In an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post on April 30 Arik Ascherman, the venerable former leader of Rabbis for Human Rights, addressed one of the primary objectives of his newly formed organization, Haqel: Jews and Arabs in Defense of Human Rights: “preventing the takeover of of Palestinian lands in the occupied territories.”
He recounts a visit to Uja village in the Jordan Valley, near Kochav Hashahar, whose goal was to allow Palestinian shepherds to graze their flocks in the face of the “growing number of settlements and outposts” that prevents their access to the land. However, there have been no new Jewish communities built in the area for a decade at least.
As Ascherman describes it, several of the fourteen activists, includng Ascherman, were injured by the “iron bars, wooden sticks and stones” deployed by settler attackers. This violence, he informs the reader, is the “inevitable result of 50 years of absolute rule over another people.”
While any law-abiding individual will agree with his denunciation of random violence, whether or not his description fits the facts, I am bemused by Ascherman’s unrestrained obsession with “occupation” as the root cause of violence. I am not aware of any indication in his widely publicized activities and pronouncements of equally fervent denuciations of orchestrated terror by the Palestinian leadership or recognition of Israeli claims to settlement in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”). As I pondered the quandary of this stance by a well-known Jewish spokesperson and leader, I was reminded of a popular refrain sometimes directed at me by my sainted mother: Charity begins at home.
As a teenager in Borough Park in the fateful years leading to the rebirth of Israel after the Holocaust, I belonged to a small Zionist group whose primary objective was to raise funds for our “struggling brothers and sisters in Eretz Yisrael.” Like many other Jews benumbed by the incrompensible devastation whose families had found sanctuary in the “Goldene Medina,” my Hungarian-born parents displayed what in hindsight I can only describe as an inordinate sense of commitment to their adopted land. Even as they mourned the genocide of Eurpoean Jewry, they sought to indoctrinate in their children the primacy of their loyalty as citizens of the United States of America (even to the point of regarding President Franklin Roosevelt as a fervent defender of Europe’s Jews). My mother did not try to prevent my juvenile fund-raising for Jews in Palestine, but she cautioned me not to forget that I was an American. “Charity begins at home,” she would remonstrate.
As the new state struggled to survive, and as I continued in the van of young American Jews active in its behalf, my mother continued to deploy the phrase. But with the passage of time, I detected a welcome nuance in her use of it. To some extent, I suspect she felt more comfortable with her American identity. More than that, however, I am persuaded that she had found a deeper meaning to the “home” where charity is said to begin. “Home,” she seemed now to comprehend, embodies not only “where” you are but also “who” you are. Yes, an American, but also a Jew who empathized with the pain and pride of co-religionists in Israel reborn.
My mother died in 1956. Ten years later, my father now retired from his small business making neckties, realized his dream of a visit to Israel. He had spent his brief stay there in the shtetl-like Haredi enclave of Jerusalem’s Me’ah She’arim neighborhood. On his return, as I drove him back from JFK airport to Borough Park, he responded with quiet joy to my inquiry: To think that Hashem would allow me to walk in the streets of Yerushlayim, in the Jewish homeland. This was before the Six-Day war and the reunification of the city.
As for me, my ardor for the Jewish state remained undimmed, and my activity on its behalf continued, I found myself now sometimes reflecting on the justice of some of Israel’s actions in its ongoing battle for peace. As a dean at one of the colleges of the City University of New York, I was confronted by left-leaning colleagues—and a growing number of pro-Palestinian partisans—who propounded the narrative that the sole cause of the conflict was Israel’s agression, primarily the “occupation” of Palestinian lands.
In my infrequent visits with him, my father would listen to my questions about some of Israel’s policies and actions. I am sure he never doubted my unstinting commitment to the justice of Israel’s cause, but at one point, he said: We must never forget who we are. As your mother often said: Charity begins at home. And then he quoted the Talmudic sage Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who is for me?”
Would that Rabbi Arik Ascherman would internalize the wisdom of Hillel.