The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (45 page)

Though Mr. Begin had to forego his open house, he did open up his home to a Bible study circle which convened every Saturday evening. Approximately twenty people, among them Bible scholars of repute, would seat themselves around the couch on which the prime minister sat, and for an hour or more they would delve into some particularly attention-grabbing passage of the Book of Books. I would participate as a matter of course; being in attendance on the prime minister was part of my job.

On the first such Saturday night, held on the very eve of Begin’s departure for Washington, the chosen passage was from the Book of Numbers, chapters twenty-two to twenty-four, in which the Bible records how, in the fortieth year after the children of Israel embarked on their Exodus from Egypt, and just a few months before entering the Promised Land, the heathen prophet Balaam was coaxed
–
bribed actually
–
by the Moabite King Balak, to curse the advancing Israelites and thereby devastate them before they could devastate him. However, Balaam, impelled by God’s command, and much to Balak’s displeasure, found himself involuntarily blessing them instead.

That evening’s discussion centered primarily on the evocative verse nine of chapter twenty-three, in which Balaam foretells with remarkable prescience the future destiny of the Jewish people,
predicting
, “
…
this is a people that shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations.”

Reading the verse out loud, Prime Minister Begin gave a mild chuckle and said, “One does not have to be a mystic for the imagination to be stirred by such an improbable vision of a nation forever ‘dwelling alone.’ Is it not a startlingly accurate prophecy of our Jewish people’s experience in all of history?”

Even as he was saying this, I vividly recalled the remark Prime Minister Golda Meir had once made about how lonely she invariably felt when attending a session at the United Nations. “We have no family there,” she had said. “Israel is entirely alone there. But why should that be?”

Being a socialist, with no bent for theology, Golda Meir had made no attempt to answer her own momentous question. But now Menachem Begin was opening discussion on this indisputable reality.

“Why does the Jewish State so frequently face solitude in the family of nations?” he asked rhetorically. “Is it because we are the only country in the world that is Jewish? Is it because we are the one country in the world whose language is Hebrew? But why are there no other Jewish states? Why are there no other Hebrew-speaking states, just as there are multiple Christian states, Moslem states, Hindu states, Buddhist states, English-speaking, Arabic-speaking, French-speaking, Chinese-speaking states? In short, why have we no sovereign kith and kin anywhere in the world? In the United Nations, everybody is grouped into regional blocs, each bloc bound by a common geography, religion, history, culture, and language. They vote with one another in solidarity. But no other country in the world shares our unique narrative. Geographically, we are located in Asia, but the Asian bloc won’t have us. Our Arab neighbors see to that. Indeed, they want to destroy us. So, geographically, we really belong nowhere. And since membership in the Security Council is in accordance with regional blocs, we have no realistic chance of being elected to it. The one blood tie, the one kindred bond we have with anybody at all in the world, is with our own fellow Jews in the Diaspora, and everywhere they are a minority and nowhere do they enjoy any form of national or cultural autonomy.”

Professor Ephraim Auerbach, a rotund, semi-bald scholar of refinement, wit and brilliance, picked up the theme, citing classic commentators who suggested that the meaning of “dwelling alone,” as cited by the heathen prophet Balaam, really meant voluntarily setting oneself apart. In other words, the Jewish nation distinguished itself from other peoples by virtue of its distinctive religious and moral laws, and by the fact that it had been chosen by God as the instrument of a divine purpose within the family of nations. “In that sense, the Jewish people dwells alone of its own volition,” he said.

A woman in her fifties asked for permission to comment. She was tall and lean, her face equine, her dress and hat plain, and her eyes brilliantly intelligent. This was Nehama Leibowitz, a renowned Bible scholar famous for her immensely popular weekly Torah commentaries, composed in a highly comprehensible style. Deftly, she drew attention to the verse’s grammatical structure, elaborating upon and reinforcing Professor Auerbach’s comment, explaining that the word yitchashav, generally translated to mean ‘reckoned’ – “this is a people that shall not be reckoned among the nations” – was rendered in the reflexive form, which therefore gave the meaning, “this is a people that does not reckon itself among the nations.” And as an aside, she pointed out that this form of that particular word occurs but once in the whole of Scripture.

Professor Yaakov Katz, a slight figure with dour features and a deeply analytical disposition, broke in to refer to the eminent Talmudist Marcus Jastrow. Citing Jastrow’s Talmudic sources, Katz showed that the reflexive form of the root word
chasha
v
[reckon] signifies “to conspire,” meaning that Israel “is a people that dwells alone and does not
conspire
against other nations.”

