Remembering Rabin

I don’t remember where I was when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated 24 years ago last Monday. But the shock wave at the initial announcement, and then the revulsion and disbelief that he was murdered by a Jew, an observant Israeli of the far right… That, I can never forget.
Rabin had signed the Oslo Accord earlier that year and was preparing the nation for the inevitable challenges that would come along with making peace. The murderer, Yigal Amir, claimed that Jewish Law permitted him to kill the prime minister. In Amir’s eyes and the eyes of his fellow ultra nationalists, Rabin was a rodef, a dangerous pursuer. Therefore in their twisted logic, they had the right to protect Jewish lives by taking him out. Amir said he shot Rabin in self defense of the Jewish people.The courts did not agree, and Amir was sentenced to life without parole. At his sentencing, Amir proclaimed that he had no remorse and that he had done his duty to the Jewish people.
The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin had far-reaching consequences in Israel and the rest of the world. In a very real way, Amir and his fellow far-right community, murdered peace. It was the end of a certain kind of hopefulness, and a recognition that a new force was erupting. It was a force that actively and openly disdained the rights of Palestinians in Israel and vehemently opposed any notion of a two-state solution. Bibi Netanyahu, the leader of the Likud party, embraced the movement and then led the opposition to any real and lasting peace. Prior to Rabin’s death, rallies organized by Likud and other right-wing groups featured depictions of Rabin in a Nazi SS uniform, or in the crosshairs of a gun. Protesters compared the Labor party to the Nazis and Rabin to Adolf Hitler and chanted, “Rabin is a murderer” and “Rabin is a traitor”. In July 1995, Netanyahu led a mock funeral procession featuring a coffin and hangman’s noose at an anti-Rabin rally where protesters chanted, “Death to Rabin”.
The chief of internal security, Carmi Gillon, then alerted Netanyahu of a plot on Rabin’s life and asked him to moderate the protests’ rhetoric, which Netanyahu declined to do. Netanyahu denied any intention to incite violence. But one doesn’t have to start a fire to cause a panic and a stampede to the exits.
When I heard about Rabin I felt that sharp pain of loss and despair that has become de rigueur for baby boomers. With every political assassination, from John F Kennedy to Martin Luther King to Bobby Kennedy, we watched dreams die along with the visionaries who spoke of them. We have seen, time and again, the triumph of hatred and violence over the fragile beginnings of peace and understanding. It’s happened so often that we have grown inured to the chipping away at new alliances, the denigration of compromises in order to achieve a new degree of harmony and communication between different ideas and ideals.
We harbor a cynicism, a weariness that threatens to extinguish any spark, smother any flame of conscience. It calls to mind a well known Hasidic story that many have told, including Elie Wiesel, alav hashalom:

When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov
Saw misfortune threatening the Jews
It was his custom
To go into a certain part of the forest to meditate.
There he would light a fire,
Say a special prayer,
And the miracle would be accomplished
And the misfortune averted.

Later when his disciple,
The celebrated Magid of Mezritch,
Has occasion, for the same reason,
To intercede with heaven,
He would go to the same place in the forest
And say: “Master of the Universe, listen!
I do not know how to light the fire,
But I am still able to say the prayer.”
And again the miracle would be accomplished.

Still later,
Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov,
In order to save his people once more,
Would go into the forest and say:
“I do not know how to light the fire,
I do not know the prayer,
But I know the place
And this must be sufficient.”
It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.

Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn
To overcome misfortune.
Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands,
He spoke to God: “I am unable to light the fire
And I do not know the prayer;
I cannot even find the place in the forest.
All I can do is to tell the story,
And this must be sufficient.”
And it was sufficient.

The story is sufficient only if it leads us to consider the world in which we live, the world we wish to bequeath to our children and our grandchildren. The story is sufficient only if it inspires us to do deeds of lovingkindness, only if we strive to create a new clearing in their forest, a new prayer, a new flame that will banish the darkness of the world. We do a lot of head holding a la Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn. If we don’t get out of our armchairs, then shame on us. As it says in the collection, The Ethics of Our Ancestors, “The day is short, the task is great, the master is insistent. It is not your duty to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it…”
The murder of Yitzhak Rabin will always be one of the darkest days in the history of modern Israel and in the hearts of the Jewish people. I deeply mourn his passing and the potential that died with him. But there must be more than memories and sadness and cynicism. It’s time, in Israel – and in the United States – to get up out of our armchairs. Anything less profanes the memory of Yitzhak Rabin.

Before Shabbat

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