|
Legal as the sign toting is, it’s a crass ploy.
The small group of protestors consists of Jewish and
non-Jewish Palestinian sympathizers who choose to
desecrate the holiness of Shabbat with exaggerated
slogans and wild assumptions. The group contends the
Israeli occupation, checkpoints and anti-terror barriers
“are antithetical to the precepts of Judaism and to the
memory of those who perished in one of the worst of the
20th century’s genocides.”
So reads a leaflet circulated by the Jewish Witnesses
for Peace. The group holds sidewalk vigils with five to
14 picketers each Shabbat outside Beth Israel, a
470-family synagogue. Skirmishes have been minor.
The leaflet condemns what it calls Israel’s killing
of a Palestinian family walking across the family field,
confinement of Palestinians to ghettos and demolition of
Palestinian homes tied to suicide bombers. “Is the
uprooting of a farmer’s olive trees on his land, and
destroying his livelihood, justified somewhere in the
Torah or Talmud?” it asks.
Ignored is the fact that Israelis are fighting to
survive against Yasser Arafat-prodded Islamists bent on
claiming the Jewish homeland as theirs.
Beth Israel’s Eileen Freed, program coordinator of
the Sol Drachler Program in Jewish Communal Leadership
at the University of Michigan, eloquently sized up the
protest: “They even had the extremely poor taste to
protest during the High Holidays, the holiest time of
the Jewish year — representing themselves as Jews who
care about Jewish law and practice, with the implication
that others don’t and making a poor attempt to use
Jewish values to explain their values.”
Israel has gone too far in some cases in response to
46 months of Palestinian terror that has killed almost
1,000 Israel residents and visitors and has maimed
thousands more. But to be told, week after week, that
you’re “praying for Palestinian genocide” when you enter
the synagogue on Shabbat morning is extreme. I don’t see
value or purpose by continuing what congregant Dr. Barry
Gross calls a protracted siege.
Picketing a synagogue at a political lecture or board
meeting is one thing. Doing so on Shabbat, and
punctuating it by asking passing drivers to honk their
horns, is something different — and demeaning.
This is a moral matter, not a legal one.
Take it from Freed: “As an American, I am in favor of
this group’s free speech. But as a Jew who attempts to
separate the Sabbath from the activities, politics and
business of the week, I find them offensive and
misguided.
“I am concerned about the plight of the Palestinians
and pray for peace with them. But I am unswerving in my
support for the people of Israel.”
I was taken by Beth Israel’s plight after reading Dr.
Gross’ Aug. 8 e-mail note where he called the
unrelenting protests on Shabbat “antithetical to the
American ideal of free religious expression.” He’s a
professor in the Department of Radiology at U-M.
It’s egregious to mock the sanctity of the Sabbath
day through the transparency of a political protest
steeped in a simplistic look at a complicated conflict
hardened over the centuries.
Speaking for Beth Israel, here was a thoughtful,
undeterred congregant holding to the non-confrontational
principle espoused by the synagogue board and rabbi —
and helping turn frustration into a positive for the
people of Israel.
A Satisfying Gesture
With pride, Dr. Gross told me about last week’s
kickoff of a grassroots coalition forming to counter the
Jewish Witnesses for Peace — SPURN (Synagogue Protest
Unacceptable! Respond Now).
SPURN is giving weekly donations to one of Israel’s
most important human service agencies, Magen David Adom,
the national emergency medical and rescue service.
Pledges typically are tied to the number of protestors
each week, but also include spontaneous gifts.
MDA was chosen because it is nonjudgmental and
embraces all Israeli victims of violence and terror. It
was not an idle choice. Its lifelines should satisfy
congregants wherever they are politically. SPURN has
raised about $400 so far.
“We want to unite a cross-section of us,” Dr. Gross
said, “to demonstrate we will not sit passively while
enemies attempt to impede the practice of our
faith.”
This is not a congregation of only right-wingers;
some want settlements gone and sacrifices made to secure
Israel and create the climate for Palestinian statehood.
Even Israel’s hard-line prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is
seeing the merit of a cogent withdrawal from Gaza and of
rerouting the West Bank barrier around West Bank
population centers.
But anyone who sees a call for Palestine and against
Zionism as anything but a call to disenfranchise Israel
is being duped. Dr. Gross is right: Anyone can be
targeted from “this affront to simple human decency”
unless religious and civic leaders, in Ann Arbor and
elsewhere, rise up in outrage. The stain of hostility
could easily spread to surrounding areas, including
metro Detroit.
SPURN pledges are coming and support is growing.
What I especially admire is Beth Israel’s will to
stand with Israel no matter how intimidating the
protestors.
Dr. Gross put it well: “I hope SPURN convinces the
protestors that their picketing is counterproductive.
But ultimately, I am not concerned with their response
to this campaign.
“Instead, I want the campaign to move forward because
of what it says about us.”
He added, “I am proud of what I see as a real success
story.”
So am I.
It illustrates the power of forced ingenuity.
| 