Professor Harel Fisch, educator, literary scholar, and future laureate of the prestigious Israel Prize, raised a finger for attention. Stroking his goatee, he mused that in modern society the Jewish people were unique in personifying a seamless blend of peoplehood and religion, born out of the two seminal events that forged the Jewish national personality: the Exodus from Egypt, when Jews entered history as a people, and the giving of the Torah at Sinai, when Jews entered history as a nation-faith. A Jew, therefore, was a synergy of both
–
Exodus and Sinai. He could not be the one without the other, though many throughout the centuries had tried to keep them apart. Whether one was a believer or a skeptic, this subtle nation-faith individuality was indivisible. And since this was what distinguished the Jewish people from all other peoples, they would always, uniquely, “dwell alone.”

Another participant, whom everybody knew simply as Srulik, a bushy-haired archaeologist and Bible prodigy wearing an emerald green yarmulke which he had picked up at the door, provocatively remarked that whichever way one interpreted Balaam’s prophecy, it stamped the Jewish people as an eternally abnormal nation within the family of nations
–
and that this flew in the face of the classic Zionist creed, which expounded that Zionism’s aim was to normalize the Jewish people so that it could become a
goy k’chol hagoyim
–
a nation like all other nations. Indeed, the central thesis of the Zionist thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly the Labor Zionists, was that once Jews possessed what every other normal nation possesses
–
a land of their own
–
they would automatically become a normal nation within the family of nations. And the consequence of that, so the classic Zionist theory held, would be that anti-Semitism would wither and die. Well, it hadn’t withered and died. On the contrary, the very existence of the Jewish State was often a cause for anti-Semitic prejudice, and this, surely, cast a shadow on a fundamental article of Zionist faith.

To which Dr. Chaim Gevaryahu, chairman of the Israel Bible Society, added that he wondered what led those brilliant secular Zionist founding fathers of yesteryear to predict so confidently that Jewish self-determination would, of itself, lead to national normalization and put an end to anti-Semitism. Indeed, once Jews became a normal people they would cease being Jews. But that could never happen, because nothing could ever put an end to anti-Semitism. In fact, one thing to be learned from the biblical portion under review was that the so-called prophet Balaam was the archetypical anti-Semite. His whole intent was to curse the Jews, not to bless them. The blessing was God’s doing, not his.

Irresistibly, the prime minister plunged in once again, expanding on the uniqueness of the Jewish national identity, saying, “As Professor Harel Fisch has pointed out, other peoples are multi-religious; other religions are multinational. But we Jews are one and the same
–
religion and nationhood both. And as Professor Auerbach and Professor Leibowitz have indicated, we have forever maintained this distinctiveness by refusing to assimilate into other nations. It all began with the father of our nation, Abraham of Ur of the Chaldees, who, at the age of seventy-five, deduced the eternal truth of the One God, and bolted the idolatry of his parental home in order to worship Him. Hundreds of years later we see his descendents, by now an enslaved people, again embarking on a God-commanded journey
–
the Exodus from the idolatrous land of Egypt
–
again in order to worship the One God. In both instances their destination was Eretz Yisrael, there to fulfill their religious-national destiny. Never in Jewish history was this identity severed.” Then the line of his mouth tightened a fraction showing he was about to draw a practical conclusion: “And since there can be no separation between nation and faith, this means there can be no total separation between religion and state in the Jewish State.”

This triggered off a firestorm of controversy, because while some of the scholars present took the Bible as a paradigm of God’s own writing, others related to it secularly, as a piece of extraordinary literature. Listening attentively, Mr. Begin lowered the temperature by saying in an earnest voice that whatever the differences of view, the eternal fact remained that, by any reading of the text, the Jewish people did, indeed, constitute an exceptional phenomenon in world history. To illustrate his point he picked up a volume of the utterances of Dr. Yaakov Herzog, my mentor, counselor and inspiration when I took my first steps into the world of diplomacy. Yaakov died prematurely in 1972 at the age of fifty, and Menachem Begin appropriately described him that evening as “a master of the perplexities of international diplomacy and a prodigy in the field of Jewish erudition.” He continued, “In fact, he is the only man I ever met who was given the choice at one and the same time of being asked by Levi Eshkol to be chief of the prime minister’s office, and approached by Anglo-Jewry to be chief rabbi of Great Britain.”

