Lions Of The Jordan
Sermon for Yom Kippur 5779
September 19, 2018
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
When I was in Israel this summer, I got hooked on a television series, a ten-episode documentary about a group of young men and women serving in a special Israel Defense Force combat battalion.
What makes it special is that it is a co-ed unit, among the first to be deployed by Israel. The unit is called Arayot Ha-Yarden, Hebrew for “Lions of the Jordan,” and its assignment is to patrol the Jordan Valley, which forms the frontier between Israel and Jordan. Though the two countries are ostensibly at peace, the region is never quiet. The area is infested with drug and weapons smugglers, as well as Islamic extremists whose loyalty is to the Hamas terrorist organization.
Co-ed battalions are a relatively new phenomenon in the IDF, first set up about 15 years ago. To be sure, women have always served in the Israel Defense Force. Today there are even some who serve as pilots and navigators in the highly esteemed Air Force. But an integrated combat unit is something quite different. The men and women spend all their time together, training and carrying out missions 24/7, for the duration of their service.
The idea isn’t without its critics. There are some—particularly men—who claim that the women’s weaker physical strength gets in the way of the highest goals that are expected of the units. On the other hand, one of the women who appears in the show expresses a different concern: “Every extra minute I spend a with the boys, I feel like my IQ just falls and falls.”
Some Orthodox rabbis have also come out against the idea, and at least two former generals expressed concern that co-ed units would harm the IDF’s fighting abilities. In each episode of the show, we see the soldiers themselves grappling with the issue; while some come to terms with the situation, others find it impossible to do so.
But that’s not the only issue the young men and women struggle with. At all-of 18 years of age, facing responsibility isn’t easy. As we follow them from the day they enlist to the end of their four-month-long basic training, we watch them grow and change. We learn much about them: where they come from, what kinds of home and family they grew up in, and what their expectations were prior to enlisting. Invariably, the army provides them all with a new education. Some were spoiled as kids; their parents refused them nothing. “No” was not a concept they had to deal with. One young man, Moshe, from Kiryat Arba, a Jewish enclave in the center of the Arab-majority city of Hebron, describes himself as a problem child who could never follow instructions. Never comfortable with any structure or framework, at age 14 he “borrowed” his father’s car and went for a joy-ride. Chased by the police, he is caught and sentenced to one-year house arrest. Now at basic training, Moshe is asked by one of his buddies, “So did you have trouble enlisting in the army?” “I fought for three years to get in,” Moshe answers. “Why?” his buddy persists. “Why? For 18 years, people protected me, my home, from all directions. When my turn came, I wouldn’t pay them back? Bottom line.”
Others had different issues. One young woman says, “There’s something not right about a girl of 18 carrying a weapon.” And she continues, “It’s four pounds of metal, but 4 tons of responsibility.” At group discussions on the ethics of search-and-arrest missions in Palestinian villages, it is she who is the most vocal about the great need to restrain yourself despite the anger, fear, the adrenalin. “Your duty is to arrest them, not kill them,” she argues. Despite her initial impulse to leave the unit, she decides to stay. “I feel it’s best that I am there, instead of someone else. This way I have some control over the situation; I know it’s probably not going to get worse.”
In these ten weekly episodes, you not only got to know these young men and women; you also caught a glimpse of the challenges that their homeland, the State of Israel, faces every day.
There are social tensions, religious tensions, gender issues, even racial issues. While 18- year-olds in other countries pack and leave home for 4 years of college, at the same age Israeli youths learn how to follow orders; how to deal with discipline, physical hardship and responsibility; with shooting to kill on command; with thinking about others at least as much as they think about themselves. With the real possibility that you might get killed, wounded, or captured by a brutal enemy. With the fact that you are protecting your country and your people, in “real time,” not in theory.
Lions of the Jordan is a microcosm of modern Israel.
At 70 years of independence, Israel is a young country. It’s composed of any number of cultures and ways of life. In the last 200 years, trickles and then waves of immigrants came from different countries. Established largely by Russian Jews with socialist ideals, the emerging country was mostly funded by American Jews. In Israel, Ashkenazi Jews met Sephardi Jews and argued non-stop about who’s a better Jew. Machismo men met heroic women who had done battle with Nazis, and who now challenged the men to realize they were living in a new world and a new century.
Over the years, Israel has had to define and redefine itself several times over.
At first, Israel served as a haven for millions of Jewish refugees. As prophesied by the prophet Isaiah, they came from the four corners of the earth. From Iraq, Morocco and Yemen; from war-torn Europe and the United States; from India and Afghanistan, from China and Indonesia, as well as a host of other nations and countries.
In the 1970’s, a million and a half Russian Jews came to Israel. Aside from the word “Jew” that was stamped on their Russian passports, most of them knew little or nothing about what that meant. But they knew that in Israel they would be safe. On the night of July 4th, 1976, the bicentennial of the United States, a special unit from the IDF flew 2000 miles to Entebbe, Uganda, and rescued 100 Jewish hostages, as well as a dozen non-Jews, crew members on a plane that was hijacked by Arab terrorists. In May 1991, in a period of 36 hours, 14½ thousand Ethiopian Jews were flown to Israel, plucked from an area racked by famine, revolution and violent tribal warfare.
Each group came with its own customs and costumes, spoke its own language, cooked its own food.
But what they all had in common was their heritage. They came from Judah. They were Jews. Now they came back.
It wasn’t going to be easy, but nobody cared. The need to survive overrode all obstacles.
