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A Response to the Assassins of Rabin

05/30/2015 08:08:00 PM

May30

In one of the strangest passages in the book of Ecclesiastes, the book of Gehelet in the Bible we are told "Better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting. Do not be hasty to the spirit of anger for anger rests in the hearts of fools." It is important to mourn in truth because the name of God is truth. The prayer we recite before we rent the kriah ends with the word "emet". The name of the cemetery in Hebrew is bet emet, which means "the house of truth". And it is important that there be a confrontation with truth and the recognition of the pain in it. Therefore, if I speak in truth I ask you to forgive me if what I have to say carries with it some marks of pain.

My dear friends not all tragedies are the same. If the death of this remarkable human being had come by accident -- a storm, a hurricane, an earthquake, or some mechanical failure of a plane, it would be sad enough. But we know if we are truthful, that this was not an accident, no aberration, no single act of lunacy, no result of a breakdown of the psyche of some mad killer. Had this come from some twisted, moronic, intelligence, some illiterate thug, it might be easier to explain. Even if it had come from the hand of Esau it would be tragic and fateful and we would manage to find the proper political categories to explain how it came about. But this was an assassination by an intelligent Jew, by a religiously trained person with the approbation of not one but many rabbis with ordination. This was an assassination and assassination is not a Jewish word.

The word "assassin" is etymologically an Arab word that derives from the word "hashish". To be an assassin is to be a "hashishin". That refers to the secret orders of some Muslims who terrorized Christians and others during the Crusades and obeyed the orders to murder under the influence of hashish which was either smoked or chewed. But a Jew -- an assassin?

The media, Jewish and general, keeps asking that strange question "How can a Jew murder a Jew?" I must tell you in all honesty that I was deeply offended by that question because it is a kind of backhanded compliment which concealed a dangerous way of thinking. Would it have been more explicable if a Jew had killed a non-Jew? After all, it seems to me, that in Jewish eyes the deliberate murder of twenty-nine Palestinians worshippers at a shrine in Hebron in 1994 by a graduate of the Yeshivah, my Yeshivah if you will, makes no more sense, no more Jewish sense than the assassination of Rabin by a Jew because murder is murder. It is very important to understand that. We contributed to the world the Ten Commandments and it was not just for Jews. It said murder is murder. When the Torah says "love thy neighbor as thyself" it doesn't mean only your Jewish neighbor. That is a myth we had better deal with. What do you mean "How could a Jew kill a Jew?" How could a Jew kill a human being created in the image of God?

There was a second matter which revealed our own naivetè, our conceit perhaps, and that is the Jews don't murder, Jews don't kill, Jews don't assassinate. If you take out your little calendars, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and you will see marked a day of mourning called Some Gedaliah -- the fast of Gedaliah. Gedaliah was the last Jewish governor of the first Jewish state. He was killed by a Jew. In 586 B.C.E. he was slain by zealots -- Kanahim -- by bigots. We fast on that day. Don't forge that. So, Gedaliah marked the end of the last vestige of Jewish self-government.

If the truth be told, and the truth has to be told because mourning is for the sake of the truth, in the last day of the second Jewish commonwealth in the year 70 C.E. we know from the Talmud and from history that there was enough food in Jerusalem to withstand any Roman siege. But Jewish zealots, Jewish men of God -- Kanahim -- set the food on fire which led to the destruction of Jerusalem.

Judaism is a realistic tradition and it is an honest tradition. The Talmud minced no words to say that the Temple was destroyed in the first case in 586 B.C.E. and destroyed in 70 C.E. not because Jews were not pious, not because Jews were not sharmbre mitzvoth, not because Jews were not learned but only because Jews had causeless hatred -- seinot filam for Jews.

Let us not pretend. We must take each other seriously. We must not pretend that we are angelic figures. We are human beings. It is important that we do not think ourselves exempt from the passions, angers and lusts. If you think it makes you a chosen people, it doesn't. It makes us a lying people. Some Jews drink, some Jews take drugs, some Jewish husbands abuse their wives, and some Jews kill. If you suppress that fact, as we have for many decades on other issues, it will lead to a kind of passivity, a kind of blissful ignorance which means that you will be able to do nothing to help yourself. It will not help our future is we falsify the past.

