The despair was deep. The dream of a peaceful future for my people – I could no longer imagine it. As a Jew who desperately wants peace and an end to bloodshed in our Holy Land, the weeks of death and violence were devastating to me.
That dream illumined my life for seven years, ever since Yitzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn in September 1993. Whatever its political significance today, on the ashes of the Oslo peace process, that event meant so much to me. It kindled my faith of a better future. In a moment, I was ready to pack away the bags of enmity, to stash away my grievances, to let the past be just that.
I sustained my faith for seven years by walking hand-in-hand with the peace process. I was knocked down when it was knocked down – when Baruch Goldstein massacred Muslim worshipers in Hebron in 1994, when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, when bus terrorism took the lives of two of my classmates months later, among other instances. Yet I never wavered in my belief that the parties had no option but to make peace and live together. Peace would come soon, well within my lifetime.
The violence of the past month in Israel and the territories broke my faith, shattered my dream and left me empty. The mutual support and dialogue of community members at Georgetown warmed me. The renewed bellicosity in the actions and voices of our brethren in the land, things which really mattered, destroyed me. Certainly, I was no longer going to see peace in my time.
In a moment of reflection this past Shabbat, as I sat down with Jewish law students trying to make sense of the irrational events, I felt my faith restored. What had been missing in my equation over the past seven years, and certainly in the devastation of the past month, was sufficient faith in God: faith in God’s watch over the troubles of the Holy Land and faith in God’s bringing resolution and peace to its disputes, in God’s time. Thankfully, blessedly, buoyed by a renewed faith, my spirits were renewed.
No, peace may not come between Palestinians and Israelis in my lifetime, although I hope it will. As a person of faith, I must cede much of the control over this destiny to God. There is only so much I can do, only so much we all can do as students and faculty on campus, only so much even our co-religionists in Israel and the Palestinian territories can do to foster peace and coexistence.
Yes, we must be vigilant in our efforts to bring peace to the region. Here on campus, it is imperative that we continue to build understanding between faith groups, instead of engaging in polemics that have divided this and other campuses for decades. Yet we must have faith that much of the work is in God’s hands. The more we fail to acknowledge this, the more we leave ourselves prey to despair and dejection. Let God bring peace soon and speedily to Israel and the Palestinian territories, in God’s day.
Rabbi Mark Robbins is the Jewish chaplain at Georgetown.