Israel-Gaza War 5784: Ki Tisa – First the Idol, Then the Plague

In this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, we read of the well-known incident of the golden calf. The people, anxious because of Moses’ long absence, demand that Aaron make a god to go before them; this, despite having just experienced the miracles of the Reed Sea and Mount Sinai.

Why? The Torah says, Vayar ha-am ki voshesh Moshe, “the people saw that Moses was delayed…” (Exodus 32:1)

A member of my Torah study group, using the Everett Fox translation of the Five Books of Moses, noted that Fox’s translation is “the people saw that Moses was shamefully late”; voshesh means not only delayed but to act shamefully. My study partner pointed out that newly freed slaves, relying on this powerful leader who channeled G-d’s miracles and freed them, would experience extreme anxiety at his absence. Moreover, they would be angry, hence their characterization of his long absence as being shamefully late.

Perhaps they were also ashamed of themselves, of their fear and dependency. It is a normal human characteristic to project shame and other unpleasant emotions onto other people.

The people then strip themselves of the gold earrings the Egyptians gave them to hasten their departure after the deaths of all Egyptian firstborn. Gold jewelry makes the wearer feel beautiful and dignified, but these people are feeling neither beautiful nor dignified. When Aaron casts a golden calf from the earrings, they declare, “This is your god, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:8)

G-d then directs Moses to hurry back to them, “for your people have wrought ruin” (Fox) or “become corrupt” (Artscroll, Exodus 32:7). These are two translations of the Hebrew text, which reads, ki shikhet amkha. But the literal translation is, “for your people has destroyed.” Destroyed what?

On Mount Sinai, they were told, “I am Hashem your G-d…There shall not be unto you other gods…” (Exodus 20:2-3) This is the first of the Ten Commandments given on the mountain.

Sometimes referred to as the Mosaic Covenant, the Ten Commandments establish a covenant between G-d and the children of Israel. He alone will be their G-d, and they will be his people, beloved and protected. By worshiping a cast image and calling it a god, the people have destroyed the basis of this covenant. Because of this, G-d sends a plague upon the people (Exodus 32:35).

Palestinian intellectuals have said that Gaza has become a symbol of Palestinian shame. Was Hamas projecting shame and rage onto Israel on October 7th? Certainly that rage was on full display that day. And the rapes and mutilations were an ugly displacement of shame onto the victims.

Hamas claims to follow Allah, but perhaps its members are actually following a “god” of their own creation. A golden calf. This god demands that Jews and Christians be killed or subjugated, and that any land that once was ruled by Muslims belongs to them in perpetuity and can never be ceded to non-Muslims. Thus their refusal of a two-state solution, a Jewish and Palestinian state side by side. Thus their murder-fest on October 7th, with the promise of more to come. Thus their total unconcern with the deaths of their fellow Muslims in Israel’s response.

“Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes,” reads the Slogan of the Islamic Resistance Movement in the 1988 Hamas Charter. The charter goes on to say: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

On October 7th, Jews hid behind stones and trees, in bomb shelters and safe rooms, in portable toilets and sewage pipes. And the Hamas murderers came and killed them.

They killed not only Jews, but also foreign workers who were Christians or Buddhist or Hindu. They killed 21 Israeli Muslims. They exceeded even their own charter, destroying both people and property.

By this destruction, they brought a plague upon their own people. Almost 30,000 killed (including about 9,000 fighters) and 70,000 injured are the latest numbers from Gaza. Gazan women, children, and elderly sleep in tents in the open air while Hamas fighters shelter in tunnels they do not permit civilians to enter. Civilians fight each other for whatever food Hamas fighters do not confiscate. Hunger and sickness stalk the land. The hospitals are overwhelmed. This is the fruit of Hamas’ golden calf idol.

Jews are not alone in following the siren call of the golden calf. But we are also not alone in returning to the one true G-d. We hope that one day those who follow the idolatry of Hamas do the same and remove the plague from their people, and Israel’s.

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Vayakhel – A Sabbath Ceasing, A Generous Heart

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Tetzaveh – All the Colors Will Bleed Into One

This week’s Torah portion is…colorful.

Tetzaveh continues describing the contents of the portable sanctuary, the mishkan. It also describes the garments that the cohanim, the priests, will wear as they serve in there. These garments will comprise the same three colors used in the screen for the mishkan entrance and the curtain separating the innermost sanctum from the rest of the mishkan: blue, purple, and crimson.

Then the Torah describes the ritual that will inaugurate both the mishkan and the priestly service. This ritual involves putting the blood of sacrificed animals on the altar and the extremities (thumbs, big toes, and earlobes) of the kohanim. This is something foreign and perhaps even repulsive to modern-day people. One possible exception is when friends, usually male, cut themselves and commingle their blood to become “blood brothers.”

