by Aaron Brandes, Aliza Arzt, Larry Rosenwald, Miriam Schwartz and Cindy Blank-Edelman

Why was this Hav Purimspiel different from all other Hav Purimspiels?

It wasn’t the mixed in-person and Zoom attendance (we did that last year).

It wasn’t the script-writers (mostly the “usual suspects”).

It wasn’t the extensive rehearsals (there were none).

It was how to respond to the on-going violence by Jews initiated in response to violence against Jews.

This year Aliza Arzt began the spiel by quoting from the Book of Esther Chapter 9 about the violence we executed on the day the King had given his irrevocable permission for his people to kill the Jewish citizens of his empire. The second section set a new tone.

Speaker 1: And so it goes throughout history. Jewish communities have been threatened many times. And sometimes they are able to save themselves. And sometimes that saving is carried out effectively with dignity. And sometimes that saving reduces them to the level of their immoral enemies.
 
Speaker 2: We declare an end to the Purim of revenge and destruction! We dedicate this Purim to the hope of redemption, of creative negotiation and reconciliation.
 
Speaker 1: And if that’s not possible?
 
Speaker 2: Then we dedicate this Purim to one of appropriate defense, protection of innocent civilians and the ultimate triumph of hope and mercy.
 
Speaker 1: Ken y’hi ratzon! So may it be!
 
Every year Larry Rosenwald introduces the dramatis personae in dazzling rhyme beginning “Come in, come in you’re welcome here, may (character) please appear.” This year he had something to say about our moral circumstances.
 
MARSHELIK:
(comes in first, and alone)

            Let’s keep in mind what Aliza’s said,
and with no further ado, go ahead.
            Zayt zhe yidn sha un shtil,
mir fangen on dem purimshpil!! –
which is, in Yiddish words, to say
we’ll now begin the Purim play! - 
Bid us now enter, to relate
a tale of strife between courage and hate:
of how a monarch chose a bride,
of how a scheming villain tried
to kill our folk, for malice alone;
of how the bride approached the throne,
proclaimed her tribe, pleaded her case,
and moved the king to amazing grace;
how deadly plots turned cause of laughter,
and  - some – lived happily ever after.
(Among the people not alive,
when the tale is done, are seventy-five
thousand Persians, young and old,
of every gender, stiff and cold
in death. And we the Jews are those
who’ve murdered all we think our foes.
It makes you wonder, who’s the true
villain  in our story, and who
the victim . . . well – I’ll leave that to you.)
            Enough!  It’s time to meet our cast,
from regal first to rebel last. 
Come in, come in, you’re wanted here;
let Shushan’s mighty king appear!
 
Of course, the usual political satire continued, as in this excerpt from Miriam Kadima’s skit.

Queen Vashi:  As you all know, the Monarchy is causing great pain to 99% of the People. Kushites are losing their cushy positions and being forcibly relocated to Kush, one can no longer get a shoeshine in Shushan, peasants are being charged for water they gather from the river, and half the Palace staff has been sacked!  King Trumpēlonōsh is issuing Royal Decrees faster than a sparrow flies!

Archivist:  African, or European sparrow?

For the chapter where the King can't sleep, Aaron Brandes replaced the servants reading from the Royal Chronicles with an AI chatbot. The chatbot may be more truthful than the King, but it lacks a sense of context.

King: So my new Gold card give foreigners a path to citizenship for only 5 million. Another 5 million gives you premium access to me. What do you think?

Chatbot : Well as long as they aren’t representatives of another government, you won’t be violating the Foreign Emoluments Clause, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution.

King:  That clause didn’t bother me before. I say
Emoluments Clause, Santa Clause, I’m a rebel with just
one cause – me.
 
Chatbot : Did you know that Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American coming-of-age movie starring James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo. Directed by …

King:    Hey I’ve been thinking, my kingdom may go from the Redwood Forests of Hodu to the Gulf Stream Waters of Cush - but I’d like to add some place with a nice view of Russia. I’m thinking Alaska.

Chatbot :  Alaska, purchased from Russia in 1867, is the biggest state in Shushan. It is 663,267 square miles of rich broad land that has produced billions of dollars of gold and oil as well as fish, furs, and timber. 

And it wouldn’t be a Havurah Purimspiel without a musical finale, courtesy of Cindy Blank-Edelman

[Sung to the tune of “Tomorrow” from the musical Annie]
 
The sun’ll come out tomorrow.
Bet your last tzedakah that tomorrow
There’ll be sun.
 
Just thinking about tomorrow
Helps us to go on despite the sorrow.
We’ve begun.
 
When we’re stuck with a year of fear and hatred
That’s the time when we need to read Torah. Ohhhh….
 
The sun’ll come out tomorrow
And we’ve gotta work for that tomorrow
With bracha…
 
Tomorrow, tomorrow, we’ll be here tomorrow
Right here at the Havurah.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, come join us tomorrow
Right here at the Ha—vu—rah!

by R Feynman

By Ralph Chadis

It was 1980-ish, and I, having grown up in a Reform Congregation, wanted to see what a more Jewish way of Jewish was like. I didn’t have a clue what that meant. I knew I didn’t want that wall thing between men and women; I did want more of the traditional stuff (whatever that means); I didn’t want a choir loft with an organ; and I was terrified there would be Hebrew.

