THOUGHTS ON ABBA EBAN
May 16, 2003













Rabbi Edward Paul Cohn
Temple Sinai
New Orleans, Louisiana




In recent days Israel's opposition Labor Party lost its chairman, Amram Mitzna, who resigned his position due to what he characterized as "backstabbing and sniping" from members of his own party. Many believe this disarray could mark the last gasp of Labor, which might now even split, its centrist half entering the government of Ariel Sharon while its leftist element might form a new liberal party.


I couldn't help wondering what the late Abba Eban, my personal favorite of all Israeli political personalities, might have said about the Labor Party's latest crisis. Considering that this was his party, and they, and for that matter, I suspect the Israeli voters as a whole, never really entirely understood him, Eban would probably conclude: "It couldn't happen to better people." But I'm ahead of myself. Let's go back. Who was this very British-sounding and looking Israeli statesman who died just last November at 87 years of age?


He was born Abba Solomon at Cape Town, South Africa in 1915, the child of Lithuanian immigrants. His father died when Eban was still an infant, and his mother took him to live in England. She remarried. and Abba, known in England as Aubrey, was brought up in south London where his stepfather, Isaac Eban, was a doctor.


An early turning point was Aubrey's opportunity, while attending St. Olave's School, to win a scholarship to Queen's College, Cambridge. He graduated with multiple degrees in Classic and Oriental languages, immersing himself in Arabic, Syrian, and Hebrew. He soon came to be regarded as one of the foremost debaters of his generation at Cambridge Union.


With the outbreak of World War II, Eban was sent off to Cairo to train Jewish volunteers in Palestine to fight against a likely German invasion. Here he met Suzy Ambache, to whom he was married in 1945.


With the War's end, Eban joined the Political Department of the Jewish Agency in 1946 and thus began his political and diplomatic career: Israel's first permanent representative to the UN in 1949 and, in 1950, also Ambassador to Washington.


Abba Eban wore his worldliness well as he proceeded to represent Israel abroad throughout the decisive moments of her history-1956-the Suez Crisis, 1967-the Six Day War, 1973-the Yom Kippur War.


I want to pause here for you to listen to Eban's recollections of what the newly-born Israel was like, 55 years ago. Listen to these memoirs from a founder who was there.

Israel, in August 1948, was a wonderful place to be. There were many shortages; food was sharply rationed; many necessities were scarce; and there was, alas, a broad circle of bereavement. Yet, morale was incomparably high. The War of Independence had been a people's victory, won by countless men and women caught up in an agonizing fluctuation of courage and defeat, despair and hope. There was a sense of a new tomorrow. Israelis were frankly savoring the pride of statehood. Flags on ministerial cars were a little too large, and the proceedings in Cabinet and Parliament were enacted with solemn relish, as though by men and women who could hardly believe the titles by which they were called.

Mr. Eban goes on to tell us of a banquet which was held to honor Prime Minister and Mrs. David Ben Gurion on their first official State visit. They were experts on Israeli political and military matters, but - let us say - lacked somewhat the wherewithal of diplomatic etiquette. Eban recollected in his autobiography how that first State banquet concluded:

After dessert, I made repeated signs to Paula Ben Gurion, indicating that she should rise to enable others to follow. Her response was to sink deep in her chair, and to my alarm, she seemed to slide under the table. The Cabinet members, Judges and Senators coughed politely and remained seated. At last, Paula surfaced, like a diver reporting a rich bed of pearls, and announced in triumphant Yiddish, "I've found my shoes."


And of the beautiful day of Israel's formal admittance into the United Nations, Eban reminisced:
I remember Eleanor Roosevelt among the spectators, standing a little distance away, obviously sharing our joy. I felt this to be a very high moment at the time, and I have not changed my mind since. Resolutions in the United Nations have often been savagely biased against us, but the political effects of Israel's admission to the UN are far-reaching. . . . In terms of Jewish history, it was a moving symbol of a nation's return to the mainstream of world history after centuries of absence. . . We were equal in law with all other members of the organized world community.


Yes, Abba Eban quickly became known as the Kol Yisroel, the Voice of Israel, and is it any wonder?


In 1959, Abba Eban was elected to the Knesset and joined the Israeli Cabinet, first as Minister without Portfolio and then as Minister of Education and Culture. At the very same time, he became President of the Wietzmann Institute of Science, Israel's premier seat of higher learning.


Up, up, up seemed to be his future direction in government service when in 1963, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol appointed Abba Eban Deputy Prime Minister, a post with absolutely no clear duties or functions! Three years he waited, until he finally received the office he was made for: Foreign Minister.


When War broke out on June 6, 1967, no Jew then living will ever forget the eloquent and impassioned speech Abba Eban delivered at the UN Security Council in defense of Israel. When this Six Day War ended, Israel was in control of the Sinai, the West Bank, and Gaza.


But, though a forceful and unapologetic defender of each Israeli maneuver or counterstrike, Eban was far more a dove than most of his Labor colleagues. Whereas Moshe Dayan, the triumphant and charismatic General, won widespread and world adulation as well as automatic support for a "new state of Israel with broad frontiers," Eban, at home, preached to his fellow Israelis a conciliatory attitude toward the Arabs and advocated territorial concessions. He even publicly dared to say this several years ago after the debacle in Lebanon:

I have fought hard for Israel to be physically strong, but it is the intellectual and qualitative element in Israel's life that has the greatest hold on my heart. The only greatness that we can achieve lies on those domains in which matter and quantity can be transcended by mind and quality.

Although here was a man who had spent less than a third of his life in England, Abba Eban was very English in manners, dress and speech; but where an Englishman of Eban's generation might have felt the need to hide his cleverness under a facade, Eban tended to flaunt it.


His instincts were perhaps too old-fashioned: he was disinclined to elbow for position, or even to raise his voice, and he made no effort to build up a personal following. . . he had never lived on a kibbutz. He had never served in the Israeli army. He was a lonely intellectual who expected to rise inexorably upwards on the strength of his natural attainments, which turned out to be something of a handicap.


Eban's wealth and earning capacity (a popular lecturer here, author of 12 books, television personality in America, etc.) all seemed to distance him from his fellow Israelis.


Because of his facility with so many languages, no Israeli politician was ever more widely quoted in the overseas press, and Eban made the fatal error of assuming his popularity abroad corresponded with his standing at home. In that sense, Eban was a prophet in every country but his own.


The late-arriving Sephardic population could not identify with a man who seemed the consummate patrician Englishman. In 1988 Eban was denied a Knesset candidacy by his own Labor Party.


Eban once told this story of an interview he had with Sir Edmund Hillary, who was, of course, the very first man to climb Mt. Everest. Eban asked the British explorer just exactly what he felt upon reaching the peak of a great mountain.


Hillary explained that the first sentiment was one of ecstatic accomplishment, but then there came a sense of desolation: what was there now left to do? Were there any other Everests left to conquer?


In Eban's mind, the paradox of Israel is not unlike that with which Hillary had to struggle. Perhaps for Israel there was more zest in striving for the goal in achieving it.


Eban has since reflected:
Zionism and Israel made great promises to the Jewish people. They may even have promised too much. There has always been a utopian element in our national movement. The Higher the expectation, the greater the possibility of disappointment. . . .
Above all, we have fulfilled our human vocation by redeeming hundreds of thousands of our kinsmen from sterility, humiliation and death. But [cautioned Eban], Israel can only be safely led from positions firmly rooted in Jewish humanism, intellectual progress and social idealism. . . . My hope [Abba Eban concluded in an almost prayerful tone] is that the Jewish people will be enabled by its experience of freedom to rise beyond the sufferings of the past and the frustrations of history into the assertion of its unique spirituality.


As we now carefully follow the progress of this Administration's latest discussions on the "Blue Print" for the Middle East, let us hope and pray that Abba Eban's dream for his people and its nation will at last come about. Nothing would more worthily vindicate his life's work and thereby underscore forever the brilliance of his dream of peace for all the children of Abraham. Zecher tzadik Livracha: May the memory of the righteous be for an abiding blessing.

Amen.