Thirty Years Later

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Yom Kippur 5764
Monday, October 6, 2003

Many of us in the sanctuary this morning, are old enough to vividly remember Yom Kippur 1973. On the west coast the news of the war must have come early, but where I was, in a Conservative congregation in Wallingford, Pennsylvannia, the first word that war had broken out in Israel came during Musaf. All afternoon transistor radios played in the hallway in the back of the sanctuary. Updates were given periodically from the bimah. Some people cried, and others, particularly the rabbi whose daughter was on a program in Israel at the time, attempted to look strong so as not to worry those in the congregation who also had family in Israel.

That day changed my life profoundly. Eventually I left the college I had been attending and went to Israel. Since I was at that time planning to make aliyah, I registered in the regular university program, among Israeli college students, the age cohort most directly impacted by the war. My Israeli roommate's boyfriend had been seriously wounded and lost a leg and much of the year was spent with her agonizing over whether under the circumstances it would be ok to break up. I remember the newspapers, filled, page after page, with black boxes with the names of the dead, put in the paper by their families to honor them at their first yazheit. Israelis, especially then, tended not to move much, and remained throughout their lives tied to their hevrah, the group of children they had been with in grade school and high school. It was customary for this group of friends to create a memorial book, filled with mementos, pictures, poems, and remembrances, which was then presented to the parents of the deceased soldier. I saw a lot of those books.

Those killed in the first devastating days of the war were primarily 18-22 year old soldiers doing their required service; only later were the reservists brought to the fronts. These regular soldiers were the classmates of the female college students, since women serve two years and not three or four, and the younger brothers of the male students. Those killed and wounded were from every segment of Israeli society and were embraced by society as a whole in a way I certainly didn't experience during the Vietnam War, and which I don't find in our country today. While we know that American soldiers are dying daily, there is no communal recognition of their sacrifice and reference to the soldiers who have died so far in Iraq seems to occur only in political contexts, either for or against the war.

Now thirty years after the Yom Kippur War, I think of how far my life has moved on since that day, and also about the changes in Israel and Israeli society.

30 years is a long time. My friends have gone from being college students to approaching or experiencing the big 50. Others have gone from being parents of young children, to reaping the bonus for all those late nights and long days- grandchildren. Some who were young children at the time of the Yom Kippur War now have children of their own and those for whom 1973 was their third or fourth war in Israel, are hopefully reaping the Biblical blessing, of seeing a third, even a fourth generation, grow up before them.

Our parents, figures of authority for many in 1973, may be gone, or we may be in a new relationship with them, as they retire and slow down, move into a frailer period of their lives, and require a different kind of love and respect from us.

For the American Jewish community as a whole these 30 years have also seen many changes. The Jewish community which had already moved out from the cities into the suburbs by 1973, has moved further; from the east coast and Midwest, to the south, the west and the furthest reaches of exurbia. The American Jewish community has changed in other ways as well. We have become more egalitarian over these past 30 years, accepting women in new roles in our religious and organizational life. We have also become more diverse. I cannot imagine a member of our congregation going up to anyone any more to say: "that's funny, you don't look Jewish,", nor would I expect anyone to feel, within almost any Jewish setting, the necessity of pretending that their spouse is Jewish, if that is not really the case. I believe the days are gone too when everyone in the congregation is assumed to be part of a heterosexual couple, with single adults and gays and lesbians of all ages, feeling totally invisible. Looking around our sanctuary this morning you will see people from many different ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds and I think we represent more of the norm than the exception.

The changes we have experienced personally and as an American Jewish community, are both positive and negative, in fact in many cases we recognize that one comes with the other. Growing older, once you are past your 20's, is a bittersweet process. As much as you are looking forward to the next state of your life, you begin to realize that you will miss earlier stages. Wonderful new experiences, like our relationships with our adult children, come along with not so wonderful new experiences, like a parent's phone call about a potential diagnosis of Parkinson's, or the management of their incontinence. For the American Jewish community as a whole too, the changes of the past 30 years bring blessings and challenges.

On the whole though, our personal lives and the life of the American Jewish community have followed the trajectories already established in earlier years. Perhaps our lives are not exactly what we expected-- I thought I'd be an urban planner or a psychiatrist, and not a rabbi, perhaps change in American Jewish life happened a bit more quickly than expected, but things aren't, on the whole, so totally different than we expected either. If we plotted the past, we could extrapolate to the present.

I don't feel that way about Israel, about where we are today versus where we expected to be in 2003 back when we were living in 1973.