Someone suggested Havurat Shalom – in a house? Oye! Some folks sat on the floor? Oye gevalt! But I was greeted with a big smiling hug from Reena Kling. I stayed for the service. A few weeks later I returned, then again. I figured out that after the Torah thingy there was a discussion (“Dee-Vah”?). Eventually I said something, and no one laughed. One day I heard someone say, “What does that Rabbi know about meat? He’s a vegetarian.” That was in present tense about some Rabbi a few centuries back.

I was hooked. I was greeted by the folks as one of them! I decided that when I wanted to do whatever it is they do there I would go there to do it. The High Holidays were crazy – such crowds, and all day. What were they doing? Oye vey!
I felt like I was marinating in this Jewish stuff. I was learning; learning that this stuff can be learned. It was interesting, and getting more  so; eventually I became curious. One day I went to Israel Book Shop and asked for Etz Hayim and they knew what I meant! I mean I knew what I meant.

So, I continued to marinate – trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.

These days I’ve learned to follow the traditions and think I know enough to say intelligent things; I listen to the congregation sing together; I still don’t sit on the floor. I give D’vrei Torah; I’m learning Hebrew and studying Talmud - it’s not so hard: confusing, annoying, edifying, interesting, and it makes me think one teaspoon at a time.

That’s all I have to say. I need to go and marinate – while standing on one foot.

Thank you all for the patient teaching.

by Aliza Arzt

And the Word of the Week is . . .
 
Knowing Hebrew is an essential skill at the Havurah for getting the most out of davenning and it can feel like an insurmountable challenge for some people.  “Knowing Hebrew” includes being able to read, having an essential vocabulary and having enough knowledge of the grammar to understand the prayers.  The first two, reading and having a prayer vocabulary, are the easiest to learn and can substantially increase the understanding of prayers.
 
Enter “Word of the Week.”  In 2020, we began this task with “Letter of the Week,” when we began our weekly Zoom “Not Just for Kids Service.”  Once we finished the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, we began to introduce a new word each week.  The “Word of the Week” goes out to Havurah members and associate members every Wednesday evening.  If you don’t get these emails, consider becoming an associate member, or, if you already are one, check your email on Thursday mornings! Words are chosen for their usefulness in connecting to davenning and, if possible, to correspond to upcoming holidays.  Each word is accompanied by a translation of the word, some information about how it relates to similar words and some “thought questions” about the word. The words are never transliterated; recipients are encouraged to figure out how to read it or to come to the Friday evening Zoom service (6:00 at this time of year) to talk about it.  Also included in the email is the word written in large, outlined letters.  Recipients are encouraged to color the words.  I do it every week.  I find that it’s quick, and very restful.  We have been through about 5 “Word of the Week” cycles, so there are 4-6 words for each letter of the alphabet.  At the 30-minute service, we discuss the word and the questions that I’ve raised in the email, and also sing or learn a familiar prayer containing a form of the word.
 
Here’s an example of a “Word of the Week” email:
 
The word for this week begins with the letter “Alef” (א). Here it is: אוֹר, which means "light".  In the Torah, God creates light on the first day (chapter 1 verse 3) but doesn't create the sun, moon and stars until the fourth day.  How do we have light without the sun, moon and stars?  Light is also one of the "big three" themes of the morning service.  The other two are "love" (which also starts with an א) and "redemption" (this was our word of the week for ג).   The "light" of the morning service is more than daylight.  Think about some other ways that "light" is used and you'll be able to figure out how light is described in the service.
 
I understand how learning a new language, especially one with a different alphabet, can be very difficult.  Currently I’m working on learning (some) Arabic and Cantonese.  Although I’m already literate in Arabic, I’m not nearly literate in Cantonese, but every day I spend about 15 minutes with my phone app (“Drops”) doing a lesson.  Repeated brief exposure to a new language and/or new alphabet helps to reinforce learning.  It doesn’t take much time, just willingness to spend these brief periods.
 
During the past few months, we’ve been doing a “review of Words of the Week” and we’re halfway through the alphabet.  I’ve chosen 1-2 words that we’ve already done for each letter, focusing on the most relevant and important words from the davenning.  I’ve also been creating flashcards (Hebrew only) for each letter.  They can be found here:
 
https://www.canva.com/design/DAGJ8nqliq0/D7My9JTciWG1KhPpKaD_0g/edit
 
If you have any interest in improving your Hebrew skills, even moderately, consider the following: desiring to do this is a good start, but if that’s where it ends, there will be no progress.  Spending as little as 5 minutes a day looking at and reading essential words results in progress.  If you’d like to have a community to do this with, consider joining us at the weekly Friday night “Not Just for Kids Service”.

by Ruth Abrams

by Larry Rosenwald, Laura Tennenhouse
and Aliza Arzt

It was impossible, this year, to write something for the newsletter about the High Holidays that took no account of the attacks of October 7th and the war in Gaza.  But it was equally impossible to have just one person write something; we are a diverse community, and no one voice can represent it.  So we invited members to contribute a reflection, and below are the reflections we received.  The writers wrote independently, without any attempt at coordination, and any points of connection between one reflection and another are accidental.

