Rabbi Beth S. Kalisch
Beth David Reform Congregation
Rosh HaShanah Morning 5775
September 25, 2014
70 Names of Jerusalem
How to find the words: we have to talk about Israel.
You know things have gotten bad when members of this congregation send me the New York
Times article on why rabbis are afraid to talk about Israel on the High Holy Days because
anything they say will be divisive1 – and it’s the fifth such article I’ve read in a major publication
this week.2 Clearly, the newspapers have run out of things to say about the new iPhone 6.
There’s got to be something more interesting than rabbis!
The reason my colleagues and I are so anguished about what to say is that we know our
congregations are filled with Jews who call Israel by very different names, and we want to
speak to all of you at the same time. The reason we are so anguished is not because we don’t
know what to say, but rather that there is too much, too much to say, and as soon as we say
one thing, we find our hearts admitting to its opposite as well. Israel is so vulnerable and yet so
powerful, so virtuous and yet so imperfect, so far away and yet so near. And yet none of us –
not the rabbis, not the Jews in the pews, not any of us who link our destiny to the Jewish
people – can afford to let this complexity lead us to sit out on the sidelines. Israel is the most
amazing, gripping, explosive project of the Jewish people in our lifetime. We may call Israel by
different names, but we have to keep calling its name.
As I have been explaining since last night, this is our year of 70 at Beth David, 70 years since this
sacred congregation was founded. 70 is an enormously significant number for the rabbis, and it
stands above all for this kind of multiplicity. If 7, the days of the week, symbolizes
completeness for the rabbis, then 70 is one step of magnitude higher than completeness – a
sense of the infinite. Last night, I spoke about the midrash, the legend, that God has 70 names.
And this idea of 70 names is not limited to God: God has 70 names, the midrash tells us, and the
Jewish people has 70 names, and the Torah has 70 names, and Jerusalem, too, “is called by 70
names.”3 And so, in order to begin the conversation about Israel with this congregation of
1
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/us/rabbis-find-talk-of-israel-and-gaza-a-sure-way-to-draw-congregantswrath.html
2
See, for example: http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/israel-news/gaza-war-pushes-israel-reluctantly-holidaybima, http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.617158, http://religiondispatches.org/too-hot-for-shul-rabbis-seekhealthy-israel-dialogue-after-gaza/, and
http://www.jewishjournal.com/high_holy_days/article/will_the_summer_of_war_affect_high_holy_days_sermons
3
Shir HaShirim Zuta (Buber) 1:14.
diverse viewpoints and diverse experiences, I think it is fitting to spend some time this Rosh
Hashanah exploring some of these 70 names, and what they have to teach us about the
realities and the possibilities of our homeland.
The 70 names of Jerusalem come from another time and place – scholars date the midrash
which enumerates the 70 names to perhaps the 9th or 10th Century, probably from a community
of Jews near modern-day Yemen. But as I listen closely to each name, I hear echoes of the
names that have been swirling through my 21st Century heart and mind this summer.
Moriah: The Land of Moriah. The very place we read about in our Torah Reading this morning.
Ir David, the City of King David. Our sacred history, stories our grandparents studied in Hebrew
school, bar mitzvah Torah portions: that is Israel.
Yafeh Nof, “beautiful landscape.” Olive groves on the hillsides, the afternoon sun reflecting
golden off walls of ancient stone, the stark barren beauty of sunrise in the desert, the blue of
the Mediterranean coast, the lush green of hiking trails up north that lead to crystal swimming
pools, the colors and textures and sights and scents of the fruits, vegetables, and spices in the
shuk. That is Israel.
Beit Tefilah, House of Prayer – as if the entire country were a sanctuary, filled with a spiritual
energy that seems to polarize the air. Perhaps it is the sense of spiritual history that lingers in
the land; perhaps it is the sheer number of synagogues, dotting every town and seemingly
every street; perhaps it is the confluence of so many different faith traditions coexisting,
however imperfectly, and so many people of faith walking the streets; perhaps it is the
teenagers, jabbering in the language of our prayerbook. That is Israel.
Gai Chizayon: the Valley of Vision. Israel’s answer to Calfornia’s Silicon Valley. A generation
ago, much of Israel was still quaintly developing; today it is fiercely high-tech. Israel produces
more scientific papers per capita than any other country, and it has more start-up tech firms
and more venture capital firms than any other country other than the United States. That is
Israel.
