They planned the assassination with few doubts in their mind as to the justice of the terrible deed they were about to perpetrate. They just knew they had to get rid of him, that only that way would they protect the integrity of the people of Israel from his egotistical designs. Their animosity drew from two deep, dark, irrational sources: their hatred for the man – who did he think he is to lord it over them, to tell them what to do? – and their envy: they were deeply jealous of him, and therefore mistrusted his vision, his dreams, his plans for the future. And so they decided to murder him without thought as to the consequences.

They were lucky – at the last moment their eldest brother intervened, as Reuben pleaded with them to spare Joseph’s life and he stalled for time by recommending that they sell him into slavery instead. And so Reuben saved Joseph from the brothers of whom we read: “וַיִּשְׂנְאוּ אֹתוֹ... וַיְקַנְאוּ־בוֹ” (בראשית ל״ז:ד׳, י״א).

But when it came to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, no Reuben was to be found in time to save him. The Reubens of our time – the rabbis and the roshei yeshiva and the academicians and the journalists and the politicians and the pundits and the intellectuals – were too busy; they were engaged in more important things and could pay no attention to the escalating verbal violence all around them, to the wild epithets shot like bullets by and on all sides in the increasingly bitter polemics. And so this נוֹצֵן חֲלוֹמוֹת, this dreamer, reviled and envied by some and admired and revered by so many others, was murdered in cold blood and lowered into the קֶבֶר, to his final resting place.

The Midrash (איכה רבה כ״ד:כ״ג) describes what went on in Heaven on the day the First Temple was destroyed:

אמר לו הקב״ה לירמיהו: דומה אני היום כאדם שהיה לו בן יחיד, ועשה לו חופה, ומת לו בתוך חופתו. אין אתה מרגיש עלי ועל בני? לך וקרא לאברהם ליצחק וליעקב ולמשה מקברותיהם, שהם יודעים לבכות. הלך ירמיהו אצל האבות ואמר להם: עמדו, שהגיע זמן שתעמדו לפני הקב״ה. אמרו לו: למה? אמר להם: איני יודע (ואף על פי שהיה יודע), שהיה מתירא שמא יאמרו לו: בימיך אירע כך לבנינו!

ר׳ שמואל בן נחמן אמר: כשחרב בית המקדש בא אברהם לפני הקב״ה בוכה, קורע בגדיו, אפר על ראשו, ואומר לפניו: מפני מה נשתניתי מכל אומה ולשון שבאתי לידי חרפה וכלימה כזו?!

Yitzhak Rabin was killed as he neared the climax of his career, almost like the son who died at the moment of his great joy, his wedding. He was cut down at a rally celebrating his historic achievements. And so we experienced a sense of disaster – both for the assassination of a Prime Minister and for the enormity of the חילול השם – the desecration of the divine Name – and the devaluation of the kind of “Yiddishkeit” that we and our educational institutions represent, because the murderer was “one of our own.” It is a צָרָה לָאָדָם וְצָרָה לְאָבִיו שֶׁבַּשָּׁמַיִם – suffering for the man, Rabin, and for our Father in Heaven whose Name has been profaned by this foul act.

And, despite all the eulogies that have been spoken, we are all in the category of Jeremiah who, despite his authorship of Eichah, the Book of Lamentations, was “unable to lament,” incapable of giving adequate expression to the vastness of the misfortune that had befallen his people. And, again like Jeremiah, our efforts have fallen short for the same special reason: because we are just too embarrassed to admit that “חָבָל עַל דְּאָבְדִין וְלָא מִשְׁתַּכְּחִין” – it represents a failure that is peculiarly ours, and it hurts to admit it. We feel deeply, even those who won’t admit it publicly, the חֶרְפָּתֵנוּ וּכְלִמָּתֵנוּ; it is our shame and our disgrace. It happened on our watch, the magnificent age of Yeshivot Hesder, of religious Zionism and religious universities, of the growth of Torah along with openness to the broader culture in which we live.

But if our situation bears remarkable parallels to that of Jeremiah, it is in certain important ways remarkably different from that of Abraham, as portrayed in the Midrash. Both he and we have learned to bewail our situation as best we can, and we experience חֶרְפָּה וּכְלִמָּה – shame and disgrace. But unlike Abraham, however, our חֶרְפָּה is not that we are different from all the nations – כִּי אַתֶּם הַמְעַט מִכָּל הָעַמִּים – but that we are so much like them – like every banana republic where political killing is a way of life, and even like America, which saw political assassinations of its greatest and finest, its best and its brightest.