There are two songs that I remember especially from being in Israel just after the Yom Kippur War. One Lu Yehi- speaks about the longing to turn back the clock, to wipe out the events of that day, and go back to Kol Nidre eve, to the candles lit on the table, and a soft breeze blowing through the window, before the war with its 2,500 Israeli deaths and the resulting political catastrophes that followed the war and continue to echo in Israeli politics today.

The second song I think of with even greater sadness today is hardly sung any more. Ani maftiach lach, I promise you, yaldah sheli ketanah, my little daughter , shezot tehiyeh hamilchamah ha-achronah, that this will be the last war. I realize that every generation hopes to fight the war to end all wars. But I remember the pundits of the time telling us that those who died in the first days of the 1973 war didn't die in vain. By losing initially, Israel, according to all the talking heads, allowed the Arab countries to regain their pride which took such a beating in 1948 and particularly in 1967 and this restored pride would enable negotiation and compromise.

And for a while, it looked like that was true. Sadat came to Jerusalem. Begin went to Camp David. Israelis began to travel to Egypt and there was a trickle of contact in the other direction as well. Then, after years of denouncing negotiation with terrorists, back channels were established for dialogue between the Israeli government and the PLO and eventually the Oslo accords were signed, twelve days before Yom Kippur 10 years ago. There was great hopefulness all through the 1990's. The violence that did occur was seen as the last gasps of protest to an inevitable movement towards negotiation and peace. Sure, there were extremists on both sides, but the economic and social forces pushing for peace, were more powerful than anything that stood in its way. Then everything fell apart, three years ago.

Now, my daughter is sitting at that same college in Philadelphia where I once went to school, while the children of my Israeli friends are dying in coffee shops in Jerusalem and in restaurants in Haifa, or putting on ceramic vests and heading into combat. They are commanders of the IDF Education Corps media units, Nachal soldiers, and even paratroopers. They are in Gaza and Jenin. They are fighting another war and they have no hope, suffer no delusions, about a war to end all wars.

Who would have thought that the victory of 67 would be such an albatross around Israel's neck? Who would have thought that the Israeli public's anger towards the Labor establishment, following the Agranat Commission's report on the Yom Kippur War , would lead to a continuing seesawing of governments over the past 30 years? Who would have thought that in 2003, serious people and not just doomsday-ers, would raise the issue of whether there will be a democratic Jewish state in Israel a decade or two into the future?

Israel's problems today include dangers from the outside such as those Israel faced in 1973, though now the primary enemies are Syria, its client state Lebanon, and Iran, as agreements with Egypt and Jordan still stand. But there are additional problems as well. These include increased tension with Israeli Arabs, and other domestic issues reflecting the gap between rich and poor ( in which Israel now excels among Western countries) and the decreased expenditures for social services, education, and economic supports.

Do I see a way out of Israel's current dilemma? Do I see a clear path to the Israel of 2003 we all thought was around the corner back in 1973? No.

I believe the fence or wall will be built, and, if it is successful in reducing terrorist attacks, it will play a part in creating support for subsequent steps towards peace among the Israeli public. Opposition to the wall, just because it is a wall, by those who quote Robert Frost "SOMETHING there is that doesn't love a wall,," seems disingenuous, like a burglar's complaint that bars on the windows of residential housing deface the aesthetics. The wall reflects the lack of peace, it did not create it. The real question is where the wall will be built.

I understand the Israeli public's resistance to building the wall along the border lines negotiated by Clinton and Barak, in Eilat in December of 2000. Why should the strategy of terrorism be rewarded? Why should the Palestinians get what we were offering then, when so much death and destruction, 2,600 Arab deaths and 800 Israeli deaths, have resulted from their pursuit of a different strategy?

In this regard I think of some of the conversations I have with parents who are going through divorce. Why should he get that? Is it fair that she have that? Yet at some point, if the parents have adequate maturity to put their children's well-being first, they recognize that right and fair aren't everything, and that a workable compromise that both sides accept and which can be enforced is worth an awful lot.

Defensible borders, that drastically reduce the number of Arabs non-citizens within the state of Israel, will allow Israel to improve its odds of being a Jewish Democratic State in Israel, 10, 20 even 50 years from now. Defensible borders that exclude the bulk of the Palestinian population, will allow Israel to focus on repairing its relationship with the Israeli Arabs who are citizens, but whose relations with the state of Israel have deteriorated dramatically over the past three years.

