Rabbi Andrea’s Sermon 25th April / 8 Iyyar 5786

The Four Children and the Jewish State

These are difficult times.When even the BBC asks, “Why are British Jews afraid?”, [https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002vfc1/panorama-antisemitism-why-british-jews-are-afraid ]  one knows that there are real grounds for concern. To be sure, that documentary had its limitations. In my view, it did not sufficiently address either the role of the Far Left or Islamist extremism. Yet, thankfully, we were spared the usual shpiel about “security through solidarity” and “community relations” as the universal cure for all evils — as though community relations alone could protect Jewish children walking to school, Jewish students on campus, or worshippers entering synagogue.

For once, the BBC addressed antisemitism in the UK for what it has become: a serious matter of public order — and therefore a matter requiring clear and effective public-order responses.That is needed. Because there are politicians who build their popularity with boutades about the difference between British reality and Jewish perception. One would laugh if it were not so serious. [https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/fury-as-zack-polanski-says-jewish-community-has-perception-of-unsafety-after-antisemitic-attacks/]

Imagine a gay politician saying that the perception of homophobia in the gay community had little to do with reality; imagine him suggesting that accusations of homophobia were merely a political tactic used by LGBTQ people to gain influence. How long would such a politician survive? Yet the person who told us that we are paranoid and delusional has yet to apologise. Because this is how things are at the moment. Even to suggest that Jews no longer feel safe in this country triggers a veiled warning: “Be careful not to weaponise antisemitism.” Weaponise it, of course, on behalf of Israel.Today’s public hostility to Israel has become a vehicle for antisemitism.

To be sure, Israel, like every state, may be criticised. Its policies may be challenged. But the obsessive singling out of Israel, and the translation of anti-Israel rage into hostility toward Jews in Britain, are not normal political criticism. Other similar conflicts, other occupations, do not produce the same mobilisation. There is no comparable campaign against Turkey over northern Cyprus, occupied by the Turkish army since 1974. We do not see the national self-determination of Pakistanis treated as a scandal that must constantly be justified. Only Jewish sovereignty is so often treated as provisional, suspect, or morally intolerable. The classic accusations against Jews are now recycled as accusations against Israel. In the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of using the blood of Christian children to prepare matzot — as though Judaism required the suffering of innocent children. Today, we hear a modern version of the same libel: that Zionism inevitably leads to the killing of Palestinian children. Yesterday, the Talmud was condemned as a book of hatred against Christians; today, Jews are accused of being among the principal spreaders of hatred against Islam. And yet our relationship with Israel is not easy. Israel is intense, wounded, argumentative, miraculous, and indispensable. It exposes so many different Jewish voices and forces us to ask what it means to belong. For this, the Haggadah gives us a language. The Passover Haggadah offers us a helpful frame for orienting ourselves in our conversations about Israel, and for making our relationship with the Jewish State a little less painful, or at least a little less chaotic. So today, now that both Pesach and Yom HaAtzmaut have passed, while the memory of both occasions is still fresh, I would like to talk about Israel through the prism of the Passover Haggadah, and in particular the story of the Four Children.

Let us begin with the ḥakham, the wise child. He asks: “What are the testimonies, statutes, and laws which the Eternal our God has commanded you?” This is the Jew who speaks from within the people. He knows that Jewish identity is made of faith, tradition, and culture — and that all three include a relationship with the Land of Israel. He has been to Israel, walked its streets, heard Hebrew as the living language of a restored people, and understands Zionism as the modern expression of Jewish peoplehood. This Jew knows that Israel’s history is complicated; and precisely because he knows it, he refuses the simplifications of those who judge from a distance. The Haggadah responds to the wise child by teaching him the laws of Pesach “up to the afikoman.” In other words: do not leave the story before its end. Stay at the table. Taste the bitterness, understand the sacrifice, and remain faithful to the covenant that binds Jews across generations, languages, and lands.

Then there is the rasha, the wicked child. Mind you, he is not wicked because he asks difficult questions. Judaism has never feared difficult questions. His problem is deeper. He says: “What does this service mean to you?” — to you, not to us. This is the Jew who removes himself from his people. This is the Jew who is proud to have no connection with the Jewish State; the one who mocks or patronises those who do feel such a connection. This is the Jew who invokes “Jewish values” always, and almost exclusively, against the supporters of Jewish self-determination. He rejects the idea that Jews are a people with the right to sovereignty, and speaks of Jewish power only with embarrassment or contempt. This is the Jew who wants to extend freedom of speech to the most violent fringes of the pro-Palestinian movement, yet campaigns to exclude from public space the supporters of the settler movement. And may I remind you that Palestine Action’s campaign has been reported to have caused damage estimated in the tens of millions of pounds, with one report putting the figure as high as £55 million; supporters of the settlers, by contrast, have caused nothing comparable in this country. The so-called “freedom of speech” of the pro-Palestinian movement costs the taxpayers of the United Kingdom dearly. This is the Jew who, since 7 October, has been busy informing the world that Israel does not act in his name. He is endlessly attentive to Israel’s failures, yet strangely incurious about the violence and corruption of Israel’s enemies. He demands nuance for everyone except his own people.The Haggadah says of the rasha: hakheh et shinav — set his teeth on edge. History has done this before. In the Soviet Union, many Jews embraced revolutionary universalism, believing that Jewish particularism could be dissolved into a higher justice. Yet Stalinism repaid them with purges, executions, the suppression of Jewish culture, and the “anti-cosmopolitan” campaigns.

