The rabbis, who are members of Rabbis for Human Rights, begin where scripture begins, with the affirmation that every human being "is created in the image of God." (Genesis 1:27) The indisputable implication of this teaching, which is found at the beginning of the Torah and also at the beginning of the Christian Bible, is that every human person is precious in the sight of God.

Because every person bears the divine image, the Torah admonishes the people of the covenant to pursue justice. Therefore, the second crucial text from scripture for Rabbis for Human Rights is Deuteronomy 16:20: "Justice, justice shall you pursue so that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God gives you." (1)

Rabbis for Human Rights urges Jews to support international human rights law, not because it is international law, but because international human rights law reflects the ethical teachings of Judaism, when properly understood in our contemporary context. These rabbis believe all Jews, to be faithful Jews, should be advocates for human rights.

Jewish Voice for Justice

Rabbi Tzvi Weinberg, the chairperson of Rabbis for Human Rights during 2004, explains that RHR was organized in 1988 during the first Palestinian Intifada by rabbis who felt "some of the Palestinians were not being treated properly" by the Israeli government. (2) They saw that mistreatment of Palestinians, by soldiers and police acting on behalf of the Jewish State of Israel, poses for Jews a religious as well an ethical dilemma. For Jews are commanded by God to act with justice, especially in the way they treat the strangers among them.

"Judaism is more than holidays and ritual observances," Rabbi Weinberg writes, for there are two categories of commandments in the Jewish tradition. "First, there are mitzvoth bein adam laMakom, commandments regulating our relationship with God (the rituals and observances). No less important are the mitzvoth bein adam l’havero, commandments regulating our relations with other human beings, such as morality and ethics, a concern for justice, mercy, truth, and compassion." (3)

A Jewish nation, Rabbi Weinberg says, has a special obligation to "embody these ethical principles," but despite the clarity of Jewish scripture "the religious establishment is concerned almost exclusively with matters of ritual, Sabbath observance and Kashrut." Rabbis for Human Rights was founded to urge Jews to do justice and to "ensure the Jewish character of Israel." (4)

Education

Not surprisingly, given the tradition of reflection and debate among Jews, the first activity mentioned in the January 2003-June 2004 report published by Rabbis for Human rights concerns education. Three specific projects are described. First, RHR has printed a draft edition of Masekhet Atzmaut, which is translated into English as A Jewish and Democratic State? or as Tractate Independence. Using language familiar to those studying the Talmud, Madekhet Atzmaut presents two of the 19 principles in Israel’s Declaration of Independence surrounded by traditional and contemporary quotes, which are to be read as commentaries on the principles.

That is, the Madekhet Atzmaut is designed to facilitate debate about the principles of the Declaration of Independence in the manner of a Talmudic discussion. As the State of Israel does not have a constitution, Israeli society and the Israeli legal system have adopted the Declaration of Independence as the source of the fundamental ethical principles for the country. Through its "Tractate Independence" program RHR seeks to encourage ethical reflection among Jews in Israel that is akin to, and as important as, studying and discussing the teachings of the Talmud.

Lilach Tchlenov, an animated member of the RHR staff, who is not a rabbi, has overseen the publication of this draft study text. She explains that the purpose of the program is to help young Jews consider how Israel can be both Jewish and also a democratic state. Tchlenov says the Tractate presents this issue as a moral discourse or debate, which is the format of the Talmud, rather than as a theological argument supporting only one conclusion. (5)

To date RHR has experimented with this program in its Human Rights Yeshiva, which is more than two years old, and also in educational programs for young people inducted into the army. In the Yeshiva, in addition to participating in ethical study and reflection, each student volunteers three hours a week in some justice or human rights project.

The June 2004 report on RHR activity contains the following summary of fieldwork by Yeshiva participants. "A film student is making a documentary on home demolitions for RHR’s coalition partner, the Israel Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD), while another student works in ICAHD’s human rights information center. Three students work with three different organizations to help secure the legal rights of foreign workers, several students work with RHR and its coalition partners on issues of economic justice challenged by Israel’s budget policies, and two more students with an organization called Mahapach to empower marginalized communities to organize for change at the grassroots level. One student visits lonely Righteous Gentiles living in Israel, another visits neglected hospice residents, and a third speaks with children victimized by terrorism in Jerusalem. Other students work on issues of trafficking in women, agunot rights, the environment, and with the Hebrew University Beit Hillel to involve large numbers of students in social justice projects and human rights work."

