Ten Haftarahs, One (More) Murder

by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Dear companions,

We are in the season when the sacred Jewish calendar ends the year with ten haftarot. There are three before Tisha B’Av, three of rebuke to prime the People for accepting that the Temples were destroyed to punish us for our sins. Then come seven more, moving from the Shabbat after Tisha B’Av to Rosh Hashanah, the haftarot of comfort and consolation.

But in fact, all ten share a basic understanding of the world. It is a zero-sum understanding. In the first three haftarot, the Godwrestling people is miserable because it has sinned against YHWH, and the other nations are triumphant. In the last seven, Israel is triumphant because it has reconciled with YHWH, and the other nations are defeated and miserable.

There is very little suggestion that all humanity could be joyful together: That Israel and all other nations could share triumphantly in walking different but complementary paths. That YHWH, the Breath of all life, could fit our differences together to make up the jigsaw puzzle of peace and justice for us all.

I think this zero-sum assumption is a basic mistake. It comes out of a world-view that is hierarchical. Somebody must be top dog. It can be YHWH, heard as the Breath of mostly-Jewish iife, telling us what to do. And right beneath is the people Israel, obeying YHWH and telling everybody else what to do — except when we sin and others trample on us.

But there is an alternative basic view of the world: it draws deeply on ecology, and it takes the biological outlook in which all species give life to each other, into a broader way of thinking in which all cultures and all polities within the human community also share. From their very differences they share, they live, and they flourish.

There are a number of passages from the classical Hebrew Prophets that would express this world-view. There are also a number of passages from prophetic figures whom we should anoint as true Prophets. From them we can find a far better series of ten haftarot for this season of the year.

Actually opening the sacred scroll to new Prophets should be one important project in creating a new Diaspora Judaism.

Now why did I add “one more murder” to the title of this letter to you?

During the last week, the week when we are supposed to listen to our own failings as pointing toward our own disasters, the Netanyahu government of Israel assassinated — that is, murdered — Ismail Haniyeh. Most of the mass media called him a Hamas leader. Fewer media named him the leader of the political wing of Hamas.

And that's the crucial difference. Calling him just “Hamas” invites the public to think of him as one of the villains who planned and carried out the atrocious October 7th attack on Israeli civilians. But in fact, as the leader of the political wing of Hamas, he had been doing a lot of planning toward peace with Israel. He was the key chief Palestinian negotiator for a ceasefire and return of the captives kidnapped by the military wing on October 7th. And the political wing for months has been trying to work out how they could join with a transformed Palestinian Authority on the West Bank to create a broader and peace-oriented Palestinian governing body that could negotiate a peace between two self-governing peoples, in two states or confederation. The murder of Haniyeh has made the task much harder.

Why was he murdered by the Israeli ultra-right-wing government led by Mr. Netanyahu? Because they rejected peace with the Palestinian people, just as the military wing of Hamas rejects peace with the Israeli people. Both de-facto governments are obsessed with greed for land, greed to increase their own power, and the zero-sum “game” that says each of them must be top dog.

There are three tasks that face the American Jewish community:

(1) Working with non-Jewish allies toward a US government that sees Israelis, Palestinians, and others as sharing in an ecological world where the sum of the energy is far greater than zero. Where both peoples can govern themselves with internal democracy and external peace.

(2) Moving as much as possible of both what we may call the Jewish Establishment and what we might call Insurgent Jews, to exert their own energy in direct contact with Israelis and Palestinians of all communities to achieve a peace between two self-determining peoples.

(3) Inviting American Jews who seek the union of Spirit and Politics for the pursuit of Justice to join in creating a coherent yet decentralized New Diaspora Judaism.

For me, that is the future I hope to see for The Shalom Center and many partners. I welcome your comments on that vision.

With blessings of shalom,
Arthur