Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects on the special significance of the 4th of July this year.
This year July 4th is a particularly auspicious date.
It is the 250th birthday of the USA.
It is the 50th anniversary of Operation Entebbe.
It is my granddaughter’s 2nd birthday.
The Torah reading for this day is Pinchas (Numbers 25:10-30:1).
Do all these events happening on July 4th have a common theme, and if so, what?
Let’s take the USA first. President Trump has called for a national Shabbat to recognize the Jewish contribution to the United States over the centuries and their vital role in its upbuilding.
As in Great Britain, Jews started arriving in America in the mid 1650s. But there the similarity ends. Both groups were Sephardi. The oldest Shul in New York, Shearith Israel, was led at one time by Rabbi Marc Angel, two of whose books I recently reviewed for CT.
Why did President Trump choose Shabbat as the symbol of the American Jewish contribution to the nation?
What is Shabbat all about? Shabbat is about humility, the acknowledgement that we humans are not all-powerful. Even G-d created the world in six days and rested on the 7th - after creating man. ‘What a piece of work is man’, we intone during prayers. You can say that again, in more ways than one. Maybe G-d needed a bit of a rest after creating man!
Creativity also needs values and that’s what Jews have bequeathed to the world. This Jewish contribution was recognized not only by the Founding Fathers, but also by many of the original 17th century Pilgrims and others who were steeped in Bible, Hebrew and general Jewish learning. These pioneers often also learned from their Jewish neighbours. This was not the case anywhere else in the world, where Jews were always regarded as an embarrassment.
Both Rashi and Rambam, towering figures in Torah and Talmud interpretation, stated that Shabbat extends beyond Judaism and represents what the world was missing after Creation - ‘menucha’ - rest.
Rest is the completion of creation and is embedded in the structure of existence itself. It is this gift of ‘menucha’ which Jews have given the world and which the President of the USA has publicly acknowledged. Keeping Shabbat is not just good for us - for all of us - it’s essential.
Anniversary number 2 is the story of Entebbe. Yoni, older brother of Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, sacrificed his life in order to rescue fellow human beings held hostage through a plane hijacking in Entebbe, Uganda. This rescue took place on July 4, 1976.
The plane had been on a commercial Air France flight between Tel Aviv and Paris, stopping in Athens. There they were joined by the hijackers, German and Palestinian. The flight was forced to fly to Tripoli in Libya and then to Entebbe airport in Uganda. In Uganda they were joined by further terrorists, as well as the Ugandan leader, Idi Amin, who sent reinforcements to help the hijackers.
The episode has been turned into two films, the Israeli one more accurate, and made Yoni Netanyahu a world hero. The Operation was called Operation Yonatan, Operation Entebbe and Operation Thunderbolt.
The Jews were separated from the other passengers who were released and flown to Paris. The Air France crew remained with the hostages.
Meanwhile, back in Israel, Mossad, in conjunction with the Labour Government under Yitzhak Rabin, decided to go ahead with the rescue, including armed confrontation with Amin’s Ugandan army. Rabin had actually urged caution, but was persuaded by Defence Secretary, Shimon Peres, to go ahead with the daring mission.
On the night of July 3, the operation took off from Israel. Three hostages were killed. One hostage, 74-year-old Dora Bloch from the UK, was murdered by Ugandans in her hospital bed.
Yoni Netanyahu, who had led the rescue effort, was the only Israeli fatality. Israel received assistance from Uganda’s neighbour, Kenya. Amin then ordered the murder of all Kenyans living in Uganda. This led to an exodus of 3,000 Kenyans from Uganda. The remainder were massacred on the order of Amin.
It is probably an understatement to conclude that this traumatic and heroic episode in Israeli history has left its mark on the country as a whole and especially on younger brother, Benjamin Netanyahu. The moral? Caution is sometimes not enough. Peres was right and PM Rabin was right to listen to him on this occasion.
Anniversary number 3. My granddaughter’s father is Israeli, born of American parents. On learning she was pregnant, my daughter had to leave northern Zfat in autumn 2023 with the onslaught from Hezbollah in Lebanon. She moved to Jerusalem where she relied on the kindness of strangers, some from the UK, but others who were originally American.
After the birth of her baby on July 4th 2024, a caring community in neighbouring apartments provided meals for three weeks and generally looked after them. I like to believe that being born on America’s special day, as well as Entebbe Day, has left its positive mark on this very young new Israeli.