So even today, there is a remnant of an ancient mindset that saw blood as both binding and sacred. Perhaps this is because it is so linked with both life and death. Blood carries oxygen and other nutrients throughout our bodies, giving us life. Without blood, we cannot survive. The ancients may not have had our knowledge of bacteria and viruses, cancers and immune systems, but they knew that when you lost enough blood, you died.

Here the cohanim, through sharing sacrificial blood also poured on the altar, are bound in sacred service to Hashem, who will meet the children of Israel in the mishkan. What does that have to do with the three colors, blue, purple, and crimson, used in both curtains and priestly clothing?

Blue is the color of blood inside the body. When it leaves the body and is exposed to air, it turns red. Blue is living blood; red is blood leaving the body; if enough of it leaves us, we perish. ZAKA, the Israeli search and rescue organization, collects even the blood of accident and terror victims. It must be buried with the rest of the body, for it will be needed in the resurrection that Judaism believes will happen in days to come.

And purple? Purple results when blue and red are mixed together. When life and death combine. But how can these two opposite states coexist?

Judaism is big on separations and distinctions. At the end of the Sabbath, we remember that G-d distinguishes between the sacred and the mundane, between light and darkness. Many of the ritual laws enforce a separation between life, both real and symbolic, and death. Sex is forbidden during menstruation, for menstruation happens when there is no fertilized egg to become a life, while the purpose of sex is to create life. Cohanim may not handle dead bodies or enter a cemetery, save for a close relative, for the job of a cohen is to sanctify life.

In some mysterious way, for our ancestors, the sacrificial service worked to do this. The blood of sacrificial animals was seen as substituting for our own blood. The blue and crimson remind us of both the separation between death and life, and the fact that the two coexist, often with only a very thin veil between them.

But what about the purple, the blending of crimson and blue?

Judaism, despite its emphasis on separations, is not a dualistic religion. There is not, as in other religions, a power that is good and a power that is evil. Satan is not G-d’s enemy and separated from Him, but a member of his staff, as it were, a prosecuting attorney who has his place in the system, testing the faith of G-d’s followers (see: the Book of Job). Judaism believes that G-d created light and darkness, good and evil. It seems both are needed.

Our sages say that were it not for the evil inclination, no man would build a house, take a wife, beget a family, and engage in work. We need enough ambition and desire for material goods to work for them, but not to steal them. We need enough lust to marry and have children, but not to commit adultery or rape. We need enough anger to fight injustice and protect ourselves and others, but not to murder. We are not to try to eliminate our evil inclinations, but to sublimate them to a good end.

Islamic terrorists have claimed to love death like their enemies love life. Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority teach their children from a young age that their highest aspiration is martyrdom while murdering Jews. Israelis prize life and celebrate it. They are the first on the scene of a disaster to render aid, even in countries thousands of miles away. They pursue cutting-edge medicine to cure every conceivable illness. They treat everyone in their hospitals. Family members of Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’ political bureau, are currently receiving care in an Israeli hospital.

The divide between Israel and its enemies is stark.

On October 7th, in an explosion of rage, lust, and greed, both Hamas fighters and Gaza civilians looted, raped, kidnapped, and murdered. Red blood in the houses of kibbutzim and the cars of fleeing festival-goers testified to the death and destruction. We know that since then, hostages have died or been killed in captivity. We pray that many still have the blue blood that means life flowing in their veins.

And on October 7th, police officers, soldiers, kibbutz security teams, and ordinary civilians died fighting the terrorists, treating wounded, protecting others. They died that others might live. As in the ancient mishkan sacrifices, their blood substituted for others’ blood.

We want the IDF and our leaders to be angry enough to fight Hamas to utter defeat and to bring home the remaining hostages, but not angry enough to murder civilians, harm them, or loot their belongings. We want to fight for life to the very best of our ability, not for death.

Innocents died on October 7th, and die now in Gaza. The reality Israel must work with is that Hamas is embedded with civilians to an extent unmatched in any other war in history. Because we do not have G-dly powers to miraculously separate the innocent from the guilty, inevitably blue will mix with red. Innocent life will bleed and die. It is a tragedy and it is also part of the universe that G-d created. Maybe some day we will understand why.

For now, we can only accept that despite our best efforts, blue and red will sometimes bleed into each other. We are obligated, to the extent possible, to separate the two, to sanctify life and prevent death where we can. We eagerly wait for olam haba, the world to come, where death will not destroy life, where purple will become part of the sanctification of G-d’s name, a time beyond present understanding.

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil…
I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colors will bleed into one…
—U2, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Ki Tisa – First the Idol, Then the Plague

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Mishpatim – Does the Torah Contradict Itself?

