Shalom Haver: Parshat Tol'dot

Fifteen years ago Thursday, my father called me into the room with tears in his eyes. Speechless, he pointed to the television, fixated on a live broadcast of CNN. “They killed him,” he eventually said, “They killed Rabin.” Our first inclination was to pin the blame on the Palestinian radicals bent on using terror and murder to end the progress of the Oslo Peace Accords. But soon we discovered the unthinkable: Yitzhak Rabin, an early member of the Palmach, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces during the Six Day War, the first Prime Minister to be born in Israel, and now a Nobel Peace Prize recipient had been murdered as he left a peace rally in Tel Aviv, shot in the back by a religious Jew named Yigal Amir. In his pocket, a blood-soaked song sheet proclaiming the famous words – Lachein Rak Shiru – Shir L’Shalom; Let us sing a song of peace.
The shock wave which radiated throughout the Jewish world was palpable – as were its consequences. How could this have happened? We asked. A religious Jew, one bound by the Torah’s preeminent command to honor and respect all life – now an assassin, a murderer in the name of a perverted path of Torah. And what will become of the Peace Process? We wondered. That tenuous handshake on the White House Lawn; that moment of cautious triumph when Rabin, long the hawk, turned into the dove of peace; what will become of his mission, now that the man is gone?
And this morning we gather in prayer – fifteen years later and we still do not have the peace that Yitzhak Rabin had imagined and ultimately given his life for. One of the indelible images of the aftermath of his assassination was the eulogy delivered by President Bill Clinton on Har Hertzel, on this very day, November 6th, 1995. His poignant words showed a deep love and respect for Prime Minister Rabin, but the eulogy also contained a charge:

“Your prime minister was a martyr for peace, but he was a victim of hate. Surely, we must learn from his martyrdom that if people cannot let go of the hatred of their enemies, they risk sowing the seeds of hatred among themselves. I ask you, the people of Israel, on behalf of my nation that knows its own long litany of loss, from Abraham Lincoln to President Kennedy to Martin Luther King, do not let that happen to you. In the Knesset, in your homes, in your places of worship, stay the righteous course. As Moses said to the children of Israel when he knew he would not cross over into the promised land, "Be strong and of good courage. Fear not, for God will go with you."


And he ended his hesped with the now-famous two word phrase:
Shalom Haver, Goodbye Friend.

President Clinton repeated this charge with a letter to the editor of this week’s New York Times. In it, Clinton affirms his opinion that if Rabin had lived – there would have been a comprehensive peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians within three years. He also reminds us, that though Rabin is now gone, his plan remains very much in place – serving as the foundation for negotiations to this very day. And President Clinton charges us with the task of finishing Yitzhak Rabin’s work. As he says:
“Let us pray on this anniversary that his service and sacrifice will be redeemed in the Holy Land and that all of us, wherever we live, whatever our capacity, will do our part to build a world where cooperation triumphs over conflict. Rabin’s spirit continues to light the path, but we must all decide to take it.”

This morning’s Torah portion, Parshat Tol’dot begins with an image which very much describes the malaise that many of us feel fifteen years removed from those seeds of peace. After a barren Rivka Immeinu at last becomes pregnant, we learn that the pregnancy is not an easy one for her. Not only is she carrying multiples, but they seem to be fighting with one another from within her very womb. The Torah tells us:
וַיִּתְרֹֽצֲצוּ הַבָּנִים בְּקִרְבָּהּ, וַתֹּאמֶר אִם-כֵּן לָמָּה זֶּה אָנֹכִי?
וַתֵּלֶךְ לִדְרשׁ אֶת-יְהוָֹֽה:
“But the children struggled in her womb, and she said: “If this is so, why do I even exist?” so she went to inquire of the Lord.”

Rashi asks, what were they struggling about? And he answers:
מתרוצצים זה עם זה ומריבים בנחלת שני עולמות
“They were struggling one with the other, because they were fighting over the inheritance of two worlds.”

In other words, according to Rashi, these two brothers were engaged in an existential battle over the inheritance of Olam HaZeh, of this world, and the promise of Olam HaBa, the World to Come. Not only were they fighting over who would receive their father’s blessing and therefore the covenant with the God of Abraham, but their struggle even extended to the very edge of eternity – a question of whose path was right and whose was wrong, who could make a claim to ‘Truth’ with a capital ‘T’.

For some sixty two years, the State of Israel has been engaged in the very same struggle – the fight for two worlds with the Palestinians. The first world, Olam HaZeh, is the more transparent struggle. It is clear what we are arguing about: There is one land with two peoples: you call this town Nablus, we call it Schem; you call it the Dome of the Rock, we call it Har HaBayyit.
When we hear of negotiations beginning once again between the Israelis and the Palestinians, we are referring to the conflict BaOlam HaZeh, of this world: a world of boundaries and borders, of negotiations and final status agreements. And I call upon the leaders of both sides to accomplish what Rabin set out to achieve – a comprehensive peace settlement, putting to rest all questions of conflict in this material world of ours.
But, the harder task is to achieve peace in the battle for the other world – Olam HaBa, the World to Come. This struggle is not tangible, it is ethereal; it is not political it is intellectual, and it cannot be solved by use of creatively-drawn maps or by means of political pressure from the State Department. Ultimately it is this struggle which threatens to haunt us and harm us again and again and again.
It is this struggle for the World to Come which is the cause of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbolah and the Mullahs of Iran – who celebrate murder and honor those who kill innocents in the name of a perverted path of Islam. It is their unshakable belief in their interpretations of the inscrutable will of God which leads them to see this conflict as not only inevitable, but ordained from on High.
And most unfortunately, they are not alone. It is the same struggle for Olam HaBa, which concerns the ultra-Orthodox and the religiously motivated settlers who see their actions towards preventing peace as completing God’s vision of a modern State of Israel with Biblical proportions. They too are obsessed with the possession of God’s unmitigated Truth – despite the fact that the result of their obsession is the abandonment of unforsakable values of the Jewish faith such as: Pikuach Nefesh, the preeminence of human life, K’vod HaB’riyot, the honoring of our fellow human beings, and Anavah, having humility before God.
So let ours be the voices which call for an end to the battle for both of these worlds. The time has come to finish the work of Yitzhak Rabin and make peace a reality. Fifteen years since we said “Shalom Haver” is too long to wait for peace – and so I pray that another Israeli leader will demonstrate his or her courageous commitment to the creation of Peace Ba Olam HaZeh, in this world, in a land loved by two people.

But, when it comes to the struggle for Olam HaBah, the world to come, let our voices be lent to the fight for tolerance, the championing of civility and to the modest understanding that God’s will is a thing that can only be sensed – never proven, intuited – but never confirmed; for our task as religious people it to define the indefinable, to give a name to the nameless, to try and touch the ineffable, and this task can only be accomplished with the humble understanding that God alone is the Possessor of Truth with a capital ‘T’.

Shalom Haver. I pray that we will see your dream of peace become a reality speedily in our days, in this world, as well as in the next.

Shabbat Shalom.