By Larry Rosenwald

It is impossible, for me at least , to enter the Days of Awe without being urgently aware of the Hamas attacks of last October 7th, of the Israeli hostages still in captivity, and of the Israeli war in Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, many of them children.
           
We might, of course, regard the Days as a refuge, however temporary, from those horrors, and turn to thinking about teshuvah as if we could do that thinking without remembering those horrors.  No doubt some will, and I think I can see where they’re coming from;  we all need refuges, even those who are denied them, as the hostages are denied them, Palestinians living in Gaza are denied them. 
           
I myself, though, cannot make such a separation;  any mode of teshuvah severed from the war in Gaza would feel empty to me, and weightless.
           
What mode of teshuvah, then, would I connect with that war?
           
I am drawn to passages in the machzor about speech.  Speech, in relation to that war, is pretty much all I have, mine to use or misuse.  “All I have is a voice to unpack the folded lie,” as W. H. Auden wrote.  What will the machzor teach me about that?
           
I am tempted every year to chant the al cheyt quickly, carried along by the nusach and the feeling of being in community with others chanting.  But the al cheyt is an ordered list, a form I love, and like other lists it has its priorities.  Among them are speech, what we do with our mouths, our words:  bevitui sefatayim, b’dibur peh, b’tume’at sefatayim, b’tipshut peh, bilshon hara, the sin we have sinned before you in idle chatter and the way we talk, in foul speech and foolish discourse, in speaking badly of others.
One might regard these sentences as describing modes of speech that we simply need to refrain from, preferring silence to the misuse of speech. We have sinned by way of loshn hore, “slander” more or less, so all we need to do is not commit that sin, be silent when tempted to say that kind of thing. 
           
Not a bad idea, often:  to hold back, to refrain from speech with all its dangers.  And that certainly is what we are taught in the meditation at the end of the Saturday morning Amidah:  “guard my tongue from evil and my lips from lying;  may my soul be silent – nafshi tidom -  towards those who insult me, may my soul be as dust to them.”
           
But not a sufficient idea, nor the only idea the text allows.  Sometimes our sins of speech are to be remedied not by humbler speech, by softer speech, but by more louder speech, bolder speech.  And I say this not only because I hold that view in my own life – “silence is death,” after all - but because our texts, some of them at any rate, tell us that too.  “Do it that my soul may sing to you and not be silent, v’lo yidom,” says Psalm 30, for example.  And then there is Jonah.  Jonah’s failure, in relation to God’s first command, is that he remains silent and does not rebuke.  Silence can be a sin.  After Jonah repents, he breaks his silence and speaks.  What he says to the Ninevites is simple and direct:  “forty days more, and Nineveh will be overthrown,” nothing more than that, nothing less than that.  He does not speak harshly, he does not make ad hominem attacks.  Nor, however, does he speak in humility.  He does not seek no dialogue.  He does not say, I see your point of view, I see where you’re coming from, I confess that I may be wrong, I imagine that the truth lies somewhere between us. His judgment is absolute.  Hence, I imagine, his fear of being disbelieved, rejected, stoned, slaughtered.  But he spoke what he was given to speak.
           
When Yom Kippur is over, I shall for the most part go back to being the civil and courteous person I was (or think I was) before it, as Jonah goes back to being Jonah after his action of rebuke.  But only for the most part, I hope. 
           
I keep thinking in this connection of some of the last sentences of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” which seem to me a guide to distinguishing between moments for listening and moments for rebuking.   “If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience,” he writes, “I beg you to forgive me.”   But then he writes, “If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.” Not quite my language, but it teaches us this, that if sometimes we need forgiveness for overstatement and impatience,  at other times we need forgiveness for understatement and patience.  If sometimes our speech is not temperate enough, at other times it is not intemperate enough, not prophetic enough.
           
I hope in this new year to have the wisdom to discern when I need to be temperate and when I need not to, and the courage to act in accord with the instructions that wisdom provides.

By Laura Tennenhouse

One of the things I like about Yom Kippur services is how connected I feel with the community. It’s “we have sinned” and “forgive us,” and the threat of being “cut off from your people” is meant to be scary. I’m often not clear in my own mind how much that “we” means “the people in the room,” or “all the Jewish people” or “all the people in the world.” All are so very important. 
 
