Kehilla’s Covenant of Peace Proposal:
A Personal Introduction
by Rabbi Burt Jacobson

An Israeli Dove and the Idea of a Two-State Solution

I became convinced about the necessity for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian quandry in the early 1970s. My decision had to do with a fateful meeting with an Israeli dove who became an important hero to me: Arie Lova Eliav.

I visited Israel in 1969, and a good friend of mine invited me to meet Lova Eliav, who was a member of Prime Minister Golda Meir’s cabinet. Before becoming a leader of the Labor Party Eliav had lead an exciting and distinguished life. During World War II, he had fought with the Jewish units of the British army. At that time, the British held the League of Nations’ mandate over Palestine, and their policy was to prohibit all Jewish immigration into Eretz Yisrael. Appalled by this British policy, Eliav left the British military and took command of a ship that ferried Holocaust survivors from Europe to Palestine, smuggling them into the country at night. Later, Eliav fought against the British in the Hagganah, the underground Jewish army. When Israel was established in 1948, the new government gave him the responsibility of bringing the Jews of Iran to Israel. Later, he became Israel’s ambassador to the U.S.S.R., and while there he investigated the condition of Soviet Jewry, and wrote the first book exposing Soviet anti-Semitism to the world.

After the 1967 war, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol asked Eliav to survey the Palestinian refugee camps. What he saw was atrocious. He returned to Jerusalem and reported his findings to Eshkol. The Prime Minister seemed open to doing something radical about the refugees, and Eliav spoke to the directors of the World Bank, who were willing to finance a project to end the refugee problem once and for all. Unfortunately, Eshkol died in 1969, and the new Prime Minister, Golda Meir, was entirely opposed to doing anything about the refugees.

A few days before our meeting, Eliav had been released from the hospital following a heart attack. I remember him in his dressing gown, nervously pacing his living room. “She won’t let me go to King Hussein,” he told us in an irritated voice. “We could do it now. It’s an opportune time. We could work with Hussein and end the entire Arab refugee problem now . . . but she won’t let me go!”

Golda Meir told Eliav to hold his tongue and threatened him with the loss of his political stature if he maintained his position on the refugees. He did go public, and she followed through with her threat. Nonetheless, Eliav was later elected to the Knesset, where he served from 1972-1979. In the early 70s, Eliav wrote a book, Land of the Heart, in which he put forth his two-state proposal to end the Palestinian refugee problem. This was the first time that a highly respected mainstream Israeli statesman had come forward with such a proposal, and his book electrified the Israeli public. Because of Eliav’s reputation and prestige, his dovish views were not considered treasonous. In fact, in 1988, he received his country’s highest civilian honor, the Israel Prize for lifetime contributions to the state. Later, he was considered for the position of President of Israel.

My brief encounter with this courageous man, and my reading of his book forced me to examine the Palestinian claim for the first time, and eventually to become an advocate for a two-state solution. This was not an easy decision for me to make, for there was precious little support among U.S. Jews in the 1970s for a dovish position on the Middle East. Even after I had made up my mind on the issue, personal clashes with Jews who disagreed with me brought up a great deal of anger and also caused me to experience guilt about being disloyal to Israel. I felt isolated, and became more and more frustrated at not being listened to. Finally, I became antagonistic towards Israel itself. Eventually I brought the issue to psychotherapy, and discovered the deeper roots of my anger. Having grown up in a Holocaust-influenced family where I learned to identify with the Jewish victims of the Nazis, I could not stand the thought that Jews, who had been persecuted and victimized for centuries, were now victimizing another people in such a callous manner. I was then able to come to a more balanced position on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

A Change of Heart

I started Kehilla Community Synagogue in Berkeley in 1984. In my founding paper, Re-Visioning the American Synagogue, I wrote that Kehilla would offer

support for the state of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people, and as a place where the Jewish dream for national freedom can continue to be experimented with . . . We see our role in relation to Israel as one of creative partnership and dialogue . . . We believe that just as the Jewish people requires a homeland for those who choose to live there, so the Palestinian people must have its own homeland. We will work for this goal, both in the interests of justice for the Palestinians, and also to promote greater security and peace for Israelis. (pp. 4-5)

Most of my efforts around the Middle East since the early 1970s had to do with raising the issue of the Palestinian question in the Jewish community. My view of the problem focused on righting the injustices done to Palestinians by Zionists and, after 1948, by Israelis who consciously or unconsciously displaced indigenous Palestinian Arabs from their ancestral land.

