Whattaboutery, Shooting Messengers and Ecological Disaster

Here’s a classic Rabbinic tale

Midrash Tanhuma

Said Rav Huan in the name of Rav Yossi, God warned the generation of the flood about the oncoming flood for 120 years in the hope they would change their ways.

But they didn’t so God said to Noah, ‘Make an ark of cedar wood.’ Noah got up and planted cedar trees.

And the people asked him, ‘what are those cedars for?’ And he said, ‘God wants to bring a flood on the world.’ And they laughed at him.

And Noah watered the cedars and they grew, and the people asked him, ‘What are you doing?’ And he answered said God wants to bring a flood on the world. And they laughed at him.

And eventually he cut the trees down and planed them. And they asked him, ‘What are you doing?’ And he answered them. And since they didn’t change their ways, God immediately brought the flood.

--

There seems to be something in the human psyche which doesn’t like to change and doesn’t like to admit change is underway. We find it easier to mock those who are warning of the truth than to accept their truth. And even if change is acoming, we feel, we are going to be able to resist it.

These are very old stories.

--

Talmud Sanhedrin

When Noah rebuked them and spoke words to them tough as fiery flints, they mocked him. They said to him, ‘Old man, what is this ark for?’

He replied, ‘The Holy Blessed One will bring a flood upon you.’

Ha! ‘A flood of what,’ they jeered? ‘if God brings the Flood up from the earth, we have iron plates with which we can cover the earth! if from heaven, we have a substance called ‘akob’ which can ward it off.”[1]

--

Technology is extraordinary, and we clearly def need tech advance to get us out of this hole, but it’s not going to be enough. Indeed somewhere in the way in which technology gets monetized, and we get tempted into buying more and more, it might even be that the promise we can build our way out of this mess with more and more consumption is going to get us into even greater trouble than we were in in the first place.

That, of course, is the lesson of the tale we read at the end of the Parasha.

Faced with a challenge the humans of the generation of the Tower of Babel, turned to technology – let us build a tower, they said.

As if a tall building could be the solution to the problems of their lives.

And they succeeded in building a tall building, but didn’t succeed in taking due account of their lives.

And the building eventually crumbled, as buildings eventually do.

The truth is that change needs to be radical and we need to be honest about the scale of change required.

There are, of course, prophets who will tell us of the damage to the oceans and the glaciers and the fragile systemic nature of our planet’s ecosystem.

And just like the prophets of the Biblical period – we’ve largely ignored them – that is to say unless we’ve mocked or blamed them.

There’s an amazing moment in Shelach Lecha when two of the twelve spies sent into the Land of Israel come back with a perspective that is entirely accurate – but the people around threaten to stone them.

There’s poor old Elisha, wandering along the road –

וּנְעָרִ֤ים קְטַנִּים֙ יָצְא֣וּ מִן־הָעִ֔יר וַיִּתְקַלְּסוּ־בוֹ֙ וַיֹּ֣אמְרוּ ל֔וֹ עֲלֵ֥ה קֵרֵ֖חַ עֲלֵ֥ה קֵרֵֽחַ׃

– we’ve been shooting messengers for a very long time.

Elisha gets his own back he calls on a bear to come and mangle the mocking kids.

Prophets often get to be proved right, eventually.

It’s always been easy to attack the prophets for their indelicate ways and blunt language. But it hasn’t mean they were wrong.

We need to stop criticizing climate activists for the blunt=nature of their presentations.

And we need to change.

It’s one of the great truths of humanity – that change is possible.

Our most powerful and well-attended Festivals celebrate the possibility of human change. The entire message of Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur is that even if change is hard, and even if we have been here before and promised to change, and slid right back to where we were just moments ago, this time it can be different.

Rambam – see yourself and the entire world balanced.

And then, Pirkei Avot, Mitzvah Goreret Mitzah, transformational change can come.

Here’s my top tip for allowing change to happen.

Pay no attention to anyone who takes pride in suggesting a contradiction in our actions.

How can you say eco matters are important when you just … I don’t know, left a light switch on.

Similarly, pay no attention to the whataboutery merchants – the sort of people who, if they hear you are recycling want to know challenge you because you aren’t, I don’t know, only eating local seasonal food produce.

