December 1995

THE ASSASSINATION OF YITZCHAK RABIN O.B.M.

Fate placed me in Jerusalem
when Yitzchak Rabin o.b.m. was laid low by an assassin's bullet - a Jewish
assassin to boot. It was coincidently the day of my father's o.b.m. Yahrzeit (Cheshvan
12). The revulsion that washed over Israel and indeed, far beyond, wherever
Jews lived, will not quickly or easily be dissipated nor will its dismal
aftermath of indiscriminate blame placing.

On the Wednesday following -
still in Shiva - in the midst of authentic national grief for the fallen
leader, I was asked to give a shiur - a discourse on Jewish law - to our
rabbinic stu­dent's who are studying at Yeshiva's Gruss Center in Jerusalem and
to share with them what­ever other thoughts I felt may be appropriate.

The Torah portion for that
week, as the whole world was to learn from President Clinton's splendid eulogy,
was VAYERAH. In addition to the soaring episode or The Binding of Isaac to
which our President specifically referred, it contains also what very possibly
may be recorded man's boldest challenge to his Creator. The Alm-ghty revealed
to Abraham his intentions to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gemorrah which
have come down to us through the dingy corridors of history as the paradigms of
villainy. Abraham, not at all unaware of the unrelieved vileness of those
cities, nonetheless, pleads for their salvation. Ha-Af Tispeh Tzaddik eem Rasha...
Will you destroy the righteous with the wicked: perhaps there are 50 religious
people in the midst of the city? When HA KODOSH BARUKH HU, the Holy One
-Blessed Be He, agrees to spare the city for fifty, the Patriarch presses his
opening: If you're prepared to let the cities be for fifty righteous people,
are you going to destroy them if there are only 45... 40... 30... 10?

There are mind boggling
implications here. First of all, the word Af which begins this hag­gling
with G-d not only means even but also anger. And our Rabbis understand what
Abraham was saying to HaShem was: Will you allow your anger to destroy the
righteous with the wicked?' For Abraham to argue this line would seem to be
close to blasphemy. G-d is not like mortal man whose anger is unmeasured and
can bring in its wake unmitigated cata­strophe. The anger of G-d, however, is
precisely calibrated.

Yet, what Abraham seems to be
saying with almost irreverent aggressiveness. Is it con­ceivable that the
Judge of all the Earth will not deal justly, even if it only appears that way?
For in fact, and actually by definition, what He does is justice. That whole
discussion with all its theological vexations is preserved forever in the
sacred narrative of the Bible, notwithstand­ing its daring questioning of the
ways of G-d, to teach us mortals how inviolable and precious life is and how we
must hallow it. If G-d, in a manner of speaking, can be called to account for
the mere impression of indiscriminate destruction when such a notion with
regard of Him is altogether an impossible contradiction in terms, how
unyieldingly terrible it is for man to take innocent life and then attempt to
sanctify it in the name of G-d!

Secondly, on examination, it
would seem that Abraham's argument was incorrigibly flawed. It assumes that
there are only two alternatives: either destroy the cities lumping the
righteous with the wicked together or sparing them in their entirety for the
sake of the few straggling TZADDIKIM among them. In truth, however, there is a
third alternative of which, in fact, in the end, G-d availed himself. He could
remove the righteous inhabitants before destroying the cities even as he was
later to remove to safety, out of harm's way, Abraham's nephew and charge, Lot,
and his family, before allowing Sodom and Gemorrah to be buried under fire and
brimstone.

It seems to me that what
Abraham was actually beseeching of HaShem was to spare that very special entity
of TZADDIK EEM RASHA. There are two kinds of Tzaddikim (right­eous people). One
who separates himself entirely from all unnecessary intercourse with the
society about him lest he be contaminated by his involvement with it. Surely
it's not easy to be a loner. One must truly be a TZADDIK to be able to forfeit
almost entirely all social asso­ciation. On the other hand, there is an even
higher form of TZADDIK and that is the TZAD­DIKIM EEM RASHA, one who lives EEM
RASHA with the totality of life, even if it means coexisting with the RASHA.
The spiritual strength and majesty required for that kind of strug­gle - of
maintaining whole your integrity as a Tzaddik even in the midst of the
hurly-burly of Sodom and Gemmorah is an incomparable achievement and places
that Tzaddik at a much loftier plane than the Tzaddik who takes refuge in his
solitude, in the untouched and uncom­promised
Ivory Tower.

Abraham was imploring G-d not
to destroy this extraordinary phenomenon of TZADDIK EEM RASHA which would be
obliterated with the destruction of Sodom and Gemorrah even if the righteous
were all to be spared individually.

To me that most poignant
moment of the Rabin funeral was the eulogy delivered by his granddaughter Noah
It's most telling words: Grandfather! With your death, the ground has been cut
from under our feet.

How remarkable it is that the
most powerful image of speech she could conjure to convey the fullness of her
overwhelming tragedy and that of an entire people was . . .the ground has been
cut from under our feet. In her case and in ours, it was only figurative, if anguishingly painful.

One may wonder how so few can
understand and feel with the thousands of Jews of Judea and Samaria for whom
the events of the last years LITERALLY cut the ground from under their feet
and threatens to shatter a vision which is not the creation of some late-coming
ne'er do well extremist, but has been fashioned out of a more than three
thousand years old mainstream of Jewish belief and aspiration!

Rabbi Zevulun Charlop