rabbi Steve Denker

© Rabbi Steven L Denker 2008. All rights reserved.

© Rabbi Steven L Denker 2008. All rights reserved.

Blogging is well rooted in Jewish Tradition.  The Talmud can be understood as a pre-electronic blog with central ideas branching off in all directions, a plethora of voices and commentaries all around.  When parchment was invented our ancestors left their chisels and stones behind.   In due course scrolls turned into books and movable type rapidly spread the written word through all of civilization.  This medium is just another way to continue the human conversation that began with Eve and Adam and the Jewish discourse called Torah that emanates from Sinai.

Here I will present my “take” on the affairs and concerns of the Jewish people and all humanity in the light of Jewish values from my vantage point as an American congregational rabbi.  I will post on the tough issues in a non-partisan way.  Your commitment is to join the conversation respectfully - even if we don’t agree.  Rude, vulgar, racist or bigoted comments will not be published.

Thanks to our congregation, Temple Emanu El in Orange Village, Ohio, Chad Barr and the folks at CB Software Systems, in a few days we will be blogging in earnest and I will receive and respond to your comments and email.  We will shortly be adding a podcast to this website.

Put us on your bloglist or just ’stay tuned’.  B’ezrat HaShem - with G-d’s Help we will soon be sharing thoughts.

Shannah Tovah!

Rabbi Steve Denker