Still, the visions truly at the heart of Israel are bigger than the ones that led to the development
of my cell phone. Israel is a country built on ideals and a willingness to dream. Theodore Herzl
had a vision of a land where Jews, so long persecuted and belittled in Europe, could hold their
heads high with a state of their own. Echad HaAm had a vision of a land that would serve as a
center for Jewish cultural renaissance for Jews around the world. Socialists built kibbutzim to
live out their ideals of collective community. Eliezer Ben-Yehudah almost single-handedly
transformed Hebrew from an ancient language of sacred texts and prayer to a modern
language. “Im tirzu, ein zo agadah: if you will it, then it is no dream.” That is Israel.
Daltot Ha’amim, gateway of the peoples. For many Jews in the last century, Israel became their
home not because of these lofty ideals, but out of necessity. At the back of our throats when
we say this name is the memory of a boat full of Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler, and no country
would take them in. The memory of Iraqi Jews, hundreds of families who had been part of
Baghdad’s flourishing intellectual and cultural class for generations, who were suddenly
ordered to flee, leaving behind everything they owned, and came to Israel. We who are second
and third generation born American should not forget that our ancestors came to America at a
time when the gates guarded by Lady Liberty were open far wider than they are today. As
journalist Mark Oppenheimer pointed out recently, Jews living up in Istanbul or Paris today,
nervous about their children’s future as Jews in their country, would be unlikely to obtain a visa
to immigrate to the United States.4 But if they need to leave, they will always have another
home: that is Israel.
M’tzudah, Fortress. When we think of Israel, we think of war, of the constant need for military
defense, of the army as a national rite of passage. When young Americans go to war, they
leave our shores to serve abroad for months, but in Israel, IDF soldiers get a free weekend, they
take the bus to visit their parents, a sweet domestic detail that reveals a darker truth: the war is
at home. Israel is a land beseiged by enemy rockets, a land whose citizens were protected all
summer because architects built bomb shelters into homes and because scientists built an Iron
Dome, a miracle of technological innovation that we shudder to think of, missiles exploding in
the air while children wait in safe rooms, while people walking their dogs run for cover, just in
case the Iron Dome were to fail. We call Israel M’tzudah because land where beneath the
earth, militants were using construction supplies donated as humanitarian aid to build milliondollar tunnels to carry out terrorist attacks, supposedly including one that would have taken
place today, on Rosh Hashanah.5 That is Israel.
Rabati vaGoyim – great among nations. Israel stands alone among the nations of the world; no
other country is subject to the same level of scrutiny. The UN too often seems more interested
in condemning Israel than in focusing on the any of the brutal regimes who have seats on its
human rights commission. Reporter Matti Friedman wrote recently about how policies at the
Associated Press, including the disproportionate number of reporters assigned to cover Israel,
contribute to bias in its coverage of Israel.6 That is Israel.
Gilad: a mountain in Israel, but also the name of one of the three Jewish teenagers who were
kidnapped and murdered by Hamas early this summer. Gilad, Naftali, and Eyal. The feeling of
4
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/182878/zionism-for-refugees
http://www.jta.org/2014/07/28/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/report-hamas-planned-rosh-hashanah-attackthrough-gaza-tunnels
6
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/183033/israel-insider-guide
5
being hunted, of so much mourning, innocent young boys being buried before their time. It
grieves me to say: that is Israel.
Ir HaEmet, City of Truth. Sometimes we are far too certain of our own truth. After we grieved
the deaths of our three boys, we were dealt another blow: a fourth boy, Muhammed, was
kidnapped and murdered, too, and what we prayed could not be true was proven true: he had
been murdered by Jews, a senseless, hateful act of vengeance. And it grieves me again to say:
that, too, is Israel, a land where frustration has in some quarters spilled over to extremism.
Shouts of “Death to the Jews” during anti-Israel protests in Europe are worrisome; shouts of
“Death to the Arabs” on the streets of Israel break my heart. And we must be vigilant against
other forms of extremism in Israel, too – against ultra-Orthodox groups that would eliminate
women’s faces and women’s voices from public media, against nationalist groups that would
push out non-Jewish refugees. Israel is surely not the only home of racism or extremism in this
world today, but we have never been a people to let the behavior of others set a low bar for us.
And so refuse to turn a blind an eye to this extremism: that, too, is Israel.
