A Sincere Grief,
A Sincere Disagreement
This Time The Angel
Came Too Late
YECHIEL LEITER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
LEVI D. LAUER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
W
e have just buried
ow is the time for eulogies Peace for Galilee.
were told they were "just words"
Yitzhak Rabin,
— heart-wrenching eulogies
No one remembers Mr. Rabin or "for internal consumption."
zichrono livraha. We
that speak only of the good and Mr. Peres refusing to attend
From the outset of this political
are irrevocably dimin-
that Yitzhak Rabin, z"1, these demonstrations. In fact, process led by Mr. Rabin, the gov-
ished by his murder.
brought Israel and the Jewish peo- there is no record of them even re- ernment has found it easier to ne-
Tomorrow, we will awake to
ple.
questing that the signs be removed gotiate with Palestinian Arabs
what they say is "a different Is-
There is an understandable ten- or that the chanting of those in- than maintain a dialogue with its
rael." I'm not so sure. Old habits
dency, though, to go beyond that vectives be subdued.
Jewish opponents. Every Arab vi-
die hard. Still, without question,
and deify the political leaders slain
And yet, I remember standing olation was overlooked or ex-
it will be an Israel whose citizens
by depraved madmen.
next to Likud Chairman Benjamin plained away, but every Jewish
live with depreciated pride in be-
While all supporters and critics Netanyahu at many demonstra- criticism was denounced.
ing a Jew and an Israeli.
If anything is to be learned from
of Mr. Rabin alike mourn the tions where he denounced the
Yigal Amir, and very many
senseless and tragic loss of Israel's handful of misfits who used such this tragedy, it is that the pursuit
others whose language, arro-
prime minister, many of the be- despicable pejoratives.
of peace necessitates a consensus
gance, simplistic reading of com-
lievers in Mr. Rabin's policies are
What is worse, the left's violent no less than the waging of war. If plex text and disavowal . of
using this period of national verbiage did . not stop when they something must change, it is the
democratic culture that moved
mourning to indict his opponents entered government. When the notion that peace can be achieved
his hand, leaves us a future
as his crucifiers. It is not the lone settlers of Yesha mourned their with our enemies before we learn
stripped not only of innocence,
assassin, but the words of Mr. Ra- losses to Arab terror, they were to live with each other. Rather
but of our claim to positive dif-
bin's political opponents which called "cry babies." When more than pointing fingers of accusa-
ference.
killed him, they suggest.
This is not
Were it not for the blood
time for further
libel being created against
illusion: we are
Israel's entire opposition in
not so different;
general, and the Jews of
we are not much
Yesha in particular, I would
better; we do not
not write these lines. Cer-
use well the au-
tainly not now. But I cannot
thority that Zion-
allow this charge to go
ism and the
unanswered. Our accusers
Jewish state laid
would have everyone be-
as the existential
lieve that to sincerely
foundation of
mourn the loss of Yitzhak
modern, Jewish
Rabin, one must believe in
authenticity.
his policies. And what's
Free at last to be
worse, one who doesn't
masters of our
agree with his policies is in
own destiny, we
some way an accomplice to
irresponsibly en-
his murder.
gage
primeval,
I have spent the last 3 1/2
fraternal hostili-
years of my life contesting
ty, we the sons of
Mr. Rabin's policies. It was,
Cain. One of us is
and continues to be, my de-
an ish hamas, a
mocratic right. Yet my
being of unre-
mourning of his death is no
strained violence.
less sincere than that of his
One of us.
most enthusiastic support-
Raised in a home
ers.
sustained by love
No one political orienta-
for each letter of
tion has a monopoly on pain
Torah (his father
and tears. An attack on the
a sofer stam, a
prime minister of Israel is
scribe of mezuzot,
n October 1994, Stephen Grand and his sassination, nonetheless remains keen on
an attack on every Jew, and
Sifrei Torah and
wife, Nancy, traveled on a United Jew- what Mr. Rabin told the crowd that day 13
it matters not if the assas-
tefillin) and for
ish Appeal-sponsored leadership mis- months ago. "It was significant to hear the
sin wore a kafiyah or a kip-
early life (his
clarity of his convictions. He addressed the
sion to Israel.
pall at the time of his deed.
mother a nurs-
After delivering a speech, the prime min- long-term interests of Israel and felt that
Israel has been weakened,
ery-school
ister walked through the audience and Islamic fundamentalism was going to be
the Jewish people have
the main threat in the future." ■
teacher); educat-
shook hands.