I don’t remember who it was that came to me last fall and said I shouldn’t just cry about the war in Gaza; I should do something, I should speak up, I should go to a protest and demand a ceasefire. It seemed like a good idea. I was still reeling from the horrors of October 7th, and yet I couldn’t imagine any number of Palestinian deaths that could make it right. The devastation was escalating and a frightening number of people seemed to want genocide. I went looking for a Jewish group to protest with, because I was uncertain and afraid of standing next to antisemites while I yelled at my government about the state of Israel being wrong. I was shocked by how many people said, “You are not Jewish.” Not merely, “You’re wrong,” or “how dare you say such a dangerous thing,” but trying to cut me off from my people.
 
In a time of war like this, the Yom Kippur hope of reconciliation, tshuva, and connection is hard to even reach for. (There might be a ceasefire agreement in a few weeks but even if both sides sign it would take a long time to rebuild peace and even longer to restore trust.) So am I part of the community of the whole world? I cannot speak for Gaza, any more than I could speak for Afghanistan. I can only make the roughest effort to beg for their lives. Am I part of the community of the people of Israel? A lot of American Jews don’t think I am, but the people of Israel is bigger than they are. And I am part of the community of Havurat Shalom. Which I know doesn’t always agree with me, but never tries to cut me off from my people.

From Lament to Promise
By Aliza Arzt

Although you’re reading this around High Holiday time, it was actually written on Tisha b’av and Eicha (the Book of Lamentations) is very much on my mind. The feelings expressed at the end of the Book of Lamentations resonate greatly with the “triple dread” that surrounds me daily: the
situation in the Middle East, the upcoming presidential election and the plight of unsheltered immigrants in Massachusetts (not to mention everywhere else). Two verses at the end of Chapter 5 of Lamentations highlight the pain, worry and powerlessness that have skewered many of us this past year. Here is verse 17:

ה ִלֵּבנוּ ַעל־ֵאֶּלה ָחְשׁכוּ ֵעיֵנינוּ
ֶו
ַ:
על־ֶזה ָהָיה ָד
Because of this our hearts are sick, because of these our eyes are dimmed

Verse 21:
ָנשׁוָּבה ַחֵּדשׁ ָיֵמינוּ ְּכֶקֶדם
ְי ֹהָוה | ֵאֶליָך ְו
ֲ:
הִשׁיֵבנוּ
Take us back God, to Yourself and let us come back; renew our days as of old!
These two verses, juxtaposed, express an unsurprising message: things are terrible; make it better, God. The second verse would make a good and hopeful end to the Book of Lamentations. But it’s not the end of the book. There’s one more verse:

ִּ:
כי ִאם־ָמ ֹאס ְמַאְסָּתנוּ ָקַצְפָּת ָעֵלינוּ ַעד־ְמ ֹאד
For truly, You have rejected us, bitterly raged against us

Feel free to substitute “life”, “politics”, “inhumane behavior” or anything else that we tend to focus on for “God” if it’s more comfortable. Many of us feel powerless to do anything except rage and cry. We have no answers. We have no solutions. We have only tears and anger.

Even though the book of Lamentations ends with despair, when we chant the book on Tisha b’Av, we don’t stop there. We repeat verse 21 as we beg God to help us to return, to do “tshuva”. I like this idea of ending on a note of hope, but I don’t like the last word “דםֶקֶכְּ“,” as of old”. Why should things go back to the way they used to be? Why go back to (or continue with) insisting on one correct view, one victim, one villain, one solution? Where has it gotten us? Even our own Tanach (Bible) has moments when it rises above the usual scenarios of conquest and destruction that characterize biblical “international relations”. Consider Isaiah (19:23-25):

In that day, there shall be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians shall join with the Egyptians and the Egyptians with the Assyrians, and then the Egyptians together with the Assyrians shall serve [God]. In that day, Israel shall be a third partner with Egypt and Assyria as a blessing on earth; for God of Hosts will bless them, saying “Blessed be My people Egypt, My handiwork Assyria, and My very own Israel”

ָנשׁוָּבה ַחֵּדשׁ ָיֵמינוּ
ְי ֹהָוה | ֵאֶליָך ְו
ֲ:
הִשׁיֵבנוּ
Take us back God, to Yourself and let us come back; renew our days!

by Heidi Friedman

Keeping in mind that Havurat Shalom is run almost entirely by volunteers and doesn’t have a paid rabbi or cantor, how do we make the magic of the holidays from Rosh Hashanah to Simchat Torah?

This is a marathon, not a sprint! We start at least three months before Rosh Hashanah. Over the decades, we have compiled lists of all the work that needs to happen. So, the first thing we do is get volunteers to be the leyning coordinator, the davening coordinator and the task list coordinator. Then the leyning coordinator signs up people to chant all the readings, the davening coordinator signs up people to lead all the services, give the divrei Torah and blow shofar, and the task list coordinator recruits volunteers to do everything else.

There’s also a sukkah coordinator (guess what that person does!), a childcare coordinator, an accessibility coordinator, an usher coordinator and a Zoom coordinator.