In Mishpatim, G-d lays out detailed laws to the newly freed slaves. Before they are ready to live as a free people in their own land, they must learn how to live together. But in the midst of ordinances regulating theft, assault, damages, and reparations is a generic command not to oppress the foreigner. (Exodus 22:20, 23:9) The Hebrews know the feelings of the foreigner, for they were foreigners in Egypt. And after the ordinances, G-d says he will drive out the inhabitants of the land He has promised to the children of Israel.

So first they are told to treat the foreigner kindly, then told that foreign tribes will be driven out before them. Isn’t this a contradiction?

The rabbis say that the Hebrew word ger, translated here as “foreigner,” is a reference to a resident alien, someone who is not Jewish but who lives in the land of the Jews. The Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites whom the Torah says G-d will drive out were not resident aliens, but peoples with whom the Hebrews were in competition for the land promised them. The direction not to oppress the foreigner, then, does not apply here.

But what about the injunction to drive them out? Does the Torah advocate ethnic cleansing? Many are accusing Israel of attempting to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.

Our rabbis say that the Torah’s guidance about the Canaanites was a divine command, specific to that time and place, that no human ruler has the right to apply. No halachic authority of any standing has advocated ethnic cleansing, now or in the past. And the evidence does not support any claim of ethnic cleansing today. Israeli Arabs make up 20% of the population of Israel. Gazans have been urged to move away from areas where there will be fighting to protect civilians, not to drive them out. And while one Israeli government minister has called for Gazans to leave, he is not part of the war cabinet and has no voice in how to conduct the war. And both Israel’s president and its prime minister have said that Gazans will not be expelled.

What about oppressing non-Jews? Some critics of Israel have accused Israel of practicing apartheid against and oppressing Palestinians in Gaza and the disputed territories of the West Bank. They complain that these Palestinians are restricted from entering Israel and cannot vote in Israeli elections. But most countries do not allow noncitizens to vote and restrict noncitizens from freely crossing borders. If the Torah does not require treating citizens of other nations and lands the same as one’s own citizens, neither do most modern governments.

The Torah does mandate not oppressing resident aliens—non-Jews living in Israel. Some have claimed that Israeli Arabs are oppressed. But Israeli Arabs, Druze, and Circassians who live in Israel today are citizens with full civil rights, and the government actively seeks to bring them fully into the mainstream of society. They can live where they please and worship as they please. Certainly you can find prejudice in Israel, just as you can find it in any country. But prejudice is not government policy. And the Torah does not contradict itself.

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Terumah – Brothers and Sisters in Holy Unity

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Yitro – I Wish That I Had Jessie’s Girl

In Yitro, we re-encounter Moses’ father-in-law, Yitro, who joins Moses and the escaped Hebrews at Mount Sinai. Yitro sees Moses wearing himself out daily, from dawn to dusk, ruling on matters both large and small as the people line up to see him. He advises Moses to appoint judges under him to handle the small matters and get involved only if the matter is too great or complex for them to rule on. Today countries around the world use some version of a tiered system of courts, from local magistrates to a supreme court, and they rely on multiple judges, rather than on one individual, to ensure just rulings. There are times when the wheels of justice turn slowly. And yet, nations that rely on the rule of law rather than a ruler’s whim allow their citizens to feel they are treated fairly, and as a result are more peaceful societies. Where there is rule of just law, clan warfare and Hatfield-McCoy type feuds disappear.

Judges today at least have a body of laws to refer to. But how were the ancient Israelite judges to know how to rule? From what sources could they learn concepts like justice?

Our Torah portion tells us:

“In the third month from the Exodus of the children of Israel from the land of Egypt, on this day they came to the Sinai wilderness…and encamp there did Israel, opposite the mountain.” (Exodus 19:1-2)

On this mountain, one of the most far-reaching encounters of all time took place, with reverberations still felt today. G-d presented the Israelites with commandments to guide them. Almost every country and people in the world subscribes, or claims to subscribe, to some version of the Ten Commandments given that day. G-d gave us just laws to live by, enabling the courts we create to rule well.

In discussing some of the Ten Commandments and how they apply to the current conflict, I will be drawing on wisdom from Rabbi Dennis Prager’s volume Exodus: God, Slavery, and Freedom from his Rational Bible.

Prager asks what the Third Commandment to not take the name of Hashem in vain (literally, “for emptiness”) means. He points out that the verb translated as “take” actually means “carry.” So: “You shall not carry the name of Hashem your God for emptiness.” (Exodus 20:7)

Prager posits that anyone who does evil in G-d’s name is carrying His name in vain. He includes, among other examples, Islamists who shout, Allahu akbar (“God is great”),when murdering innocents. GoPro cameras on Oct. 7th recorded many cries of Allahu akbar. The original Hamas covenant makes clear that killing not only Israelis, but Jews, is a religious obligation. Hamas and its allies carry G-d’s name for emptiness.

The Sixth Commandment is pretty clear: “No murder!” Over 1,000 were murdered by Hamas and allied militias on October 7th.

