Remarks for the Honorary Doctorate Ceremony at Bar-Ilan University
21/05/2002
Mr. President of the university,
Mr. Rector,
Members of the faculty,
Honored guests,
My teachers and my masters:
First of all, I would like to thank you for having found me worthy of bearing the degree of honorary doctor. I hold this honor you have given me in great esteem, and I am especially proud to share the stage with my fellow honorary doctors: Professor Alan Heegar, Mrs. Cynthia Ozick, Ms. Anna Hitter Webb, and Ms. Vivienne Wohl, and with my friend Sami Shamoon, recipient of the Life Achievement Award. I offer you all my heartfelt congratulations.
I?d like to open, if you?ll allow me, by praising my host.
Bar-Ilan University has produced generations of students, scholars, and scientists who have learned their craft here and who can now be found throughout the Israeli academy, in all branches of research, science, culture, and creativity.
The university?s unique integration of academic and scientific freedom with religious Jewish underpinnings is not something to be taken for granted. Bar-Ilan?s success has placed it at the head of our academic institutions. Israel is proud of Bar-Ilan University and is blessed by its presence.
My teachers and my masters,
On my way here I was met by a senior correspondent of the Hebrew Television who asked me if I was about to address current topics. My answer to him was that I was about to address a topic which is always current ? the Jewish people. I am first of all a Jew and for me being a Jew is the most important thing.
Ladies and gentlemen,
When our forefather Jacob crossed the Yabuk River on his way from Haran to the Land of Israel, he remained alone on the riverbank, and an angel wrestled with him until daybreak, and could not prevail against him.
A Jew reads this and wonders: what does this mean? What did this angel of God have as his purpose in striving with Jacob, on the marches of the land of our fathers, and in hindering Jacob?s return home after long and exhausting years in a foreign land?
Jacob himself demands an answer from the angel, and will not free his adversary until he receives an answer. The angel offers Jacob an astounding reply, a metaphor of the Jewish people?s fate to this day:
?Your name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel, for you have contended with God and with men, and have prevailed.?
This has always been our people?s fate and destiny: to strive and to survive; to struggle and to overcome; to fight ? and to win. To withstand the harshest trials to which man and God put us, trials that no other nation has endured, and to emerge from them fortified in spirit and in deed.
This is the meaning of the name ?Israel.? The word?s Hebrew root means ?to strive.? To survive means to struggle. To bravely and boldly face the challenges before. To know that we may not rest on our laurels.
It means knowing that our struggle as a people has not ended and will never end. Even when we reach, with God?s help, our generation?s ultimate aspiration, and achieve security and peace for our country, this will not be the last peak we must scale. We will not find, on the other side of the mountain, a tranquil and serene plateau of green meadows stretching to the horizon. No, there will be further mountains to climb and new challenges to meet with the vibrant creative spirit of the Jewish people.
When Jonah sought to flee, to escape the responsibility imposed on him, and to hide his mission and his Jewish identity, he found himself cast into the stormy sea, after being forced to acknowledge that he was a Jew.
The ship?s crew ? the captain and the sailors ? assailed Jonah with questions and demanded that he identify himself:
?What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you??
Jonah?s reply puts it all into four short words: ?I am a Hebrew.? I am a Jew. That says everything.
?I am a Jew? ? that is the eternal answer to the identity of every member of the Jewish people, an answer that links past, present, and future.
This definition of ourselves is not fifty-four years old, the age of the State of Israel. It is four thousand years old. First of all, and after all else is said, ?I am a Hebrew,? a Jew.
I belong, I am connected, I am obligated by the historical continuity of my people.
I am a link in a long chain of generations. I am here because of my parents and grandparents and forefathers who preserved the flame of Jewish existence through tribulations and persecutions and martyrdoms throughout the Diaspora.
I am here because of their faith and their prayers and their love for this land.
I am here because I am of them.
I bear with me their greatest treasure, the spiritual and creative works that the Jewish people have produced, handed down from generation to generation like a torch, and it is my duty to add to them something of my own and to bequeath them to my own children and grandchildren.
I am a Jew, and my duty to my Jewish identity is the foundation stone of my being, and the starting point of my national identity.
On the fifth of the month of Iyar in the year 5708 of the Jewish reckoning, David Ben-Gurion declared Israel?s independence with the words: ?The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. (Here their spiritual, religious, and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained national independence, created cultural values of national and universal significance, and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.) The proclamation reaches its climax with the words: ?We hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.?
That state?s Jewish identity is fundamental foundation of Israel?s national character. That is the reason it was established, the grounds for its existence.
