Olive Groves and Kitke Bread

In my earlier blog about Limmud, I mentioned the brilliant sessions I attended by Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbi’s For Human Rights.
At the second session he handed out these flimsy hand-written fliers about advertising his family visit to North London for Shabbat. I decided to make one of my irregular appearances at Shul on Friday night. To my dismay, I found out that Rabbi Ascherman was not speaking in shul that night. In his place, I got to hear a young girl who was about to have her Bat Mitzvah talk about the portion of the week, she was excellent, talking about Yitzhak Rabin, Martin Luther King etc,, except that some young terror escaped the soft clutches of his dad and started running through the shul and screaming during her address, the father could not catch the child, the child ran past wiped these pieces of paper onto the ground, it was mayhem during this girls big moment!

After shul, I approached the Rabbi of New North London, Jonathan Wittenberg and expressed my disappointment that I could not hear him at shul, so to make up for that I got invited to a dinner at his house where Ascherman would speak.

In the beginning, I was downgraded, I had to sit at the kids table, and one of those kids was the young terror who spoilt that girls moment of glory, well he was no better, I really thought that he was going to deliberately break the table with all the food on it. In between the bedlam, I chatted to Ascherman’s elder daughter. She is 11, her father is a Rabbi and a human rights activist her Mom is a Rabbi and a dean of a Rabbinical school-Einat Ramon, so one would expect her to be bookish and already have her career mapped up, but unlike other children of Rabbi’s, she was able to excel at what she loved doing most…athletics, maybe she will become a Rabbi and a 10,000 metre superstar…

I was quickly upgraded to the main table. It was great to converse with Ascherman to hear a more intimate account of what he had encountered over the past few years. After a vegetarian dinner and complaints from all the people round the table that they served meat at Limmud-I was the only vegetarian at the table. Ascherman spoke about the work he did. It was an overview of his work, so naturally there was an overlap of some of the sessions I had attended.

Ascherman is a religious man driven by a sense of justice and compassion for him Jewish text mandates him to not look at the lessons of the Torah and the Midrash from a particularistic aspect but on a universal level. He spoke about how the settlers agitated and bullied the Palestinian olive farmers and his pains at getting the army to protect these farmers. He explained how most settlers have more of a problem with him than the Palestinian farmers. One of the projects he has initiated is the Olive Tree Project, where every year during harvesting season, Rabbi’s For Human Rights go and harvest olive trees with Palestinians and work hand in hand. He describes the event and process and surreal and the epitome of two people from opposite sides of the fence working together. He remembers working next to a Palestinian man who was shocked and could not understand why a rabbi would want to do this, and Ascherman remembers being amazed when he found out that the Palestinian was a member of Yasser Arafat’s Revolutionary Guard, who had taken time off to help his family.
Ascherman has faced the most challenges with regards to his work on stopping house demolitions. I am not talking about house demolitions of terrorists, but of Israeli Arabs who are involved in land disputes. Ascherman says the sight of the bulldozers destroying a home with the mother of the house tearing her hair out will never leave. He has looked at research saying that children take a very long time if ever to recover from something like this. Ascherman was arrested for standing in front of a bulldozer, and was dragged away. He remembers that his kippah was left in the rubble, and he hopes that when an Arab finds that kippah one day that a religious Jew tried to do something about it. In this particular case, they got money for the house to be rebuilt, and the Rabbis for Human Rights rebuilt it, but that house was again recently destroyed.

Rabbi’s For Human Rights always in principle divides their work into one project focused on Israel and another focussed on the Palestinians. At the moment, they are doing a lot of work to help the impoverished in Israel and are one of the organizations leading the battle cry for economic justice.

As he reminded me every time I heard him speak, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel would always say, “ In a Democracy few are guilty, but all are responsible…”

He and his organization might have won many awards, he might have a lot of anger and frustration, but he is incredibly down to earth and calm, but there is nothing that can stop his passion for equality, fairness and justice.

To learn more about Arik Ascherman and the work of Rabbi’s For Human Rights log onto www.rhr.israel.net

The pictures are taken from Limmud