Community Views

Editorial Notebook

Israel: at Price
Shall We Pay For Peace?

Some Simple Truths
Learned During Shavuot

RABBI SHERWIN WINE SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

PHIL JACOBS ED TOR

When Yitzhak Ra-
bin shook the hand
of Yassir Arafat
last September on
the White House
lawn, there were
both euphoria and
despair in the Jew-
ish community.
The supporters of
Mr. Rabin saw the prospect of
peace after 80 years of war. The
opponents saw irreparable dam-
age to the security of the state of
Israel.
The peace process took its first
dramatic step forward when the
Israelis withdrew from Gaza and
Jericho — and a PLO adminis-
tration began to move. But the
debate continues. Enthusiasm on
both sides has diminished. The
extremist opposition, both Jew-
ish and Arab, has sobered the
public with continuing acts of ter-
rorism. Major unresolved issues
loom on the po-
litical horizon.
_ What can a
realist say
about the cur-
rent situation?
Giving up
Gaza is a boon
for Israel. Seven
hundred thou-
sand, mostly
poverty-strick-
en Palestinians
is something
the Israelis do
not need. The
territory was
unmanageable.
Gaza is now a
PLO headache
open to the pos-
sibility of inter-
national help and relief.
Giving up Jericho is a prelude
to giving up the West Bank.
Within two to five years most of
the West Bank, with minor ter-
ritorial adjustments, will end up
under the control of Palestinian
authorities. One million Arabs,
who have no desire to be part of
the State of Israel, will now have
to contend with their own gov-
ernment.
The PLO will cease to be a guer-
rilla government. It will have to
function as a national govern-
ment. It has no track record with
this kind of responsibility. It is cor-
rupt, rife with cronyism, filled with
internal contention, and weak
from the cult of personality.
A temporary truce with its
main opposition, the fundamen-
talist llamas, will not disguise
the fact that llamas wants to re-
place the PLO. Both the PLO and
the government of the state of Is-
rael have a vested interest in pre-
venting this development.

Sherwin Wine is rabbi at the
Birmingham Temple.

The state of Palestine is com-
ing into existence. It is divided
into two parts, is too small for vi-
ability, and is totally dependent
on Israel and its Arab neighbors
for its continued survival. But it
is real, a dramatic testimony to
the fact that there exists a self-
aware Palestinian people.
This people is the product of
war, exile, occupation, rejection,
and resistance. Whether Jews or
Israelis wish to acknowledge this
reality is less important than that
the Palestinian people exists and
will not go away.
Right now there is only a flag,
a passport and a small police
force. In the future, there will be
the international presence of an-
other nation. The dreams of fed-
erating this state with Jordan
may prove to be far more difficult
than many Israelis imagine.
The end of the Jewish settle-
ments in Gaza, the West Bank

and Golan is in sight. With the ex-
ception of a few suburban coin-
munities, the Jewish settlements
will have to be abandoned. Their
creation was part of a policy of an-
nexation which has not worked.
While, theoretically, Jews
should be able to reside in a
Palestinian state in the same way
that Arabs now live in a Jewish
state, Jewish settlers would have
to choose to remain under uneasy
circumstances. Disarming and
resettling the Jewish settlers will
be a difficult and provocative un-
dertaking. Jewish religious ex-
tremists will offer fierce
resistance.
The troubling vision of Israeli
soldiers evicting Israelis from
their homes — remember Yamit
in Sinai — will not be an easy
sight for Jews to experience. This
action is likely to trigger intense
Orthodox hostility.
The mutual dependence of Is-
rael and Palestine will continue.
Israel will continue to need Pales-
tinian labor. Palestine will con-
tinue to need Israeli employment
and tax dollars.

The three most difficult issues
for resolution with the Palestini-
ans, which Israel will face over
the next four years, will be the
status of Jerusalem, the return
of refugees to Palestine, and the
demilitarization of Palestine.
Israel will not presently accept
a Palestinian army. The Pales-
tinians want some military po-
tential.
The Israelis are vigorously op-
posed to the return of thousands
of Palestinians to a fragile state
on the borders of Israel. The
Palestinians see their strength
in enhancing their numbers with
exiles.
The Israelis are virtually
unanimous in refusing to give up
any part of Jerusalem. The Pales-
tinians cannot conceive of a
Palestinian state without east
Jerusalem as its capital.
Pessimists tend to see these
seemingly unresolvable contro-
versies as the fuel
which will blow
up the peace
process.
Peace between
Israel and the
Palestinians is no
sign that Jews
and Arabs now
love each other.
Suspicion and ha-
tred will take a
long time to van-
ish, especially
with the continu-
ous provocation
and extremist ter-
rorism.
Peace is a trib-
ute to rationality.
Rational" people
understand that it
is impossible in life to have every-
thing you want. Compromise is
the essence of mutual survival.
Israel needs peace more than
it needs the West Bank and
Gaza. In an age of rocket warfare,
boundaries are less important
than technology.
What must be noted with
great and deep satisfaction is that
this difficult and frustrating
peace process leads to the restora-
tion of the ethical vision of Zion-
ism. The occupation of the West
Bank and Gaza has made an eth-
ically difficult time for many Is-
raelis and many Jews.
Imposing Israeli rule on an un-
willing population, without de-
mocratic rights, is a violation of
moral convictions of contempo-
rary Jewry. The extremist de-
mands for the expulsion of the
Arabs and for authoritarian rule
were an embarrassment to the
Jewish world.
What is now happening is not
without its faults and disadvan-
tages. But it is the beginning of
the revival of moral sanity. O