Yet Israel?s Jewish character is not guaranteed and is not invulnerable. It requires immigration (and the settlement of the land). It requires that we work to ensure a permanent and decisive Jewish majority (while, of course, fully protecting the rights of our minorities, as guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence).
It requires intensifying Jewish consciousness, Jewish education, and Jewish values, preserving the country?s Jewish character, and fostering its links with the Diaspora.
Ladies and gentlemen,
On this solemn occasion, at this unique academic institution, I want to emphasize that I always bear in mind Israel?s purpose: to be the country of the Jewish people. In my view, it is not a refuge from anti-Semitism. We are an ancient nation, with roots that run deep, united by a common memory and history and faith and hope, a nation that has returned home.
We have taken our fate into our own hands; we have assumed responsibility for our existence and for our people?s future. Zionism, in my view, is a combination of a national-political vision with a spiritual-cultural purpose. Neither can endure without the other.
The State of Israel is the Jewish people?s citadel, but Israeli society is, like every modern, free, democratic society, open to foreign influences. We must do much, much more to strengthen, intensify, and deepen Jewish identity. We must see to it that our younger generation is familiar with the great works of our tradition. While there is much to be done, the situation here is, nevertheless, immeasurably better than it is in the Diaspora.
Unfortunately, the demographic trends in Jewish communities outside Israel contain no good news for us. Assimilation, intermarriage, a low birth rate, disengagement from Jewish culture, and rejection of Jewish identity are all common phenomena in the Diaspora. Israel is today the Jewish people?s center of gravity, and it will not be long before it contains a majority of the world?s Jews. We must not wait for this to happen of its own accord, as the inevitable result of the shrinking Jewish population of the Diaspora. We must set a supreme national goal of bringing about the immigration of a million Jews within the next ten to fifteen years. This is the primary goal of my government.
The responsibility we face is a most serious one: to build a fence, to erect a dam, against the terrible erosion taking place in the Diaspora and in Israel. In Israel also we still have things to take care of.
This requires Israel to conduct an ongoing dialogue with Jewish communities everywhere, and to make efforts and invest resources in broadening and deepening Jewish education and Jewish culture in the Diaspora.
If we see to it that Jewish knowledge is widely disseminated, that Jews everywhere are familiar with the works of their tradition, then our young people will feel a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people and pride in their Jewish identity.
A special emphasis must be placed on the study of the Hebrew language, which is the key to the treasures of the Jewish spirit. Jewish youth must also become conversant in the history of our national rebirth through visits to Israel. This is the only way to ensure their connection to the Jewish state and future links between us and our brothers overseas.
My friends,
The State of Israel is now in the midst of a campaign for security and peace. Our hand was outstretched in peace to our neighbors in 1948 and remains outstretched. Encouraging signals have been coming from the Arab world recently, and Israel welcomes them.
I hope that my initiative to convene a regional conference will soon come to fruition. This will enable us to take a large step forward in the diplomatic process that will lead to peace. I am still waiting for those very significant changes that the Palestinian side must make to make it possible for us to begin to talk about consensual political arrangements.
The complete cessation of all terror, violence, and incitement is a precondition for any negotiation. If and when the necessary changes take place, and the conditions under which we can negotiate a real peace come into being, Israel will be generous towards its Palestinian neighbors. I will say no more, except this: I will never compromise on Israel?s security. I have promised to bring peace and security to the State of Israel, and I will keep that promise.
There can be no true peace without security and there can be no true security without peace. Israel?s future in the Middle East cannot be based on peace without security measures, any more than it can be based on security measures without peace.
So I reiterate: I have promised to bring Israel peace with security ? and with God?s help that is precisely what I will do.
I have devoted most of my adult life to Israel?s security and to public service. I have fought in Israel?s wars and I have lost my best friends on the battlefield. I despise war, because I know first-hand, from my own experience, its horrible price. For that reason, peace is my supreme goal as Israel?s prime minister.
I am convinced that only an Israel that is at peace with its neighbors and with its region can fully realize the immense potential of our people. Nowhere else in the world is there such a unique and wonderful concentration of talent, wisdom, creativity, and common sense as that of the Jewish people. This hidden light was not created out of a vacuum. It is the product of Jewish history, which has forced us to focus our aptitudes in the areas of thought and spirit.
I am certain that, in conditions of peace and security, Israel can rise to its destiny ? that destiny based in the visions of the prophets, of being an exemplary society based on social justice, a ?covenant of the people, a light of the nations.?
My teachers and my masters,
I will conclude with words of Solomon?s prayer and petition:
?Give therefore your servant an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and evil: for who is able to judge this, your so great a people??
And I know ? it is not easy.
Thank you all.
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