Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 11, 2024

As a rabbi in Philadelphia whose family moved to Palestine from Lithuania in 1809 before immigrating to the U.S., I was horrified when, in the days following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant announced an order for Gazas complete siege.

He declared that no electricity, food, fuel or water will be delivered. We are fighting barbarians and will respond accordingly. Reading these words, my heart sank, and I instantly felt nauseous.

I knew he meant it, I knew Israel had every intention to starve Palestinians, and I knew this was a complete abdication of Jewish values.

When my family came to Palestine from Lithuania, they first settled in the Old City of Jerusalem, and later became one of the seven families to settle outside of the Old Citys walls in the Nahalat Shiva neighborhood of Jerusalem.

I am part of the Rivlin family, whose descendants have gone on to serve as president of Israel, outspoken anti-occupation activists, and everything in between. Growing up, on family trips to Israel, we would take pictures under the Rivlin Street sign in the Jerusalem neighborhood my ancestors settled.

It was meant to be a source of pride in our family that we were Jewish settlers. And it was for me until I went to study abroad at Hebrew University in Jerusalem during my junior year of college and learned about the Nakba, the catastrophic mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948 when Israel was founded, the ongoing military occupation of Palestinian lands, and the gruesome reality for Palestinians living under the Israeli state.

My pride transformed into commitment as I turned to dedicate my life to standing in solidarity with Palestinians and building a Jewish future worthy of the coming generations.

My family left Palestine during the First World War because my great-grandfather was seeking to avoid being drafted into the Ottoman army. A wealthy American Jew, Hershel Manischewitz, who was studying in his yeshiva in Jerusalem, helped him immigrate to the U.S. and set him up with work distributing his familys kosher food products in Cincinnati.

My great-grandfathers business continued for decades, with my father and uncles taking the helm. I grew up surrounded by food, taking joy rides on the pallet movers in the warehouse, bartering with local Jews for goods and services, and, of course, ritualized meals at my Bubbes table for Shabbat and holidays. There was always a random guest at the table, someone my grandparents met in the community. There was always an open seat at the table.

At Passover, when we read from the Passover Haggadah Let all who are hungry come and eat we would take comfort in knowing we were doing our part as a family.

My familys history shaped my reaction, and ultimately how I moved out of despair. Fast-forward to October. In the days after Hamas attacked Israel and Israel invaded Gaza, I called together a group of rabbis to speak out for a cease-fire to save lives. That holy circle of faith leaders, Rabbis for Ceasefire, is now over 325 strong.

When it came time to mark Passover this year, we knew we had to address the Israeli governments utilization of starvation as a weapon of war against 2.3 million Palestinian people in the occupied Gaza Strip. This manufactured famine follows decades of forced displacement, military occupation, and communal subjugation by the Israeli government. So we planned to travel to the Gaza border to bring food into Gaza, arm-in-arm with Jewish Israeli comrades.

We have been watching for months as right-wing Jewish settlers have been given free rein at the southern border between Israel and Gaza, successfully blocking the entry of hundreds of aid trucks into Gaza.

We wanted to do the opposite to bring food in, to shepherd in aid, to demand a cease-fire, to show the people of Gaza they are not alone. As human rights experts warn that Gaza is now at catastrophic levels of famine, the urgency of our action was clear.

On Friday, April 26, a delegation from Rabbis for Ceasefire from the U.S. joined Israeli rabbis and Jews in a public attempt to deliver food aid to the people of Gaza through the Erez border crossing. As we marched toward the crossing with bags of rice and flour, we chanted the words of the Passover Haggadah: Kol dichfin yeitei vyeichol let all who are hungry come and eat.

While food aid is essential, it is not sufficient. To save the lives of Palestinians on the verge of death by Israels policy of forced starvation and siege, there must be significant infrastructure in place to supply and distribute food, with medical advice and supervision. This is not possible without a cease-fire and lifting the siege.

I was held for nearly 10 hours at the Ashkelon police station.

Unlike the right-wing settlers blocking aid from entering, we were immediately stopped, and myself and six others were arrested. The rest of the group retreated and brought the aid we had sought to bring to the starving people of Gaza to the West Bank, where Palestinians are the targets of vigilante settler violence, land theft, and military intimidation.

I was held for nearly 10 hours at the Ashkelon police station. The Israeli police officer who interrogated me after my arrest said, You are being detained because you tried to bring bags of rice and flour into Gaza. Ultimately, we were released after agreeing to stay away from the Gaza border for 15 days.

Our success was not, of course, from bringing food into Gaza. The Israeli police prevented that. Rather, our nonviolent action succeeded in shining a light on Palestinians on the verge of death by starvation, offering them our solidarity, and reminding Jews of our responsibility to live our lives in accordance with the most sacred value of our beautiful tradition: We are each made in the image of the divine.

Rabbi Alissa Wise lives in West Philadelphia and is the founder and lead organizer of Rabbis for Ceasefire. She was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote in 2009.

Read the original:

Here's what happened when a group of U.S. rabbis tried to take food to Gaza | Opinion - The Philadelphia Inquirer

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