Why The Settlement Freeze Is So Crucial

Two days ago I posted on Facebook (à propos of a news item on Israel artists boycotting Ariel):

Israeli artists are acting as the conscience of their nation. “When two are holding onto a tallit — this one says, ‘It is all mine,’ the other says ‘It is all mine’ — they shall negotiate a division.” Forbearance regarding the occupied territories is essential to establishing a climate of trust under which negotiations can proceed. Israelis and Palestinians are at a delicate turning point. Every precaution must be taken for them to succeed. This should not be confused with a very different kind of boycott (by anti-Zionist elements) questioning Israel's legitimacy. These artists have Israel's (their own) interests at heart and deserve our support.

I have been asked for a clarification of this post. The rest of this post is an expansion and clarification of my Facebook posting.

When I read that over 100 Israel artists decided they would not perform in Ariel’s cultural center, I immediately felt a sympathetic rapport with them.

Let us consider the context of this declaration. For fully a decade, since the collapse of the Camp David peace talks and the Taba talks, Israelis and the PA have been avoiding peace negotiations (abetted by the neglect of the Americans during the Bush administration). However, before that time—and more recently—when there has been any hope of moving forward on negotiations, a major sticking issue has been that of the Israeli settlements in occupied territories.

Within the past year, Netanyahu reluctantly agreed to a temporary moratorium on settlements, at the urging of President Obama. The temporary moratorium is due to expire late in September, 2010. Abbas demands a renewal of the moratorium as a condition of continuing the peace talks that have resumed today (September 1). But Netanyahu’s right-wing Knesset supporters demand that it not be renewed. The issue is in doubt.

So what are the Israeli artists saying? They are saying that for them, it is more important to give peace negotiations with the Palestinians a chance, than to insist on Israeli settlers’ rights to continue to live and expand in the land that was occupied by Israeli forces in the defensive war of 1967. They are sending a message to Netanyahu: Do not regard the occupied West Bank as belonging to Israel by unilateral declaration, to do with whatever they want! Leave it on the table, so the Palestinians will feel that we are negotiating in good faith, and that the future of the land will be determined by the process of joint negotiation, not by unilateral actions on the Israeli side. Just as Ariel is part of the West Bank in dispute, so are the other settlements. By our refraining from performing in Ariel during this difficult and uncertain period of negotiating, we are saying to you: Keep your hands off those parts of the West Bank where the line of settlement has not yet advanced! Do not keep taking land away from the part of the pie that remains to be distributed. Do not destroy the chances for peace because of the settlers’ insatiable greed.

Underlying this are several other issues:

Who owns the land?

By what right is ownership of the land determined?

What is the big deal about a settlement freeze?

Is there a real chance for peace between Israel and the Palestinians? What will determine the possibility of peace?

First of all, there are different points of view as to who owns the land. Hamas thinks that Moslems own “the land” (including everything between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, including Tel Aviv), by the principle of “dar al-Islam”: whatever land has once been conquered by the Moslem sword, must never again revert to non-Islamic ownership. Fundamentalist Orthodox ultra-Zionists believe that Jews own “the land” (again, including everything between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, including Jericho, Hebron, Nablus, and Jenin) because God promised it to Abraham and his descendants in Genesis, and that promise is irrevocable. Between Hamas and the ultra-Zionists, there can never be the slightest agreement. If either of their positions is taken as normative, then the Middle East is doomed to eternal war and peace is forever impossible.

Jewish law has a principle that is directly applicable to situations such as the one just dscribed: “If two persons are holding onto a tallit—the one says, ‘It is all mine’ and the other says, ‘It is all mine’—they shall divide it [50-50].” [Mishnah Bava Metzi’a 1:1] No Torah proof-text is cited as authoritative backing for this law, so we may count it among those rabbinic laws that are based on reason or common sense. What is the logical reason for such a law? The two parties each have entered a claim to 100% of the disputed article. But the claims are incompatible. It cannot belong all to Party A and all to Party B. If no objective reason can be brought to prefer A’s claim to B’s claim or vice versa, they must be regarded as logically equally probable. This translates into a 50% probability that A is right, and a 50% probability that B is right—and still no criterion for deciding that the one is all right or the other is all right. The just adjudication thus divides the disputed article 50-50, in accord with the 50-50 probability of validity of the respective claims.

The exact terms of partition of the land of Israel/Palestine has been the subject of international negotiations since 1936, when the first partition plan was proposed. It is not my purpose to go into the precise terms of a just partition. The Israelis and Palestinians came close enough at Taba in 2001 and the positions of that conference are in many people’s view the best starting point for further negotiations. In principle, the arrived-at settlement should give scope for each of the two nations—the Israeli and the Palestinian—enough land and control over resources to govern its own destiny.

So what is the big deal about a settlement freeze?

The practice of the maverick settlers who set up new settlements at the blink of an eye goes back to a practice of the Zionist Jews in the late 1930s. It has been called “creating facts.” In the 1930s, the Palestinian-Arab leadership, under Haj Amin Al-Husseini (the chief instigator of the 1929 riots and later an accomplice of Hitler), was pressuring the British to freeze the Jewish presence in Palestine at its then-current level. The Jews were understandably under pressure to maximize the extent of their land-possession as much as possible, so that in the event of partition, they would have enough land for a viable state. They would put up a watch-tower and stockade wall in the course of a day in order to lay claim to a new site and render it defensible, after which they could fill in the rest of the buildings at leisure.

The methods of extending claim to Jewish land are pretty much the same now as in the 1930s. But the circumstances have changed drastically. For one thing, the majority of the land-holding in the 1930s was Arab; today the position is reversed. For another thing, the Arabs in the 1930s never talked or negotiated with the Jews; today, some do and some don’t. Moreover, it is not the British who are custodians of the territories; it is primarily the Israelis themselves.

The biggest factor of difference is tied up with the question: Who owns the land? And there is a difference of opinion here between the settlers and the world community, with the Israelis themselves of divided mind between the two. The settlers who are expanding the settlements believe that of right, all the territories (or at least all of the territories not yet occupied) should belong to the Jewish people. They are staking out the land, tract by tract, on behalf of turning that hypothetical claim into a “fact on the ground,” so that (presumably) once the claim is reinforced by settlement and direct occupation, it will never be revoked but the land will always remain Jewish. That is the whole primary motivation behind the radical portion of the settler movement.

But if negotiations are to take place, and if those negotiations are to be taken seriously, then any land of the West Bank not already put in an exception class by the Taba negotiations (primarily the Etzion Bloc, the Ariel Bloc, and Greater Jerusalem) is on the table, in escrow so to speak, with its ultimate disposition to be determined by the negotiations. Some would go so far as to say, this disputed land presumably belongs to the Palestinians—it was agreed to be part of their domain by the 1949 cease-fire, and everything that has happened since then (the 1967 and 1973 wars, plus the intervening expansion of Jewish settlements) does not change that status. But without going even that far, we should at least stipulate: the status of this land is to be determined by negotiation.

Thus, the settlers, by expanding the settlements at this stage, are taking land with status “to be determined by negotiation” and marking it as “Jewish land.”

That is like moving the goal posts during a time-out.

If the status of the land to be negotiated is being changed while negotiations are pending or in progress, then whoever is doing that (or allowing or condoning it) is not taking the negotiations seriously. That is what is such a big deal. That is why it makes perfect sense for Abbas, Fayyad, and the other PA representatives to make a continued freeze on settlement expansion a precondition for going ahead with the negotiations.

And that is why the Israeli artists are boycotting Ariel, saying they will not perform there as long as the negotiations are a factor, and as long as the Israeli government is acting as if it will let the settlement freeze lapse, thus putting the negotiations (and peace itself) in peril. They are trying to deliver a wakeup call to the Netanyahu government, saying: “If you want your negotiating partners to take you seriously, you are going to have to adopt a ‘hands-off’ policy to the very thing that is being negotiated, until the negotiations have completed their course and its disposition is properly, legitimately decided by both parties in conjunction.”

Is there a real chance that this round of negotiations will lead to peace? I don’t know. It depends on the actions and words of both sides. But I do believe that it is our obligation to do everything that is in our power to give them the best possible chance. And continuing the settlement freeze indefinitely for the course of the negotiations is what common sense dictates, to show good faith with the other side, to demonstrate by our actions that we take the negotiations in all seriousness.

That is what the Israeli artists are trying to say by their boycott. And that is why I agree with them wholeheartedly, and consider them the conscience of Israel today.

Don’t Give the Button-Pushers the Power!

I saw it happen 15 years ago. In September, 1995 Rabin was Prime Minister. The Oslo Accords had been approved. Our family went to spend a year in Israel, elated to be in Israel, but also elated that progress was being made, after decades, to move toward real peaceful relations between the Zionist Jews/Israelis and Palestinian Arabs in the Middle East.

Then the extremists pushed their buttons. In November, Yigal Amir assassinated Prime Minister Rabin. In February, around Purim (anniversary of the monstrous crime of another button-pusher, Baruch Goldstein), Hamas suicide-operatives began blowing up buses in the cities of Israel. Among the first victims were my JTS classmate Matt Eisenfeld and his fiancée Sara Duker. Although our son David and our daughter Rachel—then in 8th grade and 4th grade, respectively, in the Israeli public schools—handed out hamantaschen to the soldiers guarding the bus-stops and brandished posters supporting the election of the Labor candidate Shimon Peres, it did not help. Netanyahu won.

