Persona Non Grata

Daniel Ben Simon - Senior features writer for Ha'aretz. Ben Simon, who has been at Haaretz since 1998, is often interviewed on political developments on American and French TV networks. Born in Morocco in 1954, he has a degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University and was the member of a research group on the Middle East at Harvard University.

Last Saturday Lucien Lazare gathered his courage and walked toward the synagogue from which he had been banned. He had spent difficult weeks since he was made to feel unwelcome in the congregation and now once again he was walking the familiar route he had taken for the past 35 years. If it were up to him, he would have avoided the traumatic experience, but he was afraid of breaking a long-standing custom of having an aliyah laTorah - of "going up" for a Torah reading - in memory of his father. Once a year, during the first week of the annual cycle of Torah readings, he has gone up to to say a prayer in his father's memory. This gesture eased the torture of his return to the synagogue.

As soon as he was called to approach the holy ark, the women in the women's section had a synchronized coughing fit. He was so emotional that he did not notice the attempt to interfere with his prayer. In any case, at this age, he is hard of hearing. On the way back to his seat he had to make his way among the worshipers. Some of them nodded to him; most of them turned their backs on him. He gave them a friendly glance; they ignored his existence. Up until two months ago they were still considered his friends and now they saw him as an enemy.

While this was happening, his wife Janine sat at home and worried. Under no circumstances was she prepared to go to the synagogue with her husband. After what they had done to them, she informed her family, she would never again set foot there. Ever since they came to Israel 35 years ago, she had seen the Ohel Nehamah synagogue on Chopin Street in Jerusalem's Talbieh neighborhood as a second home. Not only services and religious gatherings were held on its premises. Over the years the elaborate building had become an arena for social gatherings at which immigrants from the United States rubbed shoulders with immigrants from France, immigrants from England with immigrants from South Africa - and veteran Israelis also came. This was a mixture of languages and customs that symbolized a multicultural Judaism unique to Jerusalem. On Sabbaths and holidays, the Lazares made it their habit to stay after services to chat about life and family and the new homeland.

Although many years went by since they immigrated to Israel, they clung to their mother tongue, like other congregants, finding it difficult to adopt the language of the new country. They made the acquaintance of scores of immigrants from France with whom they developed close social ties. They talked about everything. Except politics. Opinions, positions and beliefs were so deeply rooted that the friends from the congregation feared that an argument about the situation would develop and rip the intimate social fabric to shreds. Among the congregants there were those who sanctified every Jewish settlement and outpost in the territories, and those who saw them as idol worship. There were those who saw Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a savior, and those who saw him as Satan. There were those who did not believe in peace with the Arabs and those who saw it as a Zionist and Jewish deed. The fear of a rift gave rise to an understanding among the congregants that they would not bring up controversial subjects and not even mention them, as if they were an evil spirit.

Although everyone knew what their friends thought and for whom they voted, they agreed not to talk about it. The Lazares devoted themselves to promoting peace and understanding between Israel and the Arabs, and took care not to mention their activities among the congregants of the synagogue at which they worshiped.

The Expulsion

On the eve of Yom Kippur, on the way to the synagogue after the final meal before the beginning of the fast, Lazare noticed an envelope that had been placed in his mailbox. He did not open it. Several days earlier, he and his wife had returned from a trip abroad and their daughter, Yael Burg, had warned them of ill winds blowing among the congregants of the synagogue.

It quickly turned out that the congregants were furious at their fellow worshiper for having dared translate for France's Le Monde an article written by his son-in-law, MK (Labor) Avraham Burg, about the difficulties of Zionism and the problems of the Jewish state. The article, "Zionism is dead," which was originally published in the mass- circulation Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, created quite a stir and was translated into many languages. The French paper also wanted to publish it and asked Lazare to translate it. The article was published and beneath it the name of the translator was noted.

Thus Lazare's troubles began. To friends who warned him of what was going to happen he replied: "I just translate." This didn't help. Among some of the congregants, especially the French-speakers among them, there was such hatred for Avraham Burg that sometimes they tended to take their anger out on his father-in-law. They hated Burg's left-wing activities in the pursuit of peace because they were conducted under the shelter of a crocheted skullcap and religious faith. They were especially angry at him for having exposed Israel's moral shame in public, to gentiles and to Frenchmen who read Le Monde and who, in their opinion, want only to do Israel ill.

