Boycott Benefits Interfaith Peace Symposium

By the Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

A boycott launched by President Gideon Goldenholtz of the Wisconsin Council of Rabbis against last November's Milwaukee Symposium on "The Role of Religious Leaders in the Middle East Peace Process" has had the unintended result of enhancing media interest in the event. Its repercussions continue eight months later.

The Associated Press, local and outside newspapers, and academic and religious periodicals all sent reporters to the Marquette University campus. Resultant headlines included: "Understanding—Key to Aiding Israelis, Arabs"; "Jews, Muslims, Christians Must Re-learn Harmony"; "Action is Necessary: Religious Leaders Have Obligation [Vatican UN] Observer Says"; speaking Out: Christians Address Mideast Peace"; "Conferees Say That Only Recently Have They Examined Aspects of Zionism"; "Israel Called Oppressive at Conference"; and "Jerusalem's Pride Also Its Curse."

Like other area clergy, Goldenholtz had been invited to bring colleagues to take advantage of question and discussion periods to air their views. He declined, however, complaining that neither of the slated Jewish speakers represented "mainline American Jewish" opinion. Hence, he was not present to challenge or confirm Jewish theologian Marc Ellis' assertion that, in most interfaith dialogues, "Christians are afraid to raise honest questions about Israeli behavior on the West Bank" while "Jewish leaders are allowed to get away with evasive non-answers."

Speaker's Life Threatened

Nor was Goldenholtz on hand to comment on the symposium's most widely reported incident. As summarized in the Milwaukee Journal's coverage: "Two Milwaukee police officers guarded Michael Lerner, one of the Jewish speakers, whose life was threatened by some right-wing followers of the slain Rabbi Meir Kahane. Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine, had said on CBS television that the cycle of violence resulting in Kahane's assassination in New York City was one the militant leader helped perpetuate by his own use of violence. " (Goldenholtz was prominent in local memorial services honoring that fallen founder of the Jewish Defense League and Israel's anti-Gentile Kach party.)

The rabbinical president was, in any case, shortly to have to contend with other news stories which may also have been brought to journalistic attention by his attempted boycott. Among their headlines were: "Jewish Rift May End State Council of Rabbis" and "New Group Likely for Rabbis." One interviewee acknowledged that "There are deep divisions in the Jewish community, but most Jews won't discuss those differences. " In his camp, it came out, Goldenholtz had, at best, five staunch supporters among his rabbinical colleagues.

This is not to discount support given Goldenholtz from other sources. Mordecai Lee, seasoned Zionist politician and executive director of the "umbrella" Milwaukee Jewish Council, did his unsuccessful best to get key personages at Marquette, the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee and Cardinal Stitch College (departmental cosponsors with the Wisconsin Committee of the American-Arab Affairs Council) to dissociate their schools from the symposium. And, although only 4 of the symposium's 17 speakers were Arabs—a Syrian-born Protestant, two Catholics from Lebanon and Jerusalem, and an Egyptian Muslim—the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle fanned anxieties by alleging that the speakers were "predominantly Arab. " The newspaper labeled the Jewish participants in the symposium as "extreme leftists."

Glimmers of Hope?

An otherwise disparaging Chronicle editorial did, however, conclude on a positive note: "Let us hope," it mused, "that enough people of good will at this symposium ... are willing to build an honest symposium on what religious leaders can do to further Middle East peace."

Actually, many veterans of the overflow attendance have been pursuing that goal, working in their own circles and through the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee. In the latter they have found overwhelming non-Jewish support for distributing pertinent peacemaking literature, for jointly framing official statements and for candid public dialogue on American-Arab-Israeli relations. There have also been cooperative Jewish supporters. Otherwise, a symposium committee member could hardly have become the keynote speaker on the current Jerusalem turmoil at the May 15 annual meeting of the Milwaukee Association for Interfaith Relations.

Supportive Jews, however, have special problems. Their efforts regularly run up against the virtual veto power of elements in the Jewish Council which, in turn, seems corporately bent on frustrating any attempts at interreligious studies, discussions, or action tending toward American-Arab-Israeli conciliation. Stonewalling (ranging from genial to hostile), word-mincing, red herring-dragging, defamation by innuendo and implied guilt by association have appeared to be deliberate tactics to delay or obstruct any momentum in that direction. Despite local annual millions to Israel plus new millions for the "Soviet Exodus," whenever suggestions are made for bringing Shamir-led policies and practices into line with American requirements or Israeli signed international agreements, "the establishment" fends them off by disclaiming any adequate influence in Jerusalem.

Repeated—but still evanascent—expectations keep recurring: perhaps, despite obstacles, some unrestricted, Jewish-Gentile collaboration may yet emerge to round out this story more positively. Awaiting such possibilities, though, has already delayed publication too long. (The symposium took place on Nov. T) Any accounts readers can provide from other settings to permit a happier ending will be warmly received.