Over the decades, Israel turned its attention from building homes to nation-building. Television, a budding movie industry, even the famous Tzahal (IDF) music and entertainment troupes, all helped in creating a new national identity. Overcoming prejudice and ignorance among the various groups became Israel’s top priorities. Hospitals were built and outfitted with the most modern equipment. Kindergartens and schools were supplied with a unified curriculum. Universities were founded where the very best in higher education was made available to all. Little by little the new state became a leading world power both in terms of its military and technology, as well as in medicine, trade, culture and education. Over the years, I watched with wonder and amazement as a new generation arose in our old/new homeland, a generation that was confident, happy and secure in their identity as Jews and Israelis.
Overcoming international prejudice and anti-Semitism, however, was not so easy or simple. For thousands of years, Jews were ostracized and persecuted. Expulsions, pogroms, and the Holocaust of our own day and time were seen and tried as solutions to the eternal problem that apparently the Jews posed. For thousands of years the world was content to leave the Land of Israel as a swamp and a collection of ruins, as a reminder of Judaism’s failure, rather than see it rebuilt as the nation-state of the Jewish People. Overcoming thatobstacle became Israel’s next goal, making it necessary yet again to redefine its purpose: Israel would become vital, indispensable to the free world.
During the years of the Cold War, Israel became the West’s chief and most reliable ally in the Middle East. Gathering and sharing intelligence, developing and testing new weapons, Israel saw and presented itself as a bastion of modernity, an island of democracy in an ocean of tyranny and totalitarianism.
But that wasn’t enough.
In 1961, driven by a sense of solidarity with other oppressed peoples, Israel’s Foreign Ministry established the Golda Meir International Training Center, with the goals of providing training to women and men from developing countries, giving them the necessary tools for modernization and advancement. Teaching innovative agricultural techniques, eradicating hunger, ignorance and disease in Third World countries—these became Israel’s stated mission. Bringing solar power to countries that have no other energy resources is one of Israel’s most recent outreach projects.
High-tech developments thrust Israel into the 21stcentury as an economicworld power.
Humanitarianaid sent to regions overcome by natural disaster or by warfare and violence has put Israel on the map as a beacon of compassion and volunteerism, unmatched by any other country in the world.
Nor is this aid limited to Israel’s friends only. Five years ago, in response to the savage civil war in Syria, Israel established an army unit for the purpose of implementing a “Good Neighbor” policy. In the last two years alone, 350 tons of clothing made their way through the border fence and delivered to Syrian refugees; 2000 tons of food; and 40 thousand cans of baby food. Doctors and nurses, working day and night in field hospitals, treated 4,500 wounded Syrians and 1,400 children in need of medical attention.
Israelis see this kind of work as their duty and privilege. Even for those who are not religious, volunteerism helps them define their Judaism. This, as they and I see it, is the purpose of the Jewish People, set out for us thousands of years ago. This is what Israel was created for; this is what it stands for today, the most recent incarnation of how Israelis define their role on the world stage.
But evidently even this is not enough.
The violent attacks on Israel continue. The threats to destroy her keep coming—from Iran as well as from Syria; from Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. On top of this, the BDS—Boycott, Divest and Sanction—movement keeps rasping out hate. Anti-Zionism is responsible for an alarmingly growing number of incidents of verbal and physical assault on Jews in almost every country around the world—even in places where there isn’t one Jew to be found. In the open, at least. Anti-Semitism, always a potent force among White Supremacists, has now also gone mainstream among liberal, left-leaning politicians and their supporters.
After the Holocaust, we deluded ourselves. We began thinking that we were witnessing the dawning of some Messianic Age; that humanity, horrified by images it saw of the Holocaust, was genuinely sorry for what it had done to us for 2,000 years. In Israel we came to believe that everyone loved us for our strength and our chutzpa; and that the world would continue loving us, because we are good.
It’s time, however, that we all recognize the fallacy of these myths. Jews—and Israel—are not judged by how good we are. We are judged for our existence.
It’s time to stop deluding ourselves. Israel will survive: not because it helps the West; nor because it sends humanitarian aid to developing countries. Israel will survive only because it is strong.
That’s not to say that we have to stop our cultural and humanitarian work. That isour mission, set for us thousands of years ago. But neither are we free to lay down our weapons, no matter how tired and weary our arms. What was true during the rebuilding of Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE is still true today [Nehemiah 4:17, NKJV]: “Those who carried the burden, with one hand they worked at the building, and with the other they held a weapon.”
In the television documentary I watched this summer, “Lions of the Jordan,” there were many scenes that moved me, both to laughter and to tears. But one stood out over all the rest. It was the moment when the soldiers took their oath of loyalty to the IDF. Each, in turn, received a Bible from the base commander. With one hand, they clutched their weapon; with the other, they held their Bible tightly to it, forming an unbreakable bond between themselves, their weapon and their Bible. אני נשבע, “I swear,” each called out, while their families and friends watched, with many of them crying.
In truth, however, it wasn’t only their families and friends. It was the entire Jewish People, throughout our history, that was watching, with pride and disbelief. Who would have guessed?
Three and a half millennia after Moses charged us to follow God’s law, we are still here; with one hand still fulfilling our mission, with the other holding our weapons.
And that’s OK. If that’s what it takes, then so be it.
May we all be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a year of love and joy; a year of strength and health; a year of rest and renewal; a year of security and peace.
© 2018 by Boaz D. Heilman
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