This event was not an event that took place by Lee Harvey Oswald. This event did not take place at the hand of a hired thug. As Zev Haifitz, one of Israel's columnists, put it "This guy Yigdal Amir was as Israeli as chumas. He is the boy next door. He's not a lone anything. He is exactly a product of extreme Orthodox nationalistic culture that he came from. He was trained by rabbis and as far as I am concerned, he pulled the trigger for them." I didn't like that sentence but I think he is right. I'm not going to lie to you that I think this was some sort of idiosyncratic aberration of some sort. A person is what he thinks. This is what we were taught in the brilliant statement in the book of Proverbs "As a man thinks so is he". What did this man think? How is it that a Jew who believes in God, in Torah, in Halachah, who follows the rabbis, and who received a fine religious education would do this unspeakable thing and find still no remorse for what he had done. On the contrary, to find justification in Halachah itself? I don't understand it. I think back to the Sabbath before the assassination. I was in Schul, you were in Schul. The Parshah was Lech Lecha. On the Sabbath before the political rally in Tel Aviv, Yigdal Amir and his father, Shlomo, a Sofer -- a Scribe of the Torah, left their home at 54 Borochov Street to go not to the beach and not to a movie and not to a bar, but to go where? to a Synagogue, to a house of prayer and embrace himself in a prayer shawl of peace and unity. On that day he studied, I am sure because he knew back and forth with no question of language, no question of knowledge -- he knew Lech Lecha that section of Genesis in which father Abraham is told to be a blessing "Heyeh brachah" -- "Be a blessing to your people and all the nations of the world shall be blessed in you."

And after the Schul he returned to his home and he didn't go out to the streets. He waited until the Sabbath was over. He waited until the stars came out in the sky. He waited so that he could spread his fingers and recite "Baruch atah Adonai Elohenu melech haolam bohrei m'orei haesh" to bless God for the difference between light and darkness. After havdalah he headed to a bus stop for the Tel Aviv rally with a 9 millimeter Biretta semi-automatic hidden in the waistline of his black jeans, he proceeded on his mission. The semi-automatic was loaded with bullets prepared by his older brother, Haggai, who drilled holes in the bullets so they would be more lethal and cause more damage than ordinary bullets.

I must tell you that I asked myself that this is not an apikoros. This man is not an atheist. This man is not an apostate. This man is not am-haaretz, not an ignoramus. This is one of the bright students of Bar Ilan University who was nicknamed in Hebrew nitznetz which means "brilliant, sparkling, bright and clear". He is an individual, clearly not alone -- would that he were, who was raised in the tradition. I want to know the answer to one question -- what do they teach at Yeshivah? not only his Yeshivah but other Yeshivahs? And what didn't we know? Let me tell you that my colleagues knew plenty what was being taught. According to his teachers, who I can assure you were masmeadim -- learned people pouring over sacred texts of the Talmud -- he was taught that this man, Yitzhak Rabin, falls into the category of a rodef which means "a pursuer", someone who murderously pursues someone else. It's in every single secular press. According to the tradition if someone pursues somebody else to kill him, you have the right to kill this individual. Yitzhak Rabin, according to the rabbis who read that Talmud said "This man is a rodef" because he was pursuing peace. Therefore, he was deserving to die because this was an act of pikuach nefesh -- an act of saving Jewish life through murdering the potential pursuer. This then was interpreted as an act of pikuach nefesh -- an act of saving Jewish life through murdering the potential pursuer.

I am a product of Yeshivah and I'm a product of the Seminary. I have studied the same texts that he has studied. I cannot believe that nobody, the rabbis of the whole Yeshivah climate did not teach him that the whole purpose of Halachah was to see to it that vigilantism is never allowed. The whole beauty and grandeur of law is that we do not take the law into our own hands. That's what it's all about. You mean to tell me that they did not study the same Gemorrah I did in Sanhedrin in which we find the testimony of one of the great sages, Shimon Ben Shetach, who testified "I saw a man chasing another into a ruin. I ran after him and saw a sword in his hand dripping with the other's blood. The murdered man, in his death agonizing. I said to the one I chased after 'You villain! Who killed this man, you or me? But what can I do? Your life is not delivered in my hand. For the law states that out of the mouth of two witnesses shall he that is to die be put to death."

