Risks and faith.

I recently read a Jewish peace activist's eyewitness account of the Israeli army's destruction of a Palestinian home.(1) No stranger to such stories, I was nonetheless upset by its distressing details. The walls of the house fell one by one, mauled by the bulldozer's relentless arm, until its roof was sent crashing down. This was apparently not enough for the soldiers overseeing the operation, who mowed down the fruit trees in the rear and rammed an adjoining water tank until it toppled. After some young Palestinian men began throwing stones, the soldiers ran up the hill after them, firing round after round of live ammunition, a clear breach of official regulations that soldiers shoot only when their lives are in danger. When the peace activist confronted him with this violation, the commander shrugged his soldiers and did nothing.

A Palestinian youth struck by a bullet ended up in the same hospital as the mother of the family whose home was destroyed; she had been injured by soldiers while attempting to dissuade them from carrying out the order. Fortunately, there was one hopeful sign in the aftermath of this tragedy - a group of Palestinian and Jewish activists would be meeting the following week to reconstruct the home. Never mind that the army would most certainly raze it again. They would rebuild.

This and other house demolitions symbolize for me not only the breakable edifice of the peace process, but the shattering of my once pristine vision of Israel. As a child, I had joyously sung the classic Zionist lines:

Anu banu artza levnot ul'hebanot.

(We have come to the land, To build and to be built up within it.)

Now, I cannot help but ask: Has Israel "built itself up" through military might alone? Can it, with equal resolve, overcome the past and build a relationship with Palestinians that truly recognizes their humanity? Most critically, will Israel feel secure enough to take all of the necessary risks for peace?

I will address these questions by examining some salient aspects of the Jewish biblical tradition of active risk-taking. My analysis will explore the fragile renewal of Israeli risks for peace since the Wye summit in the context of risk-taking as an expression of the deepest well-springs of Jewish faith.

Peace Negotiations as Active Risk-taking

On the most fundamental level, dividing up land into parcels labeled "ours" and "theirs" is the way both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have come to terms with each other's nationalist claims since the start of the Oslo accords. Traditionally, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party has maintained that the peace process offers Israel no security benefits; to the contrary, it has said that every square mile of territory handed over to the Palestinian Authority entails grave risks for Israel's Jewish population.

The truth is that the collision of Jewish and Palestinian nationalist aspirations is far from a contest between equals. Israel, operating from its double-edged advantage of sovereign control and military superiority, cannot expect the Palestinians to perform political magic at the negotiating table, or anywhere else. Although Palestinian nationalism is, at this point, undeniably as passionate as the Jewish nationalism that conceived and forged the state of Israel, it can only be measured against the backdrop of humiliation, dispossession, subjugation, and economic privation that has been the lot of Palestinians since their nakbah (catastrophe) of 1948. A people whose back is to the wall can hardly enter into a quid pro quo relationship with its occupier.

However vociferously Likud exhorts Arafat to resolve the problem of Hamas extremists or to generate democratic institutions, the fledgling Palestinian entity will be hard-pressed to do so in short order. Given the dismal facts on the ground, most of which are the direct result of more than thirty years of Israeli occupation, Israelis cannot escape the prospect of taking greater risks for peace and security than Palestinians.

Whatever anxieties active risk-taking in the peace process engenders for Israel, the benefits it stands to gain over the long term are as crucial as they are manifold. Instead of a future of continuing military expansion, loss of life, and suppression of Palestinian rights, a determined commitment to the peace course will allow Israel more humanely to "build itself up" from within. Free to invest energy and resources in overarching social problems such as poverty, religious intolerance, women's rights, domestic violence, and the socio-economic divide between Ashkenzai and Sephardic Jews, Israelis gradually can move beyond their old siege mentality. In direct proportion to the army's fading centrality, they will be empowered to rebuild their national character through a redefinition of priorities.

Lamentably, during the first part of Netanyahu's tenure, a combination of factors chased risk-taking for peace underground. The nation lapsed into an atavistic nightmare of its own making, fixating on every traumatic aspect of its past - wars, terrorism, isolation in the world community and at the U.N. Fear of Hamas and mistrust of Palestinian intentions seemingly triumphed at the expense of the precious vision of peace for which Yitzhak Rabin had died.

Yet the encouraging agreement at the Wye summit in. October 1998 did occur, albeit midwifed under American pressure. Behind the talks were also the less visible but ongoing efforts of small clusters of heroic Israelis and Palestinians who beat towering odds by braving rapprochement throughout decades of strife. The vulnerable course of conciliation for which they labored must not be abandoned, and it falls heavily upon Israel to take the risks needed to ensure its success.

