The Logic of Occupation - Part 3
Compassionate Justice

by Aron Trauring

What follows is an extended version of a talk I gave on the panel with Ghassen Andoni at Anshei Hesed synagogue in Manhattan on September 23rd, 2002.

Right before the holidays, a good friend of mine posed the following question: "I know you are an a-theist, Aron. So why do you go to synagogue to pray on Yom Kippur?" My glib answer was that Jewish practice is for me a cultural act, not a religious one. But my friend did not accept that answer and neither did I. In fact, the question ran through my head during the entire service.

When I was in college, I took a course on the history of Judaism with the late professor Joseph Blau. I wrote a paper on the problem of prayer. I spent days working on it. I don't remember the grade, but I do remember Professor Blau's comment: "You didn't discuss the most important problem: people can't relate to the theology of the prayer book." That sentence too, reverberated in my head as I sat through the service.

Certainly, there are many things I find objectionable or even off-putting in the prayer book. The centerpiece of the High Holiday service, is the Netaneh Tokef prayer. My first problem relates to the story behind this prayer, which you can read here. I remember hearing this story when I was a young boy of 8 or 9 and being enraptured. The rendition given below is an edited version from a website I found which targets ultra-Orthodox Jewish "tots." It is nearly identical in form to the way I heard it as a child. Thinking about Rabbi Amnon, led me to think about the whole idea of martyrdom in Judaism. I have heard so many people talk with repugnance about the phenomenon of martyrdom in Palestinian society, and how awful it is. The Israeli army even circulated a picture they seized (obviously when they forcibly entered someone's home) which shows an infant dressed up as a shaheed -  a martyr. The point of the army's action was to show how savage, primitive and immoral the Palestinians are for glorifying death and martyrdom.

From personal experience, I can say categorically, Jews are the last people on earth to criticize any one on that score. Rabbi Amnon was just one of many other stories of martyrdom I grew up with: the mothers who killed their children during the crusades rather than have them fall into the hands of Christians who would forcibly convert them; the story of the mass suicide at Masada; and many, many more. These were not told as horror stories of some remote Jewish past, but were held up to us as living examples of deep values which we should emulate. They were told to me by teachers and group leaders when I was very young. And I loved those stories. They resonated in some deep way. I know my friends enjoyed them as much as I did.

Political martyrdom also has a long and glorified history in Judaism. Thomas Friedman, in one of his less intelligent pieces on the Israel-Palestine conflict, called the Islamic suicide bombers a unique and horrific innovation of the Palestinians. Besides being an historically absurd comment, Friedman seems to forget Shimshon Ha'Gibor, Samson the manly hero, who is the first "suicide bomber" recorded in history. Samson, after all, killed innocent civilians in a holy place no less - he pulled the walls of the temple down on himself and his Philistine enemies. Samson is as glorified in Jewish and Israeli society as any shaheed. Moreover, there is even a term to describe Israel's justification for unleashing weapons of mass destruction, should Israel feel mortally threatened by the Arabs. This policy is called the "Samson option." So, if anyone should take the "credit" for inventing the idea of the suicide bomber, it should be the Jews.

But it is not just the glorification of martyrdom that makes the prayer problematic for me. It is the prayer's theology as well. The prayer actually has some beautiful metaphorical language. It talks about how on this holy day we are all called into judgment for our actions. We pass before God who judges us individually. He decides who shall live and who shall die in the coming year. A whole litany of ways of dying are listed, some most gruesome -- who by fire, who by sword, who by strangling and so on (Leonard Cohen has a beautiful musical rendition of this part of the prayer, "Who by Fire.") Then, at the climax of the prayer, we recite the following: "U'T'shuva, U'Tefilla, U'Tzedaka ma'avirim et roah hagezerah - Repentance, Prayer and Charity can reverse God's death sentence." Oh, really?

On Yom Kippur, this prayer is followed by a long Aramaic poem about the Ten Holy Martyrs (yes, more martyrs!). Many liberal temples tend to skip this long and gory poem, particularly since it is written in an archaic language that only Jews who study in a yeshiva can understand. In the synagogue I attended, instead of reading the poem, a young woman was invited up to the podium to tell the story of her parent's experiences during WW II as victims of the Nazis.

