Divine spark lights future

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 15, 1996 | by Suzanne Fields

Jews are no strangers to tragedy. Tragedy fell upon them on more when Yitzhak R prime minister of Israel, was slain by a Jewish assassin, further drenching the Wailing Wall with the tears of mourners. Shimon Peres, the new prime minister, expressed his personal sadness when he addressed Congress, echoing the words of Lyndon B. Johnson after the assassination of President Kennedy, and before that the benediction spoken of Abraham Lincoln: "All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today. My senior partner is gone. Now he belongs to the ages."

In December, Jews all over the world celebrated Hanukkah by singing a Hebrew version of the hymn "Rock of Ages," a song that resonates with memories of Rabin, a rock of ages. Not without irony, Hanukkah celebrates the victory of Judah Maccabee and his followers, who 2,200 years ago won a great victory over the Syrians, enabling the Jews to reenter their Temple in Jerusalem -- just as Rabin and his Israeli soldiers successfully defended themselves against the Syrian army in the Six-Day War of 1967, enabling Israel to secure the Golan Heights.

History moves on but the conflicts remain. Now the defeated Syrians want to take back the Golan Heights that Rabin won, the strategic hills from which Syria shelled Israeli settlements. Peres, in a compromising mood, used the podium of Congress to appeal directly to Syrian President Hafez Assad. "Without forgetting the past, let us not look back," he told Assad. "Let fingertips touch a new, untested hope.... We shall stand ready to make demanding decisions if you are -- if Assad is."

But the Israelis, like the rest of us, must learn from history, and that means looking back. Even casual visitors to Israel are struck by the strategic importance of the Golan Heights, of how vulnerable Israel is revealed to be below. Peres clearly knows this in his mind, if not in his heart. "The Golan Heights is the last mountain we have" he says. "We shall not negotiate it for skimmed milk" But isn't any milk poured for the Israelis by the Syrians, no matter how rich with cream, likely to curdle?

Throughout history, Jews have felt forced to negotiate from weakness and to suffer the best deal their weakness would allow. The Holocaust taught Jews that evil can be so overwhelming that no negotiation can succeed before fighting. Jews in Israel became warriors and gained a reputation that they would stop at nothing to protect themselves.

Rabin, the gruff soldier, was such a Jew. He remembered the Holocaust and also emulated th courage of Maccabee. Survival, of course, requires more than a good defense. When the Maccabees entered Jerusalem, they found images of Greek gods in their Temple, pages of their Torah slashed and the Temple's altar awash in the blood of sacrificial pigs. They threw out the false gods, cleaned up the altar and rebuilt it to accommodate their sacred scrolls. But when they rededicated the holy site they discovered they had only a one-day supply of purified oil for their lamps on the altar. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days.

Hanukkah thus became the Festival of Lights, symbolic of light and truth, beginning with one candle on the first night and the addition of another on each of the following nights of the holiday. Hanukkah is about the spark of the divine in all of us made in God's image.

The life and death of Yitzhak Rabin continues to teach just that. He called the peace process "the battle for peace." And so the battle continues: Without an enduring struggle there can be no enduring peace.