The extremists logic was: They didn’t want peace. They knew if they pushed the buttons of the moderates by dastardly acts inciting fear, enough moderates would drift from the center to throw the center of gravity to the anti-peace forces in both the Jewish and Arab constituencies. Peace would be defeated. The extremists’ agenda would prevail.

The same pattern is repeating itself. Last week, Al Qaida attacked targets in 13 cities in Iraq, on the eve of the American turnover of military control to the Iraqis. Yesterday, Hamas killed four Jewish settlers in the Hebron area, on the eve of the start of peace talks between Israel and the PA.

Hamas has consistently opposed peace. They have consistently refused to recognize the legitimacy of Israel. They have consistently maintained that the only just solution in Israel/Palestine is the dismantlement of the state of Israel and the establishment of an Arab-Palestinian dominated state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

Whenever Jews and Arab moderates get together to try to work out a fair peace settlement that gives a legitimate place to Jewish and Palestinian-Arab national aspirations, the minority party Hamas claims veto power. They think that if they wreak enough havoc, proving that nobody can control them and that they can kill Israelis/Zionists with impunity, they will alienate enough moderates from the idea of peace to kill the peace process. So far, they have managed to achieve this—following the example set by Arab extremists since the massacres of 1929.

We must not let them. We must not let a small violent minority veto the peace aspirations of the majority.

The only way we can stop them is to oppose their call to violence with an equally strong call to peace. We must not let them push our buttons. We must not let them trigger our own vengeful instincts, generalizing from the violent few to tar with the same brush the entire group that shares their religious or national identity.

Over 2800 years ago, when the Middle East was already embroiled in the inter-group wars and rivalries that have persisted there (and in most of the human-populated world) ever since, a Jewish prophet named Isaiah had a dream, that the nations would flock to Jerusalem and learn there of God’s Torah, and that when they did so, they would beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning-hooks, that nation would not lift up sword against nation, and they would not learn war any more.

The conventional wisdom was against Isaiah then. His dream has still not been realized. The same forces that conspired to defer the fulfillment of the dream then are still at work. But the dream still lives. The dream must prevail.

Letter to Cousin Nick

Dear Nick,

You have asked me what I think about Michael Chabon’s NY Times Op Ed piece of June 4, 2010, “Chosen But Not Special.” I liked the piece very much. It raised a lot of pertinent issues. I think I would do justice to it only if I took up each of the issues and gave my reaction to it, point by point.

First, let me address the Facebook byline: “Jews would be wise to abandon the myth of their exceptionalism.” This is a loaded question. If it means Jews should not be treated differently than anyone else because of their presumed difference—whether greater intelligence, greater suffering and entitlement, or the like—this is a truism. Everyone should be treated alike on the basis of their actions. But if it means that Jews are the same as anyone else, and any differences are so trivial as to be negligible, this is false. Everyone is different, and differences matter. Our differences are two-edged. We can welcome them benignly and take the opportunity they offer to enrich our experience, or we can take them invidiously and use them to foment envy and hatred. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks addresses this in his book, The Dignity of Difference. It is our responsibility as human beings to acknowledge the fact of difference and use it for good, not for evil.

Are Jews special? Yes. But it would be wrong to measure different people’s specialness and to try to figure out, is one more special than another? Though we cannot “know” God, we are right to imagine God as a loving parent whose children are all God’s creatures, all people, all living things. In the 18th century, the German Enlightenment philosopher and dramatist Gotthold Lessing expressed this in a parable that he put in the mouth of his hero of his play Nathan the Wise (a character he based on his Jewish friend Moses Mendelssohn): A father had three sons and one precious heirloom ring. He hesitated to give any of his sons preference by giving him the ring exclusively, so he had an expert jeweler make two replicas. Before his death, he took each son into confidence and said, “I am giving you this precious ring because I love you.” At the funeral, the three sons were wearing the three rings and were perplexed. They went to a judge to help determine, which son had the genuine ring? The judge answered: The one who behaves in a loving fashion to his brothers, his ring is the true ring. So we should each regard our specialness in the eyes of God. Our relation with God is unique because each of us is unique. God’s love for one of us cannot be measured as greater or lesser than God’s love for someone else, because that which is unique is not susceptible of measurement or comparison without impugning its uniqueness.

What about Jews and smartness (or wisdom)? I do not want to enter into the questions of comparative measurement of intelligence that Charles Murray and Kevin B. MacDonald (cited by Chabon) discuss. To dwell on such questions serves envy rather than enlightenment. I think it is perfectly fair, however, to say that Jews have traditionally valued wisdom and intellectual achievement, and this is one of the most important positive features and contributions of Jewish culture. The phenomenon of the Bar Mitzvah, which you have portrayed in your cinematic work, is symptomatic of this. It is not every culture that celebrates an adolescent’s coming-of-age by calling on that individual to give a display of intellectual competence. Matthew Arnold was on the right track in his Culture and Anarchy in contrasting Hebraism and Hellenism in terms of their ideals. Hebraism in his view cultivated righteousness, while Hellenism cultivated “sweetness and light” (art and philosophy). The cultures of the world are importantly different in their emphases on the panoply of human ideals as ideals and we should learn what we can from all of them. But in this inventory, it would be correct to say that in the ideals that it strove for, Judaism has valued intellect and wisdom. Whether it has always achieved it, is of course another question.

But is the fiasco of the Mavi Marmara to be chalked up to a lack of smartness? This is where I think that Chabon’s dry, tongue-in-cheek analysis is missing an important dimension. Even his reference to Chelm does not tell us the whole story about that phenomenon (and that may be the right place to start, as there is something very Chelm-like, though tragic, in the missteps of the current Israeli administration). The Jewish tradition does not speak of the “fools of Chelm” but of the “sages of Chelm.” The sages of Chelm were very ingenious in the application of their reason to solve puzzles, but they always came up with the wrong answers because they left out a crucial part of every problem they addressed. Indeed, the tradition of the Chelm stories may be read as a parody of the unworldly yeshiva students, learned in Talmud but ignorant in the ways of the world, who were therefore handicapped in their negotiation of reality. They were smart but not truly wise, for true wisdom must include breadth of experience and openness to viewpoints other than one’s own.

The current Israeli predicament reminds me of a different Talmudic story. Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua were arguing whether a stove made of a particular amalgam of materials was susceptible of ritual impurity. Rabbi Eliezer ruled: “Pure.” Rabbi Joshua ruled: “Impure.”

Rabbi Eliezer said, “If the carob tree is on my side, let the carob tree uproot itself.” The carob tree uprooted itself. Rabbi Joshua retorted, “We do not admit evidence from a carob tree.”

Rabbi Eliezer said, “If the law is on my side, let the brook run backward.” The brook ran backward. Rabbi Joshua retorted, “We do not admit evidence from a brook.”

Rabbi Eliezer said, “If the law is on my side, let a voice from heaven prove it.” A voice from heaven announced: “The law is according to Rabbi Eliezer.” Rabbi Joshua retorted, “It is written: ‘It is not in heaven!’ Since the time that the Torah was given at Sinai, we do not listen to a heavenly voice, but we decide according to the majority.”

The story goes on to say that they ostracized Rabbi Eliezer for his failure to listen to the views of his colleagues.

Now, it is not said of Rabbi Eliezer that he was not smart. Indeed, he had a prodigious memory and remembered all the traditions of the previous generations. I am sure that his argument proving that he was right about the purity of the stove was intellectually impeccable—so solid, in fact, that a heavenly voice agreed with him! But he was not wise, because he did not learn from others. (“Who is wise? He who learns from everyone.”)

The more I think about what is missing from the thinking of the current Israeli leadership, the more it seems to me they are like Rabbi Eliezer. It is not stupidity or lack of smartness that is their problem, but close-mindedness, their lack of interest or responsiveness to viewpoints other than their own.

The rationale they give for their actions is factually and morally well-based every step of the way. Yes, the leaders of Gaza are by their own declaration at war with Israel. Yes, they fire rockets into Israel at every provocation (and no provocation). Yes, if they were given full open access to shipping, they would import weapons. Yes, if they had free ability to import metal and concrete, they could build their own weapons from them. Yes, the passengers on the Mavi Marmara attacked the Israeli commandos first, so when the commandos fired back, it was in self-defense and technically justified. Yes, when the Mavi Marmara was inspected after it arrived in Ashdod, it had weapons and large amounts of cash on board. All of which adds up logically, technically, to the conclusion: Israel acted in justified self-defense.

So why, they ask, are the nations of the world almost unanimously condemning Israel? Don’t they see the validity of their reasoning?

I want to say to them: Read the story of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua! The validity of internal reasoning is only one part of establishing the truth. The consensus of reasonable people is another equally valid part, and that is the part that is missing.

In particular, a moral law depends on consensus to be operable. If only a lone individual holds to a moral principle, it ceases to be an effective instrument in guiding humanity in their interactions. To act morally is to engage in a responsive dialogue with the people on the other side of the table until you have thrashed out common principles that can be binding both ways. It is to be engaged in reciprocal conduct that affirms the equal validity of both parties.

Admittedly, this is very difficult when the other party has refused, since the 1920s, to acknowledge your validity. But it is the only way. One must continue to talk to whoever will listen, the adversary or a third party, until reciprocity is achieved. One must listen to what they have to say, and keep sharing and listening, building bridges of understanding until a common perspective is achieved that will lead to a common plan of action. If one’s course of action is not achieving the desired results (as in the case of the siege of Gaza, which in three years has not advanced the Gazans toward a different regime, or the region to greater understanding), then it should be re-evaluated and a different course of action tried—in consultation with others, in an attempt to elicit their cooperation. This is what the current Israeli leadership has consistently failed to do, which has led to the current impasse. The “stupidity” (or lack of wisdom) was not what they did in this one latest instance. It was their obstinacy in their self-determined course of action, regardless of negative feedback, that led inevitably to being expressed in one crisis or another.