And perhaps our greatest chagrin is that the Arab world now sees us as being just like them! Here are a few choice morsels from a front-page article in last week’s (Wall Street Journal, November 27); a similar article appeared in yesterday’s New York Times:

“A strange thing is happening to many Arabs – they are starting to see Israelis as more like themselves. The assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a fellow Jew destroyed a basic element of many Arabs’ understanding – and awe – of the Jewish state: that Israel was somehow above the social maelstrom that afflicts the rest of the Mideast.… Post-Rabin Israel is at least an Israel that its neighbors can relate to.… Some Arabs are seeing Israelis as human for the first time.”

Now, thanks to our murderous friend, we can achieve peace with our murderous adversaries because they realize that we are as unbalanced and murderous as they are. We too are “human,” finally, a “normal” people… Thank you, Yigal Amir. Father Abraham would have experienced much greater חֶרְפָּה וּכְלִמָּה over this than over the disgrace of the destruction of the Temple. The zealotry of young, immature, arrogant, know-it-alls has made the world – and especially our adversaries – lose all their respect for us. Indeed, וַיְהִי בֵּית־יִשְׂרָאֵל כְּכָל־הַגּוֹיִם (יחזקאל כ״ה:ח׳) – the House of Israel is like unto all the nations!

Of course, this has nothing to do with how one stands on the Peace Process. I must make it crystal clear: I am not taking sides on the basic political issues. I by no means disqualify those who are for peace but are against the way the present government is going about it. I am referring only to the way we articulate and propagate and teach certain opinions – and how we treat those who disagree with us.

It would be immoral as well as undemocratic for the pro-government people to exploit the tragedy by demonizing the legitimate and loyal opposition and blaming them, directly or indirectly, for the assassination. We should not and must not tolerate a witch-hunt, an inquisition into what rabbis think – and that is what seems to be taking place – or engage in self-abnegation. Indeed, no one is entirely guiltless, the halls of the Knesset least of all.

The entire political culture of Israel is too loud, too intemperate. It was no one less than Ben-Gurion who referred to his political enemy Jabotinsky as “Vladimir Hitler.” It was the Left which, during the Lebanon War, taunted Begin to distraction with the epithet “baby killer” – which they adapted from the anti-Vietnam activists in America who proclaimed, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many babies did you kill today?” It was the late Prime Minister himself who said that the settlers are “enemies of peace” and “collaborators of Hamas.”

Nor can the action of a few misguided violence-prone zealots be legitimately used to discredit an entire population that has proven its loyalty to Israel over and over again. No sane, intellectually honest person will hold all Bar-Ilan responsible for Yigal Amir, or all Yeshiva University for Baruch Goldstein. Let it be said openly and clearly: we Orthodox American Jews will not, as Jews, permit extreme secularists in Israel to excommunicate from Israeli society its most Jewishly learned and committed segment. And, as Americans committed to democracy, we will protest vigorously and, in every forum, expose the hypocrisy of so-called “liberals” who use undemocratic and racist demagoguery to delegitimate us.

We will stand united in sustained and sharp opposition to the vicious, malicious efforts by the Assistant Minister of Defense who, according to a recent issue of Haaretz, threatened to investigate and close all yeshivot Hesder and Nachal. We will not accept a situation whereby, according to a recent report in Yediot Acharonot, it costs forty shekels in Israel to “buy a stigma” – twenty shekalim for a kippah serugah and another twenty for a tallit katan. Remember, we Orthodox Jews have much to be proud of: our rate of aliyah is disproportionate to our numbers; we send our children to study in Israel more than others; and we visit and provide political and financial support for the Jewish State. The exercise of introspection and the assumption of a degree of moral responsibility should by no means diminish the value of these achievements.

Indeed, Mr. Peres should be congratulated for taking steps to avoid such group libel and for exploring ways of reconciliation. It is both politically astute and statesmanlike. That is precisely what is needed at this time. But those in lower positions in government and elsewhere, including the academy, are less scrupulous and must cease exploiting the situation to discredit the political Right and all religious Jews. And the police must learn to be more cautious of civil rights; there are simply too many cases of blatant police malfeasance. I am confident that when Israelis will get their rage and frustration out of their system, the situation will turn tolerable again. All of us pray that soon, very soon, cooler heads and warmer hearts will prevail.

But that does not mean that we can avoid any responsibility by dividing it up amongst many others. What we must aim at is self-criticism as a way of reacting to our חֶרְפָּה וּכְלִמָּה, even while we refuse to grant to others the right to use that commendable exercise of honest introspection to cast aspersions – and worse – upon us. Too many of us are in a state of denial that we can ill afford. If we will not be realistic, if we will be blind to the gathering storm and deaf to the nearing thunder, we will be defeated by our own defensiveness. Putting your head in the sand is most tempting to an enemy who wants to decapitate you.

