The first time I met Zohar Avigdori was standing in the graffitied parking garage attached to the South Tel Aviv Bus Station. Looking out over the city— with beautiful, white, Bauhaus architecture in front of us, and the gritty, dilapidated neighborhood of Neve Sha’anan beside us, Zohar began his tour by asking us to define Zionism.
Ultimately, he shared with us his own preferred definition, which over the years, has become mine as well. Citing an early essay of Theodore Herzl, Zohar shared the belief that “Zionism [is] an infinite ideal” and even after the establishment of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel, it would not cease to be an ideal, because, as Herzl wrote “Zionism is the aspiration to reach moral and spiritual perfection.”
Tonight, it feels as though we are aspiring from the bottom of an abyss.
Over the years, Zohar has remained for me an important teacher.” Zohar lives up north on Kibbutz Eshbal, near Karmiel. Since 1998, Eshbal has been home to the Galil Jewish–Arab School, runs outreach programs in local Arab and Bedouin villages and organizes Jewish-Arab dialogue events. Growing up in a youth movement inspired Zohar to dedicate his life to education and social change. Zohar currently works as a high school social studies teacher, and is also one of the leading drag queens in Israel, performing as Zohara (his drag character) as well as a prominent LGBTQ+ activist.
On October 7th of last year, Zohar’s niece and sister-in-law, Sharon & Noam Avigdori were kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri by Hamas. Sharon and Noam were released in the November hostage deal, and since that time, Zohar and his brother Hen have remained committed leaders in the Hostages Families Forum, advocating tirelessly for the release of the remaining hostages.
Earlier this week, Zohar tagged me in a post on Facebook.
מה לעשות ביום כיפור?
What should I do about Yom Kippur? I am tagging my friends who have any religious connection to God. Yom Kippur is coming and I'm deciding what to do. Usually, I fast, and ponder and go to Neilah. This year I'm very angry at God and I don't see a need to confess my sins to her until she begins to move things here in the desired direction. What about you guys? What are your thoughts this year? What are the plans? And what would you advise me to do?
Zohar tagged me along with an array of both Israeli and American rabbis, from across the non-Orthodox religious spectrum.
And so tonight, I want to answer his question together with you.
For him- for all of us, really.
What should we do about Yom Kippur?
What should we do about this moment we are living through?
Maybe you're feeling like Zohar too. But for different reasons.
To answer this question, I feel called to examine our past.
Not only our most recent, accessible past— not just the past that we have experienced ourselves by our connection to the generations of our parents or grandparents. I believe in this moment, we need to remind ourselves of the thousands-of-years old story of our past, and perhaps, glean insight as to how to move through this moment.
There is no question in my mind that we are living through an inflection point: a watershed moment in Jewish history that became spectacularly obvious to us on October 7, 2023. And what has become clear to me over this last year, is that this watershed moment is multifaceted. It would be all too easy to say “a great disaster happened, and is happening, there”.
But, when we talk about “all of this,” we are as likely to be talking about Israel as we are about the homegrown anti-semitism we've grown accustomed to. We are as likely to feel pained by the on-going war, the on-going captivity of 101 hostages, the on-going internal displacement of thousands of citizens from both the north and south in Israel— as we are to be pained by the rising anti-semitism on college campuses, the bald-faced Jew hatred that we have seen on the subways of New York City, and the streets of towns across this country including here in the Berkshires. Our pain at the humanitarian disasters unfolding in Gaza and Lebanon, sits next to the pain we feel at the on-going Islamophobia in our own country.
What has become clear to me is that the pain that sits in the middle of the circle here at home, and the pain we witness in Israel from a distance is overlapping, but distinct.
To answer Zohar’s question— what should we do about Yom Kippur— I want to turn to other watershed moments in Jewish history. Looking back across the history of the Jewish people, there are so many possible stopping points.
So many moments of rupture; when the Jewish world changed. Working backward, the list is remarkable:
From Auschwitz to the Kishinev pogroms to Pale of Settlement to the Dreyfus Affair
From the Alhambra Decree and the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula after a thousand-years of presence living there.
To the Crusades and the forced conversions and the blood libels of Europe….
There are so many moments of rupture and trauma across the timeline of Jewish history. Moments when, I imagine, people paused and saw before them multiple paths.
One path— the “lachrymose view” of Jewish history, as described by Jewish historian, Salo Baron. At every point in our history, one could look at the Jewish condition, and easily see our story as “one tragedy after another, linked and inevitable.” We can imagine individuals and communities throughout Jewish history looking back, and saying- well, this was bound to happen. This narrative is one that has been amplified again in our own time:
It is the narrative that scholar Simon Rawidowicz critiques in the concept of the Jews as an “ever-dying people”, which basically says that across Jewish history, every generation thinks they’re “the last”.
And yet, if a lachrymose view of Jewish history– seeing ourselves as an ever-dying people was the only true path, we would not be here tonight.
Sitting as we are in our own watershed moment: one that is on-going and unfinished, I believe we have lessons to glean from reaching even further back into our own past.
The year is 70 CE.
By all accounts, and by the looks of it- the Jews have suffered a defeat so humiliating, which coupled with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple at the hands of the Romans, seems to mark a bitter ending to Jewish life in the land of Israel, and even to Judaism as a whole - who could have imagined it would really persist with the Temple destroyed a second time?
By 73CE, the last fortress held by the Sicarii rebels at Masada, overlooking the southwestern shore of the Dead Sea, could no longer hold back the Roman legions. Eleazar ben Yair, the leader of the zealot faction, admits the futility of further resistance.
His story is recorded by the historian Josephus who attributes the following words to Eleazar ben Yair:
And where now is that great city, the mother-city of the whole Jewish race, entrenched behind all those lines of ramparts, screened by all those forts and massive towers, that could scarcely contain her munitions of war, and held all those myriads of defenders?
