' ' A Response to the Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria I.

pons in Syria I. "Its time to break free of the moral relativism, multicultural hypocrisy and political correctness that prevent us from seeing our evil neighborhood as it really is. A terrible warning siren is being sounded in Damascus. Do we hear it? Does the world hear it?" Those words, written this past week, were not penned by a bellicose reactionary. They were written by Ari Shavit, a member of the editorial board and a celebrated columnist at Ha'aretz, without a doubt Israel's most liberal major newspaper, The incredibly disturbing images, especially those of children, that we have seen, or at the very least, read about, coming out of the eastern suburbs of Damascus, are beyond verbal description. As of Friday, even the previously recalcitrant Russians were willing to call for an independent investigation of the use of chemical weapons. When we confront the kind of suffering that we have seen in Syria over the last two and a half years, with at least 100,000 dead and millions of displaced, we face a twofold challenge: 1. It's difficult for many of us, all but those most predisposed to consumption of news and international events, to truly care about something so far away. How many of us give much thought, if any at all, to the existence of what can only be described as concentration camps in North Korea? We have our own concerns- our own families, our own communities, and more broadly, the Jewish people. There simply isn't much time or energy left, for many of us, even where the moral sensitivity exists, and too often, it does not, for any serious universalist concern. 2. Beyond the mere distance, we have our own reasons to be somewhat unsympathetic to many of those affected by the gruesome war in Syria. How many times have all of us heard the utterance, let them all kill each other and get what's coming to them, without much of a sense that 'them' comprises many different groups? And yet, as members of a people who have spilled drops of wine for centuries to memorialize the death of our Egyptian taskmasters, we should have the courage and honesty to challenge this facile and often misguided reaction. All the more so, when it comes to the tens of thousands of children who have been killed, with whom he
-1-

have no gripe. All of the above could be said, and in my humble view, should be said, independent of seeing people killed specifically by some form of poisonous gas. Yet, when we deal with that atrocity in particular, the urgency of registering a protest is dramatically heightened. Even if the agent in question, as it appears was not Zyklon B, this should absolutely still hit a very raw nerve in the Jewish collective memory. We should always resist Holocaust comparisons that are completely inappropriate, whether they are the usual distortions of both scale as well as malicious intent. We live in a world in which, cynically, the most frequent targets of such comparisons are, not surprisingly, ourselves. Yet, at the same time, we ought to be sensitized by our own experience of suffering to feel a particular form of outrage when we see children gassed to death, no matter what the number, no matter what their ethnicity, or religious affiliation. When the Torah taught us that we ought to treat the stranger within our midst with a certain level of care and compassion, because we had suffered at the hands of the Egyptians as strangers, the Torah wasn't foolishly equating hundreds of years of slavery, infanticide that we experienced in Egypt with the potential alienation an individual stranger might feel within a Jewish polity. Far, far from it. Yet, what the Torah does insist upon, and what we all ought to feel, is that historical suffering is meant to be utilized to enhance communal sensitivity, even if the scale is nowhere near the same. To my mind, seeing any number of children gassed to death more than meets that standard. II. All of this might be said, and in my view, should be said, at any time of the year. But, in all honesty, it is doubly apropos as we approach Rosh HaShanah. Yom Kippur has a highly particularistic orientation, it is the day upon which the Jewish people are forgiven for their sins, ' . The roots of the day are traced to a seminal event not in world history, but Jewish history, when Moshe came down from Sinai with the second set of , marking the reconciliation between God and his singular people, . The singular task of the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kippur was to achieve atonement on behalf of Israel, . Rosh HaShanah, conversely, is universalist in its basic orientation The Sages of the Mishnah, R. Eliezer and R. Yehoshua, disputed whether the world was created on the first of Tishrei or Nissan1, but Jewish tradition has ruled decisively in favor of the former's view. We will say repeatedly, in less than two weeks, after the Shofar is sounded.
.-: .1
-2-

