In an effort to build bridges with the community that has most cohesively opposed the current Middle East peace process, Prime Minister Shimon peres met with a group of Orthodox rabbis during his visit this week to New York.
In a separate meeting immediately preceding the one with Orthodox rabbis on Sunday, Peres met with representatives of pro-peace process groups, including the American Jewish Committee, the American Zionist Movement, the Israel Policy Forum and Americans for Peace Now.
The closed-door meetings at the Essex House hotel, which each had about two dozen participants and lasted 45 minutes, followed the memorial tribute to Yitzhak Rabin that had been held earlier that day at Madison Square Garden.
Orthodox participants were culled primarily from the centrist Orthodox community, and included several of Yeshiva University’s top administrators, notably Rabbi Norman Lamm, the school’s president, and Rabbi Israel Miller and Rabbi Robert Hirt, both vice presidents.
In both meetings, Peres stressed the importance of making Israel “a spiritual as well as a geographical center,” said Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, who was at both meetings as founder of the pro-peace policy Orthodox advocacy group Shvil HaZahav.
Peres told the American Jews how importantly he regards the Syrian track of the peace negotiations, and said he expects the Palestinian track “to take time.”
Peres also said that if the Palestinian charter, which calls for the destruction of the State of Israel, is not changed within two months of the Palestinian elections slated for early next year, as the Oslo accords require it to be, then “the train will stop,” Goldin said.
“On Jerusalem he spoke very firmly, saying that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel” and that he would not allow it to serve as the capital of another sovereign nation, Goldin said.
The thorny and divisive issue of religious pluralism in Israel was raised by a participant in the first meeting, who told the prime minister that non-Orthodox support for Israel should not be jeopardized by legislation or political compromise that would strengthen Orthodox control over conversions to Judaism in Israel.
“Peres neatly sidestepped” the issue, said Goldin. “He said it’s not a time for us to raise issues that will polarize the jewish community further.”
One of the participants in the meeting with Orthodox rabbis asked Peres about an issue that for the last several months has been widely seen as an attack on Orthodoxy by the Israeli government – the removal of the Bible section on the baccalaureate exam, known as the bagrut, taken by every Israeli high school student.
“Peres seemed genuinely surprised to learn that it had been taken out,” Goldin said, quoting Peres as saying, “I consider the Bible to be the foundation of Jewish education.”
Goldin said that Peres “made a note and promised to look into it.”
“You could see the tremendous importance of being able to have these face-to- face conversations,” he said.
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