Rabbi Balfour Brickner

By Andrea Barron

What was Rabbi Balfour Brickner named after the author of the 1917 Balfour Declaration doing on Capitol Hill speaking out against Jewish settlements in the West Bank? Lord Arthur Balfour's Declaration, after all, was the official British document which gave the Jewish people "permission" to establish a national home in Palestine. But for Rabbi Brickner, who headed a delegation of 16 rabbis who travelled to Washington in April, 1983 to express their opposition to settlement construction in a land overwhelmingly populated by Arabs, there was no incongruity between being a Zionist and criticizing Israeli policies.

Brickner's Zionist pedigree is as good as they come. "I was born with a Zionist spoon in my mouth," the 60 year old Rabbi confesses. His father, a prominent Reform rabbi in Cleveland, Ohio, was one of the country's "crusading Zionists" in the 1920's and 30's. And his mother, bilingual in Hebrew and English by the time she was 17, was one of the first people in the world to type on a Hebrew typewriter. The elder Brickners believed in "the renaissance of the Hebrew language," and brought up their children in a bilingual household. "Like Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver and other American Zionist leaders," says Brickner, "my parents did not feel compelled to move to Palestine. But they wanted to establish a state where all Jews could go if they wanted to."

As a teenager, the Rabbi became involved in the Zionist movement, enthusiastically embracing what he saw as the "first successful national liberation struggle in the world because the Jews succeeded in throwing the British out of Palestine." He also became active in the civil rights movement and, in the early Sixties, travelled extensively throughout the South, enjoying what he said was "the hospitality of those cities' finest Jails."

Brickner served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, then graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a B.A. in Philosophy in 1948. Four years later, he was ordained as a Reform rabbi at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. He founded and built Washington's Temple Sinai, remaining there until 1961 at which time he became the rabbi of the well known Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City. A noted author, Brickner has published two books, including one entitled Searching the Prophets for Values (with Albert Vorspan), countless articles, and several pamphlets including one on Arab refugees.

Until 1982, Balfour Brickner lived on what he called "the inside of the Jewish communal structure." For more than 20 years he served as National Rabbinic Co Chairman of the Israel bonds campaign, and for nearly that long was on the executive council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, umbrella group for the country's reform congregations. He travelled to Israel, Europe, and North Africa in 1951 on behalf of the United Jewish Appeal and helped "Si" Kennan found the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington's powerful "pro-Israel" lobby.

But then came the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 a turning point in the life of Rabbi Brickner and an event which put one of the most respected rabbis in the United States on the "outside" of the Jewish establishment. Brickner was probably not very different from the majority of American rabbis in that from the time Menachem Begin assumed power in 1977, he felt uncomfortable with the policies of Israel's rightwing Likud Party. Unlike most of his colleagues, however, Brickner had the courage of his convictions. He stated publicly that Lebanon would be "Israel's Vietnam" and criticized Israeli policies in interviews with New York Times reporters, actions which brought forth from some fellow Jews accusations of disloyalty to the State of Israel.

Until recently, argues Brickner, the Jewish communal structure had "no mind of its own, but took its marching orders from Jerusalem." And if there's anything Balfour Brickner has demonstrated, it's that he will not take "marching orders" from anyone, no matter what the cost to him personally. Though still an ardent Zionist, he insists that Israel was wrong to invade Lebanon, an opinion now shared by the majority of Israelis, and that it is wrong to hold the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He does not like "the creeping annexation" of the territories, or the fact that their Jewish and Palestinian inhabitants are subject to two different sets of laws. "Israel should grant the Palestinians the right of self-determination," he says. "That would not threaten Israel. The country's present policies are what keep Palestinians restive and make the territories a 'warm oven for terrorism'."

Brickner is rare among rabbis when it comes to the question of whether AIPAC and the President's Conference of Major Jewish Organizations speak for all American Jews. Brickner insists that they do not, and that there are many American Jews who believe as he does that the U.S. should talk to anyone in the interests of peace, even the PLO. Though himself not a great admirer of the PLO, Brickner stands on the principle that "no ethnic, racial, or religious group should be allowed to dictate U.S. foreign policy. The Jewish lobby should not be permitted to stop U.S. talks with the PLO, just like the Armenians, for instance, should not be able to stop them with the Turks."

Wise words from one of AIPAC's founders. The question now is whether the rest of the American Jewish community will heed them.