You mean to tell me that this man doesn't know, having gone to Yeshivah, the tremendous amount of meticulous laws that deal with warning, that deal with judicial procedure, that deal with justices? What went wrong there? Do you mean to tell me that this man did not know a simple Mishnah in Sanhedrin 12:3, one of the most powerful Mishnaoth which says that witnesses in a capital crime are warned "Know that capital cases are not like monetary cases. In a monetary case, one may make financial restitution and his offense is expiated. But in a capital case you are accountable for the blood of the man and for the blood of his potential posterity. For when God asked Cain 'Where is your brother?' and Cain responded 'Am I my brother's keeper?' it is God who declares 'The voice of the bloods of your brother cry out to me from the earth.' He does not say the "blood" of your brother but the "bloods" of your brother for you have shed the blood not only of this man but also of his children and his children's children. You have cursed the earth. "Therefore," says the Mishnah, "he who destroys a single life is considered as if he has destroyed an entire world." Know therefore that there are no two faces alike in this world. And know that you must say, each of you, "For my sake the world was created. For each of us is created alone."

I do not understand what they taught him. Do you have to be so smart to go to such Yeshivahs to understand Aramaic? to read Rashi, Tosfas, and the Rashbam to understand that in Judaism what is essential is kedushath hechayim -- "the holiness of life". Human life in Judaism is so venerated that the rabbis in a famous parable referred to God and the human being as twins. He that kills a man is guilty of the reproach of God. He who injures a man, injures God. Therefore, the Bible insists that even a guilty man who is hanged in a tree must be buried quickly and not left to hang overnight because it is a reproach to God. You see, to kill a man is to kill God. It's an embarrassment to God.

Did the Yeshivah not teach him what the Rambaum said when he commented on Moses' response to the two Jews quarreling with each other in Egypt? The Rambam says "Wicked one, why do you hit your brother?" And the Rambam says "Even if he didn't strike him just to lift up your hand against another human being is considered to be like you struck him down." Did none of the rabbis at the Yeshivah or the rabbi of his own Schul never tell this man about tzelem Elohim (the image of God) that the human being is created in the image of God? It is the only time in the whole Bible that the word "image" is used is only for human beings.

Even if he heard a voice, for he said his act was part of the will of God, he certainly must have been taught the wonderful, classic, Talmudic story which warns about false voices and false prophets. In the Talmud Baba Metzia one rabbi calls upon the echo of heaven, a voice from heaven, to vindicate his position through miracles where the rivers flow upward, trees are uprooted, and walls fall and bend. The man says "This is the voice of heaven". But the rabbis get up and say "Lo bashamayim" - "It is not in heavens." Can't you understand? There is no voice from heaven, no supernatural source that can make a decision.

This is the genius of Judaism. We are not a people who listens to voices. Beware of those people whose God is in heaven. Don't you understand that you are given a brain? that you pray "God, You give the human being knowledge to distinguish between right and wrong." THINK! THINK! REASON! Where is your moral sensibility? Where is your understanding of the consequences? These things are not taught in the Yeshivah? He doesn't know this? I am not talking about one individual, be assured I am not. You will see in the very near future, as you have begun to see already, the countless numbers of Rabbinim in Yeshivoth who are teaching this stuff. They did not teach the sacred text which teaches how you should act even if God tells you to do something which you know is wrong. It is Bamidbar Rabbah in which God commands Moses to "Make war against Sichon even though Sichon does not interfere with you. You must open hostilities against him." As it says "Rise ye up, take your journey and fight him in battle" (Deuteronomy 2:24). What does a Jew do when he hears a voice like that? What does Moses do? That's your tradition. Jews, do you understand your tradition? Your tradition says that Moses says "That's wrong God. Do you mean to tell me that I'm going to attack Sichon without giving him any warning? without trying to negotiate for peace? And Moses says to God "No I will negotiate for peace. What does God say? And God says as it was quoted in the Midrash "By your life Moses, you have taught Me. I will cancel My words and confirm your words." Therefore it is written in Deuteronomy 20:10 what was not written in Exodus, "When thou drawest near to a city and fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it."

There is no Eichmann defense in Judaism whoever the commander may be. If it's wrong and you know it's wrong because everything in the tradition tells you it is wrong, you have an obligation to say "I am not going to do this." What do you mean "he heard the voice of God"? This is the kind of people we have become.

Did no one at Yeshivah teach him these elementary things? Should he not have been taught what is so critical and unique in our tradition? The voice of the angel who comes to Abraham while Abraham holds in his hand a knife to kill his son in the name of God and the voice of the angel cries out "Al tichlach yadehchah el ha-na" -- "Do not stretch out your hand to your son." This is what Jewish culture is all about. Jewish culture says "I know that you have vindictiveness, lusts, desires, angers and passions but there is a brake on these. There is an inhibition which does not allow those hands which were open to the Havdalah candle and those fingers around which the tefillin were wrapped to shoot. There is in the tradition something basic which says "YES" to life and "NO" to the killing of life.

