(RNS) — On Friday evening, Oct. 6, 2023, the eve of the Sabbath and of Simchat Torah, Jews went to sleep, living in one historical reality.
By the time we awakened on Oct. 7, we discovered we were in a different era of Jewish history. We had gone in one era, and out the other.
It has been more than six months now.
Among everything else, a pervasive sense of loneliness and isolation has descended upon the collective Jewish soul. It is as if the enforced, pandemic isolation of March 2020 has manifested itself again, but this time, specifically against one people.
The eclipse has become a metaphor: Understanding, sensitivity, sensibility, nuance and rationality are all in eclipse.
To further extend that metaphor: It is dangerous to gaze directly at the sun during an eclipse. The image of the sun will burn itself into your retinas.
So, too, to gaze directly at the obscenity of Oct. 7. If I have turned aside from viewing the images of what happened on that day — especially the images of the sexual violence and mutilation of women — it is because I know that those images would, like the sun on the unprotected retina, sear themselves into my moral retinas.
There are some things you cannot unsee.
Jewish loneliness and Jewish isolation.
It has always been this way.
In the book of Numbers, the heathen prophet Balaam sees the Israelites encamped in the wilderness, and proclaims:
As I see them from the mountain tops,
Gaze on them from the heights,
There is a people that dwells apart,
Not reckoned among the nations… (Numbers 23:9)
The book of Lamentations consists of dirges over the destruction of Jerusalem and Judea by the Babylonians. The opening verses portray Jerusalem in all its existential solitude:
Alas!
Lonely sits the city
Once great with people!
She that was great among nations
Is become like a widow;
The princess among states
Is become a thrall.
Bitterly she weeps in the night,
Her cheek wet with tears.
There is none to comfort her
Of all her friends.
All her allies have betrayed her;
They have become her foes. (Lamentations 1:1-2)
The cities and kibbutzim of southern Israel are like ancient Jerusalem — destroyed, plundered and empty.
The Jews are alone.
The hostages are alone. Alone, somewhere, in the tunnels — experiencing what is unimaginable and unspeakable.
Their families are alone. Yes, supporters around the world wear pendants with the names of their loved ones. Yes, we pray for them. Yes, we leave chairs open for them in synagogues. Yes, we leave places open for them at our dinners. Yes, we will leave chairs open for them at our Passover seders. But those families feel alone, raw, abandoned. Who can blame them?
Israel is alone in the world. There were, at most, 24 hours of support and solidarity on Oct. 7 and Oct. 8. That support barely lasted into Oct. 9; in many places, it did not even exist on Oct. 7. It is not only because, in the words of Dara Horn, the world likes dead Jews. It is also because the world only understands dead Jews — Jews as victims. Jews know how to do the victim thing very well; power is a whole other story.
Israel fought back, knowing well, as it knows from previous incursions into Gaza and Lebanon (1982), that its actions would be distorted; that there is almost no way to fight an asymmetrical war with moral purity, despite Israel’s allegiance to the concept of tohar ha-neshek, the purity of arms; that the nations of the world would indict Israel for fighting in a way that is all too common and sometimes all too necessary.
That loneliness breeds more loneliness.
Consider the main character in this week’s Torah portion. He is afflicted with a particularly disfiguring skin disease.
As for the person with a leprous affection: the clothes shall be rent, the head shall be left bare, and the upper lip shall be covered over; and that person shall call out, “Impure! Impure!” The person shall be impure as long as the disease is present. Being impure, that person shall dwell apart — in a dwelling outside the camp. (Lev. 13: 45-46)
He is not a mere character in an otherwise unappetizing Torah portion. He is the metaphorical Jew in the world — the Jew who is outside the camp.
American Jews feel alone in the midst of our political allies. Lamentations got it right: “All her allies have betrayed her … ”
Our progressive allies were either silent, or they said there was wrong on both sides (like “There are good people on both sides” at Charlottesville?), or that all human losses are the same (recalling how none of us liked the “all lives matter” thing). They ignored how Hamas operates — placing its operatives in schools and hospitals, deliberately using its people as human shields. They have consistently and repeatedly called for a cease-fire — on Israel’s part, but not on the part of Hamas — and not for a release of the hostages.
We don’t get it.
When George Floyd was murdered by a white policeman, we were there within nano-seconds.
But, when it came to the mutilated bodies of our people; the hostages, whose photos are ripped off lampposts, we are entitled to ask our progressive allies: Where were you?
We must not walk away from those struggles, though many of us will be tempted to do so. Rather, we must call our partners into heshbon ha-nefesh, an accounting of the soul. To do anything less is to betray an astonishing lack of Jewish spine — an anatomical defect that no other people or group would tolerate in themselves.
American Jews feel alone in the universities. Over the past six months, there has been a growing anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism in our universities. It has escalated into nihilism. Jewish students report that they do not feel safe from intimidation. It is their basic right to be safe from such intimidation, and increasingly, the universities themselves are being called into account.
American Jews feel alone, even with other Jews. During the Exodus from Egypt, God parted the waters of the Sea of Reeds, and “the Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.” (Exodus 14:22)
There are some days when I feel I am that wall — between the right and the left.
When I encounter Jews on the far left, who can only criticize Israel’s actions, and its very existence — who do not want a better Israel, but who want no Israel — I experience radical loneliness.
When I encounter Jews on the far right, who cannot criticize any of Israel’s actions, and who deny the existence of a Palestinian people, and who have hardened their hearts to the suffering in Gaza, I also experience radical loneliness.
I get it. To be a Jew is to be lonely. Sometimes, it is necessary. Sometimes, it is an extension of what it means to be an am kadosh, a holy people. It means we do not get to win any popularity contests. It means knowing we were never the cool kids of history.
What keeps me from feeling utterly, irredeemably alone?
First: my numerous gentile friends — from high school, college, clergy colleagues — who have reached out to me over the past half year. Their words come from the heart; they have lifted my spirits and reminded me of why I am who I am.
Second: I echo the words of the Shunamite woman to the prophet Elisha: “I live among my people.” (II Kings 4:13) My people give me oxygen, and they give me hope, and they give me meaning.
I close with the words that adorn many posters in Israeli cities — words addressed to the hostages — “Our well being is connected by a thread to yours. And our heart is with you.”
By a thread. By a mere thread.
