The Miracle of Peace

Sermon Israel Shabbat 5786, Shabbat Tazria-Metsora

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ

This is always an intriguing time in the Jewish year, between the major festival of Passover and the perhaps greater holiday of my father’s 100th birthday… true, but I mean in the early weeks of the period of the Counting of the Omer between Pesach and Shavu’ot we observe two special days, modern events that have their own observances associated with them.

Yom HaShoah and Yom Ha’atzma’ut were both established after World War II, which makes them, respectively, 75 and 78 years old.  In the grand sweep of Jewish history that is but yesterday, of course, and their significance to American Jewry waxed and waned over the years.  I can recall that some of the very first times I ever performed for audiences in public was singing Holocaust songs at Yom HaShoah events in Los Angeles, including for Survivor groups like the Vilna Ghetto Survivors.  It was a common thing growing up to see people reaching up to take a number in the local Jewish bakery on Fridays and to see faded numbers tattooed on their arms; they were concentration camp survivors, of course.  The need to remember, especially as the remaining survivors age and diminish, is powerful.  And so last week was Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

And then, exactly seven days later, on Tuesday, we will celebrate Israel Independence Day.  Now, it is not an accident that Yom HaAtzma’ut takes place just a week after Yom Ha’Shoah.  Historically speaking, the creation of the State of Israel was only possible because World War II ended in Allied victory with the defeat of the Third Reich, and the horrific magnitude of the destruction of the Jews of Europe, who had no country to flee to from the Nazis, was made explicit by the liberation of the death camps, and further publicized at the Nuremberg trials.  For a brief moment, an uncaring world realized that no one was going to save endangered Jews except other Jews who had their own Jewish State.  And in miraculous fashion, that tiny Jewish state survived, and grew and, eventually, thrived.

You are no doubt familiar with the complex history of the rapid development of the underdog state, which absorbed more Jewish refugees in its first decades of life than it had people when independence was won.  That included hundreds of thousands—perhaps over a million—Jews robbed and then expelled from Arab countries they had lived in for literally thousands of years.  It included Holocaust survivors and refugees from repressive regimes in Europe and South America and Africa and Asia and, well, everywhere on the globe.  Over time, that underdog nation won enough existential wars to become the most powerful military in the Middle East and grew to be a much larger but still tiny nation of nearly 10 million people.

We celebrate the survival and incredible development of Israel over the less than eight decades of its existence, how a mostly barren wasteland has been transformed into an incredible, dynamic country, how it has continued to welcome Jewish refugees in the ensuing decades—from Iran, from Russia, from Argentina, from Ethiopia, from Ukraine.  How it has created a dynamic, complex democracy that is also economically vibrant and innovative in so many extraordinary ways.  A nation that changes all the time, that constantly creates art, music, culture and intellectual accomplishments that are too numerous to name.

My friends, this is a complicated Yom HaAtzma’ut for many American Jews, I suspect.  Israel is engaged in war with both Iran and the Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, after over two years of war with Hamas in Gaza, and following last year’s battles with Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthis in Yemen, plus its involvement in preventing Syria’s new government from massacring its Druze population.  While we understand that Israel is fighting genocidal, murderous terrorists, and horrible, evil regimes, and is accomplishing many of its tactical objectives in spectacular fashion, it is an uneasy feeling to see the only Jewish State in the world in what feels like a constant state of war.  Those of us who have friends and relatives in Israel know that they are still constantly dealing with sirens and bomb shelters on a regular basis, that nothing is really back to anything like normal. 

We also know that support for Israel in America has been dropping steadily, influenced in large part by a steady propaganda barrage from the progressive left that treats every Israeli defensive act instantly as evidence of genocide, and on the right by an isolationist element that is heavily tinged with antisemitism.  Both sides would like to see the only Jewish state in the world destroyed, to be honest, for very different reasons that somehow circle back to a foundational Antisemitism.

At a time when the American-initiated war with Iran seems to completely lack overall strategic vision, let alone an actual exit strategy, Israel is a convenient scapegoat, and its very unpopular Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu an obvious, and perhaps appropriate, target.  Now, make no mistake, what America and Israel have accomplished in a military sense in the last month is extraordinary: Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile capability have been severely degraded, much of its navy destroyed and its entire leadership killed.  In Lebanon, the hated Hezbollah terrorist network has been hammered, its leadership taken out, and its control of Southern Lebanon seriously diminished. 

We pray that the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, just arranged yesterday, will lead to a productive settlement.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean the US and Israel has won this war, or that Iran’s regime will change, or the Straits of Hormuz are permanently open again to oil shipments, or that gas prices will immediately return to pre-war levels, or that Hezbollah will be expelled from all power in Lebanon.  When we celebrate Israel’s 78th birthday this coming week, we will do so with profound prayers not for victory but for the establishment of a durable peace, with security, for Israel and its troubled neighborhood.  And we pray, as well, that these three years of war will end with a better, more stable, healthier Middle East.  

You know, there has always been a certain rueful honesty in the way Israelis look at the world, and that impresses me as profoundly Jewish.  The Israeli jokes used to be things like, “How do you make a small fortune in Israel?  Come with a large fortune.”  And “Never say things can’t get worse; sure they can, just wait five minutes!”  Nowadays, that kind of cynicism can lead to a fatalism: “Peace with the Palestinians?  That will come just a little while after the Messiah arrives.”

The truth is, as Ben Gurion said, “In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.”  This year, I think that is essential to understanding that this semi-permanent state of war is not the true destiny of Israel.  In fact, there will be a better time, and I firmly believe that eventually we will see something we never believed could be: that Israel will live in peace with all its neighbors.  And I believe that time is coming sooner than we might imagine.

After all, Israel’s very existence is a miracle.  It’s thriving culture and state is a miracle.  And its military power, which has protected all of that, is a kind of miracle as well.  Why not the miracle of peace, too?