January 21, 2024

“In the Belly of the Whale,” by Rev. Mark Caggiano, 1/21/24

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

[Jonah] cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

From the story of Jonah, people most often remember him being swallowed by a whale. But there is a lot more to the story. Jonah was running away. God had asked him to travel to the city of Nineveh to warn the people about their sinfulness and their coming judgement. Jonah did not want to do this, so he boarded a ship heading west. The ship was caught in a storm and Jonah was thrown overboard.

Then came the whale. Jonah cries out to God from within the stomach of the whale. And then the whale spews him up onto the shores of the Middle East. Kinda gross.

Jonah then travels to the city and says to the people, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Notice what he did not say. Not repent and seek forgiveness. Not repent for the end is nigh. All he said was you are going to die.

And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

Happy ending? For the people of Nineveh, maybe, but not for Jonah. Jonah was angry, furious really. He was mad because the people were forgiven. He was mad because God had forgiven them. And God asked Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

 “Is it right for you to be angry?”

We will come back to that question.

This Sunday, I would like to discuss a topic that is rather difficult. One that has caused a lot of consternation in our country and around the world. The topic is an idea, a concept, that can lead to a great deal of disagreement. The topic is antisemitism.

What does antisemitism mean? That is the start of the problem. There are many definitions of antisemitism. They often seem alike in most respects. I will offer up one definition put forth by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance:

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

The problem is not the definition, but the examples people offer to flesh out a definition, to give some practical application. What is antisemitism and, significantly, what is not antisemitism. Some groups have declared that boycotting Israel and Israeli companies is not antisemitic, while others say it is. Some suggest that criticizing the occupation of Palestine and the treatment of Palestinians is not antisemitic, while others say it is.

Another factor in defining antisemitism is whether you are differentiating it from anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism can also be the subject of definitional wrestling matches, but generally it means opposition to the nationalist movement to establish and to maintain the modern State of Israel.

Does that mean Israel as it is now or as it was in 1948 or in 1967 or in 1973 or in 2023?

Antisemitism generally means anti-Jewish, but the term came into use during the 19^th century by a scholar trying to sound academically clever when he was being a bigot. Antisemitism was a racialized term, which would later figure in the policies of Nazi Germany. And it is a lazy and inaccurate term because “Semite” includes a range of linguistic groups, including Arab speakers.

I am discussing antisemitism, of course, because of the terrible violence occurring in Israel and Gaza and, alarmingly, more and more around the Middle East. On October 7, 2023, there was a series of terrorist attacks by the group Hamas across southern Israel that led to the deaths of approximately 1,500 Israelis plus others and the kidnapping of hundreds of people, some Israeli and some from other countries. These events were horrific, repugnant, and unjustifiable. These were for the most part civilians going about their daily lives and they had done nothing to deserve what happened. Nothing at all.

And then, Israel attacked Gaza. This was not surprising to anyone. The desire to strike back and to achieve some semblance of justice would not only have been predictable but expected. Not responding would have been unthinkable to Israelis, I can safely speculate, and to most Americans, I need not even speculate.

The number of Palestinians dead has grown from hundreds to thousands and now to tens of thousands. As of yesterday, there were 25,000 dead and 60,000 wounded.

Such numbers are disputed by the Israeli government because they come from the health ministry in Gaza operated by Hamas. But since the Israeli government itself has reported that 8,000 Hamas fighters have been killed, I think it would be reasonable to assume that at least a similar number of civilians have died. So, 16,000 people. Looking at the footage of destruction in Gaza, this number might be a gross underestimation.

The need to strike back at Hamas has shifted in scope over the months since October 7. The desire to find those who committed these crimes has become a plan to eliminate Hamas, root and branch. The desire to respond in kind has become a large-scale military invasion.

And the desire to rescue hostages, Israeli and non-Israeli, was initially a burning passion for the Israeli government. That desire remains as an oft-repeated message from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But if you read the newspapers and look at public sentiments, there seems to be growing frustration among Israelis that concrete plans to rescue the hostages seem few and far between. Protests are growing, by family members and the public, to make the safe return of the hostages the number one priority, and not yet eliminating Hamas. Because these two goals might be entirely incompatible.

And with that growing criticism of the Israeli government in mind, I had to ask myself as I wrote this sermon: are such protests antisemitic? Some are by Israelis. Some are by Jews in other countries. And some are by non-Jewish people. So, are these protests antisemitic in nature?

Most likely not, at least when it comes to calls to rescue hostages. Even though there is criticism, this seems like a normal version of disagreement over priorities without any tinge of antisemitism. Bring the hostages home.

Another question: are these same protests anti–Zionist? Meaning are they critical of the concept of the State of Israel or the way in which Israel is conducting its affairs in the occupied territories.

