Rabbi Bloostein’s
Torah Corner

Parashat Bereishit – October 9, 2026

Sukkot – September 25, 2026

Yom Kippur – September 20, 2026

Shabbat Shuva, Parashat Ha’azinu – September 18, 2026

Rosh Hashanah – September 11, 2026

Parashat Nitzavim/Vayeilech – September 4, 2026

Parashat Ki Tavo – August 28, 2026

Parashat Ki Teitzei – August 21, 2026

Parashat Shoftim – August 14, 2026

Parashat Re’eh – August 7, 2026

Rabbi Eitan Bloostein
Congregation Bnai Sholom/Fair Lawn Jewish Center
Rosh Hashanah, 2 Tishrei 5787

Zionism as a Religious Consciousness

By the time that the 19th century turned into the 20th, there were more than fifty-thousand Jews living in the small city of Kishinev in the Russian Empire.

In the year 1903, Passover in Kishinev began just like any other year.  Kishinev, which is in modern day Moldova, was on the southern end of the Russian Empire.

Perhaps that April, the snow had melted, the trees had begun to bloom, and the kids were playing outside.  Families organized seders, bought food by the cartful, and frantically cleaned their homes.  That Passover just began like any other, but ended in tragedy.

On the morning of April 19th, residents of the city of Kishinev woke up to newspaper headlines accusing the Jewish community of killing Christian children.  An ancient antisemitic lie: The blood libel.

What happened next was a massacre, a pogrom.  Over the course of two days, anti-Jewish riots killed fifty Jews.  The people of Kishinev injured five-hundred of our brethren.  They destroyed more than fifteen-hundred Jewish-owned properties. The Jewish neighborhood plunged into violence, chaos, confusion, and destruction.  The Kishinev Pogrom was a watershed moment in the history of our people.

This event impacted Jews the world over. It sparked widespread ideological changes among the Jewish people.  Jews, for the first time in any significant, widespread way, became Zionists.  It became a mass Jewish dream to build a state in the Holy Land of Israel.

This dream took several forms.  There were those, like Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who dreamed that the chief function of a Jewish State was to ensure Jewish safety.  Others, like Theodore Herzl, dreamed that such a state could guarantee Jewish political acceptance around the world.

Asher Ginsberg, widely known as Ahad Haam, meaning “one of the nation,” had yet a different dream for Zionism.  Ahad Haam’s Zionist vision was rooted in Jewish life and culture.  Standing at the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, Ahad Haam declared that to be Zionist means to say loudly and proudly for the entire world to hear:  “The Jewish people are alive and full of the will to live.”

Crucially, for Ahad Haam, to live as a Jew does not only mean to wake up to see another day.  Certainly, he saw physical safety and survival as important.  However, Ahad Haam takes the meaning of Jewish life one step further.  For the Jewish people, life means living as proud Jews, publicly displaying our Jewish identities.  It means creating and celebrating Jewish culture in Israel.

He said at the Zionist Conference: “We must liberate ourselves from the inner slavery, from the degradation of the spirit caused by assimilation, and we must strengthen our national unity until we become capable and worthy of a future life of honor and freedom.”  To live as a Jew means that we proudly identify ourselves as Jews.  It means that we live lives full of Jewish activities and culture.

For Ahad Haam, to be Zionist means to belong to a Jewish national culture centered on the ancestral and historical center of Jewish culture and religion–the Land of Israel.  The Land of Israel therefore becomes a cultural center of the Jewish people, an inspiration for Jewish life around the world.

Of course, Ahad Haam believes that Zionism must entail physical safety.  There is a persuasive argument to make that a strong Jewish state makes Jews the world over safer.  A strong Israel, of course, means that our State has the means, ability, and personnel to defend itself against existential threats.  And to step in when Jews in the diaspora face antisemitism.  This kind of physical strength, centered in the State of Israel is crucial to all of our safety as Jews.

But there is more to our Zionist vision than simply survival.  Zionism is also cultural.  It is also spiritual.

