Theo: An Autobiography

20: Toward the Millennium

zaTowardthe /11 _ / ~U1:/nJUU;m Zo~ nit keinnlol az du <~eyst denl letsten ve..~ Khotsh himlen blayene~farshteln bloye tey. KUlnen vet nokh "Inzer oys}Zcbenktc slzo S'vet a poyk ton unzer trot-nlir zayncll do! Never say that you are walking your last way Though leaden skies above blot out the blue of day. The hour for which we long will certainly appear, Our steps shall thunder and prociailll: We are still here. -HIRSH GLIK 1922-44 (TRANSLATED 13Y E. PALEVSKY AND T. BIKEL) ALL THAT IS LEFT FOR ME 13EFOR.E C()NCLUI)INC; this narrative is to cast a last long look backward and a quick glance forward. I consider 1993 and 1994 milestones, both in ternlS of world events that affected my life and in ternlS of personal history. The year 1993 was the sixtieth anniversary of Hitler's rise to power, an event that the world remembers as the beginning of state-sanctioned criminality , which left scars on Europe's face and consciousness that will not fade for many decades. In personal ternlS, 1993 marked twenty-five Toward the- MiLlennium, · +()7 years since I first played Tevye the Milkman, the role that since then has been the lllainstay of llly stage career-I played my thousandth perfor111ance as Tevye in September 1990, two days after Rosh Hashanah, in Providence, Rhode Island. And 1994 is the fortieth anniversary of my arrival in America. I lllUSt also take note of the fact-not without a little shock-that May 2, 1994, marked my seventieth birthday. A chronological fact luckily backed by little evidence of physical or Inental erosion. The poenl with which I started this chapter is the text of a song that has becol1le the anthelll of Holocaust survivors. It is always sung standing; each year after 1945 nlY father would sing it during the Passover seder as we all stood and recalled the lllemory of the Inartyrs. I have continued the custom. Among the more public and solelnn occasions when I sang it together with thousands of survivors was the 1993 cOllllnemoration of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. This marked the fiftieth anniversary of that tragic and yet heroic event in the ll10dern history of Jews. With Madison Square Garden filled to overflowing, I acted as lllaster of ceremonies. I introduced various dignitaries and speakers, including one of the few survivors who had fought in the Warsaw Ghetto, Vladka Meed. As I recited the poeln "In varshaver Getto" by Binetn Heller in Yiddish and in English (in the translation by Max Rosenfeld) it was difficult for nle to avoid being overCOllle by nlY own emotion, yet I had to-my job was to stir others to rellleinbrance. If there were to be tears, they should be theirs, not 111ine. I read the final lines of the poem: But no more uJillJews to the slaughter be led The truculent jibes o.fthe Nazis are past. And the lintels and doorposts ton(~ht uJill be red With the blood offreeJe~vs who UJillj(~ht to the last. As I said these words, I glanced toward the audience alld saw Elie Wiesel in the front row; it becanle much harder still for me to retain my composure. But none of us could. We had already been through a solemn and harrowing ritual. A seemingly endless procession of women had mounted the stage and lit hundreds of candles to commemorate the innocent victims as well as the heroes who went down as they fought and died. There was hardly a dry eye in the vast hall, including all of us on the dais, from Vice President Al Gore on down. That week in April had more in store. On April 22, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., opened its doors with a dedication cerelllony attended by the president, the vice president, President +()8 · Th£o Chainl Herzog of Israel, and other dignitaries fronl around the world. I attended the CerelTIOny on that drizzly nl0rning and would later in the evening greet the survivors at the end of their candlelight march with songs of the ghetto, ending the evening again by singing the survivors ' anthenl "Zo<-~ Nit KeinI110/"-"Never say that this is your last road." But it was the nlorning cerenl0ny that brought 111e, along with the thousands who had come to pay hOll1age, to an enl0tional catharsis . Once again it was Elie Wiesel who stirred the conscience of all who were listening. His words were, as they so often are, an affirnlation of hunlan decency, which can triunlph over evil and outlive it. As indeed it nlust, if we are to survive as a race. He also gives the lie to the notion that calling up the nlenl0ry of the Holocaust nlust invariably cast Jews as victinls. There is sonIething ennobling and redenlptive about this storyteller's words and delTIeanOr; one hopes that, having conle through a living hell with his soul intact, he ll1ay guide us to a place where we nlight save ours. Sonle people had voiced doubts about the wisdonl of creating a Holocaust nluseunl, and some others had questioned its situation in Washington, where the visitor fronl rural All1erica would receive his first, perhaps his only, view ofJews. If this should be the only showcase for Jewish history and Jewish existence, was it proper to have death as its only thell1e and focus? Jews, it was argued, surely had other faces than nlerely those of sacrificial lanIbs .on the altar of racial suprenlacy. But when I went through the nluseunl, painful as the experience was, I found it absolutely right and proper that the nluseunl should exist, that it had been put in exactly the right place, and that it showed exactly what had to be shown. The designers took great care to shield the nlost gruesonle sights fro111 the eyes of snlall children by placing baffles in front of the nlost horrifying exhibits, too high for children to see over. The rest of us are spared nothing. Just as the Nazi nlachine forced the Jews into ll1echanized and inlpersonal cruelty, so does the nluseunl conlpel the visitor to look, to listen, to experience an unrelenting and unforgiving savagery. Quite unlike other museunlS, where the visitor enters and works his way up fronl the ground floor to the top, here we are taken up to the top floor in elevators that already evoke the feeling of boxcars. Fronl there you begin what I can only describe as a descent into hell. Every turn is an assault on your senses and sensibilities; all the objects displayed are real, all the filn1s are real also, from the archives of a n1ad nation that not only conlnlitted atrocities but arrogantly documented them in still pictures and nlovies. Even the model layouts of call1ps and crenlatoria bear witness to the clinical self-congratulatory conceit of Nazi plan- Toward the ,j\;tiLle:nmum • +08 ners who prided themselves on a nleticulously planned and executed canlpaign of death. I nlust confess that I was seized by an irrational feeling of claustrophobia. Kno\ving that the perpetrators of the horror before ll1e were gone, that I was in a nluseUll1 in the year of 1993, did nothing to alleviate nlY pangs of anxiety, which were extrell1e. It is perhaps the sign of a brilliant architectural concept that such feelings are evoked in that space. Seenlingly, the visitor has choices whether to take a left corridor or a right; it turns out to be no choice at all. Even in the canlps the selection to one side nleant death and to the other tenlporary survival. Here, whichever way you choose to go, there is only death. I asked ll1yself Why all1 I here? Every fiber in nlY body told nle that I should not be here, l1lust not be here. Equally loudly, everything in ll1e said that I could not possibly be anywhere else. The Holocaust MuseUll1 is not only a place of nUll1bers, it is a place of individual pain. CUll1ulative deaths are uninlaginable, while a single death is unbearable. One Anne Frank did 1110re to rattle the world's conscience than the listing of actuarial figures of corpses. In treating both ll1ass destruction and the suffering and dying of single hUll1an beings, the ll1useUll1 achieved for nle a subtle balance that will surely be recognized as one of its greater assets. Yet the nlenl0ry of the nlartyred nlillions of the Holocaust has not re111ained unll10lested. Even while the dedication of the nluseU111 was going on, neo-Nazi hooligans outside the security cordons shouted slogans of "We don't buy the Holocaust lie." None of these can learn anything froll1 the nlenl0rial, even were they to enter its doors. They will insist, in their single-nlinded stupor, that the story of the Holocaust was concocted by Jews who had nothing in nlind except blackll1ailillg the world into supporting Israel. But the ll1illions of A111ericans who knew little about the Holocaust or cared very little even if they had S0111e vague knowledge of it, care very nluch-when these Anlericans visit the 111useU111, it will have an inlpact not only by resurrecting history but by teaching thenl a lesson about the fragility of civilization. If they are able to draw the parallel , they will see that, though the Holocaust was a uniquely Jewish experience, its lesson 111ust be a universal one. Menlory, especially 111e1110ry of horrors, which tends to be buried deep, is fragile and perishable . This ll1useunl's irrefutable evidence will be one of nlenlory's few safeguards. What a different experience this was froll1 a visit to the Vietnanl War Mell10rial! Sonle nl0nths earlier I had paid a visit to that shrine. I renlenlber seeing nlY own reflection in the polished black stone as I walked from one end to the other. The stone wall gradually rises +1() · Theo above you, 100nlS above and engulf~ you, donlinates you with darkness and shado\v as you proceed along the trench. But then gradually you rise to the surface again as the list of the dead grows snlaller and you are exactly where you began. The ground at the end is as level as it was at the beginning, and the nanles of the dead are behind you. No nlatter one's views about the Vietnanl War, the dead of that war died in a purposeful sacrifice for what they believed was the good of their country. As you renlenlber thenl, you think little about those at whose hands they died. At the Holocaust MUSeU111 you never stop thinking about the nlonsters whose deeds obscured centuries of noble thought, and you conle away asha111ed of hU111anity with its thin veneer of civilizatiol1 . When you eIl1erge fronl the Holocaust MUSeU111, nothing is the sanle as it was and the dead are not behind you, will perhaps never be behind you. After the dedication and Illy journey through the nluseUlll, it was as if my life as a hunlan being and as a Je\v had COIl1e full circle. It had started \vith the bar nlitzvah boy in Vienna who was ilnIl1ediately thrust into the ll1aelstr0111 that 1l1arked the beginning of the age of turIll0il . During Illy entire life I was never far away fronl that nlelllory. I had escaped the Holocaust's deadly grip, but I could never evade the pall of nlY people's renlenlbrance of it. This, as nluch as anything, nloved nle to say and sing as I had done for years. I would reIl1ind nlY own people of what they lost and what they nlust retain so as not to lose even 1110re. I would also reIl1ind the enenlY, the je\v-hater, and the Jew-baiter, sayillg and singing Mir zaYl1cn dol-we are still here. JANUAR.Y 1979 was not an easy 1110nth. I was on ll1Y way to an FIA conference in Geneva, having stopped off in London for one night on January 8. I felt .quite ill during the night in nlY hotel roonl and even contenlplated waking up nlY friend Arnold Kalina. He had been nlY doctor when I lived in England and had renlained Illy close friend over the years. In the end I decided to tough it out until nlorning rather than trouble hinl in his professional capacity, but I felt really bad. It seenled as though my innards were turning inside out; lTIOSt unusual for nle, who is not given to bouts of illness. I still do not know what was wrong with nle that night, and I decidedly do not believe in psychic phenoll1ena, but in the 1110rning nlY wife called nle fronl Connecticut to tell nle that lllY father had passed away in Tel Aviv in the early hours of the lTIorning. I flew to Tel Aviv to bury this lllan who had had such an influence on nlY life, both positive and negative. My father Joseph Bikel, ne Hasenfratz, had a life not so much of Toward the ~£Uennium, • 4-11 nlissed opportunities as of lllissed chances. Poverty was what he had battled as a young nlan; it thwarted his acadenlic anlbitions and eventually forced hilll into Illaking a living in ways that were always a step or two beneath his intellectual capacities. The need to make enough ll10ney for his falllily and to give nle the opportunity to conlplete Illy education, which he hinlself had been unable to do, forced hinl into the ranks of the lower nliddle class. The fear of poverty haunted hinl all his life and prevented him from enjoying life fully, even when it becallle quite clear that he would never have to face poverty again. My parents becanle past nlasters at cutting corners; they would deny themselves little luxuries and would not even dreanl of big ones. I renlind nlyself constantly that I lllust guard against any inherited traits of this nature. Another bad trait I seenl to have inherited, and one that troubles me, is the inclination toward a violent tenlper. In nlY father's case it was not the kind of violence that draws blood or even s111ashes objects; it was yelling loudly in a torrent of verbal abuse. Quite early in nlY life, I discovered that I, too, had a tenlper. When in a fit I broke a school bench, it frightened nle so nluch that I resolved to keep Illy tenlper in check, and for the most part I've been successful. Another thing I learned fronl my father by negative exanlple. When I was about eleven years old, they brought him honle fronl the office where he had collapsed: nicotine poisoning. It shocked I1le so that I vowed there and then never to beconle a snl0ker. I never did. My father, however, continued to smoke for several nlore years, despite this episode. When he finally quit, both nlY tllother and I were inl111ensely relieved. His doctor said that it would take a long tillle before his lungs would cleanse themselves. It is ironic that thirty-five years after he quit snl0king, 11ly father died oflung cancer. The good heirlooms I got frolll 11ly father were not nlaterial in nature. They were like the proverbial kiddush cup handed down frolll generation to generation; in my case, a cup filled with stories and songs. I inherited fronl my father a love of languages, an aptitude for learning thenl, and a love of singing. In his good periods, he was a fine and intellectual human being, rightly nluch loved by his fanlily and colleagues. I did not like SOllle of his ways; his tendency to watch jealously to see whether anyone was slighting hinl in some way drove me up the wall. He was not a very tolerant 111an, and it caused an adverse reaction in me toward intolerance of any kind. But I also inherited from him a love of Jewish culture, and for that I shall be eternally grateful to him. He had quite a good life, especially during all the years he lived in Israel; nlore especially still, after he finally retired as an official of the health services department of the Histadrut, 4-12 • Thea the Israeli labor organization, the equivalent of the AFL-CIO. I wish he hinlself had realized how good a life it really had been. Toward the end of his days nlY father lost nluch of his hearing. The joke went that he turned deaf so as not to hear what nlY nlother was saying to hinl. In the end it turned out that hers was the only voice he could hear. He was also too vain to use a hearing aid. I tried to persuade him to use one by getting hinl devices that were very snlall; he balked. Finally I got hinl one that was built into the tenlple of sonle eyeglasses, and even those he would rarely use. One tinle, \vhen he again nlisheard \vhat I had said to hinl, I got nlad. "You know you can't hear," I said. "Why don't you wear your glasses?" Thankfully, he had a relatively short bout with the cancer that took his life. At the funeral nlY nlother walked after his coffin and ahead of the rest of us with the grinl steps of a brave warrior. I let her walk alone; after fifty-eight years of lllarriage this was her right and this was her place. That sanle 1110nth I had another trying experience which at one point could have beconle very dangerous. I found lllyself on a hijacked plane. Strangely, this was not an international flight going to exotic places, it was a 747, United Airlines Flight 8 froll1 Los Angeles to JFK. It seellled an uneventful flight: cocktails, a nleal and a l1lovie, and all the other trappings. It turned strange vvhen we g~t near the East Coast and the plane kept flying in circles. It could not have been the \veather; there \vas an absolutely clear and untroubled sky. The captain was totally unconlnlunicative and so were the cabin crew. After a long delay we landed at JFK, taxied to a renlote spot, and then sinlply sat. Beyond the instruction to fasten seatbelts and stow tray tables, there had been no word. We just sat. After a long while I went to talk to the chief flight attendant. I asked hinl what was happening and he henl111ed and hawed, saying sonlething vague about there being sonle trouble in the ternlinal that we would have to wait out. I told hinl that I was a seasoned traveler and that the explanation lllade no sense to nle: If there was trouble ill the United ternlinal, conlmon courtesy would have prompted any other airline to pernlit us the use of their gates. Or we could have be'en let out by llleans of an exterior stairway and bused to a ternlinal. I pronlised hinl that I would not start any kind of panic, but that I would rather know what was wrong than not know. "Is sonleone holding a gun on the captain?" I wanted to know. He said no, the trouble was not in the cockpit. I said, "All right, now we know where it isn't. But where is it?" Finally he decided to trust nlY prolllise not to start a stanlpede and canle clean. It appears that there was a WOlllan sitting in the coach portion of Tov1/ard the LlvtiLLenniLim • 4-13 the plane in seat 44-J who, about ten nlinutes into the flight, had handed a note to a flight attendant to give to the captain. In the note she said that she had nitroglycerine in her handbag, and she would blow up the plane \vith it unless her de111ands were nlet. Clever, because nitroglycerine in a glass or plastic container could not be detected by devices screening for nletal. The flight supervisor did not know exactly what her denlands were, only that she insisted that Charlton Heston, Jack Lenlnlon, or Lindsay Wagner read over the air a note she had left in a locker at the L.A. airport. Later I learned that Chuck Heston, as always ready to be a good citizen, had been located, had interrupted a rehearsal, and had driven to the L.A. airport to stand by if needed. I went back to 111Y seat in the forward cabin, quite a \vays froll1 the hijacker, of whonl I had caught a glill1pse. She appeared to be a WOll1an ill her forties with a bandanna on her head. I did not stare because the last thing I wanted to do \vas rattle her. I began to feel a little queasy, sOl1lewhat claustrophobic, and just plain afraid. The passengers were getting restless, but true to nlY proll1ise I did not let anyone know what I had found out. I wished I had, because then I could have shared the feeling and not been alone with ll1Y fears. We had now been on the ground for over an hour and still had not been told anything. In fact we were never told the truth of what was happening. The passengers did find out, but not froll1 nle. A couple of travelers had brought out their portable radios and had tuned in to the news. Fron1 the broadcast everyone learned that we were on a hijacked plane. To nlY chagrin I also heard nlY na11le l1lentioned as one of the passengers, along with the actors Sanl Jaffe and his wife Bettye Ackerman , as well as Dean-Paul Martin, Dean's son. How stupid, I thought. The nledia had no way of knowing what kind of operation this hijacking was, how well organized, and whether there were any acconlplices on the ground. If they had been Palestinian terrorists, broadcasting ll1Y nanle would have surely put ll1Y life in danger. By the till1e the broadcast was heard and repeated, the wonlan hijacker had demanded and received a telephone so she could COll1municate with the authorities. The technician who brought her the phone was actually an FBI agent, but she did not know that. SOl1le people had begun to get very nervous and upset. I lllyself felt that I could not just sit there and do nothing. I took nlY guitar case out of the coat closet, pulled out the instrull1ellt, and started to play. This is a stupid way for one's life to end, I thought, but if it has to, then at least I will end llly life as I have lived it-playing songs. The first thing that came to mind for me to sing was Jim Croce's 4-14- • Thea "Till1e in a Bottle." The lyric was apt in light of our situation, and the choice, I later realized, was ironic, since Jinl Croce had died in a plane crash. We sat captive on the aircraft for six and a half hours after a flight of five-eleven and a half hours in all. I played and sang for the last four of those stressed hours. I was told that nlY doing this had prevented a panic anlong the passengers. I know for sure that by singing and playing I had prevented n1Y own. In an unguarded n10nlent when she was distracted, the FBI agent overpowered the hijacker and wrested the handbag froll1 her. When the contents were later exanlined, there was nitroglycerine all right, but only in the fornl of pills for a heart condition. No explosives were found; still, no one could take the gall1ble of assunling that there would not be any. The wonlan was neither a Palestinian nor a terrorist . She was a disturbed hunlan being who had a gripe against the Catholic church, and against an ex-husband whonl she blanled for their failed nlarriage. This was a solo act. What was renlarkable was that she never went to the bathroonl during all those hours. The hidden nlessage was never found and never needed and Charlton Heston returned to his rehearsal after spending son1e hours at the Los Angeles airport. Rita had rushed to the airport when she heard the news on the radio and had spent sonle anxious hours there before we were released and could drive honle to Connecticut. A few days later, the chairn1an of United Airlines sent nle a beautiful crystal bowl in recognition of nlY having "calnled the fears and anxieties" of nlY fellow passengers . In llly reply I thanked hilll and said that I would not like to have to go to such lengths again to find an audience. (It also occurred to me that there had to be easier ways to get crystal bowls.) WITH THE lzEST of the world Jewish community I have always shared the fear that the first war Israel loses will be its last. Israel never had the luxury its hostile Arab neighbors have-to lose, lick their wounds, and conle back another day to fight again. The threat "to push the Israelis into the sea" was always a real one, and it lllade us trelnble each tinle there was lllore than just a border skirnlish or a terrorist infiltration. The wars of 1948 and 1956 saw Israel emerge unscathed and with an inlage of invincibility. I thought this to be dangerous, both in terms of how Israelis might see themselves and in how the world would relax its concern for the Jewish state. When the Yom Kippur War broke out in 1973, catching the Israelis by surprise, there was deep worry anl0ng Israel's supporters. For the first few days its nlilitary fortunes seenled to be on the wane, heavy losses were inflicted, and, as we heard it, n10rale was lower than it had been in the previous crises. Tovvardthe-~JvliLlenniu,rn • +15 l~ita and I agreed that I could not stay away; all the speeches I had given, all the rallies I had attended over the years in support of Israel would not count for nluch if, in its hour of isolation, I did not do what I could, as an Anlerican Jew and as an artist, to lend to the struggle whatever prestige and talent I had-in person. I contacted the Israelis, announcing nlY readiness to help, and was put on a planeload of young nlen returning to join their arnlY units. Regular £1 Al flights had been suspended, and all the planes had been put to such use as the governnlent and the 1l1ilitary required. Tel Aviv had a different face when I arrived. There were no tourists; in fact, the entire Tel Aviv Hilton, where I had been assigned a roonl, was full of war correspondents from all over the world, and was teenling with nlen and wonlen in uniforll1 doing liaison chores alld conducting briefings. I had not COlne as a journalist, or as an observer, or as a fighter. I did want to go to the trenches and I had brought the only weapon I have, nlY guitar. The arnlY cOlllmand assigned ll1e a car and driver as well as a liaison officer, and at first I was taken to hospitals where the wounded had been brought froln the battlefields. Having arrived frolll peaceful Anlerica, I found the sights shocking to the senses. But I had COlue to help, and I played and sang in large and sluall hospital rOOIl1S, first to lllen who were lightly wounded and could laugh and clap. But then I also played for the severely wounded who could barely acknowledge that they were able to hear. The nursing staff encouraged nle to persevere; they had always found I1lusic to have a therapeutic effect, even on these patients. One of the 1110St gratifying experiences I had was in one of the arlllY hospitals where severe shell-shocked cases had been brought. One nlan had been in a catatonic state ever since they had brought hinl in. His tank had been blown up by a direct hit; he survived-llliraculously-but the doctors had sonle doubts that he would conle out of his severe nlental traunla. He had been sitting open-eyed in one position for several days and had been artificially fed; he reacted to nothing. I played in his rOOlll for a long while, and suddenly there was a snlall foot movelllent keeping up with the beat of the lllusic. The nurses hugged him and llle and I had tears In my eyes. Then I was taken to the very battle zones where the fight \;vas raging . I played and sang in gun enlplacelllents, in bunkers, and in inlprovised shelters where soldiers temporarily off duty were taking a breather. All the lllen wore a stubble of beard several days old, and they sang along with me as best they could. This was on the Golan Heights, with the guns boonling frolll the Syrian side. SOlneone 4-16 • Th£o counted fourteen ll1iniconcerts I gave in one day. Anl0ng other places, I played in Quneitra, a town then under Israeli control that was later ceded back to the Syrians. I sang in Hebrew, in Yiddish, and in Ladino; and I also sang in a dozen other languages. As I tell audiences froll1 tinle to tinle, I do not only sing ofJewish hopes and drean1s; I sing about hopes and dreams, period. The song I sang 1110St often was Jacques BreI's "If We Only Have Love." I had known it in French and English before; on this trip I learned the Hebrew words to it, and so I could sing it in three languages . When the peace process that began in 1977 with the famous trip to Jerusalell1 by Anwar Sadat was concluded by the signing of a treaty between Israel and Egypt in Washington in 1979, I was there. I \vas invited to attend a reception given at the house of Esther Coopers111ith for Madanle Jihan Sadat, whon1 I found to be a very gracious lady. When they asked n1e to perforll1, I decided to sing the BreI song. I explained that I had sung it at a tin1e and in a place when bombs were exploding all around us and shrapnel was flying. I had sung then about the only road to peace, which was love and understanding, and I would sing of it again on this night. My recalling these events raised a few eyebrows, but I assured theln that it was all right. If you are not willing to renlen1ber the bitter tinles, then you cannot savor the sweet taste of peace, either. The Gulf War of 1991 presented another kind of threat. Israel was not a conlbatant in the war, and yet it was put in the direct line of fire by an irrational tyrant who tried to nlake points with his Arab adversaries by hitting targets in the territory of their common enemy. The tactic did not work, but it threw Israel into a solely defensive stance, bracing for hits without hitting back so as not to upset the alliance between the United States and its partners in the war against Iraq. We kept watching CNN to see the fireworks as the Scud n1issiles streaked over Israel and sometinles hit random targets. My mother, then ninety-three years old, sitting in her roon1 at the senior citizens home in Rarnat Chen, at first refused to don the obligatory gas mask during the raids. "At my age, what can they do to nle?" she would say. Finally the staff at the hOtTIe and I, via long distance telephone, prevailed on her to do as the Israeli government had directed. Whenever I saw a raid, I tried to get through to her; usually the phone lines were ja111111ed. Once I had my phone in Los Angeles in the automatic redial n10de while a Scud alert was happening and, after numerous tries, got through to my mother. She answered, speaking with difficulty through the gas nlask she was wearing. The next attack found its mark in Ramat Chen, a mere eight blocks Toward the ~iUe,nmum • 4-17 from the h0111e. There were casualties and there was great anger also, and not just because of the destruction. Israelis were not used to sitting actionless while being attacked. I felt that I had to go to Israel, be there, offer help, and do what I could. Once again I took nlY guitar and flew to Tel Aviv. On arrival at the Ben Gurion airport I was handed a gas mask and instructed in its use. That first evening I saw that the Tel Aviv I had known for so many years had vanished into thin air. Nothing 1110ved at all except the occasional lone police car or a11lbulance. The town was one of the liveliest I had ever known: Even on the eve ofYonl Kippur, the only day of the year when no vehicles would 1110ve, you saw pedestrians walking. Now the town was dead, nothing. It was eerie. Zubin Mehta had been in Israel fronl the beginning of the crisis. When I arrived he asked nle to come up to his suite at the Hilton and gave 11le some directions on how to get to the shelter in case of an attack. He had already been through several. Zubin has a close and intimate relationship with Israel: He is so c01111nitted that he will put himself into har111's way in national emergencies. As I sat there facing hinl, I started to laugh. Here was this nlan-not Jewish, an Indianborn , Vienna-trained artist with Wh0111 I s011letinles speak Ger111an in a broad Viennese dialect-and here he was giving 111e instructions about gas masks like a veteran Israeli warrior. I re111elnbered the joke about the man who comes h0111e to find his wife in bed with his friend. The man starts to laugh as he says to the guy in the bed: "I have to-but you?" I gave Zubin a lot of credit. There were no evening concerts, but the orchestra would play sonle afternoons. The hall would be full of people holding cardboard boxes containing gas masks on their laps. The most courageous act was Isaac Stern's. The warning sirens went off in the middle of his afternoon concert. The entire audience donned the masks; everyone except Isaac, who continued playing without. It may have been part theatre, but if so, then it was the theatre offortitude and defiance. As I had done in 1973, I placed myself at the disposal of the Israeli army, which sent me to various places to entertain. Unlike that other time, when I got up early and was driven for several hours to the front lines, this time there was no front; the front was the entire country. Anywhere you were you slept in your clothes with the gas mask beside you, knowing that when the alarm sounded, you had less than three minutes to get to shelters that were sealed against penetrating gases. There may have been no front but there were casualties. I performed in hospitals and in places where troops stood by in readiness, should Israel decide to retaliate. I also performed in absorption centers where newly arrived immigrants from the Soviet Union had been put +18 · Thea up. These were people who had been relieved to arrive in a place that held out the proll1ise of freedoll1 and safety; here they were, frightened and bewildered, fearing attacks that could come froll1 the sky at any tillle of the day or night. Sonle of thell1, fronl the Asian part of the USSR, spoke Georgian and Russian and had not learned any Hebrew yet; they had no idea who I was, but I had conle from Anlerica to soothe their spirits, and that was good enough for them. The day before I left I entertained at a Patriot ll1issile site. My audience consisted nl0stly of All1erican nlilitary personnel and sonle Israeli soldiers who were being instructed in the use of the equipment. These vvere secret installations, and I \-vas brought to them not quite blindfolded but in roundabout ways. Although a TV,crew was permitted to filll1 inside the tent, no exterior photographs were allowed. Since CNN could be seen by friend and enell1Y alike, security was ll1aking sure that the Iraqis would be unable to pinpoint the locations. Inside the large tent I entertained the off-duty personnel, Americans who were glad to see sonleone froll1 honle. They were a serious bunch, aware of their purpose. The captain of one battery, Lt. Colonel Harry Krilnkowitz, happened to be Je\vish; he was pleased both as an American and as a Jew to be stationed in this place during this particular war. Then I talked to Battalion Sergeant-Major Shepard, who was black, and asked him what his feelings were about being stationed here. He felt it was right for Alnericans to be defending Israel's soil. "This is the Holy Land," he said. While in Israel I spent sonle time with a group of American Jewish leaders who had come to demonstrate solidarity with the enlbattled country. We had nleetings with Prinle Minister Shamir and attended a reception given by President Herzog. There was also a dinner in the middle of which the air raid sirens blasted their warning of an ill1pending Iraqi nlissile attack. The warning had COll1e just as Binyanlin Netanyahu, then deputy prilne nlinister, was about to speak. We all rushed into shelters and remained there until the allclear sounded. This was a full-blown attack, and the strangest feeling was that in the shelter we were able to watch on a television screen a CNN live translnission from Atlanta, showing us what was happening outside! There were women and snlall children in the shelter and we all wore our gas masks. It was nlost disconcerting to watch a little child cry because she could not figure out why it was impossible for her to put a pacifier into her mouth through the mask. When the allclear sounded we resumed the dinner, but before Netanyahu began his speech again, they asked me to calm the spirits of the assenlbled dignitaries . I sang a few songs, again finishing with BreI's "IfWe Only Have To}va,d the ~iUenn£um • 4-18 Love" in Hebrew and in English. In his speech Bibi Netanyahu nlade reference to the song by saying that it would take nluch nlore than love to settle the conflicts that are plaguing the Middle East. I anl not a naIve person, and I know that it will take far nl0re than love. But I doubt whether the nledicine can be gotten fronl Dr. Netanyahu's prescription pad. His opposition to any forllllda of landfor -peace not only inlposes psychological hurdles that prevent negotiators fronl being open to all possibilities, it also presents a greater danger in the long run. Suppose Israel were to incorporate the occupied territories into Greater Israel, which SOl1le have advocated-then what? Apart froll1 the necessity of becollling perlllanent occupiers in hostile areas, do these advocates fail to see the delllographic tinle bOlllb looming on the horizon? Given the different birthrates of Arabs and Jews, Greater Israel would have a population with an Arab 111ajority in very short order. Then there will only be two choices, both equally inlpossible to accept. Israel can relllain a Jewish state or a delllocratic state, but not both. If the forlller, then the Arabs \\lill have to be relegated to second-class citizenship without the rights and privileges of Israeli Jews. In other words, the South African fornlula, which is disappearing even in South Africa and which has had sinlnlering revolt as its constant companion. A never-ending inttfada. If the latter scenario, Arabs will outnumber and outvote the Jews, and the political makeup of the state will be so radically altered as to nlake Israel disappear. Scratch Hatikvah and the Star of David. I anl worried about the preoccupation American Jews have with the defense of Israel and how little thought is given to the ideological underpinnings without which there could have been no Israel. The very notion of Zionism seelllS to have been relegated to history, and although today's friends of Israel care about its body, they seem to care as little about its soul as they do about their