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God Won’t Clean Up Your Mess

by
October 26, 2007

I was hoping to write about sex today, but then I read an Op-Ed from the Jewish Journal about why Jerusalem should be divided.

An Orthodox rabbi's plea: consider a divided Jerusalem By Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky

The question of whether we could bear a redivision of Jerusalem is a searing and painful one. The Orthodox Union, National Council of Young Israel and a variety of other organizations, including Christian Evangelical ones, are calling upon their constituencies to join them in urging the Israeli government to refrain from any negotiation concerning the status of Jerusalem at all, when and if the Annapolis conference occurs. And last week, as I read one e-mail dispatch after another from these organizations, I became more and more convinced that I could not join their call.

It's not that I would want to see Jerusalem divided. It's rather that the time has come for honesty. Their call to handcuff the government of Israel in this way, their call to deprive it of this negotiating option, reveals that these organizations are not being honest about the situation that we are in, and how it came about. And I cannot support them in this.

These are extremely difficult thoughts for me to share, both because they concern an issue that is emotionally charged, and because people whose friendship I treasure will disagree strongly with me. And also because I am breaking a taboo within my community, the Orthodox Zionist community. "Jerusalem: Israel's Eternally Undivided Capital" is a 40-year old slogan that my community treats with biblical reverence. It is an article of faith, a corollary of the belief in the coming of the Messiah. It is not questioned. But this final reason why it is difficult for me to share these thoughts is also the very reason that I have decided to do so. This is a conversation that desperately needs to begin.

No peace conference between Israel and the Palestinians will ever produce anything positive until both sides have decided to read the story of the last 40 years honestly. On our side, this means being honest about the story of how Israel came to settle civilians in the territories it conquered in 1967, and about the outcomes that this story has generated.

Later in the article Kanefsky writes

The Religious Zionist leadership (similar to today's Evangelical supporters of Israel) made a different judgment, namely that settling the Biblical heartland would further hasten the unfolding of the messianic age. Thus, the Arab population already there was not our problem. God would deal with it. This belief too — reasonable though it may have seemed at the time — has also turned out to be wrong. To tell the story honestly, this mistake too must be acknowledged.

(Emphasis mine)

Full story

I agree with Rabbi Kanefsky’s politics, and I think his writing is brave and important, but what really caught my eye was the part that I highlighted. There’s a sense in a lot of Jewish communities that we can pretty much screw around as much as we want, and as long as we’ve got generally good intentions we can safely expect God to clean up our mess. We’ve written about repentance quite a bit on FaithHacker, but I just want to make it clear that there’s nothing in any Jewish theology that I’m aware of that would sanction someone screwing up with the understanding that God would fix it. I seem to know a lot of people who operate under the assumption that they can just square things away with God later, or what God will just cover whatever their tab has become, and it makes me crazy. Those people are why atheists walk around talking about how God is for weak people. If you fuck something up, it’s your responsibility to deal with it. If you want to go to God for help that’s certainly fine, but to expect that going to God makes everything hunky dory is immature, and I’m so glad to see Kanefsky calling Religious Zionists and Evangelicals out on that.

Tamar Fox has an MFA from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, but she still doesn't like sweet tea. Born and raised in Chicago, she's also lived in Iowa City, Dublin, Oxford, and Jerusalem. When she's not rocking out at honky tonks she teaches text study, cooks elaborate meals, and volunteers for a hospice. When she grows up she wants to be a professional whiskey taster.

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