Toledot 5774

Let’s do an experiment. How many people know who Baruch Goldstein was? I suspect many. Baruch Goldstein was the American-born Israeli religious extremist who perpetrated a massacre in a mosque, in the city of Hebron. That was 1994, and we still remember the crime, the outrage, the tragedy.
And let’s do another experiment. How many people here know who Abed and Ghassan Muhammad Abu Jamal were? I suspect they are less known to us than Baruch Goldstein. Abed and Ghassan Muhammad Abu Jamal are the names of the two murderers that a few days ago, in a synagogue in Jerusalem, slaughtered four Rabbis, and killed one Druze policeman, and wounded several other worshippers, among whom two, very seriously.
Now I have a question. How come that the name of a Jewish criminal, who committed a crime twenty years ago, is more famous than the names of Palestinian criminals, whose crime has been committed only a few days ago?
Is a mosque different from a synagogue? No: they are both religious buildings. And for the record they are very similar, in both places, there are no images, for example.
Is killing Muslims in a mosque far more serious than killing Jews in a synagogue? And is a mosque in Hebron different from a synagogue in Jerusalem?
And let me ask another question. What’s the difference between Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza, and Israeli civilians killed in Jerusalem? There must be a difference. Otherwise why, throughout the whole summer, did the BBC show bodies of dead Palestinians, (some of them happened to be killed by the Syrian Army, and the news was about Gaza, but these are minor details), while the bodies of the Jewish victims of the Palestinian massacre, were reputed not worth showing. Actually, a few days ago, a BBC reporter brutally silenced a minister, a member of a government of a sovereign State, Naftali Bennet, and reproached him because he was showing one photo of one victim of the massacre in Jerusalem.
How come, that the violence towards the Palestinians is always more serious, more tragic, more violent, than the violence that Jews suffer, generally by the hands of Muslims and Palestinians? Are the Guardian readers, the BBC viewers too sensitive, too impressionable, and for this reason the BBC, the Guardian, whoever runs the media, have chosen to hide the spectacle of murdered Jews, not to make our suffering public?
Tell me, please, is our blood less red than their blood?
Of course, I know the answer. We’re the bad guys. We are the settlers. We are the coloniser. We are the oppressors, they are oppressed and they can do no wrong. Remember, we stole their land, therefore we should not complain when they kill us.
A journalist on Haaretz (where else?) had even noted that Har Nof, where the massacre took place, is not far from the infamous Deir Yassin, where Jewish paramilitary groups killed Palestinians in 1948, as if this makes any justification. When you read that article you cannot but empathise with the poor dispossessed Palestinians who had been waiting since 1948 to have justice, and then, because they have not had any justice, (you see, no one talks about Deir Yassin, nowadays), poor fellows, what else can they do but murder four Rabbis in a synagogue. It’s a matter of justice, after all. But no one seems to remember that Hebron, where Baruch Goldstein committed that crime in 1994 is the same Hebron where, on 1929 an Arab mob killed 90 Jews, injured a larger number and raped an incredibly high number of women and girls.
As always, the violence against the Jews has no place in the mainstream narrative. Why?
Well, I am afraid we have to face the reality. There are people, pious and religious people, well-meaning people, idealistic people, who think that the violence against the Jews is somehow just. That hurting Jews, marginalising Jews, silencing Jews, and killing Jews is a way to put in place a kind of historical justice. So we Jews must not complain.
Probably the problem begins with the narrative in this week’s Torah portion. The very famous story of how Jacob, the younger of two twins, acquires his birthright that his brother Esau was expecting for himself.
The story is well known: Isaac, the father, is on his deathbed. His sight had dimmed. Rebecca instructs Jacob to put on Esau’s clothes, so Isaac blesses Jacob, depriving Esau of his birthright.
According to the Christian understanding of this story, Jacob, who later became Israel and a Patriarch of the Jewish people, had actually cheated his brother. He had been shrewd, astute, and clever, and in this way, he had put his hands on something, which does not belong to him: blessings, possessions, and maybe land.
In the Christian reading of this episode (and our society reads these stories through a Christian prism), Jacob, Israel, the father of the Jewish people is dishonest, he is the bad guy and Esau, poor Esau, he may be violent, but is a good fellow, and reacts harshly because he had been unjustly deprived of his own rights.
But we read the story in a different way. We do a closer reading of the text. Because, you know, it’s not a minor detail in this story that their mother, Rebecca, had the two children in her womb for nine months, and she felt they were fighting each other, but then when they were born they were together, with Jacob holding on the heel of Esau. They were connected. It’s not a minor detail in this story that the same mother, who knew of that connection only too well, wanted Jacob to wear Esau’s clothes, so that Jacob actually becomes Esau, at least for Isaac. And it’s not a minor detail in this story that Isaac asks so many times: “Who are you?” “Are you Esau?” But then, in the final moment, when he wants to kiss him, he does not call him Esau anymore, but just beni, my son.
These are not minor details. These passages (and many others, because in the Torah nothing is casual) are there to tell us that this is not, purely and simply, a story in which someone steals something from someone else, no.
It’s a story of a difficult relationship between two difficult brothers, in a difficult family, which is close-kin and difficult like Jewish families usually are. It is a story of connection. It is a story in which two brothers, while fighting each other, still dream to make peace at a certain point, in a future that both of them see as terribly distant. It’s a story of boundaries to be negotiated. It’s a story of pain and suffering, it’s a story of narratives that reclaim to be heard. In these narratives, there is the connection of Jacob to the land of Israel, and to his rights, our rights, to live and prosper. Go and tell the BBC.

22 November 2014