For the first 50 years of Israel's history there was no incident of terrorism involving an Israeli Arab. That is no longer the case. The pent up resentment of years of second class treatment, the radicalization of the young people who define themselves as Palestinians, the abyss created by the shooting deaths of Israeli Arabs in the first days of the intifada - all this is exacerbated by allowing the intifada to go on and on. There is still time to repair that relationship. The Israeli Arab leadership has endorsed the Orr Commission, but that window of opportunity will pass and then it will be too late.

Defensible borders will also spare Israel the expense both in money and in soldiers, of defending isolated settlements, whose purpose is to fulfill Messianic dreams, rather than to safeguard the security of the State. This will allow resources to go where they are desperately needed, for education, economic development, and the continuing needs of the immigrants from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union, who arrived in the 1990's. These domestic issues are much more of concern to Israelis in Israel than we abroad appreciate. We think that Israeli's are concerned with security, and they are, but Israelis are also very concerned about school budgets, job creation and all of the other issues that impact their everyday lives.

Finally, defensible borders will improve Israel's standing with the rest of the world, preventing terrorist groups from continuing to gain support in Europe, and elsewhere.

I began by saying that thinking back to 1973, the Israel of today is not what I expected to see in 2003, and it is the negative, the shortcomings and the pain of the present that is most on my mind. Perhaps my problem is the 30 year perspective.

Would Israel today look better if my vantage point was 1903 when the Zionist movement dreamt of a "national home for the Jewish people", not even expressing publicly the vision of an independent state? Would Israel look better from the vantage point of 1933 when Arab riots in Israel, brought not merely psychological havoc and economic disruption, but actually destroyed whole communities and were a serious threat to the Jewish population? Would the economy of today look better from the vantage point of 1953 when the weakness of the economy and the arrival of so many new immigrants, refuges from Arab countries, created shortages that were severe enough that food was rationed?

The matzav, the situation, is like a black cloud, which succeeds in blocking out the rays of the sun: it prevents us from even looking at other areas of Israeli society where there have been gains in the past 30 years. Consider for example the integration of Mizrachi Jews, the growth of the non governmental volunteer sector, and the continued contribution that Israel makes in science and medicine, among other fields.

Will Sharon continue to ride the despair of Israel's silent majority, or will the scandals that are covered in the Israeli papers, but ignored abroad, eventually weaken his position? The 90's were marked by radical changes of government in Israel, from Shamir to Rabin, from Peres to Netanyahu, from Barak to Sharon; who knows where we will go from here?

Our responsibility, sitting in California, 5,000 miles away, is to support the people of Israel, through contributions to humanitarian organizations, through people to people efforts like our Temple web site's exchange with Ohel Avraham, the Reform community in Haifa, and by visits. This August alone 10% of the United States Congress visited Israel. I hesitate to ask for a show of hands here today, as I know our numbers would be so much lower.

Within hours of the terrorist attack in Haifa yesterday I heard from my friend Rabbi Edgar Nof, whose congregation lost almost an entire family, a pre Bar Mitzvah student, his grandparents, uncle and a cousin. Michael heard from Yael, the physicist who is Rabbi Dan Pratt's wife. A child in their son's gan was killed and they themselves typically take their car to be washed at the gas station attached to the Maxim restaurant ( gas stations and restaurants being a typically Israeli combination). Email is at least a small sign of our concern.

We in America, also have an important and sometimes not easy role in helping other Americans understand the Middle East better and see Israel in the context of its history and real challenges. Many of us have had tense conversations at work or with our neighbors and we need to be well prepared.

Finally, our distance gives us an even more difficult role, as Israel is buffeted, day by day, by attacks and violence. We must keep our eyes on the real goal, a democratic Jewish state living in peace and security, and urge Israel's government not to lose sight of that goal in the tragedies of the day to day attacks.

There was a third song that I remember from 1973, Shir LeShalom. It is now associated in most people's minds with the Israeli peace movement and Rabin's assassination. Actually, it was written before 1973 and embraced by the generation that fought the Yom Kippur War. It is less about the glories of peace than it is about the tragedy of war. "The one whose candle was snuffed out and who was buried in the dust will not be brought back even by our purest prayers. Our bitter cry won't wake him up , even songs of victory won't bring him back." The song ends with a call to individual responsibility: al tagido yom yavo, tavi'u et hayom, ki lo chalom hu Do not say the day will come, but rather you must bring that day, (for if you will it) , it is not a dream".