Speech delivered on March 11, 1996 at the Greater Hartford Jewish Community Center, Memorial Service and Rally in Solidarity with Israel
When Seymour and I became parents over 40 years ago, we never envisioned that we would become frequent flyers to San Francisco and to Israel in order to see our grandchildren, that earthquakes in California and war and terror in Israel would become part of our daily anxieties.
Our middle child and only daughter, Lisa, went to Israel in September 1973 on the Young Judea program, a week before her 18th birthday, two weeks before the Yom Kippur War. That year quickly spawned a decision to attend college in Israel which led to aliyah. Since then our lives have been enriched by our Israel connection, which over the years has come to include nearly 300 cousins whom Seymour has discovered there.
Lisa is married to Yuval. Their third child was born a month after the Gulf War ended. Ten years ago they moved to the Modiin Region, halfway between Tel Aviv and Yerushalayim. They both work for high-tech companies.
With Lisa’s permission I want to read parts of two letters she recently wrote us.
On March 6, my 67th birthday, she wrote:
“The goal of terrorism is to destroy the routine of our daily lives, to make us fear the unknown in familiar surroundings, to shatter our equilibrium. The pain is so sudden, so acute, that it gashes the heart and leaves a deep empty hole. Memories of and longings for the lost loved ones swarm in that hole, together, perhaps, with anger and guilt. And it can never again be filled completely with joy.
In Hebrew we say, halev nikrah. It is not simply the heartbreak of those who have lost loved ones. It describes the way all of us in Israel feel. It holds our mixed emotions of anguish and relief. Our hearts are split by our grief and sorrow for those who died and by our relief at having survived and being able to go on with our lives.
So many news flashes this week, so many deaths, so many wounded — as if I were in a nightmare and couldn’t wake up…
I think of the children…how can one begin to fathom the emotional scars of the teenage girl whose three friends were killed as the four of them crossed the street, or the grief of parents who are burying a son instead of celebrating his bar mitzvah? How do we explain to our children why the Purim carnivals they so eagerly awaited this week had to be cancelled—without making them fear for their own safety and security?
I’ve been hugging the kids all week. Staying close. Calling them from work. Making sure I know where they are. Reassuring them that Maccabim is safe, that our offices in Tel Aviv are safe, that they are safe. School trips which were planned for this coming week have been postponed until quieter times. Parents as well as children feel more secure with the kids in their familiar school environment.
To me personally, the most disturbing element of these terrorist attacks is that they struck you in West Hartford, that you, not I, attended the funeral of two victims. Hearing your distress; realizing the extent of your fears for our safety in Israel; crying together on the phone Purim evening. This was probably the hardest emotional burden to bear.
The news of the explosion on Dizengoff flashed on the radio as I was driving into Maccabim. I was so shaken I could barely drive the last few kilometers. When I got home I poured myself a drink. (that’s what you’re supposed to do on Purim.) When phone lines opened up, I called you. Then the kids put on parts of their costumes and we went to synagogue to hear the Megillah. (That’s also what you’re supposed to do on Purim.) I cried some, and calmed down.
I will go to sleep tonight hoping tomorrow brings us a step closer back to normalcy…
On March 8 Lisa wrote: “While the Israeli security and police forces work to destroy the Hamas terrorist operations, ordinary citizens such as I also fight this battle by resuming our normal routines and returning to the streets where these horrific massacres occurred.
Returning to normal means that American Jews should continue visiting Israel and sending their children here. As Cousin Maurine reminded me, there were bomb blasts in London during their trip there last month. No place is absolutely safe. But we can’t lock ourselves in our homes and stop living. Cousin Tia told me today that being at work this week was the best remedy for her. Putting our minds to other matters is difficult but therapeutic. It is the way we bring normalcy back.”
We parents with children in both Israel and North America often totter on the balance between kavod, the honor and the pride our children reflect on us, and kaved, the weight of worry and loneliness their life’s choice has thrust upon us.
How do we Jews go emotionally from the merriment of Purim to the revulsion of terrorism? How do we live in that existential place between grief and joy, between evil and good, between doubt and certainty? How do we negotiate the passage?
We think of this question each year with the four observances we have added to our calendar since 1948: Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and six days after that, Yom HaZikaron, Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers, followed next day by Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel Independence Day, followed by Yom Yerushalayim, celebrating the re-unification of Jerusalem in June 1967.
We thought of it last Shabbat as we studied the Torah portion, Ki Tissa. Moshe, our greatest teacher, totally committed to his task, still needs reassurance of God’s presence: He pleads: “…Pray, let me know your ways,…let me see your Glory!” God replies, “…here is a place next to me; …when my Glory passes by, I will place you in the cleft of the rock and screen you with my hand until I have passed by…you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”* And then God instructs Moshe to get ready to receive a new set of tablets to replace the ones Moshe smashed in his fury over the Golden Calf. I’m here, says God, so stop asking questions and return to the people.
To keep our balance on that thin ridge, we draw on the strengths that Judaism bestows on us. We accept ambiguity. We wrestle with doubts. But we can’t use our doubts or fears as an excuse to avoid tikkun olam, repairing the world.
We hold fast to our unshakable, invincible optimism, to bittahon betuv haolam, our trust and faith in a good and just God ruling the world, and to our conviction that the world that God created is good.
This is what Jews do,in order to remember all of those whose struggles and sacrifices made our triumphs possible.
*Ex. 33:13, 18, 21-23. Fox Trans.