Once the coordinator slots are filled, the task list coordinator gets people to volunteer for everything else. What is everything else, you wonder? Ahead of the holidays: cleaning tasks, including hiring a paid cleaner, and also getting members to wash the curtains, floor pillow covers, etc; stocking supplies including kids snacks and apples for the Rosh Hashanah break; setting up the physical space including renting tents, bringing the chairs down from the attic, setting up the outdoor lighting and microphone and tech for Zooming, changing the Torah and Aron covers from their everyday ones to their holiday ones, rolling the Torah scrolls to the right spots, etc; and communications tasks like writing and mailing out the fall newsletter (our one remaining paper newsletter a year) and fall fundraising letter, letting the police and parking department know services dates, etc.

During the holidays in addition to leaders and leyners, each service needs set-up and clean-up folks, ushers, and a time keeper. Torah services need someone to give out aliyot. Holiday meals need meal coordinators, someone to bring challah, their own set-up and clean-up, etc.

And finally, after the holidays everything has to be put away, including taking down the sukkah, putting the extra chairs back in the attic, etc.

With only 31 members, some juggling is involved. The person leading Rosh Hashanah shachrit on the First Day, for example, can’t be the person who leads the children’s Rosh Hashanah service and also can’t be an usher for that service. So, usually we sign up the people leading services first and then have them fill in their other volunteer tasks.

All of this work is truly a labor of love. Being a member of Havurat Shalom means committing to do this work, and all the other work needed throughout the year. (Folks who want to be affiliated with Havurat Shalom without a work commitment are associate members.) I’ve been attending High Holiday services at Havurat Shalom since the late 1980s, and when all is said and done, this system of volunteer labor by dedicated members has led to magical davening every year. We hope you’ll join us!

Taught by Aaron Brandes on Shavuot

My goal for this Shavuout class was to use Albert Camus’ essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” as inspiration for us when we  struggle with the Torah text. Both the myth of Sisyphus and our annual cycle of reading the Torah involve never-ending struggles. Camus’s essay (which can be found in full online) is a midrash in the sense that he takes a problematic story of human degradation and reimagines Sisyphus as an existentialist who brings meaning and even happiness to the task. In the class we read a less condensed version of the full essay
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. … one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain. … It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock. … The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Each participant in the class selected some Torah that they found worthy of struggle. They follow below.
Genesis
Noah 6:22, 7 God destroys all life on earth, sparing only those on Noah’s ark.
Chayei Sarah 23:1-2 We don’t hear Sarah’s response to Abraham’s attempt to sacrifice Isaac. Parsha is named after her, she dies at the beginning.
Va-Yishlach 34:25-29 Simeon and Levi kill the people of Shechem after Dinah’s rape.
Exodos
Va-era 7:1-3  Aaron will ask Pharoah to let the people go, and God will harden Pharoah’s heart.
Yitro 20:1-14 God singles out 10 commandments/utterances.
Mishpatim 21:7 When a man sells his daughter as a slave …
Leviticus
Sh’mini 10:1:3 Nadav and Avihu offer strange fire and are consumed by a fire from God.  “Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, And gain glory before all the people.”
Acharei Mot 18:22 Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; It is an abhorrence. This was chosen by several people.
B’har 25:44:46 Aquiring slave from other peoples.
Numbers
B’midbar 1:2-3 Take a census of all those in Israel who are able to bear arms.
Korach 16:27-35 The earth swallows Dathan, Abiram, Korach and their families, and fire from God consumes the two hundred and fifty men offering incense.
Deuteronomy
Ki Tetzei 21:18-21 Stoning a defiant son.
Ki Tetzei 22:13-22 A man charges his wife with not having been a virgin at marriage. If he is found to have lied he is flogged and fined and cannot divorce her. If the charges prove true she is to be stoned.

What Torah do you struggle with? Post a response in the comments here

by Larry Rosenwald

(Note:  I presented a version of this text at John Carroll University in Cleveland on February 27th, 2024, at the kind invitation of Philip Metres, who runs the Peace Justice & Human Rights Program there.  The experience of giving the talk, and the interesting comments and questions that followed it, led me to want to change some things, and I was still making changes when the awful news from February 29th came in, of over a hundred Gazans killed while waiting for a delivery of food and other aid; I make reference to that news late in the talk.)
 
I’m offering these observations in safety, sheltered and far away from the horrible things done by Hamas and the horrible things being done by Israel.  And I can’t imagine that any Israeli or Palestinian is impatiently waiting to hear a pacifist’s perspective on what’s going on, the needs of the hour are so intense.  If I offer that perspective nonetheless, it’s not only because Phil invited me – not the least challenging invitation I’ve ever received, so among the invitations I’m most grateful for – but also because in the world we live in, conducting the war on war feels crucial, and because pacifists who want a world without war need to imagine how they would run it.  (George Orwell wrote that pacifists who could not imagine being in power were not serious.)
           
And also because it is so awful to read of what the Israeli army is doing in Gaza, what Israeli settlers are doing in the West Bank, of what Israeli journalists and ministers of state are saying to dehumanize Gazans in particular and Palestinians in general, to read and hear and to feel isolated, powerless, silent, and because any occasion for speaking out to or speaking with friends or colleagues or just fellow passengers to the grave is so precious, so much a deliverance from the deadening passivity we risk being condemned to.  Thank you, thank you.
 
