Many Israels –

by Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

At this time two weeks ago, I was with the fellow-members of a Liberal Judaism/Rabbis for Human Rights Mission led by LJ Chief Executive, Rabbi Danny Rich, at Congregation Or Chadash in Haifa.  We were looking around the building following the Shabbat morning service, which began at 9.30am.  After an amazing week that included coming face to face with the most painful realities of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians it was a very refreshing, if slightly surreal experience:  A large, beautiful well-equipped synagogue with a staff of twenty-five people, including kindergarten and youth club facilities and a space for under-privileged mothers to come together and receive weekly support. 

Rabbi Edgar Nof, an energetic fund-raiser for his congregation that has just celebrated its 40th anniversary, took us on a tour between Bar Mitzvahs – the next one was scheduled to start at noon.  As it happens he conducts four individual B’nei Mitzvah services every Shabbat – that’s how popular Progressive Judaism has become amongst ‘secular’ Israelis in recent years.  What is more Congregation Or Chadash is not the only progressive synagogue in Haifa:  The previous evening, we attended Ohel Avraham, which is connected with the Leo Baeck Education Centre.  The Erev Shabbat celebration began at 5.30pm, with a twenty-minute special Shabbat activity on the bima involving dozens of small children – who then left with their parents before the service got underway.

There are so many Israels to visit when you go to Israel.  In just under a week, we glimpsed several fragments:  progressive Jewish Israel; orthodox Jewish Israel; the Israel of Jewish-Arab co-existence; the Israel of a new Arab-Jewish shared existence; the Israel that occupies the West Bank; the Israel that challenges the harassment of Palestinians; the Israel that works together with Palestinians to reach a peaceful and just settlement; the Israel that pursues justice in a variety of different settings, on behalf of all minority and marginal groups within the society, both Jewish and non-Jewish.

One fragment:  In addition to visiting progressive synagogues in Tel Aviv and Haifa, our group of thirteen – that included an Imam from South London – went to the Leo Baeck Education Centre in Haifa and were taken on a little field trip to see a couple of the projects it supports in the city.  One of these is a The Clore Neighbourhood Centre in Ein Ha’yam, one of the few areas where Arabs and Jews live in the same neighbourhood.  A lovely building refurbished by the Vivien Duffield Foundation, the Centre includes a games room, an Internet Café, a dance studio, a television room, a playground and football area.  Explaining that the Jewish and Arab residents in the locality have opportunities for meeting together as well as separately, both the Jewish Israeli co-ordinator, a young woman in her thirties, and a younger Muslim social worker, holding her three year old on her knee, talked to us about the various activities that take place at the Centre – in particular, those for young people. Because the Arab youngsters are already fluent in Hebrew as well as Arabic, the organisers are planning to run a programme in street Arabic for Jewish Israeli youngsters, for whom Arabic is only compulsory up to the 7th or 8th grade. While we were at the Centre we met a group of a dozen Arab six year olds who were having an English lesson that involved playing shop.

It wasn’t all quite so heart-warming:  Waiting around all morning with Palestinian farmers at a dusty check-point in the middle of the village of Baka, divided by the Separation Barrier, while the army deliberated about whether or not to open the gate and let the farmers go through to work their land.  In the end – after about three and a half hours – the army refused.  Visiting Palestinian areas in East Jerusalem, and seeing where houses had been demolished by the army because the owners did not have the necessary building permits that are virtually impossible to obtain.  Spending forty-five minutes waiting for our transport at the check-point outside Ramallah amid the potholes and the dust: Of course, the check-points fulfil an essential security function, but watching the build-up of people and vehicles queuing up to pass through made me aware of the impact of this security measure on the thousands upon thousands of ordinary Palestinians who spend hours every day waiting on either side.

It was depressing seeing it all – and listening to the Director of Rabbis for Human Rights, orthodox Rabbi, Arik Ascherman, who is currently on trial for standing in front of Army bulldozers, relating the many different instances of army harassment that he had witnessed.  But then: meeting with Saab Erekat, the Chief Palestinian Negotiator, at his Headquarters in the free atmosphere of the pleasant Palestinian-controlled town of Jericho, and listening to him speak about his unshakable commitment to the peace process; meeting with Yasser Abed Rabbo, the Head of the Palestinian Peace Coalition in the midst of conflict-battered Ramallah, and hearing about the on-going Palestinian effort to achieve an independent Palestinian state by peaceful means:  Both men were furious about the way in which the Separation Barrier deviates from the Green Line and cuts into swathes of Palestinian territory.  Both men were angry about Ariel Sharon’s unilateral, patronising approach and the way he delivers ultimata without entering into negotiation.  Both men were frustrated by the reluctance of the Israeli authorities to change some of the ‘facts on the ground’ to make the life of ordinary Palestinians a little easier – like removing the check-point outside Jericho, which is completely unnecessary.  Both men were well aware that in deciding to withdraw from Gaza, Sharon was planning to hold onto as much land in the West Bank as possible.  And yet both men remained totally committed to a peaceful solution.  As Saab Erekat put it:  ‘It’s a win, win, or it’s a lose, lose situation; either: both Israelis and Palestinians have a chance to live, or: both Israelis and Palestinians continue to die.’

