Tensions between Washington and Jerusalem reached new heights this week with the leaking of comments by officials in the White House describing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as all sorts of colorful adjectives including one a popular Israeli paper translated to mean 'coward', and this was putting it mildly.
The choice of words seems most striking.
It is in this week’s Torah portion we are introduced to the first Jew, Abraham. A peculiar suffix is givento his name; Avraham Ha’Ivri, Avraham, the Hebrew. He merited this name because at that time, society was deeply engrossed in idolatry and pagan worship. Abraham preached a belief in an invisible G-d and mocked the worship of graven images. The father of Monotheism was thus deemed different, strange and weird to everyone else for harboring such strange and radical beliefs-hence the term Ivri-‘of the other side’.
A Jew is a child of Abraham. To be a Jew is to be a Hebrew. To be a Hebrew is to have the courage to be different.
When Jacob saw his Egyptian grandkids, sons of Joseph, who were reared in a foreign culture and influenced by values inconsistent with Judaism, he blessed them to be like fish: 'veyidgu larov bekerev haaratez'. Just as fish have the G-d given ability to swim upstream (remember the Alaskan Salmon run?), Jews of Egypt (today in America) are blessed with the courage to be different. To march to a different beat and to believe in what others don’t.
Maybe this is why it takes a yiddisher kop to succeed in the stock market where one needs to do the opposite of everyone else to come out on top: sell when everyone’s buying and buy when everyone’s selling!
I can’t speak for Bibi, I’m not a politician. But each and every Jew is a Hebrew- from the other side of the river! Let us celebrate our heritage and identity by having the courage to stand up for what we believe in, even when it’s not popular to do so.
How often do I hear ‘Rabbi, we’re not that kind of Jews- we don’t practice’, or ‘My bubby would do that, but we’re just cultural Jews’.
I am proud to tell you that there are dozens of men in our city lay tefillin daily, you would never know who they are. Countless women are lighting Shabbat Candles tonight at 6:20pm. Others are even baking their own Challah and giving tzedaka in ways they never dreamed possible. Yes indeed, Palm Beach Gardens is filled with Hebrews!
Feeling a little self concious to live more Jewishly because no one in your country club does so?! Great!!!! That means you have the chance to prove yourself as a Hebrew!
So nu- What kind of Jew are you?
Do you justify those awful comments out of the White House or are you a Hebrew?
What have you done today that makes you a Hebrew?
Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Dovid and Chana Vigler