Tag Meir, committed to eradicating racism and violence in Israel, organized a solidarity visit to Hawara on March 2nd, two days after a large group of settlers marauded through the streets of the West Bank village following the shooting murder of two Israeli brothers. A prominent and altruistic member of the village was killed during the rampage. When I asked Gadi Gvaryahu, the founder and Chairman of Tag Meir, to put me in touch with people who had joined their solidarity visit to Hawara, one name he sent me was ג׳סי בורק.
I wasn’t sure how to read the name. JC? Jesse? Yet his name was not the most confounding thing about Jesse Burke. Nor was his accent when we finally met over Zoom. Australian? American? Israeli? Check.
The most confounding thing about Jesse Burke is the combination of how he looks and what he says. When we zoomed for the interview, he from Beit Shemesh and I from Rochester, NY, I was unprepared when he appeared on my screen: black hat, button-down white shirt, black suit. Not what I expected. And then he began to speak.
Jesse explained that he is a product of the ultra-Orthodox education system with a stint at a Haredi Religious Zionist yeshiva. He said that he has been a human rights activist for quite a few years, and recently became the education coordinator for Tag Meir, providing Torah and Rabbinic sources for “tolerance, peace, and love” in his lectures.
While acknowledging that one can also find support for competing values in the sources, Jesse explicitly extends the Torah values of tolerance and a shared common humanity to all. “I focus on Palestinians, but it’s true for the African migrants here; it’s true for the LGBTQIA plus community; it’s true for many other minorities who suffer from bigotry in one way or another.”
I was just wrapping my brain around the disjuncture between ultra-Orthodox identity and social activism when Jesse encapsulated it. “So, I’m here to say that you can be an Orthodox Jew and accept these ideas. I’d put it this way: I won’t argue that there aren’t sources that you can find in the Torah, in the Bible – and in many other religions – which, if I want to find them, they can seem discriminatory, they can seem bigoted. But many other sources are different, and if I want, I can find sources for the love of mankind and the necessity of bringing good and peace to everyone, even at the expense of other values. We can choose what we buy.”
How did Jesse arrive at this value system? He says it started in childhood when he began questioning the arrogance of saying “we” have a monopoly on truth. He recognized that being born into something and convincing yourself that yours is the only true path when you know nothing else, is ignorance. By age 18, Jesse became interested in other communities and found good people outside his narrow world. Now, at 48, Jesse lives both his traditional religious and his humanist values.
Jesse was unable to join Tag Meir’s solidarity visit to Hawara, so he joined two other organizations the next day. However, this larger delegation was intercepted by the military and told it was a closed zone. He described a woman in a wheelchair who boldly stood in front of the soldiers.
In discussing the solidarity visit to Hawara, Jesse started with the evil killing of the two Jewish Israeli brothers. Then he said that claiming revenge directed at the innocent is also evil. The rampaging crowd didn’t know if the perpetrator was from Hawara and didn’t actually pursue the perpetrator but engaged in acts of violence. He compared this to Kristallnacht in that an outside event led to taking revenge against the innocent, and the belief that membership in the group – Jew or Palestinian – is guilt by association.
Jesse said, “For me a Jewish state is extremely important. That’s one lesson of the Holocaust; Jews need a place of refuge. But the other lesson of the Holocaust – not less important – is never again to anyone. Not only what happened in 1941 to 1945 but even what happened in ’33, in ’34. The idea of not everyone having full citizenship rights where they can be equal is highly problematic.” Jesse wants the Jewish state to learn from Jewish history and treat minorities better than Jews were treated. He’s not referencing the genocide; as he said, “Not all racism ends in the Holocaust, but you can’t have a Holocaust without racism.” Jesse wants Israel “to be at least as good as other countries that realize, post-Holocaust, that minorities must be treated with equal rights.”
When the solidarity visit was blocked, Jesse got out of his car and started walking. He hitched a ride with a Palestinian man from Ramallah who drove him to Hawara. A few other activists managed to get through and were standing at a distance from him holding solidarity signs. A few Palestinians, and perhaps Jews as well, were holding Palestinian flags, upsetting the soldiers who grabbed them away. After directing the visitors down a path, the soldiers threw “stink bombs.” Jesse said that he “was more fearful of the authorities than of the Palestinians around me.” In fact, the driver from Ramallah insisted on walking him back to his car saying, “I don’t know if it’s safe for you here.” The implied danger was the settlers.
Jesse has immediate family in nearby settlements. In fact, he sent his love to his nephew with a settler who drove by. He maintains that family is of utmost importance to him. More than most of us, Jesse lives with the contradictions within who we love, our identity, our politics, our beliefs, our values, our activities.
One thing Jesse asserts without contradiction is that occupying people, not land, leads to moral impoverishment. “The West Bank is part of Israel for the Jews, who get to vote and have a lot of say and they’re in the government now. And if you’re not (Jewish), you don’t (get to vote), and that’s just not sustainable. It’s immoral, it’s wrong, and it comes with a heavy price because the occupation comes with a heavy price. Even if people argue about the land, there are definitely people occupied, people under some kind of Israeli control who are not full citizens, do not have full rights…So they need full citizenship rights, either in their own state or in our state, but they cannot be continually the outsider. I think that’s extremely important.”
Naomi Schlagman is Founder of Americans for Tag Meir.