Just about a month ago, I was driving down the New Jersey Turnpike to see a friend.  Since I knew that the holidays were coming, I decided to put on some music from the selichot service to get in the mood.  In the Ashkenazi tradition, the daily selichot service begins on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah and ends at Yom Kippur.  In the Mizrachi traditions, in the Middle Eastern Jewish traditions, the selichot service occurs every day for the full month leading up to the holidays.  Because the Middle Eastern tradition has so many more days of selichot services, their selichot music is far more developed and widespread than that of the Ashkenazi tradition.  And so, when I put on this selichot playlist that day on the highway, out came Mizrachi, Middle Eastern selichot music.

Suddenly, while my body was driving on the Turnpike, my spirit was in Israel, at the kotel.  This is the music that plays in Israel non-stop in the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah. These melodies and prayers were the prayers that I heard when I attended the selichot services at the kotel, at the Western Wall.

Sitting in the car, flashing back to my time at the kotel, I began to feel the inspiration that comes with singing along with hundreds of other Jews standing together beside our holiest site asking for forgiveness, and asking ourselves to do teshuva, to repent. This music, this expression of Jewish religion and culture, coming out of my car’s speakers was recorded in Israel, by Israeli musicians, and is performed at our holy sites in public expression of Jewish culture and religion. This is what Ahad Haam dreamed of: Jewish cultural and spiritual connection centered on and cultivated in the Land of Israel.

What became clear to me was that without a Jewish State in our Holy Land, without the State of Israel, without this oasis of Jewish cultural expression, I would not know this music. I would not feel religiously inspired by it.  I would not have the same experiences surrounding this music that put me in the Rosh Hashanah mood and connected me with global Jewry.

The music is Iraqi or Persian in origin, but found widespread expression in Israel and became a part of the broader Jewish culture there.  This is the kind of State that Ahad Haam imagined: One that could serve as a cultural center and spiritual inspiration for Jews across the world.

In 1906, only three years after the Kishinev Pogrom, Zionism in the United States remained unpopular.  The Orthodox movement was largely anti-Zionist; the Reform movement were outspoken critics of Zionism.  Our movement, the Conservative Movement, was not.

In the year 1906, one of the founders and central thinkers of the Conservative Movement, the great scholar Solomon Schechter, wrote of the hope that he had in a future State of Israel.  He built upon Ahad Haam’s vision of a Jewish State as a cultural and religious inspiration for Jews throughout the world.  To Schechter, the great excitement of Zionism lay in its potential to awaken a national Jewish religious consciousness.

Schechter already began to see this Jewish national awakening in his lifetime.  In the Land of Israel he saw the flourishing of the kibbutz movement as a renewal of the ancient Jewish tradition of working the Land of Israel.  He saw the organization of seminaries in Jerusalem as fueled by the advent of a new kind of Israel-centered religious philosophy, Religious Zionism.

Schechter saw an entire generation of American Jews who had no Jewish identities to speak of suddenly join together in Jewish community, inspired by the distinctively Jewish culture sprouting in the Land of Israel.  This excitement fueled movements focused on Jewish cultural renewal. It led to phenomena such as JNF boxes appearing in homes, Israeli folk dance practiced in the streets, and the advent of Jewish summer camps devoted to promoting the culture of the Land of Israel, such as Camp Ramah.   It was an awakening of an Israel-centered Jewish national consciousness.

There were myriad ways to be involved.  Had you been around in 1906, during Schechter’s lifetime, perhaps the secular, socialist kibbutznik movement would have inspired you.  Perhaps you would have been religiously inspired by the realization of the ancient promise of Jewish self-governance in our Land.  Perhaps you would have been motivated by the excitement of a political home for the Jewish people.

This is the Zionism of Ahad Haam and this is the Zionism of the Conservative Movement: A dream of a religious and cultural awakening centered on Jewish life in the Land of Israel.  I imagine the cultural and religious life in Israel as the center, the north star, the inspiration for Jews around the world to live their Jewish lives out loud.  To live proud Jewish lives no matter how they connect to our tradition, be it through culture, religion, or politics.

The Zionist vision of the Conservative Movement imagines that one of the central roles of a Jewish State, of the State of Israel, is to invest in, to foster, and to cultivate Jewish culture that can inspire a national consciousness in global Jewry.

I love Israel.

I love the salad bowl of cultures centered there–Jewish cultural and religious practices from Egypt, Eastern Europe, India, Afghanistan, Iraq, Tunisia, the United States, Mexico, Morocco, to name only a few. I have spent months and months and months in Israel.  I cannot count how many times I have been there.  I have been there for all of the holidays, celebrations, and observances. The many times that I have been to Israel have inspired me to become the proud Jew who I am today.

