From the Rabbi

On May 25, many Black communities and their supporters commemorated the one-year anniversary of the death of George Floyd. I participated in the local candlelight vigil at the Clinton Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church in Greenport. It was a well-organized and respectful gathering, presided over by Pastor Natalie R. Wimberly. It included several local clergy, a mufti, and Christian and Muslim lay leaders. The charge by Pastor Natalie was “The time is now for uncommon courage.” She added that we should never stand idly by, that we should mention the victims’ names, not forget them. “Say my name, say her name, say his name, say our name,” she called out.

The vigil took place just a couple of weeks after I had returned from my trip, driving almost 13,000 miles across America. Seeing police all over the country, I often thought about the expression, “Driving while Black.” How awful it is for someone to have this feeling of constant exposure and vulnerability. I thought of my relationship with God. As a faithful man, I don’t want to be afraid of God; I am in awe of God. Similarly, I don’t want to be afraid of the police; I want to respect them. We need the police, of course, and we need them to be confident. The police should see themselves in us and we should see ourselves in them. They shouldn’t see anyone as “the other,” and we shouldn’t see them as “others.” It is a vast and beautiful country. One of the reasons it is beautiful is because of its godly diversity.

The vigil happened to coincide also with the conflict in Israel and the Guardian of the Walls Operation. I suspected that a connection would be made between the two, just as I had heard had happened in similar gatherings. At the end, as it was starting to get dark, windy, and chilly, Habeed Ahmed, chair of the Islamic Center of Long Island’s Board of Trustees, spoke. Quickly, he drew a parallel between what he perceived as the oppression of Blacks in America and the Palestinians in Israel. This, of course, is an ignorant, offensive, and dangerous comparison. It is ignorant because it is a different conflict, impossible to judge from afar, as impossible as making a judgment based on a person’s external look or skin color. It is offensive because educated Jews, who largely support Israel and the historic and current struggle of Jews to live peacefully in their land, also support the Black outcry of injustice in this country. And it is dangerous because this false parallel has provoked acts of anti-Semitism in streets across America—from NY to LA.

I spoke last, to chant Psalm 23 and make a few comments. Pastor Natalie’s call for “uncommon courage” resonated with me. Something had to be said. I began by sharing my thoughts about what it would be like to “drive while Black,” also our journey through Birmingham, our visit to the site where four girls were killed in the 16th Street bombing of the Baptist Church in 1963, our drive from Selma to Montgomery, and our walk with my friend, the Rev. Jerria Martin, across the same bridge where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel locked arms in 1965 during the Civil Rights protests. We visited those sites to show our support, even six decades later. Seventy percent of non-Black supporters of the Civil Rights Movements were Jews, among them, the current Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet’s own parents.

It is a welcome development, finally, to make Juneteenth a national holiday, to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S., and the 700,000 who lost their lives in this battle. We should denounce prejudice in any form — anti-Jewish, anti-Black, anti-any particular group. In the words of Dr. King, “Injustice somewhere is injustice everywhere.” It was important for me to reiterate that Jews identify with this discrimination out of their own struggles, that there are always reasons to hate Jews and Blacks if one is looking to hate. All of us need to understand that we are in this together.

I concluded my remarks at the vigil by saying that I am visibly Jewish because of the yarmulke I wear. Many Jews now are afraid to be visibly Jewish, that all of us should be outraged at the surging anti-Semitic violence. Let us not allow this country to become a place where it would be dangerous to be “walking while Jewish.”

May the light of this summer shine upon all of us,

—Rabbi Gadi Capela

Every Shabbat morning, just before we open the Holy Ark and take out the Torah scrolls, we sing: “Source of compassion, favor Zion with Your goodness; build the walls of Jerusalem.”  Throughout Jewish history, the walls of Jerusalem have represented the barometer of Jewish wellbeing. It’s the fence around the beating heart of our people. When the walls are down or breeched, the shield is down and the end nears. It was the case twice before, with the destruction of the two Holy Jewish Temples. It took only three weeks from the breach of the walls on the 17th of Tammuz and the destruction on the 9th of Av. Praying to God to build the walls of Jerusalem is to pray for the fortitude of the Jewish people.

Since the destruction of the Temples and the exile of the Jewish people in the first century, many nations have occupied this area and built their holy sites nearby. The Muslims, however, built the shrine of the Dome of the Rock in the 7th century directly on the spot where the two Jewish Temples had stood. Temple Mount has changed hands a few times since. The Christian Crusaders took it over in the 11th century but lost it to Muslim hands a century later. It was then conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century until the British Mandate post WWI awarded it to the Jordanians, who controlled the area until the Six Day War in 1967. Throughout this time, Jews viewed the return to Jerusalem or Zion as an act of climbing the wall, attributing the walls of Jerusalem as the context for rebuilding the Jewish homeland.

Fast-forward to May 6, 2021. Something triggered riots and demonstrations by thousands of Israeli-Arabs. One apparent reason was an Israeli Supreme Court decision to evict a few Arab Muslim families from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Another reason seemed to be the storming of the Temple Mount the next day by Israeli police to quiet down the riots. The Jerusalem police also decided to close access to the Damascus Gate at the end of Ramadan to prevent further riots, especially before the Jerusalem Day Parade on May 10.

