Jews the world over today celebrate Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement. Nothing all that special about that, except that Ira Chernus,writing a piece "This Yom Kippur, We Must Atone for the Sins of Israeli Policy" on AlterNet suggests that Jews ought to incorporate atoning for the sins which the Israelis have meted out to the Palestinians.
"Until a very few years ago, though, Israel’s policies triggered virtually no guilt in synagogues across the U.S. It was all too easy to assume that communal solidarity and mutual responsibility meant supporting the Israeli government, no matter what it did, and standing firm against any Palestinian demands for self-determination. Now the climate of American Jewish opinion is rapidly changing, complicating that crucial question: “What sins? Precisely what should we, as a community, feel guilty and atone for?”"
And:
"And the holy day this year finds a surprisingly wide variety of opinions is in the air. More and more U.S. Jews every day are beginning to raise questions, criticize Israeli policies, and confess that far too many of those policies are both a strategic and a moral error. A growing number would even call it a sin.
We can expect to hear that kind of message even from some synagogue pulpits this year. Nearly 600 rabbis have joined the Rabbinic Cabinet of J Street, the nation’s most prominent Jewish pro-Israel, pro-peace group. The Cabinet is circulating a letter that acknowledges Israel’s “dangerous behavior,” cites the biblical injunction to “rebuke your kin,” and calls for the Israelis to make “difficult compromises and mutual sacrifice.” That’s a message hardly any rabbi would have dared endorse publicly just a few years ago. Now an impressively long and growing list of rabbis, including nine former presidents of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, have signed the letter."
"Until a very few years ago, though, Israel’s policies triggered virtually no guilt in synagogues across the U.S. It was all too easy to assume that communal solidarity and mutual responsibility meant supporting the Israeli government, no matter what it did, and standing firm against any Palestinian demands for self-determination. Now the climate of American Jewish opinion is rapidly changing, complicating that crucial question: “What sins? Precisely what should we, as a community, feel guilty and atone for?”"
And:
"And the holy day this year finds a surprisingly wide variety of opinions is in the air. More and more U.S. Jews every day are beginning to raise questions, criticize Israeli policies, and confess that far too many of those policies are both a strategic and a moral error. A growing number would even call it a sin.
We can expect to hear that kind of message even from some synagogue pulpits this year. Nearly 600 rabbis have joined the Rabbinic Cabinet of J Street, the nation’s most prominent Jewish pro-Israel, pro-peace group. The Cabinet is circulating a letter that acknowledges Israel’s “dangerous behavior,” cites the biblical injunction to “rebuke your kin,” and calls for the Israelis to make “difficult compromises and mutual sacrifice.” That’s a message hardly any rabbi would have dared endorse publicly just a few years ago. Now an impressively long and growing list of rabbis, including nine former presidents of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, have signed the letter."
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