On the Yahrzeit of Yitzchak Rabin

Rabbi Melanie Aron

November 2, 2001

Several years ago, Michael and I saw Assassins here in San Jose. I thought it was a pretty good production and the music was compelling, but during the intermission, about half the audience left. It was a dark play, it was Stephen Sondheim after all, and for many people the material didn't seem appropriate to a musical. There were objections to the attention given to the assassins, focusing on their lives and motivations, which seemed to glorify them, while taking little note of the havoc they left in their wake.

This past Monday was Yitzchak Rabin's yarzheit on the Jewish calendar, the 12th of Heshvan, and on the secular calendar, the sixth anniversary of his assassination is this Sunday, November 4. For most of us, that day is still very vivid in our memories.

I was at Camp Swig on our Shir Hadash confirmation retreat with the class from Temple Emanu-El. In the morning we had a service in the Holocaust memorial and then walked the kids back for lunch in the chader ochel. Rabbi Mark Schiftan, who was also at the retreat, had gotten into his car for some reason that I can't recall, and he happened to turn on the radio. He came back shaken and told me what was known at that point, early Sunday morning Israel time. We gathered the students together and tried to explain to them the meaning of this tragic event. I don't know that they understood our stumbling, stuttering, still shocked explanations, but they could tell from our affect that something very sad and important had happened, and they responded accordingly. That class of Confirmation students are now college juniors. The aftermath of Yigal Amir's actions, the fall-out from the assassination of Rabin and all that has followed, has meant that none of them is spending a Junior Year Abroad in Israel this year, though several intended to when they first entered college. This class came of age watching Netanyahu stall the peace process, and Barak fail to pull the Israeli government together, lurching as he did from one approach to another. The events that followed Rabin's assassination have meant that their college career has been spent in an anti-Israel atmosphere so pervasive that it has challenged even our most Jewishly committed students. Perhaps it is for this reason that Yitzchak Rabin is mentioned so often as a hero by our college students, the model of something Israeli with which they can identitfy in a positive way.

Many people have used the current Intifada as evidence that Rabin was on the wrong track, that Camp David was flawed in some fundamental way. But Rabbi David Saperstein director of the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement, has argued that the conclusions that Yitzchak Rabin reached in his lifetime remain relevant today.

Looking at the territories that Israel controlled since 1967, Rabin saw two options that were both unacceptable. The first was that of Meir Kahane and the recently assassinated tourist minister Rehavam Zeevy, of forcing the Palestinians out of the territories, loading them up and moving them across the border, something antithetical to Jewish values and to the dreams on which the state of Israel was founded. The second was what we have today, an attempt to hold on to territory by force, particularly because of the settlements in densely populated Arab areas, creating frustration and anger, constantly escalating the Intifada and requiring military action to such an extent as to bring upon Israel constant condemnation. Rabin recognized that this path would only lead to increased terrorism and the demoralization of Israeli Society. The third way, the way Rabin sought in the end, was some kind of normalization of relations with the Palestinians and Israeli's other neighbors, even if that meant significant concessions of land both on the West Bank and in the Golan Heights.

As a military man and tactician, Rabin argued that without a peaceful relationship with the Palestinians, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, Israel could not deal with the more significant long-term threats to its security from Iran, Iraq, and radicalized Islam around the world. (We might note that in this current intifada, it was the Iraqis who offered their help to the Palestinians, not the Egyptians, Jordanians, or even the Syrians). For realizing what we now have come to understand, that the Intifada and the Palestinians are just a side show with the real conflict and threat elsewhere, Rabin deserves a lot of credit as a man ahead of his time.

Rabin also understood that Israel's relations with its allies and potential allies in the world community depend on its relations with its most immediate neighbors. Improvements here in this tough neighborhood, even a very cold peace, bring tremendous benefits to Israeli society; similarly setbacks are felt immediately in terms of trade, cultural and political contacts and economic development.

During the high holidays we read Chapter 21 of Genesis as our Rosh Hashanah Torah portion. Though I made various comments on the text at services, I did not speak to the second part of the reading, the story of Hagar and Ishmael being banished from Abraham's camp, wandering lost in the wilderness only to be rescued by an angel of God. Too much was going on at the time of the holidays for me to be able to focus on that passage. It is not that our situation is better today than it was on September 17th. If anything, both for the Unites States and for Israel things have gotten worse. We now have anthrax in addition to the fear of future conventional terrorist activities, and for Israel, the increasing radicalization of Israeli Arabs in addition to the Palestinians seems like the genie that will not be so easily put back in the bottle. As things stand now it is not clear, contrary to earlier hopes, that Israel will benefit in any way from the worldwide war on terrorism.

Still as Chapter 21 of Genesis comes round again as part of our weekly Torah portion, I am more ready to hear what that text seems to be saying. Above all it reminds us that Ishmael exists. Just as the Palestinians will not wake up one morning to find the modern state of Israel gone from the shores of the Mediterranean, neither we will find that the Palestinians have changed their minds and decided yes, just as Golda Meir wished, they really are Jordanians after all.

We are also reminded through this moving story that God heard Ishmael's cry, where he was: that however hateful, vengeful and irresponsible as partners in a peace process, the Palestinians have turned out to be, they are still human beings created in God's image and we can't escape from the responsibility that reality creates for us. Finally we can learn something from the coda to the story, the mention later in Genesis that Abraham was buried by his two sons together. When other forces are out of the picture- in the Biblical story Sarah and Hagar and even Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac seem able to get along. Perhaps in our own times, neutralizing in some way the power of Radical Islam and the other Arab nations, might allow the Palestianians and Israelis to work things out.

Yitzchak Rabin took some dramatic steps, pursued strategies, like the secret Oslo meetings, that were out of the box. These actions were key to some of the good years that Israel experienced in the l990's. To bring back those better times, Israel will need to take the initiative again, to act dramatically to capture the imagination of its own people and of the Palestinians. Recently the Kenesset discussed a proposal by two Labor representatives for a unilateral separation. Unlike the separation proposed by Barak in his final days in office, this separation gives the Palestinians more, about 70% of the West Bank and the greatest part of the Gaza strip. In this version the Palestinian lands are turned over to international caretakers- giving the Palestinians the international presence they have requested but in a different form. It would involve Israeli withdrawal from some of the settlements- but that could possibly be the face saving exit from the Intifada, that some think Arafat has been looking for since March.

Rabin's last speech, at the peace rally at the square in Tel Aviv that now bears his name, was full of hope for a better future. It was not a future without struggles, but it was ultimately a future of peace. He said: "Today I believe there are prospects for peace, great prospects". He said: "Peace entails difficulties, even pain. Israel knows no path devoid of pain. But the path of peace is preferable to the path of war."

As we honor his memory in prayer this evening, may we find our way back to his vision, his willingness to fight when that was what was needed but his willingness to stop fighting and make sacrifices in order to move to a time of peace.