As she spoke the first question that jumped to my mind was: "why are we hearing this?" Of course it is important to remember the Holocaust. But we Jews have found many and varied ways to memorialize this tragedy (sadly, almost to the point of trivializing it). What is the connection of the Jewish Holocaust to Yom Kippur - the day of atonement and repentance? Whether one accepts its message or not, at least the poem the Ten Holy Martyrs, has a theological point. These Rabbis, like Rabbi Amnon, were willing to die in God's name. The point of reading this poem is to teach us that on this day of contemplation, we need to purify our souls to the point where we too would be willing to accept the path of martyrdom in God's name. But no one contends that we Jews need to follow in the footsteps of the victims of the Nazis. On the contrary. We Jews have taken as our motto - Lo Ode - Never Again.

She went on to tell how her parents survived the Holocaust and went on to live in Israel, where she is born. This theme in her talk is not at all surprising. The connection between the Holocaust and Israel is a central theme of post WW-II Jewish life. The Holocaust and Israel have become the pillars of modern Jewish identity. Israel is always portrayed as the Jewish people arising like the Phoenix out of the ashes of destruction. But while she spoke, it hit me in the face: the proper word is theology and not identity. Believing in God the creator, as Joseph Blau noted, is a great problem for most modern Jews. But believing in the teleological connection between the Holocaust and Israel, accepting the need for a Jewish state as a religious truth - these are articles of faith the modern Jew not only feels comfortable with, but eagerly embraces. So this women's speech was not only appropriate, but mandatory. It was the key sermon of the service, the call of the faithful to prayer.

The mixing of ethnic identity, religion and politics has always disturbed me. I always felt that the founding fathers of the United States of America bequeathed a great gift to human culture by creating the distinction between religion and state. And yet, somehow, I had always allowed myself to make an exception for Israel. Somehow it was ok that there be a Jewish state. So part of my realization was that I, too, had been a believer in this new form of Jewish religion. But now I was having a crisis of faith.

I was introduced this evening as a ex-soldier in the Israeli army. The question I always ask myself is how did a nice, pacifistic Jewish boy from the Upper West Side get to the point where he could pick up a gun and become a soldier. During service on Yom Kippur this too was answered for me. All the religious values I grew up on - the Holocaust, Israel, and yes, Jewish martyrdom came into play. In Israel, being a soldier is not a civic act, but a religious duty.

[At this point in my talk I described three experiences I had in the army which eventually caused me to change. Since I write about them more in detail in the City of the Dead series, I won't repeat them here. I will tell the last one, though.]

One of our main jobs during the first intifada was removing Palestinian flags, or having Palestinians do that. One day when we were serving in Ramallah, my first tour of duty with this unit, we came back to the base from a patrol, to find our comrades in arms sitting around talking and laughing. One of the young soldiers in the unit had been telling a story which he repeated for the amusement of those of us who had just returned. Apparently, while they were patrolling this young soldier noticed a small flag flying from the tip of a lightening rod hanging off a minaret. He wasn't going to let it go. So he called to some Palestinian teenager and motioned to remove the flag. The boy at first refused, but what could he do surrounded by all these soldiers?

So the boy climbed up the minaret. Of course he was reluctant to climb out the window and onto the pole. As he described the scene, the soldiers were laughing at the description of the terrorized Palestinian boy. Finally, through the soldiers shouts and appeals to his manhood, the boy climbed out the window and got the flag.

Over the years this story was told and retold in our unit. It became a legend. It got embellished and enhanced. The story was extended to repeat the drama - the contrast between the frightened boy and the shouting and laughing soldiers; the mocking of the boy's cowardice and his lack of manhood; in the enhanced story, he even peed in his pants out of fright. Each time the story was told and retold, the laughs would be louder, the enjoyment greater.

It was only after I had been with the unit for many years, that I gathered the courage one day to speak up and say something. It was only a mild comment about how humiliating it must have been for the boy. Instantly the mood in the room changed. The laughter died out and all my fellow soldiers turned on me and started shouting at me angrily. "What did we do, we didn't hurt him? What do you think the Arabs would do to you if the situation were reversed? We have to show them who's boss or they will get uppity (lit. lift their heads)." I just left the room, and the rest of the soldiers returned to their jovial repetition of the story.

