As we approach the Fall Holidays this year, we also approach the anniversary of the Simchat Torah Massacre perpetrated by Hamas on the Gaza Envelope communities of Southern Israel and at the Nova music festival, and the yahrzeit of roughly 1200 victims killed in the attack.
One of the beauties of the Jewish calendar is that we don’t just show up on Yom Kippur to beat our breasts and be forgiven and then disappear until the next year – I mean, I’m aware that is precisely what some people do, but they’re missing out, and here is why. Before the new year, our tradition encourages us to spend the month of Elul (which begins September 4th this year) reflecting, assessing, making amends to others and changes in ourselves. This is so much more than seeing our sins symbolically ride off on the back of a goat. Rather, it is a provision of time, motivation, and process to both repair relationships with others, and implement change and improvement in ourselves – an early form of therapy ingrained in our calendar every year. Further, that month of preparation is embedded in the final stage of a ten-week cycle of anticipating, mourning, and being comforted from the historic destruction of the Temple and concomitant loss of Jewish sovereignty and autonomy, which presents an opportunity for a parallel process on a national scale.
Yom Kippur itself provides a ritual marker cementing (hopefully) the change we want to see in ourselves. It would be a mistake to underestimate the power of ritual to shape how we see ourselves and the world. A new doctor doesn’t know any more medicine the day after med school graduation than they did the day before, but they are a doctor, no longer just a student. But, just as on Yom Kippur, getting into the graduation ceremony won’t make you much of a doctor if you haven’t put in the work to earn it. And we know the same is true for rabbis and lawyers and welders and jockeys (Saratoga!) and pilots and… pretty much everybody.
Finally, after months of self-therapy, and a long day on our feet, fasting, praying, to seal our commitments and invoke God’s help in our efforts, we spend a week celebrating the most joyous holiday on our calendar, because we deserve it.
This corner of our calendar should be a time for national reflection as well. Of course, it’s hard to introspect when there’s a war on; this alone is good reason to hope the war in Gaza will be concluded soon, and without expanding in other directions. Although the Torah prescribes the death penalty for many sins, the Talmud (in Makkot 7a) records that a Sanhedrin that carried out a single execution in a span of seven years would be labeled bloodthirsty (a word related to the modern Hebrew word for a terrorist); Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah demurs that he remembers it as once in seventy years – a lifespan. Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva (both of whom would ultimately be executed by the Romans) add that if they had been in the Sanhedrin in the era when it had the power to issue death penalties, no execution would ever have come to pass, because they would have cross-examined the witnesses until they found some detail in the testimony which would invalidate the death penalty for the case. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel counters that their approach would lead to more bloodshed in Israel. Of course, today’s Israel permits the death penalty only for crimes against humanity and treason, and has only carried out two judicial executions, both connected with the Holocaust.
The point is that even when brutality is justifiable, it is not always wise, or right. The conduct of Hamas, and many Gazan civilians, on October 7th and since, is deplorable. Israel’s response has been justifiably brutal, but the conduct of some Israeli civilians in the West Bank is lately becoming deplorable as well. Now it seems to me a good time to stop and reflect. Is continuing to batter Hamas more important than bringing home any hostages who could still return alive in a cease fire deal? Does the barbarism of Hamas in Gaza justify allowing settlers on the West Bank free rein to riot against and murder their neighbors there? Is running up the score on
Hamas now worth the risk of widening the war into full-scale conflict with Hezbollah and/or Iran? Are there remaining realistically achievable military goals in Gaza?
I know Hamas’s Gaza is a uniquely challenging operational environment, but for comparison, it was roughly eleven months from D-Day to the German surrender in World War II. I have certainly not entered the “ceasefire now, ceasefire at all costs” camp. But for my two cents, it seems like the time has come for Israel’s government to get serious about how it’s going to finish the fighting in this war, and what comes afterward.
I have said many times on our bimah that peace is not when your neighbors haven’t killed you today; peace is when you know your neighbors aren’t plotting to kill you tomorrow either. May God, who creates peace in His heights, bestow peace on us and on all Israel in the new year and for the years to come.