It appears exceedingly difficult to attempt public stock-taking, even self-criticism, without providing grist for the mill of our adversaries. But it can and must be done. For instance, as the Rav (Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik) זצ״ל points out in one of his great derashot, the laws of mourning involve self-judgment, the experience of deep guilt, and repentance; that is why the laws of mourning are in so many ways similar to those of Yom Kippur, which is the day of guilt-feeling par excellence. But would that justify an “outsider” who visits the mourners to berate them, blame them for their grief, and enumerate their sins? So, such self-critical experiences as we are undertaking are exercises in moral and spiritual growth, and no non-participant may use them to point a finger and cast aspersions upon those who indulge in such commendable introspection. Would that they do the same!

In a sense, this communal self-judgment is based upon the assumption that we affirm a “double standard.” We Jews have grown up through the centuries to know that we are and must be different; that for us there are certain things that, as the Yiddish expression goes, es past nisht far a Yid – that are not appropriate, not suitable, even unthinkable for a Jew. Indeed, that is the essential content of the concept of Jews as “the Chosen People.”

אמר רבי חנניה בן עקשיא: רצה הקדוש ברוך הוא לזכות את ישראל, לפיכך הרבה להם תורה ומצוות (משנה מכות ג׳:ט״ז).

Note that the word “לזכות” means not only to give merit or privilege, but also purification. Moral purity and probity in Judaism are incompatible with thoughtlessness, insensitivity, and careless language – let alone murder – even if such conduct is tolerated or expected in other cultures or sub-cultures.

Hence, even if the assassination had never taken place, we should still learn some enduring lessons from the excessive rhetoric that we have too patiently tolerated in the past. But certainly must we do so now that this insufferable and unspeakable crime has been committed.

אמר רבא (ואיתימא רב חסדא): אם רואה אדם שיסורין באין עליו, יפשפש במעשיו… פשפש ולא מצא, יתלה בביטול תורה.

And what is it that our painful self-examination has discovered? That indeed we sinned in neglecting the study of Torah. And the Torah we failed to learn is in two areas: one, in קֹהֶלֶת ט׳:י״ז, namely, “דִּבְרֵי חֲכָמִים בְּנַחַת נִשְׁמָעִים” – “The words of the wise are spoken in quiet” – and that, therefore, people – whether laymen or rabbis – who shout and clamor forfeit their claim to wisdom; and second, in the Mishnah (Avot 1:11):

אַבְטַלְיוֹן אוֹמֵר: חֲכָמִים, הִזָּהֲרוּ בְּדִבְרֵיכֶם, שֶׁמָּא תִחֲבוּ חוֹבַת גָּלוּת, וְתִגָּלוּ לִמְקוֹם מַיִם הָרָעִים, וְיִשְׁתּוּ הַתַּלְמִידִים הַבָּאִים אַחֲרֵיכֶם וְיָמוּתוּ, וְנִמְצָא שֵׁם שָׁמַיִם מִתְחַלֵּל.

Let us speak the truth: the Amirs and the Goldsteins did not invent their depraved justifications for murder out of thin air. It is true that they were weeds in our garden; but they were weeds in our garden. The atmosphere in certain quarters was heavy with viciousness and intolerance. There were rabbis who took it upon themselves to speculate aloud and carelessly on life-and-death issues for a whole state, a whole people. They proclaimed that any other opinions are a violation of Torah. They arrogated to themselves the right to throw around, casually, carelessly, and with abandon, such terms as רוֹדֵף and מוֹסֵר – both capital offenses – and without the hoary, traditional disclaimer עַנְיֵין הַקָּטָן, “in my humble opinion,” or צָרִיךְ עִיוּן, a phrase of modest hesitation which is standard fare in halakhic responsa of any kind. Is it a wonder that young people, barely out of adolescence and at the mercy of their boiling hormones, extrapolated from it and acted out the consequences?

I know, I know – it has been argued that words are only words, and you cannot blame criminal action upon mere rhetoric. Well, legally you can’t, but morally you can! Because if you cannot blame words for maiming and humiliating and degrading, then you also cannot credit words with encouraging noble action, expressing love, and promoting heroic achievement. And if that is so, all speech is but static, all communication mere clamor and without consequence, and we humans had best learn to shut our mouths and say nothing at all – and thus be no better or wiser than dumb animals.

If our experience of teshuvah is to be real and effective, we must ask ourselves a series of exceedingly important questions. They have been teasing and troubling me for a long time, but since the assassination they have assumed more ominous proportions. I shall share these six questions with you, and either leave it at that or offer some preliminary thoughts on the way to a fuller treatment some other time.

These include:

1. Is the territorial integrity of אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל הַשְּׁלֵמָה – “Greater Israel” – one of the שָׁלוֹשׁ עֲבֵרוֹת יֵהָרֵג וְאַל יַעֲבוֹר – those commandments which must be observed even under pain of death? The last I heard there were only three such, and the territorial integrity of Israel was not one of them. Furthermore: there has been much talk of the prohibition of turning over even a square inch of “Greater Israel” to the Palestinians. But this contradicts an explicit teaching of the Torah!