Both these kinds of people – and I might be one of these kinds of people sometimes too, should be disregarded.

There’s a lovely line in Baba Metzia – Reish Lakish says

קְשׁוֹט עַצְמְךָ וְאַחַר כָּךְ קְשׁוֹט אֲחֵרִים.״

Sort yourself out, then afterwards, worry about sorting anyone else out.

If you are trying to do better, if you’ve found a first step – take it. It will tip the world, it will tip you, it will make the next step easier.

Change doesn’t come all at once. Change is always messy, inelegant, contradictory. But only way we ever improve. Our unevenness needs to be welcomed.

To those standing tall, raising their heads over parapets where it is so easy to be attacked - I salute you. Keep fighting, keep campaigning, keep doing that most Jewish thing of refusing to give up on us, even as we fail.

And as for the voices that mock – there have always been voices that mock. There always will be.

Those who mock might not deserve to be mangled by a bear – but they don’t deserve our attention. The rumours of the flood are very real and we have a world to mend,

Shabbat Shalom

[1] Sanhedrin 108b

A Response to the Green Party’s Anti-Zionist Policy, An Open Letter

 

I am a Zionist; that is to say, I believe in the right of Jews to live in self-determination, in peace, in the Land of Israel to which we have been bound for millennia.

I also believe in a free Palestine; that is to say, the right of Palestinians to live, in self-determination, in peace, on land to which they have also been bound for millennia.

It’s not going to be easy, neither practically nor emotionally, for both ‘sides’ to get what they wish. But I don’t accept these statements are either mutually exclusive or beyond the realm of possibility. In fact, I believe the only way to have either is to have both.

Some self-describe as ‘Zionists’ or supporters of a ‘free Palestine,’ for whom the statement they adopt requires, either explicitly or implicitly, an eradication of the humanity of the ‘other’, or worse, some kind of ethnic cleansing. There are certainly those on both, supposed, sides of this too-often lethal argument who seek to deny that either Jews or Palestinians have meaningful connection to the land of their ancestors. This seems preposterous, again, in both directions.

It’s heartbreaking that voices of performative dehumanisation and exclusion have come to seem so popular in these extreme and populist times. And I’m saddened to feel that the Anti-Zionist policy, adopted by the Green Party, falls into the category of this kind of posturing, heartbreaking public statement, both in its own terms, and even more so in terms of the failure to show empathy for both Jews living in Israel, victims of despicable violence perpetuated in the name of ‘Palestinian resistance,’ and Jews living in this country, for whom a prayer in the direction of Jerusalem, or for the sake of Jerusalem, now stands to be condemned as racist by a party they might otherwise support or find holding the mandate to represent their democratic interests.

Jonathan Freedland, writing in the Guardian, perfectly captures the problem with the policy’s claim that it is not antisemtic.

[The policy] reveals a wilful misunderstanding of Jews and Judaism. Social media has been full in recent days of supposedly progressive non-Jews telling Jews what Judaism is and what it is not – with an arrogance that, I suspect, they would find unacceptable in a majority group addressing any other minority – and the same error recurs. Breezily, we are told that Zionism is merely a political ideology, wholly separate from Judaism, which means, happily, that one can denounce the former without expressing any animus towards the latter. If only it were so simple.

It’s possible to articulate an anti-Zionist position without being antisemitic. This wasn’t it. A rabbinic colleague, writing as "Lev Saul", a self-described “activist on the Jewish radical left since childhood,” has analysed clearly the historical connection between the language of the Green Party policy and century-old Stalinist and related antisemitic attack. I commend his article.

These aren’t just matters of historical interest. These kinds of statements and the culture which organises towards them, is used deliberately to shift the ‘Overton window’ of acceptable discourse about and actions towards Jews in this country. They range from the extreme, and thankfully rare – murderous violence- to the almost daily – verbal abuse, loss of professional opportunity and the like. The thing that I see and feel most often is a sort of social recoil as Jews become ‘non-grata’ in liberal circles.