The Eighth Commandment is similarly clear: “No stealing!” The rabbis tell us that this refers not just to money or objects but to people. Possessions from children’s toys to kibbutz tractors were stolen on October 7th; more horrible still, more than 200 people were stolen and taken captive to Gaza.

The Ninth Commandment says you shall not testify falsely against your fellow. Since October 7th, not only Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, but their western enablers have falsely claimed that there were no rapes, the IDF killed the civilians, and that Israel is a genocidal, apartheid, colonial state practicing ethnic cleansing.

Most interesting is the Tenth Commandment, which prohibits coveting. It is the only commandment to forbid not an action, but an emotion. Rabbi Prager writes that the Hebrew verb used, lachmod (“covet”), means not just to desire but to want to take something that belongs to another person. He distinguishes between wanting something (for example, a house, car, or mate of one’s own) and wanting something owned by another. Since 1947, the Palestinians have made clear that they do not want a state on part of the land; they want all of it, and will accept nothing less. Israel giving back Gaza and parts of the West Bank was not enough.

Rabbi Prager posits that coveting ultimately can lead to violating the other commandments against stealing, adultery, and murder. Certainly, at the least, it leads to anger and resentment.

Rick Springfield’s 1981 song, “Jessie’s Girl,” paints a frightening picture of someone who, seeing the relationship his best friend has with a woman, does not ask himself what he can do to find and form a relationship with a woman himself, but covets his friend’s love interest. The words, guitar, and music video all express resentment and rage. This is the path that covetousness can lead us down. It is the path Gazans followed on October 7th, to not only Israel’s but their own detriment.

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Mishpatim – Does the Torah Contradict Itself?

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Beshalach – When Staying Comfortable Is Not an Option

This week’s Torah portion, Beshalach, tells us that when the children of Israel left Egypt, G-d did not send them by way of the land of the Philistines, “lest the people reconsider [pen yinakhem ha’am] when they see war and return to Egypt.” (Exodus 13:17) But the root of the word translated as “reconsider” also means “comfort.” Is this portion warning us that we should not seek comfort when confronted by war?

Conflict is uncomfortable, and armed conflict extremely so. When confronted with the choices to fight, take flight, or freeze in a life-or-death situation, most of us opt for one of the last two. Only a trained or unusually brave person relishes a fight with a mortally dangerous attacker.

During the last several years, Israel has sought to become comfortable with a neighbor that regularly rained rockets upon Israeli civilians. It deceived itself into thinking that work permits, free medical care, and aid would avert war with an enemy that wants to destroy it. But that way closed on Oct. 7th.

Now Israel is locked in an existential fight with the modern-day equivalent of Pharaoh’s pursuing chariots. As the Song of the Sea says:

“Said the enemy, “I will pursue, overtake, divide plunder, satisfy my desires. I will unsheathe my sword, impoverish them will my hand.'” (Exodus 15:9) These terrifying images were realized on Oct. 7th as both Hamas fighters and Gazan civilians tortured, raped, murdered, kidnapped, and looted. Many Israelis fought, and many, quite understandably, fled or froze in terror. Listening to the testimonies of the unarmed survivors and hearing the horrors they endured, the heart breaks.

Even now, it would be so easy for Israel to yield to both internal and external pressures and take the easier, softer way out. How easy it would be to give in to the demands of not only Hamas but many who call themselves allies, and agree to a ceasefire. Perhaps this would end the discomfort of an impossible war against a callous enemy that embeds itself in a civilian populace. Maybe it would bring the hostages home, stop the tragic loss of IDF soldiers, and avoid condemnation from enemies and pressure from allies, including a claim of genocide before the International Court of Justice.

If I, a non-Israeli 6,000 miles away, long for surcease when confronting local anti-Israel resolutions in my city council and weekly demonstrations downtown, how much more so the Israelis. What a relief—what a comfort—it would be to stop meeting with my mayor and city councilors, giving verbal testimony at bimonthly council meetings, hearing neo-Nazi Zoom-bombers and radical leftist commenters spout their hate there, and writing letters to the local paper to make Israel’s case.

But the Torah reminds us that the only way out is through—through the Reed Sea, through this fight. “Armed, they did go up, the children of Israel.” (Exodus 13:18) The way is guided by the pillars of cloud and fire created by Israeli bombs. Salvation now will not come through seeking comfort, but through fighting. “My might and my praise is G-d, and He was for me a salvation…Hashem is a Man of War, Hashem is His name.” (Exodus 15:2-3)

“Then came Amalek and warred with Israel…” (Exodus 17:8) Whether Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran, Israel will defeat these modern-day Amaleks. “For there is a war for Hashem against Amalek, from generation to generation.” (Exodus 17:16) Staying comfortable is no longer an option.

