“Who is Rabin?” Asks my son, 3.5 years old, upon returning from kindergarten on the assassination’s anniversary day.
Without waiting for an answer he goes on: “He was a soldier, right, Dad? He fought the Bad Guys, right? He won, didn’t he? If he fought the Bad Guys than he surely won, right, Dad?” I do not answer.
While taking-in the flow of his words, I try to think how to respond to this particular stream. He stops for a moment, ponders what he just said, processes again the information snippets he got from his teacher, and arrives at the unavoidable conclusion: “Rabin was a Super Hero, right, Dad?”
How Does One Answer These Questions?
There are Good Guys and Bad Guys. The Good ones fight the Bad ones, and always win. And then there are Super Heroes, that come out of nowhere and save the day, just when it looks like the Bad Guys are winning.
How does one tell a three-and-a-half-years-old child the complex, fragile, and vulnerable story of Rabin’s assassination?
“Rabin was a soldier,” I say. “He was the commander of all soldiers. Then he became the Prime Minister.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Because he was a good and wise commander, and all the people wanted him to become Prime Minister. And he wanted to bring peace.”
“Why?” he asks again.
“Because he thought war is a bad thing. And then someone came and shot him. And Rabin died.”
“Why?”
“Because that man didn’t want peace.”
“Why?”
“Because he was a Bad Guy,” I answer, with some hesitance in my voice.
“And Rabin won?” he asks, finding it hard, probably, to take that information in.
“Rabin didn’t win. He lost,” I say to him, and wait to see how he would respond.
He is quiet for a moment, looks at me, and runs to the other room, to play with his big sister. We have probably reached the end of everything that is possible to say, contain, and digest in this matter.
Happy children’s play noises come out of their room, but I am left with the ripples of our conversation. For some reason it is harder for me to move on. I know Rabin wasn’t a Super Hero. I know that the business of war and peace, Good Guys and Bad Guys, is much more complex and debatable than a 3.5 years-old child can understand. I even know that in this life the Good Guys don’t always win.
The Question Lingers
And still, his basic question is one I ask myself, too. That innocent three-years-old place, which can’t contain the fact that Rabin didn’t win, is a place I recognize within myself, despite my thirty-something years of age. And I believe that this question: how could Rabin, and his ways, lost? continues to echo, unanswered, in most of our hearts.
True. Not everyone saw Rabin, or his ways, in the same light. Even today, not everyone tells the story of what happened back then, in the mid nineties of the last century. So many things have come to pass since.
Some terribly difficult. Reality moved toward the coming millennium with dizzying speed. We experienced tremendous changes. Let each hold to their own opinion and political stance on the matter, but there can be no doubt that our current national reality tragically echoes those days of a dream and its crash.
Can We Still Believe?
I wonder whether Rabin’s assassination didn’t kill our society’s ability to dream. To believe in change; to have a vision and work toward making it a reality. In those days, as far as I can remember, there were people who were “For”, and those who were “Against”. There were those who believed in Rabin’s way, and those who thought of it as a disaster.
Nevertheless, a discussion took place, a real debate, with true alternatives. And today? Who really dares think of a solution? Does anyone dare suggest a real alternative to the status quo? Does anyone really believe that the status quo can go on for long without further tragedy, sadness, and misery happening?
I have a feeling that Rabin’s assassination murdered our ability to try and solve our problems as a people. That it murdered our trust in ourselves as a healthy society, which is able to cope decisively with its greater challenges.
Optimism
At the end of the day, though, I’m an optimist. I believe we can emerge from where we now are, and arrive at a better place. Even the Kabalistic Jewish spiritual tradition I study, teaches me: “as long as the candle burns, it’s possible to mend.”
The candle, undoubtedly, still burns. But Rabin’s assassination’s anniversary tells me that perhaps we forgot it is possible. Perhaps we gave up, decided to go with reality’s flow, without a direction or a vision, lacking the courage to act for change. Lacking even the guts to truly debate each other.
But how do you explain all this to a three-and-a-half-years-old boy, who still lives in a world full of Good Guys and Bad Guys, of Fairy Tales and Super Heroes?
Translated from Hebrew by DeAnna L’am.