And, so, my deep connection to the State of Israel has led me to wonder whether it is living up to the Zionist imagination.  It has led me to ask whether this Land truly functions as a spiritual center, a north star, to all Jews.  Of course, no country, no state, is perfect.  No country can truly live up to the ideals upon which it is founded.  Israel is no exception, and there are legitimate conversations happening in our families, and our communities about the political direction in which the State of Israel is heading.  However, the spiritual and cultural value of the State of Israel supersedes these political differences and imbues the State with deep religious and cultural value.  Its existence is crucial.

I think back on my car ride down the New Jersey Turnpike, music of selichot blasting, and my flashback to my time at the kotel during selichot services.  I imagine myself, as I was, standing at the kotel.  I think back to how I was feeling.  Excited? Yes.  Inspired? Absolutely.  Connected to the Jewish people? You betcha.  But I also felt deeply unsettled and uncomfortable.

I looked around and I saw only men.  The kotel, which, by law is administered by the Prime Minister’s office through the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, functions as an Orthodox synagogue and segregates genders with the vast majority of space relegated only to men.

I felt uncomfortable because segregated prayer does not inspire me; it is not my Jewish practice. I could not have attended that service with my mother, my grandmother, my sisters, or my fiance all of whom I pray with here, today, without barrier.

Segregated prayer grates against my moral fibers–the very fibers instilled in me by the Conservative Movement and by Jewish values that demand human dignity and equality.

Imagining myself back at the kotel, I remember listening to the amplified voice over the speaker leading services and yet feeling uncomfortable.  This voice belonged to a rabbi ordained under the supervision of the State of Israel.  He is paid by the State of Israel.

The State of Israel recognizes and invests in only Orthodox rabbis.  There, the rabbinate is closed to women.  I felt uncomfortable that day at the kotel because despite my education, in the eyes of the State, I am not a rabbi.  Despite my title here, they would not let me or my colleagues lead services there.  This feeling dampened any inspiration that I felt standing at the kotel.

Thinking back, I felt uncomfortable that day at the kotel because even if I wanted to leave and go to a Conservative or Masorti Israeli Synagogue, they are few and far between.  In Israel, the State supports Orthodox synagogues; it gives them the majority of their funding.  Reform and Conservative synagogues exist, but struggle with no or very little State support. They are regularly vandalized by our fellow Jews.  This thought dampened my feeling of inspiration and connection at the kotel.

The State of Israel has a sacred duty to cultivate Jewish religious and cultural practices of all kinds.  Just as it must invest, and does invest, in Orthodoxy of all stripes–chassidic, charedi, modern orthodox, Sefardic, Ashkenazi, Mizrachi–so, too, must it invest in the cultivation of our kind of Judaism as well.

In the meantime, we can help.  When we travel to Israel, we should visit Masorti/Conservative Synagogues to show them our support.  We can donate our money individually and as a synagogue to the Masorti/Conservative Movement in Israel and to organizations that support Israeli Democracy and Pluralism such as Women of the Wall. We can donate a Torah in our Torah Donation Project to a Masorti synagogue in Israel that otherwise could not afford one.  We can support Mercaz Olami, the Masorti/Conservative Movement’s party in the World Zionist Congress.

Yet, no matter how we feel about the policies of the current government of the State of Israel, we should visit Israel.  We can help by becoming spiritually involved in the State, allow yourself to be inspired by the Land and the culture. We should visit Israel because we are Jews, because it can give us spiritual uplift because we are Jewish.

We should raise our voices and demand a religious pluralism in the our Holy Land so that when we come home from Israel, we feel inspired not only to live lives as proud Jews, but to live as proud Conservative Jews, proudly egalitarian Jews, Jews who can feel proud that our religious leaders have a place in the religious leadership of our Jewish State.

It is a sacred, holy task for our Jewish State to invest in Conservative, egalitarian, historically informed, traditionally minded Jewish practice.  Israel must stand as a spiritual leader, a north star for every Jew.  This kind of investment, this kind of support for Jews around the world is how Zionism will continue to exist and thrive in the United States for generations to come.

May you have a sweet new year, a shanah tovah umetukah, and may you be written and sealed in the book of life.

