Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Where Were You?

That's the question everyone's asking one another today. "Where were you when you heard, where were you when you got the news?" People are asking, are remembering not what they were doing when they learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor or the tragedy of September 11. Israelis are recounting, are memorializing not the sudden shocking deaths of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. but the loss of their own iconic statesman Yitzchak Rabin.

A dozen years ago, on the 12th of the month of Cheshvan in the year 5756 on a day corresponding to November 4th, 1995 on the Gregorian calendar Yitzchak Rabin was assassinated as he left a peace rally in Tel Aviv. His killer, a religious man named Yigal Amir, staunchly disagreed with Rabin's support of the Oslo Accords and stated in a police interview the night of Rabin's death that he meant to "paralyze (Rabin) politically." When asked by the police interrogator if he regretted having taken the prime minister's life with his own hands, Amir replied "Heaven forbid." Of course, he did not.

In the lobby and downstairs hallway at school today a large series of panels commemorating the life and accomplishments of Rabin, as well as paying tribute to other world leaders whose lives have been lost to assassins, stood where Kitot Alef, Bet, and Gimel (First, Second, and Third Grade) usually dance to traditional Israeli folk music at recess. Tonight I attended a memorial service in the neighborhood synagogue down the street from our apartment, rising at the end with those assembled to sing the State of Israel's national anthem, HaTikvah--The Hope--for the first time ever while here in the Land itself. Tomorrow I understand there may be a memorial siren sounded, as is done each spring on Yom HaZikaron—The Day of Remembrance—at which time everyone will cease their activities, will stop secular pursuits like driving and sacred pursuits like praying and everything in between, to be still for a moment. In silence all of Israel will remember the man whose political life brought unprecedented hope to its people and whose sudden, shocking death brought indescribable sorrow to allies and adversaries alike all around the world.

Three summers ago on my first trip to Israel I stood with two dozen fellow educators and our teacher, the inspiring and incomparable Peter Geffen, around the graves of Rabin and his wife Leah in the military cemetery at Har Herzel. He led us in a slow and solemn version of Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu, or May Peace Yet Come Upon Us:

Salaam
Aleinu v'al Kol ha Olam
Salaam, Shalom

Peace
To us and all the world
Peace, peace

Just a few months ago, in July of this year, I stood on a wooden deck drilled into an age-old granite boulder in Yosemite. On a Saturday morning in Makom Shalom, Camp Tawonga's sanctuary whose name in English means Place of Peace, I stood beside the songleaders Gal and Isaac with the Torah spread out on a table in front of us, in front of the community and sang this same song with all of them, this time with the Arabic words taught to us by the visiting Palestinian Muslim campers and staff:

Siahelo asalemo al aina
Wal al jamia
(with apologies for the butchered Arabic transliteration)

More peace over us
And over the world

That is what the man beside whose grave I stood, the man who perished even before the birth of the 10 year olds who read tonight in synagogue the words of his final address, wanted: peace for us here in Israel, peace for all the world, peace for you wherever you are. Two days after Rabin's death President Bill Clinton stood beside leaders from around the Middle East and throughout the world, eulogizing the loss of Israel's prime minister during the week in which the Torah tells of the testing of Abraham and the near-sacrifice of his own son whose name Rabin shared. One Yitzchak saved, one lost. The final words of that eulogy continue to resonate through the lexicon of Israel's history: "Shalom, chaver," President Clinton said in conclusion. Goodbye, friend.

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