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Yitro – I Wish That I Had Jessie’s Girl

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Bo – I Shall Execute Judgements

It’s not fair. That’s what some might say about this week’s portion, Bo. Why did the plagues torment all the Egyptians, not just Pharaoh? Even though the plagues hurt the parts of the population that actively participated in the oppression of the Jews, surely, not every Egyptian was guilty.

Some would argue that in the current war, Israel does not differentiate between Hamas fighters and Gazan civilians, or between the latter and those civilians who actively participated in rape, murder, torture, and hostage-taking. As in any conflict, innocents inevitable suffer in war.

Indeed, some of the plagues tormented the Hebrews, too: blood in the water, frogs, lice, possibly boils, and locusts, which make their appearance in Bo, along with the two final plagues: darkness and the killing of the firstborn, both of which affect Egyptians only.

Out of a total of ten plagues, five do not affect the children of Israel. It’s almost as if G-d is trying to be, in modern parlance, equitable. And repeatedly, before initiating a plague, He has Moses demand that Pharaoh let the Hebrew slaves go. Pharaoh does not accede, and with each plague, the ante is upped, until the final, horrifying killing of first-born Egyptians.

When describing how He will slay the Egyptian first-born, G-d reveals another motive besides freeing the children of Israel: “…and against all the gods of Egypt I shall execute judgements of destruction…” (Exodus 12:12)

Initial Israeli attacks on Gaza inspired Hamas to make deals, releasing hostages for Palestinian prisoners, but ultimately they reneged and 136 hostages are still held. So Israel continues to fight, sending ever more “plagues” on the Gazan people, just as G-d sent plagues on the Egyptians. In both cases, there are two shared goals. To free prisoners, whether Hebrew slaves or today’s hostages, and to topple oppressive rulers, be they the gods of Egypt or the “gods” of Gaza, Hamas.

Israel goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. Often, the IDF is successful. For example, a recent targeted strike in a densely populated area of Lebanon killed the Hamas second-in-command, along with six other Hamas members. Nonetheless, in Gaza civilians, many of them innocent children, die. The hostages held there are affected by the shortages and assaults experienced by Gazans. Three were killed in a horrific case of mistaken identity by IDF soldiers who thought they were terrorists feigning surrender.

Such is the sad and horrific nature of war, that the innocent suffer along with the guilty. But can this be reduced, or even completely prevented?

There seem to be three approaches to war: pacifism, just war, and anything goes (all is fair in love and war, as they say). Dr. Idit Shafran Gittleman of the Israeli Democracy Institute says that the first and last approaches, while seemingly opposites, agree that war and morality cannot coexist.

How so? The pacifist, unable to reconcile war with morality, ditches war; the proponent of “anything goes,” similarly challenged, ditches morality. That leaves the middle way of just war, which presumes that war is sometimes necessary but sets limits as to when it is justified and how it may be fought. From this approach stem the laws of war reflected in international conventions. War must be fought only as a last resort, with the intention of ultimately bringing peace; the evil caused by war must not outweigh the good it seeks. When wars are fought, civilians are protected and prisoners must be treated well; force must not be disproportionate to the military objective. Civilian casualties must be avoided to the extent possible, with the realization that there will inevitably be civilian deaths.

Hamas and its allies have broken every one of these principles, while Israel has adhered to them. Hamas fights to eliminate Israel, not to make peace. The evil done on Oct. 7th far outweighed any benefit that might have been gained, even if one believes the attack was made to stop oppression (it was not). Civilians were brutally attacked, and as released hostages open up about their experiences, we learn how badly they were treated. Hamas uses its people as human shields, increasing the number of civilian deaths.

Israel went to war to prevent more assaults like Oct. 7th, which Hamas had vowed to repeat. Israel seeks not to eliminate Gaza but the terror organization in charge of it, with peace with its neighbors the ultimate objective. The Jewish state telephones Gazans and warns them to evacuate before bombing legitimate military targets. Unfortunately, because Hamas embeds itself within the civilian population to a never-before-seen extent, even with the greatest of care, there are many civilian casualties and much suffering for the ordinary citizens of Gaza. The hostages still in Gaza share that suffering.

Some say that the number of Gazan civilian deaths, so much greater than that of Israeli civilians, makes the war disproportionate and unfair. But only G-d has the power to make casualties “equitable”; we do not.

Will Hamas/Pharaoh finally accede to Israeli demands and let them go? And, equally important, will the “gods” ruling Gaza with an iron fist, shooting those who resist them, depriving them of humanitarian aid, be struck down? Only if they are deposed will the good from this war outweigh its evil. May judgements be executed against Hamas and their allies, and the hostages freed.

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Beshalach – When Staying Comfortable Is Not an Option

Israel-Gaza War: Va’eira – I Shall Make a Distinction Between My People and Your People

Va’eira, the second portion of Exodus, is particularly relevant to the hostages held in Gaza. It relates the first seven plagues G-d sends against the Egyptians to redeem His people, the Jews, from slavery. Mitzrayim, the Hebrew word for Egypt, means a narrow place. The Jews are literally being squeezed and constricted by the Egyptians.

