Rabbi's Derasha

I met with a young lady about a month ago.  She cold-called me a week after the war started because she was bothered by the way people she knew were speaking about the Jews and Israel.  She’s not Jewish and she wanted to understand better.  She came in to talk a few weeks later.  She told me that one thing I had said on the phone had shocked her.  She recalled that I said I was not surprised by the outbreak of antisemitism.  She could not comprehend that.

I told her that this is among the things we tell every candidate for conversion: It is irrational to want to be a Jew because it can be distressing or worse to be a minority religion.  I tell them that things might be sweet in America for the Jews right now but that it can turn quickly.  The historical pattern is just too regular.  Sweet times come to an end.  

Several years ago, R’ Jonathan Sacks, a”h, spoke in Palo Alto about antisemitism.  He called it a disease with many types of mutations.  That’s why we are blamed because we are capitalists and then blamed because we are communists.  Whatever is villainous in a given era becomes the mutation of the disease for that time.  We are all aware of what’s happening now.  The world does not look at merit, or achievement, or at almost any measure of earned success before it looks at whether one is from the underdog or the favorite.  Virtue comes from being among the oppressed. Everyone else is an oppressor, and, the Jews are, worse still, colonizers. 

But if a disease persists in this way it must stem from something basic to the human condition.  For insight into this we can look at the first instance of antisemitic tension, which happens to be in this week’s Parasha.  As Yitzchok struggles with the Pelishtim over the wells, Avimelech states the problem clearly and then Hashem points Yitzchok to the proper response.  Avimelech sends Yitzchok away -- Lech Miemanu -- with the complaint, “Ki Etzamta Mimenu M’od,” you have become very much stronger than us.  He is overwhelmed by Yitzchok’s success.  He is jealous, a failing to which we are all vulnerable.  And by the word “M’od,” Avimelech probably signals that Yitzchok’s status is threatening to him, which is why he becomes hostile.  This is a basic reaction, impossible to eradicate from the human condition.

How does one respond?  First, there is a national response, which is to unify.  When there was an attack 100 years ago against Shechita (ritual slaughter) in Poland, the Jewish socialist Bund saw it as an attack against the Jewish nation and they called for a Jewish boycott against Polish farmers. The Bund was anti-zionist and anti-religious.  They did not even care about eating Kosher food.  But they saw it as an attack that needed a response.  The religious leadership could have said we don’t work with Bundists but they did not.  They thought that if Jews were uniting as Jews, then one had to unite with them.  One could not ignore it even if there had to be a response that was more rooted in the Torah.  

And what is that further response?  The proper response comes from the second message Yitzchok receives from Hashem in the Parasha.  Like the first one, and like so many aspects of Yitzchok’s life, it involves Avraham.  Hashem tells him not to be afraid, and then invokes Avraham but this time he mentions something that was not mentioned the first time He spoke to him.  This time he refers to Avraham as “Avdi,” my servant.  The commentators say that this was a hint at the proper next step.  One way Avraham was a servant was that he built altars over and over.  Yitzchok has never built an altar.  And now, immediately, he does.  And the picture with Avimelech immediately shifts as he looks to make a treaty with Yitzchok, “for we have seen that Hashem is with you.”  

The proper response is to concentrate on what we do as Hashem’s servants.  We need to work on our service, on what it means to live devoted and moral lives.  We all know that Avraham’s service also involved Chesed.  Many people here remember Sylvia Berman, who returned to Israel last year with her husband Abe, both of them in their 90s.  Sylvia and Abe went to Israel first after the Six Day War.  She re-trained as a nurse in order to do so.  After living in Yerushalayim for a few years, they moved their family to Ofra when it was founded as the first settlement outside of the Gush.  Sylvia had a conversation in those years with one of the leaders of Gush Emunim, the group that pushed for more settlement in the territories.  She suggested that they open up a medical clinic here, and service the whole area, Jews and Arabs.  Everyone relates to medical care, she told him, and they’ll see us in a different light.  The leader of Gush Emunim told her no, he was not interested in treating Arabs.  She told him, you are making a big mistake.  This is a good thing to do and people will appreciate it.

We all know how much discussion has taken place this week about a hospital.  The first thing to do is to show that this hospital is also used as a military installation.  But the second thing to do would be to make it as operational as possible.  That is the right thing to do.  When the world offers so few good options, we must learn from Yitzchok.  First, do not be afraid.  And, then, do the right thing, as a proper servant in the mold of Avraham Avinu, a true servant and one who took care of everyone.