An open letter went around this week from a progressive rabbinic group that I have long supported. I often sign their petitions, including ones both strongly critical and strongly supportive of the Israeli government. Hundreds - literally hundreds - of respected rabbinic and cantorial colleagues signed on to this letter. l decided not to sign. It was a lonely feeling to stay on the sidelines.
Nothing there was in itself objectionable to me, but the sum of parts did not do justice to the enormity and uniqueness of what happened on Oct 7. Right now, it is crucial to maintain moral clarity, which demands that the genocidal crimes of Oct 7 receive three paragraphs of attention for every sentence devoted to other concerns. It's like how President Biden warned of the potential for angry overreach by Israel and called on them to address the humanitarian needs in Gaza; those warnings came only in the midst of a 15,000 mile, week-long bear hug and a long speech filled with unconditional love.
For Biden, and for us, moral clarity means three paragraphs of empathy for every sentence of critique. For the letter to have passed my muster, there would have needed to be three paragraphs about October 7 for each sentence dealing with Israeli provocations or potential provocations. That was not the case.
Moral clarity, a term made popular in conservative circles, gained a bipartisan flavor when it came from the mouth of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after she won her race in 2018. “I think what we’ve seen is that working-class Americans want a clear champion,” she said, “and there is nothing radical about moral clarity in 2018.”
The New York Times put it this way at the time:
Moral clarity is long defined by usage as a capacity to make firm, unflinching distinctions between evil and good, and to take action based on those distinctions. These are fighting words: They mean knowing the enemy, which is the first step to taking up arms against the enemy. But they’re potentially applicable to any side of a fight. What adrenaline does for the body, moral clarity does for semantics: It generates a surge of willpower, serving as a prelude to — and maybe a pretext for — combat.
For me, moral clarity does not come in a rush, like adrenaline, and is not designed to prepare the field for battle and enemy for dehumanization. Moral clarity needs to be borne of intellectual clarity, not a war footing. While it often will involve an enemy - as it does with Hamas - the case against that group need to be intellectually self evident, so clear as to be beyond reasonable doubt.
When looking at that clergy letter, I didn't feel, for instance, that an equivalence should be drawn between what Hamas did on October 7 and what some far-right Israelis have been doing on the West Bank. Moral clarity demands that a clear distinction be drawn, so that no one would suspect that a false equivalence is being made. Yes it should be noted, and not go unnoticed, that there has been a marked increase in violence toward Palestinians, notably in the South Hebron Hills, at a time when everyone's attention has been directed toward Gaza. (See this Time Magazine story: Settler Violence in the West Bank Undermines Israel’s Security). But the three paragraph rule has to hold.
Moral clarity regarding Oct. 7 does not require blinders on other issues - including a genuine compassion for the plight of innocent Palestinians. A Jew should never wear moral blinders, especially at times of war. The Torah is clear about that. We can defend Israel and stand up against Islamophobia and push for better red flag laws for guns; we can shed tears at Joe Biden’s moral courage and fight campus antisemitism on the left - AND chew gum, all at the same time.
There have been attacks on Jews in many places this week, including rioting in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, where mobs roamed through the airport looking for arriving Israelis. David Horovitz today wrote a column entitled, Shock at the October 7 catastrophe gives way to horror and fury at global immorality, where he states:
A rising global effort propelled by Israel-haters and antisemites, assisted by falsehoods and misrepresentations everywhere from TikTok to supposedly responsible media, and inflated by fools, to try to halt our military response, or limit and undermine it. Basically, to tell us that what happened on October 7, if it happened, was terrible, but we need to get over it. Subverting “Never Again,” and telling us instead, well, yes, Almost Certainly Again.
It's infuriating. But fury doesn't help us to communicate moral clarity and remind people, again and again, about what happened on October 7. We need to methodically ritualize it, to show the videos and text messages, play those final phone messages, pray at the vigils, call out the names of the hostages. We need to maintain our focus on addressing the horrible things that happened so that the hostages may return safely and those living in Israel's southern communities can rebuild their lives in safety and peace. That is why this war is being fought. Everything else is secondary. The fury is not helpful.
I think I'll pass on the adrenaline.
Moral clarity needs to be focused, empathetic, measured and nimble, able to address multiple injustices simultaneously and distinguish between those that are more chronic and a "once in a thousand year storm."
At the same time, let me tell you what moral clarity is not: tribal. Your "team" is due some extra consideration when individual lives are at stake, but we can't allow tribal affiliations to cloud our judgment, even when it seems like everyone else is piling onto the bandwagon of peoplehood. There are reasons why degrading or ending Hamas rule is a moral choice, but none of them is because they picked on our people. Had they pulled an October 7 on Rwandan Tutsis, Cambodians or Armenians, the evil would be just as morally clear, the act equally repugnant, and the obligation to defeat them equally compelling. Which is also why we can't have a ceasefire right now.
As David Wolpe wrote in the current issue of Sapir:
...The rabbis say that one who is kind to the cruel will end up being cruel to the kind (Tanhuma, Parshat Metzora). They remind us that allowing cruel people to pursue their designs in this world will ultimately lead to innocents running, terrified and helpless, as evil men shoot them in the back, kill their children, and rape the women. It will lead to October 7. The great philosopher Maimonides, having fled from Almohad persecution in Spain in the 12th century, put it more comprehensively. “Compassion toward the wicked,” he said, “is cruelty toward all beings.” (Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, Part 3, Chapter 39)
So moral clarity is a product of the reasoning mind, not unbridled passions. We need to present ourselves with an array of options and constantly challenge and update our choices. A socratic dialogue must constantly be going on in our minds, and if the result comes out more Churchill than Tevye, we know that the case for clarity is compelling.
It has never been more compelling in my lifetime, and arguably since World War Two, than it is now.
I present a variety of opinions in these newsletters. It doesn’t mean that I agree with them all. On the contrary, some of them pose rigorous challenges to my way of thinking. While I often quote from columnists and pundits who tend to be doctrinaire and unyielding, if their motives are transparent and arguments reasonable, I'll hear them out. I want to gather as much information as I could, as any thinking person (or media company) should do before coming to a conclusion.
And so, as best I can summarize it, that's what it means to speak with moral clarity as we engage in dialogue our neighbors, our families, and ourselves. We don't need talking points, all we need is truth.
We need to be prepared to make the morally-clear case for removing Hamas from power. They have ceded their right to run a country. | 
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