            Prefatory
            1) “Seek peace and pursue it, ”bakesh shalom v’rodfehu.  I take my title from that verse in psalm 34 because I want to make clear that the pursuit of peace, which I take to be the task of the pacifist – and not just maintaining a preference of peace over war -  is as much a part of Jewish tradition as is the annihilation of Amalek, which has been more in the news.  That is made clear by this verse in particular, because it does something unusual, namely, provide two verbs for one object:  don’t just seek peace, pursue it – zukh sholem un yog zikh nokh im, in Yehoyesh’s Yiddish translation of the verse.  Commentators love doublings, and there’s a passage in the minor Talmudic tractate called perek hashalom, the chapter of peace, that comments on that trait in this verse:

Hezekiah said: Great is peace, for in connection with all other precepts in the Torah it is written, If thou see, etc., If thou meet, If there chance, If thou buildest, [implying,] if a precept comes to your hand, you are bound to perform it; *But if not, you are not bound to perform it. But what is written in connection with peace? Seek peace, and pursue it, [meaning,] seek it in your place and follow it to another place *if your presence can help to bring about peace there.

Do not, that is, make your pursuit of peace conditional, contingent;  pursue it always and everywhere.
 
Another passage from that same tractate:
R. Jose the Galilean said: Great is peace, since even in a time of war one should begin [by attempting to arrange] peace, as it is stated, When thou drawest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. *Deut. 20, 10.

I’ll repeat that, or paraphrase it.  When you approach a city to make war upon it, whether Sderot or Rafah, even then, especially then, propose peace to it.  Start with that.
 
These aren’t the only pertinent passages in Jewish tradition – there’s a book on the subject, Evelyn Willcock’s Pacifism and the Jews -  but they’re enough to establish the point at issue.
 
            2) Lots of goodhearted people wish there were peace in the Middle East, wish that Hamas had not committed mass murder and would release its hostages, wish that the Israel Defense Forces were not killing and wounding and immiserating so many civilians in Gaza, so many children in particular, that the government of Israel would release all Palestinian political prisoners.  But such wishes are not pacifism.  Pacifism rejects the making of war across the board.  Pacifists do not say, “I’m a pacifist but I support this war”;  people who say that are not pacifists.  Pacifists accept as a constraint on their wishes and schemes that those wishes and schemes will not include the making of war.  Pacifists regard war the way Gandalf regards the One Ring:  whatever you think you can do with it, however fair your visions of what you could accomplish, do not use it, you cannot control it, it will master and betray you.  (Tolkien said of World War II, “they are winning the war with the Ring.”)
 
Pacifism requires a willingness to pay the price of that constraint.  Whatever we wish for as pacifists, we have to figure out how to get without making war.  Maybe we have to accept that some of the things that we wish for we can’t get at all, since it’s only through war that we could get them.  (In the latter part of this talk I’ll be doing my best to imagine how we could get at least some of the things we wish for without war, but I’ll try to be honest about the limitations.)
 
3) As is probably clear, pacifists reject the idea of just war – which was, as pacifists know but others may not, developed in the West by St. Augustine as a means to make it possible for Christians, who were then pacifists, to support the wars of the state.  Pacifists also reject the idea of humane war;  on this see Samuel Moyn’s recent lacerating book Humane.
 
4) As is probably also clear, but is indispensable to say, pacifists reject the movement slogan, “no justice, no peace.” I’ve been at demonstrations where that slogan was chanted, and no doubt I’ve chanted it myself.  But I reject it.  Peace without justice – what scholars in peace studies, following Johan Galtung and Martin Luther King, call negative peace – is worse than peace with justice.  But it is still peace.  In a state of negative peace, if you are a kid you can get up in the morning, have breakfast, go to school, play with your friends. If you are a grownup you can go to work, buy flour for making bread, buy medicine for an illness, find a spare moment to sit with friends in a bar or a tearoom.  And at night you can sleep, there will be no terrifying sounds in the night of bombs or shells or collapsing buildings – ve’lo yeshama od chamas b’artsam, “the sound of violence will no longer be heard in your land.”  That is not nothing.
 
I quote from a theater piece called The Gaza Monologues, narrated by 33 young people in Gaza in 2010:

I dream of having ONE day of safety, I’m sure the world is too busy to remember our situation; six years have passed since we wrote our monologues and we are still under siege … When can we live in peace like the rest of the World?  (https://www.gazamonologues.com)
That is a very modest demand: safety, peace.  Not justice.  But what it demands is a world away from what the speaker has.
 
            5) Pacifisms are of many kinds.  My own opposes war but not all violence, as I learned when I realized, listening to my students, that I could not condemn someone being raped for knifing their rapist.  I am “serious” in Orwell’s sense, i.e., I want to imagine how to win, and also in King’s, i.e., I do not regard my position as sinless. (King’s account is in an essay called “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence.”)  I allow a distinction between war and policing, as will become clear later, and a distinction between soldier and civilian.  But I hold fast to the idea, principle, axiom, blessing, that we are all created b’tselem elohim, in the image of God, our enemies no less than we, soldiers no less than civilians, and I oppose war because it requires us to deny that principle, it in fact exalts that denial.
 
