After Hebron
On the morning of Purim 5754 (25 February 1994) the world was shocked to hear the news of the massacre of Muslims at prayer in the mosque in Hebron. The perpetrator was a religious Jew. I felt that the strongest possible condemnation was called for, and within an hour I had issued the following statement, which was carried by the national press:
I am shocked and grieved by the devastating criminal act perpetrated in Hebron today which has cost so many lives. Such an act is an obscenity and a travesty of Jewish values. That it should have been perpetrated against worshippers in a house of prayer at a holy time makes it a blasphemy as well.
Our hearts go out to the families who have been bereaved. As a religious leader I unequivocally condemn all acts of violence against the innocent, regardless of by whom and against whom they are committed.
Violence is evil. Violence committed in the name of God is doubly evil. Violence against those engaged in worshipping God is unspeakably evil. In the name of God I pray that in the light of today’s tragedy no effort is spared to ensure the safety and security of the three great world faiths to express themselves freely in the Holy Land.
I issued similar statements after the tragic reprisal attacks at Afula and Hadera.
Three days later, on 28 February 1994, Jewish and Catholic leaders met in London to mark the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel, and I used the occasion to make a further statement about the events in Hebron. It was difficult not to sense the historic resonances of the moment. On the one hand was a significant move to mend the troubled relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people. On the other were the still-fresh reverberations of Jewish-Arab violence. In my address I said this:
We are gathered tonight to celebrate a moment of light in what has been a long history of darkness. In diplomatic terms, perhaps the establishment of relations between the Holy See and Israel is not a major event. But set against the centuries of a relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people which the Pope has described as one of “internecine enmity and oppression” it is a powerful gesture of reconciliation.
It carries to its logical conclusion the process set in motion by Nostra Aetate and taken further by the present Pope when, in the synagogue in Rome, he spoke of the Jewish people as Christianity’s “beloved elder brothers.”
It extends the new relationship from Jews as individuals to Israel as the sovereign state of the eternal people in their ancestral home. As Jews we salute the courage with which the Church has wrestled with her teachings in the aftermath of the Holocaust, knowing – as we all must know – that in our battle against evil we must do our utmost to ensure that our own most sacred teachings are not unwittingly the cause of a legacy of hatred and contempt.
Every faith must wrestle with itself in this century of unprecedented destruction of human life. The Catholic Church has done so with a determination that is both admirable and exemplary. It did so in Nostra Aetate (the 1965 Vatican II Declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions), and it has continued to do so since. I extend my congratulations to those on both sides who made this agreement possible, and to those many others who have worked so hard to create a climate of goodwill and mutual respect between our two faiths.
But in the light of the terrible event in Hebron let me say one more thing. We live, we say, in a secular age. And we, Jews and Catholics alike, know only too acutely the price humanity pays in fragile relationships, broken dreams and the impoverishment of human aspiration when we exile God from the moral and spiritual horizons of mankind.
But we forget at our peril one fact. The secularisation of society began when people of goodwill came to the conclusion that religion brought war, not peace; conflict, not conciliation; intolerance, not love; closed minds instead of open hearts. And incredibly, after all we know about the devastating cost of religious and racial conflict, in which there are no winners, only losers, there are still too many areas of the world where people are prepared to kill other human beings, created in the image of God, and to do so in the name of God.
In the name of God it must end. And it must be brought to an end by men and women of God who have the courage to say that hatred, triumphalism, violence, murder, the estrangement between peoples, and the imposition of truth by force, have no part to play in the life of faith. Between brothers, there must be love; and between enemies, peace. There is no other way.
If the massacre at Hebron has taught us one thing, it is this: that each of us, within our own faiths and across the boundaries between faiths, must double and redouble our efforts for reconciliation and peace. If religion is part of the problem, then religion must be part of the solution. As a religious leader I say, loudly and unequivocally, that violence and vengeance blaspheme the name of God in an age when God is calling on us not to destroy the world He made.
