PEACE IN THE HOLY LAND

Summer Service at the Grosse Pointe Unitarian Church

August 20, 2006

Service Leader: Andrew Reeves

Prelude

Welcome—Anne Roberts, Lay Services Coordinator

Opening Words—Andrew Reeves

Good morning; Today I am going to engage in one of the more hope-less endeavors within my memory. Any sober onlooker must have come to the conclusion years ago that as long as present political facts and emotions persist, there will not be and cannot be Peace in the Holy Land. Indeed, the idea of drafting a church service on this very subject came to me two summers ago; as our Lay Services Coordinator sitting here will no doubt remember, I backed out in the last moment, citing insurmountable conceptual difficulties. Those difficulties have not exactly become less during the past years but the existence of this unfinished project was grating on me and it is time to put the matter to rest. It seems that the longer I wait, the more insurmount-able it gets.

I must not take up too much time with autobiographical matters but a few personal comments seem to be in order. I am a Jew by birth; born in Hungary into a totally non-observant family for whom religion was little more than an entry into one’s personal records. My parents had no compunction at all to convert to Christianity when the Nazi difficulties started and I became a baptized Catholic at age 18. In the end, of course, this did not matter much and I spent the last year of World War II in a Nazi concentration camp from where the U.S. Army liberated me.

If I was never an observant Jew, I was a Zionist even less. The persuasion did exist of course among European Jews and Theodor Herzl, the spiritual founder of Zionism, was himself a native Hungarian. But the movement as a whole remained unpopular in Hungary and the prevail-ing sentiment among Hungarian Jews, including my family, was strong patriotism for the Fatherland. The indifferent (or worse) attitude of our Gentile neighbors during the Holocaust of course dampened this sentiment somewhat. When the State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948, the event gave a sentimental thrill to all Jews everywhere, including myself. But when I escaped from Communism a few years later and looked on the map of the world for a place to go, Israel was not high on my list of possible destinations.

After successfully settling in the United States in 1954, I none-theless watched the struggles of the new nation with sympathy. I do have some friends and distant relatives living in Israel and I visited the country as a tourist twice and as a delegate of the World Health Organization once. I can’t say that I was not impressed by the serious effort to make the desert bloom and to build a modern technological society literally from scratch. But I traveled professionally in the neighboring Arab countries of Egypt and Jordan also, and became famil-iar with their problems and aspirations, including their attitude towards Israel. I also happen to be a dilettante student of ancient history and archeology, including specifically biblical history. It is on these grounds that I have the temerity of expressing an opinion on this touchy subject.

Chalice Lighting—Shirley Reeves

I light this chalice in the true Unitarian tradition, seeing in the flame the glow of enlightenment. There is no area of human rela-tions today where enlightenment is more urgently needed than in the Holy Land. May this flame express the timeless yearning of two ancient peoples to achieve enlightenment together in the twenty-first century.

Musical Interlude—Evan Arora, violin

Anne Roberts, Piano Accompaniment

Shinichi Suzuki: Andantino

Introductory Remarks—Andrew Reeves

The twentieth century saw the emergence of many newly independent countries in the world, mostly the former colonial possessions of the European powers. A special case of new nation formation in the years following World War II was the state of Israel, created by a United Nations vote by partition of the former British mandate of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The antecedents of this event are well enough known to need only the briefest mention. The Jewish people, scattered over the world but held together by their religion, had been subjected to persecution of variable intensity over the cen-turies. The persecution reached its peak in the 20^th century under the rule of a deranged leadership in Germany that abrogated the humanness of the Jew in the most basic sense; they regarded Jews as vermin suck-ing the blood of other peoples, and themselves as chivalrous saviors of Humankind who would rescue the world from this scourge.

The extermination machinery was working full steam when the mil-itary defeat of Nazi Germany put a stop to this project. At the end of World War II the task stood only half-accomplished: of the approxi-mately 11 million Jews of Europe, only about half were successfully subjected to the “final solution”; the other half, which included myself, still waiting their turn. The blood of the victims was crying to Heaven. Once the perpetrators of this monstrous project were defeated, the remorse of the world was profound. A resolution gained ground not to let this kind of thing happen again. Without a doubt, this was the underlying motivation of the United Nations vote to give the Jews a country of their own. To make this donation in Palestine was in obvious deference to the Jews’ own historical consciousness of this land, forcefully expressed by their new political movement of Zionism. What was unfortunately lost sight of by the decision makers was that the land of Palestine was not theirs to give: it has been inhabited, since time immemorial, by a local resident population designated as Philistines in the Old Testament and as Palestinians since the Roman occupation of the land. This is at the root the most intractable political problem of our times the solution of which still lies in the future.