            The War in Gaza
            1) I’ll begin with something that’s predictable but necessary.  A pacifist has to condemn both the Hamas attacks on October 7th and Israel’s war in Gaza, and both condemnations arise from the principle just stated.  No claim that this is what decolonization looks like (in defense of the Hamas attacks), that this is what just war looks like (in defense of Israel’s war) matters more than that principle.  For decolonizers and disciples (and in my view misreaders) of Frantz Fanon on the left, for recolonizers and ethnic cleansers and zealots of all kinds on the right, for all for whom the idealized end justifies the horrific means, these paired condemnations are bland and boring, too even-handed. I myself sometimes distrust even-handedness, it feels weak.  But I hold to it here.
 
            2) The American pacifist Kathy Kelly said that pacifists need to be concrete.  When I read about the war in Gaza, I’m moved by what is concrete and repelled by what is abstract, this even before I discern the argument. Ted Deutch is the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, and said: “A premature cease-fire, without ensuring the elimination of Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, will only prolong that organization’s reign of terror over the people of Gaza, perpetuate its threat to the Israeli citizenry and doom any prospect of a political end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” I don’t agree with his claims;  but even before I get to them I know that the abstractness of his language is veiling what is being done.  Compare this statement by the Haaretz reporter Gideon Levy:  “11,500 children have been killed in Gaza.”  If Ted Deutsch were to say, “I believe that the slaughter of 11,500 children is justified,” I would oppose him – how on earth can that slaughter be justified? - but he would at least be defending what is actually happening.  (That number is out of date;  the current estimate is 13,000.  That number will rise.)  
            3) There are deep desires at work right now, among the militants of Hamas and among the militants of Israel, and deep hopes.  Each group dreams of eliminating the other, and of living in the other’s absence, in a utopia, whether that utopia is Israel sovereign and unchallenged from the river to the sea, or Israel wiped from the face of the earth.  Both Hamas militants and Israeli zealots are utopians, what the historian Jay Winter calls “major utopians.”  Winter distrusts major utopians, among whom are, for him, Stalin and Mao, possessed by what the political theorist Mathias Thaler calls “despotic reveries of social engineering.” So do I.
 
Pacifism, on the other hand, is a minor utopia, with smaller claims, as Winter implies and as Thaler says outright.
 
I remember a talk many years ago by the Israeli scholar Moshe Halbertal, at a moment in the history of Israel-Palestine that then seemed fraught with danger but which now seems idyllic, as pretty much anything would at the present moment, with so many children being killed daily.  At that talk, Halbertal said that for people to make peace, they have to give up their dreams – i.e., the utopias I just mentioned – but that they can then be free of their nightmares.
 
As of the moment, both groups are unwilling to give up their dreams;  they think they can bring them into being.  Peace is for them second-best at best. 
 
       4) (This is the longest section of the talk.)  What does a pacifist – what do I, that is – say should happen now? It’s in some way an unfair question, since it asks pacifists to weigh in at a moment that they would, had they had the power, have done everything possible to avert. Or as the Jewish American journalist Peter Beinart puts it, “it feels a little bit like someone has driven a car into a ditch and then is asking you how to get out of it.”  But it can’t be right simply to refuse to answer, and in any case, presumably you’d want to help the driver get the car out of the ditch regardless of how they got there.  So I’ll answer the question, within the constraints of pacifism – no war – and within the limits of what’s possible.  (Within the limits, but not at some timid, safe distance from the limits, right up against them.)
 
I’ll hold to Beinart’s simile for a while.  The first thing is to get the car out of the ditch. In the present context, that means getting to some sort of ceasefire, however long, however named, and to the release of some hostages.  Towards that end, every strategy and tactic is of value. Successful campaigns against wars, like successful campaigns generally, are various.  Radicals criticize moderates and vice-versa, but in the end both contribute. The campaign against Israel’s war is already as various as any.  Among its modes of action:  letters to American congresspeople, online petitions for ceasefire, municipal resolutions for ceasefire (three of them so far in my home state:  Somerville, Cambridge, Medford, with resolutions moving forward in Amherst, Easthampton, Greenfield, and Northampton), blocking roads, blocking access to the Statue of Liberty (a former student of mine was there), self-immolation (on December 1st, in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta and now again on February 25th, in front of the Israeli consulate in Washington, D. C.), support of artists and writers being banned for supporting a ceasefire, refusal to pay taxes that fund American support of the Israeli military, displaying Palestinian flags, voting uncommitted, supporting journalists aiming to provide information to Israeli Jews about what is happening in Gaza.  The South African charge of genocide brought against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
 
(I am aware that most of these measures are focused chiefly on influencing Israel, not at all or nowhere near as much on influencing Hamas, and that that cannot be right;  a ceasefire requires two parties, Hamas was party to the first ceasefire and will be party to any ceasefire to come, it has agency.  Whatever means there are of influencing it towards a ceasefire and the release of its hostages seem to me of value.  But I do not know what they might be, not myself having any connection here that I might draw on to exercise influence, no legislator to vote for or campaign against, no addressee to whom to direct a letter.  That is my limitation.  Surely others could do more.)
 