To declare one’s moral purity in isolation, regardless of the consensus of others, is to court ostracism. Rabbi Eliezer was ostracized for violating the mandate of reciprocity and consensus. The current Israeli leadership is courting ostracism by its willful adherence to its own view of the morality of its actions, in the face of the consensus to the contrary.

This is not stupidity. The policy and its justification are being pursued with the highest intelligence—equal to the famous intelligence of the sages of Chelm. But it is folly of another sort—the absence of wisdom, which must include openness to the views of other reasonable people.

I hope these reflections help you! Thanks for raising the questions.

Your cousin,

Lenny

She Doesn't Live Here Anymore

SHE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE
By Smadar Shir, Yediot Achronot April 30th 2010

From: SARTABA
[TRANSLATIONS FROM THE HEBREW PRESS]
http://sartaba.org
Translated by Jonathan Adam Silverman

Jessica Fishman no longer lives in Israel. Exactly a week ago she cleared out her rented apartment in central Tel Aviv, put the dog she called Jinji she picked up off the street, in the cage, and together they flew to her parents in Colorado. She has no plans, either on the personal or professional plane, but she needed the warmth of her family to rebuild her identity.

"Seven years ago, I arrived here as a Jewish and Zionist woman," she says teary eyed while packing her suitcases. "Now I am leaving Israel because in the eyes of the Chief Rabbinate I am not a Jewish woman, and when I myself am already not so sure I am so Zionist."

Her seven years in Israel were not a bowl of cherries. But Jessica, age 29, did not break. "To be a new immigrant is to go to war every day. It is a nightmare. It isn't a matter only of concessions and reductions in quality of life and comforts, but getting used to many difficulties including a lonesome life style. Even in the most frustrating times I said to myself that this is my time and the suffering will pay off, because the good follows bad. I volunteered, I studied, I worked, I served two years in the IDF, I met a boy, we were about to get married, I thought I finally was starting my own family. Look the new immigrant's biggest fear is where will we be for the holidays? Who will invite us for meals? And indeed when everything looked like it was falling into place, that seven black years were behind me and I can look ahead ˆ the door slammed in my face."

Suzie Fishman, Jessica's mother, who came to Israel to help her daughter with parting arrangements, shrugs in defeat.

"I ran a kosher home, I sent my two daughters to Jewish schools and I never hid from them the fact that I am a convert," she explains in English. "I always told them: "there are people who were born as Jews and never did anything to enrich the wonderful religion. I did: "I chose, I converted, I immersed myself in a mikvah. Today for the first time in my life, I do not regret this, but I am certainly sorry. I never wanted my conversion to destroy their lives."

Suzie (62), Jessica's mother, grew up in a Christian family in Missouri. "My mother was very religious, and every Sunday she took me to church," the mother recalls. "But in high school I started to move away from religion." In the framework of studies for becoming a registered nurse she met Leslie Fishman, who became a pediatrician. "We dated for two years, and when he received his certification in Minneapolis, MN, he proposed marriage. I knew he was Jewish before then, but between the two of us religion did not play a significant role. Love made me flexible. I need to convert? No problem. This was much harder for my family than for me, in particular my mother. My two parents were prejudiced, and my mother worried she would lose me, which actually happened. She respected my husband but the conversion separated them."

Fishman went through conversion with a reform rabbi in Saint Louis. "I did not know much about the various streams of Judaism, but Leslie explained to me that the orthodox are less progressive than the reforms in their approach to women, and therefore we chose a reform rabbi. I studied kosher laws and holidays and customs. Leslie came from a home in which the Judaism was a cultural and social matter more than religious, and it turned out that I learned things that he never knew. At the end of the process I immersed myself in the mikvah. Most of the reform conversions don't include immersion, but the rabbi explained to me that the mikvah will increase the chances that my conversion will be recognized in Israel, a question which at that time did not concern me at all. I received a certificate that I am a Jewish woman and I chose the Jewish name Shulamit, which is derived from the word shalom = peace."

In their home in St. Paul MN, Suzie was in charge of giving their daughters a Jewish education: Jessica (Tamar) and her younger sister Sheina, who lives today in New York. "We lived ten minutes walk from the conservative synagogue "Beit Yakov" led by Rabbi Morris Allen," Jessica recalls from her childhood. "Every Shabbat we walked to the synagogue, even when it snowed, and after prayers the children split up into classrooms where they learned Bible. My father was on the synagogue's board of directors, and my mother volunteered for Hadassah. She lit candles every Friday night, she built the sukkah on Sukkot and she taught me why we fast on Yom Kippur and why we light candles on Chanuka. For the seder night there was a big celebration, the whole family came to our house, and until today Passover is my most favorite holiday."

When she was three years old, her mother went through a Bat Mitzva ceremony. "For a year she studied and I applauded when she read from the Torah," Jessica recalls, who until sixth grade learned in a Jewish school. Because of her father's work the family moved to a small city in New York, and she remembers herself in the local supermarket, looking for food items on whose packages was written OU, specifying they were kosher. Summer vacations she spent in "Herzl Camp", and at age 14 she went with her parents and sister for a first visit to Israel. "We toured all over and I loved it," she says smiling. "In particular Tel Aviv. Even then I announced to my parents that one day I will return to Israel forever." Two years afterward she came to Israel for six weeks in the framework of the conservative youth movement. "We prayed three times a day, and every meal ended with the prayer after meals. "I was not so devout," she confesses, " but it interested me to see Israel from the point of view of people my age."

While studying communications and business management at Indiana U. she came to Israel again, learned for a half a year at Hebrew U. and at age 22 returned to Israel in the framework of a nine month volunteer project. "I worked in an absorption center in Ashkelon with Ethiopian children and I prepared young Israelis for their high school graduation exams in English. Afterward we moved to Migdal Ha Emek, we set up a chocolate milk house for children, I worked in a village for children at risk in order to contribute as much as possible," she stresses. "In the framework of the volunteer project I met Nachman Shai, who was then IDF Spokesman, I told him who I am, and he promised to help me. Two weeks later I received a phone call, someone asked to speak with Jessica Fishman Daughter of Eliezer. It took me a minute to understand that they meant me," She laughs. "They asked me to enlist in two weeks, I sought to postpone the enlistment until I finish the Hebrew class and finally they told me "Hey you can't choose the date of your enlistment according to what is comfortable for you, this is the army." I flew to my parents for a month and a half, I organized documents, I made Aliyah, and at age 23 I started to serve in IDF Spokesman."

"We were worried about her," her mother comments. "This was during the second intifada, it was dangerous, but we were very proud of her. She fulfilled her Zionism and her Judaism.:"

LOVE DEPENDENT ON THE PAST

For two years Jessica served as an aide in the Unit For Strategy and Initiatives. "Until today I am forbidden from telling too much about what I did there," she relates. "I thought that I would be Israel's spokesperson for the foreign press, but this was only one aspect of work in the unit, which prepared in advance ways of coping with atrocity scenarios. As a lone soldier woman I rented an apartment, I found friends and every day, when I dressed in uniform, I felt my Israeli identity getting stronger. When I was discharged I wanted to make a long trip abroad like everyone after the army. Instead of flying to India I flew to my parents, who had moved to Colorado, I went skiing and I returned home, to Tel Aviv."

She worked in an advertising office, started to study for a master's degree in business management in the interdisciplinary center in Herzliya and for the first time started to read in Hebrew. "They told me to start with books that I did not know in English, so I started with CATCHER IN THE RYE and from there I moved to BAGEL WISDOM. Reading in Hebrew took more time, but there was great satisfaction.

Two years ago she met M, who almost became her husband. "A friend told me about a guy who wanted my advice," she relates, "I assumed this was someone planning Aliyah. The first time I met M I was amazed that he had such good Hebrew. Later I understood that this was an alibi for a date. We fell in love. He is a fun loving guy who works in strategic marketing. We took a biking trip, his family adopted me like a daughter and I felt that finally I found a home. When we started to talk about marriage I told him that my mother was a reform convert, which the orthodox rabbinate in Israel did not accept. This I learned in the army. M said he did not want our children to suffer and asked me to convert. I was opposed. I claimed "Why should I convert? Am I not Jewish? After all I contributed more to the country than many who wear the kipa who refuse to serve in the IDF. These discussions became arguments and soured our relations."
According to her, M's mother used to say: "I love Jessica as if she is my daughter, but your children will suffer, they will not permit them to get married in Israel," And she applied indirect pressure. In the final analysis Jessica phoned her parents and asked them to try to obtain a certificate of validity for her mother's conversion. And then the blow struck.

Rabbi (advocate) Uri Regev, director of Hadush (Freedom, Religion, Equality) stated unequivocally: "Israelis born in Israel who want to get married go to the Religious Council, bring two witnesses who verify they are Jewish and single and the marriage is registered. When new immigrants want to get married, they are sent to Rabbinical court to verify their validity for marriage, and it demands that an orthodox rabbi from the place they live will verify that the party making the request is Jewish and single."

