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(or, The Blast of the ‘Shofar’)
An extract from the book ‘Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life,’ London: Vallentine Mitchell, forthcoming (October 2010)
26 June 2010
London, UK
To accept the Torah is to accept the norms of a universal justice’
(Emmanuel Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings)
The subject of this symposium – ‘higher roads to peace’ for Arabs and Jews – is of great public interest. It is also of deep personal moment to me. For, as someone who is Jewish, I find myself situated on the inside of the subject. Were this not the case, I am not sure that I would have anything to say about it; or, if I did, it would not be the lecture I am about to give.[1]
If there is animosity between Arabs and Jews today, it is largely on account of a single issue: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whose roots go back over a hundred years. What does it mean, in the context of this conflict, to speak of peace? There are those on either side who seek to thrust peace down the throat of the other side. On this view, peace is a cessation of hostilities that results from crushing the will of the enemy. I am not sure that this option, if available at all to either party, is equally available to both. For the conflict today is primarily between the State of Israel and the stateless Palestinians who live in the territories occupied by Israel since the end of the 1967 June War; and between a state and the stateless, between occupier and occupied, there is no equal contest.[2] Be that as it may, a peace in which the will of one side has been crushed by the other is like the peace of the dead. It is not, I take it, the kind of peace that is the subject of this symposium. No higher road can lead there.
The kind of peace to which a higher road can lead is not an external place that could be reached by some other route. It is something internal to the road, a result that the road produces of itself. It is more like the yield of a harvest than a destination.
What kind of peace is joined to what road in this manner? On this question, a certain wise Palestinian from antiquity, Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel, who died in the same year that the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans (70 CE), has something to say that has a bearing: ‘The world rests on three things: justice, truth and peace …’[3] Some time later, Rav Muna, commenting on this comment (as rabbis are wont to do), observed, ‘The three are one, because if justice is done, truth has been effected and peace brought about …’[4] In other words, peace depends on justice, and justice on truth. Without truth no justice, without justice no peace.
It is no easy thing to follow this bearing. But if what we are looking for is a dignified way out of the current impasse and a higher path to the future for Palestinians and Israelis – a path that elevates those who travel it – then this is the direction to take. The question I wish to raise is this: At its heart, does Judaism itself – by which I mean the broad human tradition which bears this name and not the religion alone – point out this direction?[5]
There is a story that my sister tells that sounds like a Jewish joke, but, funnily enough, it is true. Some years ago, Francesca worked for the London Borough of Hackney, which includes Stamford Hill, an area with a large population of strictly observant Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews. Hackney Council is controlled by the Labour Party – and probably has been since the creation of the world over five thousand years ago. When my sister was an employee, one of the Labour councillors was a rabbi from Stamford Hill. One day, curious about his left-wing leanings, Francesca approached him with a question. ‘Rabbi,’ she said, ‘Tell me: Where do you get your socialism from?’ ‘From the Torah,’ came the instant reply. Then after a pause he added, ‘Mind you, you can find almost anything you want in the Torah!’
Was he joking or was he serious? Like the challah over which a blessing is made on Shabbos and festivals, the rabbi’s words should be taken with a pinch of salt. I can almost see the twinkle in his eye as he said ‘almost’; the word is dripping with irony. But he was a rabbi – and so his quip made a profound point. On the one hand, what you find in the Torah depends on what you bring to it. On the other hand, you cannot simply impose your will upon it. Reading the Torah is a matter of give and take: the text is a given but how we take it is down to us; ultimately, to each of us, even if we come together to form a denomination or a school of interpretation. Judaism is a configured space; it is an arena of argument, not a body of doctrine. No one speaks for Judaism – except for every Jew. And to the question that I have posed – whether Judaism points us in the direction of a higher road to peace – Jews give more than one answer.
One answer was given by rabbis in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) during Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s twenty-two day military offensive in the Gaza Strip in December 2008 and January 2009. The rabbis set out to educate Israeli soldiers. Their aim, in the words of Brigadier General Rabbi Avichai Rontzki, the chief army rabbi, was ‘to fill them with yiddishkeit and a fighting spirit’. Yiddishkeit in this context means, roughly, Jewish values or a Jewish way of doing things. So, what values are Jewish according to Rabbi Rontzki? His office sent Israeli soldiers a publication entitled ‘Daily Torah Studies for the soldier and the commander in Operation Cast Lead’. The text told them that there is ‘a biblical ban on surrendering a single millimeter of it [the Land of Israel] to gentiles …’ It went on to avow, ‘We will not abandon it to the hands of another nation, not a finger, not a nail of it’. Since ‘it’ includes the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, there is not much respect here for Palestinian rights. Regarding appropriate conduct in the field, the IDF rabbinate cautioned soldiers thus: ‘When you show mercy to a cruel enemy, you are being cruel to pure and honest soldiers. This is terribly immoral.’[6]
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Groupes juifs
