Far From Zion

Peace Activists

So, the violence in Israel and Gaza has slowed, but not stopped. Calls for a nonviolent approach to the problem continue to float around, though a unified rabbinical response has faltered, due largely, as Rabbi Brant Rosen notes on his blog, to the “third rail” in American Jewish politics, the idea of witholding military aid for Israel. To even suggest such a thing, had the power to shut down the process of spiritual leaders issuing a statement calling for peace.  While this says a lot about American politics and Jewish community politics, it says even more about the state of Jewish peace activism. That the religious leaders would feel so tied to the policies of two nation states–the US and Israel–underlines the danger that the ties between religion and politics create. The Talmud makes a strong case for peace, yet the political realities of our time undermine this case. This provokes a question: which has helped Judaism survive over the centuries–deft political maneauvering in the interest of various nation states, or a commitment to the sustaining ideas of Torah and Talmud? I’m not sure there’s an absolute answer to that, but it is one we should be asking as a community, figuring out where our values are. I do wonder though, what it says when the rabbinical answer to the question of spirit vs politics is as muddy as the secular answer.

And of course, we cannot forget that there are also many Palestinian voices calling for nonviolence. These messages must be spread, as must the peace messages from the American Jewish community and the peace groups in Israel. The interfaith peace movement is perhaps the best hope for countering the rise in anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim sentiments around the world. People of faith are going to have to come together to counter the people who seek to destroy. In all of this conflict, interfaith statements have been sadly lacking.