Suzie Fishman relates: "One day we received a phone call from an orthodox Rabbi who asked to know the names of my parents, and I understood that he does not realize I am a convert. So I told him that since the conversion I am called Shulamit daughter of Avraham. At that moment he stopped talking to me. My husband raised the telephone receiver in the next room, and the Rabbi continued talking but only to him. The orthodox Rabbi claimed that Reform conversion isn't valid and that Jessica is not a Jewish woman because the Jewish spirit was not in my womb when she was conceived. I broke out weeping. This was the first time that someone dared state to me that I who chose to be Jewish, am not Jewish."

"My father phoned me immediately after the talk with the rabbi," Jessica continues. "He reported to me about the nuances of the conversation and wept like a child. My father said that he felt he was raped. He wept and said Jessica I am so sorry we have not managed to help you get out of this trap."

In November Jessica said goodbye to her mate (it was no longer pleasant between us. The arguments killed the love") And she decided to leave Israel. "I felt that the country betrayed me, humiliated me and spit in my face."

'ANTISEMITIC BEHAVIOR"

Jessica's story is a sad human saga, strong and powerful, that exemplifies the growing crisis between Israel and Jewish leadership in the US, "says Rabbi (advocate) Uri Regev. According to him the thing that causes the crisis is the proposed law on conversion from MK David Rotam from Israel Beiteinu, chairman of the Knesset constitutional committee. "His proposed law is aimed, as it were, to increase the number of orthodox converts in Israel, but in fact it grants for the first time to the chief rabbinate the authority over conversion in Israel, and it is liable to cause Reform and Conservative converts ˆ who are the decisive majority of converts in the US ˆ not to be recognized as Jews even for the purpose of the Right of Return," Regev cautions.

MK Rotam, who landed in New York this week for a series of meetings with heads of Federations and Jewish communities about the proposed law of conversion, was sorry to hear that Jessica Fishman already left Israel. "She is correct," he said. "Her case is scandalous. It hurts me to hear that a young woman who contributed so much to Israel was forced to leave, and this is exactly what my law seeks to correct."

"How will your law correct the problem Fishman experienced?"


"If my law is passed, instead of going through a long process of conversion Jessica will be able to turn to the Rabbinical Court of the metropolitan rabbinate that we want to establish. The metropolitan rabbinate will examine her knowledge of Judaism, and in the worst case will convert her one more time in a swift way."

But Jessica Fishman does not want to go through another conversion, either long or short. According to her she is Jewish.

"This problem is beyond my law. It relates to the Chief Rabbinate which recognizes only orthodox conversion. Jessica can still get married in Israel with a reform Rabbi. If she fell in love with a young man who is not prepared to get married to a young woman whose mother went through reform conversion, she needs to address her reasoning to the young man with whom she fell in love. Not to me and not to the establishment. If my law is passed, Jessica would be able to register in the couples registry and get married. It is correct that with regard to orthodoxy there will be problems for her children, but she can say: "I am a Jewish woman and my children are Jewish like me, and hope that they will choose to marry Israelis who don't object to reform conversion."

Jessica is leaving and is very angry about it especially toward the rabbinical establishment. "This is not Jewish behavior, this is antisemitic behavior that causes discrimination. Everyone thinks that the proposed new law relates to Russians and foreign workers, and they don't understand the extent to which it is likely to influence people like me, Americans who came to Israel out of Judaism, Zionism and idealism. I came to Israel because I thought it is a country where everyone is Jewish, but this beautiful dream was shattered. It is finished. My case is already lost, but I agreed to tell my story in the hope that it will raise public consciousness about the matter. I intend to build a new life in the United States, and I have no doubt that I will only marry a Jewish man. What will happen when my children want to immigrate to Israel and get married to Jews here? God bless. I can only hope that by then they will solve the problem."

Translation by yonatan silverman zalman_8@013net.net

Chametz and Olam Haba

I heard through the grapevine that a friend of a friend undertook this year's Pesach observance in an ultra-serious frame of mind, determined to be observant of every detail and not let one crumb of chametz get through the cracks. My first reaction was to admire this person's conscientiousness. Would that we go at all our undertakings in that serious, determined frame of mind! How much we would accomplish!

Then I heard of this friend's underlying motivation. If she were not to succeed in having her Pesach totally chametz-free, she might lose her personal immortality, her place in "Olam Ha-Ba" (the "World to Come"). My immediate reaction to this was: Superstition.

But the shared news got me thinking. How could someone have come up with an idea like that in the first place—that the God of the universe would respond to someone's failure to observe this ritual 100% by taking away their immortality [or to put it more bluntly, by killing them]?

How could anyone believe in a God that had those values?

As I thought about it more, it seemed there was a pretty reasonable explanation how this belief could have come about (which does not make the belief itself any more rational). Two factors interacted: the vague but imperious way in which certain commands of the Torah are expressed, and the psychological makeup of the person who is susceptible to certain kinds of appeals.

As to the first, the attentive reader is likely to be impressed by the dramatic way in which the Biblical text emphasizes the importance of certain mitzvot. It says that whoever transgresses X "v-nikhretah ha-nefesh ha-hi me-ameha"—"and that soul shall be cut off from its people."

That language occurs for a small number of mitzvot, among them:

• Doing work on Shabbat
• Not afflicting oneself on Yom Kippur
• Failing to participate in the Paschal sacrifice
• Eating chametz on Pesach
• Violating the incest prohibitions of Leviticus Chapter 18
• Eating the blood or fat of sacrificial animals, that ought to have been God's portion, offered on the altar

These were considered pretty serious violations. Eating pork, by comparison, suffered only the penalty that you became "unclean" (tamei) by doing so.

But in Biblical times people didn't have the evolved view of "olam ha-ba" that the rabbis developed. "Being cut off from your people" meant simply that — ostracism, being cut off from social and communal ties with the folk. We can infer from this the positive side of all these injunctions: identifying oneself with the Israelite people meant that one took these obligations seriously. They were singled out as core obligations that were central to identifying with the people of Israel. Defining these as core obligations was effective—it left an impress that lasted over the millenia. It is instructive that to this day, Yom Kippur and Pesach rank very high in broad-based participation among all kinds of Jews, as borne out by recent sociological surveys.

In post-Biblical times, the Jewish world-view underwent a transformation. "Olam Ha-Ba" (with its dual meaning of Messianic times and personal immortality) became a central belief, whereas in Biblical times it was unkown. Accordingly, the rabbis had to interpret the punishment of "karet" (being "cut off") in terms of the new world-view. According to one view, it meant that one was condemned to childlessness. According to another view, it meant that one got a lesser share of "Olam Ha-Ba"—or in the extreme case, none at all. But this dire fate was mitigated to a large extent by the prevailing doctrines of repentance and working off one's sins through punishment. Eventually, most people (who had not committed ax-murder or genocide) could gain forgiveness for infractions of their sins, even though the Bible specified "karet" as the ultimate penalty. It was presumed that most ordinary people meant well and were sincere in their wanting to repair their relationship with God, and this would be taken into account. A crumb of chametz on Pesach (or even a sandwich consumed in a rebellious moment, and later repented) was not enough, in the Jewish scheme of things, to forfeit one's personal immortality.

This should help put the first factor into its proper perspective. Yes, there are certain statements in the tradition that could lend themselves to be taken as forfeiting one's "Olam Ha-Ba" by violating the afore-mentioned injunctions. But no, it would take a lot more than that to really bring about such a radical personal undoing.

But then there's the second factor—the personal susceptibility of a lot of individuals (not just this one case) to obsessive and even fanatical religious commitment, as a defense against mortal anxiety. The big truth (the elephant in the room) is that we are mortal, and this is out of our control. We don't have any control over what happens to us when we die. If death is annihilation of our selves — or if there is an afterlife, for good or for bad — we don't get to say, either way. The world is the way it is; we are the way we are.

This brute and inconsiderate fact goes against the grain of those of us who like to be in control of everything — of what college we get into, what career we have, keeping in good health, etc. We don't want to admit that something as major as whether we live or die is out of our control. We are all potentially very susceptible to a program that comes our way and tells us with confidence and authority, "Do A, B, and C, and you are guaranteed immortality! Just sign up and do everything that it says in this book."

There is even something plausible in the view that if we single out just those mitzvot for which the Torah threatens "karet" as violation, and observe them scrupulously, that this is the central, most important part of the Immortality Deal. They are central to Jewish identity, and they also present a significant practical challenge—though not an insuperable one. When we knock ourselves out and are "perfect" in our observance of the Pesach dietary laws for 8 whole days, we feel we have earned something big — maybe even Eternity. Having gone through the 8 Pesach days (or the 25-hour Yom Kippur fast) according to the book, we can now turn to God with our shoulders thrown back and our head up high and tell God: "I've done it! I am truly deserving now. Surely you will grant me Olam Ha-Ba now, for all the sacrifices I have made!"

This is part (though not the whole) of the "Ba'al Teshuva" syndrome that some of us are familiar with—people whom we know, of ordinary background, who feel the strong attraction of an ultra-strict religious regimen for the personal security it offers. The same tendency is more selectively manifested when Jews decide to pick and choose certain observances and do them 200% or 500%. Pesach is very easy to adopt for this strategy. Go crazy-strict for 8 days, but in doing so, you are buying insurance for eternity. It's a very tempting proposition.

But does God really want this kind of extremism? When I look around the world and see the incredible variety that adds to the richness of existence, it seems to me that God is saying in all of this: Be yourself, the best you know how! Take what you do seriously, but don't go crazy over it! Excel in what you do best, but don't sacrifice what is inimitably "you" for a straitjacket of someone else's devising. Honor the traditions you grew up in, but be open to the richness of being around you and enrich yourself by it! And if you ever do come to a point of being judged, you will be judged for the totality of your life, not for this or that one detail.

