Weekly Message from Rabbi Alexandra Wright Gilad Shaar, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrach: these are the names of the three teenagers, who were kidnapped while hitch-hiking in the West Bank two weeks ago. Their abduction highlights the painful and protracted stalemate between Israel and the Palestinians. Since their disappearance, five Palestinian teenagers have been shot and killed and over four hundred Palestinians have been rounded up, some of whom were released in the deal made when Gilad Shalit was released in 2011. The search for the missing boys has focused around Hebron – the ancient city of Kiriyat Arba – where Abraham pitched his tent and built an altar to God. It was in Hebron that he purchased a burial cave to bury his wife Sarah and later on, it was to Hebron that Jacob returned to his father Isaac after a twenty-year absence. Joseph was sent by his father from the valley of Hebron to seek out his brothers, pasturing the flock and it was not far from there that he was abducted and sold as a slave to a passing caravan of traders. The twelve spies, sent by Moses to scout out the land of Egypt, arrived in Hebron having passed through the Negev and it was there in Hebron that they came across the Anakites – the ‘giants’ of the land who made them seem like grasshoppers in the eyes of the inhabitants of the land and so they seemed in their own eyes. Joshua attacked the city of Hebron during the Israelite conquest and destroyed it and David, before his conquest of the Jebusite fortress of Jerusalem, was anointed in Hebron and the city became his capital for seven years, a witness to covenants and cut-throat politics. But Hebron was also one of the cities of refuge in Israel – a place where those guilty of accidental homicide could take refuge without fear of avenging attacks. What kind of appeal should be made to the splintered militant cells of one people to release these three boys? And who is there of influence and sufficient moral strength to persuade Israel and Palestine that there is no future in the continued occupation and humiliation of one people and terror and refusal to recognise Israel’s presence on the part of the other? In Hebron there are two pavements on either side of the central street. A barrier runs through the middle of the road: one side for Israelis, the other for Palestinians. The old shop fronts, with their green painted shutters are closed, their houses emptied of inhabitants. And what do the next generation see – the little children whose journeys to school are determined by the birth of their parents and which side of the barrier they happen to walk – they see a tired, dusty city, patrolled by armed soldiers, they see their parents humiliated and frightened, both asserting their right to the ancient territory and stones of the place. They have emptied the wells of Hebron to search for the missing boys. Israel and Palestine. Palestine and Israel. A people undone and weary, fearful of what will happen next. This is the place of our history, written not only in the chronicles of the Jewish people, but another people too – our brothers and sisters, neighbours, a people who shepherded their flocks with ours on the hillside outside Hebron. What can we do but pray for the return of these boys? Pray for strength, pray for comfort for grieving parents – Israeli and Palestinian - and the grandchildren of the man who died of a heart attack in Hebron when his house was searched. Pray for peace, pray for a tiny chink of understanding between two peoples who are hurting, who are angry; who will not have rest until they have felt the pain of the other and stood in their shoes. Alexandra Wright
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 20:48:06 +0000
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