MARSHALL: In His Own Words
In the fall of 1991, Marshall spent three months as a Montgomery Fellow at his alma mater, Dartmouth College. During his tenure there he delivered a most extraordinary speech to the faculty and students. That speech, edited for a more general audience, follows.
Why and how to be an activist? Focus: Argentina, New York City,
Israel.
Why be an activist? Because it's the only way to play
a melody. In that symphony of life, which plays the leit motif of human dignity, I have no right to be silent in
the face of injustice! I cannot claim to believe in God and remain inactive when God's image is destroyed. According
to the Muslim, Christian and, of course, Jewish belief, we human beings are made in the image of God, and when
humans are denigrated, humiliated, and persecuted, the sanctity of human life is threatened everywhere. And, if
there is no longer the sanctity of human life, we lose our course in history and become less than human. On the
day of atonement in the Jewish calendar, the most sacred day in the year, we recite a communal confession. It's
called Al cheyt,
and it is always in the plural. As Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel said, "in a democratic
society, not all are guilty, but indeed all are responsible."
We all are responsible for the sins of our society. We are all involved either through omission or commission.
That's for those of us who believe in God. For those of us who do not believe in God, in a creator God, it is perhaps
more of a categorical imperative to respond to that which we consider unjust and that which tarnishes the image
of human dignity. If we are agnostics or atheists, we can only appeal to that courage within us. We have to prove
that humans are capable of their own redemption because for agnostics or atheists, there simply is no other force.
And thus, believers and non-believers, all of us are constantly called upon to redeem the human endeavor which
is our drama, which is our saga.
What is the first question found in the Bible? In the original Hebrew it is:
Vayishm'u et kol Adonai Elohim mit- halekh bagan l'ruap hayom vayitha be ha-Adam vishto mipnei Adonai Elohim b'tokh eitz ha-gan. Vayikra Adonai Elohim el ha-Adam vayomer lo ayekah?"They heard the sound of God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of day. And the man and his wife hid from God among the trees of the garden. God called out to the man and said to him, ayekah, where are you?"
Didn't God really know where Adam was? The omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God had to ask where Adam was? God most certainly knew where Adam was! Adam didn't know where he was. This question is asked through-out the ages, of each and every one of us, man and woman, where are you? Where am I, where are you, where are we? At every given moment of our lives, whether you believe in God or you don't believe in God, that's the question that perforates your being! If you dare listen. Whether it's when you're putting on your makeup, or you're shaving, or you're walking amazingly impressed with the turn, with the hills ablaze with color or with the snow in the mountains, and the crunch of the ice beneath your feet, the question is always there. where are you? I don't know the answer for tomorrow. I have to struggle with the answer today! I cannot, nor can you, dare to hide in our respective gardens when people scream in pain! Whether you be conservative or liberal, rightist or leftist or centrist. Circumcise your hearts and listen to the calls of the most vulnerable who are in pain and who are bleeding! They are asking, where are you? That's one of the reasons to be an activist.
How do you see a burning bush? "Now, Moses, tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, came to Horev. An angel of God appeared to him in the blazing fire out of the bush. Moses gazed, and there was a bush full of flame, but the bush was not consumed." "Vayar malakh Adonai b'labat-esh mitokh hasneh vayar v'hineh hasneh bo-er v'hasneh einenu ukal." Moses said, "I must turn aside." "Asuruna." Have any of you tended sheep? Do you know how many miles a day you walk? Moses is on his way home. It's dusk. He's exhausted. I don't know if a bush was burning or not; I don't care. The metaphor rings out to me and perforates my being. He didn't rush by the sight. He stopped and turned aside to look at it. When God saw that he turned aside to look at this extraordinary sight, "vayar malakh Adonai elav b'labat esh m'tokh hasneh," only then did God call to Moses. And that's when the covenant takes place.
I submit that all of us see burning bushes everywhere. Not all are very marvelous, but they burn! Are we, am I, are you capable of hearing a voice or voices from the bush or the bushes? To whom do those voices belong? Are they those of the poor, the disenfranchised, the most vulnerable, the persecuted, the prosecuted? Do they belong to those who are bashed because they are gay, because they have AIDS, be-cause they're homeless, because they are black, because they're Jews, because they're any minority? We had better listen to the voice from the bush, and we had better turn aside because the fire runs through the forest. And soon all bushes burn and the screaming is so loud that you can't hear a voice.
