By Shoshana Brown

“For the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but sojourners, and settlers with Me.” Lev. 25:23

The above verse of Scripture was read in our Jewish lectionary two weeks ago; it had particular resonance for me personally, since I was in the immediate throes of mourning my mother, who had just died four days earlier. In its Levitical context, the verse is not of course referring to our mortality and the impossibility of claiming land or anything else as our own, since we are only “sojourners” upon this earth – nevertheless, I could not help but hear it that way under the circumstances. In the Jewish tradition, we make haste to conduct the funeral and burial soon after a death – optimally, within 24 hours. However, as a convert to Judaism, my family of origin is not Jewish, and I write this column in anticipation of returning from my mother’s May 23rd funeral in Virginia, upon which time I will be sitting shiva (this term deriving from the Hebrew word for seven, sheva: the custom which prescribes that you sit at home to allow time for intensive mourning for seven days). During those days it would not be proper for me to write this column – and so I write these words in mid-May.

Beginning on May 15th, the news about Gaza, the Palestinians, and the Israel Defense Force began to be splashed all over our newspapers and magazines, radio, TV and the internet. This disturbing news greatly concerns any Jews who feel a deep connection to Israel or to the Jewish tradition. For good reasons the Jewish people across the globe have worried about what their non-Jewish neighbors have thought of them: we have been chased from pillar to post throughout much of our history, if not outright slaughtered. So our public relations profile is a matter of some import. And though I am what most Jews would consider “liberal” on the question of the rights of the Palestinians to a homeland and sovereignty – nevertheless, I am deeply concerned that the public at large does not hear, see, or read the whole picture when they are exposed to a thumbnail sketch of what is happening at the Israel-Gaza border.

What do these two things have to do with one another? We human beings fight here on this earth for property, we fight over borders, taxes, wages, over who will be in control of the government, of wealth, of land, and yet we usually fail to step back and remember that each of us is only “passing through” this existence. I might think that I “own” the land in my backyard – that it is mine to plant what I want, to pave it over or to build a garden shed there (but the government might step in if I refuse to cut my grass!). But this soil, which in Hebrew is called adamah, is both older and younger than me – it was here long before me, and it will keep regenerating itself and will be here long after I am gone. I mention the Hebrew name for soil, adamah, because the first human being created in the Genesis story was called “Adam” - we are “soil creatures.” At the beginning of the Jewish ritual at a graveside funeral the officiant takes a handful of earth and crumbles it over the casket in the grave, reciting the following words from Ecclesiastes 12:7:

“The dust returns to the earth as it was, but the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

We are both creatures of the soil, created from “dust” as God says of Adam in Genesis 3:19 – and creatures of spirit, made “in the image of God,” but only eternal insomuch as our spirits reside finally with God again, for ultimately we are not settlers here on the earth – whether in Israel, Gaza, Palestine or anywhere on the planet – but “settlers” only with God. And yet – the land which was once the biblical Israel, and more recently, also the dwelling place of the grandparents and great-grandparents of today’s Palestinians, has an overwhelming power in the minds of Jews and Muslims who struggle to survive and flourish there. Sometimes Israeli Jews are referred to by Palestinians or others as “European colonists” – as if Jews, fleeing very real, even lethal, anti-Semitism in Europe went to the then British-occupied Palestine in the same manner as the English or Spanish came to the Americas, seeking land or gold or some new way to make a buck. They are told to “go back to where you came from!” Go back to Europe – where they were rounding up Jews and sending them to concentration camps, feeding them into crematoria? No, “colonizers” is not a good way to describe the Jews who found their way back to a state of sovereignty on their ancient homeland after 2,000 years. Neither those who sought refuge from persecution in Europe, nor those who fled persecution (or were expelled by) the Muslim countries of the Middle East (this latter group, along with their descendants, making up over 50% of Israel’s Jewish population) can rightly be called “colonizers.” What might they be called? Survivors.

To Jews it is a miracle. To Palestinians it is a “catastrophe.” We are back to the first two brothers, Cain and Abel. They had the whole earth to dwell on, and yet Cain killed his brother. Israel is a modern nation which has borders, just like any other nation, and the protests – which included the attempt to tear down the border fence, and a plan, ultimately, to overturn Israeli sovereignty so that Palestinians can re-possess the land that had once been the dwelling-place of their recent ancestors (lost as a result of wars, and also through legitimate land-purchase by Jews) – how can Israelis simply turn back this tide with a gentle hand? When Gandhi, in the 1940’s, led Indians in the peaceful protests that ultimately persuaded the British to leave India, the British could bow to that pressure because they did not have to stay in India. They had another home. But the Jews of Israel have nowhere else go, and in truth, with all the upheavals in the surrounding Arab lands, neither do the Palestinians. Both Jewish Israelis and Palestinians (in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza) have to figure out some way to live together. I do not have any secret plan, but it might bring us some perspective to remember that in the end we all are bound to “return to the earth,” our spirits to find a permanent dwelling-place only with the One who created all humanity.

Shoshana Brown is the cantor and co-spiritual leader of Temple Beth El of Fall River.