Looking For My Brothers
Rabbi Ron Shulman
Shabbat Vayeshev 5771 - A report after visiting Israel with the Maryland Clergy Initiative
Here’s a greeting I’ve never received before. “Welcome to Palestine.” Last week, I traveled to Israel as part of the Maryland Clergy Initiative, sponsored by the Institute of Christian and Jewish Studies and the Baltimore Jewish Council. Our group of 15 Christian clergy, 7 rabbis, and 3 communal professionals passed through the Security Fence and checkpoint as we made our way from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. (This is one of three vignettes I want to share with you, as well as a synthesis of what we heard and considered.)
The main purpose of our visit to Bethlehem was to take our Christian friends to the Church of the Nativity, and to meet with Christian clergy in that community. Though I had been there before, visiting this and other Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, the Galilee, and Nazareth with Christian clergy, hearing about the significance of these locations to them, and in return sharing my reactions to Jewish sacred sites and rituals was a truly moving experience.
Our itinerary included some of the familiar historical and archaeological sites in Israel as well as meetings with various academic, religious, and political personalities from a variety of affiliations and perspectives. We also enjoyed each other’s company in Jerusalem and the Galilee, sharing good food and conversation, good humor and exploration of our own personal and religious backgrounds.
Leaving Bethlehem, we stood in line with local Palestinian residents waiting to pass through the checkpoint into Jerusalem. I stood in that line next to one gentleman who asked me what I was doing there. I explained that I was with a group of Jewish and Christian clergy exploring issues in religious, social, and political life for Israelis and Palestinians, for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. What I didn’t tell him was how odd this particular experience felt to me.
“I’m a father of four,” he said. His little girl with big brown eyes stood next to him very closely. Tell your friends back home that we all want the same things for our children. The problem is that we haven’t figured out how to live beside each other yet. A remarkably true statement, I thought. I’ve now delivered his message.
From Bethlehem looking north we saw the familiar skyline of Jerusalem. Though the cities stand so close to each other, the people are separated by so much. Inside Israel, inside the territories, and between the two peoples, religion, family and cultural identity, roots to the area, economics, and politics create palpable tensions and divisions, as well as passions about what was and what might be.
This was a wonderfully intense visit. Seeing Israel through others’ eyes added another layer to my awareness of the joyous complexity that is Israel. Israeli society is complex by its nature. Israel’s people are varied, passionate, and dynamic. When there, I always sense a life-energy filled with purpose and spirit. It’s a very different culture than America’s.
We read in Torah this morning that Jacob sent his beloved son Joseph toward Shechem to see how his brothers were doing. When Joseph arrives, a man greets him and asks of his quest. “What are you looking for?” Joseph answers, “I am looking for my brothers.” In a sense, this was our journey, to learn something more about the welfare and condition of our brothers and sisters who live in Israel. It is a never-ending search, to understand something more about ourselves and about others who are present in our lives and our consciousness.
While I am still reflecting on all that we did and heard, at this moment one hunch seems clear to me. No true peace is available right now. Beyond our prayers and hopes which must never wane, despite the news and debates we follow, given the passions and identities as well as the memories and ideologies that define the people who live today in the land of Israel, it is hard to conceive of actualizing the middle ground vision that so many people hold out for, one honoring Israel’s purpose as a Jewish state and the Palestinians’ goal for a state of their own.
Here’s a clear example. This past Sunday we drove to Ramallah, and entering the city with a security escort, we drove to the compound that houses the government of the Palestinian Authority. Inside, we gathered around the meeting table in the government’s cabinet room and waited for Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to join us.
On the wall behind the head of the table was a picture of Jerusalem, featuring the iconic golden Dome of the Rock in the center. But it wasn’t the view most of us are accustomed to, gazing from the west. Flanked by Palestinian flags, this view from the east was a political statement about East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.
Prime Minister Fayyad entered, and in fluent English welcomed us as his guests from Charm City. Raised in the West Bank, he is a western educated businessman with a Doctorate in Economics earned at the University of Texas in 1986. He was appointed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in June 2007.