Most of us have the same answer as Moses - who am I that I should go? Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh. Who am I? I'm a student. I'm a professor. I'm a rabbi. I'm a priest. I'm a doctor. I'm a business executive. I'm a woman. I'm a girl. I'm a boy. I'm a man. Who am I? The reason to be an activist is because you must see the bush burning. There are enough bushes in this world! There are bushes everywhere, and they are all burning and all screaming! And if we, each and everyone of us, are not capable of seeing these burning bushes, then God help this world!
And if we are too involved in our own lives to see the bushes, what is our worth? If we do not listen to the calls for the dignity of human beings, how can we believe in the sanctity of life?
Others of us answer with Jeremiah. "Lo yadati daber ki na-ar anokhi." "I don't know how to speak, I'm still a boy." At the age of 61, I'm not still a boy! Yet I know so many people exactly my age who claim to be too busy, too involved in their own little worlds, desiring only to be left alone. They profess that they don't know how to speak. You don't have to know how to speak, you have to know how to act! We know how difficult the situation is, to con-tinue with Jeremiah, "For from the smallest to the greatest they are all greedy for game, priest and prophet alike, they all act falsely! They offer healing of hands, saying "Shalom, shalom, v'ein shalom." "Peace. All is well, all is well, when nothing is well!" Lest you feel that this is a plea for organized religion or the institutionalization of spirituality, let me hasten to comment that many times, the worst places to go for spirituality, are the churches or the mosques or the synagogues. I don't know what Jesus would say if he walked into most churches today. I don't know what Mohammed would say if he came to visit most of the mosques. I'm afraid I do know what Moses would say if he came to the synagogues. God help us.
But that doesn't release us from changing things! From being that very strange thing, an activist. Which means being responsible. There are moments in our personal lives when we cannot avoid confronting unpleasant truths. Some of us know this through painful love affairs that end disastrously. Marriages that end in divorce. Friendships that end in hatred. All of us have to face the ultimate experience of the death of a loved one. Or from one day to the next, one's own imminent or not imminent death. Thus we have to understand that we must also face the unpleasant truths of our society. It is not nationalism, or rather, it is nationalism, and not patriotism to refuse to understand the ailings caused by the sicknesses and the plagues within one's own society. If we do not confront these present facts, we are destined to confront the disasters that invariably follow our paralysis.
How to be an activist? How and why?
One must understand that fear is the inevitable concomitant of activism. But one must learn to live with fear.
Both the activist and the coward know fear. They know it intimately. The difference is that while the coward allows
the fear to paralyze him or herself, the activist learns how to function despite the fear that makes you quake.
If you ever participated, as some people in this room have, in the demonstrations of the civil rights movement
of the 60's, fighting for the rights of our black brothers and sisters, or those of the 70's protesting our country's
involve-ment in Vietnam, you have probably known what it is to face death. Or if you marched in the Plaza de Mayo
in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, and looked into the cannons and machine guns all
about you, hoping that there were enough cameras from the world press trained on you because as soon as the cameras
left, the matracas,
the sound of machine guns, opened up, you know that any activist knows fear. The art is not to succumb to the paralysis
of that fear. I don't believe that heroism is ever a consciously chosen objective. If one becomes an activist because
he or she wants to be a hero, the affair is bound to end very badly. One is thrown into heroic situations and responding
affirmatively does not make one a hero. It is, simply, a responsible human being doing his or her duty.
Perhaps there is an aura or halo around the word activist, like an opera star. Or for some of us, it may be a perjorative term conveying the idea of rabble rousers. What was so great about the sixties and seventies is, as they say in Spanish, that it was desenfrenado, unchecked and uncontrolled passions. However, this is not the way I am using the word activist. Rather, I am using it to apply to anybody in the entire political spectrum. If we are to guarantee a democratic process, if we are to guarantee a democratic society, we must reeducate ourselves to respond to the injustices of our society. We must commit ourselves to the welfare of the polis within which we live. In short, we must be responsible citizens of our society. We must vote, we must become candidates and leave our soft tranquility. We must maintain civilized discourse with those who hold contrary views. We must not slap and punch when we get angry. We must learn how to live with the drama of existence which is no easy task.