Then there is the tam child. The word is often translated as “simple,” while other authorities suggest “wholehearted.” In the usual reading, he asks, “What is this?” because, if he is “simple,” he does not understand these strange things: the unusual foods, the matzah and the bitter herbs. Or, if he is “wholehearted,” perhaps his personal integrity is offended by the violence of the Pesach ritual and by the story itself: the plagues, the Angel of Death, the drowning of Pharaoh’s army. I do not claim to overrule these authorities. I simply notice that the Torah, in Genesis 25:27, uses the same word for Jacob: אִישׁ תָּם, יֹשֵׁב אֹהָלִים — a tam man, dwelling in tents. Ibn Ezra, ad loc., understands the phrase in direct opposition to Esau, the hunter and man of the field. Esau belongs to the field: to hunting, appetite, and the harshness of the world outside. Jacob belongs to the tent: to family, study, and inwardness. Rashi, following the Midrash, reads Jacob’s “dwelling in tents” as a life spent in the study halls. Jacob, then, is not a simpleton. He is learned. But he is also easily guided, even manipulated, by Rebecca, the mother who provides his food and nourishment. So, if one may put it mischievously, Jacob is rather like those academics who can be manipulated by the institutions that pay their stipends. Joking aside, the danger of the tam Jew is utopian innocence. He believes that an ideal order will somehow overcome the brutal facts of power. The twentieth century should have taught us how destructive such utopias can become — especially collectivist utopias that promised to abolish competition, property, and the free market. But the tam Jew refuses to see how often Jews paid a terrible price for the utopias he cherishes. Jewish survival has always required more than purity of intention. The tam Jew is drawn to every project of peace, dialogue, and reconciliation, yet unable to see when noble language is being used to manipulate him. He wants peace so much that he mistakes aspiration for analysis. Worse, like the young Jacob reading destiny through family drama, he may imagine that the dissolution of Israel into a binational state is somehow demanded by history, justice, or even Providence. But utopias are dangerous. A binational state would not be an abstract seminar in coexistence. The history of Jews in many Arab and Muslim lands should make us cautious. Many tam Jews today have no family memory of dhimmi status, communal vulnerability, confiscation, exile, or fear. So they cultivate their dreams of coexistence; and when challenged by historical experience, they become aggressive. And this Italian Jew knows too well what can be hidden beneath the innocence that seemingly motivates the dream of coexistence. Tam Jews can be dangerous and, believe me, some of them are real racists.

And then there is the child who does not know how to ask. This may be the most recognisable of all. This is the Jew who is not hostile to Israel, nor naïvely utopian; he is simply speechless. Raised in the habits of English middle-class life — understatement, politeness, linguistic caution, the careful management of offence — he arrives in Israel and finds himself overwhelmed by the intensity of Jewish existence. He is used to being diaspora: a minority, tactful, grateful, always explaining, always translating, always proving that Jewish life is useful to the wider society.Suddenly he is in a place where Jewish existence does not need to justify itself. Hebrew is not a museum language, Jewish festivals are not “diversity events,” and the Jewish people is not a theological metaphor. It is a living, quarrelling, defending, voting, grieving, rejoicing people. This leaves him disoriented. Even more unsettling, Israel does not resemble the tidy image of Judaism he inherited. It is full of Jews with darker skin, Middle Eastern accents, Russian sharpness, Ethiopian dignity, Moroccan warmth, Iraqi memories, Yemeni melodies — Jews whose history was not shaped by Anglican moderation or suburban liberalism. They do not ask permission to be Jewish. They do not soften every sentence with apology. They remind him that Jewish peoplehood is older, wider, and often unruly. It is no secret that, until 7 October, relations between Israel and the Diaspora — certainly here in the Progressive world, but also in significant sections of the Orthodox world — were often shaped by voices more interested in creating a gap, a distance, than in strengthening Jewish identity. The aim, too often, was to make identification with Israel conditional, or at least attenuated, unless Israel met standards of morality impossible for any real state to sustain. The message was frequently one of caution: do not go here, do not visit there, do not cross this line; after Birthright, spend ten days listening to the Palestinian narrative. Organisations created campaigns to prevent young Jews from visiting Hebron or East Jerusalem, or from meeting settlers. Paradox of paradoxes: Jewish organisations campaigning to prevent young Jews from meeting other Jews. It was apparently more important, more formative, to encounter Palestinians — including those who wish to erase the Jewish presence — than to encounter Jews. Instead of helping young British Jews encounter and understand a Jewish culture that is intense, difficult, Middle Eastern, democratic, and alive, the emphasis was placed almost exclusively on Israel’s faults: when it was offensive, when it was discriminatory, when it was racist.Meanwhile, in the UK, hostility to Israel — and hostility to the very idea of Jewish peoplehood — had become, in some circles, a credential of sophistication and moral seriousness. The field of Israel engagement was ceded to groups of the radical left, some of which openly flirted with post-Zionism: with the idea that one can be fully Jewish without any real need for Israel. These same circles often showed a remarkable ignorance of the history of Jews in the Middle East — despite the Board of Deputies having explicitly encouraged Progressive British Jewish institutions to take Sephardi and Mizrahi perspectives seriously.