In the last few years, however, I’ve undergone a major shift in my thinking. In 1996, I began a dialogue on the Middle East with my longtime friend, Eryn Kalish, a professional mediator who trains American Jews, Israelis and Palestinians in the art of Compassionate Listening. (For many years she served as the Chair of the Board of the Compassionate Listening Project.) Eryn had lost thirty three relatives in the Holocaust, and throughout her life has been deeply concerned for Israel’s survival and, later, with justice for the Palestinians. In our dialogue, I persuaded Eryn that she needed to study the issues in even more depth and that if she did so, she would find that the Palestinian grievances had to be addressed by Israel if there was ever going to peace between the two peoples. At the same time, Eryn convinced me that my quest for justice for the Palestinians did not sufficiently account for Jewish suffering and the woundedness brought about by the Holocaust. Eventually, Eryn and I came to see eye to eye.

A History of Tragedy

Living in Europe, early Zionist theoreticians believed that Eretz Yisrael – the Land of Israel – was “a land without a people,” and this false perception colored the entire Zionist enterprise. Of course, when Zionists began to visit and settle in Palestine, they discovered that there were Arabs living there. Beginning in 1901, the Jewish National Fund began to purchase land in Palestine. There were many debates about whether it was more appropriate to hire Palestinian Arabs as workers, keep them on as tenant farmers, or displace them. Years later, during the War for Independence in 1948, some Arabs simply abandoned their homes out of fear of what the Jews might do to them, but many Arabs were simply expelled by Jewish soldiers from their ancestral homes.

As I said above, we must also account for the affects of the Holocaust in creating the conflict. So many of the Jews who fled from Europe during those fateful years were not ideologically Zionists. They entered Palestine illegally only because the “civilized” nations of the world refused to provide them with refuge from the Nazis, and the land of Palestine was their only chance at physical survival. Now, ironically, it is the Palestinians that have no homeland.

Both peoples live in mortal fear of one another, and neither people has been willing to see and accept the full history and moral complexity of this tragic situation. Israel’s military occupation has been cruel and inhumane, and the terrorist tactics of the Palestinians are brutal. Eryn suggested to me that what we need first and foremost is empathy for the plight of both peoples, and that resolution and peace in the Middle East could only come about through the cultivation of compassion by each side for the plight of the other.

Each people needs to hear the story of the conflict as it is understood by the other. The Palestinians will need to renounce violence toward the Israeli people, and the Israelis will somehow need to help restore the lives of the Palestinians by ending the occupation and making it possible for Palestinians to live in dignity and security in a homeland of their own. In the end, such a change in policy will redound in Israel’s favor: Once the hostilities end, Israel will be able to live without the fears of terrorist attacks and continuous war. Perhaps the two countries will eventually be able to create a cooperative economic bond.

Martin Buber and the Middle East

Although Martin Buber died in 1963, his life and writings remain the most profound testimony to what it can mean to be a spiritually-oriented Middle East peace activist today. And so I re-examined Buber’s approach to the issue. (see A Land of Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs, edited with Commentary by Paul R. Mendes-Flohr, Oxford University Press, 1983)) As early as 1917, Buber spoke about the need to make a place for native Arabs in the Jewish dream for the future of Eretz Yisrael. Central to Buber’s philosophical thought was his faith in the power of authentic “I and Thou” dialogue. He applied this principle to many areas of human endeavor, and to the conflict between the Soviet communism and Western democracy. For the quarter of a century that Buber lived in Eretz Yisrael, he was instrumental in creating forums that encouraged dialogue between Jews and Arabs, and he struggled with David Ben Gurion and other Israeli leaders in behalf of Palestinian rights.

