A Glimpse of Israel Now
Sermon, Shabbat Vayeitzei 5786
Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ
As most of you know, I returned eight days ago from a Zionist Rabbinic Coalition mission trip to Azerbaijan and Israel. I spoke last week, primarily, about the Azerbaijan aspect of the journey. Tonight I’d like to address Israel today, as I found it on this recent experience.
It is an appropriate topic for this Shabbat of Vayeitzei, which begins with our ancestor Jacob, who will be renamed Israel in next week’s parshah, receiving a promise that his descendants will be numerous and inherit the land that will eventually be known as Israel. According to tradition, the place that Jacob has that vision, the famous ladder climbing to heaven, was in the heart of Jerusalem, the place where the First and Second Temples would be built on what is now the Temple Mount. Naturally, as I always do in Israel, I went to the Kotel, the Western Wall, last standing remnant of the holiest structure in our history, on a beautiful autumn night. It is always a powerful, mystical gift to stand at the Wall, touch it, and pray. According to Midrash, this place was where all creation began, where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, where Jacob dreamed, where King David conquered, where our people’s worship has been centered and directed toward ever since the 10th century BCE. It is a place of holiness and power, always, and a unique place in the world for all Jews.
This visit that experience was positively impacted by an earlier, almost casual visit our guide led us on while we were on the way to a meeting at the Begin Center. As we walked past a corner I have traversed hundreds of times, dating back to my first visits to Israel many decades ago and while I lived in Israel and on many subsequent visits, a street corner quite near the old Turkish train station that is now an entertainment and shopping hub, our guide led us up a little path I had never before noticed. Just above the street level there is a small park, or really, a monument called Ketef Hinom. The archeological site was excavated back in the 1970s for its First Temple-era burial chambers dating back over 2600 years. The archeologist Gabriel Barkay gave the site its name, based on the fact that it lies at the edge of Gay Hinom, the valley of Hinnom that gave its name to Gehenna, the Jewish word for hell, since children were sacrificed there by the ancient Canaanites to the fire god Molech; he combined that with the word ketef, meaning shoulder, since it’s the shoulder of that valley, the edge.
The greatest discovery made there came in 1979, and it was made by a very irritating volunteer on the dig. Gabriel Barkay was so irked at this nudnik, who kept asking dumb questions and not doing what he was told to do, that he directed him to dig far away from the main area of interest, where, it was believed, nothing valuable could be found. Lo and behold, this “ultra-nudnik”, as Barkay describes him, discovered two delicate silver amulets. Written upon them was a version of the Birkat Kohanim, the Priestly Benediction, “May God bless you and keep you, May God’s light shine upon you and give you grace, may God’s countenance be turned to you and grant you peace.” The text on the amulets, quite legible after they were painstakingly unraveled over the course of three years, is nearly identical to the famous formula in Numbers 6:24-26 that we use regularly to bless birthdays, anniversaries, wedding couples, new babies, conversion students, b’nai mitzvah and confirmands.
That makes the discovery made at Ketef Hinnom the oldest textual form of the Hebrew Bible yet discovered, dating back to the 7th century BCE, First Temple times. These silver amulets with the priestly blessings are 400 years older, at least, than the Dead Sea Scrolls. And that also makes this blessing of God’s light and peace the most important element taken from the area of Ketef Hinnom, from the very “shoulder of hell,” as it were.
A popular interpretation of this, sometimes credited to Rabbi David Wolpe, although I have seen it ascribed to others, is that these last two years of Israel’s history, since October 7th, 2023, can be seen as the chance to find God’s light and peace emerging right next to the hellish disasters of that day and the subsequent war. Out of Ketef Hinnom may come the blessings of God, of protection, light, and peace. It may yet prove to be true.
For now, I can tell you that Israel once again feels like Israel. When I visited in January of 2024 I found a country that in some ways seemed like the same place I have lived in and loved, but in other ways was in a kind of national PTSD experience. Posters of the missing hostages were everywhere, video boards cycling through their faces and names and ages, billboards and bumper stickers and assembled monuments and performance art displays were constant reminders of the missing Israelis, as well as memorials to the murdered teens, elderly, children, mothers and fathers brutally killed by the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad on and after October 7th.
