LIFE IN ISRAEL
Think-Tank Rabbi In Israel
Hopes To Break 'Bloody Cycle'
DAVID HOLZEL
Special to The Jewish News
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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1989
546-0090
n Israel, according to
rabbi-philosopher David
Hartman, the past buries
the present.
"I live in Jerusalem, and
in Jerusalem my zadie
always haunts me," Hart-
man said.
Hartman, 58, is founder
and director of the Shalom
Hartman Institute, a
Jerusalem think tank and
study center that stresses
the reconciliation of
Judaism and Western
modernism. The U.S.-born
educator explained that liv-
ing with the past is the tra-
ditional Jewish approach to
dealing with the present.
"Jewish philosophy
always begins in a
framework of commentary.
If you study a page of
Talmud you would see. Jews
don't write anything new. A
Jew always reinterprets the
past and makes room for
himself," he said recently.
In Jerusalem, Hartman,
an Orthodox Jew, is trying
to reinterpret the 3,000-year
experience of Jewish
sovereignty and exile to
make room in the Jewish
consciousness for ideals of
pluralism, tolerance and
democracy. According to
Hartman, the Jews' return
to Zion discourages those
three Western ideals. And
without them, Israel will
never be able to move into
the future.
Israel's Zionist founders
were trying to build a new
world, divorced from the
past, Hartman said. They
failed. Hartman compared
their effort to the teenager
who wants to rebel. "He goes
to the door. He says, 'Ma, I'm
tired of all the stories of the
past you told me. I want to
make it on my own.' So he
goes to the door, bangs on
the door and forgets to leave.
"The land forces us to go
back to our biblical roots,"
he said.
And in returning to those
roots, Jews once again are
playing out an ancient
struggle that uses memory
as a framework. Judaism,
Christianity and Islam all
claim the soil of Jerusalem
as their own.
In Christian theology,
David Holzel is a staff writer
at our sister paper, the
Atlanta Jewish Times.
Hartman says the issue is Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is the city of
Jesus, not of the Jews whose
covenant with God was
superseded by the new cove-
nant with Jesus' followers.
To Moslems, Islam
superseded Christianity.
The Moslem Dome of the
Rock is built on the ruins of
the Temple's Holy of Holies.
And now, Hartman said, to
continue the process, there
are Jews who, anticipating
the destruction of the Dome
of the Rock, are preparing to
build a new Temple on its
ruins.
"There are people in
Jerusalem who are knitting
garb for priests, so when the
revolution comes, priests
will have garb."
With this dynamic in play,
there will be no peace with
the Palestinians, or peace in
the Middle East, Hartman
said. The past is burying the
present.
"Unless we rethink and
reinterpret the past, we will
never be able to build the
future," he said.
Rethinking for Jews is
essential to break the cycle
because traditional Judaism
leaves no room for Western
ideas and provides no solu-
tion to Israel's conflict with
the Palestinians, he said.
"Would you say that
Moses taught liberalism and
pluralism? When Joshua
conquered the land of Israel,
did he say, 'Let's divide the
land. Let's have a peace con-
ference'?
"When Meir Kahane and
his followers say, 'Let's
remove the strangers from
our land,' they're not speak-
ing out of a 20th century
madness. They're giving ex-
pression to deep biblical
roots."
Those roots — Jewish tra-
dition — tell the story of two
brothers, Ishmael and Isaac.
"One is the rejected son; one
is the blessed son," Hartman
said.
In the next generation, the
tale is repeated with Jacob
and Esau —Jacob, the bless-
ed, gains all while his re-
jected brother, Esau, loses
everything. These misty
biblical figures have become
archetypes for all three
monotheistic faiths. And the
mythic drama of the blessed
and the rejected is being
played out again in modern
Israel.
Said Hartman, "To have
your truth, there has to be a
rejected one to confirm your
truth. When we went back to
the land, we went back to
that story."
This paradigm explains