I must tell you that the older I am the more I am convinced that these political and economic reasons are all superficial. This is not an issue between the Lekhuth and Labor. I wish it were that. This is not an issue between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox. This is an issue which has to do with the character of our people, the character of Judaism. This is the deepest insult that we have experienced, an insult which we have not been able to absorb. That is why we do not know how to mourn. If you listen and read the papers you will see that they do not know how to mourn yet. This is an insult to Halachah. This kind of rationalization is an insult to Judaism. What do you mean when you tell me that this is going to be a quarrel with texts? Do you think this is a matter of giving quotations and counter quotations and we will fool around and throw texts at each other? Texts are malleable -- I can do anything with a text and so can you. That wonderful text which is engraved in our window as you walk into the Schul "You shall love thy neighbor as thyself" can be interpreted in contradictory ways. One will say that it means that you shall love your neighbor who is Jewish as yourself but not the goy. Or the same kind of argument -- you are to love the Jew who listens to you, who follows mitzvoth, who keeps kosher and who believes in God your way but not somebody who does not.

As a people we have to recuperate from this blow because it is a blow to what it means to be a Jew. In the 1950's President Dwight D. Eisenhower said it doesn't make a difference what you believe as long as you believe something. Eisenhower was a great general but it makes a great deal of difference what you believe. It doesn't make a difference whether you believe or not. It is what you believe, what kind of God you believe in -- the God of the Ayatollah, the God of Torquemada, the God of Kahane is a monstrous God that leads to nothing but murder and hate. It makes a difference what kind of Halachah you believe in. The question is not "Do I give my child more religious education? Do I send my kid to Yeshivah?" but rather the question should be "What kind of Yeshivah am I going to send my kid to?" If you think this is exclusively an Israeli issue you don't know what is going on. Even in The Jewish Journal there was a statement about the teaching in Yeshivah Los Angeles. It doesn't make a difference if you give to charity or not, the question is what kind of charity do you give to? Whatever institution it is the question is "Does the institution promote harmony, love and intelligence or is it divisive? is it meant to exclude and shame" It is not a question of how much Gemara you know. When the young disciple boasted to Menachem Mendel of Kotzk "I have gone through the Shass, the Talmud dozens of times already." The rabbi asked him "And how many times has the Shass gone through you?"

Of course there are texts but you people have got to awaken and understand with a certain kind of seriousness. As Heschel put it "Judaism is based upon a minimum of revelation and a maximum on interpretation." What is important is how are we going to interpret the law. "He who studies Torah alone without understanding its morality or its moral significance is considered as if he has no God." What is our obligation? What can we do? It is our obligation as Jews not to sit idly by and allow the spread of fanaticism and fundamentalism, bigotry and authoritarianism. It is our obligation to become the defining character of Judaism. It makes no difference if the totalitarian mind wears a kafiah or a biretta or a shtreimel. Bigotry and fanaticism are the same, whether under the Crescent, the Cross or the Magen David. You had better consider this seriously because it affects your children and your children's children. You have to ask yourself what kind of Judaism you want for your children and grandchildren? only that they should marry within themselves? But what about the "within themselves" that they marry? There are things we must do. First of all we have to put a curb on our own tongues and on the tongues of the rabbis. It is wrong and I knew it was wrong but when Kahane was alive and said to the world and the Jewish world that Judaism and democracy are incompatible there were people in my congregation and other congregations who supported him. It was wrong. I spoke about it about a month before the assassination. I had a guest scholar, Moshe Tendler, who knows more Talmud than I have ever dreamed of who was able to issue a P'sak Din saying that it is impermissible for a Jew to take the position in support of the Rabin negotiations of Oslo. And that no Orthodox rabbi can have on his pulpit another rabbi who favors the peace process. Where was the indignation of the Jewish community? Where were you to say "You are going to muzzle us? You are going to tell us that you know enough Gemara t tell us that for me to speak my mind violates the Halachic character of Judaism?" Where was the Jewish community when Rabbi Abraham Hecht, who is the President of the Rabbinical Alliance said that to be for peace is to be complicit with murder. Jews can make a difference. When you didn't like the "WHO IS A JEW?" issue in which Jews who are not converted by an Orthodox conversion are going to be exempt from the law of return. All of Israel heard it and it was not passed. Do you know why? Because Jews cared. But we don't care about this? If you don't care about you'll have a vicarious Judaism and you will leave it all to the rabbis, whoever the rabbis may be. This is not an anti-rabbi lecture -- I am a rabbi myself and some of my best friends are rabbis. But this is wrong. You cannot allow a vicarious Judaism to grow up. It is your responsibility.

