TV Channel

Thank you, Senator Ridgway. It is a delight for me to introduce our next speaker, who has joined us from the Netherlands via Kyoto. As I mentioned to the Rabbi earlier, in Australia, if you don't fly for five hours, you don't get anywhere. For us, traveling long distances is not so much a problem, but we do recognize those who have traveled a great distance to join us today. Our next speaker is Rabbi Aroham Sotendop. He presides over the European region of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. He is an Earth Charter Commissioner and a founding board member of Green Cross International. Among his many activities, he is also the co-chair of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders with Sheikh Ahmed Koftaro, the Grand Mufti of Syria. Please welcome to the microphone Rabbi Sotendop. My dear friend Swāmījī, partners, friends from the Earth Charter, We stand at a critical time in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future. The choice is ours: to form a global partnership to care for the Earth and one another, or to risk the destruction of ourselves and the diversity of life. This knowledge, the awareness of this choice, fills me with awe and trepidation, but also with hope and responsibility. Every human being has two pockets, each with a sentence. One sentence says, "You are only dust and ashes." The other says, "For you alone, the whole world has been created." In the first, humility can lead to powerlessness and a feeling of nothingness. In the second, the feeling of responsibility can lead to haughtiness and self-importance. But the balance—the balance should empower us to do what God asks us to do: to be co-partners in the work of creation. This is the Shabbat, the day of rest, the connectedness with creation. God has created us in His image, men and women, with the potential to build this world of justice and peace. When God created us, He wanted our cooperation. So He put forth this cosmic light, which was His light alone, to allow us to form our own free choice. But we could not contain it. The casks broke, and the rays of light spread all over the world. The task of the human being is to retrieve those rays of light. How can we do it? Through deeds of justice, deeds of kindness, deeds of compassion—by being human in the most inhuman circumstances. In 1943, a man stood with a suitcase full of holes in his hand. He knocked on a door, and a 47-year-old, German-born woman opened it. The man said, "I've got a baby. Can you take him?" If she had said, "I cannot. I'm German-born. I have a son. I have to protect my family," no one would have judged her for doing an unjust thing. But if she had done that and closed the door, chances are very great that I would not stand before you, because I was that baby. Millions and millions of children look at us. They are deprived of education; 125 million have no basic education. A billion people are cut off from fresh water, as we heard again and again at the World Water Forum in Kyoto only a week ago. Two billion people lack proper, healthy sanitation. They are looking at us. Do we open the door, or do we close it? Will the waging of war weaken our resolve? Or will it strengthen us—the knowledge that destruction can never be the final answer—in our attempt to create space? Yes, here in Australia, for the first time in my life, I meet space. I meet this tremendous country, which could house almost all of humanity, along with the forces of nature and the force of our history, transformed into kindness. We wage war against want. We wage war for the future of our children and our children's children. One simple, practical way—as I try to be a practical man—is this: if every human being in the relative wealth of the billion people between the East and the West, of which Australia is a part, would start to give an extra one-thousandth of their income each year; if every country would rise to the occasion and give just an extra one-thousandth of GNP per year; then by the year 2015, we will achieve the universal goals set by humanity. We will save human lives and ensure the population has access to fresh water. Some of us were in Vienna, and I think of Vienna as a powerful moment that engendered and empowered us. You, dear friend Swāmījī, and others who were there, do not know that a few days later I was at a spiritual conference of spiritual women for peace in Geneva. I must apologize to women; you should be a much greater part of the speakers' roster as well. That will happen in the next conferences. I have seldom in my life felt such a strength for peace. Just in the corridor, I heard there was a meeting of Palestinian women and Israeli women. I waited, and an avalanche of people full of hope emerged. One woman stood in front of me, a Palestinian woman from Gaza, and she said to me, "You killed my dream of peace." I realized it was not me, but it was "the other." She spoke of degradation, pain, the hope of Oslo where she was a junior partner, and the desperation of a people. I did not feel the need to speak of the other thoughts, of the other people, of Palestinian leadership, because I felt her pain. The struggle there is not between right and wrong, but between right and right, and therefore it is so deep in the soul. While she was so angry, I asked myself, "Can I give this woman a hand?" And I did. She grabbed my hand, and we stood hand in hand while she continued to be angry at me. Later, she wrote me an email from Gaza about togetherness, apologizing for her tone. I replied, "Don't apologize for your tone, because I learned." We have to walk the path together. Just recently in Jerusalem, in that torn city, I was with people trying to find common ground in East and West Jerusalem for peace. I saw two hands carved in wood, held together. Underneath were the words of Indira Gandhi: "You cannot give a hand to someone with a clenched fist." As long as we hold hands together, there may be anger and anguish, but we will overcome that hatred and break open the door of peace. We are here. We are here in a day of opportunity. Let us hold these hands together. I feel the fragility because I was born and saved by the soft forces of compassion. And I was saved by the hard forces of the weapons of the Alliance. I struggle, I agonize for those soft forces to overcome. I ask God, in all His names, in all Her names, in all the inclusivity of our spiritual force, to give us strength. For a human being can live weeks without food, maybe days without water, but not one moment without hope. Children are looking at us—our children, our children's children, and their children. They will look at the photographs, they will look at the pictures, and they will see us at this moment years from now. I can only pray, and I can only pledge with whatever I can bring. I hope that they will be proud of us. Thank you. Recording location: Australia, Sydney, World Peace Forum 2003