We must be willing to think and act beyond our own selfish interests. If I respond to everything as a Jew, I forfeit my right as a member of humanity! If I respond to everything only as a Black, or as a Catholic or as a Protestant or as an American or as a Korean or as a Russian or as a South American, then my sensitivities are limited to this ethnic, religious or faith tradition. There is little I can say to sweeten the concord of sounds of the nations.
One of the best definitions I ever heard of existentialism was given by Professor Eugen Rosenstock Huessy. "Existentialism," he said, "is crisis thinking". Crisis thinking. Crisis in Greek means to separate or to decide. We're back to where we started with the question, "ayekah?" "Where are you?" You have to separate and decide in just about every moment of your life. Are you capable of deciding? No - I can't decide! That is a decision. I decide not to decide. That is a decision just as much as is a positive decision. Every moment of our lives can be a turning point. A moment of decision. And we must realize always that our failure to decide is also a decision. Your undergraduate years are a great period of indecision. And they should be! That is why you're here! You don't want, nor can you, decide now what you're going to do for the rest of your life! Take your time, make your mistakes with your decisions! You will make mistakes! We all do. All our lives. From the oldest to the youngest, we err. That is what it means to be a human being. That's what mortality is all about. That's why we must incorporate death within life as part of the same process. You can put off the decisions of your career. But you can't always put off the decision whether or not to respond if the person next to you is being beaten to death because of the color of his skin or because of her religion or because of the language she speaks or because of his sexual preference. You have no right to put off that decision, because you have to declare if you are for the dignity of humanity or you are not? You have a right to say I'm too weak, but that's a sin of omission. We have to deal with our shortcomings too. But let's not call them something else. To be responsible we must respond. We must decide what is the priority decision at this very moment! We must be aware that there are moments of terrible and painful confusion when our priorities are not at all clear, when you can't distinguish anything, when you're anxiety-ridden, when your guts are being eaten up because you can't find out what your priorities are! But that's what life is all about - the wrestling and the questing and the battling.
If we decide to act, we have to decide with whom we shall act. And if you're not naive and ingenuous, you must understand that you will be judged, correctly and incorrectly, by the people with whom you act. Don't misread me. You will frequently act, as I have and will, with people whom you cannot respond to or for. But chance tosses you in with them and there are things for which you have to battle together, like it or not. When we marched in Buenos Aires, I couldn't put in my hand in the fire, (por er la mano en la fuego), for everybody in that march. Together we were trying to destroy a fascist military dictatorship that was mercilessly murdering and torturing to death young people and children. I didn't have time to investigate the curriculum vitae of every individual participating in the marches. The killers did that.
There are dangers inherent in compromise. You know, conscience makes cowards of us all, but without conscience you can't operate. But let's understand how difficult it is to make these decisions. It's rough when your life is at stake. And it doesn't have to be dramatically in a demonstration against cannons or rifles or machine guns. You who are students now, your lives are at stake. Your futures are at stake. Your capacity to love, to care, to share. Your willingness to stand up for something, to take your education seriously. Let it come with a price! Pay for it!
Forty-one years ago, Martin Buber came to Dartmouth to visit Dr. Rosenstock-Huessy. It was the first time the two men had met since the days of Hitler in 1936. As I had a car, I picked Dr. Buber up at the White River Junction station, where he came in on the Montrealer and drove him to the College. I will never forget the moment of their meeting. It seemed as though two mountains were about to come together when they met and hugged each other with tears and sobbing, and with just two words. "Eugene." "Martin." And I, so very privileged to walk with them and listen to them, said to Dr. Rosenstock-Huessy, "how glorious it is to live here in Four Wells and look at this view. How lucky you are. How I'd love to spend the rest of my life here." He looked at Buber and they both looked at me and he said, "What right have you to this? Go out and bleed first! Do your battle!" It's true. The halcyon days will come to an end. And all the complaining you did about exams, or that course or this course will end and you'll go out into the world, and it's cruel and cold and miserable. But it is also beautiful, glorious and inviting - if you have something to quest for, to fight for, to stand up to. Now is the time to prepare yourself for that battle!
