It is said that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Yet it is curious how quickly we forget. Even those of us who have lived it. Even me.
In the spring of 1996, I visited Israel for the first time.
Although it was many years ago and I was young, I remember a lot of details about that first trip. I remember a long Jeep ride across the border into Egypt, to the Sinai peninsula where we rode camels through the Colored Canyon. I remember the seemingly empty fields in Northern Israel blocked by barbed wire and a sign: “Danger! Mines.” I remember visiting an otherwise ordinary city square in Tel Aviv that was covered in bouquets of flowers, store-bought and hand-assembled, accumulating in great mounds on the ground.
It was spring of 1996. Yitzhak Rabin had been assassinated only six months earlier.
We were at the newly renamed Rabin Square. In the year between his death and his unveiling, Rabin Square served as a makeshift memorial site. At first I didn’t understand why everyone came to look at a bunch bouquets. And then I understood: we weren’t there to look, we were there to pay our respects. To honor one of the great peace-makers of our time.
Only a year after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Benjamin Netanyahu became Prime Minister of Israel for the first time. The Oslo Accords fizzled out. Then came the Second Intifada. For many, if not most of us, it seemed like our hopes for peace died along with Rabin.
What if Rabin hadn’t been killed? What if the Oslo Accords had been successful? What if our leaders continued to pursue compromise and coexistence? What if...
I ask these questions because this was the climate of the world when I became aware of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Coming of age during a time when we not only believed in peace but we actively pursued it had a deep impact on me. It shaped my worldview. I remember the feeling of hope and optimism, palpable even to a child. I felt it so strongly. Yet even I find myself forgetting. Forgetting what it feels like to believe in peace, forgetting the feeling of hope.
We get the name Israel from Jacob. After Jacob fights an angel and prevails, the angel blesses him with a new name, Yisrael, the one who struggles with God. We as a people become am Yisrael, the nation of strugglers.
We struggle in so many facets of our lives. We struggle with faith, we struggle with practice, we struggle with ethics. And yes, we struggle with ourselves, and we struggle with am Yisrael, the people and the nation.
Perhaps the only time we aren’t struggling is when we walk away, when we turn our backs, when we abandon the cause. We only cease to struggle when we’ve given up.
Jacob wrestled the angel for a blessing. He was about to face his brother Esau, whom he was convinced was going to kill him. It was life or death for Jacob. He needed that blessing or he could die. The struggle was existential.
In some way we are facing a similar struggle now. An existential struggle. A life-or-death struggle. A struggle for peace. We struggle to remember a time when we were optimistic for the future. We struggle to imagine a better tomorrow for the next generation.
There are also struggles here, in our own communities, sometimes within our own families. We struggle to understand each other. We struggle to find common ground.
Our struggle cannot be like Jacob’s struggle, a physical fight. Let us read Jacob’s struggle as a metaphor: he was wrestling with something more powerful than himself, and though the odds were stacked against him, he did not give up.
Our struggles aren’t with each other. They are so much bigger than that. Like Jacob, we are struggling with something bigger than ourselves. We are struggling to find a pathway forward. We are struggling to maintain hope. We are struggling to make peace a reality.
It is summer of 2024. My aunt and uncle are in Democracy Square, just 2 kilometers from Rabin Square. They are surrounded by thousands of Israelis and Palestinians all marching together. “Iskah achshav,” they chant. Deal, now.
Everyone with a different reason for supporting the deal. Some desperate to bring the hostages home. Some desperate to protect their loved ones in Gaza. Some feeling torn in two. Everyone grieving, united in their despair. Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Druze, all marching as one. Iskah achshav, deal, now. For all of us.
Before Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s parents knew they would never again see their son alive, they spoke at the DNC urging Americans to support a peace deal. They said, “In a competition of pain, there are no winners.” Seeking peace even in heartbreak, knowing revenge will not bring their son back.
Our friends and family in Israel have had to let go of the competition of pain. They are not unrealistic idealists. This is their lives, and they have experienced too much loss as it is.
Groups of Palestinians and Israelis working together emphasize the need for common ground. One such group is Women Wage Peace: Palestinian and Israeli mothers who came together and said, “We want our children to live.” Everyone could agree with that statement. “We want our children to live.” By finding common ground, they found empathy. They saw themselves in the other; they saw each other as human.
These peace groups are not monolithic – they may still disagree on certain topics. But with mutual understanding and empathy, they come together to create a path of peace. They know that peace cannot choose sides. There cannot be peace for one without peace for another. Peace must be a middle path which unites us all.
But this isn’t just about peace in the Middle East. It’s about peace in our own communities, in our own homes, in our own hearts.
There are no winners in a competition of pain, and yet we continue to compete. Who is more righteous? Who is more moral? Who is on our side? Who is against us?
Rabbi Sharon Brous has noticed the polarization in her own community. People tell her they feel unsafe when others have drastically opposing views. With great sensitivity, Rabbi Brous asks them this question: Are you actually unsafe, or are you incredibly, unbearably uncomfortable?
There are situations where people are in real danger. And there are many more situations where we are incredibly, unbearably uncomfortable.
Rabbi Brous encourages those of us experiencing this unbearable discomfort to do our best to shift our mindset from furious to curious. What if we could sit with our discomfort, and perhaps even question it?
Is there a way we can find a point of connection? Can we find a common ground? Can we look past our personal pain and hope for healing, rather than retribution? Can we imagine a future of coexistence and peace? Can we be like Women Wage Peace, united in love?
Last week I talked about all humans being deserving of love simply because we’re human. I talked about a Source of Goodness within us all that is a holy, healing light. We all have that light, whether we feel it or not. We all have God within us, a sacred soul that cannot be corrupted.
If we find ourselves engaged in the wrong struggle, can we remember the divine spark within us, our own Source of Goodness? Can we remember that this same light is in every person, that every human is holy and deserving of love?
We need to find a way to sit in the discomfort. To not abandon our struggle for peace even if feels unbearable. We need to focus on what we are for, rather than centering what we are against; we need to focus on what unites us, rather than centering what divides us.
We must reframe what it means to win. If we think we need to beat the other to win, then we will always lose. If not this time, then the next. There are no winners in a competition of pain. But if reframe our goal, then we win when we find common ground, we win when we empathize.
This is not just theoretical. In many ways I am writing about myself, about my own struggle. I have felt overwhelmed by despair. I have felt my heart harden, tired of being broken. I have felt discomfort so unbearable that I felt unsafe. I knew I was not in danger, yet my heart felt afraid. Rabbi Brous could have been talking to me. And in many ways, she was.
My struggle had become internal. Like Jacob wrestled with the angel, I wrestled with myself. I struggled to keep an open heart. I struggled with the unbearable discomfort of empathy. I struggled to abandon the competition of pain. In my own struggle, I wrote a poem as a reminder to myself, as motivation. The refrain says, the heart is never so open as when it is broken.
Friends, we are all broken hearted. Our hearts are wide open. Let’s do our best to keep our hearts open. Let’s not harden them against each other. Let’s turn our open broken hearts into vessels of empathy. Let us remember that love is the Source of Goodness; that every human is deserving of love; that we all have the power to turn love into peace.
In this season of return, let us return to a time when peace felt possible. Let us return to the version of ourselves that believed in a better world. We have been there before, let us not forget that feeling. Let us go back to believing. As we strive to live up to our name as am Yisrael, the ones who struggle, may we remember our struggles are not with each other; we are struggling to make the world a better place. Let us not abandon the struggle, may we never give up the fight for peace.
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