(M)oral Torah

The path of peace is not an easy one; it cuts through the binary of right or wrong, victim or oppressor, hero or villain, us or them. The path of peace does not choose favorites, does not leverage one over another, does not create hierarchies. The path of peace has no sides.

How we love our neighbor is by fighting for a society in which we would be glad to live no matter how little privilege we had.

We are born in the image of God, but we must accept that this God-given status exists only within the framework of human enforcement.

How can we take on our own “marking of the doorposts” for this moment? What am I prepared to do, or say, to help bring this cursed war to an end? How might I “mark” myself as someone committed to the collective liberation of Palestinians and Israelis?

This is the work before us this Pesach. We must abandon our worship of the false idol of correctness. We have to start with what we know. We know that all people need peace to survive. We know the liberation of Israelis is bound up with the liberation of Palestinians and vice versa. We know being traumatized is not a way to live. We also know that clinging to the crumbs of winning an argument only takes us further away from peace.

The words we speak may soothe our spiritual and emotional wounds when spoken in kindness, but speech has the potential to “sicken” us, as individuals and as a society when spoken in malice.

Real intimacy — with the Divine and with each other — is an ability to say I will show up, but only if I can demand that when there is destruction there is rebuilding, when there is grief there is space to mourn, when there is heartbreak there is space for healing.

We know the heart of the stranger and we cannot allow ourselves to lose sight of these people, or allow statistics to blur them and their lives into a faceless “issue.”

I yearn to live in a generation where everyone, including our leaders, recognizes that leaders sin; where our leaders admit their mistakes, are held accountable, and where they actively make amends.

I went to Juárez seeking a window into what is happening along our southern border, but I left staring at a mirror of culpability and responsibility.