As Rabbi Akiva said, "B'tuv ha-olam nidon, ve-hakol le-fi rov ha-ma'aseh" — the world is judged in goodness, and it is all according to the preponderance of the deeds (Pirkei Avot Chapter 3).

My Take on "Migdol Yeshuot" (II Samuel 22:51)

Every year, come the 7th day of Passover, I am reminded of it again—how (in my view) an 8th-Century Jewish politician tried to ram something down the throats of his fellow-Jews and got the usual response of “two Jews, three opinions.”

As we read the Haftarah from Chapter 22 of Second Samuel, we come again to that last verse where it says, “Migdol yeshu’ot malko”—“A tower of salvation is his King.” Only it wasn’t written that way. The consonants of the written text say “Magdil yeshu’ot malko”—He gives abundant salvation to His king [and deals graciously with His anointed, to David and his descendants forever.] It is written, in other words, the same way as the end of Psalm 18.

Why, then, did the Masoretes vocalize II Samuel 22:51 as “migdol” when the consonants read “magdil”?

Here is my pet theory.

Roll back the calendar to the centuries after the Moslem invasions. The Abbasids established a mighty empire—the Caliphate—with Baghdad as their capital. They forcibly converted to monotheism any pagans who stood in their way. They graciously made an exception of the Jews and Christians—the “peoples of the Book”—on condition that they governed themselves according to an approved religious regime of their own faith-community.

Under these circumstances, the rabbis of Babylonia rose to new heights of prestige. Their interpretation of the Talmud was authoritative for Jews throughout the Muslim realm. They also took care to establish an official liturgy—the first Authorized Jewish Prayer Book.

High in the prestige rankings of that time was the Exilarch, the secular head of the Jewish community, who thought he was a descendant of the Davidic line, and therefore could regard himself as the Messiah of his generation. Certain prayers were instituted in his behalf, such as the blessing “et tzemach David” in the Amidah, praying for the restoration of the Davidic lineage in the Jewish homeland.

In this context, it seems pretty clear that the verse “Magdil yeshu’ot malko ve-oseh chesed li-Meshicho, le-David u-lezar’o ad olam” was probably inserted into the Grace After Meals in this period, also as a token of glorification of the Exilarch. ("He increases the salvation of His king...")

But just as there are Jews in each generation who can’t stand the current political leadership, you can bet that there were Jews of that period who couldn’t stand the self-important stuffed shirt who bore the title of Exilarch. When it came time to say grace after meals, they were looking for a way to avoid this obsequious singing of his praises.

They found it.

Since the vocalization of the Hebrew Biblical text was still pretty fluid at that time (there were three competing traditions of vocalization just making their start), it was easy to claim that however so-and-so claimed the text should be read, wasn’t the correct way to read it. We have countless midrashim with the punch-line “al tikrei” — don’t read it X, read it Y.

So just because the consonants of a particular word read MGDYL didn’t mean you had to read it MaGDiYL. You could say that the Y and V are interchangeable, and read it MiGDoVL.

That profoundly changes the syntax of the phrase. Instead of “[God] Increases the Salvation of His king [= the Exilarch]”—glorifying the Exilarch— you could understand the phrase “A Tower of Salvation is his King [= God]. It is a Jewish truism that God is the one really worthy of glorification, not any flesh-and-blood mortal.

If the Exilarch-of-the-moment’s popularity rating was under 40%, then this stratagem probably caught on like wildfire and became the favored reading of the verse, especially at the public recitation of Grace After Meals. From then, it was a simple matter, when the last recension of the vocalization of the Bible was made, for this vocalization to be accepted as the “Kere” (vocalized version) overriding the “Ketiv” (written version) of II Samuel 22:51.

That’s my thought-for-the day for 7th day Pesah. Hope you enjoyed your holidays!

What Does It Mean to Say: The Categories of Work Are Torahitic?

Rabbinic law is definite about the hierarchy of categories of Jewish law. The basic, fundamental law is “de-oraita” (= “of the Torah,” or “Torahitic”). The extension or penumbra of the law is “de-rabbanan” (= “of the rabbis,” or “rabbinic”).

For example, the categories of work. There are 39 categories of work prohibited on Shabbat, according to Mishnah Shabbat 7:2. A core violation of any of these categories is counted as violating the “Torahitic” command. But each category of work has extensions, the violation of which counts as violating a “rabbinic” command.

For example, “shearing” to obtain wool from a sheep is a core category of work. Derivatives of these, such as cutting one’s hair or nails with scissors for cosmetic reasons, are still considered within the “Torahitic” zone of the prohibition. But doing the latter by hand is considered within the “rabbinic” addendum to this law.

(See Dayan Isidor Grunfeld, The Sabbath: A Guide to Its Understanding and Observance, for a detailed summary of the “Torahitic” and “rabbinic” parameters of each of the 39 categories. A more concise summary is available on several websites, such as http://www.webshas.org/shabbos/melachos.htm or http://www.ou.org/publications/kaplan/shabbat.)

Now, what is the source of these 39 categories? The Torah is very sketchy as to what is prohibited on Shabbat. Among the guidelines it gives are:

“In plowing-season and reaping-season you shall rest.” (Exodus 34:21)

“[On the previous day] that which you would cook, cook; and that which you would bake, bake…let no man go out from his place on the Sabbath day” (Exodus 16:23-29)

“You shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations on the Sabbath day.” (Exodus 35:3)

“They came upon a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day…” (Numbers 15:32-36)

“If you hold back your foot on the Sabbath, refrain from pursuing your affairs on My holy day—if you call the Sabbath ‘delight,’ the Lord’s holy day ‘honored,’ and if you honor it and go not your ways, nor look to your affairs, nor strike bargains…” (Isaiah 58:13)

“Take care not to carry burdens on the Sabbath day” (Jeremiah 17:21)

The 39 categories listed in Mishnah Shabbat 7:2 go far beyond these in specificity:

Sowing, plowing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, selecting, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking.

Shearing wool, bleaching, hackling, dyeing, spinning, stretching, looping, weaving, separating, tying, untying, sewing, tearing [in order to sew].

Hunting (capturing) a deer, slaughtering, flaying, salting, curing, scraping, cutting it up, writing [two letters], erasing [in order to write].

Building, tearing down, extinguishing, kindling, striking with a hammer, carrying from one domain to another.

What is the source of these 39 categories? The Talmud gives two answers. The first is that the number of times the word melakhah occurs in the Torah is 39, though there is some discussion as to which passages needed to be included to come up to that number. The second is “corresponding to the labors in the Tabernacle.” What does this mean? The Jerusalem Talmud elaborates and says that the total occurrences of the words melakhah and avodah in the portion prescribing the building of the Tabernacle comes to 39. (JT Shabbat 9b; BT Shabbat 49b) Rashi says: “Those labors enumerated in Mishnah Shabbat were required for the Tabernacle, and the portion of Shabbat was written adjacent to the portion of the Tabernacle to draw this lesson.” But nowhere is there an extended argument of the rabbis, deriving the specific 39 categories of the Mishnah from the activities described in the Torah portion of the Tabernacle (Exodus Chapters 25 thru 40). In fact, some of the categories listed in the Mishnah are not mentioned in that Torah portion. Furthermore, the one rigorous demonstration of correspondence that we possess—in Israel Al-Nakawa’s Menorat Ha-Ma’or (14th century)—follows the simple procedure of counting up the occurrences of the words melakhah and avodah in the Tabernacle portion, which add up to 39, regardless of the contents of the passages in question. (Enelow, Menorat Ha-Maor, Bloch, 1931, Vol. 3, p. 603)

It would seem, then, that the sequence of development of these laws was as follows. First, the rabbis developed the specific list of categories (or, if you wish to believe, received the list by oral transmission from Moses through Joshua, etc.). They then sought Torahitic basis for this enumeration. The justifying arguments that they give are of a “paralogical” character, of the “wild-card” variety. The 39 mentions of melakhah and avodah are treated as so many wild-cards, to be played at the interpreter’s discretion: assign them to the corresponding number of work-categories, whatever they may be. This procedure puts the decision-making power squarely in the rabbis’ hands.

But if the specification of work-categories was developed by the rabbis, and is not found in the Torah, then how can one consistently maintain that transgressing one of them (for instance, cutting one’s hair or shaving, included in the category “shearing”—or even, for that matter, shearing wool off a sheep) is violating a Torahitic command? Would it not be more consistent, more “intellectually honest,” to say that one was violating a rabbinic command?

As paradoxical as it may seem, it is nevertheless entirely plausible to maintain that (1) the judgment that Action X is “work” was made by the rabbis, yet (2) “X is work” has the status of Torahitic law.

Consider: Reuben is trying to enjoy his Shabbat rest. His neighbor Simeon is fixing his house, as he has not found leisure to do so during his very busy work week. The sound of Simeon’s hammer is driving Reuben crazy. Reuben brings Simeon to Rabbi Yosi with a complaint: “Simeon is violating Shabbat.” Rabbi Yosi must now make a decision. The Torah declares: “The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You shall do no work.” What did the Torah mean by “work”? Does Simeon’s action fall under that intention? He performs an act of interpretation: “Work” as intended by the Torah includes striking with a hammer.

Rabbi Yosi has no escape. He must interpret the Torah’s vague term “work” either to include or to exclude “striking with a hammer.” But having made that interpretation, the action “striking with a hammer” is prohibited on Shabbat, not by an edict of Rabbi Yosi (which would make it clearly “derabbanan”) but by the Torah’s edict, as understood by Rabbi Yosi—and as henceforth understood by the community of Israel.

