Contemplations during the High Holy Days of Judaism
JVL Introduction
Jewish Voice for Labour is a member of Global Jews for Palestine, Jewish organizations in 16 countries around the world standing for Justice for Palestinians and peace for all who live between the river and the sea.
These contemplations were written by Sheryl Nestel of our sister organisation, Independent Jewish Voices Canada, for issue as Rosh Hashona, the Jewish New Year, comes in at sunset on 2nd October and to be considered over the Days of Awe between Rosh Hashona and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
As Jews standing with the overwhelming majority of people in the world, although sadly not our governments, we always have to ask, are we doing enough? What will it take? Nothing we do feels as though it is enough while there is a genocide in Gaza, and a brutal military occupation in the West Bank. And now, on top of that and in part a result of the failure of the US and others to bring about the long overdue ceasefire in Gaza, all in that region are at risk of attack, displacement, injury, death and destruction.
Normally we wish people “L’Shana Tova” – for a sweet year. Of course we wish that. We will work as hard as we can for sweetness all over, so that there may be peace for all.
LL
“Ashamnu” – We are culpable”
Sheryl Nestel, Independent Jewish Voices Canada
On Yom Kippur, Jews traditionally confess our sins in public. We confess in the plural, and we do so not only for our own sins, but for those of the community we live in and for those of the Jewish people as whole – for even if we did not personally commit each and every sin listed, we are responsible for stopping our fellow Jews, and the Jewish communal institutions that act in our name, from committing these sins. According to the great medieval Sephardic Jewish philosopher and Torah scholar Maimonides, the person in whose power it is to prevent sin and does not undertake to prevent it is ultimately responsible for the sin since it was possible for them to prevent it.
This year as Jews worldwide recite the Al Het (list of sins) and the Vidui (confessional) under the shadow of a genocide being carried out in Gaza in which nearly 50,000 Palestinians have been killed let us consider some of the sins that have been committed in our name by people and institutions claiming to act on our behalf – namely by supporting and defending the oppression, historical erasure, degradation, dispossession, and killing of Palestinians in the name of Jewish self-determination.
For each of the ten days of repentance, there is a different sin that our community must rectify in the quest for justice and moral accountability- heshbon nefesh.
ּונ ְמ ַֽׁ ש ָא
“Ashamnu” (we are all culpable for the transgressions of our community). “Jewish communities must make a choice. We cannot continue to deny the injustices committed in our name against Palestinians. We must engage in the work of teshuva (repentance) by facing the truth about Palestinian suffering and by recognizing our complicity and ending our silence.
ּונ ְדַַָּֽֽׁב ג
“Bagadnu” (betrayal) We have betrayed Jewish tradition by failing to acknowledge the humanity and rights of the Palestinians and by supporting the state of Israel as it carries out a genocide.
ונ ְלַֽׁ זָג
“Gazalnu” (robbery) We have participated in the theft of Palestinian land by supporting the Jewish National Fund and the ever-expanding Israeli settlement project.
ּי ִּפונְַֽׁרַֽׁד ב ִּד
“Dibarnu Dofi” (slander) We have slandered and defamed those with whom we don’t agree including Jews who oppose Israel’s violence and human rights abuse
ּונ ְס ַֽׁ מ ָח
“Chamasnu” (acting zealously) In our zeal to protect Jews and Israel we have distorted, misused and weaponized charges of antisemitism.
ר ֶק ֶַֽׁשונְלַֽׁ פ ָט
“Tafalnu Sheker” (lying) We have distorted and denied the truth about Israeli crimes against humanity and justified policies such as the withholding of water, medicine and basic necessities to the people of Gaza.
ּונ ְע ַֽׁ שָפ
“Pashanu” (perverting justice) We have wrongfully exerted influence on institutions so as to prevent legitimate criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
ף ֶר ַֽׁוני ִַּֽׁשע ִּק
“Kishinu Oref” (stubbornness) Even when confronted with the deaths of nearly 17,000 children, Israel supporters continue to claim that there are “no innocents in Gaza”.
וני ִַּֽׁע ָת
“Tainu” (straying from a righteous path) We have abandoned the fight for justice by refusing to acknowledge the Nakba – the ongoing Palestinian experience of violence, expulsion and dispossession’
ּונ ְע ַָֽׁת ְע ִּת
“Titanu” (causing others to stray from righteousness) We have caused others to stray from righteousness by miseducating our community and our children about Israel’s role in the Nakba and Palestinian suffering alongside the history of Jewish suffering.
…
May the spirit of justice guide us in the new year so that we may open our ears to truth, open our hearts to the oppressed, and speak our minds courageously in order to begin to stop our community’s complicity in the, oppression, suffering and attempted destruction of the Palestinian people.
In this season of atonement Jews must take an ethical stand:
- Demand an immediate end to the genocide in Gaza.
- Demand that our religious, educational and cultural institutions acknowledge and speak truthfully about the Palestinian Nakba.
- Demand that Jewish institutions stop attacking, maligning and punishing those who speak their conscience about Israel’s genocidal violence and dispossession of the Palestinian people.
- Demand an end to the malicious vilification of fellow Jews who name and oppose Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights.
- Demand an end to Jewish communal funding for organizations that promote Islamophobia, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism.
- Demand an end to Jewish communal funding for organizations that support and enable illegal Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land and which defend settler violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Written by Sheryl Nestel, Independent Jewish Voices Canada; Global Jews for Palestine
It has repeatedly been asked how it is that so often in history good people have set out to do good things in the world and ended up killing millions. How many times we’ve seen people, who always see themselves as good, set out to conquer evil only to end up visiting even more evil on the world.
I’m not one of those who see Zionism has having always been wicked from the start, although I know the arguments (even had there been no Palestianians it would still have been the wrong answer to historic antisemitism; and when it was no longer deniable that ‘the land’ did have a people, thoughts of genocide were always hanging around, if inchoately).
I can’t remember my childhood family elders, or the Jewish community in which we were embedded, as bad people. But all were reeling under the hammer-blows of still recent history, and not only the Holocaust, but the failures of assimilation fresh in their memories, of Bundism: and they weren’t going to return to cringing.
And then later it was all too clear that they had unwittingly joined the ranks of the righteous good doing bad.
There is, said the writer of Ecclesiastes, “a time to cry and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance” and probably someone has added, a time to rejoice and one to repent.
Today it looks as if many of us Jews turned our historic memories of death immersion into a counterphobic reactive quasi-religious ritual of crazed killing, as if to say, ‘As long as we kill others, and keep killing, we ourselves are free from death; making Sacrifice of others, as well as some of our own, to the great god, Death, we buy ourselves eternal life, Am Yisroel Chai.’ Thus do so many try to fight death with death.
Repentance, sackcloth and ashes.
Hmm, very honourable, but this makes Jews everywhere responsible for Israel’s atrocities, which I’m not comfortable with.
Mazel Tov to comrade Sheryl and JVL for this powerful posting!
For me, even the painting you display is significant because it is by my namesake, Chagall.