"PASSOVER, ISRAEL, AND THE PALESTINIANS"

“PASSOVER, ISRAEL, AND THE PALESTINIANS”

            Holy Week and Passover both begin next week, and of course, Holy Week is rooted in Passover.  It was the celebration of Passover that brought Jesus and his followers together in what became the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  As these two holy seasons intertwine, as they often do, we should recall that Jesus was Jewish – he lived as a Jew, he died as a Jew, he rose as a Jew.   As with so many other captivities, I grew up with anti-Semitism as one of my values.  In many ways, I had no idea what that meant.  I remember coming home one day from middle school to tell my mother that I hated Jews.  When she asked me why I hated Jews, I said something like “because they are Jews.”  Then she replied:  “Do you hate Raymond?”  I said “Of course not, he’s one of my friends.”  “How about Ruth?” she replied.  “Well, she’s a girl {the hormones had not hit yet}, but she’s nice, so, no I don’t hate her.”  My mother then drove it home:  “Nibs, they both are Jews.”  “Wow, I said – I’ll have to think about that!”  And, in my thinking, I also decided not to tell my mother so much – she was too nimble in her thinking and in her questions!

            I thought of these issues about a decade later. It was after my junior year in college, in the summer of 1967, when I was scheduled to travel around the western USA with one of my college roommates, Sidney Cassell, who was the child of the only Jewish family in Tunica, Mississippi.  We were scheduled to start our travels in his VW bug in early June, 1967.  He called me to tell me that we might have to cancel our trip because his home country of Israel was at war with Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.  If things started to unravel in Israel, he indicated that he would have to go over here to fight for his homeland.  I was stunned at the possible loss of our trip, but I was even more stunned by his loyalty to Israel.  

            As those in my age category know, Israel routed the Arab armies in what became known as the Six Day War from June 5-10, 1967.  Sidney and I could take our trip, and it was great indeed!   It was in days when people were less afraid, so we stayed in Presbyterian churches and in Jewish synagogues, and if those were not available, the rabbis or pastors would often find families to put us up.   There were many gifts that I received from that trip, but one was an understanding of the powerful dedication of Jewish people to the state and existence of Israel.  Sidney was no doctrinaire Israeli, but he had a deep sense of the necessity of the existence of Israel – he and his family could still smell the ovens of Europe.  There would be no trusting of the West to save Judaism – the Jews would take care of themselves from now on.

            It is in this context that I approach Holy Week and Passover of 2019, the Israeli elections this week, and the apartheid that has developed in Israel toward the Palestinian people.  I have another friend, Fahed Abu-Akel, a former Moderator of our denomination. He is a Palestinian Christian, and he has reminded me of the difficulties of his history.  His family home was taken in the “Nakba,” (The Catastrophe") the taking of the homes and lands of the Palestinians in 1948, in order to create the modern state of Israel.  Fahed’s family came to the USA as part of their forced trail of tears.  The millions of descendants of those Palestinian peoples are now homeless and landless, and it looks more and more likely that those Palestinian Israelis will soon lose their citizenship, as Israel’s desire for ironclad security moves them far, far away from their dream of a democratic, secure nation. 

            On our recent trip to see our daughter Susan, Caroline and I made a side trip to take the “Sally Hemings” tour at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.   Sally Hemings was the enslaved woman who had at least five of Jefferson’s children, and that side trip is the stuff of another blog.  I bring it up now because our docent for the Hemings tour was a self-proclaimed Jewish woman who began the tour indicating that this story was “complicated,” with the great American author of the idea of “equality” having children with an enslaved woman, whom he never granted freedom.  As our docent saw the leftish leanings of our group, she dropped the “complicated” language and indicated that it was what it seemed – at best some relationship between the two, and at worst, continuous rape by Jefferson.  In many ways the relation of Judaism and Israel and the Palestinians is equally complicated.  Yet in the end, the impetus that drove Judaism (and the West) to create Israel has equally disappeared in the fervor to rid Israel of Palestinians, both past and present.  It will not happen, and that brings us to the difficult images of the both the Cross and the Passover lamb.  There are no easy answers, but answers of justice there must be.  As the Jewish prophet Amos put it so well:  “I hate the noise of your songs, take away from me the noise of your harps- but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”  As we begin our important religious rituals of Holy Week and Passover, let us remember the powerful words of Amos, and let us lean toward them.