Next month at Seder, we will recall how Egypt made the lives of the Children of Israel “bitter.” We will remember how “the children of Israel groaned… and cried out” and that “God heard their moaning.”
But this week we heard the groaning of the Tibetan people.
The Tibetans have no Seder, but they commemorate their history of oppression every year by remembering March 10. On that date in 1959, more than 100,000 Tibetans spontaneously demonstrated to protect the Dalai Lama from a death threat. He barely escaped the capital of Lhasa with his life, and in the uprising that followed it is believed that more than 10,000 Tibetans died.
Every year since, Tibetans remember March 10 with mostly peaceful demonstrations. This year in Lhasa was no different, until riots broke out and furious young Tibetans burned shops and murdered ethnic Han Chinese shopkeepers.
What happened that drove the Tibetan people to violence?
Theirs is a tragic history of cultural genocide. First the Chinese came with troops in 1949. Later they shelled the ancient Buddhist monasteries, which they’ve more recently rebuilt to serve as tourist traps.
Today’s Tibetan monks are tightly controlled and humiliated Ρ they must publicly disavow the Dalai Lama, which is like asking rabbis to renounce the Torah. The government has reached deep into the religious life of Tibet with clumsy hands, yet somehow the old religion of Tibet still lives.
Along with cultural destruction has come a massive influx of Han Chinese immigrants, who now far outnumber native Tibetans in Lhasa. The political and economic systems favor the immigrants, and Chinese rule has made the lives of today’s young Tibetans bitter.
Every people, if their groaning is never heard, has a breaking point, and this past week’s dramatic outburst of violence should be put in the context of 50 years of patient nonviolence.
From his home in exile in the northern Indian city of Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama has loudly and clearly condemned the violence. But he has no power at this point to control it.
The Chinese know this very well, but to cover up the harshness of their treatment of Tibetans they have trotted out the tired old propaganda of a “Dalai clique” fomenting an uprising. The fact is that the anger that has spilled over in Lhasa is a heartfelt response by a genuine popular movement — and it is spreading to neighboring provinces, where more than three-fourths of ethnic Tibetans now live.
The Dalai Lama is not behind the violence, he grieves over it, for he knows as a Buddhist that it only begets more violence — and that chapter is now unfolding.
The Chinese government has shut down the phone lines and Internet connections in Tibet, shut out the press and expelled tourists. Now the army has moved in.
What happens next — the roundup of civilians, the imprisonments, the killings — will take place in the dark. When the lights come back on, just as after Tiananmen Square, the victims will be out of sight, killed or hidden away in dank prisons.
As Jews we know in our bones how it feels to be oppressed and murdered while the whole world stands silent — and we ought to cry out for the fate of the Tibetan people.
In 1997, the Dalai Lama and I sat together over matzo with Rabbi David Saperstein and a table full of Washington dignitaries for a Passover “Seder for Tibet.” We shared the great promise of the Seder — that someday all people will be liberated from oppression. We heard the four questions and wept at the unforgettable voices of teenage Tibetan nuns singing of freedom, in a recording smuggled out of the dreadful Drapchi Prison.
We concluded the Seder in solidarity: “Next year in Jerusalem! Next year in Lhasa!”
For decades, the Dalai Lama has maintained his religious ideals while struggling to negotiate with the Chinese superpower. It’s hard not to think of Moses negotiating with Pharaoh.
As I listened to him recently on the news, pleading with his own people for an end to their violence, I felt how poignant and difficult his position is: The world praises him, but has given him no usable power.
The groaning of the Tibetans is not heard. It feels as if his dream is broken.
Our “Seder for Tibet” in 1997 was a Seder of hope — hope that the Dalai Lama’s inspiring message of nonviolence would be heard, that just this once another miracle would happen. I thought back then we did it for the Tibetans. I think now we did it also for us, because our hope for Tibetan freedom resonates deeply with our own deepest hopes.
The liberation from Egyptian bondage was not a Jewish military operation or armed resistance struggle. It was a demonstration of divine grace.
One midrash tells us that God liberated us by miracle, so our people would not learn to rely on the way of the fist. Another teaches universal compassion. When the Egyptians drowned in the sea, the angels rejoiced, but God rebuked them: “My children are drowning, and you sing?”
These beautiful stories and their like have shaped our Jewish souls. We share with Tibetans an ideal of human compassion that bonds us to the Dalai Lama’s religion of kindness. Over the past 50 years, however, Jewish history seems to have taught a very different lesson.
The State of Israel was born not long before the invasion of Tibet. For many years now our trust has been in military power for Israel, and in personal aggression for ourselves that we praise as chutzpah. But as the Dalai Lama implicitly asked those of us who traveled to Dharamsala in 1990 for Jewish-Tibetan dialogue, what happens if a people survives but loses its ideals?
There is no easy answer to that very Buddhist question. Nor to the very Jewish one we asked him in reply: What happens to the ideals if the people fail to survive?
Rodger Kamenetz is the author of “The Jew in the Lotus” (HarperOne, 1995) and “The History of Last Night’s Dream” (HarperOne, 2007).
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If it's ok for Israelis to crack down on Arab terrorism, then it's ok for Chinese to crack down on Tibetan violence. I guess you are suggesting Chinese shop owners and migrant workers killed in this Tibetan riot deserved to die and their murderers don't deserve to be punished?
Alex, You are talking about a Chinese government that has repressed Tibetan rights with such absurd measures as outlawing reincarnation without a permit in order to prevent the ordination of the next Dalai Lama. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2194682.ece That ridiculous piece of legislation is part of the country's laws. To somehow characterize the Tibetans as aggressors is ridiculous. As for comparing it to Israel's military response, read the last paragraphs of this article again. Kamenetz is implicitly criticizing both the Chinese and Israeli governments.
The Dalai Lama, a tzadick if one has ever been in our times, sought out Jews to learn about cultural survival in exile -- who else more experienced? Sadly, Tibetan culture, religion and political/economic opportunity in its homeland, and that very land itself, is ever more rapidly being destroyed by policy of the Chinese government. If the Dalai Lama dies before some accomodation can be negotiated, it may indeed be millenia before that people, too, will be able to return to live out their heritage. Alas!
China is a strategic friend of Israel, like Turkey. So don't expect the Israeli government to speak out on the persecution going on in Tibet. Realpolitik, not conscience, dictates the situation.
While Roger Kamenetz is to be commended for requesting our showing concern for the repressed Tibetans I do not understand his comparison of their situation with that of Israel. They it seems to have little hope of doing anything but bring destruction upon themselves by taking up arms. The Chinese vastly outnumber them , and the Dalai Lhama's call for non- violence makes sense not only in terms of his religious principle, but as practical way of defending his own people from slaughter. Israel too was under attack and is under seige but has developmed means for defending itself . Without such means the great likelihood is that the Jews would have been driven completely out of their own historic homeland.
It is wise to remember that before 1949 Tibet suffered under medieval feudalism ruled by the monks. Life was brutal and short. Corvee and slavery (the children sold to or impressed into monasteries were monks' personal slaves for most of their "training") were the norm. Chinese Communism is awful but Tibet under the Dalai Llama and his predecessors existed in primitive, theorcratic brutality at lease as awful as the Dark Ages in Europe and probably worse.
Unfortunately, the Tibetan situation is not simply a matter of BAD China, good Lamas.. Is anyone out there aware what was going on in Tibet prior to the Communist invasion? Try slavery and amputations perpetrated on the lower Tibetan classes by the upper castes (like Lamas, Monks). This is not the kind of Tibet that we should bring back.