Not exactly. But that is less clear.

Criticism of the Israeli government is closer to the heart of the idea of anti-Zionism. And, depending upon who you are asking, anti-Zionism is in varying degrees more acceptable. Maybe some academics around the world would say it is OK, maybe some political or nonprofit groups, too. And still others would suggest it is inappropriate to second guess the Israeli government in light of the terrible events of October 7.

This process of picking apart definitions is how we might begin to understand why it is painfully difficult to talk about antisemitism. Even if you can come up with a workable definition, fitting examples into that definition requires you to make claims. Claims about who is right and who is wrong. Claims about what is right and what is wrong. Claims about who is right, right now, and who was right long ago.

History factors greatly into this topic. Antisemitism is an old notion, even if the term was only coined in the 19^th century. Christianity has had a long-term love-hate relationship with Judaism. Christians love the Hebrew scriptures, but they love them in an odd way. They are referred to as the Old Testament. Old in this sense is about age but it is also about being outdated. The New Testament comes along and replaces what came before. Some might disagree.

Now if you read the Christian scriptures closely, you might notice that there are some places where Jews are spoken of quite fondly, as if Christians are in fact Jews. This is a self-referential conversation because Jesus and his followers considered themselves to be Jewish, entirely Jewish. There were disagreements among Jewish groups about how to run things and how to live a good life, but this was not an “us versus them” conversation. There was no distinction drawn, except that Jesus represented something new.

And then there are a few books of the Christian scriptures in which things get ugly. The Gospel of John in particular strikes an extremely negative tone, sounding very accusatory about Jews for having crucified Jesus. That is not the case in the other Gospels, in which it is clear that it was the Temple priests who were behind the campaign to have Jesus executed. In a modern example, this is like criticizing the citizens of Israel for the conduct of the war in Gaza versus criticizing the Israeli government. Not the same at all.

But this antisemitic tone only increases across the centuries. Once Christianity becomes the imperial religion of the Roman Empire, there is a recognizable effort to persecute Jews. Anti-Jewish policies become common across Europe. They become cultural norms and the backdrop of everyday life.

And even after efforts to reform Christianity, there remained a deep distrust of Jews for refusing to convert and to follow the one true religion, even after the one true religion splinters into a thousand different shades of Protestantism. One particularly virulent strain of antisemitism grows in the area that will become known as Germany. It is by no means unique, but anti-Semitic writings from the German Reformation would be used by Nazi leaders to justify the Holocaust.

And the Holocaust becomes the driving force behind the creation of the modern State of Israel. The idea of Zionism did not start with the Holocaust, but it became an existential fight after millions died because they were Jewish. In the shadow of that tragedy, the urgency for creating the State of Israel grew.

The problem was that there happened to be many people already living in what is now Israel. Palestine was a region populated by more than a million residents, the Palestinians. Muslims had become the majority population a thousand years after Jews were expelled from the area by the Roman Empire in the second century.

Over thirty years ago, I was in college. I took a course on the psychology of negotiation taught by Herbert Kelman. Professor Kelman was on the surface an unremarkable fellow. He was what you expected from a college professor. Thick glasses, frumpy suits, and long lectures. One part of our course together was a simulated negotiation between Palestinian and Israeli representatives. We spent a long weekend session trying to negotiate peace in the Middle East. Some of us were asked to play Israelis, some Palestinians, and some third-party negotiators. I was a third party from the UN or something.

We were told to stay strictly in our roles. I remember some people getting agitated and angry with others. One women was so good at her role, meaning unwilling to budge an inch, that we thought she was actually an Israeli. But she wasn’t Israeli. She was South African, another group that at that time was used to fraught conversations about what it means to interact with people across differences.

By the way, Professor Kelman had a secret. He was holding clandestine meetings between representatives from the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Israeli government. He did so under the cover of academic lectures. Two groups would be going to seemingly unrelated events, like one in Geneva and the other in Zurich, and then they would quietly gather in between to begin planning for peace talks. These conversations are thought to have been the basis upon which the 1993 Oslo Accords were founded. The last best chance at peace in the Middle East was fashioned from conversations people had in good faith and with quiet hope.

And those plans failed. They failed because there were people on both sides who did not want peace. They did not think that there was a way to coexist. They thought one side was being asked to give up too much. For these and other reasons, the Oslo Accords fell apart. Violent uprisings by Palestinians every decade or so have been met with violent responses by Israelis.

The Hamas attacks in 2023 were different in severity but they were not unpredictable. The policy of Israel has become one of managed conflict, of theoretically limited warfare and controlled loss of life. Hamas overwhelmed this planned system of control, but the system was never designed to prevent all violence. Just to limit it to acceptable losses, as cynical as that might sound.

