In a paper calendar book, I turned the page to find the secular New Year 2024. Accidentally, I took hold of too many pages and opened to 2025. If only, right? The tragedy that began on October 7th in Israel, and the American presidential election that looms in the future, have already branded 2024 as complicated. If only a “leap year” lived up to its name! But rather than lament the difficult start, let’s learn from Torah and Jewish history how to do something about it.

In the book of Joshua, we learn that Joshua, Moses’s successor, prepared to cross the Jordan River with the Israelites into the land that [God] was giving to them. On the threshold of a new beginning, God said to Joshua:

Be strong and resolute, for you shall apportion to this people the land that I swore to their fathers to assign to them. But you must be strong and resolute to observe faithfully all the Teaching that My servant Moses enjoined upon you…Only then will you prosper in your undertaking and only then will you be successful. I charge you: Be strong and resolute; do not be terrified or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:6-9). 

Three times in four verses, God implored Joshua to be “strong and resolute,” in Hebrew, “Chazak ve’ematz,” חזק ואמץ. The purpose was military preparation that included the role of God as Protector. From the “Song of the Sea” in Exodus 15, when God is “Ish Milchamah,” איש מלחמה, a warrior, war preparations were part of Israelite history as soon as the Israelites were redeemed from Egypt. Though history often regarded Jews as weak and passive, ever since WWII and Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, Jews have reclaimed their role as a people who are physically strong and resolute.

In places where Jews weren’t threatened, we traded the role of warriors for the role of a settled people. In America, Jews have been settled for a long time. During relatively quieter times, the Hebrew prophets, rather than Joshua, were our guides for how to be Jews in the world. The prophet Micah urged us to “Do justice, love goodness, and walk humbly with God” (Micah 6:8). It’s embedded in our psyche and inscribed on the wall of our bimah in the sanctuary.

In a recent article, Rabbi Daniel Gordis recognized these two parts of our people’s past and personality. In his review, he all but condemned the settled west (American Jews) for being mostly disciples of Micah, who aim for social ideals while the world is burning around us. By contrast, he lauds modern Israelis who have taken up the role of Joshua, to be warriors for Israel, and for all Jews everywhere, including America. Why? Because the existential war that Israel fights today will determine the outcome for Jews in Israel, in America, and everywhere else in the world.

I take no issue with Rabbi Gordis. He lives and works in Israel and his son serves in the IDF, while he also balances history, modernity, prophecy, and Israel as God’s promise to our people. The question he has for American Jews is, what will we do beyond working for “social justice and goodness” while Israel’s future is at stake? While his son fights in the IDF, what can we do to protect and serve Israel from our homes in America?

First, he should know that many of us have contributed heavily to Israel’s safety and well-being. It comes in many forms, including advocating in Congress for aid to Israel, and support for Israel’s right as a sovereign nation to fight its enemies on its own terms; and the enormous commitments of Jewish communities throughout North America that have contributed financially and otherwise to Israel’s future. Second, he should know that we’re as vexed as he is by some American Jews who call Israel an oppressor and a colonizer.

Actually, Gordis’s critique helps us examine ourselves. During this dangerous time for the Jewish people, we need to land on the right side of history. We need to be like Joshua and defend Jews in Israel and elsewhere. Then we can be like Micah who prizes justice, goodness, and humility. At best, we can do both at the same time. But if Gordis is right, and he often is, then we can’t mistake what our times demand of us, today: “Be strong and of good courage” in 2024, and beyond.

L’Shalom,