[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 17 (Monday, May 3, 1999)]
[Pages 742-746]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Union of American Hebrew Congregations Dinner Honoring 
Rabbi David Saperstein

April 26, 1999

    Thank you very much. Rabbi Yoffie--or Mr. President, should I say? 
[Laughter] My good friend Barney Frank--I would like to be furnished 
with a copy of the jokes he told before I got here. [Laughter] I want to 
thank Richard Ben-Veniste, Marian Edelman, Senator Metzenbaum and others 
who organized this great dinner, and thank at least the Members of 
Congress I have been told are here, Senator Wellstone, Representative 
Shelley Berkley, and Representative Tom Udall.
    And like David, I would like to say to you, Mr. Landsburg, our 
prayers are with your daughter, and we're pulling for her, and we're 
proud that she's making the progress she is.
    As David said, sort of in passing, we first met, oh, about somewhere 
between 12 and 15 years ago at a weekend retreat, courtesy of Marian and 
Peter Edelman. It was one of these deals where you get really smart 
people, and they talk all weekend. And they solve every problem, and 
then they can't imagine why it doesn't happen afterward, you know? It's 
a fabulous thing. [Laughter]
    And I met that guy, and I thought: Now, this guy is some talker. 
[Laughter] And then, it is true, he stayed with Hillary and me when he 
came to Little Rock for the 30th anniversary of the integration of 
Little Rock Central High School, and we did stay up half the night. And 
Hillary sends her love.
    I know, David, that over the years you've often been willing to 
stand against the tide and take a minority viewpoint and be very brave. 
But when you said that most people think we married wives that were 
smarter than we are, in this case, the majority is right. [Laughter]
    Even by the high standards of rabbis, David can talk. I mean, he is 
a good talker. [Laughter] But he talks so fast. [Laughter] You know, 
tonight he was clipping along at a pretty good pace, and it's the 
slowest I ever heard him speak. [Laughter] One night I saw him on 
television debating Jerry Falwell. And he was unbelievable. He just 
waxed him. He leveled him, you know? [Laughter] But unfortunately, no 
one who lived below the Mason-Dixon line could understand a word he 
said. [Laughter]
    I want you to know where I was tonight. While you were listening to 
all these people heap praise on David, I was home praying that God would 
forgive them for the lies they were telling. [Laughter] Then I decided, 
what the heck, I'll come tell a few, too. [Laughter]
    Let me say, like all of you, I love this man. And whether he's 
speaking fast or slow, the most important thing about him is that 
whatever it is he says, he does his dead-level best to do. And that is 
really the difference between David and most of the rest of the world, 
including most of the rest of us, from time to time. If we are all 
completely honest we would have to admit that there are very few people 
who are as absolutely certain, day-in and day-out, year-in and year-out 
to say something and then follow it up by acting in a way that is 
completely consistent with what they say. He is such a person, and that 
is why he is such a great treasure.
    As he says, since I've been President I've often sought his wise 
advice, and his energy I have tried to tap. I've done it so often it's 
almost to the point of abusing our friendship. And it's hard for a man 
in his position to be friends with the President. You know, he was so 
gracious tonight--so were you, Rabbi you never mentioned any of the 
things that I've done that you disagreed with. [Laughter] Barney would 
have, but I wasn't here to say it--just to hear it. [Laughter] And what 
all they said before amounts to, ``He's not so bad for a President, but 
we know they're never completely perfect.''
    I want you to know that David talked about religious liberty. It 
means a lot to me. And if you look around the world today, we'd be