Rabbi Eitan Bloostein
Congregation Bnai Sholom/Fair Lawn Jewish Center
Kol Nidrei, 10 Tishrei 5787

Jewish Grace: A Path Towards Forgiveness

Elwin Wilson was a proud racist.

Growing up in segregated South Carolina, in the height of the civil rights movement, he joined the Ku Klux Klan.

One day, in 1961, a group of black and white activists, the freedom riders, rode a Greyhound bus into Wilson’s hometown of Rocky Hill, South Carolina.  This racially integrated group of young activists stopped to rest in a whites-only waiting room.  Soon, the Klan arrived, Wilson among them, and violently attacked these activists.

These non-violent activists did not fight back.  Wilson left a scene of bloodied bodies behind.   More than forty years later, Wilson was a changed man.  He evolved, his views shifted, and he recalled the faces of some of the bloodied bodies from that day. He began to recognize the humanity of human beings of all races; he deeply regretted his past violence.  In order to repent, Wilson openly admitted to his participation in the Rocky Hill Bus Station massacre among other incidents.  He called the papers to tell his story.  Some of the names and images of his victims had stayed with Wilson as the decades passed.  In hopes of apologizing for his racist crimes in a more personal manner, Wilson began to seek out his victims.

In a strange coincidence, it turned out that one of the men that Wilson had beaten was now a House of Representatives member and the noted civil rights activist John Lewis.  In 2009, Wilson and Lewis met peacefully for the first time, 48 years after their violent encounter.  In a tearful meeting, Wilson apologized to Representative Lewis for his violence and acknowledged his role in perpetuating Jim Crow racism.  Lewis quickly forgave Wilson.

In reflecting on his ability to forgive Wilson, Lewis said: “Well, it was a moment of grace, a moment of forgiveness and a moment of reconciliation, and that’s what the movement, that’s what the struggle was all about.”

It was a moment of grace.

In other words, there was nothing compelling Lewis to forgive Wilson; and, in fact, it would have been understandable had Lewis, confronting a man who beat him on account of something so trivial as the color of his skin, dismissed Wilson without forgiveness.  Instead, Lewis chose grace.  He forgave Wilson not because of his past, but despite it.  He overcame the deep divides that once separated himself and Wilson.  Through grace, Lewis forgave.

We live in deeply divided times.  People are entrenched in their views, unable to so much as listen to their fellow citizens.  As a result, those who we disagree with become the “other,” they become less-than.  As opponents, they lose their value as neighbors, as friends, as fellow citizens and human beings.

This is happening here.  Families within this synagogue have political disagreements that have driven one another apart.  Members of our community have told me that they no longer come to services because of political rifts, disagreements.  Chasms emerge between people not because we disagree so strongly, but because we turn those who we disagree with into opponents, into “others.” When we disagree with such vitriol, our family members and community members lose their value as neighbors, friends, and fellow human beings.

This is not normal political life.

Families here in Fair Lawn and around our country are split apart, our communities are suffering.  This is too divisive.

Representative John Lewis turned to the value of grace to allow himself to forgive.  We associate the characteristic of “grace” with Christianity.  I, myself, only discovered that grace is a Jewish value when reading about the topic a couple of years ago.  Lewis was an ordained Christian minister; it is no coincidence that he spoke about his forgiveness in terms of grace.  However, as I discovered, grace is a fundamental value in Judaism as well.

Grace, or chen, in Hebrew, has deep roots in our tradition.  In fact, this evening, in the selichot service that we will recite in a few moments, we will open the ark several times and chant the thirteen attributes of God.  We will say: adonai adonai el rachum vechanun. Adonai, God who is loving and grants grace.  In our tradition, hanun, hen, or grace is one of God’s central characteristics.

The concept of grace is somewhat challenging to describe.  The well-known biblical commentator Rashi defines this virtue very simply.  He says, “Wherever we see the word ‘Grace’ in the bible, it means to give freely.”  Grace is giving without the expectation of receiving.  And, thus, when we say that God is el rachum vechanun, a God of love and grace, we are expressing an appreciation for all that we have received from the Divine without need for repayment.

