By Eli Kavon

In a recent issue of The International Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin argues that Israelis should comply with their government’s vote to pull Jewish settlers out of Gaza, despite the dangers of dealing with a corrupt and undemocratic Palestinian Authority. Rabbi Riskin, chief rabbi of Efrat—a Jewish city on the West Bank large enough to be a suburb of Jerusalem—states that “I am not one of the settlers who believe in Greater Israel or who maintain that the Land is not ours to give away.” According to Rabbi Riskin, “Israel has the right to arrive at a decision regarding its borders. After all, did not King Solomon give up 20 cities in the Galilee to King Hiram of Tyre? Did not Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai give up Jerusalem in order to secure from Vespasian the city of Yavneh and its Sanhedrin?”

For me, Rabbi Riskin’s reference to Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai and Yavneh evoked memories of my hearing him at a Yom Hashoah night almost thirty years ago at Rabbi Avi Weiss’ synagogue in Riverdale, New York. Rabbi Riskin—then going by the first name Steven and serving as spiritual leader of Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan—was the guest speaker for the Holocaust commemoration. He contrasted two rabbinic views of how to deal with the overpowering Roman authority.

Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai adopted a posture of conciliation with the enemy in the name of securing concessions. In a famous story, he daringly had himself sneaked out of the besieged city of Jerusalem, and charmed the Roman general Vespasian. When the latter was named Emperor of the Roman Empire, he granted Rabbi Yohanan’s request to allow Torah scholars to continue their work in the city of Yavneh.

In contrast, Rabbi Akiva criticized Rabbi Yohanan for not trying to get Vespasian to spare Jerusalem. He, living two generations after the Romans destroyed the Temple on Mount Zion, supported Simeon Bar Kokhba’s revolt against the Romans in 132. The enemy crushed that rebellion at Betar in 135 and executed Torah scholars, among them Rabbi Akiva.

For Rabbi Riskin, the two were studies in contrasting political strategies. The former believed in making peace with the ruling power even at the cost of the end of Jewish political sovereignty and the likelihood of discrimination and persecution. The latter looked to violent messianic rebellion as the answer. For Rabbi Akiva, unlike Rabbi Yohanan, no bargain could be struck with the enemies of the Jewish people.

At that Yom Hashoah commemoration, Rabbi Riskin argued that in the epoch following the Holocaust, Rabbi Yohanan’s view—the strategy adopted by Jews for centuries in both Israel and Diaspora in order to survive—should be rejected as bankrupt. In the face of Nazi genocide, the idea that one could thrive or even survive by accommodation to foreign domination was no longer tenable. The strategy of Rabbi Yohanan, which worked for almost two thousand years, failed miserably and tragically in the face of Nazi totalitarian extermination. After Auschwitz and the rise of a Jewish State with a Jewish army, the political response of the Jews must be that of Rabbi Akiva, that of fighting back against the oppressor. Had more Jews not followed the “sha shtil” (stay quiet) strategy of Rabbi Yohanan, had there been more rebellions like those in the Warsaw Ghetto and Sobibor, perhaps more Jews would have survived the Nazi genocide.

Rabbi Riskin’s presentation had a great impact on me. Never again should Jews be reduced to a state of helplessness, without a sovereign Jewish State or a Jewish defense force. The Rabbi Yohanan strategy of making deals with the enemy left us, in modern times, with the terrible phenomenon of the Judenrate, the Jewish councils in Europe who, mostly against their will, cooperated with the Nazis in the extermination of the Jews. In the post-Holocaust epoch, aspects of the political strategy of accommodation are, indeed, bankrupt.

Yet even though I have always been a supporter of the Jewish nationalism of Nordau, Jabotinsky and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, I am pleased that Rabbi Riskin has not totally abandoned political moderation. By citing Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai and Yavneh in the recent Jerusalem Post article, Rabbi Riskin has made clear that political and military defiance in the mode of Rabbi Akiva is not always the answer in a crisis. Yes, after Auschwitz and certainly after Nasser’s threats to drive Israel into the sea in 1967, the message of Rabbi Akiva should never be forgotten: the Jewish people must fight back enemies threatening mortal danger and extermination.

Despite the horrible homicide bombings of recent years, our people today is not in the same peril as during the Shoah and the early years of the Jewish State. Israel is ready for whatever threat comes its way, either from the Palestinians or from Iran and Syria. The Egypt of Nasser is no more, Hafez Assad and Yasir Arafat are dead, and Saddam Hussein is in a prison cell. I do not mean to discount the danger of Hamas and Islamic Jihad or to underestimate the dangers of global anti-Semitism (which hides behind the mask of a politically correct anti-Zionism). But much has changed in the world for the Jewish people and the State of Israel. We do not always need to be in the politically and militarily defiant mode of a Rabbi Akiva. There is room for negotiation and moderation.

If we do the math—9000 Jews in Gaza as opposed to 1.3 million Palestinians—it is apparent that there will never be a Jewish majority there. To spend precious shekels and risk the lives of soldiers defending a small group of Jews is not worth the cost. Also, the same problem of a small Jewish presence in areas of Judea and Samaria near large Palestinian population centers must be addressed. While such settlement blocs as Ma’aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion should be a part of any Jewish State after negotiations—they are suburbs of Jerusalem, not small settler outposts—the fate of those few Jews living amidst thousands of Palestinians is questionable.

I agree that God gave the Jewish people the Land of Israel on both sides of the Jordan as an inheritance. But reality indicates that if Israel holds on to all of the territory legitimately captured in 1967, in 25 years the majority population of the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River will no longer be Jewish but Palestinian. While Israel has already made concessions to the Palestinians, it will have to make more in order to remain a Jewish State. That is the sobering political worldview of a Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai. Many Religious Zionists in both Israel and the United States want to avoid facing this reality. They want to react in the mode of Rabbi Akiva. In the case of Israel, partial defiance is legitimate in the rooting out of terror cells and the prevention of homicide bombings. However, negotiation must be a part of the total equation.

We are left, of course, with the question of with whom to negotiate? Hamas has done well in recent Palestinian Authority elections, not a good omen for any peace process. Should we give up hope that there will ever be peace? Will the Jewish people forever be on a state of red alert, ignoring world politics, denying there is a demographic crisis, and wishing the millions of Palestinians in their backyard would just disappear?

The answer is this: neither the Jewish State nor the Palestinians will be driven into the sea nor vanish into the air. Those days are over. Both sides are here to stay. The idealism of Rabbi Akiva is admirable—and his belief that Bar Kokhba was a messianic redeemer was a response to the religious and political oppression of the Roman Empire. Today, while Israel is under far more moderate threats than the ancient Judeans, it is time to reconsider the acts of Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai , the ancient sage of Yavneh.

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