Prime Minister Fayyad spoke with us about the challenge of creating a functional government, which did not exist previously in the West Bank, and of building the infrastructure of a future state. He actually declared that he paid less attention to the headlines and arguments about the peace process, and encouraged us to do the same. He is focused on “conscious decision making so that a new dynamic can be created. Pay close attention to what’s happening on the ground,” he said.
I would like to, but its very hard to get passed the ideology when on the day after our polite hour in Ramallah, the Palestinian Information Ministry declares on its website that the Western Wall, the great iconic symbol of Jewish faith and historical sovereignty in Jerusalem, is the western wall of the Al Aksa Mosque “which the Zionist occupation falsely claims ownership of and calls the Wailing Wall or Kotel.”
This is what many of us sense right now. Until ideologies on both sides can make room for each other, there can be no real peace. Until leaders are as passionate about their vision of co-existence as they, and others, are in preserving their stake in the status quo, and in negating the narrative of the other, there is no possibility of a new normal. What may be possible for Israelis and Palestinians who live in close proximity to each other is to begin living some aspects of their lives calmly in tandem.
History and memory are crucial for self-understanding and purpose, for reminding us of our values and our destiny. But they are not as useful in dialogue between the parties to this enduring conflict. The facts on the ground are different today.
Zionism has succeeded. For this we rejoice. Israel is a strong and prosperous Jewish state. It now confronts what the early Zionists hoped it might, the normal moral and social challenges every society must address. For the first time in the Jewish people’s five thousand year history, Jews in Israel strive to understand what a majority’s responsibilities are toward the minorities who live among it. Sometimes this creates a difficult balance, but at all times it is a difficulty for us to celebrate and honor.
After this trip, something else is apparent to me more than before. Our opinions matter much less than we think they do. This is humbling and healthy. We have very little to offer those who live there everyday, other than our support for their lives as we try to understand their circumstance, which is so very different from our own. Believe me, none of us has considered something of which they are not already aware. Most of what we perceive here is at best a partial portrayal of their reality.
For example, consider the Security Fence that Israel reluctantly built in self-defense. In our minds, the divide between Pikesville and other communities is only psychological. We can’t conceive of driving on the beltway beside a fence that protects by separating local populations.
Last week, our group toured the Security Fence with IDF Col. Danny Terza, one of those responsible for designing and building it. Col. Terza spoke with us in great detail as we poured over his maps and witnessed checkpoint procedures. I came away impressed that there is a genuine commitment both to Israeli security and Palestinian dignity.
At one location, we saw farmers and their children, riding on simple horse drawn carts, comfortably pass through uninterrupted on the way from their homes to their fields on the other side of the fence. We learned how schedules and access are regularly adjusted to accommodate these farmers and others.
Standing there, I couldn’t help but sense how the Security Fence creates a disconcerting and imperfect circumstance for everyone. I was impressed, however, with Col. Terza’s sincerity when he told us that he hopes to be the first person to start dismantling the fence if ever that much anticipated day arrives.
We all have our thoughts on all of the issues that define today’s Middle East. Our opinions do matter, but only for us. In a complicated situation with competing narratives and claims, we need to pay close attention and clarify the lens through which we see the situation.
Differently than many of my Christian colleagues with whom I traveled through Israel, I see Israel as more than a place of history and religious memory. For me, and I imagine for many of you, for many Jews, Israel is the dynamic center in which, and around which, the Jewish people live. The Jewish State of Israel is a place of fulfillment and destiny, not only an address of care or concern.
In Torah, Jacob’s instruction to Joseph was, “r’eh et sh’lom ahe-kha, see after the peace, the wellbeing of your brothers.” Of course, Joseph didn’t find peace. He found his brothers conspiring against him.
It is an age-old story, one that we still tell, one that we still live, and one that we hope will come to an end, as Joseph’s ultimately does. At the conclusion of Genesis Joseph and his brothers reconcile. Then Israel knows peace, temporarily. Until a new Pharaoh arises who didn’t know Joseph.
We are like Joseph still, on a journey to look after the peace and wellbeing of our brothers. We do this as an expression of our identity and as an act of responsibility toward the whole of the Jewish people.
© 2010 Rabbi Ronald J. Shulman
