We have been hearing a lot over the past few weeks about what 9/11 did and did not change for Americans. As I wrote previously, 9/11 did not change much for my family’s existence or approach to the world. But it has altered for me, as for most Jews, at least for now and some time to come, the High Holidays (or Chagim). 9/11 itself occurred just before the start of Rosh Hashanah, and now, every year, it seems we enter the season of our individual and collective atonment through the lens of the just-finished remembrances of 9/11.
Strange that it took al-Qaeda to orient our individual and communal Jewish religious thinking about our pasts and futures around this issue of terrorism — understanding it, living with it, combatting it — that dominates so much of our national and international political attention. Eeerie that Usama bin Laden has presented us with the most direct challenge, not just to our daily lives through his actions as a terrorist leader, but to our Jewish lives by bringing our international political and military actions into such direct connection with our observance of the Chagim. In some ways, then, this juxtaposition of 9/11 and the High Holidays perhaps offers us the ability to think about how we can use the Jewish principles of the High Holidays in our thinking about terrorism, about Israel, about America, about Muslims, about Judaism.
This year, as well, we face the reality of experiencing the High Holidays in the wake of Lebanon (and Gaza). Last year, we remembered Disengagement during our recitation of the “Ashamnu” (or Vidui) and prayed that our individual and collective sins during the occupation of Gaza, as well as the individual and collective pain and tragedy we experienced, might lead to a more peaceful future. Yet just one year later, with the memory of Hizballah rockets landing in northern Israel and the destruction of so much of Lebanon still seering our minds, most of us believe this will be as sorrowful and pessimistic a High Holiday season as we have had since the Intifada began in late September 2000.
But I wonder if it must be. Perhaps we can move from the framework of 9/11 and the tragedy of Lebanon to work as a community, through the symbol of a High Holiday ritual, and use Judaism and the power of the message of the Chagim to begin to achieve what our political and military leaders have failed to.
There are many themes and symbols of the Chagim, but two of the over-arching (and related) themes are atonement and redemption. Throughout the liturgy for the Chagim, we reflect on, pray to God about, and atone for our fallibility, our sins, our humanity. But to do so, we come together as a community, pray as a community. Indeed, the Vidui and “al Chet” prayers, two of the central prayers of these themes, are written and spoken in the plural form. We acknowledge that we commit these sins both as individuals and as members of a community, and both the individual and community must be redeemed.
Yet, at bottom, the specific result each individual in the community is seeking is life — inscription in the Book of Life for another year (those who live then form the life of the community). And to get there, each individual must deal with his or her own sins. Thus the tradition of Tashlich, of symbolically casting away sin, usually performed on the first day of Rosh Hashanah (but can be done any day between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur). There are few specifics to the tradition, other than taking bread crumbs to a body of water, reciting several verses from Micah, then casting the bread into the water as representation of the sins we seek to cast away. It is also said to be preferable to perform Tashlich at a body of water containing fish (explanations range, but most relate to the fish providing a reminder that God protects us as the water protects the fish).
As I said above, as a Jewish community, our most recent collective experience is Lebanon. For some, the war itself is seen as a sin to be cast away; for most, the idea of the war itself was not sinful, though its handling may have been. As individuals, then, each of us responded to the war and to its aftermath in our own way, and there are different aspects of Lebanon that stand as sins, or as paths to redemption. As a Jewish community, we look to the war in Lebanon as a symbol of the communal self-questioning we must do about who we are, what we do and stand for as a people, and how we can move toward a more peaceful and secure existence.
Which brings me to one aspect of the Lebanon war that was sinful in result if not in intent, and that has not gotten nearly enough attention: the oil spill in the eastern Mediterranean. Caused by Israeli air strikes on takers at the Jiyeh power plant, the spill involved an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 tons of oil (app. 3.1 to 4.6 million gallons), is the worst in Lebanon’s history, has reached Syria and caused untold environmental and economic damage.
Whether or not you view some, all or none of the war in Lebanon as a sin for which the community, or any of its individuals, should atone, this spill represents a result of the war that we must acknowledge. As we stand next Saturday to cast our bread in local bodies of water that fish can live in, I believe we must turn our thoughts to the water, the life, the environment in the Mediterranean that the Israeli strikes destroyed, and which must be cleaned up and rescued as soon as possible in order to prevent complete loss. If we let this spill go unsolved, then that will indeed be a collective sin for all of us.
So I ask everyone who reads this to do something more than cast aside your sins with that bread. Dip that bread in the Mediterranean oil. Use your individual cast-away sins for change, to clean up if not the past year’s communal sin, then certainly its communal sadness. Once your Tashlich observance is complete, donate to the UN Environment Programme, which is coordinating the clean-up.
Why donate to this effort rather than, say, to efforts to rebuild northern Israel? Or to your synagogue’s annual fund, or the never-ending emergency appeal of a mainstream organization? First, these need not be zero-sum; I am just saying include the UNEP in your allocations. Second, those efforts do not represent the time-critical emergency that the spill does. Third, the High Holidays require us, I believe, to look at our sins in a different way. As Jews, we examine and reflect all year long on our sins, on our humanity — but this one time each year, we focus on them, act on them, pray on them in a more holistic and honest way. That difference can lead us to an act like donating not just within, but without. And in a way that reflects an acknowledgment of our communal actions.
But mostly we should do so because of 9/11. As I read and listened to some of the remembrances of 9/11 and the analyses of what we have learned, where we have gone, I was reminded of how little we as an American community, or as an American Jewish community, have engaged with the post-9/11 world other than through security measures, division of peoples, or combat. Whether or not we believe that engagement with “the enemy” or even attempted reconciliation is at all possible or realistic, let alone a solution, it is a sin, I believe, not to try. And we are just not trying.
Regardless of the response from the other side, we sin when we do not seek peace; indeed, the other side may not be responding precisely because they know our quest is not genuine. Perhaps a universal effort to clean up the Mediterranean — led, even in part, by the Jewish community — can provide the first real overture. What better way to be inscribed in the Book of Life as individuals, and as a community.
Brad Brooks-Rubin
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