This will be my final blog before Pesach begins, and I want to take the opportunity to wish all of you a season of renewal and joy.
May your Seders be punctuated with hope, enveloped by family and good friends, open to strangers and people in need of material and spiritual uplift, filled with prayers for justice and peace for our people, for the Palestinians, Syrians, Ukrainians, Venezuelans, Sudanese, Congolese, Egyptians, Iraqis, Afghanis, and all peoples suffering under the reality of and threat of violence and living with injustice.
I pray as well that all who are suffering from addictions and abuse of every kind find wholeness and relief from their wounds, and those suffering from illness and chronic pain find a way to overcome.
As Jews, we are a people of hope, not false hope, but a deeper kind of hope based in the unity of our people am Yisrael, the unity of humankind and the recognition that each human being belongs to each other. Our faith calls upon us to seek holistic and holy ways of being with each other and with the “other” with whom we live.
As a Jew and an ohev am u-M’dinat Yisrael, I have not given up on the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. I believe they will continue not only because there is too much to lose for Israel, the Palestinians and the United States if they end, but because in the Middle East maximum demands and extremist posturing usually precede breakthroughs. We will, of course, have to wait and see.
I wish for President Obama, Secretary Kerry, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and President Abbas not just the fortitude to carry on, but the wisdom and courage to find a way through the morass of issues that need resolution and compromise.
Jeffrey Goldberg has written a fine piece in The Bloomberg View on the dynamics of the current negotiations that is worth reading – “When Will Netanyahu Hail Himself to the Cross” (don’t let the title deter you from reaching his words) http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-10/when-will-netanyahu-nail-himself-to-the-cross.
Shabbat shalom v’Chag Pesach Sameach,
Biv'racha u-b’ahavah,
Rabbi John Rosove
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