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Jewish World Review March 9, 199 / 21 Adar, 5759
MANY HAVE MADE MUCH ABOUT the battle going on in Israel over its Jewish soul.
Meaning defining what Jewish means in the context of the Jewish state.
Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I believe the battle is a healthy and necessary one. If we can truly work together to define where and when and how shul and state should be separate and should be together, all will benefit.
Just as the Palestinians and the Israelis have been working toward finding a way to live together, if for no other reason than that they’re stuck with each other, so, too, Jews and Jews in Israel must figure out how to live together, because they, too, are stuck with each other, because none are going anywhere, predictions by one movement about the others notwithstanding.
Seichel, that wonderful Yiddish word meaning good sense, street smarts, the kind of wisdom you don’t get from getting a Harvard diploma.
Seichel tells you what’s right and what’s smart better than any book or guide or intellectual.
And seichel is something Israel has always been known for, has always had. Indeed, there wouldn’t be an Israel if it weren’t for seichel. Read the history of trying to found the state and you find that Israel didn’t have the weapons, didn’t have the support, didn’t have the money or manpower, didn’t have the power. Didn’t have anything. Except seichel.
And that proved to be more than enough.
Weizmann had it. Ben-Gurion had it. The classic example of Ben-Gurion’s seichel was when faced with the British government’s issuance of a White Paper effectively halting Jewish emigration to Palestine. This at a time when the British were leading the fight against the Nazis.
So what were the Jews of Palestine to do? "We will fight with the British against Hitler as if there were no White Paper," he said, "and we will fight the White Paper as if there were no war."
Seichel. Be buddies with the Brits to defeat the Nazis but fight the Brits to defeat something not in the interest of establishing Israel.
And it’s been seichel that has kept Israel going and prospering for more than 50 years. Think the Israeli army. They have a weapon other armies don’t. seichel. Think Entebbe.
And on and on. Think drip irrigation and the Mossad and so much else and you see how much seichel has played a role in Israel’s life and how far Israel has gotten thanks to seichel.
And yet. One increasingly gets the sense that Israel has somehow lost that sense of seichel, or at least misplaced it.
You got that sense a couple of years ago when Israel hosted the Maccabiah games and allowed thousands of young athletes to cross over a bridge that no one had bothered to inspect. A bridge that was structurally unsound and so gave way, killing several young athletes in the process.
You got that sense last year when the Mossad gave a poisonous injection to a leader of Hamas in broad daylight in the middle of Amman. Not only did the Israeli spies get caught, but doing it right in Jordan’s capital understandably outraged King Hussein and led to the closing down of the Mossad’s vital station in Jordan.
You get that sense every time you hear of more Israeli soldiers being blown to smithereens in Lebanon. The United States had Vietnam, the Soviet Union had Afghanistan and yet Israel, more than 20 years and more than 900 dead soldiers later, still hasn’t learned from us and them, still hasn’t figured out a way out.
Those kinds of things didn’t use to happen in Israel, those kinds of things were what Israel’s seichel made sure it avoided, planned for, handled differently, took care of.
How lacking Israel’s seichel has been lately was stunningly brought home last week when Israel refused a request from the United States to extradite one Samuel Sheinbein.
Samuel Sheinbein is wanted in the United States to stand trial for a grisly murder he is alleged to have committed in Maryland. But shortly after his former friend, Alfred Tello, was found dismembered in his home, Sheinbein got on a plane and flew to Israel.
Not exactly a sign that he is an innocent man. Another not great sign is that his friend, Aaron Needle, also a suspect in the murder, hanged himself in his jail cell after his arrest.
Whether innocent or not, the fact is that Sheinbein went to Israel because he didn’t want to stand trial for murder in the United States.
And so he cynically manipulated Israel’s sacred Law of Return by going to Israel and claiming Israeli citizenship.
He did that despite the fact that he had never before set foot in Israel. He did that because his father had been born in pre-state Palestine. And though his father left the country as a young child, his having been born there meant he was a citizen and meant his son could claim the same.
And so he did. Why? Because Israeli law protects Israeli citizens from being extradited for crimes committed abroad.
And so this alleged murderer who entered Israel without authorities knowing he was on the lamm, now makes himself out to be a Zionist who should be embraced by his new homeland.
And Israel is going along with it.
Where’s the seichel? Is this what Israel as a haven for Jews is supposed to mean? Is this how we treat our best friend in the world, the United States? Does this tell Jewish criminals around the world that if they make a clean get away, Israel is there for them?
Yes, I know that Sheinbein will stand trial in Israel for the murder. But that’s a joke. For starters, even Israeli authorities have said there is no way a trial can be as thorough 6,000 miles from the scene of the crime. They can’t fly in all the witnesses, all the evidence, can’t have a jury of his peers.
Indeed, Israel's justice minister himself said it is "nearly impossible" to prosecute crimes committed abroad.
And even if Sheinbein’s convicted, in Israel someone given a life sentence rarely serves more than 18 years. Which means Sheinbein would be free before his 40th birthday. And probably much before. For yet another example of Israel’s loss of seichel occurred a few weeks ago when President Ezer Weizman amazingly commuted the sentences of several Jewish extremists found guilty of murdering Palestinians after the Jews had served less than seven years of their sentence.
What message does that send? What message does Sheinbein send?
Where’s the seichel?
I found it quite ironic that Israel’s announcement that it wasn’t going to extradite Sheinbein occurred at exactly the same time as HBO was showing a new movie about the life of gangster Meyer Lansky.
An interesting episode in that life occurred when Lansky attempted to move to Israel. He was stopped at passport control and made to turn right around. Israel wouldn’t let him in.
Bad for Israel’s image. Would send the wrong message. There are limits to what the Law of Return is meant to embrace.
That was when Israel had seichel.
But no more. Does it make any sense not to send Sheinbein back? Does it make sense to let a guy who lied and sneaked his way in and is manipulating the system, prosper for having done so? Is justice served by a trial that cannot be as thorough as it could be?
Israel and the Law of Return are there to protect Jews, shelter Jews hounded and persecuted. Not to let alleged criminals find an easier place to stand trial and get an easier sentence if found guilty.
Yes, technically the law says citizens can’t be extradited. But let’s face it, seichel would tell you all kinds of ways to deal with that. Can say he wouldn’t have been let into the country if he had declared he was under arrest in the United States. Can say the law was meant to protect Jews in anti-Semitic countries, not the United States. Can say his claim of citizenship is not genuine but only a ruse.
There are ways. If you have
03/03/99: One thumb --- way up
Having seichel
By Joseph Aaron
But while we’re attending to Israel’s soul, I think something in perhaps more dire need of help is its sense of seichel.
What those three examples have in common is a lack of seichel. Seichel tells you to check a bridge before sending a marching band of strong young athletes across. seichel says you don’t embarrass your best friend in the Arab world by staging such a foolish stunt. seichel tells you that getting stuck in the morass of another country never ever works out.
Sheinbein 
JWR contributor Joseph Aaron is Editor of
The Chicago Jewish News.
1/12/99: Thank G-d!
12/31/98: Judaism, Inc.
11/19/98: My kind of folks