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a lot better off if it meant a lot to other people, too. He played a 
major role in the guidelines we issued in 1995 to help protect the right 
of students in public schools to express their religious convictions 
within the Constitution and without a need to amend the Constitution. 
And I don't know if anybody has noticed, but that's one issue you don't 
have to fight now.
    When I became President, everybody was convinced we were going to 
have this huge battle over this constitutional amendment, prayer in the 
schools and all that. And I told the Secretary of Education, I said, ``I 
don't believe anybody has read the decisions. I think this is a bogus 
political battle.'' And so we got David and a few other people and some 
scholars together, and we put out a booklet. And we sent it to all the 
schools and said, ``Look, here are your rights now. Here's what you have 
to do. Here's how you can avoid problems. Give this to everybody.'' And 
I mean, within 6 months the whole issue of the constitutional amendment 
died.
    So David did two good things: He increased people's sense that they 
were actually free to practice their faith, whatever it is, within the 
Constitution, wherever they wish, and he did it; and at the same time, 
totally diminished the sense that it was somehow needed to amend the 
Constitution in a way that I'm convinced would have raised a whole lot 
more problems than it solved.
    And it's the kind of thing that he did that he got almost no notice 
for. And most of the rest of us didn't either, because it wound up being 
a dog that doesn't bark. But in the end, that's sometimes the highest 
measure of our success in public life. He played a major role in the 
dialog we had on race. And therefore, his influence is still felt in a 
lot of what we are trying to do in the White House in that regard.
    I do believe that, as David said better than I in his wonderful, 
wonderful speech, you must believe that we are not only all created in 
God's image but that we have a little bit of God within us, and so does 
everyone else. That is very important to his faith and to his action. 
The Talmud says whoever is able to protest against the transgressions of 
the world and does not, is liable for the transgression of the entire 
world.
    I think David wakes up thinking about that every morning. He's 
probably taken some of our transgressions away along with his because 
he's done way more than his share. [Laughter] But I say that because we 
have all been sort of sobered in these last days by what is going on in 
Kosovo and by this terrible tragedy in Littleton, Colorado.
    And when we think about it, we think we know, too, that beneath all 
the prosperity our country enjoys there are still plenty of people who 
have not participated in it here and, in more subtle, less visible ways, 
are also suffering. He thinks about that.
    And I would just like to take a few moments tonight to ask you, in 
David's honor, to think about this new millennium we're about to enter; 
how fortunate we are to go into it with many, if not all, but many of 
our social conditions improving and our economy booming and our country 
able to play a very privileged role to advance the cause of peace and 
humanity around the world but we know that this future--[inaudible]--
that most people think of as dominated by technology and global 
information sharing and a global economy and people drawing together, 
that the good parts of that future are far from assured because a lot of 
the modern things that we think are inherently good are just like all 
the old things that happen in all previous times; they have a dark 
underside that must be struggled against.
    The same explosion of technologies, for example, that fuels the 
prosperity of people all across the world really helps a lot of those 
who want to exploit today the oldest weakness of human society: fear and 
hatred of the other. I mean, think about it. The Internet offers 
scientists the way to exchange information and fight disease, offers 
poor children the way to access libraries. It's amazing how many kids in 
high school now are filing research papers, and they don't have a--every 
single source they got, they got off the Internet. But the Internet also 
offers websites that glorify death, lionize Hitler, and tell teenagers 
to make pipe bombs. It is not a thing in and of itself that is good.
    Now, what's all that got to do with what we're talking about here? 
What has Littleton to do with Kosovo? I think it has a lot to do with 
the whole way we think about life

[[Page 744]]

