Rabbi Stephen Weiss
Kol Nidre (Yom Kippur) 2013
Why didn’t the Israeli leadership “get the memo?”
The answer, in a word, is arrogance.
On October 5, 1973 at 12:30 at night, a cable marked urgent arrived at Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. The cable was from none other than Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the former ruler of Egypt who had led his army in the Six Day War and who had died three years earlier in 1970. Marwan, you see, was working as an agent of the Mossad. The cable Marwan sent warned that Egypt was planning to launch an attack on the following day, Yom Kippur, October 6. The attack, Marwan cabled, would take place under the cover of a military drill. Marwan asked for an urgent meeting in London with Zvi Zamir, then head of the Mossad. But that information was never handed over to the Prime Minister’s office. The night clerk who received the cable contacted a very sleepy, groggy, unfocused Zamir, who said “Okay, I will go see [Marwan] in the morning.”
It turns out that GOC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Hofi, later the head of the Mossad, had likewise received word on October 2 from his chief intelligence officer that the Syrian army was planning an attack, four days before the outbreak of war. He told the commission that he checked the intelligence information with the relevant authorities in military intelligence and was told that the information was baseless. He told the commission he had no idea where the information had come from but that he assumed it had come from within military intelligence but had been leaked behind the back of the commander, Zeira, who infamously believed that the chance of war was “low.”
These were only two of many signals that should have served as a clarion call the Israeli government making it clear they were going to be attacked. All this information regarding the start of the Yom Kippur war only came to light this past year, as classified documents in Israel are being released in connection with their equivalent of our Freedom of Information Act.
You know, in English we have an expression: “Did you get the memo?” Well, the Israeli leadership of the time just didn’t get the memo, and as a result of their ignoring the signals that were all around them, Israel was completely surprised on Yom Kippur. As the people of Israel commenced this day of prayer and fasting, the Arab world launched a surprise attack from both the north and the south. Egypt and Syria led the assault, with additional forces from Iraq, Jordan, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, the Palestinians, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Tunisia, Lebanon, and others. Estimates vary, but in total up to a million troops stood against Israel, who could muster just 400,000 in response. Soldiers literally were sent door to door to pull men out of the synagogues and sometimes out of bed to fight. In the first days of the war it looked like this would be the end of the experiment known as the Jewish State.
Through great courage and with the help of a US airlift of military supplies, Israel managed to turn the tide to victory and advance almost to Damascus and Cairo. But a full quarter of its tanks and fighter planes had been destroyed, more than 2500 had died – the equivalent of 100,000 for a country the size of the US – and some 8000 were injured. After the war many heads rolled. Popular sentiment pushed Golda Meir from office and unseated Labor for the first time in Israeli history. The boisterous confidence that followed the Six Day War evaporated overnight.
Why didn’t the Israeli leadership “get the memo?” The answer, in a word, is arrogance. Following 1967, Israel became overconfident. It was so sure that it had cowed its neighbors into submission, so certain that it retained military superiority, so focused on celebrating its past victory that it stopped listening to what was happening around it. Israel’s top intelligence and brass were so to speak victims of their own pride, of their egos.
The great comedian Milton Berle used to have a host of one-liners about egos and egotists. He’d say, “Put two egotists together and you’ve got a case of an I for an I.” “He’s always me-deep in conversation!” And the classic: “But enough about me, let’s talk about you. What do you think about me?” All of America laughed at those lines because we saw ourselves in them.
But arrogance is no laughing matter. Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben teaches that ego – E.G.O. – stands for “Everybody’s Greatest Obstacle.” When our ego gets too large, when we grow arrogant and think too much of ourselves, we begin to tune out the voices of those around us. We tune our conscience and we tune out God. That’s why the Talmud teaches that there is no room for the Divine Presence in a place filled with arrogance.
Now, don’t confuse ego with self-esteem. The sages understood that it is important to have self-confidence and to believe in oneself. By the term E.G.O. – Everyone’s Greatest Obstacle – I am referring to the kind of overweening pride that allows us to think that we are better than others, more deserving, that our needs are more important, that we have all the answers, make all the right judgments, take all the right actions. It is ego which allows us to assume we have done the right thing and closes our ears to critique by others. And it is often our own egos that – in the words of the Kotzker Rebbe –stand between us and God. It is our egos that not only become a barrier to our contact with the Divine but also damage our relationships with the very people we love.
How often do we “get the memo?” How often are we tuned in to the messages being conveyed to us, to the signals we receive about what our family, friends and community require from us? How aware are we of the things that we need to change in our life? According to Jewish tradition, the very first step in the process of teshuvah is charata – feeling regret over what you have done wrong. But how can you feel regret if you don’t understand what you have done – or not done – if you don’t see how you hurt that family member, let that friend down, broke that trust, if you are unable to hear that what you did was unethical or inappropriate, if you are so busy defending yourself, building yourself up and knocking someone else down that you have convinced yourself that it must be them, not you?