There was a great song in the 1960's after the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King -- "Will we ever laugh again? Yes we will laugh again but we will never be young again." As a people we will laugh again and we should laugh again. But we will never be young again. Not now. Now you understand what can be done.

We dare not allow ourselves to become Jewish manicheans splitting the Jewish world already split enough into the children of light and the children of darkness.

Two friends of mine, Orthodox rabbis, Reuben Bulka and Yitzchak Greenberg predicted about ten years ago that religious extremism would polarize the Jewish people into two different religions. Everybody said they didn't know what they were talking about. And now scholars are saying "You know what happened when you had a schism and there was Judaism in Christianity?" What makes you think that this schism is not as profound and not as deep because it bases itself on two different notions? One notion is the idea that Judaism is a theocracy, that Judaism is an authoritarian religion which will not countenance any other opposition because you will be called a heretic and you will be subject to either spiritual murder or physical murder? The other notion is a democratic pluralistic softer kinder Jewish life and Jewish Halachah.

What we want to do is not demonize the enemy, so to speak. It would be a terrible thing if the death of Rabin was laid at the foot of the Lekhuth. It would be a terrible thing unjust, unkind and of dire consequences if Bebe Nitanyahu was now considered to be the slayer of this man. That is not true and it is wrong. "We have a choice, dear friends" said Kamu "in such moments between smiling pessimism and weeping optimism." I prefer Jewish realism. We have sustained a great loss and its a loss that will not go away unless we rectify it, unless we become a new people, unless we take to heart the fact that you are people of faith. Unless you believe that what you believe counts, that it affects the way in which your teachers teach, that it affects the way in which the teachers and rabbis are trained. And don't tell me that this is the Seminary's responsibility or the Yeshivah"s responsibility. Don't abdicate and forfeit your power as Jews in a basically and profoundly democratic society. We have a great loss and we have to do what the Bible does at the end of Deuteronomy where it says in the very last chapter in the book "And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the Plain of Moab for thirty days. So the days of weeping and mourning for Moses was ended and Yeshuah Ben Nun was full of the spirit of the Lord."

I wrote on your behalf to Leah Rabin and sent her this week the signatures that many of you gave us at the memorial service on a Monday night. I borrowed the words of Carl Sandberg, for her husband Yitzhak was "a man of both steel and velvet, hard as a rock and soft as drifting fog who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable." This was Rabin -- velvet wrapped in steel. And now we come to his successor. We come to Shimon Peres. It belongs to Shimon to complete the journey and to bring peace. After Moses was gathered into his people God said to Joshua "Be strong and resolute. Do not be terrified or dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." Bless the hands of Shimon Peres. Give him a heart of wisdom. Bless us who are pledged to sustain the vision of the pursuers of peace. Our life as Jews has always been dedicated not to an escape from death but to a sanctification of life. We enter into this new moment in world history and I am convinced that Jewish history will put this particular event as one of the most significant moments in the history of our people. We have to enter it with hope. As long as there is life, love and hope in our beings we will prevail.

C O M M E N T A R Y:

1. At the funeral Ahud Haber, a close friend of Yitzhak Rabin, held up a piece of paper stained by blood. I thought of the passage in the Talmud found in our Machzor. Rabbi Hanina ben Tradyon was tied to a stake by the Romans. He was wrapped in a Sefer Torah which was set fire. One of his students asked him "What is it my rabbi that you see?" And the answer he received was "The parchment is burning but the letters are rising to the heavens."

2. "Now the earth was unformed and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And a wind from God was sweeping over the waters and God said 'Let there be light.' This is our eternal struggle -- to form "cosmos" out of "chaos", to turn darkness unto light, to turn bondage to freedom, to turn death into life and sorrow into joy." Last week speaking before a group of Israelis who came to America and who hooted and booed Rabin's talk so he could not finish his speech some tried to get in the headlines in The Jewish Post read the following: Rabin says "I am not afraid of assassins. You cannot live your life that way because if you are constantly in fear you cannot be a leader."

3. "Liturgy" -- a Greek term from "laos" meaning people and "ourgio" which means work.
In Hebrew it is "avodah".


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Thu, March 28 2024 18 Adar II 5784