Hymn #115: God of Grace and God of Glory

Scripture Reading (Unison)—Psalm #137, Verses 1-2,4-6

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat down,

Yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

We hanged our harps on the willows.

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand

Forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee,

Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,

If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.”

Joys and Sorrows—Anne Roberts, Lay Services Coordinator

Musical Reflectingpiece—Simone Arora and Erika Arora, violins

F. Mazas: Duet for Violins, Op.38/Vol.1

Sermon—Andrew Reeves

It would lead us too far afield to discuss the Biblical account of the history of the Holy Land, and to dig out the kernels of fact from the multiple layers of accumulated myths. It now seems that what has been known by the scholarly name of First Temple Judaism scarcely deserves the name Judaism at all. At most, it could be designated as the Jehovah cult alongside the simultaneous and sometimes competing veneration of a great many other local deities. Expert opinion now holds that the first hint of the historic reality of a Judaic nation, practicing its own distinctive religion, originated in what used to be known as the late monarchic age under Kings Hezekiah and Josiah, when the land was a tribute-paying dependency of the Assyrian Empire. Then came the Babylonian captivity, the return of the exiles during the Persian Imperial period, and the birth of Second Temple Judaism in which the Hebrew Bible was assembled and the Jewish religion as we know it today was established. Following conquest by Alexander the Great, the country became first a Hellenistic, then a Roman, and eventually a Byzantine province with occasional periods of religious autonomy but no full political independence.

That is where things stood in the 7^th century AD when the Prophet Muhammad had his ministry and in short order his followers became the masters of all Arab lands and beyond. The Caliph Omar conquered Jeru-salem in 638 AD, and his successor Abd al Malik erected the present Dome of the Rock on the site where the fabled Temple of Solomon once reputedly stood. The Prophet Muhammad supposedly ascended to Heaven on his sacred steed from that spot. The Dome of the Rock is the earliest and perhaps most beautiful architectural monument of Islam, and it stands today essentially unchanged from its original form and became the third-holiest site of the Moslem religion.

During subsequent centuries, the country changed hands frequently between various groups of Arab contenders and repeated waves of the Crusaders who first appeared in the Holy Land in the year 1099. Final-ly, in 1516, the Ottoman Turks occupied the land. Suleiman the Magni-ficent erected the walls of the City of Jerusalem that still stand, and introduced a reasonably tolerant administration under which Jews, Christians, Moslems all had their separate quarters in the City. The “Infidels” (Jews and Christians) of course still retained certain legal disabilities, but the holy places operated under their own autonomy and relative peace reigned until modern times.

Towards the end of the 19^th century, repeated waves of Jewish immigrants reached Palestine. Anti-Semitic measures under the Czars Alexander III and Nicolas II were accompanied by large-scale expul-sions and many of these migrants went to the Holy Land to form there a largely self-contained Jewish community. Theodor Herzl, then a jour-nalist in Vienna who covered the notorious Dreyfuss trial in France, came to the sad conclusion that genuine acceptance of Jews into Euro-pean society was hopeless and in 1897 he convened a First Zionist Congress in Basle. A new political movement was born, its name being derived from the hill in Jerusalem on which the supposed tomb of King David stands. Herzl said of his movement later,

“At Basle, I created the Jewish state.

In five years perhaps, and certainly

in fifty, the whole world will see it.” oly Land Holy

A remarkable prediction, which turned out to be accurate almost to the day. Twenty years later, Lord Balfour, Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, declared:

“His Majesty’s government view with favour the

establishment in Palestine of a national home

for the Jewish people, and will use their best

endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this

object, it being clearly understood that nothing

shall be done which may prejudice the civil and

religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities

in Palestine, or the rights and political status

enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

In other words, Zionism had suddenly come of age, and acquired the sponsorship of one of the great powers of the world. National consci-ousness of Jews around the world gained ground, and people recalled the haunting lines of Psalm 137 composed during the Babylonian Exile, which we recited as the Unison Reading from Scripture today.

