Project Chayei Sarah: Engaging Hebron, Unearthing Our Values
Two weeks ago, a group of 13 rabbinical students, rabbis, Jewish educators and lay-leaders who spent time in Hebron invited their communities to examine the conflict there by delivering divrei Torah on Parshat Chayei Sarah. Their audiences included Hadar, JTS, Hebrew College, HUC, RRC, Mercaz Hamagshimim, Wesleyan U., and others.
This drash was delivered at Kehilat Hadar and guest posted by Charlie Schwartz, a rabbinical student at The Jewish Theological Seminary who served with distinction in the IDF.
“Sarah died in Kiryat-Arba, now Hebron…”
This Shabbat, thousands of Jews will descend on the holy city of Hebron in commemoration of the death of Sarah. Gyms will be converted into makeshift dorms, tents will sprout up around the city, serving food and hosting the pilgrims, and massive minyanim will form in and around the maarat hamakhpelah, the traditional burial site of Sarah, Abraham, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah. The streets will fill with excitement and joy, and maybe even spiritual ecstasy buoyed by the deep historical and religious Jewish connection to Hebron. But I don’t have access to this spiritual joy. For me, the hatred, fear, and violence that mar modern Hebron seal off the path to the holiness of ancient, mythic Hebron.
Among the places I served while in the IDF, Hebron was the most difficult, the most physically and psychologically draining, the place where moral lines were most blurred in the name of security. There, I encountered the harsh realties of a city under occupation, a city where 500 hard-line Israelis live among 130,000 Palestinians. I came to know Hebron as a city of intense conflict and strife. My role there as a solider was as much desperately trying to keep distance between Israelis and Palestinians as it was preventing terrorists from hiding within the civilian population. Among my unit, there was constant talk about the theoretical calculus of whether our overwhelming presence in the city stopped more terrorists than it created. More »