The Biblical Tradition of Dynamic Risk-taking

A vibrant tradition of Jewish risk-taking wends its way through Hebrew Scripture. Essentially spiritual in nature, but always translating itself into courageous action before God, this tradition can be seen as a major component of the belief of ancient Israel. It seems to me that when modern Israel experiences periods of confusion and fear over the vicissitudes of the peace process, it unwittingly disconnects itself from the tenacious faith of its ancestors, a faith which elevated risk-taking to the level of a holy and regenerative spiritual endeavor.

Abraham and Sarah were the first to commit themselves to taking risks before God. Whatever their shortcomings, they were motivated by the most profound devotion to their calling. Shaping the foundation of the Jewish people out of little more than their own belief, they became the archetypical community of faith.

God enjoined Abraham: "Go forth from your country, and from your kindred, and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you" (Gen. 12:1). The enormity of that challenge lay not only in its directive that Abraham leave Haran for the unknown, but in the mandate that he sever all ties to the cultural and spiritual landscape of his past. God did not merely demand of Abraham to make a fresh beginning in His name; He importuned him to recreate his very being through a radical reengagement of faith. "Go forth." A command shattering the security of a lifetime, yet unfolding the tender promise: "Through you shall the families of the earth be blessed" (Gen. 12:3). Thus, from the outset, God steered Abraham to acknowledge that risk-taking would be an essential element of his faith.

Once in Canaan, one of Abraham's first actions was resolving a territorial conflict between his and his nephew Lot's shepherds. Abraham offered Lot whatever portion of land he preferred, saying, "Is not the whole land before you?" (Gen. 13:9). Later, a dangerously escalating dispute between Philistine shepherds and Isaac's shepherds over ownership of wells was similarly resolved by Avimelech, the Philistine king. He transcended the mutual hostility and sued Isaac for peace, requesting that they sign an agreement stating "that you (Isaac) will do us no harm, just as we would do none to you" (Gen. 26:29). Isaac, distrustful of Avimelech and feeling grievously wronged by him, nonetheless rose to the occasion to ensure their peaceful coexistence. In both cases, the antagonists took risks to share the land and its resources, quelling imminent violence through a partial relinquishing of power.

Jacob, perhaps the most complex personality in Genesis, looms large among the early risk-takers. Having duly humbled himself before God during long years of travail, but afraid that Esau would carry out his death threat of long ago, Jacob managed to overcome his terror after a night of excruciating inner struggle. Renamed "Israel" (he who has striven with God) by the Lord, he successfully reconciled with his brother despite their mutual trepidations. Like his father and grandfather before him, Jacob/Israel stood at the edge of an abyss, uncertain as to where the risks he took would lead him, but convinced that God demanded no less of his faith.

The lives of the first Jews offer a paradigm of faith-inspired risk-taking, giving rise to the seminal rabbinic concept of z'chut avot - merit of (our) ancestors. Daily invoking the righteous deeds and steadfast faith of our earliest forebears, Jews pray for God's loving kindness and compassion. Just as we believe that our ancestors' merits move God to bless us, so are we aware of our obligation to uphold the ancestral faith through emulation of their sanctified acts. If contemporary Israel is to struggle fruitfully with its formidable trials and challenges at the peace table, it must see those acts as a moreh- derech (literally, teacher of the way).

Across the millennia, Abraham reminds Israel of the sacred necessity of breaking with a part of its past that it has spiritually and morally outgrown, of standing on the fringes of a once comfortable national identity, and of opening itself to the possibility of "going forth." Like Rabin, will Israelis embrace the spirit of Abraham in sharing the land, in taking the chance of putting peace above territorial holdings and power? Will they continue to risk facing their former enemies, and, as did Isaac and Jacob, surmount all final obstacles to reconciliation?

Moses' Wilderness Wager

Moses, the Jewish people's greatest teacher, faced the void time and again through his abiding faith in the Lord. Despite his stutter and initial lack of confidence, he became the most courageous of risk-takers. Victorious in confronting Pharaoh and leading his enslaved people out of Egypt and the jaws of Pharaoh's army, Moses risked peril after peril as he instructed and guided the spiritually groping children of Israel in the word of God. Without the faith of their leader, my ancestors would never have encountered the Lord at Sinai, or emerged as a unified nation from the torments of the desert. Bereft of faith and the impetus to take risks, they would have succumbed to their fears and returned to Egypt, utterly broken.

