Regaining Our Sight

Rabbi Sarah Weissman
Oct 1
8 min read

Kol Nidre 5786

Promise was that I

Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;

Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him

Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves,

Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke…

Thus the great 17th-century poet John Milton describes Samson, the Israelite leader from the Book of Judges, in his epic poem Samson Agonistes. You probably know at least part of the story. Samson is raised as a nazirite, a person specially consecrated to God, whose consecration is demonstrated by never cutting his hair. He grows up to become a superman, able to kill a grown lion with his bare hands and defeat 1000 Philistines, enemies of the Israelites, with a single weapon. Powerful and brave, but impulsive, Samson is ruled by his passions. He falls in love with Delilah, who is paid by the Philistines to find out the secret of Samson’s strength. He eventually gives in to her coaxing and reveals that his strength is connected to his hair. He falls asleep, his hair is cut and his strength disappears. The Philistines capture him. They gouge out his eyes, put him in chains, and carry him away to Gaza.

Samson represents the lethal combination of brute strength and moral blindness. Throughout his life, he responds to conflict with violence, driven by lust and vengeance. Milton imagines that after Samson has been imprisoned by the Philistines, he reflects on his misspent gifts, asking himself, “But what is strength without a double share

Of wisdom, vast, unwieldy, burdensom, Proudly secure, yet liable to fall [ 55 ].” He concludes, “... to me strength is my bane, And proves the sourse of all my miseries” [62]. The story ends with Samson standing between the pillars in the Philistines’ temple during a great celebration for the Philistine god Dagon. Samson prays, “O Sovereign GOD! Please remember me, and give me strength just this once, O God, to take revenge of the Philistines, if only for one of my two eyes” (Judges 16:28). The spirit of God comes upon him one last time, and Samson’s strength returns. He grips the two pillars and pulls with all his might. The pillars topple and the temple collapses, burying Samson along with thousands of Philistines. Strength is his bane, and so Samson’s last wish, the only way he can imagine finding redemption, is to regain his power for one final act of destruction, one final act of self-destruction.

The most famous phrase from Milton’s poem is “eyeless in Gaza.” As Rabbi Janet Marder explains, “It was in Gaza, that Philistine city on the southern coastal plain of the Mediterranean, that embattled Samson met his doom. We imagine him trapped there, helpless in his blindness, tormented by his captors, who mock him in his misery. Samson is a man imprisoned in hell; he is, for Milton and for us, a symbol of violence, rage and despair. Long ago, this city of the Philistines, ancient Sea-People who gave their name to the land of Palestine, was the setting for Biblical tragedy. [And now] Gaza is bleeding again, overrun by violence, rage and despair.”^[1] Rabbi Marder wrote these words in 2009, during another war in Gaza, but how apt they are today.

Eyeless in Gaza. It is a terribly fitting description, for there is no vision in Gaza today. Not for Alon Ohel, the 24-year old Israeli hostage who we think has lost vision in one eye.^[2] Not for Maisa al-Ghandour, the 14-year old Palestinian girl who was blinded by shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike last year.^[3] No vision for Palestinians, who cannot see a future other than one of suffering and loss. No vision for the Israeli government, which is shown the photos and the reports and yet says “there is no starvation in Gaza,”^[4] and who still cannot articulate a clear vision for Gaza’s future other than as a “real estate bonanza,” as one Israeli minister recently called it. Not for the Israeli press, who shy away from covering the devastation,^[5] or for the international press, who are mostly prohibited from entering Gaza at all.^[6] No vision for a large majority of Jewish Israelis, who have turned a blind eye to the suffering of their neighbors, as reflected in a recent poll that showed that 79% of respondents said they were “not so troubled” or “not troubled at all” by reports of famine and suffering in Gaza.^[7] And there is too little vision for Jews and Jewish organizations across the globe who have been excruciatingly slow to recognize the truth of what is being done to Gaza. But little by little, we are opening our eyes.

Regaining our sight is terribly difficult. For so many Jews, the modern State of Israel has been a story that made us proud. We took pride in the scrappy pioneers who made the desert bloom, the young soldiers who fought bravely and, against all odds, triumphed again and again, the clever entrepreneurs and innovators who turned Israel into a “start-up nation.” All this while being surrounded by hostile neighbors and under intense international scrutiny. And we know Israel isn’t just a story or an abstract principle – it’s a real place with real people whom we love and worry over. So many of us have relatives in Israel, and those of us who don’t might still consider Israelis to be our family. Jews of the Diaspora have been proud and glad to know Israel was there – our homeland, a Jewish State, a safe haven for Jews.

