Tshuva

 

By: Paula R. Stern, World Jewish News Agency Columnist

 

On Rosh Hashana it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who by water and who by fire…who will rest and who will wander; who will live in harmony and who will be harried; who will enjoy rest and who will suffer; who will be impoverished and who will be enriched; who will be degraded and who will be exalted. But repentance, prayer and charity remove the evil of the decree.  Yom Kippur Prayer

 

Yom Kippur is upon us. It is a time of introspection and retrospection, a time to do tshuva, repentance, for the wrongs we have done to others. It is a time to ask and find answers to many questions. What more could we have done? What shouldn’t we have done? What could we have done better? Did we try our hardest to be the best we could be? Were we kind enough, generous enough, understanding enough?

 

This year, I believe, it will be harder than ever to stand before the Heavenly Gates and ask forgiveness for the wrongs we as a society have done to those within our borders, to the people of Gush Katif and the northern Shomron, to our youth, to our governmental institutions and to our army. Those in the leading party, those who voted for the so-called disengagement plan, must do tshuva. You have much to consider and little time left to undo the damage you have done to the nation, to the army, to the people, to the residents of Gush Katif that you have betrayed and left homeless. You lied to the party that brought you to power, betrayed the will they clearly expressed by ignoring the results of the referendum you called. And finally, you went in with merciless precision and efficiency to destroy but ignored the need to build. You have no solution to the new homeless you have created just as you have no solution to the poverty that plagues our society. You continue to be a government based on corruption and ego while your people suffer.  As Yom Kippur arrives, you must recognize that until the last resident of Gush Katif has a home and their possessions returned to them, until they are once again gainfully employed and resettled amongst their communities, until your own wealth and position mean less than the health and wellbeing of the nation, you have failed to achieve tshuva. Those in the army, those who sent soldiers responsible for defending our country against our enemy to evict their brothers, must do tshuva. You have broken the hearts and souls of thousands of young men and women by giving them a task that never should have fallen on their shoulders. We can see this in the numerous suicides you have barely acknowledged and by the thousands of young men who simply are unable to answer the call to serve. These are not the spoiled youth seeking adventure and escape. They are the children and brothers of families that have sent their sons to serve in the past with pride. But they cannot serve in an army that will lay siege to its own people, that will encircle a whole town with barbed wire and send soldiers dressed in black to physically remove people from their homes. Our soldiers cried out this summer and you failed them. Until each young man who promised he would not serve in an army that expels its own citizens from their homes is brought back to serve with pride in the IDF, the army will have failed to achieve tshuva.

 

Those on the right, those who promised to be with Gush Katif always, must do tshuva because we didn’t raise our voices loudly enough to complain about the government’s ongoing treatment of the refugees. To achieve such apparently high levels of incompetence could not have been done by accident. How efficiently they marched from settlement to settlement and took them from their homes, how easily they destroyed whole communities to rubble in a matter of hours and how quickly they suddenly forgot how many people needed homes, how many families lived in the very communities they so carefully demolished. How dare these people be shifted from place to place, looking for a short-term temporary solution until they can be settled in a long-term temporary solution until the permanent solution of the Sharon government is eventually disclosed? And how dare we sleep peacefully in our homes and eat at our tables and cook in our kitchens while they remain in hotels and guest houses unable to access their possessions because the government has a disagreement with Zim over the storage agreement? Where is the outrage when hours before the Sabbath, they are told to leave a hotel in Ashkelon because the government refuses to come to any payment agreement.  We stood for them in Kfar Maimon and Sderot, in Netivot and Ofakim, but we lost our will to scream after the tears ran from our hearts. We allowed Sharon to bring us to despair and we didn’t demand justice for the people. Until we bring down the Sharon government, we will have failed to do tshuva. Those on the left, those who called gleefully for the expulsion of their fellow Israelis must do tshuva because in their haste to see our brothers expelled, they didn’t worry about what would happen to them the day after. They ignored the single most important request, to be given a community solution, despite the fact that psychologists and social workers all agreed that this would ease their pain and lessen the damage we as a society were about to do. You watched them being expelled from heaven and rationalized by saying they’d had many good years there, but you remain silent and unaffected by the treatment they are receiving now. Until your voice joins those on the right, demanding fair compensation and a community solution for the refugees, you will have failed to do tshuva.

 

Tshuva is the act of acknowledging what we have done wrong, apologizing for our transgressions and doing our best to repair the damage we have done. We must recognize the sins we have committed. We were wrong to have surrendered territory for nothing, wrong to have assumed the world would suddenly welcome our sacrifice. It was wrong to further endanger the border towns, who now face ongoing rocket attacks and infiltrations, and wrong to trust that the Palestinians would take our evacuation as anything but another opportunity to belittle our efforts and demand more concessions. It was wrong to let the corrupt government of Ariel Sharon teach the world that Israel does not value its democracy, that we allow our Prime Minister to buy support, exchange political favors for critical votes, silence dissenters, and throw children into jail. We must apologize to our soldiers for putting them in a position that contradicted all the reasons why they agreed to serve. We have desecrated the sanctity of the army and all it represents. We must apologize to the refugees for allowing them to remain homeless, for making them accept charity in order to survive. And finally, in order to repair the damage we have done, we as a society must see the people of Gush Katif, Northern Gaza and Northern Shomron resettled in their own newly created communities. We must make sure they have land on which to rebuild their farms, schools in which to teach, beautiful synagogues to replace the ones we forced them to abandon and then allowed Palestinian mobs to desecrate. We must force the Sharon government not to make any more one-sided meaningless gestures that further endanger our communities and break our hearts and souls.

We must give the army back to the people so that we serve in it with pride and honor, and not shame and tears.

 

In a real sense, Yom Kippur is about coming to terms with who we are, what we’ve done, and where we want to go. This year, as the Book of Life is sealed for the coming year, we must make sure we are written in for a good year, a year in which we will do our best to come together as a country and respect the land we have been given and the society we have created.