Sharing Our Grief, Burying Our Fears, Sitting Gently with the Land
Only the dead can truly own land, so the Jews cannot claim to 'own' the Temple Mount.
BY: Rabbi Arthur Waskow
"Now these are the days and the years of Avraham, which he lived: 100 years and 70 years and five years, then he expired. Yitzchak and Yishmael his sons buried him in the cave of Makhpela in the field that Avraham had acquired There were buried Avraham and Sara his wife. Now it was after Avraham's death, that God blessed Yitzhak his son. And Yitzhak settled by the Well of the Living-One Who-Sees-Me" (Gen. 25: 7-8a, 9-11.)
On the eighth day of my life, I was named "Avraham Yitzchak"--"Abraham Isaac." On Rosh Hashanah, 1975, when we read in the Torah about the near-deaths of Abraham's two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, it came to me to add "Yishmael"--Ishmael--and thus to complete the troubled triangle.
Ever since, when the children of Ishmael and the children of Isaac tear at each other, I feel myself being torn apart.
So I take joy in the passage of Torah where these two come together to bury Abraham, and then live together at the same "well of seeing" that had saved Ishmael's life. For years, I have urged that we read it on Yom Kippur as atikkun
--a way of healing or makin whole--atshuvah,
(repentance) for the deadly Rosh Hashanah stories.
And not merely read. Today, all Israelis and Palestinians, all Jews and Arabs, might mourn together--not separately--the deaths of our children. If we see each other's tears, we may water a wellspring of seeing, a wellspring at which we can learn to live together.
And perhaps we learn not only to share our tears but to bury our fears. Perhaps the brothers had projected onto each other the fear they felt toward Abraham--but could not say aloud. So perhaps his death released them both to see each other's faces, rather than his frightening frown.
Today, what fears would have to die to release Israelis and Palestinians to see each other?