Both Saab Erekat and Yasser Abed Rabbo were impressive – but the stature of another Palestinian, who lives in a small village on a hill in the midst of the territories, was even more compelling:  Nawaf Suf spent thirteen years in an Israeli jail for his involvement in a Palestinian militant group.  When he was released he vowed to pursue the Palestinian cause by peaceful means – despite the fact that his brother, Issa Suf, was shot in the spine by a rubber bullet while looking after older brother’s children, and is now paralysed.  As we sat on comfortable chairs and sofas in their bright living room, drinking, first, mint tea, and then thick black coffee, listening to Nawaf Suf talk, I watched Issa Suf’s impassive face as he sat in his wheel-chair.  At the end, one member of our group asked him if he was also committed to peace.  He smiled slightly, a small resigned smile, and said simply, ‘yes.  I agree with him’.  Nawaf Suf finished his comments by telling us that his son – who was only a year and half year’s old when his father went to prison – is currently being detained by the Israeli authorities because one of his acquaintances was suspected of planning a terrorist attack.

Courage; tenacity; determination; commitment to humanitarian values – these were the qualities we encountered when we met both Israelis and Palestinians.  But what struck me most about being there, meeting people, visiting different places, was that it’s actually impossible to speak simply of ‘Israelis and Palestinians’.  From an external vantage point all you see when you look at Israel is the conflict between these two peoples; when you visit Israel it becomes clear just how diverse Israeli society is – and it’s not just a matter of Jewish diversity:  One point two million Palestinians live inside Israel – the Palestinians who remained in their villages and towns in 1948.  Mostly Muslim, but also Christian, these Palestinian Israelis – who until recently have been called ‘Arabs’ – have no intention of leaving their homes and going to live in the State of Palestine when it is established.  Their attachment is to the place where they live and have lived for generations.  What they want is to receive equal treatment as Israeli citizens within Israeli society.

It makes sense.  It sounds simple.  But, in fact, ensuring full equality for Israel’s Palestinian citizens will be far more difficult to achieve than creating a Palestinian state.  I hadn’t really thought about the issue much – until our whirl-wind tour took us to the Jewish-Arab Center for Peace, established in 1963 at Givat Haviva, the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Kibbutz Artzi Federation, which is situated just a couple of miles from the Green Line, in the narrow strip, south east of Haifa. There we met three people – two Jewish and one Palestinian Israeli – who talked to us about a variety of different projects that bring Palestinian Israelis and Jewish Israelis together, encompassing encounter groups, peace education, teacher training, community leadership programmes, Arabic Studies, a bi-monthly young people’s magazine, called ‘Crossing Borders’ and a twenty-four hour Internet Radio Station, called ‘All for Peace’ – which you can find by following a link from our synagogue web-site.

It was fascinating, inspirational and challenging.  Mohammad Darawshe the main Spokesperson for the Centre, responsible for Public Relations, summed up the challenge:  ‘We want Israel to be a state for all of its citizens.  Of course, Israel must be the Jewish homeland.  Every Jew must be able to come here.  But once here, we must all be treated as equal citizens with equal rights and responsibilities.’  A simple message – but the implications are massive.  For some Jews both inside and outside Israel, the binary solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the ‘two-state solution’, is attractive because it seems to preserve the ‘Jewish character’ of the State of Israel.  But what kind of Jewish state is it, where twenty-per cent of its citizens are non-Jews?   In what ways will the concept of the ‘Jewish state’ have to adapt to encompass the reality of Palestinian Israeli existence?  And what about the symbols of the state:  the seven-branched Menorah emblem; the flag with the blue Magen David at its centre?  Won’t new symbols that reflect Palestinian Israeli identity also need to be incorporated?  Perhaps one day, the flag might include an olive-tree as well as a six-pointed star?  Of course, the answers to these questions lie far in the future – but we should begin to ask them now.

This week’s portion, the parashah, Vayakhel, opens at Exodus chapter 35, verse 1, with the words: ‘Vayakhel Moshe et kol-adat b’ney Yisrael’ – ‘Then Moses assembled the whole congregation of the Israelites’.   Why does the text say ‘the whole congregation’ and not just, ‘the congregation’?  Is it because everyone was included:  that is, the erev rav, the ‘mixed multitude’ that came out of Egypt, as well as the descendants of Jacob? – All of whom stood at the foot of Mount Sinai.  As we read at verses 5 to 9, Moses challenged ‘everyone whose heart’ was ‘willing’ to come forward and offer their gifts for the building of the Tabernacle, the Mishkan.  Today, that Mishkan is not a portable tent in the wilderness; it is both myriad, diverse Jewish communities throughout the world and a complex society encompassing Jews and Palestinians rooted in a particular land.   When we were travelling with Arik Ascherman on his Rabbis for Human Rights work, he said: ‘the real Zionism today involves working for an Israel that is not only physically strong but morally strong because it lives up to the highest Jewish values.’   In essence, it takes individuals, wherever they come from, having the opportunity to contribute their gifts to the collective endeavour, to create a healthy community, a healthy society – even a healthy state.  Ultimately, what will define the State of Israel as a Jewish state will not be the religious and ethnic identities of its inhabitants, but rather the values it proclaims.  As we read in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel – paragraph 13:

The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and the Ingathering of Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the Principles of the Charter of the United Nations (Official Gazette: Number 1; Tel Aviv, 14.05.48, p.1).

Paragraph 13 of the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel says it all.  But, of course, it does not say it all.  As Jews we live with complexity and with pain: the on-going complexity of Jewish existence as well as the continuing pain of anti-Semitism; just three days ago, our Sanctuary windows were broken for the fifth time.  We live with our fears for the future of Israel.  But because we continue to live, we must also continue to hope.  As Nawaf Suf, put it to us, holding the arm of Arik Ascherman, ‘you cannot live without hope’.  During that long-short week, we encountered an inspiring ‘coalition of hope’.  May we all be part of that coalition. 

5th March , 2005