Arabs and Jews on Campus
Schwarz, Sidney H.
BOOKS Arabs and Jews on Campus The Reunion of Isaac and Ishmael by Jack J. Cohen, Mosaic Press and The Reconstmctionist Press, 1987. 169 pp, $1995 hard cover, $1295 paperback Reviewed by Sidney...
...In applying these concepts to Israel, Cohen challenges his adopted homeland to do no less than rethink the very premises of Zionism...
...The Reunion of Isaac and Ishmael is Rabbi Cohen's record of those experiences and the insights and conclusions he drew from observing this microcosm of Israeli society...
...The rigors of intellectual debate in the Western tradition are not as much part of the cultural legacy of the Arab community as becomes the norm at the university...
...Our American experience tells us that even in a democracy, preferences for the majority ethnic group are built into the system naturally, even if there is no malicious intent or innate prejudice...
...Or maybe I should say this: We'll teach you how to use something you already possess...
...Because the knowledge of how to kill is deep inside each of you...
...Like any good facilitator of intergroup dialogue, Cohen begins by getting each side to understand what makes the other tick...
...The trick is to be selective about employing that knowledge...
...Let each community celebrate its cultural diversity and richness in its own way...
...Cohen would answer this by saying that as a democracy, Israel's ethnic and cultural reality must be bi-national...
...Sidney Schwarz is the president of the Washington Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, which sponsors seminars on American democracy and Jewish values...
...However, even the effete Rafi is swept along by his training and finds himself brimming with hate for Arab enemies...
...Cohen does not attempt to review the competing claims of the respective sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict over who are the more legitimate heirs to the land...
...It is easy to pay lip-service to the principles of pluralism and democracy...
...This experience not only makes them older than their Arab counterparts but it dramatically affects their maturity and life outlook...
...He is also rabbi of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Washington, D.C...
...Cohen challenges Israel to become the kind of society that could place Israeli Arabs in such a position...
...169 pp, $1995 hard cover, $1295 paperback Reviewed by Sidney H. Schwarz Rarely has the appearance of a new book seemed so timely...
...Though Cohen is a committed Zionist himself, one senses that neither history nor theology will successfully resolve the conflict for him...
...Ironically, no Israeli Arab student ever indicated a preference to live in such a state, should it be created, preferring the higher quality of life and democratic safeguards that Arabs have become accustomed to in Israel...
...Cohen's contribution to this state of affairs has been to bring Arab and Jewish students together...
...Subsequent demands by Israeli Arabs for equal treatment by Israeli institutions are seen by Jews as presumptuous...
...He has tried to get each side to look past the fact that their respective nations are at war, to realize that they are co-citizens in the same state...
...The themes that recur in succeeding classes of university students tell Cohen much about the respective psyches of Arabs and Jews in Israel today...
...As is common in the West, the university tends to radicalize students...
...And as we read on and take a break to read the newspaper, we are reminded of how difficult it is to master this trick...
...His goal is to open the lines of communication between individual Arabs and Jews...
...For a country that was founded as a Jewish homeland, to be as open to Arabs as it is to Jews, amounts to a form of de-Judaization of many aspects of Israeli society...
...Furthermore, because Israeli Arabs are exempt from military service, the Jews have the abiding sense that these Arabs have not really contributed to the service of their country in equal measure...
...He is not talking about prime ministers and ambassadors but university students who will make up the educated populations of their respective communities...
...Finally, it has been a long and slow process for Hebrew University, founded as "the university of the Jewish people," to provide its Arab students with moral support and a cultural environment that meets their particular needs...
...In the open and sympathetic environment of the university, the Arab student learns to demand equal treatment with his or her Jewish counterpart, demands the student will later challenge Israeli society as a whole to deliver...
...Jack J. Cohen, an American-born Reconstmctionist rabbi, served for 23 years as the Hillel director at Hebrew University in Jerusalem...
...The pre-eminent fact about typical Jewish students is that they come to the university directly out of their obligatory two or three years of military service...
