Jerusalem, A Fractured Unity

Yom Yerushalayim 5777

As Jerusalem recovers from President Trump’s whirlwind visit, the city moves on to its next milestone. As evening falls, we celebrate the fiftieth Yom Yerushalayim / Jerusalem Day.

In fact, the Trump team’s quick departure is timely, because its visit inadvertently raised doubts about the very meaning of Yom Yerushalayim. 

In the days leading up to the President’s arrival, controversy was stirred as one of his advisors reportedly told the Israelis, “The Western Wall is not your territory. It’s part of the West Bank.” Subsequently, members of the administration both refuted and tacitly affirmed the remark. And while the President indeed made history by visiting the Kotel, his rebuff of Prime Minister Netanyahu who wanted to join him at the Wall only made his actual position more inscrutable.

Apparently, even though the state is 69 years old and Jerusalem has been united under Israeli sovereignty for 50 years, there remain those who doubt the city’s status as the legitimate capital of Israel.

Under the U.N. partition plan of 1947, Jerusalem was supposed to be an internationalized city. After the War of Independence, the city was bifurcated; Jordan ruled its eastern half and all of the Old City, and the western part of the city was controlled by Israel. The national institutions of Israel—including the Knesset, Supreme Court, and residences of the Prime Minister and President—all became rooted in western Jerusalem. And it has flourished: Jerusalem is Israel’s largest city.

Yom Yerushalayim marks the anniversary of the unexpected and dramatic unification of Jerusalem under Israeli rule in the Six Day War. On the 28th day of Iyar—corresponding to June 7, 1967 and May 24, 2017—Israel pushed back the attacking Jordanian forces and conquered the Old City and East Jerusalem. On that day, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan proclaimed:

This morning, the Israel Defense Forces liberated Jerusalem. We have united Jerusalem, the divided capital of Israel. We have returned to the holiest of our holy places, never to part from it again. To our Arab neighbors we extend, also at this hour—and with added emphasis at this hour—our hand in peace. And to our Christian and Muslim fellow citizens, we solemnly promise full religious freedom and rights. We did not come to Jerusalem for the sake of other peoples' holy places, and not to interfere with the adherents of other faiths, but in order to safeguard its entirety, and to live there together with others, in unity.

But there have always been two Jerusalems. Literally: Hebrew speakers know that the –ayim suffix means “a pair,” so its very name Yerushalayim implies not one but two.

The first appearance of Jerusalem in the Bible is in the Book of Joshua, where Joshua battles an alliance led by King Adoni-zedek of Jerusalem (Joshua 10).  By the end of the saga, most of the land has surrendered—except for Jerusalem, of which it says: “The men of Judah could not dispossess the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem; so the people of Judah dwell with the Jebusites in Jerusalem to this day” (Josh. 15:63).  Already in Joshua’s time, the city was multicultural.

David was the first to “unite” Jerusalem; he made the city his kingdom’s capital. His son Solomon built the Temple there, making Jerusalem the dual religious and political capital of the people of Israel. With palace and temple, Jerusalem came to represent both the body and soul of the Jewish people.

Fractiousness amidst unity has remained part of the city’s identity ever since. In the Talmud (Ta’anit 5a), Rabbi Yitzhak imagines two Jerusalems, a heavenly city above that matches its earthly counterpart below:

Rabbi Yitzhak said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan:  “The Holy One says, ‘I will not come into the Jerusalem that is above until I come into the city of Jerusalem that is below.’”
Is there really a “Jerusalem that is above”?
Yes, for the verse says, “Jerusalem built up, a city with its companion” (Psalm 122:3).

In other words, Rabbi Yitzhak knows Jerusalem as both a spiritual ideal and as an earthly reality. Unifying the ideal with reality remains a messianic aspiration.

Today, we know that Jerusalem still bears these contradictions. On one hand, we have no doubts about Jerusalem’s centrality to modern Israel. We rejoice that for 50 years it has been united under Israeli rule. The streets of the Jewish Quarter—which had been demolished under the Jordanians—are flourishing. An American President just caressed the stones of the Western Wall. And the religious sites of all the city’s religious faiths are protected. Jerusalem is a thriving city of culture, spirit, and politics.

And yet: how unified is Jerusalem really? The Arab and Jewish neighborhoods certainly feel like two different cities. Do Israelis frequent Silwan or Beit Safafa or Shuafat? Even Jewish Jerusalem feels divided. Do secular residents visit haredi outposts like Sanhedriya or Kiryat Tzanz?

The Western Wall itself is a symbol of the schisms among Jews. The dispossession of non-Orthodox Jews at the Kotel is a pungent reminder that Jerusalem undivided is still a heavenly ideal that is far from reality. The Chief Rabbinate and its supporters distribute ugly posters around the city that slander non-Orthodox Jews and spew hatred at the Women of the Wall. President Trump is welcome at the Kotel, but Jewish women in tallit and tefillin, or men and women together in egalitarian prayer, are derided and scorned.