Over time, by hundreds of acts of interpretation by Hillel and Shammai and Rabbi Johanan and Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Tarfon and by hundreds of unnamed students, scholars, scribes, and authorities (and even by thousands of lay Jews), the vague terms such as “work” specified by the Torah took on specific meaning. The enumeration of 39 major categories of work in Mishnah Shabbat 7:2 was the summation of centuries of life-experience and interpretation of the meaning of Shabbat observance, compressed into one paragraph. It represents the content of the edict of the Torah, as understood by the Jewish people.

Consider the analogy of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

What is the content of this declaration? What does it permit and forbid?

As students of American constitutional law will attest, it has come to forbid such things as:

• Instituting “separate but equal” educational systems based on racial differences.
• Depriving mentally ill persons, who do not pose a danger to themselves or to others, of their freedom.
• Forbidding the use of contraceptives by married couples in the privacy of their bedrooms.
• Totally and absolutely disallowing a woman to abort her fetus.

The status of these applications is not that they are “federal statute law.” They are not simply the opinion of the Supreme Court of such-and-such a session. They possess, rather, the status of “constitutional law.” It is indeed constitutional law as interpreted by the Supreme Court, but it is constitutional law nonetheless—what the Constitution mandates, as officially interpreted by the Supreme Court. The “right of privacy” is nowhere written in the Constitution as such, but it is regarded as a constitutional right under American law, because of the history of the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution—notably, the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

It is in the same sense that the 39 categories of work articulated in Mishnah Shabbat 7:2 have Torahitic status in Jewish law. The Torah’s term “work” had to mean something. The rabbis were empowered to interpret it. (By whom, let’s not ask here.) It is their interpretation that gives the Torah’s term “work” its traditional normative content.

Interpretations are not irreversible. As we saw, in Ketubot (3b-7a) the rabbis reversed themselves on the question whether consummating a marriage was permitted on Shabbat. Similarly, the Supreme Court in the early 20th century understood “due process” to forbid legislation restricting the freedom of contract between employers and employees—for instance, through labor laws forbidding contracts requiring workers to work over 60 hours per week. But in the 1930s the Supreme Court reversed its earlier understanding, declaring that such laws were in the interests of the public welfare and hence constitutional. The very substance of what was constitutional or unconstitutional under the “due process” clause of the 14th Amendment underwent change.

It is conceivable, therefore, that a future interpretation of “work” might modify or replace the interpretation of Mishnah Shabbat 7:2. Such a new interpretation would have a steep uphill road to climb, and a hard task gaining a foothold of acceptance. Practically the whole Jewish world is divided into three factions: (1) those who believe wholeheartedly that the traditional interpretation is God-given, and that to modify it, let alone revoke or replace it, would be blasphemy; (2) those who do believe that defining “work” in any formal, let alone legal or quasi-legal terms, is obsolete and counterproductive; and (3) those who do not observe Shabbat anyway, so for them the whole discussion is moot.

But if modern Jews—or even a small subset of them—are ever going to make Shabbat meaningful in their lives, they will have to take ownership of it and adapt it to their life-needs, which are different from the life-needs of Jews two millennia ago (although there is also a certain commonalty which is also of crucial importance). They will have to define what “work” and “rest” mean in the rhythm, and in the material circumstances, of their lives today.

Ahad Ha-Am, a modern Jewish secularist, said: “More than Israel has kept Shabbat, the Shabbat has kept Israel.” Though he did not believe that the Shabbat was divinely commanded, he believed in the enduring value of Shabbat, both individually for individual Jews, and collectively for the Jewish people.

What a renewed understanding of “work,” “rest,” and Shabbat might be for us today, I leave to some future blog posting.

Reflections on Ketubot (1): Nature of Oral Law

The Talmudic tractate Ketubot has been called “Shas Katan” (the “little Talmud”) by Talmud aficionados, because the range of subject-matter in it is so broad as to cover aspects of most topics of the Talmud itself. An exploration of Tractate Ketubot is therefore a good way for me to structure my own interaction with the Talmud for purpose of a philosophical inquiry on what is distinctive about the Talmud’s logic and discourse.

An excellent study of the topic of marriage in Talmudic law exists in the form of Judith Hauptman’s Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice. I will be relying on the insights of this book, while using it as a starting-point for my own.

The tractate begins: “A virgin is married on Wednesday, and a widow on Thursday, for twice a week the courts are in session in the towns, on Monday and Thursday, so that if [the groom] should have a claim regarding her virginity, he would go early [the next morning] to court.”

Colleague Michael Pitkowsky has informed me that Joshua Kulp has recently completed a study on virginity claims in Talmudic times, epitomized in his HUCA article “Go Enjoy Your Acquisition: Virginity Claims in Rabbinic Literature Reexamined.” The upshot for our purposes is that in rabbinic times the whole issue of bringing virginity suits was declining and discouraged, but not totally dead, so that it was still able to influence such things as the customary day of the week to schedule a wedding, as announced in the opening to this tractate.

My chief focus for this comment, though, is in another direction. What was the “Oral Law”? We have here a striking instance of a central Mishnaic law that is of rabbinic (not Mosaic) origin, by universal consensus. The custom of having courts in session on Monday and Thursday is dated by the rabbis to Ezra’s time, and the day of the wedding is contingent on that.

A popular view of the “Oral Law” (fostered by Avot 1:1) is that it is a body of law, complementary to the written Torah, communicated by God to Moses and communicated by oral tradition from Moses to Joshua, to the elders, to the prophets, to the “Men of the Great Assembly” (in Second Temple times), thence to the rabbis, until it was finally codified by Rabbi Judah the Nasi in the 2nd century in the form of the Mishnah. The popular view assumes that it comprises the basic content of Mishnaic law, minus certain embellishments and rabbinic disagreements recorded in the Mishnah. Call this the “traditional view of the Oral Law.”

In contrast to this, we have the modern scholarly view, that the “Oral Law” was (in its entirety, or nearly so) developed by the rabbis, from Second Temple times through the first five centuries of the Common Era, producing the literary products of the Mishnah and the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds.

Both views are reflected in Maimonides’ Introduction to his Commentary on the Misnhah. In one passage, he describes vividly how Moses would receive a law directly from God, transmit it to Aaron, then to Aaron and his sons, then to the seventy elders, then to the entire people. But in another passage, Maimonides dismisses the view (reflected in Talmud Yevamot) that the divergence of rabbinic opinion is due to the distortion of memory in transmission (the “telephone” game). Rather, different rabbis had different “sevarot” (rational considerations based on common experience) for judging that the law should be X rather than Y, or the reverse. So at least in those matters recording different opinions of rabbis, the substance of the disagreement was over matters rabbinic in origin.

Still, even for those of us who tend to hold the modern scholarly view, the question may rightly be asked: What did the rabbis have in mind by the “Oral Law” of Mosaic origin, according to the traditional view? What was included in it, by a conservative estimate?

It is clear, from our example here, that even on a conservative estimate, the “Mosaic Oral Law” could not have comprised all topics of the Mishnah. As Judith Hauptman reminds us in her book, the very ketubah itself was a rabbinic innovation, according to the rabbis themselves. Naturally, then, the tractate concerning “Ketubot” must have been on a topic itself rabbinic in origin. No surprise, therefore, that Ketubot begins with another law – the day of the wedding – that also (according to Rashi, who was no flaming modern scholar) was instituted by the rabbis!

There is a rabbinic recognition that the time-honored ancient stratum of law was a variable factor. Mishnah Chagigah 1:8 tells us: “The laws of release from vows hover in the air—they have nothing to support them. The laws about Shabbat, Chagigah, and sacrilege are as mountains hanging by a hair—little text, but many laws. The rules about civil law, the Temple service, purities and impurities, and forbidden liaisons have ample support; they are the essentials of Torah.”

The essentials of Jewish practice today – Shabbat, holidays, prayer, kashrut – contain many regulations, some of them (such as Shabbat and holiday) having much detail based on cursory statements in the Torah, others (such as prayer) absent in the Torah altogether. Clearly, most of Judaism falls into the category of the “Oral Law.”

But could that Oral Law be Mosaic in origin?

The continuation of the discussion in Ketubot links to the topic of Shabbat in an amusing way.

The question is raised: What about consummating the marriage on Friday night? To those familiar with the holy-erotic significance of Friday night in later Judaism, influenced by the kabbalah, this question should have an obvious answer: Of course! And in early-modern Ashkenazic Jewry, weddings on Friday were common. (One of Moses Isserles’s famous responsa stems from such a case, when the bargaining between the families forced postponement of the wedding ceremony until after sundown, causing a minor scandal. Isserles himself performed the wedding, and defended his action in his responsum.)

Why not consummate the marriage on Friday night? Because breaking the bride’s hymen would be inflicting a wound, a possible violation of Shabbat, under the category of “derivatives of shehitah [slaughter].” (A Baraita cited on page 3b indicates that in some localities it was actually the custom to separate the bride and groom in such a case.) But the counter-argument says: A melakhah she-eino mitkavvein – a work-action that is a secondary, unintended byproduct of one’s primary action – is not forbidden on Shabbat.

So we ask: Is the principle of melakhah she-eino mitkavvein (the secondary, unintended byproduct) of Mosaic origin? The very principle is the subject of dispute between Rabbi Judah (who prohibits it) and Rabbi Simeon (who permits it). Rabbi Judah (not the Nasi) and Rabbi Simeon were of the generation after Rabbi Akiba, in the middle of the second century. By all evidence, this point of law was not even theoretically raised prior to then. And it would fall under Maimonides’ principle, that issues debated by the rabbis on the basis of sevara were themselves of rabbinic origin.