The parallels with the hostages kept in Gaza are unmistakable. Kept in the dark, they were not allowed to raise their voices above a whisper, deprived of food and medicine, beaten, and subjected to psychological torture. And like the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt, they awaited—many still are awaiting—a miraculous liberation.

In the first plague, water is turned to blood, rendering it undrinkable. Similarly, after months of war, Gaza’s wastewater and desalination facilities have shut down. Water is filthy, bacteria-ridden, and tastes of salt.

In the next two plagues, frogs and lice are let loose on the populace. Currently in Gaza, a lack of fuel has led to a widespread and rapid proliferation of disease-carrying insects and rodents.

But three of the next four plagues are different. G-d specifically tells Moses that there will be a “swarm” (Biblical commentators are unsure whether this “swarm” refers to hornets, mosquitoes, or wild beasts) upon Egypt. However, they will not afflict the land of Goshen, where the Jews reside. G-d then sends an epidemic that afflicts only Egyptian livestock but not that belonging to the Jews. Next come boils on the people, though the Torah does not tell us whether they strike the Jews. Finally, there is a storm of thunder, hail, and fire that strikes every man and beast in Egypt—but not in Goshen.

Humanitarian organizations warn of the threat of epidemics in Gaza from the unsanitary conditions. Thundering, fiery bombs have fallen like hail on the strip since Oct. 7th. We read of skin lesions from biting sandflies that are also affecting IDF soldiers; one has already died from a secondary infection.

The IDF’s campaign to eliminate Hamas from Gaza—and prevent more atrocities like Oct. 7th—undoubtedly affects not only Gazans, but the remaining hostages held there. It is horrible to imagine the suffering of all in Gaza under these conditions (except Hamas, who divert humanitarian aid from the populace to themselves and their families). Knowing how these conditions must affect their loved ones can only increase the agony of the hostages’ families and friends.

Perhaps we can hope that, miraculously, the horrors of war in Gaza will not affect the hostages. That the epidemics of disease from dirty water, rats, and mosquitoes and the “hail” of bombs will not touch them. But surely a merciful G-d will spare them at least some of the plagues loosed upon Gaza, as He spared our ancestors in Egypt.

May they be returned to their homes and families soon, speedily in our day. Amen.

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Bo – I Shall Execute Judgements

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Shemot – How Paranoia Leads to Murder

This week, we start the second book of the Torah. We began our journey with the book of Breishit (Genesis in English), which tells how G-d created the world and all that is in it, including humanity.

Now we begin Shemot, or Exodus in English. Shemot, which is the name of the book, as well as this week’s Torah portion, tells a different story, moving from the universal to the particular. It recounts the birth of a distinct people, the Jews. Like many births, this one is difficult, accompanied by blood and pain.

The Torah tells us that the original group of Hebrews who came to Egypt comprised just 70 people in all. The Torah further says they were fruitful and increased greatly. How greatly, we are not told. But a new Pharaoh fears them, telling his people that the Hebrews are more numerous and stronger than the Egyptians. Surely this is an exaggeration. The population of ancient Egypt is estimated to have been 3 to 4 million; various authorities have estimated the number of Hebrews at the time of the exodus would have been anywhere from 6,000 to 140,000.

This exaggerated perception of the Jews has not changed. A 2022 survey also wildly overestimated the numbers of Jews both in the U.S. and the world. We punch above our weight, rising to the top in whatever professions are allowed us. Joseph rises rapidly as a slave to run his master’s household; in prison, the warden puts him in charge of the prisoners. Later Pharaoh plucks him from the pit and appoints him as his second-in-command over all of Egypt because he interprets dreams so well. When Joseph’s brothers join him, Pharaoh, assumes they will be similarly competent and instructs Joseph to appoint them as chiefs of his livestock.

But it doesn’t take long, whether in ancient Egypt or today, for admiration to turn to suspicion and dread. Just how is it that we end up in high places everywhere? And what will we do with our power? asks the world. In country after country, in era after era, we are first prized by kings, then persecuted or expelled.

Modern-day Israel, too, was first admired for its pluck and grit. Born in ghettos and mellahs, forged in pogroms and concentration camps, Jews built a nation, turning arid desert and malarial swamps into lush farms. Israel went from a socialist to a world-class, high-tech economy. Israeli military and intelligence agencies were forced by constant terrorism and wars to excel. Not content to succeed within its borders, Israel exports drip irrigation, life-saving medical help, training, and emergency rescue teams around the world to places of greatest need.