And now to the Torah reading.
In his new book, ‘BaMidbar, the Book of Numbers’ (Kasva Press), Rabbi Nathan Lopez Cardozo states that Pinchas ‘is the most dangerous parashah in all of the Torah, seeming as it does to allow one to take the law into one’s own hands. It appears not only to justify, but even to praise, outright murder.’
In this story, G-d states that Pinchas, ‘son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back My wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for Me, so I did not wipe out the Israelite people in My passion.’
What a good translation! So often the word ‘jealous’ is used for the Hebrew ‘kinah’. But ‘jealous’ has changed its meaning through the centuries and is now regarded as wholly negative in nature. Passion, on the other hand, means that G-d cares and that Pinchas cares.
But Aaron, his grandfather, represents peace and compromise. Remember the Golden Calf episode (Exodus 32) where Aaron tries to appease the children of Israel in the absence of Moses. Maybe Pinchas is making up for grandfather, Aaron’s placid attitude at a time of crisis.
Sometimes, as in the case of Pinchas, actions have to supersede due process. After Entebbe, for instance, many international organizations blamed Israel rather than the hijackers, the terrorists, or Idi Amin for the entire episode! And as for our day, who exactly is getting the blame for October 7, 2023?
As Rabbi Cardozo says (p 169): ‘occasionally the law must be violated for the sake of a greater good - even when the greater good is not obvious and the price is very high.’ An example was the curtailing of freedom during the Covid pandemic, despite ‘enormous emotional and social damage’.
‘Pinchas realizes that the spiritual state of Israel is at risk. The nation is on the verge of of moral collapse.’ The law is inadequate ‘for moments of total breakdown. The law itself is refined by moral insight. There are many instances in which the Sages quietly reshape or soften biblical law because they sense that it’s literal form does not reflect G-d’s deeper will’ (p 170).
‘Pinchas stands at the edge of the precipice where law, morality and responsibility collide. He saves the people and then pays the inner price.’
This leads us to the question of ‘unchecked tolerance.’ What are the limits of tolerance?
Rabbi Cardozo cites Karl Popper’s ‘The Open Society and its Enemies’ (1945). What is ‘the paradox of tolerance’? ‘Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant … then the tolerant will be destroyed.’
Or as former UK Chief Rabbi Jacobovits used to say: ‘If you are kind to the cruel, the cruel will destroy the kind.’ Don’t we see this insidious poison daily in our own lives, where DEI reigns supreme and the majority population are the subject of pernicious discrimination. As for the experience of the Jewish community in this situation, you could write a book about it.
Popper, a refugee from Nazi Austria, ‘argued that a society committed to tolerance must paradoxically refuse to tolerate intolerance.’ Rabbi Cardozo asks: ‘Is [tolerance] truly a virtue? Or has it become a disguise for apathy, confusion, or cowardice?’
He cites Ogden Nash: ‘Sometimes with secret pride I sigh,How tolerant am I.Then wonder what is really mine:Tolerance or a rubber spine.’
Tolerance has now become ‘what we personally find comfortable. When does tolerance become dangerous permissiveness, and when does intolerance mask itself as moral integrity?’
Pinchas is one among many Bible heroes, including the prophets, who were ‘moral pioneers.’ So let’s circle back to this special day in the human calendar, the 250th anniversary of America’s birth. There is no doubt that the Pilgrim Fathers and others who followed them can be considered as ‘moral pioneers’. And so were the Jewish refugees and others who eventually made their homes in the USA. And unlike in Europe, including the UK, Jews were not simply ‘tolerated’ but made at once to feel part and parcel of their new homeland, which they did so much to build up.
After all, who do we feel more akin to, George III of Great Britain or Founding Father George Washington? Was the American Revolution merely an act of rebellion or a passionate desire for freedom? Probably the latter!
Let’s cite George Washington himself, from his address to the Jews of Newport Rhode Island on August 21st 1790: ‘The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of a large and liberal policy - a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.
‘It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under their protection shall demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
‘It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my administration and fervent wishes for my felicity.
‘May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants - while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid [Micah 4:4].
‘May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.’
This foundational letter in American history was later developed into the famous First Amendment of the US Constitution of 1791, protecting freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly and petition.
As we have seen, America is full of generous, giving people and I have encountered many, especially on Zoom calls during Covid as well as in Israel.
America is more than a nation, it is the living out of a dream. And this is what that country shares with the State of Israel.