Later, with trembling hands, Lazare opened the envelope and read the contents. His eyes filled with tears. About 50 members of his congregation addressed "an open letter to Lucien Lazar," in French. "We felt betrayed by your actions," they wrote, "in translating this rubbishy outburst and in so precipitously sending it to the Western press. Lucien Lazare, you have been an accomplice in strengthening our enemies' fight." Further on, they accused him of abetting suicide terrorists. "You tightened the last screw in the explosive belt that tomorrow will kill members of your people ... and we call upon you to repent on Yom Kippur, which is almost here ... We will not shake your hand."

In a moment his whole world collapsed. He was shunned by a congregation of which he had been one of the founders and a leading member. It was clear that he was persona non grata at the synagogue. In 1936-38, Jewish immigrants had flocked to his home in Alsace trying to find refuge from their persecutors. His father spared no effort to find lodgings, food and work for them. Eventually the Jews of the city blamed his irresponsible acts for strengthening the anti-Semitism toward them. "Don't have anything to do with them and don't help them," he told him. "Those refugees aren't like us. They look too Jewish and there's not a chance that they'll learn French."

"Sixty years later I'm hearing the same thing," said Lazare in a trembling voice. "I hear similar accusations to the effect that I'm helping Israel's enemies and helping anti-Semitism. What they did to my father, they're now doing to me. They sent me letters with threats and signed petitions to excommunicate me from my congregation. This isn't fair. For 35 years I've worshiped at my synagogue with a congregation of which I have always been proud to be a member, because it is a congregation of good deeds, of helping others, of helping new immigrants, of helping those in need. We are Ashkenazi worshipers who pray in the Ashknazi liturgical style and every service was a celebration that is difficult to describe."

The Sadness

Lazare looked for somewhere else to pray. For the first time since he immigrated to Israel he had to go looking for a synagogue. Finally he found a place in Rehavia where yeshiva students gathered. "I looked for other places where no one knew me," he related, finding the memory of those moments difficult. "Of course I was looking for places where I could expect not to be shunned. Finally I found an Anglo-Saxon yeshiva where I didn't know a soul and no one knew me."

"It was a moment of terrible crisis," he continued hesitantly. "An act of expulsion - a sense of crisis. Something broke inside me. I had been in a relationship with people whom I saw as human beings and suddenly I found out that they were not worthy of the name `human beings' ... At my age, to start all over again and build a new community - it's impossible. I was born at the beginning of the last century and I can't build a new life now."

His wife has shut herself into her home, choking back her tears. "I wept bitterly," she related. "For the first time I did not go to Kol Nidre [the service on the eve of Yom Kippur] and Ne'ila [the concluding prayer on Yom Kippur]. I felt half-paralyzed. The psychological distress was enormous. Kippur is something special. The fasting doesn't affect you because you're so deep in a huge spiritual experience. Of course I went to synagogue every year, but this time I stayed home because I felt that I was not wanted. I felt so terribly shattered and disappointed that I can't describe it. I thought to myself that those people who shunned my husband suffer from a split between their personal morality and the humane political morality of the other."

During those moments of distress, she remembered the high points of her life in Israel. Though she had been raised in an assimilated Jewish family, she adopted Judaism with love. "I came to Judaism because during the war, I met a rabbi in France who embodied for me the wonderful combination of Judaism and morality," she recalled enthusiastically. "I was only 13 and in my home, which belonged to the middle class, they played bridge and weren't interested in religion. Thus, when we came to Jerusalem in 1968, I had a feeling that we had come to the center of the Jewish world. Every Friday I went to pray at the Western Wall and I had a feeling of elation that I can't describe. It was too good."

One of Janine Lazare's friends tried to dampen her enthusiasm and warned her that the idyll of the return to the Western Wall would not last long - that the Palestinians were destined to rebel.

Lazare thinks that even then, a sense of mission to bring about reconciliation between the two peoples was germinating within her. The Yom Kippur War served as her entry ticket into the Israeli world of protest; during the Lebanon War, she enlisted in the local "protest army." She organized women's demonstrations and took part in events in Israel and abroad against the militarism that had become so much a part of the texture of Israeli life. With the outbreak of the first intifada and during its aftermath, she felt despondent, limp. The harder she worked for peace, the further away it seemed.

