Unraveling

Three days in, and I don’t have any words to offer that can give voice to the scale of death and destruction happening in Israel/Palestine. This makes sense – the actions defy reason, there is no balm for grief of this level. Yesterday and today, I have been sitting with the impact felt around the world, among Jews and others connected from all corners, and continued to ponder the history that led to these events and will continue to bring bloody conflicts and wars.

During the past several years, I’ve spent a lot of time reading the words of Nelson Glueck, the president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion from 1947-1971 and an archaeologist in Israel and the Transjordan. Glueck was working and living in Israel before the modern state was official, and was there through many times of fighting and moving of boundaries. The pages of his diaries, available in the American Jewish Archives, led me to write the following for a benediction in 2018 given at the Cincinnati HUC campus, and upon which I have been reflecting the last few days:

“[Today we remembered] Nelson Glueck, who explored the frontier of Near Eastern archaeology in Jordan, Israel, and Sinai. In a 1959 Biblical Archaeologist article, Glueck’s work is lauded ‘as one of the…most important individual contributions to the field of Palestinian archaeology in our generation’…

As the president of HUC, Dr. Glueck and his predecessor Julian Morgenstern envisioned and helped bring to fruition a new and uncharted venture: a Jewish graduate school filled with students of different faiths.

I have benefitted from both these efforts: learning as a Ph.D. student here about Dr. Glueck’s excavations and discoveries – through our valuable archival and library resources, and partnering with University of Cincinnati’s Classics Department as we prepare a Nabatean exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Dr. Glueck embodied the theme of Judah Halevi’s (לבי במזרח) Libi B’Mizrach:

לבי במזרח ואנכי בסוף מערב

My heart in the East

but the rest of me far in the West –

In a 1967 journal entry: ‘…while I [am] proudly a native American, I have long felt myself to be passionately a spiritual son of Jerusalem, and…among the things I [am] most proud of [is] the fact that I [am] an honorary citizen of Beersheba and an honorary citizen of Eilat…I [feel] the Holy Land to be the center of the heartland of the world and my hope [is] that this physical and spiritual centrality might be maintained to the blessing of Israel and of all mankind.'”

In his diary, Glueck discusses how the ongoing fighting in Israel affects the building of the Jerusalem HUC campus, his work in the archaeological field, and his relationships with colleagues across the area, Jews and non-Jews. These words have remained relevant since they were written, but in times that are more fraught I often return to both Glueck’s sentiments about the difficulties of the land, but also his personal connection.

As many have written during the last few days, the politics and beliefs we hold regarding the situation are, and must be, overshadowed by the human connections, emotions, and compassion for our fellow people. Many of my colleagues and friends have expressed the sentiment expressed by Yehdah HaLevi, echoed in Glueck’s diary, and sunk inexplicably within ourselves, as I quoted in my benediction: “לבי במזרח ואנכי בסוף מערב“

These are the words I keep hearing, drawing me to the years, decades, centuries of seeking to live in peace. Now is the time to keep seeking that peace, even when the notion feels absolutely too far from us.

Avdat, a Nabataean kingdom in the Negev