The enduring potential of Moses' faith-based risk-taking is demonstrated in the example of Dr. Martin Luther King. Deeply affected by the biblical account of Moses and his role in the liberation from Egypt, he imbibed the passion of the ancient Hebrew leader. Dr. King knew that there would be no quick fix for the plight of Black Americans and that only risks flowing from his religious belief would actuate his nonviolent philosophy. Nonviolence in the South took hold, in part, because King led others in spearheading a movement that emulated the pure faith of the Hebrew Bible. His epochal speeches thundered with the rhythmic teachings of Moses and our other prophets, investing men, women, and children with the fortitude to confront police dogs, shotguns, fire hoses, and tear gas, to be hogtied and humiliated. "Justice, justice you shall pursue" (Deut. 16:20) was for them an injunction to put their belief on the line, leaning on God as they shouldered the risks. Understood in this light, the early civil rights movement was literally an act of faith.

The triumph of Moses and his spiritual descendent Dr. King was their impassioned refusal to remain enslaved to the past. In his own time and place, each fought the tyranny of taskmasters with faith as his battering ram, wagering that, however wounded, a people infused with God's spirit could hazard a break with the way it had come to perceive itself. Casting off the chains of what sociologist Zygmunt Bauman calls "hereditary victimhood"(2) is a painful and daunting task, but for those willing to venture into the wilderness and take the necessary risks, it can be achieved. Whether Israel can reenter that wilderness and effectively override the Holocaust trauma and siege mentality that has so often shackled its national consciousness will be its most rigorous test of faith in the final status talks.

Prophetic Risk-taking: Not By Might Nor By Power

Speaking truth to power is the throbbing pulse of Hebrew prophecy. Struggling with the hallowed burden of their calling, the prophets audaciously challenged the Status of power in the world at large. The Lord and Creator of mankind, they taught, abhors the idea that the worth of individuals and nations is determined by their ability to exert superior force. Zechariah's quintessential pronouncement, "Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, says the Lord of Hosts" (Zech. 4:6), became a beacon illuminating a dark world that valued power above all else.

So imbued were the prophets with mistrust of power that they dared to disavow military might as a means to peace and security. "The work of righteousness [my emphasis] shall be peace and the effect of righteousness quietness and confidence forever" (Isa. 32:17). If the yearning for peace is to be fulfilled, it must embrace the pursuit of justice in good faith, heeding that "what . . . the Lord requires of you is only to do justice and love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God" (Mic. 6:8). Ultimately, the interdependence of peace and righteousness is to be the blessed cornerstone of God's holy people. Arrogance, greed, and reliance on military might, all natural accessories to power, are halted only when true knowledge of ". . . the Lord Who does kindness, justice and righteousness in the earth . . ." is attained, ". . . for in these things I [God] delight" (Jer. 9:23).

By virtue of their own lives and the teachings they delivered, the prophets' words reverberate for the state of Israel with renewed meaning at this critical juncture. As Israeli negotiators again face their Palestinian counterparts, will they be able to risk a deep inward look at their long role as occupiers? Will they find the strength of character to acknowledge that, for too long, they have failed to see the Palestinians' violated humanity? Can they risk seeing their own reflection in the other, and recognize that mutual peace and well-being are rooted in ensuring a just resolution to the two sides' conflicting claims?

Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai: Laying Odds On a Political Solution

For almost two millennia, Jews have thrilled to the Talmudic tale of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai's heroic blend of faith and pragmatism on the eve of the Second Temple's destruction.(3) The Romans had besieged Jerusalem, whose starving inhabitants were barred from leaving the city by its militant Zealot defenders. Rabbi Yochanan and his colleagues tried to convince the Zealots that resisting the enemy was futile and that they must "go out and make peace with them [the Romans]."

When the Zealots refused to listen - accommodation with the enemy being viewed as traitorous - Rabbi Yochanan reigned illness and then death; his disciples carried him on a bier to the city gate, where they demanded to be allowed to pass beyond the walls to bury their master. They persuaded the suspicious Zealot guards not to put a lance through the "corpse" and thus managed to smuggle their revered teacher to the Roman lines. General Vespasian granted Rabbi Yochanan an audience, and after a fascinating exchange between the two, in which the rabbi accurately predicted that the Roman commander would momentarily be proclaimed the new Emperor, Vespasian agreed to grant him one request. The sage asked permission to establish a seminary in the town of Yavneh, hoping that this small center of learning might preserve Judaism after the impending ruin of Jerusalem and the Temple. Thus, when all was about to be lost, Rabbi Yochanan saved Torah study, and by extension, the entire Jewish people.

