A letter to the rabbi of a local congregation

I just sent this letter to the rabbi of a local congregation regarding the sermon he gave from the pulpit this past Shabbat morning, which focused on the war Israel had just started with Iran. Not a fan, 0/10, would not recommend.

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Rabbi [name elided],

I don’t know if you noticed, but I was one of the people who walked out in the middle of your Shabbat morning sermon.

My father is a rabbi—you’ve probably read a prayer he wrote at multiple funerals where you’ve officiated!—and I have thus been taught since early childhood that you never, ever walk out in the middle of the rabbi’s sermon. What could the rabbi possibly say that would earn them that level of disrespect?

I’m sorry to say that you answered that question.

Let’s start with your gleeful, ebullient praise of Israel for starting a war. You didn’t bother to make any pretense that Israel was responding to an attack. No, you made it quite clear and explicit that you know Israel started the war and you consider that a good thing.

Since when do moral people glorify war? Since when is glorification of death and destruction a Jewish value?

Moving on, let’s talk about your buffoonish recitation of Israeli propaganda. “It was the most successful military option in Israeli history, more successful than all previous operations put together.” What kind of nonsense is this?

But you were just getting started. “What’s really amazing is that they killed these generals and nuclear scientists without killing anyone else!” Let me ask you a question, rabbi… When a bomb drops on an apartment building in which a general or nuclear scientist is sleeping, do you think it miraculously harms only them, that no one else is injured or killed?

Before you started your sermon, there were already many reliable news reports about civilians being killed in the attacks, about apartment buildings being destroyed. What does it say about this war, that you feel it’s necessary to tell facially absurd lies to justify it?

As you continued your sermon, you did at last say that there were some reservations in Israel about the war. I said to myself, oh, good, this is the point where he is going to acknowledge that there are human beings suffering on both sides, Judaism values every life, and war is always a tragedy for all involved. Alas, I was wrong. Apparently your biggest concerns are that supermarket shelves in Israel are temporarily bare and a young Jewish bride had to postpone her wedding. Oh, the humanity!

That was the point at which I should have stood up and walked out, but a lifetime of conditioning not to disrespect rabbis, even as they stand in front of you and speak words that bring shame and disrepute upon the Jewish people, held me rooted to my seat. Until, that is, you felt compelled to up the ante by lying about Jewish history and tradition to support your thesis.

“No one in Jewish history knows where ‘Azazel’ is,” you said. “No one knows where the second goat is sent. What we do know,” you confidently continued, “is that the goat for Azazel survives even as the goat for God is slaughtered and sacrificed.”

What are you talking about? We know exactly what happened to the goat “for Azazel.” It’s spelled out quite explicitly in Mishna Yoma Chapter 6. It’s also explained in most machzorim. How can anyone who has been a rabbi for 30 years not know this? Here, let me quote it for you:

What did the one designated to dispatch the goat do there? He divided a strip of crimson into two parts, half of the strip tied to the rock, and half of it tied between the two horns of the goat. And he pushed the goat backward, and it rolls and descends. And it would not reach halfway down the mountain until it was torn limb from limb. The one designated to dispatch the goat came and sat under the roofing of the last booth until it grows dark and only then went home. And from what point are the garments of the man rendered impure, as it is stated that he is impure and his clothes requires immersion? From the moment he emerges outside the wall of Jerusalem. Rabbi Shimon says: His clothes are rendered impure only from the moment that he pushes the goat from the cliff.

What happened to the goat “for Azazel” is that it died, rabbi. It died just like the goat “for God” did, and it died a much more brutal and painful death.

Are you absurdly ignorant, or do you put yourself on a higher madreiga than the sages of the Mishna, such that you can simply reject their words and our history to make a point during a sermon millennia after those words were written?

This was the point at which I finally found the inner strength to know that any disrespect I showed by walking out on you mid-sermon was well-deserved.

In closing I want to make three final points:

1. Your sermon made it clear that people like me, people who do not glorify violence and do not give Israel carte blanche to do whatever it wants to whoever it wants in the name of “security,” are not welcome at your shul. Congratulations, nicely done.
2. It is hard to understand how you and other American rabbis can complain that it is antisemitic to equate Judaism with support of Israel, when you war-monger for Israel during your sermon, preach that Jews are obligated to support Israel, and end your service with Hatikvah. It’s not antisemites who are equating being Jewish with supporting Israel’s actions; it’s you.
3. American Jewish leaders have been all in a dither for decades about the demographic shift of young Jews becoming disaffected with synagogue life. People like you are what’s driving that disaffection. They were taught that social justice and tikkun olam are Jewish values, they recognize that what Israel is doing is incompatible with those values, and they feel neither welcomed by nor interested in belonging to communities which don’t.

I’m sure sermons like yours play well with [prominent, rich, right-wing congregant] and [other prominent, rich, right-wing congregant]. I’m equally certain they play rather poorly with God. I hope you sleep well at night; I certainly don’t, knowing what Israel is doing in my name.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Kamens