Because a number of Israelis have opted after graduating from high school to do a year of study, before serving in the army, a variety of educational opportunities have been created in Israeli society to respond to this demand for more education. RHR has been invited by several private providers of educational programs to lead human rights discussions, and has also been approached by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to do human rights training with army inductees. RHR’s educational programs for young people going into the army have included visits to see the Separation Barrier and then discussion about what Jews call tohar haneshek ("purity of arms"). As Rabbi Weinberg explains, "even in war, not every means is legitimate." (6)

Economic Justice

The June 2004 report on the work of Rabbis for Human Rights also highlights RHR’s struggle for economic justice in Israel. Deep cuts in social services in 2003 led RHR and its partner organizations to demonstrate and advocate for funding to be restored in the 2004 budget, in order to guarantee assistance for impoverished families and the homeless. When single parents set up an encampment in front of the Ministry of the Treasury, Rabbis for Human Rights joined their protest. "At the peak of activity, RHR Education Director Navah Hefetz was spending 14 hours a day at the encampment, organizing congregations to bring Shabbat meals, holding a Tisha B’Av reading of Lamentations, helping to coordinate support logistics, dealing with special needs, and bring people to her home to shower." (7)

To pressure the government, RHR held a Chanukah candlelight vigil in front of the Prime Minister’s residence, and also participated with other Israeli groups in a social justice seder. The rabbis of RHR remind their fellow Jews that Mishna Sanhedrin 4 says: "One who saves a single life, it is as though they have saved an entire world." Despite the lack of political support for government assistance programs to aid the poor in Israeli society, RHR continues to assert that "economic justice is a religious Jewish issue of the highest importance." (8)

Rights of Palestinians

Rabbis for Human Rights works to protect the human rights of Palestinians primarily through two initiatives. First, it protests the Israeli government’s house demolition program in Greater Jerusalem, which continues to involve destroying Palestinian homes simply because they have been built without a permit (that is almost impossible to obtain). In the words of Rabbi David J. Forman: "As a political policy, Israel has determined to limit any growth of Palestinian neighborhoods in and around Jerusalem, even if it means that an additional room has been built on to a Palestinian home…." (9)

Of course, Rabbi Forman notes, the Israeli government acts as if "building a Jewish community in Har Homa, which borders Bethlehem or taking over more land around Ma’aleh Adumin to the east of Jerusalem is perfectly legitimate, as is opting to set up a Jewish enclave in Arab Silwan, expropriating Arab land to do so." (10) Har Homa and Ma’aleh Adumin are large Jewish settlements built illegally by the Israeli government on Palestinian land in the West Bank, and Silwan is the Palestinian community south of the Old City of Jerusalem in the Kidron Valley.

Actually being present to protest home demolitions is difficult, as the Israeli government doesn’t announce its intentions. Early in the morning, when Palestinians observe bulldozers being moved into a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, they telephone Israeli activists for help. Rabbis for Human Rights is one of several Israeli organizations, which respond through an emergency network of text messages urging volunteers to come and protest these demolitions.

Rarely is there time to employ a legal strategy in trying to block a house demolition, but RHR is involved in a legal battle against the Israeli government’s house demolition program. Its Executive Director, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, and two other defendants go to trial this month for refusing an order to move from standing in front of bulldozers sent to demolish a Palestinian home in East Jerusalem. In this act of nonviolent civil disobedience, these defendants have been supported by more than 400 North American, European and Australian rabbis, in an open letter to the Prime Minister that was published in the Hebrew and English editions of Haaretz.

The second RHR initiative in support of the human rights of Palestinians involves sending Jewish Israelis and international volunteers to help protect Palestinian farmers, who are often prevented from working their land by the Israeli army or by aggressive Jewish settlers. In some places the Separation Barrier divides farmers from their land, and the army often makes it difficult at the nearest checkpoint for Palestinians to pass through in order to work their fields and tend their groves. In other areas of the West Bank, the army has failed to protect Palestinian groves from wanton destruction by groups of armed settlers.

Presently, RHR is sending out teams of three or four volunteers to go with Palestinians to their fields and groves in order to provide some protection, simply by being present. Last Wednesday I went with another American and an Israeli student from Hebrew University to a grove of olive trees, which is located west of Nablus in the middle of the West Bank west, but just below an illegal Jewish settlement that in the past has attacked the Palestinians who own the land.

Our instructions were to assist in pruning the trees, but to call the police and the army, if settlers came down the hill (and to retreat to avoid a confrontation). RHR had notified the police and the army in the area of our presence in the olive grove, and we had the names and phone numbers of each commander. RHR says the police are generally more reliable than the army, but it varies from place to place. Fortunately, the settlers did not bother us, so we enjoyed a lovely spring day with our Palestinian hosts working in the olive trees amidst the blooming, wild flowers.

In addition to pruning, RHR teams assist with olive picking in the autumn and are now helping Palestinians who are planting. The RHR tree planting program began as an effort to replant trees uprooted by settlers, and sadly hundreds of old olive trees have been illegally and maliciously destroyed in such attacks. But now the tree planting program gives priority to assisting the Palestinian farmers that have a hard time reaching their land, because of the Separation Barrier and the arbitrary closures of checkpoints that sometimes allow passage through the barrier.