It is an act of grace that we exist.  We are not owed life.  Life was bestowed upon us, gifted to us, for no reason.  Life is an act of God’s grace.  The fact that we, human beings, can love, can enjoy, can experience all of the pleasures of being human was not granted to us in exchange for anything.  Existence, and all that comes with it, is an act of God’s grace.  Grace is a deeply rooted Jewish value. It is one of God’s central attributes.

There is a certain irony that I sense when we recite God’s attributes–as we will several times this evening.  It would be natural to think that when we say that God is el rachum vechanun, that God is loving and bestowing grace, that we are anthropomorphizing God, that we are describing God in fundamentally human terms. We might say that using human language to describe characteristics of God lowers God to a human level.  Perhaps it cheapens the concept of the Divine by imposing human characteristics onto God.  We might think that we, humans, display grace and, therefore, we box God in when we attribute grace to God.

This could not be further from the truth.  Love and grace are not fundamentally human characteristics.  They originate in God.  Human beings are an act of and evidence of God’s grace.  We were created in an act of grace.  Our ability to love is an act of God’s grace.  Our humanity was bestowed upon us for no reason with nothing expected in return.  We are evidence of God’s grace.   Grace is no human characteristic that we impose upon an indefinable God.  Rather, it is a Divine characteristic that we must seek to exhibit.

In the Talmud, a rabbi named Abba Shaul explains that just as God is full of love and grace, is rahum vehanun, so, too should we, human beings, be full of love and grace.  Abba Shaul demands of us to behave in ways that pull the best of the divine world down here to earth through our actions.  To appreciate the gift of life and our humanity that God gave us freely, we must, ourselves, give freely in our own lives.  We must strive to live our lives according to this Divine attribute, this Divine characteristic of grace.  The Torah tells us that we must walk in God’s ways.  This is what it means: We must strive to exhibit the grace granted to us by God.

John Lewis understood that we, human beings, must strive for grace.  When a formerly avowed racist, a man who attacked Lewis, approached him, Lewis exhibited the divine quality of grace and forgave him.  In this remarkable act, Lewis demonstrated what it means to walk in God’s ways.  He forgave this man even when he did not have to.  He was rachum vechanun, loving and full of grace when he gave without any expectation of something in return.

Lewis overcame an ideological separation that caused significant pain through its “othering” of fellow human beings and, through grace, offered forgiveness.  And, while it is true that this former member of the KKK changed his ways, Lewis had to overcome chasms of the past to grant forgiveness.  We, too, must overcome a challenging present in which our opponents continue to believe differently than we do.  And yet, we, like Lewis, must behave with grace.  No matter which side of the aisle we sit on.  Regardless of whether we are red or blue, far to the left or the right, or in the center.  The nature of our political discourse is such that we have been othered.  No matter where we stand, we have been called fascists, communists, animals, racists, and nazis.  The temperature has been ratcheted up so high that we can barely recognize the other side through the heat’s distortion.

It is time to turn it down.

It is time to exhibit the Divine quality of grace by forgiving.  The other side does not deserve it.  They have not shown you the same respect that you want to give them.  But it is precisely this situation where we need to exhibit the Divine quality of grace.  We must give to those who do not deserve.  We must assume the best of others, and realize that no matter how terrible their ideas are, they, too, are seeking a good life for themselves and their family.

When the Torah communicates that God grants grace it uses the term limtzo chein to find grace.  In the story of Noah and the flood, for example, we read that Noah found grace in God’s eyes. When the Torah says that Noah found grace in God’s eyes, it means that in the antediluvian world of chaos, in the pre-flood world, God worked to find the redeeming qualities in a human being, in Noah.  There was nothing on the surface about Noah that deserved to be saved.  However, God sought out redeeming qualities, ways to empathize and better understand Noah. Only then could God give Noah grace.

In a world that is as divided as ours is, in a world where families and communities are broken, we must find it in ourselves to grant grace.  We must remember that those who sit on the other side of the aisle are human beings.  They share sports teams, favorite restaurants, taste in music and art and TV with us.  They are not “other.” They are members of our community, and they are human beings.   When we work to find the redeeming qualities in members of our family, members of our community, we are behaving as God did towards Noah, we are walking in God’s ways. These redeeming qualities humanize those with whom we disagree, and allow us to seek grace, to find it in them.  When we find and grant such grace, we are rachum vechanun, we walk in God’s loving ways full of Grace.

