Rabbi Landsberg's Blog

You heard it here first...

I don't go for blowing Temple Emanu-El's trumpet, so to speak, but I cannot resist bringing your attention to David Brooks of the New York Times calling out Professor Moshe Halbertal's article in the New Republic as one of the finest magazine essays of the year. Brooks wrote in today's column:

After the Israeli incursion into Gaza, the U.N. produced the Goldstone Report, a tendentious and simple-minded account of Israeli tactics. But the report at least produced a sophisticated response, “The Goldstone Illusion,” by Moshe Halbertal in The New Republic.

Here’s a typical problem: Hamas fires rockets from apartment buildings. Israel calls the residents of the buildings to warn them a counterattack is coming. Hamas then escorts the residents to the roof, knowing Israeli drones will not fire on crowded roofs. Israel then deploys a “roof-knocking missile,” a weapon designed to scare people off roofs in preparation for an attack. Halbertal wrestles with the moral boundaries that should guide this kind of warfare.

For those who came to our scholar in residence Shabbaton this fall with Professor Halbertal, this is all old news. 

Without comment (yet), let me direct you to another recent article--different subject, different author, but also of deep relevance.  Here is Timothy Garton Ash's article on historical reckoning at Jedwabne and the deep recesses of the human soul:  As at Auschwitz, the gates of hell are built and torn down by human hearts.   This killing in Poland 1941 by Poles against their Polish Jewish neighbors during Nazi occupation has lost none of its power to shock.  It gives one pause before any easy assumptions we may make about man's essential goodness or any other trait. Reading this piece made me search for the words of the great Polish Jewish writer, intellectual and former dissident Adam Michnik whom I recalled writing something in the New York Times when the revelations of this massacre were made some eight years ago. I was gratified to find them and startled once again by their power--here is the piece.  I am a rabbi, not a moral philosopher, nor a politician, but I wholeheartedly endorse the words of Professor Ash when he remarks

what human beings are capable of when they find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. (And to be a small town in eastern Poland occupied first by the Soviets, then by the Nazis, then by a Soviet-imposed Polish communist regime, is almost a definition of wrong place, wrong time.) Anyone born in a luckier place and time must say: there, but for the grace of geography, go I.

I am also reminded that Zionism was a movement dedicated to the notion of never letting Jewish Geography be a game of chance...

It's been a long time...

It has been a while since I posted to this blog - more than a year, in truth . The reasons I stopped are  shrouded in mystery (otherwise known as preparations for the Chagim (High Holy Days) last year).   I say ashamnu.  I miss this route for contact with Temple Emanu-El folk; my days were often invigorated by a congregant's thoughtful response to a post.  I never cease to be amazed by our congregation's love of learning and the Jewish people.   So today I begin anew.   I have chosen a new design with blooming new flowers to both celebrate the relaunch and to hearten me against the snow outside.     

There is so much going on at Temple Emanu-El, and I  know not everyone can attend it all, given our busy lives.  A few weeks ago we were honoured to have Professor Moshe Halbertal of the Hebrew University, The Hartman Institute and NYU.  Professor Hartman spoke about many things:  forgiveness in Jewish tradition, and State and Religion in modern Israel.   But Professor Halbertal also spoke about the Goldstone Report and what it means for Israel.  His words are bracing and not always easy reading for those of us who hold Israel dear, but I recommend them to every Jew who wishes to posses a morally grounded but not demagogic understanding of the challenges facing the Israel Defense Forces today.   The presentation that Professor Halbertal made was a preview of a much remarked upon article he has since published in The New Republic - read it here. for an alternative view on Goldstone amongst many may I direct you to this view of Professor David Shulman also of the Hebrew university.