Human Rights

The June 2004 report states that: "RHR does not take a position on the existence of a barrier, which is a political and defense issue, but we are opposed to the route of the Barrier because it creates an unnecessary conflict between the Israeli right to security and the Palestinian rights of access to their land, medical care, etc." (11) Most Israeli activists oppose the Separation Barrier in principle, but RHR’s position is consistent with the ruling of the International Court of Justice.

In addition, both Israeli and international activists have criticized RHR for protesting only house demolitions where there is no building permit, and for not opposing the destruction of the homes of Palestinian suicide bombers. On the basis of human rights law both of these Israeli demolition programs involve collective punishment against families for a legal violation committed by one or two individuals, and RHR agrees that collective punishment is a violation of human rights.

But RHR has chosen to oppose only collective punishment when it is not "clouded" by a security argument, as is the case in demolishing the homes of Palestinians who lack a building permit. This strategy has greater support among the diverse membership of RHR, and also is harder for Jews to attack as "political" or as ignoring the security needs of Israel.

Lilach Tchlenov explains RHR’s position on both the Separation Barrier and house demotions in this way. "We say that the Barrier is not for security considerations, it is political; the route was not chosen because of security, but because of something else, and it violates human rights." Moreover, she says, it is very important for RHR to concentrate on human rights violations, and to avoid taking political positions. "In education, we are dealing with what are human rights, what are human rights violations, how we can minimize them, and what are the Jewish sources saying about this." (12)

RHR must be apolitical, Tchlenov argues, if it is be effective in increasing support for human rights within Israeli society. "One of our educational and general aims is to say that human rights is not a political thing. [We say to Israelis,] ‘You can be right wing and believe in human rights or you can be left wing, and believe in human rights." RHR believes that support for "human rights" should not be linked to a political agenda, but rather should be asserted within Israel as a commitment every Jew should make because of the ethical teachings of Judaism.

Secular advocates of human rights law are generally critical of this kind of religious approach to human rights, whether voiced by Jews or members of other religious traditions, for two reasons. First, the religious approach seems to endorse human rights law only to the extent that it is supported by religious teachings, which suggests that a religious position will not coompletely support international law. Second, a religious approach to human rights does not clearly reflect the disagreement among members of each and every religious tradition that, in practical terms, may mean that a religious argument in support of human rights only represents the point of view of a minority of those who share certain religious teachings.

These critical observations, I believe, should be accepted. Certainly, religious arguments in support of human rights are limited to interpretations within a religious tradition of its fundamental ethical teachings, and there will always be debate and some disagreement about such interpretations. But what is missing from this secular critique is an appreciation of the power of the religious argument for human rights. For it is one thing to say human rights are the law, and quite another to say human rights are the will of God.

Can the struggle for human rights be won through politics alone? Certainly, for the religious among us, who are now considerable, a more compelling moral argument is required. Rabbis for Human Rights offers an important example of how a small number of committed Jews are trying to make such an argument, for the sake of their Jewish tradition of faith, as well as for the sake of securing justice through greater enforcement of international human rights law.

Bob Traer, 6 March 2005

I am writing as a participant in the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel, which is sponsored by the World Council of Churches. The views expressed above are personal and do not necessarily represent the World Council of Churches. If you wish to publish or disseminate this letter beyond personal friends, please contact the EAPPI Communications Officer (eappi-co@jrol.com) for permission to do so. Thank you.

For more information on Rabbis for Human Rights, including many photographs of those participating in RHR activities, please visit their excellent web site at www.rhr.israel.net.  And for several short statements by members of Rabbis for Human Rights, go to http://christian-bible.com/Ethics/rhr.statements.htm. 

1) These two scripture passages are emphasized by Rabbi Tzvi Weinberg in "Message from Incoming RHR Chairperson," Rabbis for Human Rights, vol. XIV (June 2004), p. 2.

2) Interview with Rabbi Tzvi Weinberg by Maia Carter-Hallward, 28 October 2004.

3) Rabbi Tzvi Weinberg, "Message," p. 2.

4) Ibid.

5) Interview with Lilach Tchlenov by Maia Carter-Hallward, 28 February 2005.

6) Interview with Rabbi Weinberg.

7) "Economic Justice," in RHR, vol. XIV (June 2004), p. 7.

8) Ibid.

9) Rabbi David J. Forman, "A Morally Shameful Chapter," in RHR, vol. XIV (June 2004), pp. 18-19.

10) Ibid.

11) "Separation Barrier," in RHR, vol. XIV (June 2004), pp. 11-12.

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