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After Annapolis
Sermon by Rabbi Jonathan Miller
Temple Emanu-El
Birmingham, AL
November 30, 2007—21 Kislev, 5768
Ecclesiastes’ most famous quote is this, “Ein hadash tachat ha shamesh—There is nothing new under the sun.”
This week’s parasha, vayeshev, speaks about Joseph as a boy, and his dysfunctional family. Joseph is a dreamer. His father loves him for his dreams. But his brothers hate him because of those dreams. In every generation, there are those who are the dreamers, the visionaries, the ones who can see their way out of wherever they are into something new. They have imagination and vision, and they are excited by the prospect of making something new. But these dreamers are very few.
Most of us are the more common folk, the ones who see things the way they are and know that the way they are is the way they will always be and the way they will always be is the way that things will be forever. They do not have the capability to dream. They are protective. They protect their turf. They build spiritual fences around themselves. They refuse to let others come in. They refuse to imagine that their world can change. Yesterday is today. Tomorrow will be like yesterday. Where we are now is where we will always be. They stopped dreaming long long ago. These are the stuck people.
The question becomes, how do the stuck people and the dreamers relate to each other? The dreamers do not hate the stuck people. To the contrary, they try to imbue them with a generous heart and spirit. But the stuck people hate the dreamers. They are threatened by the dreamers. They want the dreamers and their dreams to go away.
So in our Torah portion, Joseph is searching for his brothers, who are out shepherding their flocks in Dothan. They see him first, and what do they say? “Hinei, ba’al hahalomot ha’laze ba, v’atah l’chu v’nahargeyhu v’nishl’chayhu b’echad haborot v’amarnu chayah r’ah achalat’hu, v’nir’ah ma yihu halamotav—Hey y’all have a look, here comes that dreamer. Let’s go up and kill him. We’ll throw him in one of those endless pits, and we can say that a wild animal has devoured him. Then we’ll see what has become of his dreams!” Isn’t that just the way it is? Someone has a dream, and others plot to murder him and kill his dreams. Some people would rather be stuck where they are than ever imagine that they can move ahead. To be stuck where we are always feels safe to us. We know the landscape. We know the rules. Even if our stuck place will continue to bring us misery, we would rather dwell in our familiar stuckness than imagine some way out. Living in stuckness feels safer than climbing out.
On Tuesday, the United States, Israel, the Palestinian authority, and a host of nations, including those from Arab countries, attended a meeting in Annapolis, Maryland to re-start the peace process between Israel and the Arab world, and between Israel and the Palestinians. Oh, the groans. I know what they sound like. They echo in my soul. “Here we go again. Every time we tread down this path, we end up with violence and deeper suffering. We just cannot have our hopes dashed another time. Leave well enough alone. Israel is doing alright for the time being, just leave it alone.” Regardless or our groans and our hesitation, the parties in Annapolis agreed to start a year’s long process that, if successful (a big if to be sure), will bring an end to the conflict.
Publically, all the parties have set low expectations. That was certainly deliberate for many reasons. What’s new? The Palestinians hate the Israelis and want to destroy them. The Israelis have walled themselves off from the Palestinians and have said, “A curse on you!” The Arab leadership is still intransigent, and afraid to make any progress. And American diplomacy has not produced wonderful results of late. President Bush and Condoleezza Rice don’t have too many diplomatic victories to celebrate. So what’s new?
Let me share with you what is new. This is the first time that peace is being waged by the parties when they are weak. No single party in this morass is strong. The Americans have botched up its relations with the Arab world. The Palestinians are themselves divided. Prime Minister Olmert is the weakest and most unpopular prime minister in Israeli history. And the Arab world is more worried about Iran than we are. If peace will come, paradoxically, it will come because everyone at the table needs it, and needs it desperately. There is no place for the strong in this peacemaking deal. At the conclusion of the Six Days War, and at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, and in the waning days of the Clinton administration, there was an imbalance of power. One party would win at the expense of the other party’s losing. Perhaps, perhaps the rules of the game have changed. Each party needs this process to succeed.