Meanwhile, the eight of its papers printed in the Fall 1990 American-Arab Affairs Quarterly (1730 M Street, #512, Washington, DC 20036; $5.50) remain fresh and illuminating. They include Lerner's "The Politics of Religion in the Middle East Peace Process" and Ellis' "Sabra and Shatila: Jewish Progressives and Complicity in the Oppression of the Palestinian People. " Also in the selections are "Theological Perspectives on the Middle East" by Professor John Renard, Theology, St. Louis University; "The American Christian Peace Community and the Intifada" by Professor Rosemary R. Ruether, Applied Theology, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary; "The Urgent Need for Peace in the Middle East" by Archbishop Renato Martino, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the UN; "The Vatican, US Catholics and the Conflict in Lebanon" by Professor George Irani, Political Science, Franklin College; and "The Scandal of the Holy Land" by Professor Hassan Haddad, History, St. Xavier College. Rev. Laurin Wenig's presentation of the overall theme in the contemporary local context introduces the series. He is ecumenical committee chairman in the Milwaukee Archdiocese.

Falashas: Jewish and Ex-Jewish

The stranding of 3,000 Falashas at Addis Ababa airport when between 14,000 and 18,000 other Ethiopian Jews were loaded onto the June emergency flights to Israel (Washington Report, July 1991, p. 50) led the British Catholic Tablet to inquire for the criteria behind their exclusion. The rejects, it discovered, though of immemorially Jewish ancestry, were Christian in faith either by birth or conversion.

The Jewish Agency, which initiated and executed the dramatic airlift, it seems, was bound by the basic Israeli laws of "Nationality" and "Return" which withhold otherwise automatic economic, political and territorial advantages from Jews who have embraced another faith—and their descendants. Any possible ambiguity in this case had been removed by the Christmas Day, 1989, High Court ruling that any Jew who believes in Jesus, even without baptism or church membership, forfeits those privileges.

Apparently aware of this built-in obstacle, tens of thousands of now-Christian Falashas did not even apply for inclusion in the exodus. With them in mind, the Geneva-based Ecumenical Press Service reports, Israeli Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu is asking Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to permit Christian Falashas "to come to Israel where reconversion could take place."

This has generated some apprehension lest lbo, Basa and other African tribes, convinced of their Israelite descent, might claim the right to successive waves of aliya to Israel. However, Uriel Ben Moshe, a Basa tribesman, has told Wall Street Journal reporter Peter Waldman of his total failure in petitioning the Israeli rabbinate to recognize his people as Jewish by birth. He himself had to go through formal conversion to be admitted to a Jerusalem yeshiva for rabbinical studies.

"Mr. Ben Moshe," according to Waldman, "says African Jews are victims of racism. After years of neglect ... Israel helped Ethiopia's Jews only after the UN General Assembly had passed a resolution equating Zionism with racism. The airlift, Mr. Ben Moshe says, was Israel's token response to the UN reproach."

Tikkun Conference in Jerusalem

The foreigners among the 500 Liberal and Progressive Jews who thronged the Hebrew Union College's Jerusalem campus June 23-28 were mostly American. There for Tikkun magazine's conference on "Solidarity with the Israeli Peace Movement, " they were inspired by such tested activists as prophetic Yishayahu Leibowitz and pragmatic Yehezkiel Landau.

They also heard a variety of other views. For instance, Katya Gibel-Azoulai stirred lively discussion by voicing disapproval of the "moral myopia" and "elitism" of the Israeli Left toward Oriental and Sephardic Jews. Yael Dayan (the late General Moshe Dayan's daughter) appealed strongly for American Jews to help Israel by moving there and having "many children." And Leah Shakdiel gave a ringing feminist critique.

Laini Kavaloski, an experienced interfaith dialoguer from the Midwest, while appreciating the conference's broad scope, has verbalized the disappointment of many participants on two counts: The disunity within and between the peace camps was not conducive to improved prospects of an Israeli contribution to regional stability. And inadequate attention was paid to developing a strategy for implementing such suggestions as surfaced.

The one clear strategic proposal—from editor Michael Lerner—was that the US offer a $15 billion annual "incentive" to enable a demilitarized Palestinian state and a non-expansionist Israel to live side by side in productive harmony. His four-page statement is available from Tikkun, 5100 Leona Street, Oakland, CA 94619. His five-page July-August editorial on "The Paralysis of the Israeli Peace Movement" clarifies his conviction that foreign aid can accomplish more when given as incentive than as pressure. It also expresses his dismay, as a religious Jew, that, unlike the Vietnam-era US, today's Israel offers peacekeepers no alternative to secular, "single-issue" antiwar groups; there is no parallel to the American long-range, "multi-issue ... National Coalition for Peace and Justice ... financed primarily by church groups."

The Rev. L. Humphrey Walz, D. D., is a retired associate executive of the Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast.