Yoni Zvi came to Milwaukee from Israel about four years ago. During that time, he had not attended any of the community’s previous commemorations of the 1995 murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
But he decided to come to the one held this past Sunday at the Harry & Rose Samson Family JCC because it was done in a different way than previous such events.
Instead of simply a memorial gathering or service, the event, titled “Sh’lom Bayit-Peace at Home: Toward Community Understanding and Connections,” provided the some 100 participants an opportunity to speak to each other about Israel and Rabin in an effort to “celebrate our differences,” as David Cobb, event co-chair with his wife, Naomi, told The Chronicle (Oct. 22 issue).
And that was “a good thing and a right thing to do,” Zvi told The Chronicle after the event. To him, ever since Rabin’s assassination, the political left has “claimed ownership” of Rabin and his vision and legacy.
But this event “invited the other side to voice their feelings,” the people who agreed with the “target” Rabin aimed at — peace — but “did not agree on the way” he sought to get there, Zvi said. This event was “a beginning” of bridge-building between these two views, he said.
Others had similar reactions. Paige Styler, an attorney and a member of the event’s planning committee, said the event “went great.”
After the opening events — which included Rabbi Jay Brickman’s reading of Rabin’s last speech, remarks by Jerry Benjamin and brief accounts from four people of where they were when they heard the news of Rabin’s murder — the audience was divided into small groups, each with a facilitator, to hold the dialogue.
Styler said her group contained people “of very different backgrounds” who nevertheless were able to be “so respectful of each other’s opinions” and could find “a common theme” — the desire for peace — even though their “starting places were different.”
Rabbi Yosef Schlussel, a scholar at the Milwaukee Kollel Center for Jewish Studies, said that “one of the most important things expressed” during the event “was the necessity of everyone to listen with an open ear to all viewpoints.”
And Alon Galron, emissary from Israel to Milwaukee and director of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Israel Center, thought that the event “went quite well. I think almost every group had people of diverse backgrounds in it.”
He said he was particularly pleased by the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization’s participation. About 20 BBYO members participated in both the overall event and their own project.
After hearing the opening portions, the BBYO members went to a different part of the building.
There, they viewed a videotape Galron filmed recently in Israel of some Israeli teens from Milwaukee’s Partnership 2000 region around Lake Kinneret answering questions that the Milwaukee teens had asked about Rabin and more general topics Then the local youth held a discussion and created a collage of messages and art to send to the Israelis.
Galron said some of the youth told him they had “learned a lot” from the experience about “how much they connect to Israel.” All in all, the whole was “a good experiment and experience,” he said.
At the end, Cobb said, “I hope this is a beginning” and that people can move away from feeling that “being right is more important than being connected” to each other.
The event’s major sponsors — in addition to the Israel Center, BBYO and the JCC — included the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations and Hillel Foundation-Milwaukee. Ten other area Jewish organizations, schools and synagogues were individual sponsors.
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