September 1988

ELON MOREH

It was Saturday night several
weeks ago in Jerusalem. I received a call from Zevulun Lieberman, a boyhood
friend of mine who is now a distinguished and well known Rabbi in Brooklyn. He
had invited me to come to Elon Moreh where he had just completed
building a home. Elon More/i is in the heart of Shomrom: the
festering hub of Arab unrest in the so called territories. It overlooks the
ancient city of Shechem, probably bet­ter known today as Nablus. From
the days of the patriarch Jacob Shechem has been an ill fated locale for
our people. One goes there at his or her own peril, at least that's the
impression one gets from reading the newspapers and watching T.V., and, in
fact, the risks cannot be altogether dismissed.

My immediate reaction was to
find a nice way to say no without betraying unseemly fear. But as I was groping
for the right words which would allow me to decline with dignity, I suddenly
realized that I had to go, and for a number of reasons.

You see, Rabbi Lieberman and
I were raised on the same block in the Bronx on Crotona Park East, and, as far
we knew, we were the only Zevuluns in the Borough. I came from a prominent home
whose roots were in Jerusalem. On the other hand, my namesake came from a poor
hardworking family, who, at the time, were not yet particularly celebrated. And
here we are years later: He is brave enough to put down roots on the front line
of Jewish aspirations; and Pm too timid to visit him.

Beyond that there was a
striking coincidence between his invitation and the portion of the Torah, Re-ey,
that was being read that week. Indeed, not two hours before he called me on
Motzaay Shabbat, at the Mincha service, I heard the declaration
that begins Re-ey

(l1;26, 29:30) Behold I set
before you today a blessing and a curse....and it shall come to pass when the
L-rd your G-d brings you unto the land....that you shall set the blessing on
Mt. Gerizim and the curse on Mt. Ebal....beyond the Jordan.... in the land of
the Caananite.... over against Gilgal (which is the immediate vicinity of Shechem)
at Elonay Moreh.

In the face of this uncanny
coincidence I had to go. I took a bus which dropped me off at Tzomet Hatupuach
the Juncture of the Apple a nondescript bus stop in the mid­dle of Shomron,
where my friend was to pick me up. On the bus I met Dr. Leo Landman and his
wife who were also going to visit Rabbi Lieberman. Dr. Landman is the dean of
the Bernard Revel Gradute School at Yeshiva University. It was a little late
and while we were waiting, I observed four Israeli policemen in their well
creased uniform standing adjacent to their police car stopping all traffic as
it was coming by and closely examining the drivers and the passengers,
oftentimes ordering the hood ~lifted and the trunk opened. What struck me was
that the policeman didn't look much different than the Arab drivers they
stopped. We came to the ready conclusion that they must be of Sephardic origin
whose features and coloring were very similar to the Arabs. And, indeed, I went
over to one of the policemen and said, in Hebrew, it's hard to tell the
players apart here. He looked at me noncommittally, and enough so, to make me
feel uncomfortable.

Just at that moment, and none
too soon, Rabbi Lieberman arrived. We got into his car and were surprised to
see on the seat next to him, now sandwiched between us as I was sitting up
front, an Uzi gun. He explained that no Jew living in that area would ven­ture
alone in a car without an Uzi at his side. I said, Zevulun do you know how to
shoot one of these things? When we lived on Crotona Park that wasn't exactly
the kind of toy we carried around, although I'm not so sure that's still true
today. He replied that there was mandatory target practice and that he had
become, believe it or not, quite a marks­man. I told him about my conversation
a moment before with the Israeli policeman, and he said that they, indeed
happen to be Arabs. In wonderment I said, Arabs in Israeli police uniforms
carrying guns. He replied, not much has been made of this in the newspapers,
but more than 30% of the Arab constabularies who were forced to resign their
commissions by their fellow Arabs returned to the Israeli police force the last
days and are sufficiently trusted to carry guns in the performance of their
duties. Before I bring you to Elon Moreh, he added, I want to take you to Shechem.
I said, Shechem! that's like going into the fire. He reassured us that he
goes there quite often on his own and that there was little cause for
apprehension.

When we got to the city he
brought us to a still functioning Yeshiva which stands next to the gravesites
of Joseph and his sons Ephraim and, Menashe and which directly abuts two Arab
schools that have the reputation of being the most notorious denizens of Arab
insurrection. There were about haifa dozen Israeli soldiers on duty there, but Zevulun,
with his Uzi on his back, took us on a stroll beyond the immediate protection
of the soldiers to see recent archeological digs which uncovered much of the
original city of Shechem which dates back to the dawn of Jewish history. And,
then, we walked through several of the streets of the town itself unafraid of
the sullen presence of its Arab inhabitants. I say unafraid because Rabbi
Lieberman's fearlessness was contagious. Nonetheless, I was happy when he was
finally taking us to his home.

As we were climbing the hills
surrounding Shechem on the way to Elon Moreh we passed between
the two great mountains, that was the agenda of the Synagogue reading that
Shabbat and again that very morning Mt. Genzim and Mt. Ebal. It's an amazing
thing about these two mountains. In shape and size they appear almost
identical. Yet Mt. Ebal upon which the curse was set is to this day almost
entirely naked of any growth. Save for a few scraggly trees, far and in
between, it is an otherwise forbidding rocky pro­trusion from the ground an
intimidating barrenness. Mt. Gerizin, on the other hand, on which the blessing
was set nearly 4000 years ago was covered with a lush and vivid green carpet.
Through the millennia they gave and continue to give testimony to that moment
when Israel first crossed the Jordan and as they faced these mountains, heard:

Behold I set before you this
day a blessing and a curse.

But all this was only prelude
to my visit to Elon Moreh itself. A beautiful little com­munity
bustling, vibrant, unperturbed by its salient position, surrounded as it is by
enemies. But it wasn't the buildings or the institutions, including, believe it
or not, two Young Israels, which, indeed, were impressive, that made this day
for me unforgettable. It was the people, so quick to smile, robust, their eyes
laughing. On their face there was none of the hard strain of the fanatic only
the luminous glow of idealism.

How much further than
geography were these people separated from their rich and powerful brethren in
America who shake and quake with fear at every threatening

headline and biased news
report!          -

Rabbi Zevulun Charlop