Rachel Timoner, the clergy at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spends Yom Kippur and where his daughter got married, on Saturday told Politico that “In this speech, he said what most of us think.”
She was referring to the Senate Majority Leader’s call on Israel to go to new elections ASAP so that they and the Biden administration can finally rid themselves of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Timoner also blessed Schumer’s three grandchildren (I have no idea what this means, is there a bless thy grandchildren mitzvah I’m not aware of?) and buried his father. And she “beamed” when she said about her VIP congregant, “I think that he said out loud what the overwhelming majority of American Jews are saying to each other, which is that Bibi Netanyahu is making the world less safe for Jews and making Israel less safe for Israelis.”
And how does the elected Israeli prime minister (leading a 76 to 54 majority coalition government) make the world and Israel less safe for Jews? Timoner explains: “Netanyahu himself has said that he completely opposes a two-state solution. And so, he is an obstacle to peace.”
TWO-STATE AT ALL COST
Jacob Kraus-Preminger wrote in 2016 on the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center website, that “even when it seems difficult, the Reform Movement has chosen to hold onto its support for two states, as it did at the onset of the Second Intifada in 2001 when it resolved that ‘even now, when Palestinian extremism assaults our sensibilities, there is no moral or practical alternative to these principles.’”
Little known story: each summer, the Reform movement sends its high school graduates to Israel to tour the country and volunteer on kibbutzim. At the end of their vacation, the kids are flown to Poland to participate in the March of the Living in Auschwitz. But during the 2001 second intifada, Reform parents were concerned about sending their kids to Israel, so they only sent them to Auschwitz. But I digress.
Kraus-Preminger declared, “Our Movement continues to understand that establishing a Palestinian state under an agreement that provides security and recognition for both sides is the only path to secure the future for both Israel and the Palestinian people.”
RABBI RACHEL’S COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
“I think that what Senator Schumer said was brave and right,” Timoner told Politico. I’m not sure what kind of bravery was required for the Senator from New York to advocate the overthrow of an elected prime minister, but I know that by “right” she means this:
“Part of what we need to address is the long silence of the Jewish establishment about the occupation of Palestinians, and the ways that the Netanyahu government has sold the Israeli people on the idea that they can both have peace and allow settlers to run rampant over the human rights of Palestinians. And those things don’t go together.
“So that’s what I was really applauding in Senator Schumer’s speech was that he was saying, yes, we must get to the end of this war. And what we’ve really got to do is get to the place where both Israelis and Palestinians can live in safety and freedom.”
Moments earlier, she said, “From progressive to liberal, centrist Jews, there is a feeling of crisis right now. That since Oct. 7, we have been absolutely devastated by the unbelievable atrocities of that day, and are in profound grief about it, desperate for the hostages to come home. Simultaneously, horrified by the number of Palestinians who have died and the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and shocked at the amount of antisemitism that we’re experiencing both on the left and on the right in the United States. And also watching an Israeli government that is, in its extremist qualities, betraying Jewish values.”
To summarize: this Reform clergywoman wants a Palestinian State to be established despite the devastating atrocities of October 7, 2023; she is troubled by the number of Gazans who are being killed in Israel’s war against Hamas, the perpetrators of the atrocities; she is stunned by the rise in antisemitism; and she blames it all on Netanyahu and his extremist government who are “betraying Jewish values.”
HER JEWISH VALUES
What are Jewish values according to Rachel Timoner? On February 18, 2017, she wrote an article titled, “Standing for Our Values: Why 19 Rabbis Were Arrested in NYC This Week.”
“During my arrest for civil disobedience with 18 other rabbis in protest of the Muslim ban in front of the Trump Hotel in New York City, the police had been respectful and even kind. … So, as I sat on the police bus with my hands cuffed behind my back, in the dark, I was not at all afraid.
“In fact, I was less afraid on that police bus than I have been at any time since November (2016, when Trump was elected President – DI). Since November, I have been afraid. I am afraid for our country, for our democracy, for human rights and human dignity and human decency. I am afraid for our public education system, for the civil rights and the voting rights we have won through so much struggle. I am afraid for my lesbian family. I am afraid for my Muslim neighbors and my immigrant neighbors. I am afraid that there will be reckless war, even nuclear war.”
Those are the Jewish values of the woman who runs Chuck Schumer’s synagogue, and in keeping with what our sages have taught us over the centuries, those values include defending Muslims and lesbians. This is not a cheap joke on my part, Timoner is not saying that as a Jew she supports the rights of Muslims and lesbians – which I do as well. She embraces her support as “Jewish values.”
They are not. My Jewish values suggest that I should support monotheistic Gentiles and that lesbianism is only discouraged by the sages, especially Maimonides, but not explicitly by the Torah. These are fringe aspects of my faith, not my Jewish values.
Timoner concludes her article with a shtikle Toirah: “It just so happens that this week, we read about our own people becoming refugees. In Parashat B’shalach, we read of our people’s flight from Egypt, our fear that we would be killed or captured, our despair, our hope, and our cry for freedom. And then we read that God said, “’Tell the people to go forward.’”
I swear, this is the first time I’ve read about the Jewish refugees from Egypt. Runaway slaves, sure, we cover it every seder – but refugees? In my humble opinion, being refugees from Egypt suggests that we should demand to go back to the land from whence we were forced to flee.
And I know, Timoner was just trying to come up with a cute sermon and didn’t think through the ramifications of her weird comparison. But it somehow all fits together: her weird Jewish values, bizarre reading of Parshat B’shalach, branding Netanyahu’s government as extremist and therefore not worthy of serving its voters, and, the worst sin: the refusal to accept the two-state solution. How dare Israelis shame their brothers and sisters in America in front of their progressive neighbors?
As she told Politico so eloquently: “Part of what we need to address is the long silence of the Jewish establishment about the occupation of Palestinians, and the ways that the Netanyahu government has sold the Israeli people on the idea that they can both have peace and allow settlers to run rampant over the human rights of Palestinians. And those things don’t go together.”
This really is her view of her Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel: they are all dupes of Netanyahu who, as a result of their brainwashing, are running rampant over the Arabs. They couldn’t possibly have reached their decisive objection to the two-state solution (99 MKs votes against it) without being under Svengali’s hypnosis.
“So what I was really applauding in Senator Schumer’s speech was that he was saying, yes, we must get to the end of this war. And what we’ve really got to do is get to the place where both Israelis and Palestinians can live in safety and freedom.”
And that place, like everything else Timoner preaches, is in her dreams, which are Israel’s nightmares.
