Amen. The phrase "we are none of us free until all of us are free" featured in our house seder discussion last night. To your point, we cannot call ourselves free until we acknowledge our debts to the history that brought us here. That acknowledgement may be painful, and actual reparations may be difficult, but we cannot be free until we escape the narrow place we are in. Refusing to acknowledge it forecloses any possibility of escape from it.
Moa'dim l'simcha, Rabbi Lawson. I'll be totally honest here: I was drafting a comment in my head about halfway through reading this post, agreeing with your assessment and comment about the American No vote but ready to argue about the Israel one... But I stuck with reading to the end, and I'll be damned if I don't completely stand with you on this. It's of course true that acknowledging (and even quantifying) one injustice doesn't necessarily diminish another, and at the end of the day it would have not hurt Israel in any real way to vote for this. That said, while it's also true that words matter and that this UN resolution was nonbinding, we've seen the value of the UN's words diminish greatly in the last several decades (going all the way back to the '70s with "Zionism is racism").
I'm grateful for your teaching, always, and wish us all true liberation in our lifetime.
The hypocrisy is heart breaking but not surprising. The United States and Israel--- two countries founded on creating a democracy, are falling into authoritarianism and fundamentalism, demanding an "us vs them", with "them" being vile and subhuman. In both countries people are resisting and hope needs to be our super power along with the work required. As always, thank you for your thoughtful analysis and your heart. Shabbat shalom.
Amen. The phrase "we are none of us free until all of us are free" featured in our house seder discussion last night. To your point, we cannot call ourselves free until we acknowledge our debts to the history that brought us here. That acknowledgement may be painful, and actual reparations may be difficult, but we cannot be free until we escape the narrow place we are in. Refusing to acknowledge it forecloses any possibility of escape from it.
Thank you, Rabbi, for the seasonal teaching. The no votes are so shameful.
Moa'dim l'simcha, Rabbi Lawson. I'll be totally honest here: I was drafting a comment in my head about halfway through reading this post, agreeing with your assessment and comment about the American No vote but ready to argue about the Israel one... But I stuck with reading to the end, and I'll be damned if I don't completely stand with you on this. It's of course true that acknowledging (and even quantifying) one injustice doesn't necessarily diminish another, and at the end of the day it would have not hurt Israel in any real way to vote for this. That said, while it's also true that words matter and that this UN resolution was nonbinding, we've seen the value of the UN's words diminish greatly in the last several decades (going all the way back to the '70s with "Zionism is racism").
I'm grateful for your teaching, always, and wish us all true liberation in our lifetime.
Thank you ❤️
“History does not disappear when ignore”. So true. It just comes back again and again.
The hypocrisy is heart breaking but not surprising. The United States and Israel--- two countries founded on creating a democracy, are falling into authoritarianism and fundamentalism, demanding an "us vs them", with "them" being vile and subhuman. In both countries people are resisting and hope needs to be our super power along with the work required. As always, thank you for your thoughtful analysis and your heart. Shabbat shalom.