The response of the Arabs was furious. They had been in undis-puted possession of the land for the better part of a millennium and only recently had Zionist settlers made some encroachments here and there. Opposition to the ideas expressed in the Balfour Declaration was fierce and lead to various demonstrations and disorders, peaking in a general uprising of the Palestinians in 1936 that involved large-scale massacre of the Jewish settlers. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, chief instigator of these disorders, found a powerful mentor in the person of Adolf Hitler to whom he actually paid a visit of homage in Berlin and personally thanked him for his wonderful efforts in the service of Humankind.

The Zionists, on their part, fought back as much as possible. They also argued that Palestinians were never really masters of their own land. They never had a functioning administration there, only overlordships of other Arab entities, or lately of the Turks. It was simply not understandable why they would be striving for independence suddenly right now, when the Jews so desperately needed a homeland of their own! I once asked some Zionist friends—if the country is taken over by Jewish settlers, what are the old-established Arab residents of the land supposed to do? The answer was a regretful shrug of the shoulders—“Well, they just will have to go elsewhere.” That attitude was certainly not good enough even for the British, who finally did what they could to inhibit Jewish immigration to Palestine as a means to restore tranquility there, in flagrant violation of their own pro-mise given 20 years earlier, and in spite of that then being the only practical refuge of European Jewry from the Nazi Holocaust.

That was, in a nutshell, the situation at the end of World War II when the United Nations voted to partition the land into a Jewish part and an Arab part. The Jews accepted the decision; the Arabs did not, and hostilities broke out the very day when the last British soldier departed from their former mandate. Whole libraries could be filled with the books ranging from scholarly histories through romanticized fiction all the way to unabashed propaganda, that deal with the Great War of 1948/49 that has been labeled everything from a heroic Struggle for Independence of a long-persecuted nation all the way to a 20^th Cen-tury Crusade now in a Jewish disguise but in reality just aiming at Euro-American dominance of Arab ancestral land that in the end will nonetheless be just as futile as the former Crusades. Horror stories demonizing soldier behavior on both sides abounded, and to dwell on them would be on the whole fruitless. The shooting war finally ended in 1949 with a series of armistices between Israel and the Arab League nations, but not with peace. Hostilities were reignited in 1967 by an attempted naval blockade by Egypt that led to the “6-day war” in which Israel acquired control of the entire West Bank including the Old City of Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. Historically, military defeat of that degree usually ushers in some type of reality check at which the parties would sit down and talk about a resolution of differences with some degree of rationality. Therefore, the world was somewhat taken aback by the 3 resounding NO-s that the Palestinian Authority proclaimed:

NO negotiation with Israel;

NO recognition of Israel;

NO peace with Israel.

I can remember that I was myself quite impressed at the time by this intransigence. It did happen in previous history occasionally that the victor would refuse to negotiate with the vanquished, but this seemed to be the first instance of the other way around. The whole world be-came preoccupied, from Camp David through Madrid to Oslo, with assist-ing in the quest for a diplomatic solution and pressured the Israelis for concessions. But the Palestinians were living in their own dream world. The hopeful best-case outcome of difficult negotiations became the precondition for sitting down to talk, and most of us will remem-ber the field day editorial writers and cartoonists had with Yasser Arafat and his ilk who “would not take a YES for an answer” or “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. In the meantime, the “Intifada” movement [violently convulsive insurrection] organized attacks on civilian sites by suicide bombers. I am sure I can spare you the melancholy recitation of these atrocities and the situation has gotten only worse under the democratically elected Hamas govern-ment. Peace in the Holy Land seems to be farther away than ever. Under these circumstances, it might make sense to re-examine the root ques-tions in this nearly hopeless situation that I have summarized for you in the program brochure. Let us discuss these points one-by-one and see if we can arrive at any conclusions.

1. Do the Jews really need a country of their own?

My own personal answer to this question, insofar as I can still be counted as a Jew, is obviously NO and I acted on this view when I did not settle in Israel following my escape from Hungary. I consid-ered Judaism a religion, or lately as an ethnic identity, but not a nationality. I would have been quite happy to live my life as a Hun-garian of Jewish roots. Unfortunately, that was not the sentiment of most of my Gentile compatriots, not even those who otherwise were quite cordial to me. To them I was, and remained, a Jew living in Hungary and depending on their temperament and upbringing they were polite and hospitable to me, or standoffishly neutral, or coarsely contemptuous, or, at worst, violently hostile. I spent much of my youth trying to figure out why was I different from the many ethnic Germans, Slavs, Italians, who also lived in Hungary in fairly large numbers and who were completely integrated after a generation or two. I think I have the answer now—it is the Roman Catholic Church, but that is another matter that we cannot go into at this service. Suffice to say that being Jewish was a practically insurmountable obstacle to being accepted into European society and Theodor Herzl saw that clear-ly when he started the movement of Zionism.

