Congregation Emanu-El of Westchester: Sermon Archives

ROSH HASHANAH - Saturday, September 27, 2003

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out ----
And to whom I was like to give offense
Mending Wall by Robert Frost

The initial wall was a wall of soldiers. Israeli soldiers. Two young men and a woman. They sat at a checkpoint on the border between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. One by one the Palestinians filed by. Men in checkered kefiyahs, women in long black dresses, scarves covering their hair, bags of fresh figs to sell in the market. A long line of Arabs, and myself. I was accompanying a Palestinian friend, Nadia, to her house in Bethlehem. Slowly, methodically, the line progressed. Slowly, methodically a soldier looked at me, opened my passport. Nationality. American. Did he wonder why I was in that line with Arabs.? On some days, Nadia avoids the official army checkpoint and walks through the grove of olive trees skirting the border. She walks on paths trampled by many other Palestinians who enter and leave Israel without official scrutiny. My mind wandered to images of Jews in World War II who, suitcase in hand, scrambled over the Alps, the Dolomites to flee from Austria, from Italy. We are skilled in leaving. In entering. The wandering Jew. Always finding a way to circumvent barriers. How else would we have survived? The wandering Jew. A single suitcase. Packing for a lifetime. There are many ways to cross a border. To avoid walls erected by soldiers. We know.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out --- and whether I could wall them out.

Nadia lives on the main road into Bethlehem. According to a master plan, in the future a wall will run through the middle of her street. This is the wall being built out of stone, barbed wire by Israel to separate Israeli and Palestinian. Nadia's next door neighbor a Palestinian Christian has a home on one side of the proposed route of the wall. His tourist shop lies on the other side of the road. If the wall follows the plan, instead of walking 20 yards across the road from his house to his store he will be forced, twice a day, coming and going, to walk for a quarter of an hour to the Israeli checkpoint --- and, perhaps, wait and wait and wait . This is a wall behind which hatred will fester.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out
And to whom I was like to give offence

Over the centuries Jews have dwelled within walls erected by others. Never happily. The Romans imprisoned us within the walls of Jerusalem. In Poland the Nazis herded us into the Warsaw ghetto. It is ironic that now the Israelis are building a wall to keep the Palestinians out, or in some places in. And once again Jews will be imprisoned. This time by their own doing. No, not really their own doing. The wall was built brick by brick, suicide bomb by suicide bomb, burning bus by burning bus, gutted cafŽ by gutted cafŽ. The mortar for this wall is anger. But once again in the words of Robert Frost "Something there is that doesn't like a wall," and will find a way to breach that wall. How do you counter a Muslim culture that extols misguided martyrdom --- as if martyrdom ever makes sense. How do you counter those who believe it is noble to sacrifice your life for Allah, instead of choosing life - that you may live. For the Jew there is no glory in death. And so the wall is not a wall of choice. It is a wall of last resort.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
Who I was walling in - or walling out.
Walls, Walls. Walls.

Walls come in many shapes - and many forms. But those walls most difficult to breach are invisible walls. These are the walls we erect when we do not see another person --- when we deny the reality of their presence. É.of their very existence.

Norman Podhoretz, retired editor of Commentary Magazine wrote. "The fervent wish of the Arab world to wipe the Jewish state off the map derives not from anything Israel has done or failed to do, but rather from its existence alone." He may be correct --- at least as concerns Israel. That is why the leaders of the Arab world have never wanted to solve the Palestinian problem; instead they have nurtured it, maintained it for all the world to see.

Some would argue that Israel is only a microcosm of Jewish history. Has the world ever welcomed our existence? Here I would answer yes. We have flourished in many lands and in many times. One facet of the Jewish problem is our own problem. We never feel quite safe. Not completely at home and this self perception erodes our confidence. Of course there are those who dislike us, who would cast us aside but today, in many parts of the world we thrive; especially in America where the most dangerous threat to our existence might be our own apathy, our own neglect of the precious gift of a unique heritage and identity. But still we strive for acceptance.

Everyone wants to be accepted, and the tragedy of contemporary Israeli is that both Palestinians and Israelis have reinforced invisible walls of rejection - one for the other.

This summer I wandered on a street of walls. Closed up, shuttered houses. Behind these walls Arabs lived, Arabs prohibited from leaving their homes. They were under curfew. The town was Hebron, the heart of the West Bank where, the day before my visit, Israel had arrested 150 members of a Hamas cell.