own. The Anlerican Jewish response to Israel is woefillly monolithic; we who are so capable of intricate thought are almost boorishly insistent about viewing the complexities of Israeli society and political makeup through a onechannel , narrow prism. Our very reaction to statesnlen and diplol1lats makes the point. American reaction to these Israelis varies according to how well they speak English. American Jews loved Abba Ebanbut for the wrong reasons: He was right on the issues, but they did not care about that because they didn't understand what he said-just that he said it so beautifully. They also loved Netanyahu: He was wrong on the issues, but they didn't care about that, either-just that he spoke terrific American English. I am not only worried about the Israel of the future. I am worried 420 · Theo about the Israel at present, about its own sense of n10ral rectitude-or the lack of it. Occasionally I an1 reassured when governn1ent institutions , notably the courts, reaffirn1 the in1age of Israel as a country of laws. John Denljanjuk's case, although extren1ely painful for Holocaust survivors, was an occasion for such reassurance. I would have been quite content to see hinl deported fron1 the U.S. on the grounds that he lied about his wartill1e activities on his visa application. But he had not been deported, he was extradited to Israel on one specific charge only, nan1ely that he was the Nazi calnp guard known as Ivan the Terrible . Once the court was unable to establish that he \vas that particular Ivan, questions about his serving as a guard in other can1ps becanle irrelevant to the legal process \vhich had brought hin1 to that court. The charge had been too specific, and unfortunately, fishing \vith a wider net after the fact was not pern1issible under any standards of jurisprudence. I say "unfortunately," because clearing hin1 of the charge of having been Ivan the Terrible did not auton1atically anoint hin1 Ivan the Innocent. They had to let hin1 go, perhaps to face another day in another court in another country. It \vas a painful decision, but precisely because the court reached it after agonizing deliberations, it pointed to the kind of n10ral fiber not often found in the Western world and aln10st never in any other country of the Middle East. Yet other questions of n10rality are contributing to a sense of unease about Israel. A friend's son, serving in the Israeli arn1Y, told his nlother that the nlost harrowing part of his tour of duty involved battling stone-throwing children barely in their teens. He realized that the unrest had to be contained, but it caused a conflict of conscience. Fighting arn1ed grown-ups and terrorist infiltrators he could cope with; taking the fight to wonlen and children in villages and refugee camps was the hardest. After all the years of talk in which Gaza and the West Bank figured pron1inently and disturbingly, I had to see the center of unrest with nlY own eyes. On January 17, 1993, I joined a trip to Gaza and Dir al Ballah, a refugee camp in the strip, which had been organized by an Israeli hun1an rights group. We were a couple of dozen Americans and Israelis; we were taken in buses which let us out at the entrance to the Gaza strip. FrOll1 there Arab buses with church markings took us the rest of the way. Despite the neutral appearance of our transportation, as we drove through the streets of Gaza on our way in, a stone shattered the window of our bus and showered those sitting near it with glass. It was an ilnn1ediate and shocking reminder that we were considered the enenlY, regardless of who we were and of what had brought us to this place. Other An1erican Jews might have turned around and gone back; I am glad we did not. Towardthe~ilknmum · +21 It turned out to be a harrowing day, seeing with my own eyes what Jews turned occupiers were capable of doing to another people. I hold no brief for Arab terrorists who kill and n1ainl Jews; I am horrified by such deeds. Like all crin1inals, they must be hunted and brought to justice. But none of it could justify randolll violence by Jews in uniforlll against villagers, even those whose family melllbers are suspected of terrorist acts or sympathies. I could no more sanction this than I would the blowing up of houses in the Bronx or in Mianli because relatives of people living in theln were suspected of crin1es, even if they included lnurder. Yet in Gaza I saw wanton destruction of houses, leaving entire families enduring cold winter nights in ten1porary tents supplied by relief agencies. I talked to the fanlily of a sixtythree -year old 11lan who had been killed a week earlier because he had ignored an order to stand still-an order he could not hear because he was deaf. Can we who have been the victinlS of brutality for so 111any centuries allow ourselves to becollle even in the remotest way like our enenlies? I was forcibly re11linded of s0111ething Golda Meir once said: "I could possibly forgive the Arabs for killing our sons but I could not forgive thenl for turning our sons into killers." But that, too, rellloves the onus from us, the responsibility not to say and think, "So what? They had it COIning." The responsibility to act instead with decency and proper regard for hUll1an rights is ours alone. We had a very long session with Arab leaders at the Gaza Center for Rights and Law. These included Raji Sourani, a hU11lan rights lawyer who has argued hundreds of cases before Israeli courts (winning none of them), and Dr. Haider Abdel Shafi, one of the leaders of the Palestinian delegation to the Israel-Arab peace talks. Disappointingly , they suggested no solutions, no new resolve to break the stalemate . They offered little besides repeated assurances of the Palestinian leadership's COlllll1it111ent to peace. The group did offer moving recitals of desperate scenes. They pleaded for u.S. help in securing self-determination, but also insisted on the "indivisibility of the peace process," an assertion that all elelllents had to be negotiated in a bundle and that partial solutions toward a cOlllprehensive peace were not acceptable. Disappointing to those of us who believe that gradual steps on the road to peace are preferable to no steps at all. Afterward, when the question was asked whether our group should recommend that other American Jews visit Gaza as we had done, I counseled against it. It was useful for us to see and hear what we had, as it encouraged us to look for further avenues toward peace. If others had experienced the same trip, I argued, they would probably have remen1bered nothing beyond the shattered glass. +22 · Thea The visit and the talks with these leaders had not in one fell swoop turned thenl into friends of Israel in our Ininds, nor could we assunle that they necessarily shared our vision and our version of peace. But if they were the enell1Y, then they are precisely the people-our enen1ies -with wholl1 we lllUSt conclude a peace. Not with third parties nor with innocuous n1iddlemen who speak for nobody, but with the very enenlY with whom shots were exchanged only yesterday. That thought had been voiced for years by Abba Eban, the statesll1an and diplonlat, fornler alnbassador to the U.S. and the U.N., and fornler foreign ll1inister of Israel. Eban, now out of office and out of the Parliall1ent , had become the Adlai Stevenson of Israeli politics. Now his forll1ula for negotiating with the enemy had been adopted by