There was nothing acceptable about the losses of October 7^th in Israel. There was nothing acceptable about those killings, those casualties, and those kidnappings. And there is nothing acceptable about the deaths and casualties being suffered by the people of Gaza as Israel tries to root out the terrorism of Hamas.

The detailed way I just described events is a requirement for any conversation about the conflict. One must clearly and initially describe the Israeli losses, deaths, and kidnappings. One may then to a comparable degree describe the losses by Palestinians if and only if you also mention that Hamas must be destroyed. Do not follow this pattern and you will face quick criticism.

I have spoken to my Jewish and Muslim colleagues about how they have had to police their language to maintain this balance, as people count the number of times words are used. How many times condemnations were made and counterpoints given. How many moments in public or at work or in private they have to remain silent to avoid personal attack.

I am a bystander in these conversations, but I can only imagine it is exhausting to maintain the weird equilibrium of outrage that has grown up around this conflict. I decided to write this sermon because I wanted to give voice to the issues of antisemitism and to add my adamant rejection of the notion of anti-Jewish remarks and stereotypes. But I also wanted to express my sympathies for the Palestinians of Gaza who had nothing to do with the murderous attacks by Hamas and who have lived under their tyranny for many years.

In this terrible debate over war, there is often lost the strange reality that both Israelis and Palestinians are suffering because their leaders want to fight. The Netanyahu government wants to fight against an enemy that threatens the existence of Israel and thereby garner public support. And the leadership of Hamas wants to sabotage Israel by making them into the biggest bad guy in the world, making us forget every other conflict. Both sets of decisionmakers are getting what they wanted. The people who are paying the price are the citizens of Israel and Gaza.

In our reading this morning, God asked Jonah “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Why was Jonah angry? Jonah was a prophet sent by God to save the people of Nineveh from destruction. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. And the Assyrians had invaded Israel and conquered the northern portion of it. People were scattered, the city of Jerusalem besieged, and a massive ransom paid to end the war. Jonah himself might have been a refugee.

He was upset at the prospect of saving these people. Nineveh contained over 120,000 people according to the Book of Jonah. And Jonah wanted all those people to die. He wanted them to suffer for what had happened to him and his people.

The story is not about a fish. It is about the anger of Jonah and his near refusal to bring about the salvation of an entire city. It is about the forgiveness of God that is available to those who repent and seek forgiveness, even when prophets like Jonah refuse to even tell them that they might be saved.

It is the height of arrogance for someone like me to get up and talk about how the people of Israel and Palestine should feel or act. Both groups have suffered. Both groups have spent centuries being kicked around and abused. Now there are few events in history that can match the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust. Few events can match the organized evil of the Final Solution.

That existential plight led to struggle for the State of Israel. That struggle was at the expense of another group, the Palestinians. Since 1948, there has been a back-and-forth struggle for control, mostly with Israel gaining as a result. I do not think the existence of Israel should be up for negotiation. But that is not the same thing as saying the Palestinians should get nothing.

And if I had the answer to that conflict, I would get a Nobel Prize. I do not have the answer. Well, actually, I do have the answer. It is so obvious an answer that it belies the seeming impossibility of the solution. The people of Israel and Palestine need to sit down and resolve their differences. They need to do so like they did back in the 1980s, which almost led to a lasting peace.

It did not work out that way because some people stood to gain more from conflict than from peace. To gain power, to gain prestige. To gain a sense of righteousness and delivery of God’s promises. Peace would not give them what they wanted. So, there was no peace.

Antisemitism represents a hatred of Jews. It is an ugly prejudice that feeds this conflict from many directions. It feeds the fires of war and intolerance and it also makes threats to Israel all the more terrifying for its people. And I do not mean to suggest that resolving the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians would eliminate antisemitism from the world. I do not.

But if the people of Israel are to know a time of peace, it will not be the result of this perpetual state of planned for war that has become the de facto policy of the Israeli government. It may not even be peace but simply less war, less violence, less tension from every direction.

When I remember the question God asked Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry?” I cannot help but think about the people of Israel now versus then. Both have the right to be angry, to be angry at the violence that they have suffered and at the centuries of mistreatment and hatred endured. And yet God asked Jonah to save the people of Nineveh. God asked Jonah to save the people that sought to destroy his people.

I am not saying anyone should forgive Hamas, who committed heinous crimes. But I think it is quite a different request to save the people of Gaza from this barrage of unyielding vengeance aimed at the wrong target. Because it is possible that someone who has been truly righteous can out of anger do something, or allow something, that is not righteous.

It is time to stop the war. To turn instead toward punishing those who committed these terrible acts. It is time to stop killing those who did nothing wrong and to find a better way to bring about some form of justice, if not yet anything that looks like peace. Amen.