Message from President Rodin at the Memorial Service for Yitzhak Rabin Following the assassination of Israel's Prime Minister, members of the University and friends from throughout the city gathered in Blanche Levy Park for a campus memorial service sponsored by Penn Hillel. Speakers included the Israeli Consul Eli Avidar, Hillel's Director Jeremy Brochin, Rabbi Howard Alpert, students Sarah Davies, Steve Ebert and Seth Lasser, and the President of the University, whose reflections are below. The event, and the attention it has received, are a stunning reminder of how much the world has changed. Sadly, it was the power of another idea that took Yitzhak Rabin's life. But it is precisely then that ideas are most dangerous, when we are least likely to think through the powerful connections between rhetoric, behavior and ideas.
Ideas have consequences.
Absolute, unchallengeable, truth permits everything and constrains nothing. Absolute certainty certifies absolutely the rightness of one's actions. It is that small opening through which compromise and compassion enter the world. It is through the possibility of error and the expectation of further enlightenment that we admit our human limitations. It is in the recognition of others, and the possibility that, if not wholly right, they may not be wholly wrong, that we recognize each other as fellow human beings.