These waters are intemperate and nasty. There is a sense that a distaste for the abuse of Palestinians’ rights in the land of Israel permits and even mandates a nastiness directed in increasing circles towards any Jew who shows any empathy with even a basic, non-racist and non-supremacist, empathy for a Jewish state.

Rabbi "Lev Saul" wrote;

A couple of weeks ago, my suburban Jewish community was baselessly accused of being at the heart of a Zionist plot to control the Green Party. Members of my synagogue’s council (most of whom are not even Greens) were doxxed. I felt many emotions since my congregants were accused of being part of a conspiracy. There is fear: for what it means to have members suddenly on this watch-list. There is bafflement: that people whose values I share, some of whom I have protested with for human rights, should stand charged with such offences.

We have reached a point where there are British Jews, including members of the community I serve, who share that they no longer feel safe in this society. My sense is that this dis-ease is not principally driven even by the murderous attacks in Heaton Park or Golders Green, but rather the social poison that seeps out from the public performances of policies and platforms such as that passed by the Green Party conference.

Freedland, in his recent Guardian article, analyses the difficulties in claiming, as the (Jewish) leader of the Green Party has suggested, that Jews could be ‘left alone’ if they (we) denounce Israel with sufficient condemnatory clarity and I don’t disagree with his analysis in that opinion piece, but it is – as Freedland knows – complex. I think it is reasonable for someone who wishes to know whether a Jew’s connection to the land and State of Israel is or is not racist or ethno-supremacist (and what a Shanda – embarrassment - it is that this is even a question) to expect of a Jew, either in Israel or this country, to show an awareness of how Jewish self-determination has impacted Palestinians. For what it’s worth, I expect the same from those who articulate a ‘pro-Palestinian’ position. Does such a person, in Palestine or beyond, show an awareness of the pain caused by those professing an affinity to Palestinians towards Jews?

If a person wishing to speak on this issue is capable of expressing something that feels genuine, I would argue, it would behove us to give ear, try to learn, find points of meeting, growth and a future that is free of violence for all. If, however, the voice is one only of bombast, accusation and a denial of responsibility, I’m not sure what is to be gained by even seeking engagement. Part of the problem of the Green Party policy is its blindness to that reality – October 7^th isn’t mentioned, no Israeli is considered a good-Israeli etc. I mean, I’ll talk to, almost, anybody, but I’ve spent enough time banging my head against walls to know when I’m wasting effort that could be spent more profitably on healing.

There is an annoying insistence on ‘whataboutery’ in our current approach to public discourse. You say anything about how much pain Israel has suffered and get ‘whatabout the Palestinians’ and vice versa. It’s easy to discount almost every statement about the situation in Israel / Palestine for a failure to sufficiently invoke one thing or another. We need to be gentle in allowing partial acknowledgements from those who wish to show they do indeed understand that this is complex and pain is felt on both sides. Perhaps we can lift a trick from the extremists – what about a good kind of ‘dog whistling’? Extremists use dog-whistling to let others know what side they stand on. We – protectors of empathy and demanding of complexity – should be able to get away with something similar.

So, for what it’s worth, I am a Zionist, that is to say, I believe in the right of Jews to live in self-determination, in peace, in the Land of Israel to which we have been bound for millennia. I also believe in a free Palestine, that is to say, the right of Palestinians to live, in self-determination, in peace, in land to which they have also been for millennia. Bringing both hopes to reality isn’t easy, but I believe the only way to have either is to have both.

As Theodor Zeldin, the great historian of ideas (born in ‘Palestine’ or should that be ‘pre-state Israel’) wrote in the conclusion of his magisterial An Intimate History of Humanity;

It is in the power of everybody, with a little courage, to hold out a hand to someone different, to attempt to increase, even by a tiny amount, the quantity of humanity in the world. But it is careless to do so without remembering how previous efforts have failed. History, with its endless procession of passers-by has so far largely been a chronicle waste. But next time two people meet, the result could be different. That is the origin of anxiety, but also of hope and hope is the origin of humanity.^[1]

On Heroes and Humanity

 

Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, was interviewed on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning. He spoke of the heroism of the Indian pilot, Captain Smit Machchhar – may he heal speedily – and passengers on that fateful flight who took such heroic measures to save lives; the woman who raised the alarm, the plumber who dragged the co-pilot away and pulled up on the yoke because he had watched a TV show about distressed planes, the man who …

The interview concluded and segued into news of the passing of Dame Ester Rantzen – founder of Childline and Silverline and consumer rights hero and campaigner on so many issues (including assisted death, about which I take a very different view).