The tension in Hebron dates back many centuries. It was in that town that the patriarch, Abraham, was buried. If you remember the story Abraham had two sons, Isaac, the father of the Israelites and Ishmael, father of the Arabs. Some say the sibling rivalry of the sons of Abraham was the precursor of the present tension. But what is often forgotten is that, when Abraham died, his sons, Isaac and Ishmael reunited to bury their father, to bury their past. Will the day come when Arab and Israeli will gather together to bury the past before they bury the future? Former President Jimmy Carter, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize on the eve of the war in Iraq, commented "We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children." But on that day when I wandered the streets of Hebron there was no peace.

An eerie silence embraced the town. The streets were barren. Not a single Arab. Not a single visitor - except myself - and Israeli soldiers hunkered behind sand bags or on the turret of tanks. I walked from one end of Hebron to the other imagining myself in the role of Gary Cooper, reliving a scene from "High Noon". Suddenly Arabs would burst out of the saloon, guns blazing. My way took me past an intersection where a Jewish resident of Hebron had been killed. The sniper's bullet pierced the Torah scroll he carried. I continued past the marker where an Arab, dressed as an Orthodox Jew blew himself up, and added 14 Jews to his toll. Past a home where one of the early settlers has lived for 14 years. She is the mother of 14 children. Her house displays 14 bullet holes in the plaster board walls. And from those streets in Hebron a Hamas cell laid their plan to bomb a bus in Jerusalem. A video captured the image of the bomber with a rifle in one hand, a Koran in the other.

On that day in Hebron my destination was a small square and, as I approached I left the silence behind and heard the singing of young children with side curls, peot, laughing and playing. A vivid contrast to the shuttered houses 100 yards away. This was the center of the Jewish settlement of 40 families in Hebron. In an office not far from the archeolgical remains of a wall dating to the time of Abraham I met with David Wilder, spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron. David came from a Reform Jewish family in New Jersey and, after the Yom Kippur war, made aliyah to Israel, settled in a Yeshivah and eventually found his way to Hebron. As we walked through the tiny Jewish enclaves, surrounded by the teeming Arab population he shared his philosophy: "Eretz Yisrael for Am Yisrael." The land of Israel for the People of Israel --- and David had a dream that someday, in his words, "Hebron would be Arab Rein." Arab rein. Arab pure. Free of Arabs. Without Arabs. I had heard that expression once before. More than a half century ago. Except then the words were Juden rein. It was the 1940's and there were those who dreamed of a day when Germany would be Juden Rein. Free of Jews.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.
And to whom I was like to give offense

Arab rein. Disturbing words, especially from a member of the Jewish community. Symptomatic of a country where there is a growing tolerance of intolerance. Both parties have their fanatics. And, as David spoke, I thought of the words of Hillel: "If I am not for myself who will be but if I am for myself alone what am I?" One nation can not thrive at the expense of another. After all, Abraham had two sons --- now separated by walls, visible and invisible.

Before I built a wall ----

On my last day in Israel I stood with Gideon, a longtime friend, before an ancient wall; a cherished wall. The Western Wall. I asked Gideon "What of the future? According to polls 70% of Palestinians and Israelis desire peace but they seem to move further and further away from that goal."

Gideon smiled. A time worn smile of longing that has been imprinted on our very personality; hammered out on the anvil of time.

"Maybe someday," Gideon responded. "Maybe someday people will tire of burying their sons. Maybe. Or maybe someday the 70% will prevail over the fanatic minority, or maybe someday new leaders will accept the risk of new strategies to replace those that have failed. Maybe someday."

Then his face brightened and he approached the Western Wall. "In the meantime," He said, "In the meantime" --- and he picked a leaf from a plant forcing its way through a crack in the stone. The plant, with green BB size fruits and pink flowers spread out in every direction.

"This plant is the caper, Dan. It grows wild in Israel. And emerges wherever there is a crack in the stone; it only needs the smallest space. If you cut back the caper it grows again. Stronger and stronger.

"They say the Jewish people is like the caper. No matter how often history has cut us back we re-emerge. Stronger. Call it the indomitable will.

"And so" he sighed --- "in the meantime, we will wait, and we will survive and never lose hope; for what is life without hope? What is life? So let us hope and pray and work for the day when Arab and Jew will sit under their vine and under their fig tree and none will make them afraid --- for the walls will have disappeared.