Festive sitting in honor of the Knesset's fifty-first birthday

Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg:

Honorable President and Mrs. Weizman, Honorable Prime Minister and Mrs. Barak, Chief Justice Aharon Barak, members of the government, my fellow Members of Knesset, distinguished guests, a birthday is a time of reflection on perspectives over past and present times. The Knesset has chosen this year to review the core issue of Israeli society – Is it time for a constitution?

There is not a single Israeli tribe, religious or secular, Jewish or Arab, immigrant or veteran, that is exempt from dealing with this issue. I would like to dedicate my words to a single area of tension among the many before us, which is the tension found amongst the Jewish people.

Why do the voices for a constitution try and break the illusion of Israeli consensus? Why do the objectors for a constitution object so fiercely, and why are its supporters equally eager? What are the subterranean powers that bubble as a steaming lava and threaten to take over the agenda of Israel?

As it turns out, the more that wall of hatred found amongst our enemies crumbles, the more that Israel makes its moves towards peace, so the fences of hostility among us rise higher. We, the citizens of the only state of the Jewish people, are struggling to face the tension that is constructed between the “Jewish” element and the “democratic” element, on which our society is based. The growing tension puts in doubt our national capability of responding positively on the more simple questions of the entangled ones: Are the Jewish people capable of surviving and existing with no external enemies, or maybe it is the state of war and conflict that enables us to keep our internal solidarity.

When we say constitution, it is a clean and subtle wording for a bitter argument, which destroys all that is good amongst us; the annihilating argument between religious and secular, between religion and state, between the Rabbi and the ruling sovereign, between the Knesset and the Beit Knesset. Members of the Knesset, I ask you to take the bull by its horns.

The core of the disagreements is not rhetorical. This is not a minor argument. It is the ability for us to exist here together. We have sworn allegiance to our living democracy for thousands of times, but only a few times did we pay attention to the streams and rivers that fill the sea of the Israeli nation.

If we ask ourselves what is the democracy, we will provide ourselves with a complex and varied response, and its bottom line is: Democracy is the sole tool that enables a varied society as us to live together under terms of disagreement. It is through the democracy that we decide to agree on disagreeing.

Underneath this technical definition, lies a great secret – the individual. The source for a democratic authority is you, me. We are the sources of our own authority. It is a source of authority that is human, historical, and secular in its essence. On the other hand, some of those Jewish people with faith are calling out: I cannot be subordinate to a person, for I, who believe, am subordinate to the authority of the ultimate, definite, higher power; I am subordinate to the authority of God. And so, Israel is torn between the human and godly authorities, between democracy and theocracy, and there is no ruler.

What have we done so far? We have hidden behind the cape of status quo; we have deluded ourselves that our reality stands still; we were certain that history, civilization, economy and technology await us, waiting for us to rule on our preference. But, reality does not like lies. Reality is true, dynamic and piercing. The premise of those agreeable with the status quo was wrong. Ben Gurion and his supporters believed that orthodoxy will be gone within 20 years, and those on the other side were positive that the trend of the young Zionists will vanish from the world, and return to its old ways. In the meantime they decided to freeze reality. Days have passed, years have gone by, and it turns out that neither one will be gone. The premise that the status quo is a temporary setting, until the evaporation of the religious and ideological enemy, had itself evaporated into the air of illusion- an appropriate place.

Only we in the political system remain to hold the horns of the status quo. The people, the society and the street are far away from us. There in the street, in the people, in the society, religion and state are already installing barricades for the war on culture.

If we strive for life, we must quickly establish a new principle that will replace the status quo, which blew away its artificial soul. A constitution is a new principle. I believe whole-heartedly that a thorough and true examination of ourselves will find that the distance that we must come through is reachable.

The religious man will admit that in a reality, everyone follows different Rabbis, each of which interpret differently the intentions of God, to the point where, heaven forbid, one finds true contradictions in the grasp of godliness and its intentions; a situation in which the distance between religion and morality among Hassidic streams, among Sephardic and Ashkenazi – is a state that points toward God as the highest power, but the mediating, historical, interpretive and normative authority is human; great in the Torah, but only a person, just like in democracy.

On the opposing side, when the secular person looks in to his heart, he and she will admit that sometimes it is not enough to live in the moment. We want a society that embraces its dead and their tradition, and wants his unborn children to be part of shaping our local and national identity. And in our democracy, we must maintain a respectable space for our tradition, the tribal and community culture, which will come together into a national all, that is neither homogenous nor compulsory, but a mosaic that contains all the shades of our lives.

Speaker Avraham Burg raises a toast in honor of Tu Bishvat

The legislator, we, the representatives of the Tribes of Israel, is the one who shapes and molds the national consensus into a constitution. The abiding treaty, which is the accepted constitution, will be the grand legislation that must supersede any other legislation.

A constitutional society is a society with no religious legislation, out of understanding that a legislator is of flesh and blood who denies the religious eternity and the godly beliefs in the commandment from the moment he tears it from its natural environment and forces it on another that does not want it, nor feels obligated to it. Religious legislation that is not in consent brings forward the withering of Jewish spiritualism.

A constitutional society is one in which the modernist who comes to us from the future is able to speak in a single moral language together with the conservative who comes to us on behalf of the past. This is in order to conduct a free market of opinions, of conversation, of a dialogue with no secular compulsion or religious hegemony over identity and ways of life, and there is no blood-shedding hatred between them.

A constitutional society is not a religious society in a relationship with the state. A constitutional society is not a society in which the country has an official religion. A constitutional society is a society in which the religion is the religion of its components, a religion that is disconnected from the authorities. The religion of truth must and should be looking at surrounding regimes as models, such as with the importation at the time of the kingdoms of Saul and David from the surrounding nations. A constitutional society shall have a place for religion, by virtue of the prophet Nathan’s moral power and spirit, as he opposed the injustices of King David’s rule. In his analogy he sided with the pauper and the lamb, fiercely protecting a betrayed husband and fearlessly offending the King by saying “It is you.” Such a society is a society that is rewarded with an eternal life, as the life of David, the King of Israel.

Is it an illusion? Is it an unreachable utopia? No, it is not. A political earthquake will take place in Israel the day after the awaited peace will be accomplished. Existing structures will vanish and new ones will come into existence. That day will be when Israel will finally occupy itself seriously with our civil agenda, with problems of identity and belonging, and of gaps and splits. I have no doubt that the first matter on the agenda will be the following: Religious, secular and the constitutional consensus between them. Then, on the day that is coming closer, it will be the religious public that understands a constitution is the true shield of the minority groups in Israel. At that time, we religious and democrats will bond together and unite, as Marin Buber said, in an accord with the Israeli possibilities.

I pray and hope that this Knesset, which celebrates its birthday, will know how to rise over the temporal and instinctive, and know how to provide future generations with the basis for a spiritual and social consensus – a constitution for Israel. As said in our sources: “So shall he do, ye shall have one statute, both for the stranger, and for him that is born in the land.”

Amen, so be it. Thank you very much.