Efrat. In modern times, this name identifies one of the most prosperous of the Israeli
settlements, planned communities of Israeli Jews outside the “Green Line,” the 1967 border of
Israel that is still expected to be the basis of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Because of
their location, the settlements are considered illegal by the United States, and so we sometimes
imagine the people who live there to be political radicals. But while some settlements are
largely ideological, others, including Efrat, are convenient suburban communities, offering
attractive housing in easy commuting distance from Jerusalem. And while Efrat itself is
sometimes categorized as a “consensus settlement” – one of a group of settlements that are so
well-established that it is assumed they will remain as part of the State of Israel even after a
peace agreement establishes a Palestinian State – the process of building settlements
endangers the future viability of a future Palestinian State – and thus endangers Israel’s future,
as well. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Netanyahu approved the annexation of an
additional 1000 acres of land to expand the settlement block that includes Efrat. This pattern
cannot continue. As Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the immediate past president of our Reform Movement
wrote, we need to urge the Israeli government to “set aside the mad obsession with settlement
building.”7 This, too, is Israel.
Ir HaYonah: the City of the Dove, but it is sometimes translated, The Wailing City. The IDF has
long been admired for its unusual efforts to avoid civilian deaths, but any of us who saw the
devastation in Gaza through the eyes of Jewish values cannot help but wonder if there was
more that could have been done. The deaths of innocent Gazan children this summer are
among the sins we must atone for as a people this Yom Kippur. As Orthodox rabbi Daniel
7
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/Reform-Reflections/Settlement-expansion-is-madness-374714
Landes wrote recently, “Writing this, even I get angry with myself: Was it not the fault of Hamas
who put children directly in the line of fire? I have no trouble blaming Hamas. But we have a
demanding religion, and an “Old Testament” God who expects us to search our actions,
especially at this time of year, no matter what.”8 Even when we yearn only for peace, even
when the war was justified, even when the situation was impossible, even when the actions of
the military were generally cautious: still we must mourn, still we must repent, because the loss
of innocent life on Israel’s shoulders is so heavy. That is Israel.
Even ma’amsu - a burdensome stone, an immovable rock, a burden that the people try to lift,
but their attempts only leave them in pain without moving the rock at all.9 I think this is the
darkest name of all of them, a name that attempts to snuff out hope: Israel as a painful
problem we can’t solve. We read the headlines and our hearts feel heavy, yet again. We feel
guilty that we don’t understand the full history; we feel despondent about the lack of a clear
future. We avoid talking about Israel because the conversations become tense and
unproductive – even the rabbis avoid talking about Israel.
Y’didot, Friendship. But there is so much that is beautiful about Israel, so much that rekindle
our hope. When Muhammad, the teenage boy, was murdered by Israelis, the social justice
group Tag Meir brought a group of 400 Israeli Jews to pay a condolence call to his family. Rabbi
Edgar Nof, an Israeli Reform rabbi who many of you have gotten to know over the years
through Beth David, spent this summer busily arranging interfaith prayer services and soccer
games for Jewish and Muslim teens to play together, and collecting toys to donate to children
in Gaza. “These are photos you don’t see in the papers!” Rabbi Nof often complains – but this,
too, is so much a part of Israel.
Ir Tzedek, city of justice and righteousness. When the Israeli Supreme Court considered earlier
this week the situation of Holot, a detention facility built to handle the thousands of asylum
seekers from war-torn African countries who have fled across the border into Israel, the Israeli
justices ruled that despite the challenges of handling the influx of undocumented immigrants,
Holot must be closed.10 When Israelis saw that many Ethiopian immigrants were having a hard
time integrating with Israeli society, they founded groups like Friends By Nature, an
organization that brings successful Ethiopian-born Israelis to move back to their struggling
home neighborhoods, together with veteran Israelis, where they work in the fields of
multiculturalism, education for tolerance and acceptance, at-risk youth, and community
renewal.11 And despite regional hostilities, many of Israel’s neighbors know that they can find
righteousness in Israel. The war in nearby Syria has driven some victims of the violence to seek
8
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.614989
See Zecharia 12:3
10
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.617143
11
http://www.friendsbynature.org/en/
9
medical care in Israel, including a 12-year old Syrian boy, who had been blinded and lost one
hand in the fighting in Syria, whose family brought him to the Israeli border on the back of a
donkey. When they reached the IDF post at the border, the IDF brought the boy to a hospital in
the Israeli city of Tzfat, where Israeli doctors fought to save his remaining limbs and help him be
able to walk again.12
We have to hold these different Israels in our hearts at once – the Israel that seeks to embody
our highest ideals, and the Israel that has born witness to the darkest parts of our existence.