What is the focus of how and why in my life at this time?
Let me take you back. Argentina, March 24, 1976. Isabel Peron had been thrown
out of office. The country was in a civil war. The right was murdering the left, the left was murdering the right.
Jorge Videla became President of the Junta in a bloodless coup. Most coups in Argentine history have taken place on a
Friday, preferably when the weather is good, and there's enough of a preaviso, an introduction, so you can go out and buy the things needed for an asado, which means a barbecue.
Naomi and I went through many coups from 1959 to 1985. But this wasn't just another coup. As an example, let me
describe a scene.
You're sitting at home, those of you who are parents, and your son or daughter is at class at the University of Buenos Aires, a school of some 400,000 students, with no campus, no dormitories. Everybody lives at home. Suddenly, before you know it, the door is broken down. People dressed in regular clothing come in and the first thing that happens is that your wife, or you being the wife, gets your jaw broken with the butt of a rifle, your other children get their arms broken, and your husband or you as the husband, has a gun put to his head. "Just shut up and stay there," they say as they go to your son or daughter's room and check the library for such inflammatory books as Das Kapital or Freud, the books that destroy "the Christian western civilization in which Argentina has been born!" They were as Christian as Satan and as western as an animal.
Now I'm going to say something very difficult. If you were lucky, your daughter or son came back and was shot in front of your eyes because, if they weren't, to this day, you're looking for their cadaver. And there is no greater pain than having a child disappear! Because children don't disappear! They were made to disappear in Argentina. After the people left you telephoned your brother or your sister or your mother and they said, "don't come here, we'll come to you." "But it's your granddaughter, it's your niece, it's your nephew." "Stay where you are." Though you have lived in the same apartment for 25 years, your neighbors downstairs didn't warn you that the people were coming up. The concierge, who you have been tipping every month for the last twenty years, didn't tell you. Nobody knows anything. And then, while you were out at the police station reporting the disappearance of your child, they came back and stole everything. And your child never appeared again. That's the story of being "disappeared."
That happened to more than 16,000 people. We documented in Conadep 9,600 disappearances within eight months. I went all over the world taking depositions of people who's children had disappeared. I joined a group of mothers who marched daily in the Plaza de Mayo. (Interesting ... where were the fathers? You never hear of the padres de la Plaza de Mayo. They were women. Occasionally, the fathers came but, for the most part, they were not up to it. And it wasn't that they were working.) It was the mothers that every week walked around that plaza, who were spat upon, who had their heads cracked open with rifle butts, and a few, a very few men, walking with them. A few crazy clergymen and a few crazy journalists. But the activism of those women ignited the world. I'm not minimizing the role of the Malvenas/Falklands fracas, but above all, it was the power of that movement for human rights that changed the course of events in Argentina. Raul Alfonsín became President on December 10, 1983, Human Rights Day, and on December 15, 1983, he appointed 10 people to judge the criminals, unlike the Nurem-berg trials where the victors judged the vanquished. Here Argentines were appointed to judge Argentines.
My focus moves to New York.
An extraordinary metropolis. Not by any means the largest city in the world, certainly not the most beautiful,
and certainly not the cleanest. It's a city of homelessness. Homelessness is an extraordinary disease infecting
every major metropolis in our country. Don't believe the figures - they are double or triple what you read in the
paper! I sit on almost every agency board concerned with the homeless in New York City. I work with the Mayor,
with the churches, with the synagogues. I don't say this to boast or for self-aggrandizement. Rather, I say it
with my heart overflowing with sadness and with tears in my eyes. Would that there was no reason for these boards
to exist.
Do you know what "hidden" homeless is? What it means? It means you have an apartment for 12 hours a day, and you don't dare use it the other 12 hours because another family is in it. Your child has a 103 degree fever but he or she can't get into a bed because it's not your 12 hours. Do you know how many of those families there are in New York City? About 85,000. That means when multiplied by 3.2, you're talking about almost 270,000 people who are "hidden homeless," plus another 300,000 who are "full-time" homeless! That's almost a half-million people. Do you know that there's a truck in New York City that drives around early on cold winter mornings - before most of us are up and about - to remove the cadavers of people who have frozen to death during the night? I'm not talking about Bombay! I'm talking about New York. And it's not just New York - it's every city in the country. You don't have to go to New York to find homeless. You can go over to Lebanon or to White River Junction.