In closing the discussion that night, Menachem Begin read from Herzog’s profound philosophical anthology,
A People That Dwells Alone
:

The theory of classic Zionism was national normalization. What was wrong with the theory? It was the belief that the idea of a ‘people that dwells alone’ is an abnormal concept, when actually a ‘people that dwells alone’ is the natural concept of the Jewish people. That is why this one phrase still describes the totality of the extraordinary phenomenon of Israel’s revival. If one asks how the ingathering of the exiles, which no one could have imagined in his wildest dreams, came about, or how the State of Israel could endure such severe security challenges, or how it has built up such a flourishing economy, or how the unity of the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora has been preserved, one must come back to the primary idea that this is ‘a people that dwells alone.’ More than that, one must invoke this phrase not only to understand how the Jews have existed for so long; one must invoke it as a testimony to the Jewish right to exist at all in the land of their rebirth.
58

“So there you have it,” concluded Begin snapping the book shut. “Cease dwelling alone and we cease to exist. What a conundrum!”

AT EASE!”

“ATTENTION!”

“PRESENT ARMS!”

Compelled by the roll of military drums, the honor guard saluted the prime minister as, head held high, shoulders back, chin out, he inspected the
IDF
parade, then bowed respectfully before the thicket of regimental banners which were dipped in ceremonial salute.

Dr. Yosef Burg, the always witty and highly erudite minister of the interior, leaned across to where I was standing in the receiving line and whispered naughtily into my ear, “There hasn’t been a state departure ceremony like this since Golda Meir put a stop to it five years ago. Jabotinsky would love it. For Begin this is
hadar
!”

The pomp, the show, the
hada
r
, were all entirely his. Begin wanted to underscore to the nation the momentous purpose he attributed to his journey. A ‘Who’s Who’ of Israeli public life had turned out at Ben-Gurion Airport to see the prime minister off, although he was taking a regular commercial El Al flight. The entire cabinet was there, as was the diplomatic corps, the high command, religious dignitaries, Knesset members, and various other important officials. The
VIP
s lined the carpet that snaked toward the gleaming blue and white airplane whose passengers crowded the windows to gawk at the rare show unfolding on the tarmac below. Moving leisurely along the line, the prime
minister
shook hands and squeezed shoulders, the nature of his leave-taking dependent on how partial he was to each of the well-wishers.

Standing on a podium he declared he was leaving for the shores of America filled with hope, and that he was bringing to the president of the United States a far-reaching and concrete proposal for the advancement of peace. “Let the word go forth,” he fervently declared, “that the people of Israel want peace, a lasting peace, a genuine peace, a just peace. Our people have too often been bereaved and orphaned. There is not a home in our land that has not lost someone – a father, a mother, a brother, a son – and the grief is forever with us, to our last breath. We detest war, we hate bloodshed, we threaten no one.” And then, addressing his remarks at the Egyptian president, who had recently made a statement threatening Israel if it did not accede to his demands, the prime minister scornfully reprimanded, “Really, President Sadat! Might I suggest you cease threatening us? After all, Israel is not exactly famous for its lack of courage, is it?” And then, with a sweeping gesture, caught up on the wave of his own enthusiasm and righteousness, he proclaimed, “Yes, President Sadat, we want peace. But if we are attacked, we shall defend ourselves and fling back the aggressor with all our might – as it was avowed in the days of yore, in the Book of Books, where it is written, ‘Kuma Hashem v’yafutzu oyvecha v’yanusu sonecha mipanecha’: Rise up, O Lord, and let Thy enemies be scattered, and let them that despise Thee flee before Thee.”

Softly, with deep feeling, he ended, “Citizens of Israel, I need your prayers for the success of the assignment I undertake in your name today. And even though I am unworthy of the task, I beseech the Almighty that He allows my mission to prosper, for the sake of the whole House of Israel.”
59

With that, the drums beat yet another lengthy roll and Menachem Begin, his face resolute and dedicated, stood ramrod straight as the military band played the national anthem.

Over Germany, the premier asked his spokesman, Dan Patir
–
a relic from the previous administration, like myself
–
to invite the Israeli press on board to come up to the first-class section for an informal, off-the-record chat. Soon, a dozen or so journalists were crowded around Begin, kneeling in seats and on the floor, straining to hear him above the engines and scribbling ferociously, trying to capture all the information coming their way.