As I re-examined Buber’s writings, the confluence between his call for dialogue and the aims of the Compassionate Listening Project became clear to me. I was also impressed by the work of Roger Fischer, William Ury and Bruce Patton of the Harvard Mediation Project in their use of a dialogical approach to international peacemaking, which they termed “Principled Negotiation” (see their book, Getting to Yes). Principled Negotiation is based on five essentials. Each party must

not bargain from preconceived positions, attempting to force the other side to change its position
focus on its own interests, i.e. its actual needs, desires, concerns
look for mutual gains wherever possible
insist that the results be based on fair standards independent of the will of either side
work together to create options that will satisfy both parties

I came to believe that it was more important for peace activists to insist on the necessity for authentic dialogue and principled negotiation between Israeli and Palestinian diplomats and negotiators than to make shrill and fruitless demands of the Israelis alone. “Israel out of the West Bank!” needed to be replaced with “Israelis and Palestinians need to hear one another!”*

The narrow and polarizing political approach to the Middle East that I had so often championed in the past - and that so many people and organizations on the Left seemed wedded to - must be replaced by a larger spiritual approach that will draw on people’s inherent longing for a world of compassion and peace. Such an approach would, in Eryn Kalish’s words, “draw on the immense power of goodness in the human soul, rather than focusing on the kind of ego-based conflict that characterizes power politics.”

I began a dialogue with David Cooper and I discovered that his thinking had been moving in the same direction as my own. On Yom Kippur evening in the Fall of 2002, David gave a brilliant and powerful sermon to 800 congregants in which he focused on the legitimacy of both the Israeli and the Palestinian narratives about the conflict, and on the need for people on both sides of the conflict to listen to one another’s stories in an open and compassionate way. David also addressed the great divide in the Jewish community, stating that we progressives needed to honor both the “guardians” of Israel’s security as well as the “prophetic” voices criticizing Israel’s refusal to allow the Palestinians a homeland of their own.

Toward and Interfaith Coalition

The Israeli right-wing view is well-represented by the leaders of the organized Jewish community in the United States by organizations such as the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee and the many local Jewish Community Relations Councils, but this position does not represent the views of the majority of American Jews. We need a courageous mainstream Jewish leadership that will speak truth to entrenched power. My hope is that the Covenant of Peace Coalition will become an organized voice for those of us who disagree with current Israeli policy and the aims of Palestinian terrorist groups. By the late Fall of 2002, I had concluded that we should make our appeal to mainstream synagogues, churches, mosques and other religious organizations. through the creation of a broad Jewish/Interfaith coalition based on three basic principles:

a cessation of all violence between Israelis and Palestinians
the centrality of Compassionate Listening and authentic dialogue between Jews, Israelis, and Palestinians
training Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in the art of Principled Negotiation

I embodied my vision in the first draft of Brit Shalom: Toward a Covenant of Peace in the Middle East. I named the document Brit Shalom to honor the memory of the Brit Shalom organization founded in 1925 by intellectuals in Jerusalem who believed in Martin Buber’s views about the nascent conflict. The founding document of that organization stated that

The object of the Association is to arrive at an understanding between Jews and Arabs as to the form of their mutual social relations in Palestine on the basis of absolute political equality of two culturally autonomous peoples, and to determine the lines of their co-operation for the development of the country.

In November, David, Eryn and I co-conducted a congregational Shabbaton on Israel and Palestine: Toward a Covenant of Peace. The first draft of Kehilla’s Brit Shalom was presented to attendees and Eryn led a short workshop in Compassionate Listening. Following the Shabbaton, a dozen members of Kehilla’s Middle East Action Committee spent a half year discussing, debating and refining the text of the document. Members of the Middle East Committee who participated in developing and refining spiritually-based document were: Joan Bernstein, Joel Brody, Barbara Epstein, Sue Goldberg, Judi Hirsch, Kristina Peterson, Michael Robin, Jae Scharlin, Allan Solomonow, Dolores Taller, Janet Tobacman, Beth Weinberg, and Daniel Weisberg. The final version was edited by David Cooper. During this time, Eryn Kalish and Janet Tobacman offered several Compassionate Listening workshops to members of Kehilla.

During the summer of 2003, Brit Shalom was presented to Kehilla’s Board of Trustees. Members of the Board offered further suggestions and criticisms. After four months of work, the Board approved the document. All together, the document went through fifteen drafts. In January of 2004, Brit Shalom was mailed to every member family of Kehilla, both for educational purposes and for congregational ratification. It was passed by an overriding majority of congregants at the end of February.