“Dreaming of Peace,” Rabbi Suzie Jacobson’s Sermon

November 24, 2023
Qabbalat Shabbat
Temple Israel of Boston

This week’s Torah portion, vayeitzei, is often remembered best as the story of Jacob laboring to marry the heart throb Rachel.

But this year, when reading our portion, my heart doesn’t linger on the love – instead, all I notice is the hatred between Laban and Jacob. A simmering, 20 year showdown between Laban, the patriarch and Jacob, the runaway.

Laban and Jacob spend the twenty years of this portion deceiving, manipulating and hating the other. Let’s stack up the drama:

First Laban –
Unlike his father, who betrothed Rebecca to Isaac because Abraham’s servant was nice to the camels, Laban draws the wayward Jacob into forced labor to unload both daughters in a two for 14 years deal.

Then, Laban gets another six years out of Jacob, and benefits from Jacob’s Diving blessing- Laban’s wealth grows – evidently being God’s chosen one means you are excellent with … livestock.

But what about Jacob? Is this birthright trickster morally clear? Is it a story of Laban the powerful abusing his itinerant nephew? Not quite:

Jacob wises up to Laban’s antics and devises a strange form of animal husbandry —

Jacob convinces Laban to give him all the speckled, striped and black headed sheep and goats as his pay. Then using some magical tactics involving moist almond and poplar tree rods stuck in the ground, he makes sure that all the strongest sheep and goats are born speckled and black headed. I kid you not …. Get it? Baby Goats are kids. Ok fine.

I only half understand this ancient magic – but Jacob gets his revenge and Laban is angry–

At the end of 20 years of servitude, Jacob is rich and Laban’s flocks are full of weaklings.

Then, deciding enough is enough and receiving a brief Divine vision to skedaddle, Jacob packs up his wives, children and many husky speckled animals without so much as a goodbye to Grandpa.

Laban is crushed. With his own sons in tow he pursues Jacob and family.

A fight ensues. Laban is hurt to not be given the chance to say goodbye to his kids and grandkids, Jacob argues that Laban is untrustworthy and he had no other choice.
In the end, their fight is unresolved, and they make a pact to part forever. The two erect a pillar,
They say:
“I will not cross to you past this marker
You will not cross to me past this marker” (Gen 31:52)
They will never cross paths again.

This year, I don’t read this as a simple story of the good Jacob trouncing the corrupt Laban –

I see two family members spend twenty years advancing their own agendas without any compassion or understanding of the other. I see an uncle and a nephew, a father and a son in law who ultimately find no other solution aside from permanent separation. And honestly, neither puts any work into mending the breach.

Perhaps drawing a line in the sand is manageable for two warring individuals in an ancient landscape. In our world, such a solution is impossible.

The war in Israel and Gaza is never far from my heart these days.
As the trauma and death toll mount, I find myself studying the failed peace process at Camp David more than 20 years ago. Since then, we have had years of increasingly right wing, pro-settlement Israeli leadership disinterested in pursuing peace. We have had years of increasingly corrupt and ineffective PLO leadership and years of corrupt and violent Hamas leadership. This status quo makes any peace process emerging from this conflict feel very unlikely.

And unlike Jacob and Laban, the Israelis and Palestinians cannot just draw a line in the sand and go their separate ways. If line drawing was difficult in 2000, it’s even more difficult now. These are not two individuals, but two peoples who live in a small land, each with a history of causing violence to the other. Israelis are traumatized.Palestinians are traumatized, they are ALL in so much pain. And – so are we – Where will we go from here?

October 7th and all that has followed has shattered my heart as I know it has shattered yours. But my point tonight is not to leave you more shattered.

I want to ask us this question – Can we imagine an end to this conflict? Can we imagine a world where Israelis and Palestinians both live in safety?

We sing for peace, we pray for peace, but can we imagine it?

I want to lift up the story of someone who died on October 7th at the hands of Hamas. Vivian Silver imagined peace and love, and she died from violence and hatred.

Vivian was born in Winnipeg. She first visited Israel in 1968 as a student and returned home as both a committed Zionist and committed to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. She made aliyah in 1974 and began working for women’s rights within Israel.
In 1990 Vivivan moved with her family to kibbutz Be’eri and there she sought out relationships with the local Bedouin community and Gazans. She served as executive director for the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development (NISPED). Vivian worked within the kibbutz to organize programs to help Gazans, such as job trainings, and ensured that Gazan construction workers at the kibbutz were paid fairly. She then co-founded the Arab-Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation. She won peace awards, she worked on cross-cultural projects, she founded or was on the board of half a dozen peace orgs. When she retired in 2014, she kept busy by transporting Gazan patients to Jerusalem for treatment and founding yet another peace organization – Women Wage Peace, an interfaith, grassroots organization. On October 4th, three days before she died, she was with 1500 Israeli and Palestinian women at a peace rally in Jerusalem.

Vivian’s long and inspiring fight for justice was cut short by the conflict she dedicated her life to end.
Her death leaves us with this question: What would Vivian say about our prospects for peace now? Her son Yonatan was interviewed last week and shared this: “She would always see peace as the only viable option,” “Because the only way for people to have safe lives, and in times of peril and pain, (is) the fact that we can overlook our own pain and not turn to the way of vengeance, but to understand that the only way to do so … is through reconciliation.”

This is hard to take in, in a moment so unbelievably raw. Vivian’s death robs us of her voice, we’ll never know what she would teach us today – But her life and legacy leave her own child with a powerful model of hope and possibility. If he can say this, perhaps we can listen.

In this moment when our Judaism demands that we care about the safety of Israel and the millions of Jews at peril within her borders, in this moment when our morality demands that we care about the Palestinian people and the millions of innocent civilians at peril – Our shattered hearts are pulled in so many directions.
I must believe that what is shattered and broken can be mended.
Instead of looking at the vitriol on social media I look to groups like Shomrim and Shomrot, Safeguarders of Our Shared Home – a pro-democracy movement based in Jerusalem that is holding public gatherings and activities to voice a spirit of hope and healing.

Or … Standing Together – a grassroots movement mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel to actively work for peace.

Or.. the New Israel fund who is working to bring Humanitarian aid, safeguard human and civil rights, bolster Jewish-Arab relations and provide an alternative vision for Israel’s future.

These groups dream and work for something more lasting and sustainable than Jacob and Laban’s line in the sand.

This Shabbat there is a temporary pause in the war as some hostages are saved from harm, some aid is allowed to enter Gaza and some female and minor Palestinian prisoners are released from Israeli jails.

Emphasis on temporary, and some – there are still too many hostages held captive far from home, too many lives shattered, too many questions about the future.

We can take this pause, as a true Shabbat rest, a moment to partially heal what is broken and imagine a world beyond the suffering of the present day.

What would it have looked like for Jacob and Laban to find a resolution that didn’t tear their relationship apart? What does it mean for us to allow Vivian Silver’s memory to inspire and bless us?

I don’t have answers to complex political and military questions, but I refuse to believe that shattered hearts and shattered lives are the eternal status quo.

The war will soon resume, and someday, god willing, it will end. Along the way there will be much to discuss, and even more to heal. What does it mean for our shattered hearts to keep alive the hope for true peace? How do we, as Jews, recognize that Israel’s story is our story? Even thousands of miles away, what is our role to play? How do we expand our scope of moral concern to find the humanity in one another? How do we find compassion amidst the suffering? These are the essential questions of our time.