October 1993

I'M SCARED STIFF!

The news of the reapproachment
between Israel and the P.L.O. and the ceding of large chunks of Judea and Samana
to Arab self rule frightens the living daylights out of me and should no less
frighten all caring and thinking Jews who have a sense of Jewish history and
Jewish destiny.

It seems clear to me that any
honest appreciation of real politik and the irridentist nature of Arab nationalism, particularly at this
juncture, is cause enough for terrible foreboding. But that's not what scares
me out of my wits. On real-politik I perhaps can defer to others,
however strong my own convictions, and pray to G-d for His intervention which
since the destruction of the Temple, has never been so palpably evident as in
our own days, and hope that once again He will confound the best laid plans of
men.

What doesn't let me sleep at
night is the Torah's warning ...if you don't drive out

the inhabitants of the
land.., those that remain will he thorns in your eyes and pricks

in your sides and they shall
harass you... it shall be (Heaven forbid) even as I

imagined to do to them, 1
will do to you!... (Bamidhar 34:55,56)

I have not advocated nor do I
now advocate the driving out of the Arab inhabitants from our ancient
patrimony. I don't believe that his Pasuk necessarily give us that
mandate today. But certainly its spirit still obtains and it does not allow us
to give away any part of Eretz Yisroel willingly save at our direst peril. We
court, the possibility, G-d forbid, of Hashem changing sides. During the debate
before W.W.1I relating to the Peel Commission, which called for the partition
of what was then known as Palestine, overwhelmingly the Gedolim, the
leading Jewish decisors of Jewish law,
opposed the notion of partition of the land of Israel on theological
grounds-the argument only was whether since at that time we didn't posses any
part of the land, we should take whatever is given to us so long as we did not
expressly forfeit our claim to the rest of our geographic inheritance. And some
even opposed that. BUT NO ONE IN HIS WILDEST IMAGINATION would believe that on
our own we would give up part of the land: that we would agree to a Third
Partition. (The first was in 1922, when England, the mandatory power,
arbitrarily truncated TransJordan from Palestine, and the second, of course,
was the United Nations 1947 resolution partitioning whatever remained.)

My nightmare is the MEDRASH
SHMUEL cited by the Rashbam on the verse we read on Rosh Hashanah.
And it was after these things that G-d sorely tried Isaac. After
these things, the Rashbam tells us, refers to what immediately precedes in
the Torah narrative - The covenant between Abraham and Avimelech, King of the
Philistines. Abraham voluntarily sealed that compact with seven ewe lambs of
the flock, thereby relinquishing whatever legal hold he or his children were to
have on the Philistines' land which was conceived originally to he part of Eretz
Yisroel. For this, Hashem severely rebukes him and subjects the patriarch to
the anguish of the Akeda (the Binding of Isaac) and proclaims: 1 swear!
because of the seven lambs you gave Avimelech, his descendants will wage seven
wars against you and prevail every time. I swear! that his descendant will
destroy the seven hallowed sanctuaries that were built from the time of the
Exodus through the Second Temple!

And most of all, I am seized
by an awful dread that I'm beginning to witness again, G-d forbid, And he
said: I will hide my face from them... for they are a very forward-upside-down
generation. They have roused Me to jealousy with a no god... and I will
rouse them to jealousy with a no people. (Devarim 32:20-22)

Looking
at the architects of this coming together with the P.L.O. on both sides. Can
there be any question that it is precisely those who have taken on a no god
who attempt now to vex us with a no people?

At this moment, I hear the
ominous alarm sounded by Jeremiah (30:5) - We have heard a voice of
trembling, of fear and not of peace!

A young man came to me after
hearing one of my fire and brimstone exhor­tations to heed the plain sense of
Biblical verses. He said to me Rabbi, you're a fundamentalist, a Zealot!
What's the difference between you and Khoumenini's legions and the Hamas? All
fundamentalists, whatever their religious stripe, are sure that they have the
only truth - the literal word of G-d which allows them to die and to kill for
their cause. Isn't that the meaning of Jonestown and the massacre at Waco this
year? I answered him, My fundamentalism is true - How can you com­pare a
faith 3500 and more years old-still vital - in tact, and young-with fly by
night cults? How old is Hamas? 50 years? How old is the P.L.O.? hardly 30 years
and we manage to lump our faith, an unbroken tradition that has proved itself
and remained defiantly whole for 3½ millennia with a bedraggled and motley gang
of blackmailers, murderers, and terrorists who were coming apart after less
than thirty years. That's why you can't equate or lump us together with the
flimsy and transient orthodoxies that abound all about us - here today and gone
tomorrow. Read Thomas Friedman in the Sunday times, (Sept. 5, 1993) where he levels
the playing field between the 29 year old band of murderers and the
hoariest of nations - the fountainhead of religion, of morality, of G-d
devotion.

Rashi asks - Why does the
Torah immediately follow this long litany of curses near the end of Deuteronomy
with the proclamation: You are standing this day, all of you, before the L-rd
your G-d: your little ones, your wives and the stranger... from the hewer of
wood to the drawer of water. And he answers: When Israel heard the
imprecations their faces turned green and they wondered who could ever survive
this onslaught of curses. Moses reassured them - you've roused G-d's anger
against you many times and He still hasn't put an end to you - you're still all
here -standing before the L-rd your G-d!

I may be a fundamentalist.
But you know why? Because you are all still standing, all of you, before the
L-rd your G-d. All the curses have been realized in spades and many times over
and are no longer mere threats as in days of Moses, and we are still here,
standing. And it is because of this that I cannot easily dismiss what the Torah
tells me plainly and that I cannot sleep when I think, Heaven forfend, of the consequences that can come
rushing in the wake of a frivolous give-away of the most time-sacred real
estate a benevolent Providence has bequeathed to us. That's why I'm scared
stiff'.

Rabbi Zevulun Charlop