Yochanan Ben Zakkai's unclouded view of his nation's desperate situation, coupled with his deep faith, provided him with the courage to risk life and limb for its future. He saw the uselessness of attempting to hold out militarily against an adversary that could never be routed, and decried the folly of unrestrained nationalistic zeal. One can imagine the rabbi trying to reason with the sword-wielding Zealots, self-appointed keepers of the Holy City: "Will you insist on fighting to the last man, woman and child? Do you not see that a political solution is our only hope?"

In our day, Israel possesses the strong army, but it is equally true that the Palestinians cannot be routed, and that a political resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian collision is our only hope. Rabbi Yochanan's brave voice must be heard: it speaks to all-or-nothing hardliners who cherish soil and stones, Temple Mount and tombs, over and above human life; it speaks to those who have yet to understand that another conflagration can be averted only by reining in hubris; it speaks to those who dare to comprehend that Jewish nationalist consciousness is undergoing a massive change.

When Jerusalem went up in flames, the Temple - the center of the ancient Jewish universe - disappeared along with it. The rabbinic Judaism which Rabbi Yochanan and his circle nurtured in Yavneh successfully replaced the old priestly cult, reshaping the people's national consciousness into a vehicle that would sustain them in exile. Similarly, as Israel's sovereignty and territorial boundaries are today being redefined, so are the political and spiritual parameters of its national consciousness. A new era is slowly dawning.

Carrying on the Tradition

With a grateful heart, one can point to some valiant upholders of the ancient tradition of Jewish risk-taking who live and operate in Israel today. These men and women find their strength in the belief that to "seek peace and pursue it" (Ps. 34:15) requires unflagging effort; they have created frameworks for acting on their convictions. Among their achievements are: Peace Now, founded by 348 Israeli Reserve Officers in 1979, generating the largest grassroots movement in Israel's history; Israeli Women in Black, small groups of Jewish and Palestinian women who have protested the occupation throughout a decade of public weekly vigils, often enduring verbal abuse and physical violence from passersby; Oz VeShalom-Netivot Shalom, founded in 1975 by Orthodox Jews to advocate the pursuit of peace as an expression of religious Zionism; and B'tselem, established in 1989, the leading Israeli organization monitoring and documenting human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza, and a proponent for positive change. These and other groups of like mind do honor to Rabin, who will be remembered as one of the nation's bravest risk-takers. It is their collective vision for peace and justice - not Israel's military might or territorial holdings - that constitutes "the beginning of the flowering of our (Jewish) redemption."(4)

As it enters the twenty-first century, the House of Israel must be set on a firm foundation, one fortified by the sacred tradition of risk-taking that preserved and transformed the Jewish people time and again. If this tradition is forsaken, Israel's house will remain half-built, in danger of crumbling, sinking into a quagmire of perpetual fear, insularity, and religious fanaticism.

Beyond the peace agreements, redeployments, and handshakes lies the most monumental task of all - believing that the hard-won peace can hold, that individuals of good will on both sides can overcome all barriers to keep it aloft. For Judaism's great risk-takers, belief meant stepping into the breach and resolutely acting on their faith. May Israelis possess the courage to carry on their ancestors' tradition, toiling toward that day when perils yield to promise and bloodshed to blessing:

They shall not hurt or destroy In all My holy mountain For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord As the waters cover the sea. Isaiah 11:9

Notes

1. Gila Svirsky, Letters to the Editor, Tikkun, September/October 1998.

2. Zygmunt Bauman, "The Holocaust's Life as a Ghost," Tikkun, July/August 1998, 36.

3. BT Gittin 56 a-b.

4. From "Prayer for the State of Israel," contained in most Jewish prayerbooks.

CARMELA INGWER iS a New York-based writer and teacher of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, whose articles have appeared in a variety of publications, including Tikkun, Fellowship, Reform Judaism, Reconstructionist, and Jewish Spectator. She has been active in Americans for Peace Now and the Jewish Peace Fellowship, and has conducted workshops on various contemporary topics from a Judaic perspective, such as Black-Jewish relations and Israeli-Palestinian issues.