At the beginning of this week, she met with her daughter and found it hard to evince the joie de vivre that is characteristic of her. In a moment of despair she admitted that she felt she was departing from the world she had entered when she immigrated to Israel and that her motivations for coming here no longer exist. So many bad things have happened and so many young people with a lust for life have met their deaths in merciless wars that she began to feel that perhaps bereavement is imprinted in the nature of Israeli society. And as if her soul were not already hurting, along came the affair of the shunning of her husband. For the first time she felt that her strength had run out.

"I entered this world because of the morality and especially because of the connection between Judaism and morality," she explained sadly, "and for the first time in my life I sense that I'm on my way out. This is what I said to my daughter, because I feel that Judaism and morality no longer go hand in hand. This is not the same Judaism; not the same Judaism of synagogues; not the same Judaism of values and family values. There used to be a Judaism of joy and now it has been replaced by a Judaism of hatred."

The Pain

Out of the desire to contribute to others, the Lazares devoted their lives to public work - he as an educator and school principal, she as a clinical psychologist. In her professional capacity she engaged in helping families that had lost their loved ones in wars and hostile actions. This unmediated proximity to death is what caused her to hate wars. In her worst dreams she never imagined that the killing between the Israelis and the Palestinians would reach such horrible dimensions and that helpless children from both sides would fall victim to the war lust of leaders.

"I feel that the disaster is swelling, because the occupation is growing stronger," she added. "There's a sense that we are heading toward disaster and no one is doing anything to stop it. It's like something suicidal. Every time I hear about a soldier who has been killed, I feel that they are sacrificing their lives for the Jewish settlements in the territories. I cry all the time over the children we are losing. It tortures me to ask myself what we've done to them. What have we done for the sake of their future? I feel like I'm a terrible failure for not having known how to change this suicidal tendency and for not leaving a better world for my children and grandchildren. What kind of world am I leaving for my 18 grandchildren? The past three years of the intifada have been terrible. This has finished me and I feel like I can no longer help. I have this feeling of nullity - I'm still militant and I'm not afraid of any criticism, but I feel a paralysis that is preventing me from going out on protest actions."

Her husband listens and nods. The conversation is in Hebrew but from time to time they have to plumb the depths of the French language in order to find exactly the right word, the apt expression. They read French literature, watch French television programs and follow current events in France. They often travel for lectures and have begun to feel homesick for the landscapes of their childhood in the area of Alsace.

And what will happen now? Will they go back to the synagogue? The friends who signed the letter that banned them have not been calling them and are not taking an interest in how they are doing. Not all the congregants are aware of the great split that has occurred among the French-speaking members. With time, everyone will know.

But there are also glimmerings of light. A few days ago, three of the signers of the letter showed up at the couple's home and asked to retract what they had said. Prof. Uriel Simon of Bar-Ilan University, who worships at the synagogue, sent an open letter to the congregants "who have shunned our friend Lucien Lazare," as he defined it.

"To my regret the writers are ignoring the fact that the State of Israel is not a sealed ghetto, but rather an open society," he wrote. "I cannot explain your disproportionate outcry except as being a result of collective hysteria, from which it is possible and necessary to free yourselves ... This indeed is the basic question of principle that has motivated me to write to you. Is the expression of radical national self-criticism legitimate? Should Israeli society's ability to listen patiently to painful reproaches be encouraged, or is it better to shield the society from it by deploring the criticism as treacherous self-hatred? I have complete faith that the answer to this is given in the example that was set for us by the prophets of Israel, who did not spare their contemporaries and Israel throughout the generations the harshest reproaches, articulated in the sharpest language without fear of what the Philistines in Gat or the Christians in Rome would say."

Further on, Simon cites Isaiah (1:10, 21-23): "Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah ... How is the faithful city become an harlot! It was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers. Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water: Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither does the cause of the widow come before them ..."

"This," wrote Simon to the congregants, "is the splendid tradition of our people and we are commanded to cling to it and continue it." He concluded his letter by suggesting that they write to their friend, lift the ban and rebuilt the amity between them.

Lazare says that he doubts things will ever again be the way they were before he was shunned in a brutal act reminiscent of something done in the Middle Ages. Yes, he does miss the house of worship and the prayers and the long walk from his home to the synagogue. But the wound has left him deeply scarred - and his wife, as well.

"For me, it's all over," she said decisively. "After what they've done to Lucien, it's over."

From Ha'aretz - 10/31/2003