Tension, Shadows of Past Wars Weigh Heavily on Israel’s Yom Kippur

The ghosts of past wars and the threat of a new one weighed heavily on Israelis on Sunday as the nation began its observance of Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day, a day of fasting and “affliction of the soul.”

Preparing their sermons before the holiday began at sundown, some rabbis said that events had unfolded so rapidly in the past 11 days that they had been hard pressed to keep up with the changes in their congregants’ moods.

Some rabbis who had planned to concentrate on relations between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs in the wake of rioting in Israeli Arab communities revised those sermons Sunday morning, after Prime Minister Ehud Barak seemed to be preparing the nation for the end of peace negotiations with the Palestinians and the possibility of war.

Others said they were simply struggling to help themselves and their flocks cope with what many here were calling the most somber Day of Atonement since 1973. Egypt attacked Israeli forces in the Sinai on Yom Kippur then, catching the nation unprepared and temporarily overrunning its defenses before Israel regrouped and fought back.

Many Israelis feel that once again, they have been caught unprepared, this time by a wave of violence that erupted in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Sept. 28, spread into Israel proper and now threatens to spiral into a war with Lebanon and Syria.

“Mine is a congregation where many are involved in peace activities, and there is a real feeling that everything we have worked for is blowing up in our faces,” said Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kalman, who heads a progressive synagogue in Jerusalem. “People are looking for comfort, but I’m afraid the comforter is feeling in need of comfort himself.”

In the West Bank settlement of Efrat, near where a 60-year-old rabbi was stopped on the road by Palestinian police last week and beaten by a mob, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin said the violence that has raged since the Jewish High Holy Days began has made this “one of the most frightening High Holy Days seasons.”

“The prime minister gave up 60% of our patrimony” by ceding land to the Palestinians, Riskin said, “and then we were literally attacked, and Joseph’s Tomb was desecrated and the whole world was silent.”

Each individual stands alone before God on Yom Kippur, Riskin said, but this year, Israelis “stand alone before God in a world that has terribly rejected us--even, tragically, the United States.”

Israel is “in the midst of war,” he said, and must unify to confront the threat.

But Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi, Yisrael Meir Lau, said he had not abandoned hope that war will be averted. He said he intended to lead his congregation in praying for peace even as Barak’s ultimatum to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to stop the attacks or risk a calling off of negotiations loomed at the holiday’s end.

“I tell all the Jewish congregations to in-gather and pray for peace for the nation, and for the private peace of the kidnapped soldiers in Lebanon,” Lau said, referring to three Israeli soldiers captured Saturday by Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim Lebanese militia. “This Yom Kippur, the synagogues will be even more crowded, because when people are threatened, they are more full of faith and looking for redemption.”

The nation’s mood reminded him of the tension Israelis felt before the June 1967 Middle East War erupted, Lau said. Then, “our neighbors, the Arab states,” massed their armies at the borders and Israel agonized over what to do, fearing it would lose international support if it struck first, before launching a preemptive airstrike that wiped out the Syrian and Egyptian air forces. Now, Lau said, the tension is similar, but “our neighbors are inside, and this is even more dangerous.”

In Tel Aviv, Rabbi Roberto Arbib of Congregation Sinai said the violence inside Israel proper and in the Palestinian territories was overwhelming his congregants with sadness as they prepared for the day of fasting, prayer and introspection that Jewish law commands.

At a pre-Yom Kippur study session, Arbib said, “people were crying and crying. They are afraid.” Many found the violence inside Israel, between Jews and Arabs, more threatening than the battles between troops and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, Arbib said.

“We forgot that we have a neighbor, a son of Abraham too. We committed this sin,” he said. “Now, we have to remember them. Before Yom Kippur, you go to your friend and your neighbor to forgive and seek forgiveness. On Yom Kippur, you ask God for forgiveness. We have to ask God’s forgiveness for this sin.”

In the south of the country, Rabbi Michael Gaetz, leader of the Conservative Congregation Sinai Synagogue, said his sermon would focus on the spiritual aspects of the situation. It would speak of the need for Jews in Israel to understand the suffering of Israeli Arabs, Gaetz said, and to remember that “as has been said before, there is no Olympics of suffering.” He worries, Gaetz said, because “I’m hearing hatred from people, outraged hatred, and it is based on something, on the hatred being directed toward us.

“Yet still, hatred is forbidden” under Jewish religious law, Gaetz said. “I want to talk about how we repair our broken souls at this stage, on this day when we have to repair our soul.”