We have a new story to tell now. Hamas’s brutal attack on October 7 shattered the illusion that Israel, even with its immense military strength, could keep its citizens safe. The ensuing war has put hundreds of thousands of reservists in harm’s way, with 900 soldiers killed so far. The psychological toll has been immense. More than 10,000 IDF soldiers have been treated for mental health issues,^[8] and rates of PTSD and depression have dramatically increased across the Israeli population.^[9] And after two years of war, 48 hostages remain in captivity, of whom 20 are thought to be alive; the chances of their survival diminishes every day. As for the rest of us, the world’s reaction to Israel’s war, certainly fueled in part – but not completely – by antisemitism, has made Jews everywhere the targets of harassment and violence. Today Israel is not a source of comfort and security for the Jewish People. It is actually the opposite.

And yet, many of us are quick to defend Israel without question – after all, it’s still our homeland, still our family, and there is so much hatred in the world directed at Jews and the Jewish State. When the war started, we said, “This is what any nation would do to protect itself.” When the Gaza Health Ministry reported however many thousands of casualties, we dismissed it, noting that Hamas runs the ministry and so obviously can’t be trusted, even though the IDF itself has confirmed or even relied on the Health Ministry’s data.^[10] When Prime Minister Netanyahu told us that the reports of starvation were fake news, we believed him, or at least wanted to believe him. We even looked for and found evidence that some of the photos of malnourished children were actually malnourished children with pre-existing conditions, as if that were any more acceptable. I want to repeat that last point. We were shown heartbreaking photos of skeletal children, and for some of us, our first response wasn’t to cry out, but to cry foul. What has happened to our moral vision? Gaza has made us eyeless and heartless.

But now, as the war has dragged on and as Israel’s treatment of innocent civilians has become less and less defensible, some in the Jewish community have begun to open their eyes and their mouths. In July, over 1000 rabbis from congregations across North America, Europe, and Israel, signed an open letter denouncing the mass killings of civilians and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. The letter declared, “We cannot keep silent. [We speak] in the name of the sanctity of life, of the core Torah values that every person is created in God’s image, that we are commanded to treat every human being justly, and that, wherever possible, we are required to exercise mercy and compassion; In the name of what the Jewish People has learnt bitterly from history as the victim, time and again, of marginalisation, persecution and attempted annihilation; In the name of the moral reputation not just of Israel, but of Judaism itself, the Judaism to which our lives are devoted…”^[11] And in August, 80 Orthodox rabbis signed an open letter, which read, similarly, “This moment demands a different voice—one grounded in our deepest Jewish values and informed by our traumatic history of being victims of persecution…. We must affirm that Judaism’s vision of justice and compassion extends to all human beings. Our tradition teaches that every person is created b’tzelem Elokim—in the Divine image. We are the spiritual descendants of Avraham, chosen to walk in the path of Hashem, ‘to do righteousness and justice’ (Bereshit 18:19). Allowing an entire people to starve stands in stark contrast to this teaching.”^[12]

These letters were greeted with both cheers and plenty of vitriol, for nothing has torn apart the Jewish community more painfully than this war. Jewish institutions and communal leaders have long focused on unity and solidarity when it comes to Israel. Whatever our personal feelings are about the Jewish State, we know that our congregants feel very deeply and often very differently from one another. Every statement we make, every sermon we give, receives strong reactions, and the strongest ones are usually the negative ones. Want to offend and alienate members of your congregation? Just bring up Israel. Last week, on Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York City, said, “I have been a rabbi for 25 years, 20 of them at Central Synagogue, and I have never been so afraid to talk about Israel…. It’s scary to talk about this. Not because I’m afraid of losing my job. But because I’m afraid of losing you.”^[13]

I share Rabbi Buchdahl’s fear. It’s scary to talk about this, and it might be scary or upsetting for you to hear this. But it is a risk that I feel we have to take. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that what is at stake is the soul of the Jewish People. As a Jewish community, we must declare that all human beings – including the Palestinian people – are children of the living God. They deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion. And together we must say that Samson’s way is not the right way. Brute force, fueled by vengeance and hatred, will never bring anything other than destruction — destruction that we ourselves will not escape. I pray that we, the Jewish People and those who love the Jewish People, will recommit to the heritage that unites us, the tradition that reminds us that our strength comes, in the words of the prophet, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit—said the Lord of Hosts” (Zech. 4:6). And I pray that we will all lift up our voices to insist that the Jewish State uphold the values of the Jewish People, for our good and for the good of the world. The time to speak is now — achshav.