and the way we define ourselves and the way we use categories. None of 
us could function without categories. Categories help us to organize our 
days, to understand the outside world, to even organize our inner lives 
and our search for truth. Some of us are black; some of us are white. 
Some of us are Jewish; some of us are Muslim; some of us are Christian. 
Some are straight; some are gay. Some are Arab; some are Israeli. We 
categorize them. You've got to have them. You couldn't function without 
them.
    The problem comes when people believe the categories are the truths, 
instead of helpful ways of helping us organize our search for the truth. 
Because when you believe that, then if you're an insecure kid in school 
and somebody says there's something wrong with you because you're not in 
the ``in'' crowd, you think it means something, instead of just a way of 
characterizing, ``Here's what this group of kids thinks is important, 
and I'm not one of them. I'm something else, but really I'm just as good 
as they are.'' You think about it.
    Somebody says, ``I want to build Greater Serbia.'' What the heck 
does that mean? Nothing to you, but if you were Serb and you had a sense 
of historic grievance, it might mean quite a lot to you. Unless you had 
enough wisdom to know that the concept of being a Serb could only mean 
something if it were consistent with your search for the ultimate human 
truth and what connects you to the Albanians or the Macedonians or the 
Montenegrans or whatever.
    Tougher for you in the Holy Land. And I applaud your search for 
peace, because even in the place where your faith was born you know that 
the exclusive occupation of a given acre of land is not as important as 
the ability to relate to the common humanity of others who are your 
neighbors.
    But if you think about it--we all ought to think about this--I have 
been plagued by this thing in Littleton. I thought about--I've relived 
my life as a parent. My heart goes out to the parents who lost their 
children, including the parents of the two boys who did the killing. 
Because how many people are living in homes with people they love but 
are really strangers? How many times, even in our own homes, have we 
felt that? Maybe in nonviolent circumstances, but we all feel it. In a 
certain way we're all strangers on our journey through life.
    And the only thing that enables us to hang together is somehow we 
know that there is this thing that we share, that was given to us by 
God, that makes us in God's image, that gives us a piece of immortality. 
It is our common humanity.
    If a child has a sense of that, then if somebody looks down on the 
child, the child can say, ``That's their problem, not mine. They're not 
better than I am.'' The child can almost feel sympathy for them and 
certainly feel sympathy for others who are far more discriminated 
against. But if someone believes that categories are reality, are truth, 
then when someone looks down on the child, the child is not only angry 
at that person, but the child then looks around for someone to look down 
on.
    I saw this happen when I was a kid in the South--why were the poor 
whites the worst racists? Because the rich whites were looking down on 
them all the time. They knew they didn't have very much education. They 
knew they didn't have great jobs, and their lives were kind of a drag, 
and they felt like nobody respected them. But thank God, they had 
somebody they could look down on.
    This is a huge problem in every society. And when you have a society 
like ours, where we refuse to take even the most elemental steps to 
control access to weapons that kids should not have access to and when 
we fought for the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban and the things 
that I'm trying to pass now--that I hope all of you support, and I know 
you will--they actively decide we're threatening the American way of 
life. Why? Because people believe that categories are realities. The 
gang they're in is the real gang with the whole truth and opposed to the 
others. It's the real difference in Mr. Saperstein and his debating 
partner, Mr. Falwell.
    And in the end, you know, when this thing is over in Kosovo--and it 
will be over and they will go home, because we will not quit--but when 
it's over, what's going to happen? The Kosovar Albanians who were 
uprooted from their homes and their schools, saw their villages burned--
what should they do? Go

[[Page 745]]

