“Make Peace, Not
Love.”
-Amos Oz
In Jewish tradition, peace and love are not the same, and
the former is not necessarily dependent upon the latter. Christianity has inextricably linked the two
since Jesus’ injunction to “love your enemies” but in Judaism, this linkage is
seen as unrealistic at best and, at worst, counterproductive, for it sets the
bar for peace so high as to make it essentially unattainable. Thus Israeli writer and peace activist Amos
Oz’s twist on the 1960s hippy slogan: “Make Peace, Not Love.” Or, for a slanted answer to Elvis Costello’s
sly musical question, “What’s so funny ‘bout peace, love and understanding?”
our tradition might say: “We’ll happily settle for two out of three.” (Alas, Mr. Costello himself won't settle for anything other than anti-Israel bias; a few years ago, he cancelled two scheduled shows in Tel Aviv, bowing to pressure from the boycott crowd).
This pragmatic worldview lies at the heart of our weekly
Torah portion, Vayishlach. As the portion begins, estranged brothers
Jacob and Esau are reunited for the first time since their bitterly
antagonistic parting twenty years earlier.
Upon seeing one another, they weep and embrace—and then, in short order,
go off again on their separate ways. Do
they reconcile? Yes. Do they live together lovingly, happily ever
after? No. Jacob and Esau reach a kind of hard-earned,
watchful peace based on shared history, common interests, and wary
respect. And this—rather than heartfelt
and abiding love—proves to be good enough.
The two brothers will come together again to bury their father
Isaac. Then, for the rest of their
lives, they will co-exist peacefully with a healthy distance between them.
I believe that this episode offers a still-vital model for
us as we wrestle with the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The naïve dream of a Jewish-Arab peace
settlement based on love and admiration is, by all accounts, dead in the
water. The time has come to bury that
romantic but ultimately unhelpful dream, just as Jacob and Esau buried their
father—so that we can move on to the arduous and unsentimental work of laying
the foundation for a realistic end to the conflict based on shared interests
rather than wildly unrealistic idealism.
I will leave you with the words of Israeli journalist Ari Shavit, from a
piece he published in the New York Times
last spring. To read the entire article,
see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/opinion/the-old-peace-is-dead-but-a-new-peace-is-possible.html?_r=0
The New Peace will be very different from the
Old Peace. There will not be grandiose peace ceremonies in Camp David or at the
White House, no Nobel Prizes to be handed out. The New Peace does
not mean lofty declarations and presumptuous vows,
but a pragmatic, gradual process whereby the New Arabs and the New Israelis
will acknowledge their mutual needs and interests. It will be a quiet, almost
invisible, process that will allow Turks, Egyptians, Saudis, Jordanians,
Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians and Israelis to reach common understandings.
The New Peace will be based on the humble, pragmatic assumption that all the
participants must respect, and not provoke, one another, so that conflict does
not disrupt the constructive social reforms that all seek to promote.
Israel. . . needs a new strategic
concept toward the Palestinians. The Arab world needs new organizing principles
for its fledgling states. And America needs a new Middle East vision — one
aimed not at grand and unattainable all-encompassing solutions but at
incremental steps to temper the flames of extremism, tribalism and hate.
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