Ambassador Michael Oren

Next, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, talked to us at breakfast. He stood at the podium, and a young Israel security guard (he look to be about 12 but probably wasn’t) in a oversized black suit, stood close by, eyes constantly scanning the crowed. He warmed us up – and he is a charming man, smart, quick-witted, and direct – but telling us that he comes from New Jersey and grew up in USY. His region, Galil, held its kinnus in Washington, DC, every year, and in 1971, when he was 15, the speaker was Israel’s ambassador to the United States. “We stood up on our chairs and screamed and sang and clapped until our hands were raw, and I thought then that was what I wanted to do when I grew up,” he said, adding that the ambassador then was Yizhak Rabin. Oren was working for Rabin when he was assassinated.

He talked about his own religious faith, which he compared to Einstein’s; the great scientist wrote in 1936 that the eternal mystery of the world is that it is measurable, not random, in response to younger scientists who saw no evidence of anything except chaos. The speed of light is so precise, he said, that it is unlikely to be accidental, and therefore the God whose existence is proven by the speed of light is a God with time to spend on detail, and that also is a God of history. (No doubt his argument is more elaborate and persuasive than this; it was breakfast, after all.) And if there is a God of history that “leads us to assume that there is a reason why 3,000 years ago this obscure group of nomads came up with the extraordinary ideas of one God and universal morality. There is a reason to believe that these people were given a land, and why these people, bound by faith, longed to return to that land from exile… Although thoroughly assimilated and not connected to his Jewish roots, Einstein came down on the side of God of the Jews.” He became a Zionist.

Israel is now in a better situation than ever before, he said, although that seems counterintuitive. It is safer. But “in recent years the moral struggle has become much harder. Our enemies no longer wear uniforms. Instead they hide among civilians. Israel must defend itself but when it does so increasingly it finds itself condemned for crimes against humanity.” The terms of the debate are changing – increasingly it is over whether Israel has the right or even the need to defend itself; over whether a Jewish state should exist at all. This debate has seeded doubt about Israel’s legitimacy around the world, even among some Israelis, particularly young Israelis. The answer, he said, is to remind people of how many times over the last 80 years that Israel has accepted the idea of a two-state solution, only to have it rejected, often with violence. “We say that the Palestinians have the right to a homeland. We are looking for Palestinian leaders who say the Jews have the right to a homeland and we can’t find any.”

The other existential threat Israel faces, he said, echoing Dahlia Itzik, is from Iran, which funds and undergirds Hamas and Hezbollah.

What we can do, he said – and it is both all that we can do and what we must do – is support Israel, remember that we all are connected to each other and look out for each other, and that the God who has kept us together for 3,000 years in the end will continue to do so.

The first question he took was about the situation with Women of the Wall; as perhaps might be (but naively wasn’t – at least by me) expected it was party line. It was an unfortunate incident, he said, but over-reported and misunderstood. The women were not where they belonged, at Robinson’s Arch; if they hadn’t tried to something against the rules at the Kotel, which from time immemorial had been an Orthodox shul, nothing would have happened. We have to accommodate both tradition and pluralism, and it’s a work in progress. As he spoke, an audible sigh moved through the room. Something, something intangible, broke.

The next question was about J Street. A synagogue president reported that he was under great pressure from one faction in his shul to invite J Street, while another faction strongly opposed it. J Street is significantly out of the mainstream, Oren answered; it opposes all of Israel’s government policies, and Obama’s as well. “When it comes to the survival of the Jewish state, there should be no difference of opinion,” he said. “When you are fooling around with the lives of 7 million people it is no joke.” You can invite them, he said, but prepare well.

Joanne Palmer