He continues, saying that the only conclusion to this terrible defeat is death— as historian David Ruderman remarks “For Eleazar ben-Yair, the ultimate Jewish response to Roman abasement and servitude was martyrdom.”.
Or, in other words: this zealous outlook on Jewish life was so single-minded, that it precluded the possibility of another path forward. Facing the ruins of the edifices of Jewish life that they built for themselves, Eleazar ben Yair saw death as the preferred option.
And so, another story:
It is soon after the fall of the Temple.
As Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was coming out of Jerusalem, Rabbi Joshua followed him and beheld the Temple in ruins.
“Woe unto us,” Rabbi Joshua cried, “that this, the place where the iniquities of Israel were atoned for, is laid to waste!”
Yohanan ben Zakkai replied, “Be not grieved my son. There is another way of gaining atonement, even though the Temple is destroyed. We must now gain atonement for our sins through the deeds of loving-kindness. (Hosea 6:6)
Or, in other words, Yohanan ben Zakkai offered an outlook on Jewish life that elected a strategy for collective survival; a path that saw that particular turning point in Jewish history as a new opportunity, and a new challenge for the rebirth and revitalization of Jewish life.
Yohanan ben Zakkai’s vision was grounded in a deep commitment to Jewish values and ritual, first and foremost. He is credited with creating a new center for Jewish life, outside of Jerusalem, in Yavneh— a place he identified as a new locus for Torah learning.
Yavneh is what we build, when everything we knew before is gone.
Make no mistake:
Yavneh wasn’t a Jewish Brigadoon or Talmudic Bali-Hai---- it wasn’t a simple relocation of old ideas in a new place. It was an earthly place of creativity and innovation, which emerged from the rubble of a time that ended. It was a place that had to be built up; encoded within its very name is the word Livnot, the Hebrew word for building.
It was a place where the sages would gather, sitting in rows like grapes on a vine,
setting a vision for how Torah would survive in this new world.
We are living through an inflection point: a pivotal moment in Jewish history, the likes of which none of us has ever lived through. As has been noted by many— it is not a moment that is over, but a moment that is on-going.
And I, for one, am not ready to give into the notion that we are an “ever-dying” people. Our history is too rich, and our people are too varied for there to only be one story for us to tell at this moment. I take great comfort in knowing that across the generations, our multi-vocal people have had the full range of human reactions and emotions to the shifting realities of what it means to be a Jew in the world.
And all of it is real: the pain and hopelessness after the destruction of the Temple, and the blueprint for a rich and creative new way of living Jewishly envisioned by Yohanan ben Zakkai.
Rabbi David Wolpe tells a story about attending the international convention of the B’nai Brith Youth Organization (BBYO) held in February in Florida. He was on a panel with three other presenters, and at the conclusion, the question was posed, “What gives you hope?”
Rabbi Wolpe remarks that his inclination was to say, “These 4,000 young Jewish people attending the conference give me hope.” Unfortunately for him, that’s what the three people preceding him on the panel said! Instead, he provided an alternate answer.
He began, “I’m in a conversation with my great great great great grandfather, and I say to him, ‘You know, there are anti-Semites causing problems for the Jews at Harvard.’ And he says to me, ‘There are Jews at Harvard?’” Rabbi Wolpe continued his imaginary conversation, “I say to him, ‘Yeah, but they hate Israel.’ And he says, ‘There’s an Israel?’”
Rabbi Wolpe concludes by explaining:
“We’re at the crossroads again. But our ancestors would dream of having the problems we have. And that doesn’t mean they’re not problems, and it doesn’t mean that we don’t have to address them and it doesn’t mean that it’s not crucial and it doesn’t mean that our future in different ways isn’t imperiled. All that may be true. But, boy. Look at where we were and look at where we are.”
Look at where we are.
And so, why are we here? What did I tell my friend Zohar?
Reading through the many wise responses he had already received, I wrote this:
The only thing that makes sense to me right now is to be אגודת אחת. If Yom Kippur is in any way like a rehearsal for our death, I feel like you have all spent enough time contemplating your mortality this year. Take care of your heart and be with your people. Sending you love.
Maybe we're here because we don't want to cede our place at the table. And, maybe we’re here because it’s a time for us to hold down the fort so to speak— to do our part to keep the table set.
We don't want to omit ourselves from the Jewish story.
The Jewish story is longer and deeper than us or our parents and grandparents. Just as our ancestors couldn't have imagined what would flow from their choices, honestly neither can we. But that can be a hopeful reality, not just a scary one. We have to trust in our ethics and our souls, and in the ethics and souls of those who will come after us, to believe that from this time of shattering, new growth can come.
I think we are here tonight, because to be a Jew in this particular watershed moment is to know that we have choices. We can allow that feeling that we are in an abyss to consume our ability to move forward— we can give up our seat at the table of Jewish life because it’s just too hard. Or, we can insist that there is another way.
We cannot control what we inherit.
Generational trauma is real- and the trauma of our modern condition is real.
But we can control what we hand down, because one day we will be the ancestors and one day, our children’s children’s children will look back at this moment in history and have options for the story they tell.
Will they tell a lachrymose story of an ever-dying people?
Or, like Yohanan Ben Zakkai speaking to his friend rabbi Joshua, will they say–there was plenty to grieve, but they also found new ways to connect. Despite all that had been lost, they came together, knowing that they could connect through the deeds of loving-kindness.
The urgency of this holy day has never felt more real to me.
And yet, it is only one day.
Tonight, as we stand here as Agudat Achat— one community, my advice for Zohar is for each of you as well.
Take care of your hearts.
Be with your people.
I’m sending all of us love.
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