"[W]e and the Palestinians are part of one big dysfunctional family . . . '"

. . . that goes back to Isaac and Ishmael, who struggled even in their mother’s womb.

Nope!  He's mixing them up with the twins Jacob and Esau.  Isaac and Ishmael had different mothers, Sarah and Hagar.   But the broader point is true enough, if anyone in these riven times can hear it:

There’s no point in talking about who was there first: we both were, for we’re both part of the same family tree. The Jews aren’t going “back to” Europe and the Arabs aren’t going to move to Jordan. The Arabs ARE home -- and so are we. Now we need to figure out how to share our common abode.

It is perhaps especially fitting that Herod the Great – the greatest builder in the history of Israel AND Palestine, who built Caesarea and the palaces at Masada and the tombs of the Patriarchs in Hebron, who rebuilt the Temple where the Dome of the Rock now stands, atop the great platform bounded by the Kotel– was both a Jew on his father’s side and an Arab on his mother’s. Perhaps these great works, still wonders of the world after 2,000 years, can be seen as symbols of the greatness that could be created if Jews and Arabs worked together.

From a long post -- sermon, actually -- on Israel and Palestine, "The Power of the Story," by Rabbi Barry Leff, at Reb Barry's Blogspace.

Comments

[bleff]

Yes, there was an "oops." I actually do know the difference between Ishmael and Esau. Not to duck responsbility, but I have a dear and close friend who I will allow to remain nameless who sometimes edits my sermons for me...and she did an edit at the last minute and added that line, and I didn't catch the error before posting. It was kind of funny, when I was delivering the sermon on Shabbat I got to that line and read it, and then said, "well, no, actually that would have been Jacob and Esau, but you get the idea..." :-) Probably sounded a little schizo!

Reb Barry

[JSinger]

I came over with the mob from Instapundit, had no interest in the link and wandered down to this...

First, while I'm relieved to learn that the rabbi knows the difference between Isaac and Jacob (a fairly minimal requirement for being a rabbi, I'd say), I can't understand how that line makes any sense regardless of which pair of brothers is used.

More importantly, I'm skeptical that replacing existing "narratives" with either one or two collections of congenial nonsense (e.g., that Herod's mother was an Arab) is a useful solution. I'm sympathetic to Rabbi Leff's goals, but still...

[amba]

Rabbi Barry, I can believe it was a line somebody else inserted, because it was an unlikely mistake for a rabbi to make! Surprised it survived into the transcript, though . . .

JS, it's just a metaphor for what everybody already knows, that the two groups are distantly related (despite the Jews picking up a lot of European genes on the diaspora), their languages are closely related, and they both have histories on the same land. I think the metaphor is an attempt to create an emotional connection between those still capable of feeling it, which the radicals who've caused the problems obviously are not.