 It is the day not merely of our creation, but of the creation of the entire world, . It is not merely the day in which we stand in judgment, but all humanity, . As we will say in the , the net is cast as broadly as is imaginable. It is precisely for this reason that the Jewish tradition has preserved the complexity of having multiple Roshei Shanah, as strange and counterintuitive a concept as that is. Every Jew carries a dual identity2; as a human, and as a member of a singular chosen people. Naturally, the latter identity is marked in Nissan, the month of our redemption from Egypt, consummated at Sinai; essentially, the month of our national election. However, the universalist identity, our standing as humans, along with everyone else, is marked on the first of Tishrei. Small wonder, than, that on Rosh HaShanah, we express our deep concern for both the spiritual and material welfare of all of humanity. We begin on the night of Rosh HaShanah by reciting , the 24th Psalm, proclaiming God's majesty not merely over ourselves, but over the world in its entirely, .' , . We continue by expressing our deepest hope that God's majesty will be recognized, not merely by us, but by all of humanity, , It is not merely our spiritual aspiration on behalf of humanity, but we are unreserved in praying for the welfare of all of the Nations, , . It is not about any Jew's suffering that we read on the first day of Rosh HaShanah, but of a child- and, it should not be lost upon us, one to whom nearly all of the Syrian children look to as a ancestor- Yishmael. , God heard the voice of the youngster from where he was. , as R. Yitzchak quoted in the Talmud in Rosh HaShanah tells us, becomes our mantra for repentance, God judges us based on where we are, irrespective of past failures, or future mistakes.3

2. For development of this dialectic, see the Rav's analysis of Avraham in his seminal essay on interfaith dialogue, Confrontation.
-3-

It is not in response to the suffering of a Jewish mother that our Shofar blasts include both a Shevarim and a Teruah, but because we wish to mimic the cries of the mother of Sisera4, of all people. And Rabbenu Natan b. Yechiel of Rome, author of the Arukh quoted in the Tur5, argues that this is the reason that we have developed the tradition of sounding 100 shofar blasts, in place of the thirty that would otherwise be required, in parallel to her wailing. It is not just a fact of life, but absolutely right and proper, that our primary care is reserved for those closest to us. We obviously work outwards, in expanding concentric circles: first, , as R. Akiva interpreted, 6 , there is self-interest and protection. Next, we see to is that our families are taken care of, and to each of our fellow Jews, we try to extend a remarkable level of care, all based on how we would treat ourselves, . As Chazal derived from the sequence of the verse regarding charity, , this orientation is reflected at the municipal plane as well, 7 . And yet, we must never lose sight of Chazal's teaching that we are to be suffused with a deep sense 8, that all of humanity is precious, in as much as all have been created in His very image. Perhaps it is in the best interest of this country, or those in Western Europe, to intervene more forcefully in Syria, perhaps not. It certainly is not for me to say. In crafting foreign policy, countries must always try and balance interests and cherished ideals, and it is very often more an art than a science. Tragically, it does not seem to me that there is much, at the personal plane, that any of us can do, in the immediate sense. And yet, the fact that there may not be very much that could be done directly does not mean that we have no opinion on the matter. At the very least, we ought to care, to keep ourselves informed, and, especially when Rosh HaShanah comes, to daven on behalf of the innocent people being so brutally slaughtered. , if Hashem could here the cry of the , we would do well to do so. Should we, instead, turn a deaf ear to those cries and a blind eye to the distended and discolored bodies, our well-worn communal denunciation of international inaction during the Shoah, 'the world was silent', hardly carries the same weight.

. ,: .3 : .4 .5 . .6 . .7 .8
-4-

As Rabbi Jung wrote many decades ago, adapted from the words of the Jewish prayer book, and asked to be recited from this pulpit every Shabbat morning, , May He spread the Tabernacle of peace over all the Earth, with all humankind dwelling in brotherhood and tranquility.

-5-