All this pertains to pre-Nazi Europe. When the Nazis came, in their ideology the Jews became not simply non-German, non-Italian, non-Hungarian, and so forth, but literally non-human, or even anti-human, whose extermination was a biological hygienic necessity. Most survivors of the concentration camps found themselves completely uprooted at their liberation, with no relative alive, no friend or neighbor ready to extend a helping hand, and no place to return to. For them to be able to go to a country of their own was a practical imperative and an emotional lifesaver. So from a broader perspective I must answer the question in the affirmative today. Jews do need a country of their own to live in, at least for now. It is one of the great ironies of our age that vicious Arab propaganda continues to portray Jews as vermin and even resurrected the absurd medieval canards of poisoning wells and of the blood libel, in order to pre-judice the attitude of the coming generations--thereby making sure that the root reasons why Jews do in fact need a country of their own today will remain valid for the future.

2. If they do, must it be in the Holy Land?

It could be argued that the Jewish claim to the Holy Land, based on a shaky mix of myth and history, and in any case involving a period that ended 2000 years ago, has become stale. Much shorter intervals of non-possession have completely eliminated every shadow of a claim elsewhere, and the world’s map would look very different today if the Greeks were to assert suddenly a right to the Turkish coast, or the Norwegians (Normans) to Sicily, or the Swedes (Visigoths) to Spain! Virtually every country of the world was in the possession of another national group a thousand years ago, and history is in constant flux.

Some of the strongest and culturally most advanced nations of today started out with a distinctly mixed ethnic composition as exemplified by Great Britain or France. It is possible that the true genetic des-cendants of the ancient Israelites, if that could be established in any meaningful way, would turn out to be among the Palestinians who remained in their ancestral land all the time.

The idea of establishing a Jewish “national home” elsewhere than in Palestine did occur in the past, and perhaps the first such endeav-or goes back to the Czarina Catherine II who after the third partition of Poland in 1795 established the “Pale of Settlement” on the western fringes of the Russian Empire for the Jews. In fact, they were re-quired to move there whether they wanted to or not. The Pale was thus more in the nature of a thousand-square-mile ghetto, although individ-ual villages sometimes had a degree of autonomy. The area eventually lost that character at the re-establishment of an independent Poland after World War I.

The Soviet Union recognized “Jews” as one of its constituent nationalities, and established in the Far East, on the banks of the Amur River bordering on Manchuria, a “Jewish Autonomous Region” with Biro-Bidjan as its capital. Relocation was not mandatory and voluntary Jewish settlement into that far corner of Siberia was virtually nil. The Jewish character of Biro-Bidjan existed only on paper.

It has been rumored that in the early years of the Nazi regime, before the physical annihilation of Jews was resolved with finality, enforced exile was one of the options being considered by the German authorities. Adolf Eichmann, Chief of Jewish Affairs at the Gestapo, had a plan for banishing Jews to the Island of Madagascar, off the southeast coast of Africa, then a French possession. With the outbreak of World War II this plan became impractical and it was decided to pursue the “final solution of the Jewish question” within the terri-tories then under German control.

This exhausts all plans that were considered at one time or an-other for the relocation of the Jewish people elsewhere than in Pales-tine and it is easy to see that none was a viable emotional competitor to Zionism. I was somewhat surprised that no consideration was given at the end of World War II to some revival of the old Pale of Settle-ment idea--with Germany laying prostrate it would have been easy to carve out a territory formerly under Nazi control and give it to the Jews to build their nation there. East Prussia, separated from the rest of Germany anyway, and eventually partitioned between the Soviet Union and Poland, could have become a particularly suitable solution. Too bad that apparently no world leader thought of this then and the Zionist movement, already deeply involved in building their national home in Palestine, would not have considered any such scheme. Now, of course, it is too late to change the course of history and I must re-luctantly say YES to the question asked: at the present time, there is no other option but to support the continued existence of Israel in the Holy Land.

