“Choose life”
“I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse, Choose life . . . “
Proverbs 3:18
For those of us who grew up in America and were raised in the American Jewish experience, we find ourselves in somewhat uncomfortable times. Truthfully, while we could have said this in almost any generation of our historical past, now, in looking forward, the choice is still there.
The Parasha we read from Deuteronomy this Saturday is called Vayachi, and there, in the final verses of the final section . . . is something we might understand as a ‘bottom line’ — a ‘bottom line’ of the lives of our distant ancestors and a truth of our lives, as well.
One of the hard lessons we have all been reminded of, especially of late, is that our lives appear to be inextricably linked with theirs. And especially currently, it appears that our mutual destiny appears to be both overlapping and inextricably linking us all together.
הַעִדֹ֨תִי בָכֶ֣ם הַיּוֹם֮ אֶת־הַשָּׁמַ֣יִם וְאֶת־הָאָ֒רֶץ֒ הַחַיִּ֤ים וְהַמָּ֙וֶת֙ נָתַ֣תִּי לְפָנֶ֔יךָ הַבְּרָכָ֖ה וְהַקְּלָלָ֑ה וּבָֽחַרְתָּ֙ בַּחַיִּ֔ים לְמַ֥עַן תִּֽחְיֶ֖ה אַתָּ֥ה וְזַרְעֶֽךָ׃
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life — if you and your offspring would live
לְאַֽהֲבָה֙ אֶת־יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ לִשְׁמֹ֥עַ בְּקֹל֖וֹ וּלְדׇבְקָה־ב֑וֹ כִּ֣י ה֤וּא חַיֶּ֙יךָ֙ וְאֹ֣רֶךְ יָמֶ֔יךָ לָשֶׁ֣בֶת עַל־הָאֲדָמָ֗ה אֲשֶׁר֩ נִשְׁבַּ֨ע יְהֹוָ֧ה לַאֲבֹתֶ֛יךָ לְאַבְרָהָ֛ם לְיִצְחָ֥ק וּֽלְיַעֲקֹ֖ב לָתֵ֥ת לָהֶֽם׃ {פ}
by loving your God יהוה, heeding God’s commands, and holding fast to [God]. For thereby you shall have life and shall long endure upon the soil that יהוה swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them.
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Here, below, these are not casual notes. Instead, this is more of a deeper dive into what appears to many as recent narratives. They appear not only to undermine the connection of the Jewish People to Israel, but instead, these narratives seek to undermine and delegitimize the Jewish People as a whole.
Recently, I was criticized by one of us for defending Israel and for defending the right of the Jewish People to return to their land as a legitimate national right of the Jewish people. This particular person’s criticism has come under the guise of what she claimed to be my endless defense(s) of Benjamin Netanyahu’s war, along with all of Israel’s actions or complicity in terrible things like famine, ethnic cleansing, and the innocent civilian deaths of Gaza during the past two years of the Gaza War. The picture is truthfully much bigger and broader than this sophomorphism, even as simplistic as this litany appears.
This didn’t come as a surprise to me, as I understand that many of us have a problem with context, memory, and the role of memory in our lives, and that is to say almost nothing about the role of memory in the Jewish Tradition. I did find her criticsm not out of the ordinary, as I am well aware that for many American Jews, the “memory” of the wholesale rape and mutilation of Jewish women, young and old, the slitting of Jewish babies’ throats as they cried out in hunger for their mothers who were mercifully hacked to death in front of their families while those who remained alive were bound and doused in kerosene and burned alive. The memory of Jewish Children and Holocaust survivors dragged down the street to cheering crowds and then younger Jewish children subjected to beatings, and in the case of the Babis family children and their mother, . . . all the other families, well, as just too much to bear, The list is endless, and the memories are often just too difficult to hold onto. Very few of us want to hold onto these memories. I will often admit that my memory becomes overwhelmed, and I then look to assign a “misplacement of blame” — even in places that we have very little comprehension of. But we feel the anguish; it is not difficult, it is simply just sad.
For the record, the story, and the agony of the Gaza, of the people currently living there, along with the history of the Jewish People, is not a tale of current events nor a recent phenomenon — it is part of a much larger story, one often lacking in memory, nuance and the benefits that knowledge and truth can bring to not so distant yet incredibly important history.
Yes, memory can be very uncomfortable, and as a result, memory-exhaustion and frustration can easily set in — and as such, the assignment of blame can easily boomerang and turn around and turn into a self-inflicting weapon in and of itself. As a people, we learn about truth and about ourselves, and as we learn in Pirke Avot, the Ethics of the Sages, that without truth, the world cannot be sustained. I do find it frustrating that in presenting the truth, one is demeaned as the truth is just too difficult to bear. For that we can either atone or perhaps reflect just a little further upon.
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Talia calls from Israel . . .
Talia called me this morning from Israel, after returning from the Nova Music Festival site and was overwhelmed by what she saw there, the signs and markers of beautiful young kids, raped, murdered and slaughtered — yes, she had known about it, but with time, she like many of us had forgotten that this was not just an Israel War, this was a continuing war agains the Jewish People, as she put it, against her.
I told her that I was sorry that at such a young age that she had to have seen what she saw . . . but she told me that it was the right thing to do and to see, and to feel, because it reminded her that what Israel and the Jewish people, as a whole, are doing, is waging a war our survival and nothing . . . nothign she emphasized, should ever be forgotten.
“Abba, if we forget, then they win.”