On Jerusalem Day, Hamas used the opportunity to show its solidarity with the Palestinians in Israel and to entice those in Judea and Samaria by firing thousands of rockets toward the south of Israel and even Jerusalem itself. Some experts say a powder keg exploded when Hamas intervened because an election in the Palestinian Authority, scheduled for May 22, was cancelled by Mahmud Abbas, a move designed to keep Hamas from gaining political power in the West Bank.

But can one event release this intense hatred? Many countries in the world have disputed borders, but somehow Israel is always in focus. How far back do we have to go to decide who owns the land? The Biblical reference goes only so far, especially for those who don’t take it as authoritative. Furthermore, even after God promised Abraham the land, Abraham still had to acquire it. The real way to acquire the land is through charity and justice. The essence of the Torah is to take care of the vulnerable, to stand up to bullies.

David Harris, CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), in his Op Ed in The Times of Israel on May 22, cites 15 Israel-related “whoppers” — antisemitic tropes by world leaders and media personalities: Jews are wealthy and influential and control the media; their strong lobbies are the reason Israel is getting help from the US. They blame Israel for war crimes, intentionally killing children, and even suggest Israel should be dismantled. They align closely with Hamas with its charter to have a land clean of Jews.

Why do some people still contemplate whether Israel has the right to exist. Israel has existed for 4,000 years, since the family of Jacob. The 4,000 rockets Hamas sent our way are a symbolic reminder.

One day the world will understand that history has brought us back to our land, and that we have been building and advancing step by step against all adversities to create a stable, democratic country, safe for all religions. My true hope is that this time, after the missiles stop flying over our heads, we will recognize that Am Israel Chai and is still the guardian of the walls.

Blessings for peace,

—Rabbi Gadi Capela

For a long time, one of the top items on my bucket list was to climb down into the Grand Canyon. It was love of first sight 12 years ago, when I first visited, and again three years ago. On those visits, I was able to see the Canyon from the South Rim and then from the North Rim. But looking down, I wanted to deepen my relationship with the Canyon. There is something spiritual about this place. It could be the verse Mimaamakim kra’aticha — one of the Penitential Psalms — “Out of the depth I called unto you Adonai. (Psalm 130)

There is nothing deeper in America than the Grand Canyon. Different nations or faiths satisfy the need for a pilgrimage in different ways and in different places. Americans use the Grand Canyon as a pilgrimage site. In Hebrew, the term pilgrimage is Aliya La’regel — ascent for the occasion — but regel also means foot. Something is incomplete in a spiritual ascent if it doesn’t involve a physical journey, as Abram and Sarai did before God awarded their names the letter H, thus becoming Abraham and Sarah. In fact, after the march with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965 from Selma to Montgomery, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, said, “I felt like my feet were praying.”

What I knew for certain was that I couldn’t make the round trip in one day. I was hoping I could do it in two days, one climbing down and one climbing up. But to accomplish that required me to secure a place to spend the night at the bottom of the Canyon. This required booking at least two years in advance. The other option is to call the same morning and hope for a cancellation. And there was one.

I had a couple of hours to get ready and drive to the park. By the time I started the climb down the South Kaibab trail, it was already 2 p.m. I knew at that point I had only six hours to make it before dark. When it gets dark “in the depth,” it gets really dark. Since my days in the Israeli Army, I was used to long excursions up and down mountains, usually in the dark. Moreover, leading the pilgrimages to the Holy Land every year put me in the mindset of a walking expedition. But this was different. I was alone, and the territory was unfamiliar to me. I recited Psalm 23 — “…even if I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no harm because you are with me.” I was not afraid. It was not the first time I was alone with God.

Just after pitch dark, when no human or animal can be seen, I saw three glittering lights, like lightning bugs, coming down the mountain, followed by giggling voices. As they approached, I turned on my flashlight to signal my presence. I was leaning against a rock, letting my feet and my being rest. The lights and voices were three young women from New York City, of all places. At the time I was talking to God, he was already sending me his angels. Ki Malachaiv yetzave lach lishmorcha bechol derachecha — He [God] will charge His angels for you, to protect you in all your ways. The three “Charlie’s Angels” insisted on walking with me for the last hour, until I got to my room.

The next day, I started up a different trail —  The Bright Angel. There I met other angels. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it all the way up in one day. When I arrived at the midpoint, Indian Garden, I knew I would have to spend the night there. The park provided me with a tent and a mattress. But because I didn’t have a reservation, I would have to camp by myself in an outside section. A family I’d met earlier on the trail happened to camp there as well. When they saw me, they invited me to pitch my tent among them, and they offering me a warm-cooked  dinner.

On the third day, I tried to be someone else’s angel. It was to be an eight-hour climb in intense heat. I was not in a hurry. I had learned my lessons —  drink, snack, and rest intermittently. But I noticed a man who was struggling. I decided to accompany him the rest of the way, and we became a team. We would do it together, and together we finally made it. It was a victory — a victory of the body, the spirit, and the camaraderie. The Grand Canyon of angels.

—Rabbi Gadi Capela