Israel celebrates 60... but remember Zecharyah's message

Sixty!

Sixty, in the Torah, is a measure of completion:

• The sages refer to the number of Jews who left Egypt as "60 myriads" (Talmud, Megilah 29a)
• Large gatherings in general are defined as gatherings of "60 myriads" (Talmud, Berachot 58a).
• The Temple in Jerusalem was 60 cubits long (Kings I 6:2).
• Sixty warriors surround the bed of King Solomon, a full complement of defenders (Song of Songs 3:7).
• Sixty myriads of angels crowned the Jews at Mount Sinai when we accepted the Torah (Talmud, Shabbat 88a).

There is an element of completion, then, in reaching the age of 60, however battered and broken we may feel at times; mazal tov!

I submitted the following column to the Allentown Morning Call's Religion section, in honor of the occasion:

A Lesson from Zechariah, on Israel's 60th Birthday

Some 2400 years ago, as the Jews were slowly building the Second Temple in Jerusalem, they asked the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 7), “Shall we continue to fast for the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple? Or has our period of mourning ended?”

Commentators explain that this question was born of frustration with the slow pace of Jewish redemption from their exile to Babylon. Persian King Cyrus had permitted the Jews to return to Israel and build their Temple anew, but the process had been hampered by Samaritan antagonism as well as Jewish poverty. Those who remembered the glory of the First Temple were unimpressed by the diminished beauty of the second. Only a small percentage of the nation had even returned from exile at this stage of the building process. And so the nation wanted to know: Is this what redemption looks like? Is our suffering truly over, or are we simply in another phase of our exile?

Fast-forward to our own day, and May 2008, as Israel celebrates its sixtieth anniversary of modern statehood. When this new incarnation of a Jewish country was first established, just a few years after the Holocaust, many Jews looked upon its birth as a Divine nod of approval, the first sproutings of Messianic redemption. A holiday, Yom ha’Atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) was established, complete with special prayers of thanks and great celebrations.

Over the past sixty years, Israel has succeeded in fulfilling much of that messianic promise. Millions of Jews have been saved from persecution in other countries, such as France, Argentina, Yemen, Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union. The Torah is studied there in dozens if not hundreds of institutions. Sites barred to Jews by generations of Arab rulers are now open for all to access. A thriving economy, great universities, a society with civil rights for all of its citizens, a democratically elected government and a free press, all of these have been introduced for the first time in many centuries into a land which had been governed by one despot or another for almost two thousand years, since the eviction of the Jews by the Roman empire. In many ways, the past sixty years have seen a great, even messianic, Jewish renaissance in Israel.

But, at the same time, the question of Zechariah’s era resonates with Jews of today’s generation. For thousands of years, Jewish sages have taught that a messianic time would mean peace with the nations around us, a return to Jewish religion by all Jews, and a Temple on the Temple Mount. It is for this that Jews have prayed, “And may our eyes behold Your merciful return to Zion,” three times each day, for millenia. And so Jews today look at constant warfare, internecine squabbles, political corruption and significant poverty among children and the elderly, and ask the question of their ancestors: “Shall we continue to fast for the destruction of the First Temple? Or has our period of mourning ended?”

To this question, Zechariah’s answer is as relevant today as it was in his day. The prophet reminded the populace of the sins which had preceded the First Temple’s destruction, as well as the exhortations of his predecessors: “Judge truthfully, and act with generosity and mercy toward each other. Do not cheat the widow, the orphan and the stranger, and do not plot evil against your brother in your hearts.”

In other words: Dithering about whether deliverance has arrived, or not, is a waste of time. Better to focus on righting wrongs and building a proper society, and ensuring that we earn whatever redemption God has in store.

This is a timeless message, for Jews and for all humanity’s eschatology-oriented religions: Divine Redemption will come, whatever its form, when it is Divinely decreed. Our responsibility is not to attach a label to this salvation, but to work to make it a reality.

You might also see my derashah here.

Yom haZikaron: The Value of Memory without Action

They shouldn’t have died. They shouldn’t have been murdered.
Infants, children, mothers, young men and women, elderly, handicapped…
They should be here with us today, enjoying the sunshine on their faces.
So whom can we blame?

-Ourselves, for wanting to live in the land of our ancestors, the land of the Torah and the land of mitzvos, the land taken from us by force, the land promised to us by Gd? We are seeking that which we have always sought, that which we need for our survival, both physical and spiritual.

-Jews around the world, for becoming a latter-day Babylonian Jewry, sitting at home comfortably under their grapevines and fig trees, occasionally popping in for a visit or writing a check or engaging in “political action” while their surrogates bleed? Yom haZikaron is the worst day of the year for me, questioning for the nth time what I am doing outside of Israel.

-Gd, for arranging a no-win situation in which we would be expected to return to our land, but without clear Divine “air support” for that return?

-The Arab world, for acting greedily as human beings always act upon losing something they believe is theirs, for not believing the Torah’s account of our right to Israel, for their bloodthirsty embrace of death?

-The world’s nations, those United Nations, for their realpolitik self-interest, the way they kowtow to Arab oil and petrodollars, the way they always seem to find ways to beat down the scapegoat Jews even as they insist there is no Anti-Semitism?

We can always find reasons to blame, particularly when there is blood everywhere. Our fingers are flexible; we can point in every direction, and we do. But it brings no satisfaction.

At the end of the day, all the blame in the universe doesn’t bring a single soldier, a single bombing or stabbing or shooting or stoning or lynching victim, back to life. All of the petitions and protests, all of the anger and angst and Never Again, may have some impact on the future, but no human hand can reverse the past.

Which, I suppose, is why it’s important to have a Yom haZikaron, a day not to blame, but to remember.

A day not to politicize and criticize and pontificate and castigate, but to look at photographs of faces, to say tehillim and recall the long, long list of names, to cry for men and women, young and old, to remember them not so much for how they died but who they were, how they lived, whom they loved, what potential they never had a chance to express.

It’s hard to remember without following up with retaliatory or compensatory action; it seems so depressingly pointless. This lack of bombast does not satisfy any need for revenge, does not serve any eschatological drive for redemption. But I think there is a point: To ensure that what is past does not become distant past, that in our drive to move forward we do not lose the souls of those who cannot be with us. To recall the merit of those whose lives were cut short.

Memory, we are taught, is the sum of our identity. It sums up what we have experienced and how we have acted, where we have been, what we have thought and believed. It is, in a sense, the most powerful, certainly the most encompassing, force in our lives.

And in devoting this most encompassing force to those who have been taken from us, we guarantee that their souls are צרורות בצרור החיים, bound up in the bond of life, in the most literal meaning of Avigayil words.

יהי זכרם ברוך, their memory is blessed, and is a blessing.