Did Gaza break my faith?

Did Gaza break my faith?

I don’t know. I have thought about this before. Often in fact. Losing one’s faith in God is no small thing. And I not only lost mine, it has died and been buried.

I literally had a dream as I was becoming secular where I was walking through the Judean Hills, a stream was within earshot, and I went to look for it. As I approached the stream, with a waterfall sounding the background I noticed a cemetery near the creek. I saw mourners, and as I approached they came to comfort me. Who had died? What was I mourning? Why was I being comforted? And then I saw it, a sefer torah was being buried, and it was my loved one, my sefer torah, that had died. I suddenly realized what was taking place, this funeral was for my loved one, these mourners were there to comfort me! Next to the sefer torah I saw the tombstones of my grandparents. My god! I cried. I said goodbye. I buried torah.


Please understand. I am not looking for theological reasons to come back to religion. It can’t happen. I have buried her. I loved her. Once. She was a major influence on my life, much like my grandparents. Will remain so. But she is gone now, dead. I am sad at this loss, but I can no more resurrect torah in my life than I can resurrect my dead grandfathers.

I woke up from that dream shaken. That was the moment when I stopped pretending that I could maintain my religious lifestyle. It was a lie, and I am not a hypocrite. From someone who dreamed of being a rav to a secular Jew. It was unforeseen. I believed so strongly, so completely. I never thought it could die. But it did.

How?

I don’t know.

I know that it happened the same time as the Gaza expulsion. I do know that Gaza still haunts me. Did Gaza cause it? Not entirely, but it certainly played a part. It must have. I wake up in the middle of the night usually once a week, deeply upset and hurt. I’m waking… what happened? What was I dreaming? Right… Yehuda was being expelled from the home he built in Shirat HaYam. My friends were being dragged from their homes. I am being dragged away from the beach house. By Jews. Because we are Jews. The orange flag flies against the orange sun on the horizon. The greenhouses spring over with their bounty.

Then.

No more. Houses torn apart, bulldozed. Greenhouses ripped asunder, crops turning brown without the water and love they were given by their caregivers.

I know that my friend’s children still wet their pants at the site of police officers. Imagine. Don’t just read the sentence. Imagine what that means. Take a minute, it takes a minute to imagine something so horrible after all. Jewish policemen, in a Jewish State, scaring children so badly for the crimes their colleagues committed that they wet themselves in fear. That their memory and understanding of a Jewish Army and Jewish police force is identical to the memory of someone grabbing them from their parents and dragging them from their homes.

I know that my belief in the power of what I assume to be a destiny to triumph over evil is not a given. That when good people do nothing evil prevails. That those who came and chanted near the gates of Gaza about how terrible this was but dared not enter Gaza chanted with empty voices. The song of canaries. It may have sounded right and beautiful, but it lacked any meaning.

I know that no one seemed to take it seriously. That at best it caused my fellow countrymen to lament how sad it was that Jews had expelled Jews, lacking any real empathy or understanding for the pain those Jews must be in. That Israel must be in. That the Jewish Nation should be in.

I know that I lost faith that I would be able to continue living where I was without facing the same fate. I would dream, no, I would nightmare, every night about the screaming and fighting and crying that would greet me, my wife, our future children, our loved ones, our neighbors, when our turn came. I suddenly feared that it would indeed come.


I know that my grandmother, a kind woman of over 90 years, a doctor, a healer, a liberal, a former German, a current American, a democrat, told me bluntly, that this was the first time Jews were being expelled from somewhere simply because they were Jews and she didn’t understand how or why Jews could do this. This, from a survivor of the Shoah. How it pained me. She never thought she would live to see it again. How empty the chant of ‘Never Again’. How empty.

I know that the beaches in Tel Aviv were full when Gaza was emptied of her Jews.

I know that we speak of Gaza and act (forget?) as if the four yishuvim expelled of their Jewish residents in Samaria are just an after thought.

I know that I still wake up with shivers, sweating, nightmaring of the expulsion of my people. I bleed orange. I love my people and my land and my heritage. I wish we had the courage to be what I know we could be.

I know we have learned nothing. Nothing. Our government is now ready to do to the Jews of Judea and Samaria, of the Jordan Valley, of my home, of the suburbs of Jerusalem, of our holy Temple Mount, of the Old City, of our most ancient graveyard, what she did to Gaza and North Samaria. Palestine must be Jew free. But Israel can have Israeli-Arabs. Why no Jewish Palestinians? If this is an issue of a majority people ruling their land? There is no logic here. No peace. Just hate. This I know. And what do we do? What do I do? Nothing.

When will this nightmare die? When will a new hope arise? Is the awakening of American Jews to the reality of Israel, to her realness, is the Arising of American Jewry as she returns Home the glimpse of this new hope amid the nightmare? Can we be our people’s savior? Certainly we have waited long enough for our turn to fight for our people (shame on us!). Are we ready for the challenge? I don’t know.

I know that when I am casually looking up fun Israeli music on the internet I can’t help but have search strings that return sites about the expulsion from Aza. And I know that I still break down and cry when I see those pictures. Those horrible pictures.

When one has buried God, has seen Torah buried, it becomes exceedingly difficult to find comfort in the words of our prophets, for all of their comforts rest on knowing that God loves us and will comfort us, will lead us out of darkness. I know that I can no longer believe that.

Man, excuse me, humanity, we make our fate. We make our destiny. We decide. And right now, we seem to be deciding to appease evil, to stand by evil, to ignore the plight of others, to pretend they deserved it, or that it is all part of a Divine Plan, and all will be alright, as if the damage has not already been done when children wet themselves at the site of Jewish police, or suicide rates among evacuees is through the roof, or divorces occur because of the trauma, or even, dare I be so self centered, a 27 year old man cries himself to bed when reminded about this trauma because he was foolish enough to think he could look up Israeli music without accidentally coming into contact with his nightmare.

I want to wake up.