home and see their Serbian neighbors, who turned the other way and were 
silent, because either they were afraid, maybe they were even secretly 
glad, maybe they even secretly believed in the Greater Serbia, maybe 
they openly believed in it--so what are they going to do, go in and get 
even with them?
    We cannot stop when the war is over and the refugees go home. We 
have to give the people in the Balkans a way to be proud of their ethnic 
heritage, acknowledge that they all have legitimate historical 
grievances and then recognize that no one ever gets even. That is God's 
work; we don't do that. And the more we try to get even, the more we 
remain the prisoners of those against whom our anger is directed.
    Now, somehow, we have got to drive that home to our children. And 
it's hard. But we ought to start here. You know, we're all raised in 
this old child's adage, ``sticks and stones will break my bones, but 
words will never hurt me.'' It's just not true. Hardly anybody believes 
that anymore. There are a few people, like me, who have had more 
practice living with it than others. [Laughter] But it's a huge deal.
    I can still remember when I was in second grade and I was the only 
kid that wasn't picked to play on a softball team. Nobody wanted me 
because I was too fat and slow. I can still remember it like it was 
yesterday. So that happens to kids. You know, our children need to know 
that they're still God's children, and they're just as good as anybody 
else. And they should feel sympathy for people who are disrespecting and 
enormous pain for people who really suffer far greater than they do. 
They shouldn't get into this thing where they want to get even with the 
people that dissed them, and they've got to have somebody to look down 
on. But this is human nature out of direction, people who believe that 
categories matter, that they're reality.
    And I know I'm, as the Baptists say, preaching to the choir tonight. 
But this is a very important thing. Why are people so hung up on a lot 
of the issues that Barney has worked to get me to work with him on? Why 
are people afraid to pass the employment and nondiscrimination act? Why 
are they afraid of that?
    I don't mean that categories don't matter. It really matters if 
you're Jewish or if you're Muslim, you have a different way of 
worshiping God, and they matter. All these things matter. But they do 
not define the whole truth. And that is the point that needs to be made.
    Categories are things made up by imperfect people to help us 
organize reality so we can get through the day and try to search inside 
to get closer to the truth. They will never define the whole truth. We 
cannot do that. We cannot do that; that is not for us to do.
    This sounds so basic, but after all this time I've spent as 
President, the most vivid memories I have--sitting in Kigali and Rwanda 
with a woman who woke up, having been cut by machetes, to find that her 
husband and six children had been slaughtered and somehow a miracle had 
let her survive. And instead of being full of hatred for losing 
everything, she was spending her life trying to figure out how to get 
people to live together again. And all the other examples like that I've 
seen. Every single time it was somebody in excruciating pain having 
suffered enormous abuse who somehow said, ``All these things that we 
used to think matter so much; they don't matter as much as our common 
humanity.''
    It is that which allows people to have sufficient self-respect, to 
endure the normal slings and arrows of life and sometimes the 
extraordinary unfairness that life brings. It is that which enables 
people to have the empathy and the sympathy necessary to be fully alive. 
And with all the modern world and all the fancy gizmos we have and all 
the growth of the economy we have and the stock market at 10,000--when 
you strip it all away, if we could learn that one lesson most of the 
world's problems would go away. We would have peace in the Middle East 
in the month, if we could do that.
    And so I ask you to think about that. I ask you to think about it 
especially in the Middle East. We said after this national election is 
over and the Israelis organize a new government, we'd like to bring the 
parties together within 6 months to pursue a final agreement. And we are 
committed to doing that, and I know you will support that. But

[[Page 746]]

in the end, to make it work, both sides will have to remember that the 
categories are important, but they can't be the whole truth. Otherwise 
it will become a zero-sum game.
    And you know, everybody has got a beef in life. You've got a beef, 
every one of you. But most of us get out ahead of where we would if all 
we got was simply justice and no mercy. And we have--somehow we have got 
to just bang this message home in the Middle East, in the Balkans, and 
in our own homes, in our communities, in our schools.
    Yes, we must do more to deal with the problems of violence in the 
society. And I am proud of the fact that one of the legacies of this 
administration will be that we did contest with the NRA what kind of 
future we were going to have in America and whether we were going to be 
just totally irresponsible on the gun issue. I'm glad of that.
    Yes, parents should have more control and have all these blockers 
and all this stuff on the Internet to keep some of the madness away from 
their kids. Yes, that's true, too. But in the end, most kids come out 
all right because most kids have the barriers and the self-respect and 
the guidance necessary and the humility necessary to find their 
humanity, instead of drifting into madness. And we have to find that for 
the Serbs and for the brutally injured Kosovars. We have to find that 
for the people who will make the hard decisions in the Israeli 
Government and among the Palestinians. We have to find that everywhere.
    And I have found that, from the first day I met him, in the man we 
honor tonight. And I love him for it.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 9:50 p.m. in the Presidential Ballroom at 
the Capitol Hilton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Rabbi Eric H. 
Yoffie, president, Union of American Hebrews Congregations; Richard Ben-
Veniste, former Watergate prosecutor; Marian Wright Edelman, founder and 
president, Children's Defense Fund, and her husband, Peter, professor, 
Georgetown Law School; former Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum; Jerry 
Falwell, pastor, Thomas Road Baptist Church, Lynchburg, VA; and Gilead 
Landsburg, father of Rabbi Lynne Landsburg.