Israel would benefit enormously by having an end to the conflict. Going in, the Arab nations have agreed to end the boycott of Israel economically and politically if accommodations can be made with the Palestinians. The end of the conflict would enable Israel as a Jewish state to lead a normal life in the family of nations. Israel could more focus its energies more on enhancing the well being of its people than on having to defend itself. And the threats to Israel’s existence have been ratcheted up some with an increasingly belligerent and possibly nuclear Iran. Furthermore, Israel feels for the first time that in President Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, they have practical, non-ideological partners whom they have developed a personal relationship, one more trusting, at least more than Yasser Arafat and Ismail Hanieh. Foreign Minister Livni said:
“Our hands are still outstretched in peace to the entire Arab and Muslim world without exception, including the Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Morocco and Indonesia.”
“The yearning, the goal and the vision that we seek to fulfill - peace with the Palestinians and with our other neighbors - this is the prize. We want to do it. “
The United States’ would benefit by regaining some of its gravitas after the debacle in Iraq. Resolving this crisis would resurrect American power, and those responsible would be rewarded by the American people and people all around the world for doing something that would be seen as constructive by all the parties effected.
The Palestinians are desperate for a victory. They have produced a society based upon violence, corruption, anarchy and thuggery. They have made their children into death machines and they live more miserably now than ever before. Their religious extremists promise them martyrdom and suffering. And that is all that they can offer them. Surely, many Palestinians will applaud the leadership that can bring about a Palestinian state. Hamas will produce nothing for the Palestinian people. And if the Palestinian Authority cannot achieve a state through negotiation with Israel, than they have no reason to exist. After losing Gaza, and barely holding on to the West Bank, this is do or die time for the Palestinian Authority. If they cannot produce, they will be gone, and there will be no hope left for a Palestinian state.
What has changed the most are the conditions in the Arab world. The Arab nations have seen the face of anarchy in Iraq, and it is not pretty. And they are far more threatened, existentially threatened, by a nuclear Shi’ia Iran than they are by tiny Israel. Iran has changed the entire equation. The Arab Sunni nations are desperate for an end to the conflict. Even Syria, the most belligerent of the Arab countries came to Annapolis. They didn’t applaud. They sat with a scowl. But they were there. Israel’s bombing of their budding nuclear facility might have convinced them that the crazy Israelis are serious about their survival. And they might get a heck of a lot more in return, including the Golan, if they are willing to engage with Israel and the peace process, instead of the Islamic extremism of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Ayatollahs. Very few people are winning anymore as this century long battle continues to rage.
So here we have it. I have reasons to be hopeful. Of course there are reasons to be wary and cautious. Only a fool will believe that this is easy, and that the agents of anarchy and extremism will hide their tails between their legs and scurry away because of a meeting in Annapolis and a few speeches that were proffered there. Only a fool will believe that the uncompromising religious passions that stoke these flames will magically disappear. But perhaps this might be a unique opportunity, this confluence of weakness, and weariness, which will motivate enemies to sit down together and make something good happen for themselves, even if it makes something good happen for their enemies. The fate of the Palestinians is tied up with the Israelis, and the fate of the Israelis is tied up with the Palestinians, and the Islamic world would itself benefit from putting this issue to bed. That doesn’t mean that it will happen---but it might.
There have been ages long conflicts throughout history—religious conflicts to boot. The French and the Germans, the Bosnians and Serbs, the Polish and the Russians, the Protestants and the Catholics, the Irish and the English—all of these conflicts enflamed people enough to hurt their children as they attempted to destroy their enemies. But all of them, all of these age-old conficts, eventually resolved. Conflicts between nations are too and too costly difficult to be eternal. They destroy, and when all is said and done, they produce no winners. Still, they somehow resolve themselves, some in a short while and some take far longer. But people do come to the realization that harmony serves them better than conflict. They always do. Maybe this is the moment we have been dreaming of. Let’s give the dreamers a chance and see what they can pull off. And if not, we can go back to the battlefield and gird up our loins and unsheathe our swords. We know how to do that. We are all very good at that. But now, maybe its time for the dreamers to have their turn, and see what comes up. Let’s see what becomes of our dreams.
Maybe this time they won’t kill the dreamer.
Shabbat Shalom
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