The producers played a clip of her greatest TV moment (the greatest TV moment I’ve ever seen, I’ve watched it scores of times and always cry). Rantzen, invites anyone in the audience at a recording of That’s Life!, to rise if they owe their lives to the retired stockbroker - Nicholas, subsequently Sir Nicholas, Winton. The entire gallery rise in honour of the diminutive and utterly heroic man who saved Jewish children from the Nazis.

There are heroes in our midst – human beings, ‘just normal’ human beings, who are revealed, in moments of awful and awesome importance, to be willing to do things that are, and deserve to be remembered decades after their death.

And yet, it feels society isn’t really up for heroics at the moment, thank you very much. In part, surely, that’s because there have been too many clay-footed pseudo-heroes, subsequently revealed to be frauds or worse and we are all, rightly I think, sceptical. We Don’t Need Another Hero, is, certainly from the mouth of Tina Turner, a reasonable reaction to the false Messiahs and self-serving charlatans and crooks of our time.

Moreover, and I think this is the major part, we seem to be in a time where there is something approximating to a crisis in humanity. The challenges of the world feel so real and so significant, that there is a kind of Yeiush gnawing at our human souls. Who of us can cool the overheating planet, bring peace to the Middle East, tame the dangers of AI? And so, perhaps, we just fold inwards a little, giving up on tasks that seem so beyond our ability.

A current dataset: I’ve been reading my way through the Booker Long (and now Short) List of, supposedly, the very best contemporary fiction. I’ve been struck by the number of anti-heroic protagonists – people who take steps away from leaving their mark on the world. I’ve seen critics write about a crisis of masculinity in the nominated books, but it’s not just the men. Helen of Nowhere, Dilara in The Renovation and Laura in The Palm House join the King in May We Feed the King and the man in The Black Bag in the books shortlisted as protagonists of books, but barely even protagonists of their own lives. These characters evoke empathy as they look at the possibilities of being heroic and … decline. But it’s not enough.

BMakom SheAin Anashim, Histadel Lehiyot Ish – taught Hillel (Avot 2:5), in a place without humanity, strive to be a human.

It’s the best advice. Not only does it create a possibility of saving plummeting planes, abused children and those who would have otherwise perished in Nazi-fuelled abominations, but it’s pointing at the very essence of who we are and who we are called to be – humans! These heroes, the real heroes, aren’t doing it to fatten their bank balances or for the fame, but because it feels compulsory. Their heroism wasn’t pre-meditated or driven by ulterior motives. They felt obligated to use the gift of their existence to be worthy of the gift of their existence. Thank God!

There is a wonderful idea in Mishnah Sanhedrin (5:4) about the nature of human beings, each created in the image of God, but each unique – so unlike a coin minted by a King of flesh and blood, where each coin comes out the same. That’s the source of the ineffable, desperate significance of each human life. It’s also teleological – it speaks to our purpose. When Mordechai attempts to persuade Queen Ester to go to the King and tell him that the Jews are to be slaughtered, he says, “Who knows, maybe it is for this precise moment that you became royal.” Rav Kook avails himself of this remarkable verse in a comment on a line in the Yom Kippur liturgy. “Before I was created, there was nothing in the boundless history of the Universe, that required my existence. Since I was not created until now, it is a sign, that I was not, until now, worthy of existence. I am only needed “for this very moment.” For now, the very moment has arrived for me to fix some element of complete reality has arrived. If only I could dedicate my actions towards this purpose of my creation, I could say “here I am – Hineini.”

We are called to respond to the moment with the answer, “here I am.” And the problem with training ourselves away from an interest in heroes is not merely that good people will die and bad people will triumph, but we will fail to be the human we are created to be.

May we all be saved from having to make the brutal decisions faced by those on that plane, and in so many other arenas where heroism has been needed and shown. But may we not back down if we are called.