After 7 October, the mask fell for some of these champions of progressive sanctimony. They openly became hostile to the very existence of Israel, and now they march together with supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah. Good luck with that. Different, however, has been the journey of others: the self-appointed “pro-Israel, pro-peace” camp. Think for a moment how offensive that phrase can be: “pro-Israel, pro-peace,” as if the rest of the pro-Israel camp were all warmongers. They have become silent. You do not hear much from the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” camp. After 7 October, many of them fell silent. And for good reason. All of a sudden, they realised that some of those Palestinians with whom they had claimed to be working towards a two-state solution were, in fact, closeted Hamas supporters. The supposedly moderate Abu Mazen brought himself to ask for the release of the hostages only in June 2025. That is 612 days after the largest massacre of Jews in contemporary Middle Eastern history. Six hundred and twelve days. One year, eight months, and three days. [https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-first-palestinian-authoritys-abbas-condemns-hamas-october-7-attack/]

Shocked by the revelation about the nature and aims of their so-called partners for peace, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” camp is now silent. I completely understand their trauma. I truly empathise with them. Perhaps apologies would be appreciated by those — like me — who were not surprised at all by Abu Mazen’s callous indifference toward Jewish suffering, which is quite revealing of the real agenda of the so-called “Palestinian moderates. ”The story of the four children has often been used as a weapon: sometimes for personal attacks, sometimes for games of self-definition — “I proudly identify as the wicked child!”

This is really childish. Because the genius of the Haggadah is that none of the four children is given a name. They are not fixed identities. They are possibilities within every Jewish soul. At different moments of our lives, each of us has been, or perhaps is, the wicked child, the learned child, or the tam. Each of us, quite often in our lives, has found himself in the position of not knowing how to ask, of not speaking the language of Judaism, tradition, or faith. However tam you believe yourself to be — simple, wholehearted, or whichever translation you prefer — there will always be someone whom you wound with your sanctimony. You may think yourself wholehearted. Well, there are people you hurt with your righteousness. By presenting yourself as gentle, innocent, and morally untainted, you may humiliate those whose life experience has been harder, more compromised, more exposed to danger, fear, and historical reality. And humiliation is not a minor matter in Judaism. There is a halakhic name for this: ona’at devarim.

The Sefer HaChinuch explains the verse ve-lo tonu ish et-amito as a prohibition against wounding another Jew with words. [See Leviticus 25:17 and Sefer HaChinuch, mitzvah 338]. Moral purity can also become a form of cruelty when it humiliates those whose lives have been harder, more compromised, or more exposed to danger.And however rasha you believe yourself to be — however alienated, rebellious, or angry — your fury toward Israel may still be the fury of a disappointed child toward a parent.

You feel the need to vent your anger, and it never goes away. Israel is a never-ending source of anger; you feel you cannot ignore Israel, and oh, how you wish that Israel were not there.I understand your fury and your anger. And I am not the only one to notice that the anger is there because attachment is still there. In your rage against Israel, there is a bond with that land, that people, and that history against which you continue to struggle.Perhaps you have become a ḥakham with a minus sign in front of him: knowledgeable, articulate, passionate, but using wisdom to negate rather than to build. And perhaps, beneath all the arguments, this is what we all know best: that a Jewish state is not a luxury, not a slogan, and not an embarrassing exception to be explained away. It is indispensable to the survival, dignity, and future of the Jewish people — of us all.

We need Israel not because it is perfect, but because Jewish life without sovereignty is incomplete, vulnerable, and dependent on the goodwill of others. And after 7 October, surely, we have learned how dangerous that dependence can be.

Suggested Readings

On the longue durée of antisemitic accusations Magda Teter, Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2013.

On Jewish anti-Zionism, Communist universalism, and Stalinism  Harvey Klehr and David Evanier, “The Shameful History of Anti-Zionist Jews,” Commentary, May 2024.  Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir P. Naumov, eds., Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov, Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.

On Sephardi, Mizrahi  perspectives in British Jewish life Board of Deputies of British Jews, Commission on Racial Inclusivity in the Jewish Community. Chaired by Stephen Bush, 2021.

On the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” world after 7 October Danielle Bett, “‘My Biggest Disappointment Is with My Own Political Home – the Global Left,’” The Jewish Independent, 31 October 2023. Zibby Owens, “We Are Alone: Reflections on the Jewish-American Response to October 7,” Sapir, 16 October 2023. Institute for Jewish Policy Research, A Year after October 7: British Jewish Views on Israel, Antisemitism and Jewish Life. London: JPR, 2024.