And what about the hospitals? My daughter is chief resident of pediatrics at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital where 28% of the births are HIV+, 37% are crack-addicted - with cerebral damage, with mashed potatoes for brains. And the rule is that above 500 grams, you have to resuscitate the child, to do every-thing possible to keep it alive regardless of the cost or the consequences.
I don't care whether you are an arch-Republican, an arch-Democratic, or an arch-nothing, you must listen to the voices of the bushes. Look at the scenes of tragedy, look where you are, and get yourself prepared, after leaving this institution, to respond in positions of leadership! Don't cop out!
And, finally, my friends, my focus turns to Israel.
I am a Jew. I am a rabbi. The most important encounter with spirituality I
found was here in Hanover, NH, at Dartmouth College, between 1948 and 1952. I was challenged to my roots as a Jew,
not because there was anti-semitism, (there wasn't) but because I was continually asked, "what does being Jewish mean to you?"
"What does it mean to you, what does it mean, what does
it really mean?" It wasn't a question asked by the guys
on the floor, but rather by my professors. And it drove me to begin what has turned out to be a never-ending quest.
To learn what, in fact, being Jewish does mean to me?
I am a Zionist. I think the peace process in the Middle East is, perhaps, the most important thing that I, as an American Jew and as a Zionist, can work for today within the Jewish arena, beyond what I am doing with my fellow Americans, whether they be blacks or Latinos or Muslims or Jews or Christians in New York City or in this country. There must be peace if there is to be an Israel congruent with the values of Jewish history! There must be an end to occupied territories if the Jewish soul is to remain intact. Clearly I am speaking about, and in favor of, Palestinian self-determination. The peace process must lead to security and legal and economic justice for all people in the area. Thus, if there is to be a Palestinian state, and I believe there must be one, it will have to be totally demilitarized so as never to present a security threat to Israel. I believe that the Jewish people has a place in the Middle East. I believe that Zionism is not racism, but is the natural liberation movement of the Jewish people. I believe that we have the right, just as every other people, to live in peace within secure borders. I believe that it is incumbent upon every Jew, as well as every Christian, every Muslim, every non-believer, every Arab, to work for the peace of the region with mutual security and economic justice for one and all. And I urge you to do as much as you can to achieve that peace because, if you find yourself defending the indefensible, time will just wash over us and there won't be enough tears to say the prayers of mourning.
There's a wonderful story about a mid-nineteenth century rabbi who is teaching group of children.
A locomotive is about to come into the village for the first time and the children say, "We've got to see the locomotive, rabbi."And he says, "What's a locomotive? We'll continue to study."
"Rabbi," the children say, "the whole world is talking about it. You've got to see it."
And they push and they cajole and they drive him to such a point that he takes them out to see the locomotive. This tremendous machine comes, with a deafening noise, vomiting forth flames and billowing smoke. The rabbi waits and watches as people come out of the cars and people go up into the cars. Then the locomotive chugs and pulls, and picking up speed, the train moves out of the village. The rabbi stands there transfixed.
Ten minutes after the locomotive has left the town he is still standing. And the students come up and say, "Rabbi, are you feeling well?"
When the rabbi responds, "Yes."
The children say, "Shouldn't we go back to studying the Torah now?"
The rabbi says, "Yes, we will go ... but first, my children, what have you learned?"
Some spoke about the smoke, some spoke about the noise, and some spoke about the force of the locomotive.
Then the rabbi said, "There was one car with a fire in its belly, and all the other cars didn't have any fire. The one car with the fire carried all the other cars and all of those people. When you see something unusual you must learn something from it."
Instead of a burning bush, this was a locomotive. You're at Dartmouth as a professor or as a student. How about each of us putting some fire in our bellies that we might carry the many cars that have no fire?
Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer
Dartmouth College
October 17, 1991