Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

Shemini Atzeret, 1995

by Harold M. Schulweis

We are not listening to history and we are not listening to the instructions of our tradition. We have heard it said so often but it does not affect our practical lives or our attitudes. The rabbis have told us in the Talmud that the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed not for lack of observance of the laws, not because we did not study enough or observe enough, but most importantly because there was among us "sinat chinam" – causeless hatred, hatred without real reason.

Our rabbis in our tradition have warned that where there is disunity among us a people perishes. Over again it is pointed out that one must have all four species of plants for there to be a celebration that brings us joy. One must have the willow that has neither fragrance nor taste together with the other fruits that have either taste or fragrance but above all else they must be held together. If one is missing the entire mitzvah is invalid.

And yet there is within us a terrible division, a manifestation of incivility, of anger and anger is death. We read in the secular and in the Jewish press things that should horrify us. I read on June 19 of a group of rabbis meeting in New York who brand the Prime Minister of Israel and the Foreign Minister of Israel as "traitors" and declare that if it is accepted under Jewish law to assassinate them is this no chillul hashem? I read of rabbis who surely should know better who refuse to allow Israeli representatives to speak in the Synagogue if they favor the peace process, in Oslo.

I read with horror that on June 28 a group of settlers were joined by the right wing members of Knesset and who jointly called for armed resistance against the Israeli army should the government decide to remove the settlements if Gaza and the West Bank.

I read with disbelief that a group of influential Israeli rabbis ruled that soldiers must refuse orders to hand over army bases in the West Bank to the emerging Palestinian entity.

It was carried in all the papers that at the New York salute to Israel parade, an Israeli minister, Shulmit Aloni, was physically punched, assaulted on the speaker's stand by one of the parade's main organizers. This is not debate, this is not dialogue, this is no civil disobedience. Civil disobedience accepts the legitimacy of a democratically elected government and seeks to change specific policies.

But what is happening now is based on the rejection of the legitimacy of a democratic government. What is happening in Hebron is unspeakable. On September 29, Rabbi Moshe Levinger told reporters that abandoning these places is treason and murder and that the government of Israel is committing treason and murder.

When the Likkud party was elected and when I among others argued that there ought not to be any interference in the political military diplomatic life of the State of Israel, that Jews in America while they are spiritual partners with the citizens of Israel, they must be silent partners because their bodies are not on the line. I argued and then found agreement among the Likkud party people that to interfere with the government of the State of Israel is to insult the people of Israel who have a right to determine their own destiny.

But lo and behold, now that the Labor party has received a mandate from their people, American Jews have lined up to lobby Senators and Congressmen and to insist that they vote to frustrate the peace process. They appeal to Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina to deny financial assistance to Palestinian authorities of some $500 million over five years. Despite the fact that the elected government officials who are involved in negotiation have pleaded that the Palestinian authorities need an infra-structure for the sake of their own security and Israel's security. They lobby Senator Helms and Representative Benjamin Gilman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to deny monetary assistance to Palestinians to improve their infra-structure and the peoples' standard of living and without which Arabs will switch their loyalties to Muslim fundamentalists. They do this despite the insistence of the Rabin government.

It has become difficult for rabbis in America to invite speakers to engage in discourse about the State of Israel because of the threat from and self-righteous people who have become a nightmare for the Israeli government.

I must tell you that I myself have for years now been apprehensive before inviting speakers. I can remember the first time in this synagogue that such an event took place that justified my apprehension.

A number of years ago the synagogue invited Senator Jacob Javits, New York Republican and friend of Israel to speak. Outside the synagogue members of the JDL met with circular and signs calling Javits a traitor to the cause of Israel.

I remember introducing Senator Javits, and I remember that when he spoke those who opposed him used an old Communist tactic of yelling at the speaker, “Louder, louder!” — not to hear but to frustrate the Senator. I recall that we on the dias did not know exactly how to handle it. Senator Javits’ son was there and he suggested that we call the police. But in the middle of the synagogue, behind a man who was heckling Javits and did not allow him to speak, there was an older woman in her late 70's who took her handbag and hit the haranguer saying, "You be quiet. I have come to hear him, not to hear you." With that, the heckling subsided. It remained in my memory as a sad moment that Jews have lost the ability to converse, to speak with reason, calm and respect with the other.

The issue is deeper than Rabin and Peres and their policy. The truth is that the credit for this peace begins much earlier, and paradoxically belongs to the administration of Menachem Begin who, for all his rhetoric, was the first to break the century old hostility between Arabs and Jews in Israel when he, against the opposition within his own party of people like Shamir and Sharon, signed the Camp David accord.

