Political Giants Stepping Off the Stage

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Friday, January 6, 2006

The stories my grandparents used to tell about the day that FDR died were different in some significant intangible way from the stories my parents tell about JFK’s death.

In both cases there was shock and loss but in one case it was the loss of an old man who represented security and protection in difficult times and in the other, of a young man who represented dreams of the future.

Yitzchak Rabin was already a grandfather when he was assassinated in November of 1995, but still his death had a JFK like quality to it. It was more than the assassination. It was his recent risk taking for the sake of peace, it was his handshake on the White House Lawn, and his standing at a rally singing Shir LeShalom. It was the sense that he had a vision of a different, better future and that this vision was beginning to come into being. What was killed with Rabin’s death was future oriented, though it was only in the year 2000 that we were brutally forced to recognize how fully his dream was destroyed.

Shocked this week by Prime Minister Arik Sharon being struck by a second devastating stroke, I was thinking about the impact of his no longer being active on the Israeli political scene.

In a great irony of history, I believe that Arik Sharon became in recent years, a Ben Gurion figure for the average Israeli. The Jerusalem Post called Ben Gurion Sharon’s mentor, but I remember more clearly the times when Ben Gurion, while appreciating Sharon’s aggressiveness, criticized his ruthlessness and undisciplined tendencies. Still, the men were similar in some ways, both impatient with building consensus, preferring to bulldoze ahead. They were both pragmatic, willing to jettison past commitments for present needs. Both believed at heart that Israel could not depend on an outside ally or agency for its security, but only on itself. Even Sharon’s latest trick, of leaving his own party to start another, was Ben Gurion’s as well, and they were both inventive politicians.

For years after Ben Gurion first retired to the Negev, whenever there was a crisis, a delegation would head down to S’de Boker to beg the old man to come back. In June of 1967, when Ben Gurion was already beginning to weaken, there was still talk of bringing him back, because he was a symbol of security and confidence. That is what Sharon became over these past 5 years. His role in triggering the intifada became secondary to the perception that he was the strongman who could lead Israel through this difficult period. And when he, who had spent decades of his life promoting settlements in the occupied territories, decided unilaterally that Israel would withdraw from Gaza, his strength made that a fait accompli even as many said it couldn’t be done.

Ben Gurion died on December 1st 1973 two weeks after he had experienced a brain hemorrhage. It was at a time when Israel was still reeling from the Yom Kippur War, the tragic death of so many young soldiers and the shocking failure of Israel’s political and military establishment. Thousands of mourners, from every political party, came to the courtyard of the Knesset to pay their respects and leaders from around the world offered condolences. The day of his death coincided with new clashes with Syria over the Golan Heights and the foundering of peace efforts by the United States and the United Nations. Interestingly, Ben Gurion’s last years were spent criticizing those in power for not returning the land captured in 1967. We do not want to rule over more Arabs, he would say.

Sharon is stepping off the stage in very uncertain times as well. His recently adopted work of disengagement is hardly half-way done, and the threats represented by Hamas and Iran loom on the horizon. We are bereft as my grandparents were in 1945. They ultimately found solace in a haberdasher from Kansas City, a man previously viewed as undistinguished, but whose succession as president was guaranteed by a democratic political system. Israel also has a democratic system of government which provides for orderly succession and for the election of new leaders.

Jewish tradition teaches- according to the generation, such are the leaders. May God help us be worthy of the leaders we so sorely need.