Usually, on these pages, I try to offer some words that are interesting and observational and lyrical. Today I might be less lyrical because I’ve been sitting with the war that’s going on, which is not pretty. And while I do mean the war in Israel and Gaza, I’m also feeling something bubbling up about a kind of war we’re experiencing here in our responses to the war there. The war here is being carried out not with guns, but words and demands and guilt and sometimes retribution.
For starters, we are all, I suspect, activated and traumatized by the events of October 7th in Israel and by the months of war in Gaza that have followed. We are activated for all sorts of honest and deep reasons. And I fear we are not always at our best when we are activated.
The trends I’ve been noticing started right away, in the first days of the war. People raced to their corners and took refuge there. Supporters of Israel over here and Supporters of Palestine over here. (And for clarity’s sake, not all the Supporters of Israel are Jewish and many of the Supporters of Palestine are.)
People took to the corners they knew, the corners that matched their experiences and values. People demanded that their friends and families and institutions join them there. From those corners they turned east to witness. And I get the sense that what they saw didn’t change a lot of minds. Instead, what they saw unfolding proved what they already believed. That Palestinians are terrorists. That Israel is a genocidal power. Beliefs about colonialism, about invisibility, about anti-semitism. Whatever beliefs and fears they – we – already had were now proven.
The sad part is that there is substantial truth in all of it.
And there is complete truth in none of it.
But back in those corners, Supporters of Israel and Supporters of Palestine tend only to see the truths that they already held. And to use the jargon of their own camp, which makes it near impossible to win over the hearts of people in another camp.
I have been waiting for months to hear conversations that go deeper. But nuance is not in season.
But I would like to see better of us. Of us here. I make no demands on the soul-searching of Israelis and Palestinians, either there or here. They are in the first throes of grief and in continuing peril. I cannot speak to their process of healing, certainly not until the bombs stop and the guns are silent.
But I can speak to who we are and want to be in this country, as Supporters of Israel and Supporters of Palestine. I would like to believe that we have hearts that care, or that are capable of caring. I would like to believe that all our hearts are capable of caring about what Israelis, particularly Israeli women, experienced on October 7th. I would like to believe that all our hearts are capable of caring about civilians, especially children, dying in inconceivable numbers in Gaza.
Our hearts are capable. So where is our empathy? Is empathy a value we hold only in peacetime? Where are the heartfelt words of sympathy that Supporters of Israel and Supporters of Palestine are exchanging with each other?
Empathy means listening to uncomfortable truths. Empathy means hearing how the Holocaust still lives in us, in our bones, in our reflexes, and how it was reactivated on October 7. Empathy means hearing how the Naqba was not an isolated catastrophe of 1948 for the Palestinian people, but how it is still happening – enduring and ferocious.
I think we can be capacious enough to hear and hold it all. It will break our hearts; and maybe that’s why we don’t want to do it. But our hearts are heavy anyway. If they shatter, maybe we can put them back together differently.
This week’s Torah portion speaks to the question of empathy. It is the portion of the Book of Exodus that concludes the story of the plagues sent down on Egypt. It opens famously with these words of God to Moses: bo el-Par’oh. “Come to Pharaoh. Come to Pharaoh for I have made his heart heavy.”
It is a strange phrase in Torah. “Come to Pharaoh.” Because you would expect God, talking to Moses, to say, “Go to Pharaoh.” But instead: “Come to Pharaoh.” The words “come” and “go” are like the words “left” and “right.” They are not absolutes. Their meaning is related to your perspective, your point of reference. What is left for you is right for me. “Go to Pharaoh” reflects Moses’ perspective. “Come to Pharaoh” reflects Pharaoh’s.
There is something being asked of Moses here in his fierce advocacy for the Hebrew slaves. He is being asked to come an extra mile and consider Pharaoh’s experience. To empathize. To empathize with Pharaoh’s heart, not “hardened,” as we usually translate it, but “heavy.” Moses is asked to consider not only the oppressor’s unjust deeds, but also his heart and, perhaps by extension, whatever the terrible was that put his heart in that condition.
Empathy is hard. Blame is easy. Righteousness is easy. Empathy is hard. But we are in a “Come to Pharaoh” moment. If Moses can be asked to empathize with our biggest mythic villain, then we can make the small effort to hear each other, who are not, in fact, villains.
If we could empathize with each other, maybe it wouldn’t feel so much like we are Supporters of Israel or Supporters of Palestine. Maybe we’d all be supporters of peace and partnership. Maybe our city ceasefire resolutions would not be battlegrounds, but rather a chance for all caring people to come together and say, “For the sake of all our broken hearts and battered souls, let the fighting end.”
Let us model reconciliation and mutual care. Let us model how to re-humanize each other. If we can’t do this locally, and at the distance we have, what chance is there for it to happen in the land we all love?
I want this war to end. I do. I want a different future for Israel and for Palestine. I don’t know what it will be. But it starts with empathy. It starts with reconciliation. It starts with swallowing pride and letting go of resistance and coming to Pharaoh. And we might find, as we listen generously, that Pharaoh is not who we thought.
I’m grateful to Rabbi Rami Efal for introducing me to activist Paula Green’s work on cycles of revenge and reconciliation, including her phrase “rehumanizing the enemy.”