Also of value are the ongoing negotiations themselves and the people taking part in them, the process and not only the result.  Those people are citizens of minor utopias;  they are diplomats by vocation or by function, who leave everyone unsatisfied but also undead. (Pacifists focused on non-direct action often disparage diplomats and governments, but they too have work to do.  Pacifists have much in common with diplomats, actually, though neither group consistently recognizes this.)
 
When I read stories about negotiations between Israel and Hamas - not direct negotiations, to be sure, indirect at several removes, with the US and Qatar and Egypt and Israel and Hamas all involved, somehow communicating - I note that both Israel and Hamas are being described as rational entities.  The sentences of the accounts somewhat resemble sentences describing unions and management during a strike.  “The two sides are far apart,” “negotiations continue,” “Hamas stated its demands,” “Israel stated its demands,” “there is agreement on some matters but other matters remain unresolved” etc.  Such sentences allow for a ceasefire;  they may not lead to one, but they could.  Sentences about Israelis as Nazis, or about Hamas as worse than the Nazis, whatever their truth value, cannot.  Who negotiates with Nazis? 
 
Nor are such sentences only sentences;  in such negotiations, the two parties are behaving like rational entities, having meetings, using words (“use your words,” we say to children), delaying, compromising or not compromising.  And should there be a ceasefire, as there was a while back,  and may there be one again, there will be, during that ceasefire, some releasing of hostages, some release of prisoners, some holding to agreements and no doubt some failing to hold to agreements, and all of that behavior will be the behavior of non-monstrous entities, who can go on negotiating ceasefires until one of the ceasefires lasts.
 
A friend of mine said to me, “Okay, ceasefire, but what next?”  A fair question.  In one sense an easy question:  end the Occupation, that being in my judgment the underlying cause of conflict.  (I went to a Women in Black demonstration in Jerusalem, in 1992.  All the women held identical small signs saying dai l’kibush, stop the Occupation.  It was true then, it is true now.)
 
In another sense, a tragically hard question.  No Israeli government in the foreseeable future will do anything of the kind.  No Israeli government will do even the smaller, more intermediate things Peter Beinart thoughtfully sets out in the piece I borrowed the car-in-a-ditch simile from (Beinart admits as much):  treat the murderous agents like criminals (“make law, not war,” as James Carroll wrote shortly after the attacks of September 11th, and no one did that either), release non-Hamas Palestinian prisoners, help put on Palestinian elections, accept the 1967 borderlines as the basis for a political settlement, re-admit Hamas to Palestinian political life if it observes a ceasefire and agrees to abide by decisions made by Palestinians in referendums. Whatever steps can be taken now are smaller still, more gradual and indirect and slow.
 
But getting to a ceasefire is not just okay.  I am writing this sentence  one day after the day on which, so far as I can tell, the Israeli army fired on a group of hungry Gazans trying to get their hands on food from some trucks.  To be fair, the army spokesman called the group “a mob,” said the Gazans died in stampedes, said “this has nothing to do with Israel.” A Gazan witness said, “we went to get flour. The Israeli army shot at us.”  An Al Jazeera reporter named Ismail al-Ghoul said that “after opening fire, Israeli tanks advanced and ran over many of the dead and injured bodies.”  (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/29/dozens-killed-injured-by-israeli-fire-in-gaza-while-collecting-food-aid?s=08) 
 
I admit the uncertainty.  But I don’t in some way care.  I’m with the Israeli journalist Dalia Scheindlin, who wrote, “As of this writing, at least 112 Palestinians are dead, over 700 wounded. Social media can battle out which side killed how many, but I know the truth: the war killed all of them.  It has to stop.”
 
It has to stop, and ceasefire, being at least a partial stoppage, would be not just okay but a miracle.

Two final points and I’ll be done.
 
First:  I’m old enough, and you are not, to have been in the former East Germany and the former Czechoslovakia, when the latter was a repressive Communist state and the latter a state under repressive Russian control.  Those facts seemed immutable in 1970, when I was in East Germany, and in 1972, when I was in Czechoslovakia.  But the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and in that same year Václav Havel became the Czechoslovakian President. (My great aunt Hana Heitlingerova was his Hebrew translator, by the way).  What we think is immutable might not be.
And second, some lines by Tracy Smith, from a poem called “Everybody’s Autobiography,” which I came across a week ago, and I’ll let them be my last word:

  In a dream, my children   
  Glisten inside raindrops, or teardrops.  
  Like strangers, like seeds of children.   
  I will only be allowed to claim them  
  If I consent to love everyone’s children. 

By R Feynman