Israel is not a concept, not an idea, but a living, changing country of close to 9 million people
living close to 9 million Israeli lives. When we hear people talking about Israel in a way that
forgets this simple reality and that reduces Israel to a single dimension – any single dimension –
we need to be able to speak about the complex reality of these 70 names. When we speak to
our children about Israel, we need to be able to speak honestly about M’tzudah, the security
situation, without dimming for them Yafeh Nof, the beauty of the land. When we speak to our
neighbors about Israel, when our college students head back to campus, we need to defend
Gilad, Israel’s right to defend itself against those who would attack and murder, without being
afraid of acknowleding Ir HaYonah, our mourning over so many deaths. When we speak about
Israel here at Beth David, we must stand against Ir HaEmet, the threat of extremism, while still
maintaining our connection to Beit HaTefilah, Israel’s spiritual importance. “Most Jews
instinctively know,” writes journalist Yossi Klein HaLevi, “that to be a Jew means to balance
paradoxes – security and morality, realism and vision, particularism and universalism, selfdefense and self-critique.”13
I hope that all of you will begin to widen your perspective on these 70 Israels with us this year
at Beth David. Next month, Beth David is cosponsoring a talk at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian
Church by Rabb Ron Kronish, one of the leading voices of interfaith dialogue in Israel. On
November 1st, our Adult Education and Israel committees are co-sponsoring the first of 5
sessions of Engaging Israel, a curriculum for adult education about Israel created by the Shalom
Hartman Institute, one of the leading think-tanks focusing on contemporary Jewish life and
thought. Rather than focusing on current politics, or avoiding politics to focus on
uncontroversial subjects, the Engaging Israel curriculum focuses on the big ideas and values
behind the concept of a Jewish State and its situation today. I will be teaching the 5 sessions on
the same 5 Shabbat mornings on which Religious School will be moved from Sunday to
Saturday, so if you have children in the Religious School, you can join us to learn about Israel
while your children are in class, and then join together with your kids and other adults for
Shabbat services, followed by lunch for everyone.
12
13
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4568498,00.html
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/as-we-enter-rosh-hashanah/
You can raise your voice for Israel this year by voting to help elect American delegates to the
next World Zionist Congress, a forum that takes place every 5 years for all the world’s Jews. I
will be voting for ARZA, our Reform Movement, in order to further our Movement’s
fundamental goals for Israel – a pluralistic democracy that respects all expressions of Judaism
and supports all denominations; a country which supports and guarantees women’s rights
within Israeli society including issues of status; and a country that continues to seek a peaceful
solution to the Palestinian issue. If you support these goals, too, I urge you to take a pledge
card on your way out, and pledge to vote in the elections.
Of course, the best way to get a full three-dimensional understanding of Israel is to visit. If you
or someone in your family are in high school or college, I urge you to consider a Birthright Trip,
a high school summer trip sponsored by NFTY, our Reform Movement’s youth movement, or a
semester in Israel for either high school or college students. As our own Beth David young
people who have participated in such trips recently will tell you, they are transformational
experiences.
I will be traveling to Israel next month on an ARZA Reform Jewish solidarity mission, and I want
to invite you to come with me. The trip will be a whirwind, and it is not inexpensive, but if you
can find the time and money, it will be an incredible opportunity to see Israel’s current situation
firsthand, and to learn from the experts, including an IDF commander, members of Knesset, a
professor at Tel Aviv University, Israeli Reform rabbis, social justice leaders, and educators on
the front lines of coexistence. The trip starts Sunday October 19, and finishes Thursday,
October 23. Let me know if you might consider being my travel partner!
If you can’t come next month, or if you have never been to Israel and want to tour as well as
learn, then mark your calendars for December 2015, over winter break, when Beth David will
take our first congregational trip to Israel in several years. I hope you will consider joining us,
whether you have been to Israel several times before or whether you have been holding out for
the right opportunity, the right time. Families with young children are welcome, as are single
adults, teenagers, and empty nesters. I look forward to showing you many of these Israels up
close: the beauty and the innovation, the ideals and the gritty realities, and the Israel that rises
above the grittiness to create new possibilities.
70 names, 70 Israels. The very last name listed among the 70 is particularly enigmatic. Shem
Chadash asher Pi Adonai Yikabenu – a longer name than any other on the list, and it comes
from the end of the Book of Isaiah.
“For the sake of Zion I will not be silent,” Isaiah declares
“For the sake of Jerusalem I will not be still,
Till her victory emerge resplendent
And her triumph like a flaming torch ….
And you shall be called by a new name
Which the Eternal Godself will bestow.”14
Perhaps this year, 5775, will be the year that God bestows upon Israel a new name. But until
then, the task is upon us. Speak all of these names. Loving Israel means being unafraid to
address them all. For the sake of Israel, let us not be silent; for the sake of Jerusalem, let us not
be still.
Shana Tova.
14
Isaiah 62:2