But what of the 39 “principal categories of work” themselves – were they of Mosaic origin, or of rabbinic origin? And is it possible to maintain that even though the articulation of the 39 categories was rabbinic, they can still be regarded as de-oraita (of Torahitic status) for purpose of determining the law? To these issues we will turn in our next posting.

An Exploration in Talmudic Method

I will undertake to illustrate, by discussing some topics from Chapter 2 of Tractate Kiddushin, some pervasive issues that have concerned me in grappling with the Talmud and rabbinic thought for as long as I have studied in this area.

It is commonplace in the Jewish law of marriage and divorce, as well as Jewish commercial law, that many transactions can be effected by an appointed agent, who acts on behalf of the principal party. Betrothal and divorce may be done directly by the man and woman involved, or either may be represented by an agent who acts on their behalf.

In Chapter 2 of Kiddushin, the rabbis seek to find a basis for the principle of “shelihut” (agency) in the written Torah. They adduce three possible sources:

(1) In the law of the Paschal sacrifice, the Torah stipulates that a company shall collaborate, obtaining a single lamb which is slaughtered, roasted and eaten by all members communally. But the act of slaughtering can only be performed by an individual. In such a case, the individual is therefore acting on behalf of all members of the group, and they are performing the “mitzvah” of slaughtering by implicitly designating him as their agent.

(2) In the law of Terumah, every farmer is responsible for designating a certain portion of his produce as a gift to the priests. But a landowner may (according to common practice, codified in rabbinic law) assign one of his servants or workers to separate the “terumah” from the crop. This servant or worker is then operating as an agent on behalf of the landowner. The rabbis deduce this provision from the text of the law: “You—even you (gam attem)—shall raise up from your produce a portion and give it to the priest.” The redundant words gam attem are interpreted to refer to doing it through an agent.

(3) In the law of divorce, the Torah uses the word ve-shillach in designating the act by which the husband “sends forth” his wife to be free, no longer married to him. It also uses the term ve-shillechah (“and he shall send her forth”), where the final “hei” with the aspirative mappik indicates grammatically the direct object of the verb (“her”). But one can also creatively read the word ve-shillecha (without the mappik), whereby the final “hei” would refer to a feminine subject (“and she shall send”). Though this is not the standard reading of the text, the rabbis nevertheless derive from this the principle that the woman, as well as the man, is entitled to act through appointing an agent to act on her behalf. (Indeed, taking the term ve-shillach meaning "he shall send forth [his wife to be free]" in the sense of "he shall send [an agent to perform the handing-over of the get on his behalf]" is another act of creative interpretation that would send a peshat reader of the text into a panic!)

The second and third arguments are representative of a kind of rabbinic argumentation that bothered me greatly when I was young, and stood in the way of my accepting rabbinic Judaism in its standard, received form as authoritative at that point in my development. How is one to know, in the case of a textual redundancy, what “additional” legal stipulation is to be taken as implied by the text? Maybe (in the case mentioned) gam attem is to be understood as referring to some other member of the household? Maybe it is emphatic, and meant to restrict who can perform the action (“you, yes you, nobody else”)? If there is a secret meaning not expressed directly by the words, how on earth can anyone presume to know what that meaning is? Many secret meanings are possible, not all of them in accord with rabbinic law!

And the third case was even more offensive to my critical young mind. Any word can be creatively read in any number of possible ways to suggest other meanings. But this is implicit in language itself. If such creative reading is permitted, nobody can ever speak or write unambiguously to rule out such readings if they are not intended. But then no text is determinate in its meaning. If God wanted to say X and not Y, then given this feature of language, it would be impossible for Him to do so, for some rabbi would take it in his head to read Y into the text anyway, and the divine intention would be frustrated.

The first argument is far more plausible. The law of the Paschal lamb clearly implies that several people will eat together, but only one will perform the crucial act of slaughtering on behalf of the group. Agency is built into the situation. There is indeed an additional step of generalization (called binyan av in rabbinic methodology) in inferring that if agency is allowed here, it is allowed in other situations as well. But this is not nearly so offensive to reason as the procedures in #2 and #3.

I will speak generally of “paralogic” as referring to arguments of Type #2 and Type #3, where the rabbis use procedures of inference that would not be allowed in normal logic.

In Heschel’s book Heavenly Torah, which I helped to translate, he distinguishes between the methods of Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva in interpreting the laws of the Torah. #1 is characteristic of Rabbi Ishmael’s method. #2-3 are characteristic of Rabbi Akiva’s.

This whole argument is related to the question of whether the law of agency is to be regarded as de-oraita (legislated by the written Torah, and therefore attributable to God directly) or de-rabbanan (legislated by the rabbis). All three arguments seek to prove that the law of agency is de-oraita, and is therefore a fundamental, unalterable category of Jewish law.

I must mention at this point a book by Jay Harris: How Do We Know This? The central argument of his book is that the rabbis of the Talmudic period used “paralogical” methods as part of the organic style of their thought, without it occurring to them that such interpretation of text was unnatural. The medieval commentators were more logical in their approach. Especially the peshat (plain-sense) commentators of the Torah, such as Abraham Ibn Ezra and Rashbam, would say in a case such as this that the rabbis made their own laws, but used paralogical arguments from the written Torah text as asmakhta (casual support). By doing so, they were performing a symbolic gesture, affirming that though the law evolves through addition, it is to be regarded as a single legal tradition, and the later developments have their roots in the ancient precedents.

If Jay Harris’s book had been available when I was younger, it might have spared me some of my agonizing and ambivalence toward the tradition.

I have another angle, however, to contribute to the issue just presented. There is a point of view from which such basic laws as that of “agency” can be regarded as de-oraita despite the spuriousness of the rabbinic “proofs” offered for them. Talmudic law knows of a category of laws derived from sevara (reason or common sense). The 19th-century Talmudist Zvi Chajes (in The Student's Guide Through the Talmud [Mebo Ha-Talmud, East and West Library, London, 1952], Chapter 4) argued that laws based on sevara were on a par with laws specified in the Written Torah. They are thus similar (though not identical) to those in the category halakha le-Moshe mi-Sinai. But whereas those in the category halakha le-Moshe mi-Sinai are often arbitrary (example: tefillin should be black in square boxes), those based on sevara are so common-sensical that the alternative is less reasonable by comparison. (Example: “the burden of proof falls on the claimant.”)

This is not to say that a sevara rule is so universal that no society is thinkable without it. In the case of the rule of agency, the Encyclopedia Judaica [article: "Agency"] maintains that Talmudic law was in advance of contemporary Roman law. Whether a particular transaction may be done through an agent is a specific, contingent fact of the legal custom of a given society. But any society, at any point in time, must have an accepted practice in such matters, whether X is customarily allowed or not. If effecting commercial transactions through agents was accepted practice by the 2nd century, it did not require a specific rabbinic enactment to bring it about. Once the conveniences of such a practice are established, it is hard to turn the clock back and disallow it. It then becomes, naturally, part of the accepted fabric of social practice and thus naturally gets ratified when statutory law is codified (as it was in the Mishnah).

But from an intellectual standpoint, rabbinic thought strove for unification. The Written Torah was considered to be the primary authoritative legal document. Wherever possible, accepted legal practices ought to be justified by “finding” their sources in the written text. (The Talmudic question “Minayin? From whence?” is the source of the title of Harris’s book How Do We Know This?”)

If we were to write a “Logic” of the Talmud, based on this argumentative practice, it would have to be along the following lines:

• Whatever is written in the Torah, is law.
• Whatever can be derived from the written Torah by strictly logical methods, is law.
• Whatever can be derived from the written Torah by “paralogical” methods is not necessarily law. (How could it be? This method proves too much!) However, paralogical methods are a permitted move in order to justify a law that has independent authority on other grounds. (“Other grounds” can be: a Mishnaic statement, or sevara, or universal common practice.) Typically, rabbis will disagree on the derivation of a law from the Written Torah, while agreeing on the basic law itself (though the difference of derivation may be connected with differences on detail of understanding the basic law).
  

One more caveat: The rabbis did not tell us everything that was on their minds. We may be rightly suspicious of the presentation of a law, whose only support is a “paralogical” derivation. A good rule of thumb in such cases is: Accept the paralogical derivation as a decorative embellishment, and ask: What could have been the real reason for this law?

The rabbis were no fools. They knew what they were doing. They were well aware that the paralogical methods, pushed to their extremes, could be abused. But those methods gave them freedom, to make their best considered judgment of what was necessary and just, given the social reality of their time, and present that judgment, cloaked in the time-honored garb of interpretation of the Written Torah.

Old News: Netanyahu Speech

This is old news (with the Iranian clerics in secret conclave in Qum to decide the fate of Iran, who's thinking any more about the Netanyahu speech endorsing a demilitarized Palestinian state while demanding that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state? But for the sake of keeping the record complete, I'm transcribing here the discussion that we had on Facebook in response to the news earlier this week.


Lenny Levin thinks Netanyahu has found the center. Yasher koach!

David Stolow at 11:38 on 15 June
Netanyahu returns to what was his position when he was last PM and all the usual suspects have all the usual reactions. The difference between Bibi and Obama now is that Bibi figures he won't really have to do anything since the Pals will give him and out while Obama means it. As for the natural growth nonsense, suppose someone wanted to pass a zoning law in Maplewood that gave the legal right, ahead of any other buyer, to the children of Maplewood residents to buy or build in Maplewood?