3. Was it a good idea to partition the Holy Land

into a Jewish part and a Palestinian part?

That is a very difficult question, and in hindsight it is easy to answer it negatively. At the time, however, it appeared as the logical compromise between reasonable parties. Unfortunately, when it comes to nationalist sentiments of such momentous impact, there are no reason-able parties--only selfish and infuriated partisans. I must say I can’t blame the Palestinians for rejecting the U.N. resolution giving a good part of their own ancestral land to aggressive newcomers who based their entitlement on some nebulous and clearly over-aged claim. I can blame the Israelis even less, for implementing the clear-cut decision of the top world-governing authority, trying to right many centuries of wrongs. It would be fruitless to try to second-guess now what the United Nations should have done then, because the deed is done and after a half-century of most extensive developments, building efforts, consolidation, and a deluge of spilled blood, the results are irreversible. Unfortunately, that irreversibility is not readily seen by extremist terrorist groups who still dream of Israel simply going away like the Crusaders once did, and restoration of what they call “The Peace of Saladdin”, i.e. full Arab rule of what was for many centuries Arab land. The internal political constellation in most Arab lands, including specifically the Gaza strip and the West Bank, left some doubt about the idyllic quality of that Arab rule even for the Arabs, who had to struggle with cronyism and corruption on a hitherto unprecedented scale, to say nothing of wild-eyed fanatics going on a murderous rampage against all infidels while chanting, “Allah Is Great!

Having said that, I must admit to a degree of sympathy with the resentment Palestinians who obviously feel that they have been robbed of their territorial birthright. Of course, their resentment is mis-placed; one can hardly fault the Jews who after all only did what the United Nations told them to do. It was the international politicians who gave away what was not theirs to give. As a native Hungarian whose homeland was partitioned among the Entente powers after World War I and virtually awarded to the Soviet Union after World War II, I am an old hand of understanding precisely how the Palestinians must feel. Yet, I am also absolutely certain that the “violent resistance” as they euphemistically call their suicidal attacks on mostly uninvolved bystanders is morally wrong and pragmatically self-defeating. The pop-ulation of the so-called “refugee camps” must be by now at least in the second, and perhaps in the third and fourth generation and an altogether new population type, the “hereditary refugee” has been created. These people would resist relocation and refuse to begin a productive life. Their string-pulling masters encourage these senti-ments because the misery, pervasive hopelessness, and furious hatred create the ideal breeding ground for the raising of suicide bombers who are the new tool in their embittered struggle against Western values. If I were a Palestinian patriot confronted with this situation, my main aim would be to get out of this mentality pattern, foster education and self-reliance of my people, and make the best of bad circumstances even if it meant some accommodation with the Israeli occupiers or temporary integration in neighboring Arab countries.

4. What is the present political/military situation in the Middle East?

In a word, DISMAL, and things have gotten only worse during the several weeks since I accepted the assignment of doing this service.

I must tell you frankly that the thought of backing out again, citing absolutely insurmountable conceptual difficulties, did occur to me—but, as mentioned, I had played that card once already and doing it again would have been too ridiculous. There MUST be a way out of this quag-mire but it may take more than one generation because the mentality of the participant populations has to be changed. As long as the Arabs are hell-bent on the total elimination of Israel rather than on find-ing a way to live with them, the situation will remain hopeless. It is certainly of interest that the focus of present disorders should be in Lebanon, which is a mixed population country roughly equally divided between Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Maronite Christians. Maybe it was this ethnic mosaic that prevented the formation of an efficient government and the country became the breeding ground of terrorist groups, mainly the Hezb’ollah (Party of God) with ties to the Ayatollahs of Iran. Israel kept the southern edge of the country under military occupation during the 80’s and 90’s in order to inhibit cross-border incursions into Israel and bombardment of Israeli sites, but this lead to various events of embarrassment including the memorable raids by Maronite in-surgent groups on the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. In the year 2000, in a gesture of total frustration, Israel decided to terminate the occupation which the Arabs celebrated as a great victory over Israel. After a pause of six years during which the Hezb’ollah regrouped and trained a new cadre of insurgents, we see the same scenario being replayed almost blow-for-blow. I consider the recent kidnapping of Israeli troops near the Lebanese border by Hezb’ollah operatives, while a similar diversion was staged by Hamas in the Gaza strip, a calculated provocation designed to tease the Israelis into some kind of action which would provide the excuse for the all-out missile barrage of Israeli sites that must have been prepared for months. I must say that I am surprised that the Israelis would fall into this trap time and again. Of course I admit that Israeli retalia-tion is invariably heavy-handed, and it does not escape my attention that the total body count of the two sides typically differs by a count of 10. The present situation is rendered more sinister by the nuclear capability of Iran which is the shadowy power standing in the background of radical Islamism and a growing menace to world peace. Under these conditions, the urgent solution of the Palestinian problem looks more compelling than ever.