Granting forgiveness through grace will not change minds of those who you disagree with.  Even once you forgive, you will still be sitting at kiddush or around your dinner table with people with whom you disagree.  And yet, the temperature will be turned down.  You will be able to talk, to see the other as a human being; and they will see you as a human being as well.  Conversations can become productive and full of empathy and understanding.  We can develop an understanding for why others believe the way that they do, why they vote the way that they do.  We can rebuild healthy discourse and normalize relationships amongst competing ideologies.   Humanity will come back together.

It is imperative that we find the grace in others required to forgive.  It is crucial that we learn to walk in God’s ways, that we exhibit God’s characteristic of grace.  As we turn to the selichot service, centered on God’s attributes of grace and of love, let us seek out in ourselves and others the ability to humanize the other, to reach out to those who we disagree with.  Our families are depending on it for healing, our community is depending on it for unity, our country is depending on it for its survival.

Gmar chatima tovah.
May you be written and sealed in the book of life.

Rabbi Eitan Bloostein
Congregation Bnai Sholom/Fair Lawn Jewish Center
Yom Kippur, 10 Tishrei 5787

The Antidote to Antisemitism: Jewish Involvement and Pride

I have never seen the great synagogue in Rome. 

It is not that I have never been to Rome. In fact, when I was 18, I spent a year before college in a yeshiva in Israel and, during my break, I spent some time traveling Europe with a friend.

I had only been to synagogues in the United States and Israel.  And, then, synagogues in the United States had no security. To this day synagogues in Israel have no security. This was and is not the case in Europe. 

In Europe, synagogues were and are today watched over by national police forces and military troops wearing bullet proof vests, combat helmets, and bearing machine guns. They are dressed for war. Going to shul is by membership or appointment only. And so, when my friend and I approached the outside of the great synagogue in Rome unannounced and unscheduled, we were denied access. This is reminiscent of what we have today here in Fair Lawn, though perhaps not quite as severe.  Here, today we require tickets on the high holy days in part due for security reasons, and here we have armed guards.

My friend and I learned from then on to call synagogues in advance of our visit. 

During that trip, it felt as if we were visiting the scattered remains of a once-great center of Jewish life, visiting the ghosts of a grand Jewish past.  For the vast majority of European history, Jews were, by law, separated from their non-Jewish neighbors.  At times they had to live in ghettos.  Most of the time they were barred from certain professions.  For the most part, they were socially isolated from the upper echelons of society, and legally disenfranchised from political power.

This all changed in 1791 when France became the first European country to grant Jews full legal citizenship. This process of granting Jews legal equality continued throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe.  Great Britain legalized Jewish emancipation in 1858.  Germany in 1871.  Russia only granted Jews legal equality in 1917.

Jewish legal equality is, certainly, a prerequisite for any decent country and civilization.  We, in our country, have been blessed with legal equality from a very early time. Yet, we painfully understand that even that is not enough to end anti-Jewish hate.  Antisemitism continues to exist in countries where we are equal citizens.  Historically, antisemitism flourished in even the most forward thinking of countries such as France at the end of the 19th century, and, of course, in 20th century Germany where it appeared in its ugliest, most heinous form in a Germany where Jews, at least at the beginning of Hitler’s regime, had full legal equality.  Here in the United States, incidents of violence against Jews are up more than 100% since the massacre of October 7th. 

Antisemitism has skyrocketed in our country, a country where Jews have been legal equals from the beginning. It has been the project of Jews for countless generations to attempt to understand the nature of antisemitism: Where does this hate come from?  How can we end it?

In 1882, an early Zionist thinker named Leon Pinsker offered a theory.  Pinsker, himself a physician, opted to understand antisemitism as a disease.  He understood anti-Jewish hatred to be the disease of Judeophobia.

To Pinkser, Judeophobia is the fear of the continued existence of the Jewish people, a people who the world tried to destroy two thousand years ago and, like ghosts, continue to live on haunting those who attempted to destroy it.  Judeophobia, this fear of the ghostly Jewish people, is a hereditary disease, he argued.  It is passed from generation to generation. 

Pinsker roots his theory in our people’s history.  When Rome destroyed Jerusalem and the surrounding country in the first century, Romans and Europeans expected that our nation had been destroyed.  Instead, our people were scattered throughout the Mediterranean and, eventually, throughout Europe.  We survived.

