We Are Culpable – a message for the Days of Awe

JVL Introduction

As we enter the third year of this genocide, committed by so many Jews, and supported, to their everlasting shame, by too many in leadership positions in Jewish communities worldwide, we Jews gather in these days of awe between the New Year and the Day of Atonement, to reflect on our sins, to repent and to plead for forgiveness.   The tragedy is that too many Jews will not find fault with anything done in their name by the state of Israel or if they do, they will make Netanyahu and his allies the scapegoats.  In this way absolving themselves from the support they have given to this, the greatest crime of our age.   

In keeping with the demands of our faith, our comrade, Sheryl Nestel from IJV Canada, has written a profound reflection on the nature of our culpability using the Al Chait  prayer as the framework.  This is produced on behalf of Global Jews for Palestine, to which Jewish Voice for Labour belongs.

On Yom Kippur, our holiest day, Jews stand together as one people to confess our sins.  We say Ashamnu, we have sinned.  And on this day each Jew takes on the responsibility for all the sins committed in our name.  We may not have committed the sins, but we had the responsibility to prevent our fellow Jews from those acts, and if we erred we need to express contrition 

Thus, we need to identify the sins committed in our name and make recompense.  Sheryl highlights our sins and points to what must be done in recompense.  There is nothing comfortable in these words but when the Shofar rings out at the end of the Fast may it be a clarion call for true repentance and restitution. 

DN

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“Ashamnu” – We are culpable”

by Sheryl Nestel, IJV 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.

For the second year in a row, Jews worldwide will recite the Al Het (list of sins) and the Vidui (confessional) in the midst a genocide being carried out in Gaza in which nearly 70,000 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds of thousands are starving and displaced. It is imperative that we acknowledge some of the sins that have been committed in our name by people and institutions claiming to act on our behalf. Among these are –  supporting and defending the oppression of Palestinians, engaging in historical erasure, and degrading, dispossessing, starving and killing Palestinians in the name of Jewish self-determination.

אָשַֽׁמְנוּ

“Ashamnu” (we are all culpable for the transgressions of our community). “Jewish communities must make a choice. We cannot continue to deny the profound injustices committed in our name against the Palestinian people. 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.

בָּגַֽדְנו

“Bagadnu” (betrayal) Jewish leaders in our countries 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.

גָּזַֽלְנוּ

“Gazalnu” (robbery) Jews around the world have participated in the theft of Palestinian land by supporting the Jewish National Fund and averting their gaze as Jewish settlers aided by the IDF unleash violence and destruction on Palestinian communities in the West Bank in a bid to expel them from their lands.

דִּבַּֽרְנוּ דֹּֽפִי

“Dibarnu Dofi” (slander) Many in our Jewish communities have slandered and defamed those with whom they don’t agree including Jews who oppose Israel’s violence and human rights abuses.

חָמַֽסְנוּ

“Chamasnu” (acting zealously)

In their zeal to protect Jews and Israel many in our communities have distorted, misused and weaponized charges of antisemitism.

טָפַֽלְנוּ שֶֽׁקֶר

“Tafalnu Sheker” (lying). Many Jewish institutions have distorted and denied the truth about Israeli crimes against humanity and defended the blockading of desperately needed food and medicine as a justifiable weapon of war rather than a violation of international humanitarian law.

פָּשַֽׁעְנוּ

“Pashanu” (perverting justice) Influential members of Jewish communities have wrongfully exerted influence on institutions so as to prevent legitimate criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

קִשִּֽׁינוּ עֹֽרֶף

“Kishinu Oref” (stubbornness) Even when confronted with the deaths of nearly 20,000 children and the forced starvation of hundreds of thousands more, Israel supporters continue to claim that there are “no innocents in Gaza”.

תָּעִֽינוּ

“Tainu” (straying from a righteous path) Many of our fellow Jews have abandoned the fight for justice by refusing to acknowledge the Nakba – the ongoing Palestinian experience of violence, expulsion and dispossession’

תִּעְתָּֽעְנוּ

“Titanu” (causing others to stray from righteousness) Many of our Jewish institutions have caused community members 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.

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.

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.

Read and endorse Global Jews for Palestine’s

Global Jewish Manifesto for Collective Liberation