"What Do You Think About Israel and Palestine?" – Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (March 14, 2006)

On March 14th, 2006, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014) was interviewed at Congregation Bonai Shalom in Boulder, Colorado by Sadieh Zaman.

Transcript:

What are your views on the issue of Israel and Palestine?

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi: You are touching something that gives me an ache in the heart. Before the '67 war, I tried to publish a piece, in which I wrote that Jerusalem needs to be internationalized. I wanted to see the United Nations move there away from New York, into the place where the prophets have said, "My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples." (Isaiah 56:7) And that the then nascent Israeli army should be the beginning of the Peace Corps for the United Nations, and that we should all put together — at the time when we paid 39 cents a gallon for gasoline — a penny per gallon to help resettle the Palestinian refugees. It fell on deaf ears. You know, I still have some feelings about that.
I have children in Israel, and whenever I go there, I want to meet with those people... And among the people that count themselves as my students, there have been those who have put on every year a sulha — a meeting between Arabs, Christians, Muslims and Jews — to have... the word sulha comes from when two beduin tribes would create peace among themselves and do mutual forgiveness. And each year the celebration has grown. So I am very much for this to happen. If the question is about 'What is just?' and 'What is right?' I think all the people are trying to deal with that, are taking for granted that the cortex can solve the problem. It is not a problem of the cortex. It is a problem of the reptilian brain of Jews and of Arabs, and of Palestinians there. And it is also a problem of how this is being abused by people who want to stay in power by finding a 'whipping boy' about that. We could have had the United States of the Middle East in such a wonderful way, in which the talents and the resources of all of us could have helped each other. And Al-Quds [the Arabic name for Jerusalem] could have been a holy place for Jews, for Christians, for Muslims, in a way that Isaiah foresaw way before. So I have that vision, and I think that is a strong and important vision.

How likely is it that your vision will actually prevail?

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi: It has no other choice. It has no other choice. When people look at every bit of karma that is coming down the pike, if they still think that some one group is going to win over the thing, they are wrong. They are wrong. What they cannot see yet is higher than national sovereignty; it is an organismic interaction. That is why I am talking about 'United States of the Middle East.'
So look — a visionary is not one that everybody agrees with; but if I do not put such a vision out, and if my colleagues do not put such a vision out — like the Rabbis for Human Justice, and so on and so forth — if they did not put that vision out, then it would never get there. And I would like to see my counterparts on the other side, among Palestinians... And I know there are some, I've met some of them; I spent some time recently with a Naqshbandi sheikh in Jerusalem, and it was wonderful!

This video was filmed by Michael Kosacoff, edited by Alec Arshavsky and Netanel Miles-Yépez, and produced by the Yesod Foundation

(www.yesodfoundation.org)
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