According to Pinsker, ever since, for two thousand years, for generation after generation, Jewish presence and, at times, Jewish flourishing, in Europe spooked the local population who asked: Why is this remnant of a nation, these ghosts, still here among us?  Did we not destroy them? Judaism was supposed to be dead, but we survived.  And so, Pinsker theorized, this sparked fear and hatred of the Jewish people: The disease of Judeophobia.

This disease’s greatest symptom? Antisemitism: Discrimination and violence against the Jewish people.  We have seen cycles of this violence over and over again up until this very day.  At times this violence was top down and institutional: state-sponsored, or instigated by the Church.  Other times, the hate came from the grass-roots, from the people.  Today, when countries officially accept Jews, it is most often, though not always, grass-roots.  Though antisemitism is not a policy of our government, it thrives on their watch today. It remains a scourge and a danger.

Pinsker argued that the cure to this disease of antisemitism is the creation of a Jewish State.  In his mind, when the Jewish people remove themselves from amidst their non-Jewish neighbors, when they move to this Jewish state, the fear of ghosts that is at the root of Judeophobic antisemitism would disappear.  A Jewish State would serve as an antidote to antisemitism.

The State of Israel has arguably made Jews around the globe safer.  It advocates strongly against antisemitism around the world, and supports international Jewish communities.  It is central to our continued existence, and its existence is crucial. 

However, what has become clear is that it has not served as the antidote to all antisemitism in the way that Pinsker had hoped it would.  Clearly, antisemitism continues to thrive.  It thrives among Israel’s enemies such as Hamas and Hezbollah as they plot their continued attacks aimed at annihilating the Jewish people. It thrives in Europe where, exactly one year ago, on Yom Kippur, in Manchester, England two men were killed and others wounded after an attack outside a synagogue.  In Canada, synagogues and Jewish day schools are shot at at night, leaving terrifying scenes of bullet holes and damage behind.  In the United States, in North Carolina, men marched through American streets in broad daylight carrying torches chanting “Jews will not replace us.”

Antisemitism does not only continue to exist, it is on the rise.  There are five times more incidents today than there were a decade ago.  When I was growing up, synagogues in the United States had no security.  Today, as in our synagogue, they are nearly universally watched over by armed guards.  According to some statistics, Jewish institutions spend on average 20% of their budget on security.  Think of the cost of our community’s security: Door locks, camera and alarm systems, armed personnel.  Our feeling of safety has vanished.

Clearly, Leon Pinsker’s theory of the nature of antisemitism requires some further development and honing.  His attempt to understand the “why” of antisemitism did not entirely prove to be true.  Yet, his words have valuable insight as they provide a framework through which we can look at the issue of antisemitism, through which we can try to understand antisemitism.

I think that the key to understanding antisemitism is in the lie at its center: Jews as a scapegoat. Scapegoating can function as a disease similar to Pinsker’s Judeophobia.  Scapegoating is the disease of not taking responsibility for what you do not understand. 

Judeophobia as scapegoating is when people take something they don’t understand and project it onto Jews. When things go financially awry today, capitalists say that Jews are communists, and communists say that Jews are capitalists.  When we don’t like what’s on the news, the Jews control the media. Scapegoating is projecting the blame and punishment for a social ill onto an innocent group of people.  It is far too common to project problems of society onto Jews and to scapegoat Jews for these social ills.  

Interestingly, the concept of a scapegoat is rooted in the ancient biblical ritual of Yom Kippur.  In ancient Israel, the Jewish people would come to the Holy Temple on Yom Kippur for an elaborate ritual.  During one part of this ritual, two goats would be brought before the high priest.  He would sacrifice one immediately.  The high priest would then lay his hands over the head of the second goat and say:

“Please, God.  We have sinned.  We have done wrong.  We have missed the mark.  Please, in Your name, wipe away this sin, this wrong doing, these missed marks that we, the Jewish people, have committed.”

The goat would then be taken and let loose in the wilderness. 

By placing his hands over the goat while confessing his sins and the sins of the entire Jewish people, the high priest transferred all of our sins, our wrong doings, and our missed marks onto this goat.  The goat now was defined by our sin.  This is the scapegoat, full of our mistakes and our sins, in the wilderness.

