Eulogy for Eliezer Schweid

An era of life has been completed. Almost eighty
years of creativity have come to a close. This is not
only a day of mourning. It is also time to celebrate
the life that is completed, to count the blessing of
the love, wisdom, humor, and faith of whose
abundance we are the recipients.

Eli was in my life since my childhood. He was the
central pillar of my studies and my research. He
stood by my side when I was ordained in the
rabbinate, and he honored me and us when he was
selected to receive an honorary doctorate in the
institution that ordained me. Most of all, he was a
colleague, who suffered the pain of every obstacle I
encountered and rejoiced in every advance that I
made. Always loyal, not to ignore his piercing,
critical look. He was always for us—and I can say
this at least for myself and my friend Yossi
Turner—a model of how to look deeply and
penetratingly into people and issues, of
consciousness of personal responsibility in
everything he undertook, and of his vital need to
pursue truth and engage in public affairs with
integrity as befits a Jewish scholar. In the final years
we were privileged to repay him a little for the good
that he rendered to us, and to be among those who
wrote new chapters of appreciation to his Torah and
his prophetic call.

Much will be said about Eli as the foremost scholar
of Jewish philosophy in our generation, who fought
fiercely for the philosophical, social, and
educational significance that should be accorded to
humanistic and Jewish studies, and of their
forsaking this challenge. Much will be said about
Professor Eliezer Schweid as the most important
philosopher of Judaism in our generation, the great
disciple of Chaim Nachman Bialik, Aharon David
Gordon, and Hermann Cohen. They will speak of
him as an educator and as an educational theorist,
and of the joy of his encountering—even in his old
age, in failing health—with young men and women
who sought with true devotion to hone their skills
for the work of repair and creation. And as I stand here before his coffin, I want to speak precisely about faith and hope. And here
we read from the conclusion of one of his most
important books, dealing with the “norms of
existence of the Jewish people”:

The collapse of the Israeli educational
curriculum embodies the deep crisis in
Israeli society…Is there a solution to this
crisis?…The solution is returning to the
universal and particular norms…under
the conditions in which humanity and the
Jewish people are immersed today.
The only hope is rooted in the people
itself. If it wants to live, it must arouse
itself against the prospect of collapse that
threatens its future…Like the movement
of Zionist rebirth that arose amid the
ruins of Diaspora, saying No to it as an
intolerable reality, and returning the
Jewish people to its homeland…The
signs of awakening of a movement of
rebirth among our people are many.
Especially encouraging is the awakening
among the youth…All is foreseeable,
freedom of choice is given to us, and the
coming days will tell the tale.

These words express a great deal to be found
in the heart of his writings and his personality.
The faith that human and Jewish existence is
founded on religious and ethical norms; the
recognition of the severe crisis brought about
by globalization and being cut off from the
roots of human existence; the understanding
that what we do and think today is rooted in
the ground of the generations of the past; the
optimism that this is not a deterministic
process, preordained, but a prerequisite for
choice to be made by the individual and
society, the formulation of an imperative [a
mitzvah]; and the firm conviction that it all
depends on us.

All is foreseeable and freedom of choice is
given to us, in our mouths and in our hearts to
do or refrain from doing. Time will tell. In the
coming days we will see and experience,
without Eli’s presence inhabiting them.
Whatever he could say, he said; what he
managed to wrote, he wrote. The book of his
life is sealed; no more words will be added to
it.

We are left here without him, but we are not
left orphans. We will carry not only his
memory with us. We must also carry his
blessing, to labor so that his memory will be a
source of living water, a fountain that refreshes
those who thirst. This is the mitzvah that
Eliezer Schweid has imparted to us, this is the
faith and the blessing. This is the hope of life.