What could I say, she was talking about kids her age, about the friends of her friends, and about her family, the Jewish People. She added, “Never forget.”
For the record, I take her words along with the words of the Torah quite seriously — I, for one, choose never to forget the truth, to remember the truth, even when it is uncomfortable. And I yes, I do understand that many cannot handle the truth.
Tal added, “You’ve seen the truth, why can’t I?”
I am not sure when she grew up, and I don’t think I would have planned it out exactly this way. But Robyn did remind me that we may make plans for our children, in time, they will lead their own lives, and they will think the way they choose.
Just seems a little too early.
Warm regards,
Seth / Abba
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Perhaps Lerhaus and Budgetary Notes
As always, this becomes an issue for us that is important to discuss — please click in at 7:00 PM, or before you go out. Clicking in, all the way, is a great help in generating copies, both for stat-ratings and in grant writing.
As the New Year approaches, it is not only a time for renewal of spirit and inclusion, but if you can find it in your budgets, it is also a time of renewal of donations, dues, and memberships in our ongoing project of the Lerhaus Bet Midrash (a New School setting of Jewish Learning, or also referred to as “NewShul”). Most of us have our own fiscal schedules, and for the record, we are always grateful for your financial support at any and all times, and of course, at a time of your choosing. Now, at this season of the turn of the Jewish Year and the approach of the Holidays, I would like to thank you for your ongoing support, both for your presence and attendance, and financial support in order to keep this project going. The real bottom line is that I am grateful to all of you for your participation and continued support. Todah Rabah and Am Yisrael Chai,
Rabbi Seth Frisch
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Here below is the beginning of a Truth Notebook:
If you have the time, it might be good to print it out and give it a close read. If you want to read more than you may have wanted, regarding the truth.
This current battlefield of American Jewish Identity is raging among and between Jews who understand Judaism as an integral part of Zionism, as opposed to the Jews as a Colonizer Crowd. This particular banner is often carried and supported by what now appears to be a ‘Jewishly uncomfortable crowd’, one might even say, by those who are often emotionally besieged and will just as often begin their verbal and written narratives with the opening expression of: “as a Jew” . . .
Full disclosure: This is not lite reading ahead:
One of the most overlooked and disturbing features of contemporary discourse is the way the progressive left and international institutions have come to ratify Islamic conquest narratives—not critically, but affirmatively, as if they were expressions of indigeneity and justice. In the name of anti-colonialism, they affirm the most enduring colonial structure in the region: the belief that land once conquered by Islam belongs eternally to the ummah, and that any non-Muslim sovereignty—especially Jewish sovereignty—is illegitimate by definition. This logic, rooted not in international law but in Islamic political theology, now circulates through the language of human rights, settler colonialism, and international diplomacy.
The “settler-colonial” narrative applied to Zionism is not grounded in serious historical or legal analysis. Rather, it serves to entrench an ideological and ontological premise: that Palestinian Arabs inherently own the land, such that any Jewish presence—no matter how legal, peaceful, or rooted in ancestral return—must be recoded as invasion. This framing flattens the complex history of the region, including the fact that Arab political leadership was itself divided—such as the Nashashibis, who cooperated with Jewish institutions, versus the Husseinis, who aligned with Nazi Germany and mobilized pan-Islamic rejectionism.
At its core, this narrative is not empirical, but ontological. It asserts that Jews are metaphysically alien to the land—foreign in essence, not just in action. And it aligns seamlessly with a deeper political theology: namely, the Islamic-colonial doctrine that once land has been conquered for Islam, it becomes Dar al-Islam—territory permanently under Islamic sovereignty. Within this framework, Jewish return is not merely a political challenge but a cosmic offense. It violates the implicit sacrality of Islamic dominion.
This doctrine persists in the structure of Islamist political thought today. As interpreted by Islamists, Sharia not only prohibits Jewish sovereignty over any part of Dar al-Islam, but relegates Jews to dhimmi status: tolerated as second-class non-Muslims within an Islamic polity, permitted residence but denied sovereignty. From this perspective, Jewish statehood in any portion of the land is not simply illegal, but theologically impossible. Sovereignty, in this view, belongs only to Muslims, and the Jewish return must be undone to restore the proper divine-political order.
This logic has been absorbed into international discourse, most clearly through the actions of institutions like the United Nations. When the UN repeatedly declares areas as “Palestinian territory” by fiat, it is not adjudicating claims on the basis of law or diplomacy. It is reifying this ontological exclusion, treating Jewish presence as an a priori violation, regardless of history, legal title, or demographic reality. It affirms, in effect, that only Arab-Muslim indigeneity is legitimate, while Jewish presence—even in Hebron or Jerusalem—is presumptively colonial.
Beyond legal complexity and historical nuance, what international institutions now enshrine is something far more stark: the ratification of Islamic conquest as an absolute and irreversible entitlement, and the erasure of Jewish indigeneity as a structural given. In doing so, they become unwitting vehicles for an older colonial theology that whitewashes the imperial expansion of the Arab-Islamic world while denying Jews the right to decolonize themselves.
Thus, the very narratives that claim to stand for anti-colonialism and justice end up reproducing and sanctifying a conquest ideology. They invert history by projecting indigeneity onto the heirs of conquest and colonial guilt onto a people returning to their ancestral homeland. Antisemitism is thereby laundered through the language of “resistance,” rebranding the demand that Jews submit, disperse, or disappear as a moral imperative.
This is not the application of justice. It is the theological-political disinheritance of the Jewish people, sanctified through the institutions of international diplomacy.
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