Amen comes from the Hebrew word emunah, meaning faith, belief, and deep knowing. When we say “amen,” in everyday interactions, it is akin to saying “ditto,” or “me, too.” But in its original context, it was meant to add the weight of your own prayers onto the words of another’s.
Emunah carries weight. It is not hopeful (although it can be optimistic). It is not longing (although it can be driven by yearning). It is certain. It is unwavering. It is where we store our capital “t” Truths.
My tradition tells a tale of two angels, those we welcome in on Friday night at the beginning of Shabbat, whose entire vocabulary consists of this word, “amen.”1 Every Friday night they would arrive at one household in utter disarray, look around at the painful chaos unfolding in front of them, and then sadly look at each other as they said all that they could say: “amen.” Week after week they arrived to the same scene, nothing changed, until one week, the family decided to set their house in order, and to sit down together to share a meal, to rest, and to be together. To this, the angels smiled, and said with delight, “amen.” And so it was week after week, that the family created peace, and the angels added the weight of their blessings along to it.
The angels say “amen” to us as well.
If we raise our voices in protest, they will say, “amen.”
If we cry out our grief, they will say, “amen.”
If we pour our hearts into living lives that do the least amount of harm and the most amount of good, they will say, “amen.”
If we remain silent,
they will say
“amen.”
Where do you want to place the weight of your knowing? Your belief? To the void of silence and complicity, or to the power for good that moves through and connects us all?
As I write this post, my ancestral homeland is being run by men who perpetrate great evil upon it. They have created “a land that devours its inhabitants”2 and they have done it in my peoples’ name. A people for whom no one should ever deign to speak in our entirety. We are not a monolith, and yet, there are a few rules by which we have agreed to abide. Chief amongst them is to honor the sanctity of life. To save a life is akin to saving the world. One may presume, then, that taking a life is the greatest sin.
How then, and by what logic, do the men who govern my ancestral homeland perpetrate genocide? We, who were shaped by the Holocaust? And the pogroms before that. And the expulsion from Spain before that. And the expulsion from Jerusalem before that. And on, and on. Too many tragedies to bear. And yet, we have. So how could we go and do the one thing Rabbi Hillel said was most important in all of Torah: what is hateful to you do not do to another.
The war on Gaza & Palestine is un-Jewish. It is not representative of what Jewish tradition teaches. It does not speak for us.
It is appalling to me, a rabbi who carries the weight of this peoplehood and the mantle of our tradition to watch as the state whose flag carries our magen david,3is flown over a genocide. Across the world, our flag has become a target for hateful retaliation.
What the State of Israel does to the Palestinians, the Jews of the world pay for.
In 2006 there was a fatal shooting at a Jewish organization in Seattle. A gunman walked into the office, said “I’m a Muslim and I’m mad at Israel,” and opened fire. There was a baby in utero there that day. By the grace of whatever it is that holds this world together, he was unharmed, and 13 years later I handed him the scroll of our people when he became Bar Mitzvah just a few blocks away from that shooting.
We are here to help each other. We are here to stay out of each others way. To live and let live.
But that is not how our society has been shaped. It has been shaped by other voices, harsher, darker ones concerned only with ego and vengeance. War has been wrought, and the angels can only say “amen.”
But they say “amen,” to us, too. So when we talk about how wrong the war on Gaza is, they say “amen.” And when we scream that starvation is wrong (to put it simply), they say “amen.”
We have to be louder than the bombs. Louder than the impotency of politics. Louder than the silence of complicity.
In 1995 Israel entered the Eurovision concert with a song called “Amen,” sung by Liora. I can’t help but year it in my head as I write these words. It is a beautiful song and I’ve offered it on more than one occasion as a blessing for peace and understanding between peoples of different faiths. “To the world - Amen. To everyone - Amen. Make the human spirit strong - Amen.”
This is the Judaism that is mine. This is the Jewish state that spoke for me. It was the state whose hope was peace and reconciliation with the Palestinians. It is not the Jewish state as we see it today. In his book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, Peter Beinart shares some startling statistics about the Mideast peace process and terrorist attacks by Palestinians. It should come as no surprise that good faith efforts at negotiation resulted in lower acts of violence, and that when that good faith was broken, the violence on both sides increased.
The angels can only say “amen” to us. To what we do. To how we act.
I am a Jewish person living in the diaspora. My ancestors came here instead of going there (although some of their relatives did, in fact go there). It is by pure chance that I was born here instead of there. As is the case for many Jews throughout the world. Could I have made aliyah and moved there? Yes. Did I almost? Yes. But I stayed here in America because this is where my family tree has its roots. It is where I have planted mine. I cast my vote in Washington state, not in Israel. I do not give Netanyahu my “amen,” just as I did not give it to Trump. So I do not get a vote in Israel, but if I did, it would be a resounding “no” to this catastrophe. Not in my name. Not with my “amen.”
Get loud with your grief. Get full of it and let it move through you. Say “no” to the murder of innocents. Say “no” to plays for power by men who care nothing for the people they represent. Say “no” to the war in Gaza and the angels will say “amen.” It is what we can do to push back, to move the needle in any little way.
A dear friend taught me that whenever there is the great call to violence, there is also an equally great call to peace. You get to decide where you place your belief: in life and hope or in death and destruction.
Angels, as you may know, were not given free will by their creator. That particular responsibility was reserved for humanity.
Numbers 13:32
Star of David (lit. shield of David)