But almost all of us noticed as we landed in Jerusalem that Ben Gurion airport no longer had photos of the kidnapped hostages lining the arrival hallway as you entered. And the plethora of posters and video boards calling for the immediate repatriation of the hostages are nearly all gone. What an incredible relief… Whatever the long-term impact of the cease-fire deal brokered by President Trump ultimately is, the return of the living hostages, and of the remains of the murdered Israelis and foreign nationals, has been a great accomplishment for Israel and Jews everywhere. We now have just two bodies that remain in Gaza out of the 250 people brutally taken by the Hamas Palestinian terrorists over two years ago.
Our group from the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition gained a few additional participants for our two days plus in Jerusalem and most of a day in meetings and interactions in what is called the Gaza envelope area. During our time in the capital we had lectures and discussions at the Foreign Ministry, met with Minister of Tourism Chaim Katz, MK Moshe Turpaz, a leader of the Opposition, visited the new Knesset Museum, toured the Gaza envelope with IDF representatives, and met with officials deeply involved in Israel’s current strategic and security situation.
At the Foreign Ministry we held a roundtable give and take with members of the department charged with public relations, hasbara, where we offered suggestions and feedback. In another session we were briefed thoroughly on the regional challenges facing Israel by the impressive Director of that department, including how Israel plans to go forward in confronting Iran. In a discussion with the minister in the Foreign Ministry charged with combatting the global rise of antisemitism, we discussed how we, as rabbis, can address the growing generational divide in attitudes toward Israel. Complementing our sessions at the Foreign Ministry were impassioned talks by Michal Cotler Wunsh, who was the Antisemitism Director for Israel until about a month ago, and with British journalist and author Melanie Phillips about the state of Jewish and world affairs.
As the representatives as the Foreign Ministry explained, until now Israel has successfully battled a seven-front war: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria first under Asad with deployed Iranian military units, and then against the post-Asad militias, the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, Shiite militias in Iraq who fired missiles and drones at Israel, and finally Iran itself, of course, the malign supporter behind all of the fronts and then directly attacking Israel. On all fronts, remarkably and in some cases nearly miraculously, Israel has triumphed. That is the profound geostrategic difference between the Israel that I visited 21 months ago and the current version of Israel.
But Melanie Phillips and Michal Cotler-Wunsh spoke of the eighth front – the attacks on Israel in the media and public spaces, the efforts to ostracize Israel and intimidate and demonize all Jews. The war being waged against Israel, Israelis and Jews in this sphere is well-organized, well-financed, and pervasive. We rabbis of the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition were encouraged to have a greater understanding of our responsibility to lead in this all-important battle for public opinion.
It became painfully clear in our meetings and conversations at the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Tourism, and the Knesset that the leaders of Israel, and in particular the Netanyahu government, have no overall strategy to address the virulent spread of antisemitism throughout the world. They are, in many ways, just coming to terms with the virulent spread of this new pandemic, and the ways that Jews are being attacked and intimidated, including violently, all around the world today. The department addressing Antisemitism at the Foreign Ministry is, well, one person, as she made painfully clear to us. While the responsibility to address the many slurs, conspiracy theories, and waves of antisemitic hatred launched from the political left and right at Jews and Israelis everywhere is a shared responsibility with the Jewry of the Diaspora, here in Tucson just as in New York or Los Angeles, it certainly would seem that the Israeli government needs to focus on this issue in a serious way. It has not done so yet, and we can only assume that now that the full-on war is definitively over—that’s how Israelis are looking at it—it is time for leadership on this crucial issue to come from the country with more than half of the world’s Jews and so much of its talent and leadership ability.
Our visit to the Gaza Envelope was painful, informative and inspiring. In a moving ceremony, we visited the site of the Nova Festival to recite Kaddish and Eyl Maleh Rahamim and quietly walked the sacred ground. It is, as I noted, cleaned up now: in place of blood you see the photos and biographies of each of the young people murdered by Hamas Palestinian terrorists that awful Simchat Torah day in 2023, so many promising lives cut short in terrible ways. It hurts the heart… Over 5,000 people every day visit the Nova Festival site, just a couple of miles from Gaza, and the highway that became a death trap that day. It has become the central memorial—there are others, of course, and we visited some—of October 7th.