Think of teshuvah – repentance – as a symphony in five movements: regret, confession, apology, making amends, and not repeating our wrongdoing. But every great symphony also has a prelude, and the prelude to the symphony of teshuvah – repentance – is humility. As we rise for the confessional prayer we will recite the words of our machzor: She-ayn anu azei panim uk-sheh oreh – for we are neither so arrogant nor so stubborn as to claim that we have not sinned. Indeed, we have sinned. Before repentance comes the recognition of our frailty and imperfections, of our dependence and interdependence. When we recognize that we do not have all the answers, we start to listen more closely to our conscience, to the divine voice within, and to the other voices of those we love. Only then can we learn what we need to do to lift ourselves up and transform ourselves and our world.
I worry that when it comes to Syria and Iran, we – the American people and our leaders – do not “get the memo.”
I worry that we don’t get the memo that Syria is just playing for time. While we talk, Assad is hiding his chemical weapons in over 50 sites around the country, moving them over the Iraqi border and transferring them – he has already transferred one metric ton of VX nerve gas – to Hezbollah.
I worry that we don’t get the memo on the Jewish and human obligation to react to the massacre of innocents by seeking justice and trying to save lives. President Putin tried to assuage our sense of outrage by criticizing America for its “exceptionalism.”
Let me say it loud and clear. America is exceptional. A country founded on a vision of freedom, dignity and equality for all, its history has uniquely been driven by a desire to get closer and closer to that dream within our own society and for all humanity. America’s uniqueness is not borne of a sense of our being better than others. Rather, what makes us unique is precisely that we have the humility as a nation to realize that we must collectively answer to a higher cause and seek the welfare of all humanity, that we cannot turn inward selfishly and worry only about our own wellbeing. We cannot ignore the suffering of others.
What’s more, America’s exceptionalism is not exclusive. Israel shares a similar exceptionalism, the result of an understanding that it has a sacred prophetic obligation to be a light unto the nations. It is that exceptionalism that has led Israel to be among the first nations in the world to respond to global disasters, and that led Israel to set up field hospitals and provide medical care to so many injured Syrians carried across the Israeli border by soldiers of the IDF every day, despite the fact that Israel and Syria are still at war. Ziv Medical Center, only one of many Israeli hospitals providing this aid, has spent 1.5 million dollars so far treating Syrians. Think about that. How extraordinary is that? How – yes – exceptional.
Mr. Putin does not want you to feel exceptional because he does not want you to feel a sense of moral responsibility for others. He does not want you to react with horror to the idea that over 1400 people were gassed to death, to feel the pain of the parents of those 426 children – children – who were murdered with Sarin. But a Jew doesn’t have to be told how to be horrified at the thought of mass murders carried out through poison gas. A Jew doesn’t have to be told how easy it is to go from lining up victims in front of guns to loading them in vans rigged with carbon monoxide to marching them by the thousands into gas chambers. A Jew doesn’t need to be reminded what it felt like to know that your own president – the one you voted for – kept 100 rabbis waiting while he refused to see them, refused to enter the war to save Jewish lives, refused to bomb the tracks to Auschwitz. A Jew knows in his kishkes that we must make sure that never again – never again – does mass murder go unchecked and unpunished.
Finally, I worry that we don’t get the memo that everything Assad does, he does as a puppet of Iran. Through events in Syria, Iran has managed to take our eye off the ball. The Ayatollah’s regime continues to hasten the pace at which it moves toward creating a nuclear weapon. Iran is testing whether the threat of use of force is truly credible, or whether through diplomacy and negotiations they can paralyze the West on the world stage long enough for Iran to achieve its goal.
I worry that we don’t get the memo because far too much is at stake. 40 years after the Yom Kippur War, Israel faces the greatest existential threat it has ever faced, a threat which this time encompasses moderate Sunni nations and the U.S. as well – but Just as in 1973 so too now, we do not want to see what is right before our eyes.
Gathered here on this Kol Nidre evening, I pray that we get the memo.
Let us get the memo on humility in our personal lives. Open our eyes to our imperfections and our vulnerabilities and teach us how to hear the voices of family and friends, the voice of conscience, God’s voice within us, holding us to account for our actions, making us more sensitive to what our loved ones need from us and helping us to change.
Open our eyes to the signs around us, to recognize them for what they are and to respond accordingly. Fill our hearts with the humility to recognize that in times like these we dare not turn inward in isolation, seeking to worry only about our own concerns, but must raise our voices and stand tall to defend those who cannot defend themselves and to ensure the safety and security of not only Israel, but of all those in the Middle East and the West who seek to live in peace and security.
Oseh shalom bimromav – You, God who makes peace in the heavens, hu yaaseh shalom – May you bring about true peace – alenu v’a kol yisrael – v’al kol yoshvei tevel – May you bring a day of lasting peace for Israel and for all humanity. Amen.