Begin had known most of these correspondents for years, and so it was with relaxed familiarity, jacket and tie off, that he shared what he thought of Jimmy Carter. His intention, as always, was to tug these opinion makers into the orbit of his tough choices, hoping to win them over in the event of a fight with the president of the United States.

Then came the questions, which tumbled out one after the other in rapid succession:

“Is it true that Carter is preparing a chilly reception for you?”

“We’ll have to wait and see,” replied Begin cagily.

“The pomp and pageantry of your farewell ceremony at
Ben-Gurion
Airport
–
your critics say you’re obsessed with red carpets. Are you?”

Begin sounded a deep and honest laugh: “Stuff and nonsense! I’m obsessed with
hadar
–
national dignity and Jewish honor
–
yes. But those who suggest that I indulge in self-aggrandizement don’t remember, or don’t want to remember, that I lived in the underground for five years without a carpet of any sort. The only people that can talk such nonsense are those who never savored an underground struggle, and don’t know what total anonymity is
–
an absolutely gray existence in which you cannot visit a friend and a friend cannot visit you.”

“But Mr. Begin, now you can,” said someone. “So why have you been avoiding us? Why are you suddenly so press-shy? Why have you been so tight-lipped? What do you have up your sleeve for Mr. Carter?”

“Aha! No leaks out of my cabinet, eh? My apologies!” He said this with a smug laugh and an air of victory.

“So tell us, what’s really happening?”

Deadly serious now, the prime minister explained that he had been deeply immersed during the past week in preparing for this visit, and that he was carrying with him to Washington the results of his labors. It was a confidential document whose contents the cabinet had approved unanimously. The document was entitled, “The Framework for the Peacemaking Process,” and it dealt with the whole matter of the proposed Geneva peace conference. Most significantly, it preempted the Arab demand that Yasser Arafat and his
PLO
participate in the intended conference.

“And if Carter insists?” asked one.

“Then I shall resist. They shall not participate under any circumstances!” His words were raw, but he instantly controlled himself and explained that out of respect for the president he could not share the contents of the document with the press now. “The president must be the first to hear about it, directly from me,” he said. “Remember, this is my first visit as prime minister to Washington, and it will set the tone of my relationship with President Carter for a long time to come.”

“So, if it’s that important why isn’t Foreign Minister Dayan with you?” asked one.

“Because at this first meeting it is important that President Carter and I have a chance to take a very close look at each other, man to man, with no intermediaries; just him and me.”

Five hours later, well over the Atlantic, I awoke from a fitful doze to the startling sight of the prime minister, vigorous, freshly shaven, and properly attired, bending down on one knee, unsuccessfully trying to help his wife put on her shoe. From across the aisle where I sat, I handed Mrs. Begin a neat little shoehorn that was tucked into the cunningly designed toilet kit, compliments of the airline.

“Menachem,” teased Mrs. Begin. “You can get up off your knees now. Yehuda has given me a shoehorn.”

Begin rose and said with fake petulance, “Marriage is not a word. Marriage is a sentence.”

Encouraged by this intimacy, I asked how long they had been married. Mrs. Begin answered that it was thirty-six years, since May 1939, three months before the German occupation. And he, with amusement in his eyes and loving laughter in his voice, revealed, “We met at the home of a mutual friend, a veteran Betar member in Poland. Sitting at the table were the Arnold girls, twin sisters. Seventeen! They looked identical, but I could tell they were different. On the spot I decided that this one”
–
he jerked his thumb
–
“would be my wife. The next day I wrote her a letter.”

Mrs. Begin shook her head and in mock sarcasm, scoffed, “What a letter!”

The prime minister smiled with beautiful forthrightness, and said, “I wrote to her: ‘My dear lady
–
I saw you for the first time but I feel I have known you all my life.’ Then, later, I told her how hard life would be. There would be no money, there would be plenty of trouble, and there might even be jail. We have to fight for Eretz Yisrael, I told her.”

“And what did you answer?” I dared ask Aliza Begin.

She gave me an easy smile, but he replied for her: “She said, ‘I’m not afraid of trouble.’ That’s exactly what she said.”

I told them that the American ambassador, Samuel Lewis, had told me that an internal state department brief drawn up preparatory to their visit described their marriage as “exemplary.”