Imagine yourself in the courtyard of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.  Imagine watching the priest engage in this ritual.  I can imagine feeling a sense of relief.  All of my sins are forgiven! All my mistakes, all of my purposeful misbehaviors are now embodied in this animal.  Let us cast it away!  Let us get rid of our own faults by getting rid of this goat!

Imagine being able to lift the burden of your mistakes and your sins from your shoulders.  Our own insecurities, our own problems have now taken the shape of this goat.  This is the nature of scapegoating.  It allows us to so easily rid ourselves of our wrongdoings by projecting our failures onto others.  This is how the antisemitic lie functions: People project the worst and most harmful parts of society onto the Jewish people.

However, from a very early time, our tradition has recognized that the ritual of the scapegoat is symbolic. It must be symbolic. This ritual functions to move us, and spark personal change. It should not relieve us of our burden, but remind us of the weight of our behavior and the imperative to atone. If this ancient ritual caused us to avoid seeking to change our ways and to avoid personal repentance, then it has failed.  If all we are doing is projecting our failures onto this animal, we have failed.  Our Jewish, Yom Kippur ritual of the scapegoat only works as a metaphor, it only works when it functions to spark change within us.  Using Jews as a scapegoat is a sick distortion of this ancient and sacred ritual. It is the disease of antisemitism.

I do not blame our world for seeking answers to social ills.  I do not blame people for searching for responsible parties.  However, when we place our social ills on an entire ethnic or religious group our search for responsibility has failed. This is the disease of Judeophobia: It is the moral failing that is scapegoating and avoiding responsibility. It is projecting social failures onto the Jewish people, who are, as a people, innocent of blame. At its core, the disease of Judeophobia attempts to define us not on our own terms, but in terms of the worst of society.

To stand up to this antisemitism we must not allow others to define who we are.  We must not allow what others project onto us to form our Jewish identities.  Standing up to antisemitism requires us to forge our own, deep Jewish identities beyond the antisemitic accusations and incidents.  To stand up to antisemitism means that our Jewish identities must go far beyond being anti-antisemitism and stand for themselves.  We cannot simply be angry at antisemites, or orient our Jewish selves around those who hate us.  Instead, we must find joy and delight in our tradition.

Forming strong, positive Jewish identities requires knowing who we are as Jews.  It requires publicly identifying ourselves as Jews without fear: Wearing Jewish star-necklaces or kippot to school, to work, and to the supermarket.  It requires coming to services regularly.  It requires learning to pray, to sound out Hebrew words.  It requires learning to read Torah and to lead services.  It requires reading Jewish books, delving into our rabbinic tradition in Jewish educational settings. If you have kids, it means sending them to Jewish day schools, committing to religious school and camps; if you do not have kids, it means supporting the education of future generations. When we make these kinds of commitments, who we are becomes defined in Jewish terms and Jewish values.  Our tradition becomes a positive force in our lives, and our identities become shaped by our tradition.  We create a positive definition of what it means to be Jewish.

Forming strong, positive Jewish identities means loving Israel not only because it stands as a beacon against global antisemitism, but because you have developed a spiritual involvement with the people, the culture, and the Land.  It means developing identities as Zionists rooted in the love we have for our people and not the hate that others have for us.  It means relishing our Jewish identities.

Perhaps the disease of Judeophobia has no antidote.  Likely this hatred for the Jewish people has no final cure, and will always exist.  We can, however, stand up and ensure that we are treated with respect, that we are protected.  To fight antisemitism, we must become deeply involved in our civic life, civically engaged as proud, public Jews.  When we serve on school committees, advisory councils, interfaith boards, town government we will be able to voice our concerns and shield ourselves from antisemitism.  People will come to know who we are and what we care about as a Jewish people and as individuals.  We may never be able to cure Judeophobia.  People will always hate who they hate.  But when we become active members of our community, when people come to know us, we can be sure that we are never treated differently.  We can treat antisemitism.

Let us not define ourselves by the hatred others have for us.  Let us orient our Jewish identities around our tradition, our culture, and Land.  Let us bring our proud Jewish selves to our civic institutions, and end hateful treatment of Jews. Let us take great joy in finding our Jewish selves.  And let our traditions be our lives and the length of our days.

Gmar Chatima Tova
May you be written and sealed in the book of life.