Accompanied by a VIP escort from the IDF, we also went to areas not usually seen by the public. We saw trucks lined up on both sides of the Keren Shalom crossing into Gaza, and learned from the old-timey Sabra Director of Operations that it takes 100 trucks a day filled with food to feed Gaza. Israel sends in 800 trucks a day; these trucks originate in Jordan or Egypt, filled to the brim with supplies for Gaza. Again, what is required to fee the population is 100 trucks daily. 800 trucks—we saw the enormous line of them ferrying food and medical supplies and clothing into Gaza, then unloading, with the material to be picked up by Palestinian trucks in Gaza. The Israelis search every truck and confiscate contraband weapons, explosives, and chemicals that can be made into rocket fuel hidden in toys, food cans and packages. We saw a display of some of these confiscated materials. Still, a huge amount of supplies are pouring into Gaza, and have been pouring in all along, without cessation during the Gaza War. Israel has not interdicted the food supply at any time, and starvation in Gaza was not the result of a lack of food trucks crossing through the Keren Shalom border post.
The problem is what happens once the aid gets to the other side, to Gaza, where the United Nations is anything but helpful and where Hamas, and to a lesser extent, Palestinian Islamic Jihad violently seeks to abscond and control the distribution, and to gouge its own Palestinian people for the food they then sell to them at usurious rates, or simply horde.
Just ½ hour before we arrived, a terrorist who attacked one of the kibbutzim on October 7 and who was now part of a convoy driving the trucks was captured, using facial recognition. It was a stark reminder that Israel remains vigilant and determined to apprehend any and every Gazan who participated in the October 7 invasion.
A somber moment was when we were allowed to visit the Nahal Oz base where the female “tatzpitaniot: observers” was overrun and destroyed. We heard the story and saw the site where brave young female IDF observers were murdered in cold blood and burned alive. Others were violated and abused. Some were taken hostage. Through our tears and deep sorrow, meeting the young soldiers stationed in the region and witnessing their idealistic determination to defend their country while desiring peace was inspiring.
We met as well with lone Israeli soldiers, young men and women who come from the Diaspora and have no immediate family in Israel but feel called to defend the Jewish people. Most were combat soldiers who have served multiple tours in Gaza. One of the most eye-opening observations came from an extremely bright and thoughtful young man from the United States, who said that what shocked him the most during the war was discovering that in the tunnels the most common book found amidst the Hamas terrorists’ possessions was the Arabic translation of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. This has been confirmed broadly by both the IDF and international media and observers. If there is any doubt about the motivations of the Islamists of Hamas, that should put it to rest. Hamas’ goal is the destruction—the mass murder, the genocide—of all Jews in the world. It is Nazi ideology turned into Islamist creed.
It was from these young people that the most hopeful note emerged. It came, humorously, from a slight young blonde woman soldier who studied at a Jewish women’s high school quite near where I grew up and where my parents lived until 2019 in Los Angeles. She could not be more than 5’2”, and when she volunteered for the Israeli military, she was worried that she would be considered underweight and not be accepted. So, she actually took a couple of handweights and put them into her pockets when she went for her medical exam, trying to fool the scale and the tough IDF examiners. When, in a long line of women, her turn finally came to step on the scale miraculously the scale didn’t work; they tried a few times and then just waved her on. But it worked for the next young woman… She took this as a sign that it was bashert for her to be there.
None of these young soldiers entered IDF service for anything but the motivation to protect Jews, the Jewish people, and the Jewish nation. They ranged from Modern Orthodox to secular, serving in units ranging from intelligence to naval commandoes. All stressed that in operations they were instructed to and acted to prevent civilian casualties at all times. All were incredibly inspiring, idealistic but realistic, having faced hard combat but reflecting the values and energy that should make any Jewish person proud.
Like nearly every Jew in the world, I have relatives in Israel. I stayed with some one night in Jerusalem and visited another in Tel Aviv, and I can tell you that none are fans of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, that all of them believe there must be an independent Israeli inquiry into the responsibility for October 7th having occurred at all, and that some of them believe the war was carried on much too far and too long for political purposes. That’s the point of a democracy: you get to disagree with the government, especially when you believe it’s in the wrong. I hope we recover that ability here in America soon.
Look, it is Israel again: traffic jams and public rallies, high prices and great food, ancient archeology and the most advanced high tech, constant new building and infrastructure and transportation projects, magnificent new museums and endless remodeling, chaotic and beautiful and extraordinary. May she see true peace soon, and always.
One more note: they say that tourism to Israel has declined to 30% of what it was before October 7th. In my view, it’s time to go back to Israel, to make plans now to visit this amazing, incredible nation once again. And if you haven’t gone until now, you are in for a truly magnificent experience…
Jacob woke up from the dream in our Torah portion of Vayeitzei and said, “Achei, Yesh Adonai bamakom hazeh va’anochi lo yadati—Look, God is in this place and I, I did not know it.” God is in that phenomenal place, and it is time for us to realize it, and go back.