the prinle n1inister of Israel himself. This formula led to clandestine talks between Israel and the PLO in Norway, talks that most certainly would have been illlpossible to conduct openly and under the glare of public scrutiny. In the end it led to a process which surfaced in September 1993 and which, within days, saw former archenemies shake hands in front of the White House. On Friday, September 10, while in California, I received a call from the White House inviting me to the signing ceremony of the peace accord, which would be held three days later on the South Lawn. It seenled that I was getting to be an old hand at this; I had met President Clinton in April at the opening of the Holocaust Museunl, and again at the White House only ten days earlier, at a pre-Labor Day reception. "You wear so many hats," the president had said to me then. (Even he recognized the problen1 ... ) This time, however, was going to be very special; the pundits had described an invitation to the signing ceremony as one of the "hottest tickets to get." I arrived on the redeye from Los Angeles at 5:30 A.M., changed n1Y shirt, and had a bite of breakfast before heading over to the White House. I ran into Ron Silver, my successor as Equity president, and shortly after 8:00 A.M. we walked some six blocks over to the East Gate, where a line had already started to form, even though the cerenlony was scheduled for eleven o'clock. There was heavy security; Shoshana Cardin, the former head of the President's Conference of Major Jewish Organizations, was almost kept out because she had no picture ID. I had to vouch for her identity. No one ll1inded the long wait; the excitement of the occasion carried us all. There were embraces between old friends and even old ideological adversaries; there were tentatively friendly contacts between Jewish and Arab guests; and there was much rubbernecking as various dignitaries arrived to take their seats. There were so many of them-civic leaders, Toward the ,../\ltiLlennlu,m • 4-23 senators, congressnlen, anlbassadors, and cabinet nlenlbers. Until the loudspeaker announcenlents heralding the arrival of the First Lady and Mrs. Rabin, of the vice president, of fornler Presidents Carter and Bush, and finally of the president, acconlpanied by Prinle Minister Rabin and Yassir Arafat, the dignitaries all arrived without fanfare. Only one unannounced entrance received applause fronl the assenlbled : Abba Eban. Hovv well deserved, I thought. I will not attempt to describe the scene as a journalist nlight; I anl not a journalist and the nlonlent needs to be recalled in nlore personal ternlS. It vvas not quite Canlp !)avid revisited; then the players had been equals, representatives of two sovereign nations both of whonl were able to lnake good on a pronlise of peace. This tinle the partners to the agreenlent were unequal; a nation on the one hand and on the other an organization still outlawed but pledged to abandon terroriSlll. There were no flags. Still, there was a nlonlentous feeling of hope. When President Clinton ended his renlarks with the words "Shalolll, salaanl, and peace," I felt l1lore than just the satisfaction of his having said the right words at a historic junction. And there was 1110re to come. To watch Shilllon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin standing to Bill Clinton 's right and Yassir Arafat in his traditional keffiyeh (but without the pistol strapped to his belt) to his left aroused feelings of uneasiness at first. How would this be played out? Would the right words be spoken in the right tone? Would they all be 1110re intent on saving face than on saying words of grace, true words of peace? Would they abandon mundane purpose and rise to the nobility of the nlo11lent? As I looked at Rabin's stony expression, I was able to detect nothing that 111ight foretell his actions during the next hour. I looked at Arafat's face, as always unshaven, but slniling today, and I thought of Golda Meir's first words to Anwar Sadat as he stepped off the plane at Ben Gurion airport in 1977: "What took you so long?" "May He who maketh peace on high bring peace to all of us and all of Israel." When the ancient Hebrew words rang out over the loudspeakers on the South Lawn of the White House, they reached not only those of us who were physically present but lllany lllillions more all over the world who were watching their screens and listening to their radios. The prinle 111inister of Israel, a former general and a man not usually given to emotional utterances, resorted to the poetry of the prayer book as he finished his remarks with the words Jews use daily at the conclusion of prayer. As·I sat in the noonday sun not a hundred yards from the podiunl where history was being made, it was not lost on lne that these words are also recited at the conclusion of the nlourner's kaddish. How fitting, I thought, that the pri11le nlinister had carefully avoided the tenlptatio11 of saying that what had happened ill the past was now over and done with. Had he d011e so, he 111ight have trivialized the suffering and the bloodshed, the turnl0il and the agony of the past decades. On the contrary, he stressed that the wounds of the past could not easily heal, and that this peace had COll1e too late for those who had died so that Israel ll1ay live. What he did express, however, was the hope and the conviction that, froll1 this 1110n1ent on, there could be a new start on the road to peace. When Yitzhak Rabin said, "Enough. Enough of blood and tears," tears ca11le to nlY eyes and to the eyes of nlost nlen and wonlen around 111e, and those faces were not just the faces ofJews. When the handshake that shook the world happened, it brought all of us-Jews, Arabs, Christians, and Moslenls-to our feet. Near 111e, a Jewish W0111an and an Arab \V0111an had sat next to each other, strangers before that 1110rning. They enlbraced each other and it was no enlpty gesture. No one could fail to be nloved by the spirit of the l1l0111ent, by what it said to our generation who had never known peace in the region and who had thought it i111possible even to take a first step toward it during our lifetil1le. While no one is na·ive enough to aSSU111e that what happened on Septenlber 13, 1993, was anything l1l0re than the beginning of a journey fraught with dangers and pitfalls, it was nonetheless an occasion for joy and elation. It nlay have been sYlnbolisnl , but our world is a world of inlages and syn1bols. Synlbols can telegraph good or evil, love or hate, suspicion or trust, despair or hope. For a glorious moment, in front of the White House, there was hope. For that alone I nlurlnured a heartfelt Shehcc/zcyanu, a prayer of thanks that Providence had pern1itted us to conle this far. Still, there were troubling questions, relating not only to political pragnlatisnl but to collective nlind-set. Are we as hunlan beings equipped to handle peace, to disengage fron1 instincts that breed hatred of our fellow hunlans? Can we give up the ternptation to cling to a rhetoric of nlistrust and contempt for those outside our own circle ? Can Arabs give up the inflalnnlatory and warlike language directed at Israelis and Jews? Can Jews abandon the expressions of contenlpt and disdain when speaking not about specific terrorists but about Arabs in general? We keep quoting Ve'ahavta Lere'aclza Katnocha, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," apparently