It was Begin who signed the special provision for the withdrawal of Israeli military and civil administration. It was Begin who established the idea of an elected Palestinian self-government with a strong Palestinian police force. It was Begin who argued that the determination of the permanent status of the West Bank in Gaza should come about by "negotiations between Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the elected representative of the Palestinian people." The credit belongs to Begin and it was Begin who recognized that from 1967 - 1973 Israel's death toll during the period of the later Israel programs measured in thousands. It was Begin who understood the terrible price being paid through wars of attrition with Egypt trough the Yom Kippur war against Egypt and Syria through the wars in Lebanon and through the early manifestations of the Intifada.

We rejoice in peace. But instead we carp at each other and forget what dividends these first signs following the Oslo agreement have paid our people and the world.

A remarkable event took place which was blocked out by our fascination with the sensationalistic O.J. Simpson trial. But there was the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan. The king of Egypt and Yassar Arafat and Rabin signing a treaty, the very treaty with Jordan which has the longest border with Israel was a modern miracle which hatred is too blind to see. Hatred blinds people from seeing this treaty with Jordan alone is with an enemy with whom we fought two bitter wars and suffered thousands of casualties. And today, tens of thousands of Jordanians have toured the streets of Israel and tens of thousands of Israelis have already visited Amman and its outskirts.

Hatred blinds one from the fact that there is now profound and important relations between Israel and Morocco, that there are new contacts with the Arab states of North Africa and the Gulf, that there has been a virtual abandonment of the Arab economic boycott in a significant number of Arab states, that there is a new environment of friendship in the United Nations toward the State of Israel, that there is reconciliation with the Vatican, that there is better relations between Israel, Turkey and the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union. We should rejoice with the fact that Palestinian security forces hunted down and arrested three fundamentalists is Gaza City who had been targeted by the Israeli Shin Bet as actively planning suicide bomb attacks inside Israel. We should be rejoicing in the promise of peace and prosperity and the remarkable fact that Israel has absorbed 700 thousand immigrants, mostly from Russia and the former Soviet Union.

We are not listening to the history of the past or the wisdom of the present. We are not listening to the sane and sober voice of Amos Oz, who wrote that tragedies can be resolved in one of two ways.  There is the Shakespearian tradition for concluding the tragedy and then there is the Chekhovian tradition:   In Shakespeare the stage is strewn with dead bodies; in Chekhov, everyone is frustrated, disappointed, sometimes melancholy, but they are alive and not dead. Israel needs a Chekhovian, not a Shakespearian, conclusion to this conflict.

No one denies that there is a risk in peace. There is a greater risk in war. The peace process is like a medical procedure. The Israelis and Palestinians are on the surgical table in the midst of an operation. The patient is bleeding and it is painful. But if you want the patient to survive finishing the operation is unavoidable. I am convinced that Yitzak Rabin, Mr. Peres,  will go down in history as two of the great moral heroes of our time. I am proud of Mr. Rabin who in the presence of the President of the United States and representatives and diplomats from Russian, Japan, Norway and Spain meeting at the White House said, "I want to say to you, Chairman Arafat, the leader of the Palestinians, together we should not let the land that flows with milk and honey become a land flowing with blood and tears. Don't let it happen. If all the partners to the peace making do not unite against the evil angels of death by terrorism, all that will remain of this ceremony are color snapshots, empty mementos. We gentlemen, will not permit terrorism to defeat peace. We will not allow it. If we don't have partners in this bitter, difficult war we will fight it alone. We know how to fight and we know how to win.”

And then he turned to his Jewish brethren speaking through the media and said, "Etched on every vineyard, every field, every olive tree, every flower is the deep imprint of the Jewish history of the Book of Books that we have bequeathed to the entire world of the values of morality and of justice. Every place in the land of the prophets, every name is an integral part of our heritage of thousands of years.”  This is the voice of our prophetic tradition. It is the voice of a peace loving people who in the language of the foreign minister of Israel said "We want to stop ruling over another nation."

What a remarkable statement of courage. How unusual and how rare these days. We owe it not only to Israel but to the dreams of Judaism to support the State of Israel in this most critical period in its life. In this time of transition in the Middle East we pray open for us the gates to the future even as there are those who try to close the gates, those who are afraid of what lies behind. Open for us gates of light, gates of blessing, gates of redemption. Open for everyone gates of healing, gates of peace. Open for us the last great gate, the gate that answers the skeptics laugh. Ptach lanu shaarei tikvah – open for us the gates of hope.

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