But still the nations grow suspicious. That cutting-edge medical capability? Why, it’s used to harvest organs from dead Palestinian terrorists or victims of hurricanes and earthquakes. Those counter-terror techniques? Used by American police to kill people of color. That world-class military? It commits genocide and ethnic cleansing. That amazing defensive system, the Iron Dome, that shoots down incoming rockets from Gaza? Congressional representatives who voted against funding it labeled it part of Israel’s war crimes, human rights abuses, and violence. In the eyes of those who fear Jewish power, self-defense becomes violence. A shield becomes an attack weapon.

The wild conspiracy theories floating around in the Arab world would be laughable if they had not proved so deadly: rumors of Mossad sharks, spying birds, plague-infested rats, and lizards that can detect nuclear facilities. More serious are conspiracy theories that have gained traction or are duplicated in the Western world: spreading AIDS; distributing narcotics; poisoning produce; murdering gentile children to use their blood in Jewish rituals; conspiring against Islam; planning to desecrate, destroy, or take over the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem; ISIL as a Mossad front; Protocols of the Elders of Zion; Holocaust denial; and the aforementioned libel of organ-harvesting. No wonder the fear and hatred of Jews and Israel is so great in Gaza. The population has literally been brainwashed to believe their neighbors are the epitome of evil and destroying them is only self-defense.

Pharaoh incited his people with outlandish claims that the Hebrews were a fifth column who would endanger them. In his paranoia, he sought to kill Jewish babies, utilizing first mid-wives and, when that failed, enlisting the entire Egyptian population. For generations, mosque sermons and school curricula in Gaza and the West Bank have incited their populations with outlandish claims. Hamas, its allied terror groups, and thousands of Gazan civilians also slaughtered babies on Oct. 7th. Some things, it seems, never change.

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Va’eira – I Shall Make a Distinction Between My People and Your People

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Vayechi – How Do We Fight Redux*, and Welcome to the Hotel Mitzrayim

Vayechi continues the uneasy theme of Jews as guests in a land not their own. It also makes clear that there are two types of warriors, one type honorable, the other not. The deaths of Joseph and, before him, his father Jacob, illustrate these themes.

Jacob, old and knowing his time is near, calls together his 12 sons to tell them what will happen to them in “latter days.” Really, he is prophesying the future of the 12 tribes that will descend from them and giving them guidelines for behavior as a free and independent people.

Shimon and Levi come in for some heavy criticism for their reaction to the rape of their sister, Dina, in Shechem after having left Paddan Aram and returned to Canaan. Outraged, they tricked the men of Shechem into circumcising themselves, then attacked them as they lay in pain and helpless. They killed every male and took the women, children, and livestock as slaves and booty. Sound familiar? Hamas and its associates also went on a spree of murder, rape, and hostage-taking. We know that the women—and some of the men as well—were sexually assaulted and abused in captivity. Islam permits treating defeated prisoners as sex slaves.

Jacob condemns the two brothers both right after their murderous spree and now again on his deathbed. His words reject their actions unequivocally: “Into their conspiracy, let not my soul enter! Into their congregation, do not join…Accursed is their rage, for it is intense…” Thus does Jacob, renamed Israel by G-d, condemn the type of warfare practiced on October 7th.

Yet lest we think that Jacob/Israel is condemning all war, his words about other sons make plain that, as Ecclesiastes states, “A season is set for everything, and a time for every experience under heaven…a time for war and a time for peace.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 8)

In the very next verse, Jacob praises Judah, saying, “…your hand at the neck of your enemies…A cub of a lion is Judah; from prey, my son, you have risen…who would provoke him?” About Dan, he says, “Dan will be a serpent…one that bites the heels of a horse, so that fall shall its rider backward.” Of Gad, “A troop will troop forth…” Finally, he predicts that “Benjamin is a wolf that tears, in the morning he will devour prey…”

These are not the words of a pacifist, and the future Jacob predicts for his people is not always peaceful. There will be enemies. It is just and right to fight and defeat one’s enemies, just not in the way of Shimon and Levi. Israel now fights a just war against those of accursed and intense rage that would wipe out and enslave all in its path: men, women, and children; babies and the elderly; Jewish and Muslim Israelis both; foreign workers with no part in this dispute. All were murdered, tortured, raped, and kidnapped on Oct. 7th, without discrimination or mercy.

Israel is fighting by different rules, using targeted airstrikes rather than indiscriminate carpet-bombing, warning civilians to evacuate and opening routes for them to do so, and taking prisoners when fighters surrender. Yet they are fighting with determination and force and will not stop until Hamas and its allied groups in Gaza are utterly defeated. While many civilians have died, it is not because they have been targeted, but because Hamas stations its fighters, weapons, and command centers in, around, and under hospitals, schools, mosques, and private residences.

When Jacob expires, Joseph must get permission for he and his brothers to leave Egypt for the burial. He tells Pharaoh that his father made him swear to bury him with his wife and ancestors in Hebron. They leave their children and flocks behind, in a foreshadowing of the exodus from Egypt, when another Pharaoh will demand the same as a guarantee of their return.

