WASHINGTON – A Palestinian mufti has called for violence against Jews, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is demanding Palestinian leaders disavow him, and America’s presidential race could be affected.

That could be the lead sentence of a news report from last week.

Or it could be the lead from 1946.

Sixty-five years ago, another Palestinian mufti, another Netanyahu, and another presidential race in the United States likewise intersected in an unexpected round of high-stakes Middle East politics and diplomacy.

“For not as a human sees [does the Lord see]; humans see only what is visible, but the Lord sees into the heart.”
— I Samuel 16:7

It is not hard to mistake the outside for the inside. We do it all the time. Shine and sparkle often distract us from inner shallowness.

This distinction is particularly important in the arena of leadership, where a sleek head of hair sometimes hides the fact that there is not much underneath. The Tanach, the Bible, communicates this very message in the book of I Samuel. The people agitated for a king, but Samuel warned them that the king would tax them and make their lives difficult. No matter. They insisted. God gave them a weak, but good-looking king: Saul. He had the advantage of height, creating the image of a towering personality.

In fact, Saul was not a person of great courage. He was riddled with insecurities and melancholy.

Saul’s successor came in the guise of an unlikely fellow. He was the “runt” of his family’s litter. When Samuel traveled to David’s father’s house, God said to him: “Pay not attention to his appearance or stature.” God knew that even a prophet could fall for external appearances. That is when God interjected the words quoted above. At the end of the day, human beings can see only that which is visible. That which is concealed, however, can be far more potent.

When David went out to his brothers at war to deliver food, he heard Goliath, a man of superhuman proportions, challenge — taunt, belittle — the Israelite army. Only little David had the courage of conviction to fight him. Saul dressed David in his war gear, but it was far too big so David marched into an encounter with an enemy multiple times his size in civilian clothing, armed only with a few rocks.

David commanded respect because he was an unlikely candidate for leadership who earned the high regard of others. No one expected greatness. He delivered beyond any expectations. Saul, on the other hand, betrayed God’s expectations even though he looked the part. When Saul rose to a position of power, he lorded it over others only to lose any shred of respect that he otherwise might have merited

The restaurateur Danny Meyers wrote “Setting the Table,” a book about hospitality, service and leadership. Kitchens can be brutal places to work, and I am only talking about the kitchen in my home. Restaurant kitchens are often embattled places, torn by hierarchies and egos. Meyers challenges that culture: “When certain people gain more authority and power, they tend to demand respect from those who work for them. But what got them their promotion in the first place was their natural ability to command respect. Demanding respect creates tension that can make it very tough to lead, and very uncomfortable to follow.”

Meyers claims that the higher you climb the ladder of power, the less it matters what technical skills you possess; the more emotional skills become key. In the words of a great book title, what got you here won’t get you there. Respect is a currency in human interactions that you earn. You can demand it, but the more you demand it the farther it runs from you. Ethics of the Fathers asks: “Who deserves honor?” and answers, “The one who honors others.”

In this time of political vitriol, commanding respect rather than demanding it is particularly challenging. Honor is not skin deep; it surfaces from the goodness of untrumpeted deeds.

JointMedia News Service

BEIT SHEMESH — It is raining as I write — a rare, cold, hard rain that is welcomed by Jerusalemites who know that it is good for them and the country. Water, like patience, is a treasured commodity here in Israel: temporarily inconvenient, but better for you in the long run.

Rain is a blessing. We pray for it.

Patience is a blessing. We pray that we have enough of it for each other.

It is a good day to stay inside and reflect on my trip to Israel and to Beit Shemesh, a city about a half-hour west of Jerusalem. Beit Shemesh and the Washington Jewish community have been partners for many years, and partners share responsibility for each other.

Suddenly, it seems, gender segregation is everywhere in Israel — buses, army bases, Jerusalem sidewalks, Beit Shemesh schoolyards and, above all, the front pages. What is going on here?

Let’s start with the buses. In the late 1990s, at the request of some charedim, the Transportation Ministry created bus lines that served charedi neighborhoods and cities. On an officially “voluntary” basis, women would enter the buses and sit in the back. These buses were deemed legally permissible because Israeli law allows discrimination when it is necessary to provide access to public services and does not harm the common weal. All the fundamental questions (necessary? common weal?) were left wide open.

It is virtually impossible to imagine anything more reprehensible than the recent spectacle of charedi Orthodox Jewish boys wearing yellow stars of David and simulated striped black-and-white concentration camp uniforms at a demonstration in Jerusalem. Offended by the Israeli authorities’ efforts to curtail the verbal and physical abuse of women and girls in charedi neighborhoods, the demonstrators knowingly and intentionally desecrated the memory of the more than 1.5 million Jewish children whose collective suffering and death will be remembered today (Friday, Jan. 27) at the United Nations’ annual Holocaust commemoration.

“This protest,” said one of the rally’s organizers, “reflects the Zionists’ persecution of the charedi public, which we see as worse than what the Nazis did.”

JERUSALEM – The Muslim Brotherhood did not initiate the current upheavals in the Middle East, but the Islamist parties in Egypt, as in Tunisia and Libya, are the chief beneficiaries of the collapse of North Africa’s authoritarian repressive regimes.

In Egypt itself, the two largest Islamist groups — the Brotherhood and the Salafists — overwhelmingly won the second round of legislative elections held in December, battering the secular and liberal forces.

The Brotherhood (with over 40 percent of the vote) was founded in 1928. It has never deviated from its central axiom: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Koran is our law; jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

WASHINGTON – About a year and half ago, I participated in a fact-finding mission to Israel sponsored by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arabs (IATF). Established in 2006 as a consortium of some of the major organizations in American Jewish life — including the Joint Distribution Committee, the Conference of Presidents, Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee — the IATF is committed to raising awareness of the circumstances of the 20 percent of Israel’s citizens who are Arab.

The issue was not new to me. A large part of my rabbinate has been devoted to advancing human and civil rights at home and abroad. Because I love Israel deeply, I was long concerned that issues of human and civil rights were raised only by progressive organizations, both in Israel and abroad. It was long overdue for the Jewish communal establishment to understand why the rights of Israeli Arabs should be a priority for anyone concerned with Israel’s future.

When Rabbi Shmuley Boteach approached me to read the manuscript of his newly published book “Kosher Jesus,” I was reticent and even a bit cautious, given the massive and diverse audience of people likely to be affected by his unique perspective on the subject of Jesus. Having now read the book, however, I can say that I was pleasantly surprised to find that his approach resolved many outstanding questions that I myself have struggled with in my religious studies, particularly as they relate to Christianity and its impact on Judaism throughout history.

Still, I felt the need to interrogate Boteach further in order to discover what his intentions had been for penning this latest work on a conspicuously controversial topic. As it turns out, his earliest efforts to uncover the real facts regarding the origin of Christianity stemmed from his exasperation by the treatment unsuspecting Jews received from Christian missionaries who would target them in an attempt to convert yet another Jew to Christianity. So alarmed was Boteach at the pervasiveness of this kind of missionary work that, as a young scholar learning in yeshivah, he was often memorizing long passages of the New Testament in his Hebrew Bible classes. After all, how could he counter the words of others if he had no real knowledge of what they were saying and why they were saying it?