ignoring the fact that the words refer not to ''Jewish neighbor" but to "neighbor." Period. Can we apply this to Arabs, to "goyim" in general? I anl always afraid that age-old attitudes of mistrust and fear of persecution have left SOllle scars on the Jewish psyche of wounds that are not easily overconle. But we nlust OVerCOl1le such attitudes, especially in Israel where Jews and Arabs live and work in such close proxinlity. They will either live together or die together. On Septenlber 13, 1993, fornler sworn enenlies decided to choose life over death, healing over bloodshed, and peace over war. Would \ve deny thenl that chance and decry both the process and the ainls? To be sure, Yassir Arafat had not turned overnight fron1 an enenlY into a friend, nor had Israel abandoned vigilance over its own security; both sides acted in their self-interest. But they nlay very well have, in the process, saved the region-perhaps our world-fronl an early conflagration. Alas, as we nlade our way into the cerelll0ny, there were protesters in front of the White House in Lafayette Park, already deternlined to say no. To nlY disnlay, they did not wear only traditional Arab k~[fiychsJ but also prayer shawls and phylacteries. As I watched then1 sway in prayer, I asked n1yself \vhat they thought they were praying for. Not peace, surely, but a continuation of the status quo, with its daily portion of sacrifice in hunlan lives. I thought of Isaiah, Shalol11 shalo111 lJf'cill slzalol11, "Peace, peace, they nl0uth, and yet there is no peace." After the cerenl0ny there was a lot of lllilling around; I talked with the First Lady and Tipper Gore; with Henry Kissinger, JinlnlY Carter, and Coretta Scott King. Martin Luther King, Jr. would surely have been here had he lived, I thought-the apostle of nonviolence, of tolerance and peace, JinlnlY Carter was here as a rell1inder that the architect of Call1p I)avid had a special reason to harbor a feeling of satisfaction . All agreed that, while there were ll1any pitfalls in the road ahead, this was a day of great inlport. I talked to as n1any people as I could, and was especially interested in tnaking contact with sonle of the Arab dignitaries. As we were filing out, I saw a few paces ahead of n1e one of the chief spokespeople for the Palestinians froiTI the West Bank, the university professor Hanan Ashrawi. I wanted to get son1e idea from her about the shape of the inl11lediate future she envisaged. Just as I started to introduce nlyself, there was a shout: "Hanan!" It was Jesse Jackson, who hugged her and led her away fronl me; the n10n1ent was gone. I had been invited to a nunlber of receptions scheduled during the afternoon and evening. Although the Israeli Enlbassy was the logical place to go, my first errand after leaving the White House was elsewhere . I still felt that making contact with Arabs, perhaps specifically with Palestinians, was something that needed to be done on this day. Earlier, I had already shared a hug with an old ally in the peace efforts, Casey Kasell1, the well-known radio personality who is of Lebanese +26 · TJwo origin. Dr. Jan1es Zogby, the president of the Arab An1erican Institute, had been introduced to nle before the signing cerenl0ny, and had invited nle to pay a visit to their office, where a s111all celebration would be held. I decided that I should go, not Inerely as a courtesy call but to help initiate a process that was long overdue. I was received very courteously and given a taste not only of falafel, kibbeh, and baba ghanouj, but also of a new canlaraderie. Next to nle stood Andy Young, an old associate frOlll the civil rights days, later United States Anlbassador to the U.N. (during which tinle he did not endear hill1self to the Jewish conl111unity), and later still nlayor of Atlanta. There were snliles all around; it seenled no one had stopped snliling fronl Bill Clinton's opening rell1arks on through the speeches of Peres, Rabin, and Arafat. Afterward I went back to the White House for a briefing ofJewish and Arab leaders by Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Vice President Gore, and President Clinton. If the invitation to the n10rning ceren10ny had been a hot ticket, this was a hotter ticket yet. One hundred fifty people were adnlitted to this briefing, seventy-five Arabs and seventy-five Jews. Questions and comInents fronl the floor were permitted and even encouraged. There were SOlne sober voices who cautioned that feelings of euphoria had to be contained because peace was SOllle way off, and the road to it could have nlighty stunlbling blocks in1peding progress. But by and large, the glow of what we had witnessed in the morning perlneated even this high-powered gettogether . An Arab-Anlerican, a physician originally fronl Gaza, spoke of the needs of his region in an eloquent plea. But it was heartening also to hear hin1 say that on this historic nl0rning he was prepared to greet all the assembled and especially the Jewish leadership with a sincere "Shalon1." Synlbolism again, perhaps, but his people had for so long beell adversaries of a Jewish presence in the region that even a "Salaanl" directed at Jews would have been highly unusual. As I write this account, I anl aware that history nlight well render the inlages of Septenlber 13, 1993, hollow and perhaps nleaningless. The peace promised on that morning might have been too fragile to begin with and apt to be shattered by extrenlists on both sides. By now, the Middle East could well be plunged into yet another round of hostilities. But nlY menl0ry of that glorious morning will not give way to any feeling that the exercise was futile and therefore dangerous. Only our peaceable instincts nlake us hunlan. The snarling of hate and the brandishing ofweapons is what diminishes us. As we all sat that morning waiting for the cereillony to begin, I Towardthe.MiUennLum • +27 looked around me and realized that each of us had come to this point having walked different paths. Those assembled here had been moved by different ideologies, different agendas, different imperatives. They had conle together on this day, some merely as witnesses and others as participants in the unfolding drama. Some had lived through events in the area as combatants, son1e others had rendered support and succor to one side or the other. I reminisced about nlY early years in Palestine , guarding fields on horseback and carrying a rifle that, fortunately, I never had to fire. I remembered the constant vigilance, the exercises in preparedness, the weapons smuggled under the noses of the British, weapons to defend the Jewish settlements against hostile neighbors. I remen1bered also the constant struggle within myself, one part of me taking pride in the fighting Jew who could at last stand up to any enemy, and the other part striving for peace, grieving for every victim and regretting all bloodshed-of friend and foe alike. In the end the man of peace always won out, and I am convinced that I emerged a better person. On that sunny n10rning in September I had a sense of personal fulfillnlent; my political agenda seemed to be several steps closer to realization. Yes, Osseh shalon'l bimromav, I said to myself-"He who maketh peace on high will bring peace to Israel." Yet I knew that such a peace could not just come from on high but would need much help ar~d nurturing by hun1an hands. It couldn't just be His peace, it would have to be our peace. ...