And when Joseph in his turn dies, his brothers will not be able to leave Egypt (Mitzrayim in Hebrew) to bury him in Hebron. He must ask them to swear that, when their descendants leave for good some hundreds of years in the future, they will bring his bones with them and bury them with those of his ancestors. The Hotel Mitzrayim—such a lovely place. You can check out any time you like, but eventually, you will not be allowed to leave.

*This post continues issues explored in Israel-Gaza War 5784: Vayishlach – How Do We Fight

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Shemot – How Paranoia Leads to Murder

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Vayigash – The Jew Among the Nations

Vayigash foreshadows our history as a minority living under alien rule.

Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, who have come down to Egypt to purchase food during a famine in Canaan. He urges them to go home, collect their families and their father Isaac, and relocate to Egypt. There they will wait out the remaining 5 years of the famine.

What could go wrong with this plan? Joseph is second in power only to Pharaoh, who trusted him to manage the effort to accumulate surplus food during the 7 years of plenty, as well as disbursing it during the 7 years of famine.

Pharaoh agrees to the plan. He gives wagons to the brothers to bring back their people, along with provisions for the journey, promising to provide new belongings to replace what they leave behind.

No wonder Joseph promises his brothers they will have the best of Egypt and the fat of the land.

But a red flag appears. Joseph advises his brothers to say they are shepherds of flocks. Such work is looked down on as an abomination by the Egyptians. Indeed, we know from the previous week’s Torah portion that the Egyptians will not even eat with the Hebrews, who are not regarded as equals in dignity or humanity.

Therefore, they will agree to let the Hebrews settle, but only in Goshen, far away from Egypt’s urban centers. And this is ominous, a harbinger of things to come—eventually, the Egyptians will enslave Joseph’s descendants—and a foretaste of what the Jewish people will experience in other lands not our own where we are forced to dwell over the centuries.

Throughout our history, it was ever thus. We were often welcomed and even invited to other countries. But we were always regarded as “other.” Sooner or later, we were resented for our success, hated for our imagined malign power, or feared as a potential fifth column.

Then the miracle happened. After millennia of dispersion, we gathered in our ancestral land of Israel and became again a nation with a territory of its own, a true home. Not guests in other’s homes, existing on their sufferance, no matter how well we were treated. Finally, we thought, we could live in freedom, dignity, and peace.

But things did not turn out that way. From the inception of modern-day Israel, we have fought war after war for our survival. And not just military wars against physical enemies. We have also had to fight the war for public opinion, as the world turned against us with accusations of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide.

The rage and hatred engendered by our existence and success persisted even after the massacre of Oct. 7th, as university students, unions, churches, city councils, and national governments turned against us. Antisemitic incidents skyrocketed almost 400% in the U.S. and included verbal harassment, vandalism, bomb threats and swatting, and physical assaults. Things are even worse in European nations, with many more attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions. A 2003 poll showed that Europeans regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace—not North Korea, not China, not Iran, but Israel. Conspiracy theories abound that we control world governments, will betray our countries of residence, and plan to exterminate the Palestinians and steal their land. No longer strangers without a nation, we are now “the Jew among the nations”—outcasts to be hated, feared, and threatened.

The United Nations has been unceasing for decades in its one-sided condemnations of Israel and support for the Palestinians. The extreme wing of leftist parties in Europe and the U.S. puts pressure on its moderate leaders at the local and national level with demonstrations, city council resolutions, and opinion pieces in mainstream media.

It is not that Israel has been without allies. Israel has had support from most Western nations, including the United States, which provides weapons and aid, and has even sent aircraft carriers to send a message to Iran, the Houthis, and Hezbollah not to cross the line.

But, as with Pharaoh’s warm welcome in this week’s Torah portion, there is another, subtler message from these allies: Don’t make us look bad for supporting you. Fight with one hand tied behind your back. Risk the lives of your soldiers and hostages by going to unprecedented lengths to avoid collateral damage to civilians. Call a ceasefire, even though that will give Hamas a chance to regroup. Allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, even though Hamas will hijack it and use it for their fighters and families. .

We had thought our diaspora problems were solved when we regained a state of our own. But in an increasingly flat world with open borders, global media, near-instantaneous communication, and a population who increasingly consider themselves more citizens of the world than of their countries, we once again find ourselves a despised minority too much at the mercy of our fellow world citizens. Is this always to be our fate?

For centuries, our people have looked to a messianic age where peace, harmony, and true brotherhood will reign under the kingship of the Almighty. Judaism prophesied a messiah who would usher in this final age. Now would be a great time for him to show up.

Israel-Gaza War 5784: Vayechi – How Do We Fight Redux*, and Welcome to the Hotel Mitzrayim