been weakened. Evil and
ed in the best of
Mr. Grand, saddened by last week's as-
exile have been strength-
yeshivot; com-
ened.
mitted to the
Bullets, not words and rhetoric, were killed, Mr. Rabin said he was tion, it is time to extend hands in
bravest of Tzahal's combat units;
responsible only for 98 percent of the pursuit of peace — peace be-
are to blame for his murder.
trained at the university in the
Yet if as some insist, words cre- the population. After the Beit Lid tween Jews.
best Western and Jewish legal
Much to the consternation of
ated the climate from which the bus attack, the entire opposition
traditions.
gunman sprang, then everyone to the peace process was said to be our critics I will, together with my
He is one of us, one many of us
must share in the blame. It was in collaboration with Hamas.
family, friends and colleagues, con-
aspire to be. One of us murdered
the left, in 1982, which injected
If Yigal Amir was motivated not tinue to mourn Yitzhak Rabin. I
Yitzhak Rabin.
into our lexicon of legitimate po- by his own internal dementia but will mourn him not only as the de-
Yitzhak Rabin leaves us a lega-
litical debate such abrasive epi- by words, as the left now charges, ity of peace, but as a mortal man
cy of extraordinary courage, lim-
thets. "Begin — traitor," "Sharon could it not have been these very who defended Jerusalem in the
itless devotion to the well-being
War of Independence, led Israel to
— murderer" read the signs at words?
ofAm Yisrael and the capacity to
It is further appalling that those the magnificent victory of the Six-
demonstrations against Operation
move beyond precedent and es-
who have stoically written off the Day War, and altruistically sought tablish new reality. Perhaps
Yechiel Leiter is head of
significance of Yassir Arafat's peace, though he made terrible
that's why he is reviled by so
YESI-IA, a Jerusalem-based
words now champion the signifi- mistakes trying to achieve it. And
many of his opponents.
group that supports Jewish
cance of rhetoric. When we argued it is those mistakes I will contin-
They cannot understand how
residents of Yehuda, Shoinroin
that his calls for jihad would lead ue to oppose, even as I grieve the
so
brave and dedicated a Jew
and Gaza.
to terrorist attacks on Jews, we loss. ❑
N
Foresight
Stephen Grand met Mr. Rabin in 1994.
I
could reach such a different con-
clusion about the needs of our
people. They do not comprehend
how one might move beyond the
mitzvah to remember our im-
placable enemies, so as to seek
longer life and better memories
for his grandchildren.
Too late now to regret that the
prime minister did not cite
Rashi's commentary on the
morning blessing ("Praised are
you Lord, our God, ruler of the
world, who forms light and cre-
ates darkness, who makes peace
and creates everything") that
peace is equivalent in value to all
else, that making peace allows all
else to be. Would that the prime
minister had reached out to set-
tlers whose settlements he en-
couraged and masterminded
with words of candor:
"The price of peace is unrea-
sonably costly. It is unfair to ask
you to abandon your homes, re-
linquish your dreams, compro-
mise your deepest religious
convictions. But I do so because
that is the only way I see to peace.
I, who swallowed my pride and
put aside revulsion to take the
hand of the bloody murderer; I,
who liberated Yerushalyim; I,
who returned you to Yehuda and
Shomron; I, who know well the
advantages of power, now ask
you to surrender it, in part, if
power comes at the price of de-
cency, if it demands brutalization
of another people and then, in-
evitably, of our own.
"I ask this sacrifice of you with
heavy heart, for I see no other
way to sustain the ultimate Zion-
ist vision of Israel at peace with
our neighbors and among the na-
tions, at home with our best
moral standards. I do so, for I see
you weary of unending war and
relentless repression of the oth-
er. I do so uncertain what the fu-
ture will bring, but certain that
the present unremitting enmity
is untenable."
Abraham Joshua Heschel,
zichrono livraha, tells, in Viet-
nam: Crisis of Conscience, of a
young child in cheder whose fear
disturbed the learning of this
week's Torah portion. The child
tearfully anguished that Yitzhak
would be sacrificed by a merciless
adherence to Divine call. He
would not be reassured by his
teacher's recall of the angel's di-
vinely ordained intervention.
Yitzhak would be saved from
death.
"But what if, this time, the
angel comes too late?" the child
insisted. ❑
Rabbi Levi D. Lauer is a Jewish
educator in Jerusalem. Former
executive director of the Pardes
Institute of Jewish Studies, he
is writing a book on Jewish
theology and ethics.
R11