In I Kings 9:11 we read of Solomon turning over twenty towns to Hiram, King of Tyre, as a gift to the pagan king; thus: “Then King Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee” – and not a whisper in the Bible or in the Talmud or Midrash criticizing him for it! Moreover, Hiram wasn’t pleased by this gift because the twenty cities were sandy and sterile! In II Chronicles 8:2 we read that Hiram gave Solomon twenty towns – and of the commentators, only Ralbag complains that it was improper for King Solomon to give away territory of Eretz Yisrael, but he concedes that an exchange of territory was quite kosher. The other commentators, such as Malbim, say that Solomon sent in Jewish labor to make the land fertile and then gave the produce to Hiram; but no protest against giving away an inch of “Greater Israel.”

Let us assume one will make every effort to answer the question in some sophisticated way. Is such abstract, theoretical discourse enough to warrant attacking the government with such truculent speeches and savage rhetoric? As the Rav taught us, pulling any one mitzvah out of context and absolutizing it beyond all others is עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה mamash – sheer idolatry!

2. Who has the right to pasken halakhic decisions of such monumental import? Certainly not every Tom, Dick, and Harry who ever opened a Mishnah Berurah! The Talmud (Sanhedrin 17a) warns against scholars who teach halakhah when they are not qualified – the מַפְסִיק לְהוֹרוֹת שֶׁאֵינוֹ רָאוּי. It is halakhah psukah that even the greatest scholar may not rule on public matters without authorization from a higher authority, as was true in the days of the Sanhedrin. Who authorized those who use the language of din rodef or moser in regard to political decisions?

3. Are we not confusing moral fervor with religious arrogance? Zeal is admirable, but it must be disciplined by seichel hayashar and by halakhah. Moral outrage, when unrestrained, can become idolatry. Have we not, perhaps, fallen prey to the very sin that destroyed the Second Temple – שִׂנְאַת חִנָּם – baseless hatred?

4. Have we forgotten that the mitzvah of ve’ahavta lerei’akha kamokha applies even to those who disagree with us politically or religiously? The Rambam (Hilchot De’ot 6:3) includes among the expressions of love that we speak kindly of others and protect them from harm. Where, then, is that love when we indulge in defamation and insult?

5. Do we not remember that halakhah forbids incitement? לֹא תִשָּׂא שֵׁמַע שָׁוְא – “You shall not spread false rumors” (Exod. 23:1) – applies to speech that inflames, exaggerates, and distorts. שְׁפִיכוּת דָּמִים בַּלָּשׁוֹן – murder by the tongue – is still murder.

6. Finally, is it possible that our Torah education has become too intellectual and not sufficiently ethical? We have built magnificent yeshivot, colleges, and institutions of higher learning. But have we succeeded in producing anshei emunah, men and women of moral sensitivity and humility? If Torah study does not refine our character, then Torah she’einah im derekh eretz sofah betelah – Torah without moral character will ultimately perish.

When we have answered these questions honestly, then perhaps we will have begun our teshuvah.

We must reaffirm, especially now, the dignity and holiness of religious Zionism in its true form – not as a political slogan, not as a party platform, but as a vision of Kedushat Eretz Yisrael, the sanctity of our land, expressed through humility, patience, and devotion to Klal Yisrael. Religious Zionism at its best teaches us not arrogance but responsibility; not triumphalism but service; not domination but partnership with the divine.

Let us, therefore, rededicate ourselves to the great ideals for which Yitzhak Rabin lived and for which, tragically, he died – the security of Israel, the unity of our people, and the moral purpose that must animate Jewish statehood. But let us pursue these ideals in a way faithful to the Torah – with moderation, with yirat Shamayim, with love of our fellow Jew even when we differ, and with reverence for the sanctity of life.

At this time of sheloshim, we turn to the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, who, after describing the desolation of Zion, declared: “עֲדֵי יָשׁוּב רַחֲמִי מֵהֶם נְאֻם ה׳” – until My compassion returns to them, says the Lord (Lam. 3:32). We, too, must pray that divine compassion return to our people, that healing come to our wounds, and that the memory of the fallen Prime Minister serve to sanctify, not to divide.

Permit me to conclude with words written by another great leader, Abraham Lincoln, in his letter to Mrs. Bixby, the mother of five sons who perished in the Civil War. He wrote:

“I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.”

Lincoln then prayed that God might “assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost.”

We, too, pray that God comfort the family of Yitzhak Rabin, that He comfort His people Israel, and that He grant to all of us the wisdom to transform grief into moral renewal.

.יהי זִכְרוֹ בָרוּךְ – May his memory be a blessing