Posted By James Besser
Rocks and Hard Places / Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
A lot of my time, and every congregational rabbi's time, is spent trying to figure out how to be a good rabbi to the very different constituencies in my synagogue.
There are people who crave change, and others who, with equal passion, want things to stay exactly as they have been. There are liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, the more observant and the less observant, and almost every shading in-between.
The hackneyed old joke about the Jew who builds two synagogues so that he can always have one not to go to has survived all these years because, in no insignificant measure, it's true. We Jews are a contentious lot, and we love our arguments. How appropriate that the Talmud is such an important study text for us; its volumes are built on the idea of machloket, of disagreement. Hillel and Shammai, Rabbi Akivah and Rabbi Yishmael- as long as the argument is considered to be l'shem shamayim, for the sake of heaven, it is not, in and of itself, considered a bad thing. That's how Jews think, and work things out.
On no one issue does this occasionally unnerving tendency to loudly argue things out figure more prominently than the security of Israel and its general state of being.
As this week's peace conference in Annapolis convened and adjourned before we knew too much of what was really happening, I could hear familiar voices from my congregational family speaking (loudly?) in my figurative ear. That's what happens when you serve the same community for twenty-seven years; you can almost construct the arguments without the benefit of the presence of the arguers!
"Remember Oslo!" "Look what happened when they gave back Gaza!" "Remember the intifada(s)!" That was in my left ear (or maybe I should say my right ear?).
In the other ear, I could hear the quieter but nonetheless insistent voice of members who refuse to lose their hope that a peace worth having might yet be achieved, and who lament Israel's reluctance to move more forthrightly in the direction of further concessions. One person posted on our synagogue listserv that he was going to Annapolis to stand and be counted in support of the conference and what it represents. He invited others to come with him. I don't know if he got any takers- my sense was that far more of our members were skeptical than hopeful- but I was glad to "hear his voice."
Woe unto us when we lose the capacity to dream of something better for Israel than endless hostility.
I'm just wondering about my own voice. I have my opinions, to be sure, but "preaching my opinions" as more correct or valid than anyone else's is a tricky business at best. I am hardly the sole possessor of any elevated wisdom, and I would never begrudge the right my members to disagree with me no matter how misguided I might think them. To the extent that I might know the reality of Israel better than many of them, I certainly have both the right and the responsibility to help shape their opinions. But there will always be the people talking in my other ear.
I'm wondering what I'm going to say this Shabbat…