Looking at the map, even an undivided Holy Land looks pitifully puny, and dividing it into two truncated and mutually hostile halves certainly does not look promising. In fact, initially both Israel and what should have become the state of Palestine were clearly non-viable entities. Israel could not have survived its formative period without massive international help, comprising U.S. assistance, German repara-tions, and donations by world Jewry. Yet, in the timespan of one gen-eration, they developed into a self-reliant and prosperous power. The territory of the future Palestinian state initially did not even try to become an independent nation—the West Bank came under Jordanian, and the Gaza Strip under Egyptian administration. Palestinian nation-alism developed gradually during the second half of the past century and became totally focused on nothing except relentless hostility towards Israel. Of course, Israel is far from blameless in this situa-tion; as one who was assigned to serve as WHO Delegate to the Jordan-ian Ministry of Health in Amman in 1983, I am only too familiar with accounts of the Israeli atrocities at Deir Yassin and elsewhere; of the sound trucks spreading panic during the 1948 war in order to in-duce the Arab populace to flee; and of the humiliating treatment at border crossings inflicted on Palestinian visitors. But I also have my own personal experience of utter repugnance and disgust when after a weekend spent in Jerusalem I had to look forward to return to Amman. The two capitals, less than 50 miles distant from each other by road, are two different worlds. It will take time for this difference to be bridged, but the time will assuredly come and at that point the Middle Eastern question will look fundamentally different. At the present time, the utter hopelessness of the situation is expressed by the imbalance of the ultimate aims of the two parties: the Israelis wish peaceful coexistence within securely recognized borders; there may be some dispute between factions of Israeli politics as to where those borders should be but any idea of conquering all Arab lands would be recognized as totally insane. On the other hand, the ultimate aim of Arab national aspirations is the total elimination of Israel and this endpoint is not at all viewed as insane by Arab policymakers—at most, it may be viewed as presently impractical by the moderates who favor some tactical concessions until that ultimate aim can be achieved. Be-tween these two polarities there can be no common denominator and that is the real tragedy of Middle Eastern politics at the present time.

5. What is the likely political future of these countries?

In spite of all the impracticalities of a two-state solution for the Holy Land, it is abundantly clear that at present there is no other option. Since the Palestinians refuse to negotiate, I can also see that border questions and other details will have to be determined by Israel unilaterally. The world must prepare itself for a new propa-ganda barrage about the outrageous depravity of the Israelis for the insolent presumption of doing that alone, but if there is no party to negotiate with, I don’t know what else they can do. The two states of Palestine and Israel will live side-by-side, first as embittered ene-mies but I predict that with the passage of time the animosity will subside. Economic imperatives will impose a degree of cooperation whether the parties like it or not. At some point, an Arab leader will emerge who will recognize the immense advantage of having in their midst a population with Western cultural roots and proven financial expertise. In the Middle Ages, Jews lived comfortably alongside their Moslem neighbors and attained high public office in the Cordoba Cali-phate. There is no reason, certainly not in the true religious tradi-tions of these peoples, why such a partnership could not develop again. Sooner or later, hopefully still in this century, a central governing authority or economic umbrella will exist as precursor to political unification of the two countries. I am fervently hoping that at some point a forward-looking Arab leadership and reasonable Israeli author-ities will collaborate in the promotion of the secular reeducation of Palestinian youth and transform them from abject desperadoes into full-fledged players of 21^st century intellectual life. That is the only way to loosen the grip of militant fanaticism on people’s minds, and at that point Moslems and Jews will discover that they have more in common than what separates them. I can envision in the future Holy Land a secular state, with full civic and religious freedoms for ev-eryone, and a prosperous society that takes full advantage of the fas-cinating multiculturalism that is the historic heritage of that land.

Offertory—Anne Roberts, piano

Benediction Anne Roberts, Lay Services Coordinator

Postlude