Against this darkness, the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel is a small candle of light. But as the Jewish mystics said: even a little light banishes much darkness. And there is still much darkness we need to banish. May this agreement be the herald of others between different peoples and faiths. And let us pray that other estranged brothers may yet meet and talk and find reconciliation.
Despite these statements and those of Israeli leaders, religious voices were heard in Israel defending the massacre. This, to me, was profoundly disturbing. There may be legitimate concerns about the wisdom, consequences and detailed provisions of Israel’s peace process. But these cannot be addressed by acts of terrorism or threats of civil disobedience without damaging the very structure of Israel as a democratic state and undermining the credibility of Judaism as a religion of peace. Hebron exposed deep tensions at the heart of contemporary religious Zionism. Accordingly I felt the need to reiterate some fundamental Judaic principles in my pastoral letter before Passover. The following section was published in The Times on 26 March 1994.
The rabbis said that in telling the story of Passover, “we must begin with the shame and end with the praise.” There is no doubt this year as to what constitutes the shame. Its name is Hebron.
We know the pain that lay behind the atrocity and some responses to it. Jews have suffered much this century, perhaps too much for a people to bear. The Holocaust. The persecution of Jews in Communist and Arab lands. Israel’s wars. The terrorist attacks by Palestinians since the signing of the peace agreement.
We say in the Haggadah, the Passover compilation of readings, “It was not one man alone who rose against us to destroy us. It happens in every generation.” This year, even after the film Schindler’s List, we know that antisemitism did not die at Auschwitz. It merely went underground to sprout again in new and hybrid forms.
Against the backdrop of constant violence against Jews, a mood of fear and anger and resentment is understandable. But in Judaism to understand is not to forgive. What is unforgivable is not merely the act itself – the brutal murder of worshippers at prayer – but failure in some quarters to condemn and in others even to endorse an act of pure barbarity. That a murderer should be spoken of as a hero, a saint, a Samson; that a rabbi should declare that a million Arab lives are not worth a Jewish fingernail – these are a disgrace to Judaism and enough to make us hang our heads in shame.
For there is a question that haunts the festival of Pesach. Why did God bring it about that the Jewish people should be born in exile, forged in slavery, and made to suffer brutal oppression? To this the Bible gives an unequivocal answer. You shall not do what others have done to you. “Do not oppress the stranger, because you know what it feels like to be a stranger: you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” What you suffered, you shall not inflict. You experienced injustice, therefore practise justice. You know what it is like to be a slave, therefore do not enslave others. You have been victims, therefore you may not be oppressors. You have been murdered, therefore do not join the ranks of the murderers. Until we have understood this we have not understood Judaism, however religious we are.
There is a moment of transcending moral majesty in the Seder, the service of Passover evening. We spill drops of wine at the mention of the plagues as symbolic tears for their Egyptian victims. We do not say Hallel during the last days of Pesach because, say some authorities, we mourn for the Egyptians drowned at the Red Sea. The midrash, or traditional homily, says that at the Sea, when the angels began to sing a hymn of victory, God stopped them with the words, “My creatures are drowning, and you wish to sing?” The Egyptians were Israel’s persecutors, tyrants and child-murderers. Yet the Torah says, “Do not hate an Egyptian, because you were once a stranger in his land.”
This is not Diaspora mentality, nor is it the ethic of a timorous minority. It is Judaism plain and simple. It is what gave us the moral strength which proved to be, as the prophets said it would, more powerful than any military might. Everyone has a duty to live by this truth; above all, religious Jews.
Yes: innocent Jews have been murdered by Arab terrorists and few Islamic voices have been raised in protest. Yes: Israel must negotiate peace through strength and not yield to moral double standards.
But we did not survive two thousand years of powerlessness to become brutalised by power. We did not outlive our enemies so that we could become like them. We did not survive Pharoah so that we could become like Pharoah. That is one of the messages of Passover, and we forget it at our peril.