The Jewish community had better learn how to compromise or it will find its position extremely compromised.
So says Rabbi Israel Singer, president of the Conference of Material Claims against Germany.
In a fiery, high-decibel speech Monday at San Francisco’s B’nai B’rith International Convention, Singer exhorted several hundred listeners to not allow the Jewish community to cloister itself only with those who say what it wants to hear.
“We can’t look back at the days of lonely suffering and isolation with longing. It stank. It was horrible. We can’t afford to remain an isolated people. The words in the Bible describing us as a nation that ‘dwelleth alone’ are a curse, not a blessing,” said Singer, whose negotiations with the German government have resulted in billions of dollars in restitution payments.
“‘Settlement’ and ‘dialogue’ are words Jews need to learn in order to live in a broader world and have friends. We need to learn it in regard to Catholics and Protestants, not just the fundamentalist [Christians] who have the same view of Israel we have.”
And that goes for Muslims too.
“If I were to encounter a Muslim — and I did, and I will — who was willing to dialogue with the Jewish people, I would stay up all night and climb to the top of Mount Everest and beg the way we did with Catholics after World War II, and…fight with Jews the way we did to encounter the Catholics,” he said, his loud, New York-accented voice ricocheting around the corners of a Hyatt Regency banquet room.
While dialogue with Arabs and Muslims may seem hopeless, Singer reminded the audience that the same could have been said 50 years ago about establishing relationships with Catholics, or even a decade ago with Russia.
“In Russia, we decided not to let their 1 million Jews be the hostages of the 21st century. I went to Russia 47 times and went to jail nine times. And I tell you I’m proud,” he said.
“Ten years ago, if someone told you the Russians were deciding which Jewish organizations they were going to participate with…you’d have all looked at yourselves and me as being stark raving mad. Don’t laugh; one day in our time negotiations with Arabs and Muslims will bring peace. The basis was laid by the courageous patriots of Israel who tried to bring it to the table two years ago.”
Singer also admonished the B’nai B’rith crowd not to mock or assail Israeli peace activists, for this, he believes, lends ammunition to the enemies of peace.
“When we reject or humiliate or attack or insult those people in Israel who have attempted to do things other than fight for peace, we should think again. Because that, too, is a policy that is supported by patriots, by heroes and a very large part of the Israeli public,” he said.
“We have enemies and very serious ones. Anyone can open the newspaper and know people are dying every day. Those enemies appeal to our opponents and we, by ignoring people who don’t want to agree on our terms, are helping to lose the day.”
In order to see eye to eye with Muslims, Jews will have to make difficult sacrifices. Singer recalled concessions he made when negotiating with the Germans, “caving” by accepting terms that were “inconceivable.”
Yet, by compromising, 92,500 pensioners have received more than $4 billion in the last three years alone.
“Negotiations do not occur just with rancor but with the ability to settle,” said Singer, also chair of the governing board of the World Jewish Congress.
But “if I were to take a maximal position pushed for by some of my colleagues, those people now receiving pensions would have to wait yet another 55 years, the way they did the first time.”
In fighting worldwide anti-Semitism and for the plight of Israel, Singer also admonished B’nai B’rith members not to loose sight of what they’re fighting for. If Judaism is reduced to nostalgia over “the good books read by our grandfathers with beards who lived in another world” then “we will know that we have failed.”
Including the children of intermarried couples, Singer estimated as many as 15 million Jews may reside in the United States.
“I’m not making a judgment about [intermarriage]; it’s not a good time to be making judgments before Rosh Hashanah. Those people are Jews. It’s a fact,” he said.
“When Jew hatred comes around, when Jewish dialogue appears, when Jewish censuses are taken, they are Jews in most ways. Except they, like the 5 million who are still halachically Jewish — all except a small percentage — they know nothing about Judaism.”
Singer stressed the need to “find a way to educate our children to know why it is worth being a Jew and what being a Jew is all about.” Otherwise, “all you’ll be doing is saving the Jewish body for the anti-Semite to ravage.”