Lenny Levin at 14:58 on 15 June
Obama's strategy is "behavioral modification" through "rewarding successive approximations." It is strategically correct for us to play ball positively -- let the other side put themselves in the wrong (as Abba Eban said, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity). As for the current difference between Obama and Netanyahu on the settlements, it is within the realm of the negotiable. The more important point was to red-line unbridled settlement expansion as unacceptable, and even Netanyahu's remarks concede this position.

David Stolow at 15:09 on 15 June
To agree with you I would have to believe that Bibi is actually prepared to negotiate and stop some settlement activity as a show of good faith. I fear that neither is the case. Olmert and Barak spent the last 4 years talking about how they are going to get out of settlements that even Israel has labeled "illegal." Instead they kept expanding settlements. Why Bib would try to do less is a mystery. In sum, Obama speaks the truth and Bibi, as they said on the campaign posters, lies.

Lori Lippitz at 15:24 on 15 June
It does seem that Bibi is motivated by visceral distrust of Arabs, and his base is driven by a similar mistrust, disgust, hatred or just cynicism. This is a tough guy for Obama to cut a deal with unless he gets the whole Congress to make a paradigm shift and make support of Israel more conditional. Az och un vey.

Lenny Levin at 10:31 on 16 June
In diplomacy, it matters more what words you say than what mental reservations you have about them. The words commit. Yes, and actions commit too. Meanwhile, events in Iran make the Israel-Palestinian impasse look like a tempest in a teapot.

David Stolow at 13:20 on 16 June
Maybe in the polite diplomacy of the French about 150 years ago. But in the Middle East words are merely a cover for what you are really thinking and doing. And what Israel is doing is to continue to expand the settlements while occassionally taking their foot off the oxygen hose of West Bank businesses provided that the owners act like "our kind of Arabs."

What Kind of God Do We Need to Guarantee Ethics?

What Kind of God Do We Need to Guarantee Ethics?

I am a proponent of the proposition: “Our ethics is more firmly grounded if it sees itself as grounded in God’s will.”

I am also a proponent of the proposition: “Our belief in God is more rational if it takes into account our advances of the picture of reality provided by modern science.”

But there is a tension between these two viewpoints. The more our God-picture collapses into affirming the world-as-it-is, described by modern science, the less it stands as separate from that world, drawing us upward to the world-as-it-ought-to-be. Yet some accommodation of these two viewpoints is necessary for a modern rationalist theologian like myself.

I can illustrate these views by extreme examples. A literal adherence to Genesis, unencumbered by modern science, puts God squarely in charge. God created the world and God created us. We are obligated to do as God tells us (or—more elegantly—to see our destiny as congruous with the destiny of the world as God has intended it to be—see our early discussion of the Euthyphro-problem).

Fast-forward to Spinoza’s Ethics (1677). God equals Nature. God’s perfect governance of the world equals Nature’s law. But there is no “purpose” on the scale of the world, beyond its own perfection. To project human motives and purposes on God or on the world is an intellectual and moral error. It is up to us to find our happiness in the realistic acceptance of our nature the way it is, within the world’s nature the way it is, without confusing the two. For Spinoza, God has no “will,” and thus to see the ethics as following “God’s will” has only metaphorical-poetical significance, not philosophic truth.

One may posit a spectrum of God-concepts, with the Genesis-God at one end, and Spinoza’s God at the other. Points along this spectrum might be:

• Biblical theism (taking Genesis literally, with a minimum of commentary)
• Medieval classical theism (taking Genesis as true in its essentials, while accommodating it to Greek philosophical theism à la Plato or Aristotle)
• Early modern Deism (God created the world, but left it to operate according to physical law à la Newton)
• Panentheism (God created the world and is involved in the world, but God’s involvement is within the constraints of physical law)
• Pantheism (God is the world)

The theologian speaks of God’s “transcendence” as the degree to which God is “other” than the world, “separate” from the world, “standing back” from the world.

God’s “immanence” is the degree to which God is involved with the world—an involvement whose maximum-point is being strictly identical with the world (as in Pantheism).

Despite what I have said about Spinoza’s denial of “purpose” in God, I would maintain that a certain kind of Pantheist might be able to argue that God can be the criterion of value for the world even while being identical with the world. Such an argument might maintain, for instance, that value is immanent in every thing, that (for instance) the excellence of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony can be entirely intuited by direct experience of the music itself, and does not require any reference of this piece of music to any outside standard (such as a general theory of music or music appreciation). By the same token, the perfection of the world can be intuited from encounter with the world itself, and what we should do to be in harmony with that perfection would follow directly from that experience.

Having said that, the kind of ethical valuation with which I am more comfortable sees the perception of value in transcendent terms. In that vein, the value of any thing is indeed to be considered in its relation to what is outside itself. My own value is at least to a large extent contingent on my relations with other persons, with the world outside me, with the history of the groups to which I belong (the group of Jews, of Americans, of Western man, of humanity as a whole, of life as a whole, etc.). The world is the limiting-term of these transcendent relations in so far as we can determine them with scientific validity. The religious faith carries this transcendence a step farther and says that the world itself derives its value from its relation to God. But this assertion makes sense only insofar as we conceive God as transcendent—as transcending the world.

My student Paul Steiner raised the intriguing objection: Does not panentheism (a step before pantheism in this progression) constrain the power of God to give value to the world, by affirming that God is immanent and therefore invested in the world-as-it-is? An analogy would be a certain political executive who had a large financial or career investment with a certain private company. The ability of the executive to stand back and act objectively in matters concerning that company might be tainted by that investment. We call this “conflict of interest” on the human-political scale.

My brief answer to Paul is that precisely the dual transcendent-immanent character of panentheism saves it from this trap. Panentheism sees God as containing the world, being “in” the world but also “beyond” the world at the same time. This is expressed also in my metaphor of the artist, who expresses herself in the work-of-art, then stands back and appraises it, judging it to see if it adequately expressed her creative intention.

Similarly, the immanent God of panentheism is invested in the world, and the world is thus rightly perceived as “godly” or “invested with the divine.” But in the contrary motion, God-as-transcendent steps back and sees the world in comparison with the pure ideal (in the “divine mind,” as it were). In the tension between the two, God (and we) can chart a course whereby the real world strives to become closer to the ideal.

Further Discussion on Israel and the Middle East (from Facebook)

Deborah Auerbach referred me to Edgar Bronfman’s posting on The Huffington Post: “A Real Two-State Solution” – not necessarily because she agreed with it wholly, but because she thought it contributed additional insights to the discussion.

I posted this with appreciation on my website. Deborah then offered her criticism, which led to another round of comments which I post here:

Deborah Auerbach at 19:32 on 10 June
We all want peace but as Mel Brooks said, Hitler also wants piece, a piece of Poland, a piece of Russia.... The settlements which you causually negate with a wave of the hand are what keeps the rockets far away from the fancy office suites of Tel Aviv.

Lenny Levin at 19:43 on 10 June
"If I am not for me, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?" The Zionist self-assertion that produced Israel was the necessary Step 1. Now we need to proceed to Step 2: to listen to the other side and engage in constructive dialogue until we achieve a consensus that affirms the legitimate needs and interests of all parties. It's great we have achieved what we have to this point. But the next steps have to be taken in concert, not alone.

Ephraim T. Jerchower at 06:42 on 11 June
The hostility directed at Jews by the other side of the equation will never be abated. It is the essence of being a Jew that inflames the other side. There is no constructive dialogue to be had with those who deny and dismiss one's existence. The dispute was never about borders.

Susan Zwillenberg at 10:12 on 11 June
Unfortunately, in order to have peace one has to talk to one's enemies and establish at least a minimum of trust.

Lenny Levin at 13:12 on 11 June
Ruling those who hate you does not work in the long run--whether they hate you for ruling them, or for who you are (or both). Occupation is a source of security in some respects and of insecurity in others. Disengagement with preservation of security will not be simple, but Rabin thought it was the best course, and I (who know a lot less about these matters than he did) trust his judgment in the matter.

Ephraim T. Jerchower at 00:15 on 12 June
The idea of "ruling those..." that you posit troubles me. I don't see that phenomenon as the case in Israel nor do I accept the notion of Israel as occupiers. Your position pre-supposes the existance of a people, to wit, Palestinians, that, somehow were displaced by the several wars started by their bretheren. In point of fact, there was no "Palestinian people" prior to the '67 war.
I take no issue with Rabin but the hatred of the existence of the Jew and the denial of the Jewish state remains the cornerstone ideology of those folks you believe Israel should disengage from. With the utmost respect, it's not about occupation or borders. It's about what its always been about: anihilation...of Jews.

Lenny Levin at 06:42 on 12 June
(1) As long as "denial of the Jewish state remains [their] cornerstone ideology," they shall have no state. Acceptance of Israel is sine qua non to their getting one (as Obama made clear in his speech). But "they" lumps together Hamas and the other factions-- not quite accurate.
(2) Not occupiers? If all the inhabitants of the West Bank were given the vote and representation in the Knesset, this would regularize their status -- but at the cost of making Israel truly a bi-national state, even more unstable than Czechoslovakia or the USSR, which could not survive the internal dissension of their competing nationalities-- not a good way to go. But as long as Israel maintains right of passage through the territories and other forms of control without enfranchising its inhabitants. this is occupation. You or I wouldn't want to live under the condition of West Bank "Palestinians/Arabs," subject to those controls. We should get out of this business as soon as we can safely do so.