Sunday, I was
asked to substi-
tute-teach for a
group of fifth-
graders whose
morning was
more focused on
spring weather
and outside play
than what was
asked of them.
The question was direct
enough, perhaps not so inter-
esting.
Children, what is Shavuot?
Nobody knew. I explained
from my notes. The day the
Torah was delivered to the Jew-
ish people. The symbols of dairy
foods, the reading of the Book
of Ruth, all the obligatory in-
formation.
It was sad that nobody knew,
that nobody really cared. But
when I was 10, I have to admit
I didn't know much about this
holiday, either. Fact is, before
last weekend, I didn't know
much more than I did when I
was 10.
Sunday was a hectic day.
When it normally would have
been all over, it was really just
beginning. That evening, after
welcoming the yom toy with the
Sephardic minyan in South-
field, several of us stayed up for
a good part of the night with the
Sephardic community's chaz-
zan, Sasson Natan.
First, the historical back-
ground. Jews from all denom-
inations stay up all night and
learn from the Torah.
Tradition holds that the Jew-
ish people were asleep when
Moses was given the Torah. Be-
cause they were asleep, we now
stay up and learn so we're not
dozing when this most impor-
tant event took place. We also
stay awake all night and learn
to show God how important His
gift of the Torah is to us.
I've had the privilege of stay-
ing up and learning and listen-
ing for many Shavuot holidays.
But this one was much differ-
ent.
There were five of us, in-
cluding Mr. Natan, in his din-
ing room. With Chumashim in
hand, we read from every sin-
gle parsha in the Torah. We
were of differing degrees of abil-
ity when it came to reading He-
brew and understanding it. But
around the table we went, read-
ing as best we could. Some of
us read from our bar mitzvah
portions during the night.
When we were done, it was
hours since a disinterested
bunch of 10-year-olds told me
they had never heard of
Shavuot.
Now, after what I had just
experienced — the learning and

the personal satisfaction of ac-
tually hearing my own voice
read from the Chumash — I
could tell those fifth-graders
what Shavuot was really all
about. My definition had
changed in less than 24 hours.
It became personal.
The message is something
that we've written about many
times. We cannot just tell our
children in religious school
about the holidays as if they ap-
ply to a group of people who
lived thousands of years ago.
Perhaps it's a deficit in the
way we're educating our chil-
dren that they largely don't
know the Torah as a design for
living. It's a bigger deficit that
their parents don't know, ei-
ther.
We don't need to wait until
next spring to learn Torah. And
we don't have to be stalled by
embarrassment. The Torah is
available; we just need to de-
cide that we're going to pick it
up and learn from it. It doesn't
have to be at 2 a.m., either.
Some final thoughts. Meet-
ing with friends and attending
services reinforced the mes-
sages of the night. For my fam-
ily, the holiday closed with a
signficant symbol.
We've been doing our share
of writing about black-Jewish
relations. We've examined stud-
ies; indeed, we even sponsored
one.
I thought of what Jewish
Community Council Executive
Director David Gad-Hart said
about us, as Jews, needing to
improve relations with our
neighbors. It is as important as
any dialogue he might have had
with a black or an Arab leader.
His statement came to mind
a couple of hours before
Shavuot ended. That's when we
took our a children to Inglenook
Park. My daughters played on
the swings with children of
Chaldean descent and African-
American descent. They were
giggling and talking together.
When it was time to go home,
the children said goodbye to one
another. They knew each oth-
er's names.
I learned about a mitzvah,
such as loving one's neighbor,
over coffee way past midnight
Monday morning as the holi-
day started. I saw it happen on
a playground as the holiday
came to a close.
The next time I need to tell
someone about Shavuot, it
won't come straight from a
book. It will come from the
heart. Isn't that what God gave
Moses that day on Mt. Sinai —
the heart, the pulse for a peo-
ple? I believe I now understand
that.