I wish I could say, after all the things I saw, all the things I witnessed, I wish I could say that I refused to continue to be a soldier. But I didn't. Perhaps because the Oslo accords were signed, and I no longer had to serve in the West Bank, I avoided the issue. I believed that things would be set right. Then I was discharged because of my age, and so now I no longer have to face the dilemma.

One of the things we are always taught on Yom Kippur is that we are only pardoned for sins against God. To be forgiven for sins one commits against a fellow human being, one has to seek out the wronged person and ask their forgiveness personally. As I sat in synagogue this Yom Kippur, I thought about all my sins of commission and omission. The families whose houses we entered without permission. The parents whose hearts were filled with panic as we took their sons away blindfolded and bound. The children who cried as we banged on the doors of their houses in the middle of the night, shouting "Jaish, Jaish(army, army)." And most of all, I thought of that teenage boy, suspended in terror from a pole on a minaret. Where could I find them all? How can I ask their forgiveness. In fact, for me, there is no atonement.

That evening, as the service closed, the whole congregation stood up and began to sing Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem. It got me angry. Why were they singing this political song in a religious sanctuary? Now I left the service totally depressed. Not only did I no longer believe in the old god. I no longer believed in the new god, either. For me, there is no redemption.

We went home, and after we broke the fast, we watched Stanley Kubrick's classic movie, Dr. Strangelove. If any of you have not yet seen this movie, I highly recommend it. It is a brilliant satire and political commentary, while still being incredibly funny. The movie is about a military coup that leads to nuclear war. In an amazing performance. Peter Sellers plays three of the main characters of the movie - Lionel Mandrake, a brave and compassionate soldier who nearly saves the world, the well-meaning but weak Merkin Muffley, President of the United States whose vacillations may doom it, and the ex-Nazi, now CIA consultant, Dr. Strangelove, who glories in death and destruction.

One could say that Sellers was given all three roles because of his virtuoso comedic abilities. But it struck me that evening, that Kubrick had a far deeper message to convey. Those three people were played by one man, because they really are one man. Their nature and characteristics reside in each and all of us. The choice is ours which characteristic will dominate. How we choose, will either save or destroy the world.

This point is even more important, given the character Dr. Strangelove. At one point, Strangelove, in a fit of ecstasy, addresses the President as "Mein Fuhrer." Kubrick makes a devastating point here. Sure the President was not sending people into ovens. But by even contemplating the possibility of nuclear war, he was condoning a holocaust more deadly than anything Hitler conceived. We have converted the Holocaust into a religion, and Hitler into the devil incarnate. By doing so we prevent ourselves from learning the most important lesson of the Holocaust, viz. that all of us are capable of Nazi-like behavior, in one form or another. The Nazis were human beings like you and me. They share the same DNA we do. We are they and they are us. We all have the potential to be a Strangelove. So we have to make a conscious choice to be Mandrake-like, in order to ensure that the crimes of the Holocaust will never again be repeated. Choosing not to choose, as Muffley did, means the Strangeloves of the world will win.

Thinking about Mandrake (which, by the way, is a plant used in love potions) got me further thinking about compassion and its connection to saving the world. I began to meditate again on Rabbi Amnon's prayer and its climatic conclusion. And I finally found the answer to my friend's question.

T'shuvah, while translated as repentance, really means to return. It's root means to sit. Human nature is such, that when someone hurts us, our first instinct is to strike back, to lash out. When talking to my friends in Israel about how counter-productive violence is against terrorism, the retort is always "What should we do, sit back and do nothing?" In one of the most well known scenes in the movie, Strangelove's arm automatically jerks out in a Nazi salute, and he uses his hook arm to hold it back. That image of the arm stretched out in hate and anger, being pulled back, is in fact what T'shuvameans. Only through compassion, and pulling back from violence can we find redemption. This type of compassion requires careful reflection on our actions and their consequences. T'shuva is the compassionate mind.