“Till now,” cracked Aliza, whom Begin and their intimate friends called Alla. “I’m providing him with
this
world, he’s providing me with the next.”

He chuckled and said with appealing openness, “We toast each other every day. May it last forever,” and his hand stole across the armrest and fondled hers in a possessive gesture.

On arrival at Kennedy Airport, Abraham Beame, New York’s diminutive and effervescent mayor, stepped up to the microphone to pronounce words of welcome in the name of the Big Apple, and on behalf of the thirty or forty local politicians, Jewish leaders and Israeli officials who were crowding around. The prime minister responded in kind, after which reporters began barking questions, which he fielded with experienced deftness. The first one was asked by the Jewish Press:

“Mr. Prime Minister, both you and President Carter are known to be deeply religious men, well acquainted with religious quotations. I would like to know to what extent these feelings and your knowledge of the Bible will enter into your discussions?”

Answered Begin, “I know President Carter to be a man of faith, and I am not at all ashamed to state I believe in Divine Providence. I think it is a very positive quality to have in common for the promotion of a constructive dialogue.”

The last question was posed by a woman representing the
Village Voice
, with pronounced bluntness. “Mr. Prime Minister, you say you are here to meet the president to talk about advancing the peace, but how can you advance the peace without agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state?”

“Madam, what you are suggesting is ceaseless warfare and bloodshed,” rumbled Begin. “What you term a Palestinian state would mean a mortal danger to the Jewish State. Such a state can never come into being.”

“But what if Yasser Arafat will recognize your right to a Jewish State?”

“The leader of the so-called
PLO
is the godfather of international terrorism. There are people, particularly in Europe and no doubt some here in America, too, who have a delusive impulse to read into his rhetoric messages of amiability, sobriety, and compromise. It’s all lies. Thank you.”

That night
–
it was a Friday
–
Menachem Begin slept the sleep of a Sabbath lover in his Waldorf Astoria bed. During most of the following day he had his feet up reading, and spent an hour or two entertaining old friends. Sunday he had meetings with lay and religious leaders across the full spectrum of American Jewry. He spent a goodly hour with Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, whom he had known for years. Soloveitchik was the scion of an eminent rabbinic dynasty, a Talmudic mastermind and outstanding teacher who was the head of the Yeshiva University’s rabbinical seminary. A religious leader par excellence, he was the seminal figure of Modern Orthodoxy, serving as guide, mentor and role model to hundreds of thousands of Jews across America and beyond.

With easy familiarity they chatted about developments within Jewry in general, and in Israel and the United States in particular. They then went on to converse about the relevance of the religious fast of Tisha b’Av [the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av] to modern times. The fast, which commemorates the most tragic events in the Jewish calendar, was only days away, and the prime minister wanted the rabbi’s thoughts concerning the appropriateness of integrating the Holocaust commemoration within this traditional saddest of saddest days (In Israel, the official Holocaust memorial day coincides with the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). The Rav
–
that is how his disciples reverently referred to him
–
thought the idea merited serious consideration. Rabbinic tradition, he said, favored the merging of such commemorations. By combining the two anniversaries, the one ancient and the other all too modern, the themes of Jewish suffering, destiny, and eternity would be dramatically reinforced.

Rabbi Soloveitchik and Menachem Begin parted with enormous affability, and then the prime minister readied himself for his next appointment, which was a meeting with another old friend
–
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

Rabbi Schneerson stood at the entrance of the Lubavitch movement headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, waiting to receive his guest. Amid a blaze of photoflashes the two men embraced. The Rebbe’s face was beaming as they exchanged greetings. His was an angelic face, half-curtained by a square gray beard, and topped by the trademark black fedora of the Lubavitch Chasidim. On him, it seemed to have the effect of a bastion protecting the mind from iniquitous invasions.

One reporter called out, “Mr. Begin, why have you come to see the Rebbe? Surely, you being the newly elected prime minister of Israel, he should be coming to see you?”

“Why, indeed?” the prime minister responded with grace, showing an easy rapport. “A good question.” And then, with an air of deep reverence, “I have come to see the Rebbe because I am en route to Washington to meet President Carter for the first time. So, it is most natural for me to want to seek the blessings of this great sage of the Jewish people.”

“How great is he?” asked another reporter.

“Rabbi Schneerson is one of the paramount Jewish personalities of our time. His status is unique among our people. So I am certain his blessings will strengthen me as I embark on a mission of acute importance for our future.”