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In the Land of IsraelNaso 5765 Sermon, June 10, 2005Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon It is a great and real honor to speak tonight about our Temple Emanu-El mission tour of Israel, from which we returned just late last night. Of course, having traveled for some 26 hours since leaving Jerusalem at 2:15 in the morning on Thursday, I am currently on the same time zone as the planet Mars, so I cannot fully be held responsible for what I say tonight… but it is a particular privilege nonetheless to report on a fantastic trip, filled with excitement, discovery, meaning, and extraordinary Jewish experiences. Over the last day that we all spent together in Israel, I asked each of the 33 members of our Temple Emanu-El tour to take the microphone on the bus and explain what his or her favorite experience was during the trip. The answers were extraordinarily varied and rich: many mentioned visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem, others a magical morning service we held in the Joseph Caro Synagogue in the mystical town of Tzefat; for some it was kayaking on the Jordan River, or visiting Independence Hall where modern Israel began, or the archeological dig at Beit Guvrin, where we all found ancient artifacts. Some particularly loved shul hopping on Shabbat in Yeushalayim, especially the unique Aleppo Synagogue of Syrian Jews and the fabulous male choir at the Great Synagogue. Some raved about the archeological sites of Cesarea, Sephoris, Katzrin, and Beit She’an, or found the new museum at Yad Vashem overwhelmingly powerful. A surprising number talked about the daily morning services we held on rooftops in Tel Aviv and Eilat and on a Kibbutz front lawn and atop Masada and in a Jerusalem park. Some just loved being with the group, or loved the whole experience so much they couldn’t isolate a favorite moment. I, too, gave an answer to the question of my favorite Israel experience during the tour… What I said to our magnificent group of Israel explorers, we band of brothers and sisters, we who love Israel in all her goodness and her greatness, what I told our Temple Emanu-El Israel group was that my favorite moments came from the tremendous pleasure of bringing my own son, Boaz, to Israel for the first time. In particular, the greatest of the great moments came first last Saturday night when Boaz asked me after Havdallah if we were going to be in Jerusalem for Shabbat this week. “No, honey,” I answered him, “we’ll be home for Chardonnay Shabbat by then. We won’t be in Yerushalayim next week.” “Oh, darn,” he said, “I love it here on Shabbat. Can’t we stay for next Shabbat?” And my heart melted… Or when I asked him what his favorite part of the tour was and he answered “The Western Wall.” Not the jeep tour of the Golan,or the beach in Tel Aviv or floating weightlessly in the Dead Sea—but the Western Wall, the Kotel, holiest place for Jews in the world. Even after riding a horse and a camel on the same day, he still felt that way. Isn’t that one reason we go to Israel, to show our children what holiness really is in our world? Now, being a rabbi, I always reserve the right to modify that choice of a favorite moment. I guess I don’t really want to change my choice, but I do want to add to it. Because the greatest pleasure of the journey, greater even than the fabulous experience of sharing Israel with an extraordinary group of good, caring, and committed congregants, was seeing the country that I love, and that we all have such a profound connection to, flourishing splendidly. My friends, I first spoke to Temple Emanuel about a journey to Israel nearly 30 years ago, in 1976. Of course, that was Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, California, I was 15 years old, and Israel was a very young 28 years old. When I tell you that each of my subsequent times in Israel have been, in some ways, like visiting a new country I am only testifying to the truly incredible dynamism of the Jewish state. There are many ways to illustrate the transformative nature of Israeli society, but I think the way Israelis use telephones shows it best. When I first lived in Israel 29 years ago private telephones were one to a customer, erratic in service, and many people shared phone lines. All service was controlled by a mysterious government entity called Bezeq, which was like Ma Bell without the efficiency—the waiting time for new phones was six months or more. Telephone calls were made with peculiar slotted coins called asimonim that had to be specially purchased, and which usually resulted in failed calls anyway. Basically, asimonim worked best hung around chains as necklaces. Ten years later or so, when I returned as a cantor, the weird coins were disappearing, more people had phones, and those phones actually worked much of the time. In another five years, by the early ‘90’s Bezek, the phone monopoly, would take just a month to put in a new phone line, and a land line phone was now considered a full necessity, and not an option. Suddenly, in 1996 Bezek had serious competition because everyone owned a cellphone and spoke on it constantly. By the year 2000 everyone owned two cellphones and talked on them constantly—at the same time. But it was on this trip that it became clear that if you are an Israeli and you are not talking on a cellphone they will immediately revoke your Israeli citizenship on the spot. The highlight came yesterday morning when a waiter answered his cellphone while he was pouring hot coffee for me. Israel is a postmodern, Westernized, sophisticated country. And in some ways it is more advanced than we are. What was absolutely extraordinary during this visit to Israel was the spectacular infrastructure development that has occurred in just the last two and half years since I visited last. I am not talking about the Border Fence, which has been constructed out of necessity over the last couple of years, at great expense, to tremendous criticism, and with nearly complete success in stopping Palestinian terrorism. I mean the creation of major new highways, a spectacular new international airport, the development of state of the art new museums, an outstanding private university, new neighborhoods, high rises, the complete redevelopment of older