T'fillah, while translated as prayer, is a reflexive verb based on the word "intervention". To intervene with oneself, so to speak. This bring us back to the point made above - we must intervene with ourself, we must force ourself to make the choice to be Mandrake, to have a compassionate heart. This is the true meaning of t'fillah.

And finally, T'zedaka, charity. The root of this word is Tzedek, justice. However, here it is in the female form, and perhaps can be translated as compassionate justice. In every conflict between two nations, each side believes that justice is solely theirs. But compassionate justice requires us to understand, that being right is not everything. We must open our hearts and minds to what the other feels and says. Only T'zedaka can bring peace.

As I reflected on this I understood something else. If I am to open my heart to my enemy, I must also do the same for myself. Even if I have sinned, it is not too late to make amends. If not to those I have hurt, then to others. So yes, I do believe - T'shuva, T'fillah and T'zedaka,a compassionate mind, compassionate heart and compassionate justice, can bring forgiveness. And forgiveness will bring us peace.

Thank you for listening. Wishing us all peace.

The Story of the Netaneh Tokef Prayer

In the 11th century, the Bishop of Mainz summoned Rabbi Amnon, a renowned Torah scholar, to his court. After a long conversation, the Bishop was so impressed with the Rabbi that he offered him a ministerial post on one condition: that Rabbi Amnon would convert to Christianity.  Rabbi Amnon refused.  The Bishop insisted and continued to call him back and press Rabbi Amnon to accept his offer.The Bishop gently argued with Reb Amnon, trying to show how his faith was superior to Judaism. The Bishop held out bribes to Reb Amnon that fame and money would be his, if only he would convert. Nonetheless, Reb Amnon remained steadfast and each time, continued to refuse.  One day, however, the Bishop lost his patience and threatened the Rabbi: "Accept my offer or you will die." In fear, Rabbi Amnon asked the Bishop for three days to consider his offer.

As soon as Rabbi Amnon returned home, he was distraught at the terrible mistake he had made of even appearing to consider the Bishop's offer and the betrayal of God.  For three days he could not eat or sleep and he prayed to God for forgiveness.  When the deadline for decision arrived, the Bishop sent messenger after messenger to bring Rabbi Amnon, but he refused to go.  Finally, the Bishop had him forcibly brought to him and demanded a response. 

"Jew, how dare you disobey me? Why have you broken your promise to bring me your answer after three days?"

Rabbi Amnon looked up sadly. "In a moment of weakness I fell into sin and lied and made false promises. To save my life without defying my faith I sought the cowardly grace of three days in which to give you my answer. I should have said right away to you, Shema Yisroel Hashem Elohaynu Hashem Eh-chad ('Hear, O Israel, Hashemis our God,Hashem is one'), and then perished at your hands." [Hashem literally means "the name" and it is one of the terms used by Orthodox Jews to refer to God, since the ten commandments expressly forbids using God's proper name. The Shema prayer is recited twice a day in the morning and evening prayers, and also at bedtime and on one's death bed. The reference here is to the practice of saying the Shemawhen one is martyred.]

The bishop was angry. "Your feet disobeyed me by not coming to the palace. For that, they shall be torn from your body."

"No," Reb Amnon said. "My feet should not be torn, but rather my tongue for it betrayed Hashem."

"Your tongue has uttered the truth, and therefore will not be punished."

The furious bishop ordered that Rabbi Amnon's feet be chopped off, joint by joint. They did the same to his hands. After each amputation Rabbi Amnon was asked if he would convert, and each time he refused. Then the bishop ordered that he be carried home, a maimed and mutilated cripple, together with his amputated parts. Soon the rabbi began to die of his wounds.

A few days later was Rosh HaShanah, and Rabbi Amnon, dying from his wounds, asked to be carried to the synagogue.  He wished to say a prayer to sanctify God's Name and publicly declare his faith in God's Kingship. With his dying breath, he uttered the words that we now know of as the U'Netaneh Tokef.

Three days later Rabbi Amnon appeared in a dream to Rabbi Kalonymous ben Meshullam, a scholar and poet, and taught him the exact text of the prayer.   Rabbi Amnon asked that it be sent to all Jewry and that it be inserted in the prayers of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur for all time. Back