...The barriers that could not be broken down by talk were often at least lowered through living and working together...
...Others would say, with Jack Cohen, that true democracy demands no less...
...When Cohen himself found the obstacles to the dialogue between the groups too much to overcome, he launched a trial project in which Arab and Jewish students worked together, in small villages, on educational or other community projects...
...Most Israeli Jews wonder why they must relinquish elements of Jewish culture in their state which Jews dreamed of reestablishing for 2,000 years while Israeli Arabs can choose to go to some 20 other Arab nations and be part of an existing Arab majority culture...
...The Jewish student must come to empathize with the strains on the identity of Israeli Arabs, caught between loyalty to their people who are on the other side of a conflict with Israel, their state...
...but let not the state cast its lot in with any one religion or ethnic group...
...Because "the enemy" during those years of military service was Arabs, it is hard for Jewish students to see the people behind the Arab names and faces they encounter on campus...
...We'll teach you that also...
...You are now ready to learn to kill...
...Cohen finds the typical Arab students consumed by resentment of their minority status in Israel...
...If the Israeli Arab doesn't enter the university totally committed to the idea of a Palestinian state, she or he embraces that political idea soon after matriculation...
...If it doesn't provide all of the answers, it certainly raises the right questions...
...Rafi-—artistic, physically slight—is an unlikely soldier, an aberration in a family of military heroes...
...Considering the current uprisings on the West Bank by Palestinians unhappy with Israeli rule over the territories, many of Cohen's prescriptions are worth considering...
...It has been observed by others that the key to settling the Middle East conflict lies with Israeli Arab citizens who have a foot in each world and could serve as important links between warring parties...
...At the university, Arab students must overcome a linguistic disability in that their first language, Arabic, is not the language of instruction...
...Warriors and Lovers Shimoni's Lover by Jenifer Levin Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987 378 pp, $1895 Reviewed by Irene Rosenberg In the prologue to her novel, Shimoni's Lover, Jenifer Levin sets the stage for a disturbing vision of Israel...
...moreover, other societies have achieved a level of intergroup harmony without the complete separation of church and state...
...Whether such a rigorous application of the United States tradition of churchstate separation could ever be accepted in Israel is questionable...
...To do that you must learn to kill...
...Though resigned to the current demographic facts, the Arab sees this reality as an historical injustice...
...Whatever one's own mind, this book addresses some of the most fundamental problems brought on by modern nationalisms and intergroup conflict...
...But his experiences do point the way to the kind of mutual trust and understanding that must be established before Arabs and Jews come to peacefully co-exist in the Middle East...
...Maybe, as Levin seems to be saying, it may take more restraint than humans possess to be "selective" about using the knowledge to kill...
...While Cohen doesn't deal with this aspect of the problem, his approach is relevant to it...
...The fact that both the university and Israeli society are essentially open to all citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, does not mean that there do not exist disabilities for minorities...
...They haven't and they won't...
...His profiles of Arab and Jewish students are not the product of compilations of data from survey questionnaires, but derive from years spent talking and living with these students...
...On the first day, the lieutenant tells his recruits, "You must learn to defend yourselves and to protect the things that make a long life worth living...
...Cohen is too realistic to believe that his efforts and experiments at Hebrew University will change the face of Arab-Jewish relations...
...Some would argue that such a development would reverse all the accomplishments of the Zionist miracle of this century...
...In a scene of basic training for Israeli soldiers, remarkable for the cruelties and indignities imposed upon fresh recruits, she introduces Rafi Kol, one of four sons of the Kol family who live on kibbutz May Ha-Emek...
...Resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict is achievable only through the concerted efforts of diplomats and politicians with courage and vision...
...During that time, he engaged in a variety of efforts to bring together Arab and Israeli students who shared the campus but little else...
...The Arab student must come to understand the effect that centuries of historical persecution has had on the political and social attitudes of Israeli Jews...
Vol. 13 • June 1988 • No. 4