areas of major cities, the building of a new major city, Modin, in the midst of the country, the completion of a huge high tech center in Israel’s Sillicon Valley, the creation of commercial malls everywhere —in short, during the period of the second Intifada and its aftermath, a time of great trauma and challenge, Israel nonetheless pushed forward very successfully with a tremendous variety of quite remarkable projects to build up the land, country, and economy. To illustrate the difference in how we approach things and how Israel does, in that same period of time the state of Arizona, which has more or less the same population as Israel, has developed, well, a number of new subdivisions. So in addition to the religious, historical, and emotional high of being in Israel, there is the exceptional respect that the economic and social development engender. It makes you both proud and slightly astonished. With all the conflicts and arguments, in spite of a distinct lack of natural resources, in the face of a corrosive self-criticism and international hostility and antisemitism, Israel strides forward marvelously. Perhaps that’s because there is something exhilarating about being a young country where so much seems possible. Israel is young in a number of important ways: chronologically it is just 57 years old, a new-old land whose political and social institutions and customs, while derived from ancient models, are really still evolving. But Israel also has a very young population: the vast majority of Israelis were not yet born when the country was, nor were they alive in 1967 when the city of Jerusalem was reunited. There are more Jewish children born annually in Israel than in the rest of the world combined. On Yom Yerushalayim the Old City of Jerusalem was crowded with thousands and thousands of Jewish teenagers from all over the country—and their excitement and energy were spectacular to behold. Everywhere in the American-Jewish world we are grappling with the aging of our demographic pool. How long will an aging Jewish population continue to flourish, we ask ourselves. But in Israel the opposite trend is occurring, and there is an incredible energy in a country that is expanding and getting younger. That also means that Israel’s political and social institutions are young, and in a sense immature—the government changes frequently, even when the prime minister does not. But it also means that Israelis have a sense—sometimes only a sense—of the incredible potential in every day, and of what can be accomplished, rather than what cannot be done. And that makes Israel fabulously exciting. Israel wouldn’t be Israel if there wasn’t a major conflict brewing, of course. The upcoming withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank is stirring the pot seriously. For the first time since the Sinai town of Yamit was turned over by Israel to Egypt fully 25 years ago, Jewish towns and homes will be voluntarily given to Arabs. Within Israeli society the contest between a vocal, passionate minority dedicated to annexing every part of the territories into Israel and the larger majority of Israelis who are largely committed to disengagement from the Palestinians. As the withdrawal from Gaza looms closer—it will take place in August, now, if there are no more delays—the tension begins to mount. There are a few oddities in this situation. For obscure reasons, the settlers and those who support their cause of not withdrawing from their settlements in Gaza have chosen to wear the color orange. Perhaps this is in tribute to the orange color worn by the Ukrainians in the recent democratic revolution there under Viktor Yuschenko. Orange may be the least Jewish of colors, but whatever the reason, there are now a lot of orange t-shirts and bumper stickers that say “Yehudi lo m’gorash Yehudi”, essentially, “Jews don’t expel Jews”, or “Jews don’t send other Jews into exile.” The reality is that the withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank is part of a larger demographic challenge Israel faces now, If Israel retains the West Bank and Gaza, and birthrates remain what they are, then in a just a few years there will actually be an Arab majority in lands held by Israel. At that point, Israel can either cease to be a democratic state, or it can cease to be a Jewish state-and neither option is one that would preserve Israel’s inherent character. But in spite of the rising temperature of this debate in Israel now—where will the settlers be relocated to, how much compensation will they receive, will any of them turn violent, and so on—the overall feeling in Israel right now is amazingly upbeat. I have never enjoyed a trip to Israel more, or seen a group that gained more from seeing, hearing, tasting, and enjoying Erets Yisrael in all of its beauty, fun, and holiness. I’ll close with a final memory of a magnificent trip. The group that traveled to Israel became, in a very real sense, a true community. Usually on such a trip there is at least one person who doesn’t get along with the others, one traveler who is, well obnoxious, or irritating, and over the ten or twelve days that becomes a problem. With the exception of the rabbi, no one talked too much or became problematic in our group. Our guide, whose name for obscure reasons is Muki, took me aside the last night of tour. “You really are an organic community,” he said, “It’s not the rabbi praying and people sitting back—it’s everyone participating. It’s very unusual.” In a way, that’s exactly what Israel is: a country of full participation, a greater family—sometimes dysfunctional, but still a family—in which everyone plays an important role, and everyone has a voice. Our tour group was that, and that too is exactly what makes our congregation a Kehilah Kedushah b’Yisrael, a holy community in the people of Israel. So may it always be, and may our connection to and our love for our homeland of the heart grow ever stronger. In the words of our Birkat HaGomel, the thanksgiving blessing on returning from a journey, this time a truly sacred journey, Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha’olam, shegmalanu kol tov—Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has bestowed great kindness upon us. Shabbat Shalom.
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