Braving bitter morning cold and beating rain, five senior Jewish leaders – each representing delegations from a different continent – laid a wreath at the grave of Yitzhak Rabin to mark his “shloshim,” the end of the 30-day mourning period.
The five were part of an international mission of 200 top Jewish leaders from around the globe – including more than 70 from the United States – who came to Israel to express their personal grief and their communal solidarity with the people and government of Israel.
The 24-hour, whirlwind visit, co-hosted by the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency for Israel, included discussions with Foreign Minister Ehud Barak, President Ezer Weizman, Minister Yehuda Amital, Jewish Agency Chairman Avraham Burg and members of Knesset – as well as a heart-to-heart talk with Israeli high school students regarding their feelings about the assassination.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres addressed the group after sundown Tuesday.
It was the first official meeting between Jewish community officials and the new prime minister, who decided not to hold any such talks until after Rabin’s “shloshim” period ended.
Some Jewish representatives, such as JAFI Board of Governors Chairman Charles “Corky” Goodman, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations Executive Vice Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein and Orthodox Union President mandell Ganchrow, stressed the symbolic importance of having so many Diaspora leaders come to Israel on short notice to show their “solidarity with Israelis.”
Other delegates came for more personal reasons.
“I wanted to visit Rabin’s grave, and pay my respects,” said Jack Abuhatzera, a delegate from France and chairman of the World Sephardic Federation.
“We in the Diaspora also suffered from the assassination, and I needed an outlet to show it. All these meetings with Israeli leaders I’ve done before and are really secondary.”
Each speaker began with a few words about Rabin, but Jewish unity and solidarity were the clearly the burning issues of the day.
Peppered with questions from the delegates, Amital, an Orthodox rabbi who recently joined the government, admitted that he did not have any “quick fixes” to heal the rifts between right and left or religious and secular in both Israel and the Diaspora.
Promising to use his new Cabinet position to study the issue, he also warned against using the word “unity” to mask differences.
“The problem with unity is that everybody wants it – as long as it’s done `my way,'” said Amital.
Although the minister stressed that differences were healthy and should be respected by the religious and the secular, he insisted that maintaining respect for Israel’s democracy was, “even according to Torah,” a matter of “pikuach nefesh,” the safeguarging of life.
“Israel’s very existence is dependent upon democracy,” argued Amital, “so people must respect the authority of the democratically elected government, which has the ultimate responsibility to lead the Jewish people.”
Agency Chairman Burg echoed the rabbi’s opinion.
Warning the delegates not to be “faked out by artificial unity,” Burg asserted that living in a society with multiple opinions is important and that “unity” must be realized in terms of “agreeing to the rules of the game – on a culture of how to agree to disagree.”
As both speakers and delegates grappled with the big questions, precious few solutions – or even directions – emerged.
Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents, an umbrella body of Jewish groups, acknowledged that the American Jewish community has yet to devise concrete steps for bringing the poles of the community together.
But, he said, “First, the proper environment must be created, then we can move along with implementing solutions.”
The first major effort, he said, is the mass rally scheduled for Dec. 10 at Madison Square Garden to demonstrate united American Jewish support for the government of Israel and its “pursuit” of peace.
Sponsored by the Presidents’ Conference and numerous other major Jewish organizations, the billing of the rally itself demonstrates festering divisions within the community.
Orthodox and right-wing organizations threatened not to attend the gathering if the words “peace process” were not replaced by the phrase “pursuit of peace.”
And even though there seems to be a public consensus for the need to tone down the rhetoric between right and left, some Jewish leaders still see the need to continue “telling it like it is.”
“Some people are using the term `unity’ and `halachah’ to cloak the real issues,” said Mary Ann Stein, president-elect of American Friends of Peace now.
“But when signs hang in the street calling Rabin a traitor and a Nazi, I feel that organizations and the societies they represent need to take responsibility for their actions, and that we can’t deny the right to demand this.”
Issues other than peace and the assassination of Rabin were also on the minds of delegates.
Rabbi Michael Cohen, a representative of the Reconstructionist movement in the United States, repeatedly raised the question of the right of rabbis other than the Orthodox to have legal standing in Israel. But the officials to whom he addressed the questions skirted the issue.
And the OU’s Ganchrow admitted that certain disputes between Orthodox and the other religious denominations might never be settled because of “fundamental differences” on education and basic “halachic” issues such as conversion.
Still, the OU, recognizing the dangerous rift brought about by the assassination, has created a new dialogue program.
Billed as the “1,000 Homes of Dialogue,” the program – an offshoot of the OU’s yet-to-be launched home “havruta’ project – encourages families to invite people to their homes for a night of guided, communal study.
The first session, on Chanukah, will deal with issues “between man and his friend,” said Ganchrow, and hosts will be asked to invite people who hold different opinions than they do on a variety of Jewish and Israel-related issues.
Sobered by the event that brought them to Jerusalem, conversation and declarations by the delegates ultimately returned to the need to confront extremism.
Barak, in his short address, urged the Diaspora leaders to fight the fanatics.
It is a message that is apparently being heard. But silencing the fringe provocateurs in lands that promote freedom of speech might not be easy.
Hoenlein, for example, explained that in the United States, most of the offending rhetoric comes from outside the “organized Jewish world.”
Therefore, he said, “there is little the organizations like the Presidents’ Conference can do because we’re not a police force.”
Still, he admitted that there is more the organized community can do to “mobilize and isolate the offenders,” and expressed frustration that all organizations were not doing their share – or committing enough funds.”
“Accountability is the key – and it must be on broader terms than just rhetoric,” said Hoenlein. “People and organizations need to be held accountable for what they do.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
