In three weeks I am going to stand up in a church in Marin County and talk for an hour about Israel, the army I served in, and what I believe my country is doing in Gaza. I am seventy-five. I have never done anything like it.
I want to say something about the room, because the room is the part I keep circling.
In June, the national assembly of this denomination voted to call what is happening in Gaza a genocide. The vote was 454 to 15. I have been corrected on how I describe that vote, and the correction matters — it did not come down from the top, it took years, and it happened because people with no institutional power would not let the question go. Some of them will be sitting in front of me.
So let us be clear about what I have arranged. I am a Jewish Israeli who is going to say difficult things about Israel to a room of people who voted 454 to 15 that they already agree with me.
That is not courage. That is scheduling.
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I have two sisters. One of them died in 2010. The other was born in 1941, stayed in Israel, and is there now. Her children and grandchildren are Israelis. Some of them have served.
She has never once asked me to account for leaving. I have never asked her to account for staying.
We have had that arrangement for fifty years and it has worked beautifully, in the way that arrangements like that work — by never being examined. I can tell you the exact shape of what I have not said to my sister. I have rehearsed it. I have not said it.
I am going to say it to sixty Presbyterians first.
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I have spent four years writing a book about the fifteen years between finding out what my country had done and doing anything at all about it. Fifteen years of knowing, in detail, and standing for the prayer for the State of Israel at the high holidays anyway, because sitting down would have required an explanation and I did not want to give one.
The book is written. I am still revising it, which after four years is either diligence or another way of not being finished. I have not decided which and I am not sure I am the right person to decide.
I used to think the hard part was finding out. It is not. Finding out is an afternoon and a library card.
The hard part is the distance between knowing a thing and being willing to pay something for knowing it. And the price is not the same in every room. In a church in San Anselmo the price is roughly zero. At my sister’s kitchen table in Haifa it is the last fifty years of not having to talk about it.
I am going to the church.
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I do not have a clean ending for this. The honest version is that I am doing the easier thing first and telling myself it is a beginning, which is what I told myself in 1996, and again in 2003, and again after that.
Maybe it is a beginning. I have been wrong about that before, at length, in public, and I have written down the dates.
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*If you are near San Anselmo on 3 October and want to come, write to me and I will tell you where. It is free and it is open to anyone.*
The Easiest Room I Could Have Found
In three weeks I am going to say all of this out loud. I have chosen my audience carefully, and not to my credit.
I just, JUST listened to Coby share his story at the church, as he promised. I am fortunate to know Coby personally, and to have heard him share bits of his story in casual conversation.
The story he told tonight, his story, was powerful, riveting and rich. He said he put in 61 revisions before delivering what we heard tonight.
The edits, the revisions, the practice - it was well worth it. Thank you Coby.
Hear hear, Coby! Thank you for your eloquent and heartfelt words this evening. Thank you for your generosity of spirit and your tremendous contributions to our community. Thank you. Peace.