Together? Not So Fast.

Together is a tricky word.

Inclusion can also create seclusion. Who’s in or out?

It sometimes brings us closer but also often comes at the expense of others who want to be with us and are left alone, isolated, hurt and angry. It rarely ends well.

Sometimes the old book and today’s news are so in sync - it’s shocking.

This past week below the bible belt we began to read the Book of Ezra - a carefully crafted chronicle of the Return to Zion - 2,500 years ago.

The messaging in this book, as we read it carefully and critically, between the lines and below the belt - are a mix of hyperbole and constructed reality.

There is a lot of beauty and inspiration to guide our way as the contemporary era of return to Zion is what we are living through. And yet there are also warning signs -- we are where we are today, with war and division, supremacy and racist violence - because of some seeds that are found in this text.

To know is to challenge, and to challenge is to change. What can we learn from Ezra to help us change the course of our own history and to embrace more empathy and courage - less hostility and fear?

It has to do with just one word - Together. Yachad.

All over Israel, where I just came back from, there are billboards and posters that proclaim - We Will Win Together - BeYachad Nenatzach.

18 months+ into this bloodthirsty war that’s ripping us apart, that’s killing so many innocent lives and hurting so many families, this government issue slogan is a cynical attempt at political propaganda that is standard issue at times of war but this battleground demands another narrative. This “together”may refer to the Israelis who are mobilized to fight Hamas and defend their homeland - heroes who show up daily to protect their families, including family and friends of mine -- but in fact, this slogan increasingly includes a minority of fear-fueled zealots who are temporarily in charge, fueled by fed up people who are its base. Not included in this ‘together’ are millions of Palestinian citizens of Israel who are silenced and not able to express their concerns for loved ones, or their protest against this war. Not included are millions of Haredi Jews who do not enlist and do not join the collective effort. Not included are a million or so voters who are still on the left and want peace, not war.

Despair is not a strategy, violent hate is immoral and wrong, nor is naive belief in everything will be alright a helpful outlet here.

So where does Ezra fit in here? Where does this TOGETHER come from?

Ezra isn’t on the scene yet but the first wave of Judeans who return from Persian exile to Zion start rebuilding their old lives. They begin by dedicating the altar on the holy hill where once their temple stood. It’s a touching scene in chapter 3 where the elders weep and the youth rejoice and together their voices carry the complexity of past and present, ruin and repair. And then the neighbors to the north want in on the party. The Samaritans - as they are called - want to build the new temple together with the returning Judeans.

But the leaders say no.

They refuse the alliance with the people who may have been transplanted from other parts of the empire a generation or two earlier and may have also been the descendants of of the Northern Kingdom of Israel - famously at odds with the Judean Southern kingdom. Either way - the phrasing is strong:

וַיֹּ֩אמֶר֩ לָהֶ֨ם זְרֻבָּבֶ֜ל וְיֵשׁ֗וּעַ וּשְׁאָ֨ר רָאשֵׁ֤י הָֽאָבוֹת֙ לְיִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל לֹֽא־לָכֶ֣ם וָלָ֔נוּ לִבְנ֥וֹת בַּ֖יִת לֵאלֹהֵ֑ינוּ כִּי֩ אֲנַ֨חְנוּ יַ֜חַד נִבְנֶ֗ה לַֽיהֹוָה֙ אֱלֹהֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל כַּאֲשֶׁ֣ר צִוָּ֔נוּ הַמֶּ֖לֶךְ כּ֥וֹרֶשׁ מֶֽלֶךְ־פָּרָֽס׃

“It is not for you and us to build a House to our God, but we alone will build it together to the God of Israel, in accord with the charge that the king, King Cyrus of Persia, laid upon us.”

Ezra 4:3

The leaders - high priest and heir to the throne that he’ll never sit on -- respond to the invitation to co-create a share society and temple by boundaries that will never be crossed. It leads to a lot of animosity and years of hostility, the temple won’t be built for many years and the seeds of split between us and them will only deepen.

One can justify them - I will also not say yes to any and every collaboration - not every voice on the right or the left, not every religious path is one that I will gladly join hands with or build a temple with. There are moral, spiritual, political and aesthetic reasons, among others, for why there are so many different homes of worship or different sacred recipes to celebrate life. But when does this limited ‘together’ cost us the future of a safer, better life? At what price does ‘Zion First’ alienate the locals who will now become enemies instead of partners in building a province that will benefit all?

The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah were written in close proximity to to the events they are depicting - and they are directly related to the overall message of the Bible - as these are the authors who also curated and collected, wrote and edited what would become the bible we are no reading and the blueprint to so many of our ongoing truths and values, beliefs and biased ideologies.

What do we do with this limited sense of ‘together’ -- pay attention, closely, critically, to what these texts are teaching us, and as we read through the following chapters - together -- let’s listen to the subtext, decipher what of this we resonate with and where it is upon us to question, to protest, to challenge and perhaps to leave behind.

We enter this Shabbat, after national days of together with many divides, while war still claims lives and violence surges.

I hope that we find refuge in this text, and in our history so that we can be part of the solution, not just the problem, and co-create healing for the days yet to come.

Thank you for joining me below the bible belt. Next week - Ezra shows up! The saga continues.

Hope and healing.

Shabbat Shalom.