The ideal is that every Jew in the world has a stake in Jerusalem. But the reality is that its internal divisions reflect the discord that exists among our people.

Still, there remains a vision of heavenly Jerusalem floats above it all, reminding us that this is not the way it is meant to be.  Jerusalem also carries a whiff of peace—as ‘ir shalom, the city of wholeness.  The reality may be painful and fractured, but the ideal is that we should learn how to pray and live side by side with one another.

This Yom Yerushalayim and its celebrations should be a reminder of a future unification, when ideals and reality can be brought together. Celebrate it in joy and hope!

Why I Walked Out on Donald Trump at AIPAC

March 22, 2016

Just as Donald Trump has dominated the recent news cycle, so too did he overshadow all the nuanced presentations that took place at the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC, this week.

I was one of many who walked out on Monday evening when Mr. Trump, the Republican frontrunner, addressed the crowd of over 18,000 Israel supporters. I’d like to explain why.

AIPAC, the premier pro-Israel lobbying organization in America, has remained remarkably on-message over the years. The organization has a singular mission: to advance the security and well being of the State of Israel with the U.S. government. AIPAC does this in a disciplined bipartisan manner; it consistently balances its programs with Republicans and Democrats. During an election year like this one, its policy is to invite every candidate for President to address its annual forum. This year Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich spoke in addition to Mr. Trump. (Only Bernie Sanders did not accept the invitation to speak.)  AIPAC—quite correctly, in my opinion—believes that a secure, democratic State of Israel is consistent with American national security and foreign policy goals, and that those goals transcend partisan politics of left and right. Overwhelmingly, the U.S. Congress and the majority of the American people agree.

So Mr. Trump’s invitation was consistent with AIPAC’s agenda and past behavior. Still, I was compelled to leave when he came to the stage. Many others did likewise. We objectors gathered in the hallways of the Verizon Center to voice our spiritual protest by studying Jewish sacred texts on the themes of human dignity and derech eretz (kind and decent behavior towards others). 

“To walk out or not?” was the question Conference participants asked one another. I felt compelled to do so, for a variety of reasons. 

I walked out because this protest was about the tone and attitude of the campaign, not the content of Trump’s policies.  Again, AIPAC is a single-mission organization, and a remarkably consistent and effective one. Understanding their nonpartisan policy, I would not walk out on other candidates, even when I aggressively disagreed with their policy positions.

But Trump is different. He’s an outlier; a once-in-a-generation (God willing) phenomenon. He has injected overt racism, vile sexism, and the insinuation of violence into the Presidential campaign. (Other candidates, left and right, have played the race card in the past, but none with the overt bigotry that Trump and his supporters have displayed towards Mexicans, immigrants of many backgrounds, and Muslims. For that matter, his comments last fall at the Republican Jewish Coalition were also overtly anti-Semitic.)

I have Muslim friends.  How could I look them in the eye by attending an event where Trump was celebrated and applauded—this man who grotesquely has called for banning Muslims from our shores and monitoring those who are our neighbors?

Likewise, there is the tone of violence that he has injected into the campaign. Fierce words unsurprisingly spilled over into physical violence at Trump rallies in recent weeks, and the candidate not only refuses to condemn it, but winks and encourages it, saying, “I’ll pay the legal fees” of his supporters who assault protesters.

I walked out because Donald Trump is bad for Israel. Unquestioned, uncontested association with Mr. Trump is bad news for Israel, no matter how vociferously he proclaims that he will be “the best friend Israel ever had.”  So-called friends (earlier in the campaign declared his “neutrality” on Israel’s conflicts) who are thugs and bigots do not promote Israel’s cause. Mr. Trump’s slow disavowal of the Ku Klux Klan, for instance, only benefits those who cling to slander that “Zionism is racism.” Israel’s democracy is vigorous, but her political enemies would love nothing more than to link Trump-style demagoguery with the Jewish State.

Ultimately, I walked out because I needed to walk out—for me. Watching our politics ossify into hyperbolic displays of idiocracy should be distressing to Americans of every ideological persuasion. There’s a coarsening of the national soul taking place—and I don’t want my soul succumb to it.  Moreover, I don’t want my community or my country to succumb to it, either.

The electoral process should be an impassioned, vigorous, and freewheeling debate about differing visions of our mutual future. American democracy is built upon that principle and so is Jewish tradition. “Both these and these are the words of the Living G-d,” says the Talmud (Eruvin 13b) about the virulent debates that took place 2,000 years ago between the schools of Hillel and Shammai. Judaism holds a healthy reverence for argument, as well as recognition that the other person is entitled to their point of view. But yesh g’vul: there is a limit. Mr. Trump and his followers, with their coarse rhetoric and propensity towards violence, must be held accountable.

The politics of vitriol, of scapegoating and shaming, of bigotry and violence, should have no place in our discourse. It’s the responsibility of all of us to get up and turn our backs on it.