from the heart of jerusalem

Remembering sacrifices in a thoughtful week

Posted

Literally translated, Acharei-Mot-Kedoshim means “after the death of the holy ones,” a reference that is all too appropriate following weeks that included Yom HaShoah (Holocaust memorial day) and Yom HaZikaron (Israel’s memorial day) and Yom Ha’Atzmaut (Israeli Independence days). This column, a portion of which was originally published for Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmut in 2012, is dedicated to the blessed memory of those Israeli soldiers whose selfless sacrifice gave and gives us a State we can call our own.

His name was Chaim Avner. The name was familiar to me for a long time, but I never really knew who he was, until one year on Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s national Memorial Day. I had seen it before, but I never wanted to intrude.

Chaim is close to a very dear and old friend of mine — about as close as you can get; his grave lies next to Dani’s on Mount Herzl, Israel’s National Military Cemetery.

To me, Dani Moshitz of blessed memory will always be 20 years old, which is how old he was when he was killed in an ambush at the Kasmiyeh Bridge in Lebanon in 1985. He was killed two days after Chaim of blessed memory, who was 27 at the time. Chaim was doing a 16 day stint of reserve duty in Lebanon when a Hezbollah terrorist drove his car bomb into their safari truck, killing him, along with 11 other soldiers on patrol in Southern Lebanon.

Every year at Yeshivat Orayta on Yom Hazikaron, the thought of staying isolated in our study hall in the Old City of Jerusalem while the entire country gathers in her cemeteries and memorials to remember those who fell in defense of the State of Israel, conflicts with the equally strong desire not to allow such a holy day to pass without the study of Torah, which after all, is the reason we had a home to come back to after 2,000 years. So every year we study Torah together at the entrance of Mount Herzl Military Cemetery, after which many of the students join me at Dani’s grave to pay our respects.

At precisely 11 am a siren sounds, and the entire State of Israel halts for a moment of silence. People get out of their cars, pedestrians on crowded streets all over Israel stand at attention and bow their heads, and even children stand in silence as an entire nation takes a moment to remember what it took, and how many gave up so much, that we might be privileged to have a state and a homeland to call our own.

And as the moment ends, and the siren winds down, four Israeli Airforce jets cross the airspace over the Old City, and one lone jet, peels off and flies up into the sky until no longer visible, representing all the lonely soldiers who will never come home to the beloved waiting arms.

And in that moment one year, I found myself again standing over the grave of Dani, my old and yet forever young friend who took me under his wings and helped to transform me from an American visitor, to an Israeli.

I had a stone in my pocket I had brought back from Mila 18, the bunker which was the last stand of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and I decided to give it a home this year on Dani’s grave.

As I was standing there, I noticed an older woman next to Chaim’s grave who turned out to be his mother. What drew me to talk to her was the number tattooed on her arm.

Originally from Czechoslovakia, she lost her entire family in the Holocaust, and survived Auschwitz at the tender age of 16. So what does a 16-year-old girl, with no one and nothing in the world, do in 1945?

She somehow manages to smuggle herself into Israel and builds a beautiful family that is representative not only of her decision that life has to triumph over death, and good over evil, but also of the indomitable spirit of an entire people, that over 2,000 years of pain and suffering refused to give up their dream of one day coming home at last to the land of Israel from whence they had been so cruelly exiled so long ago.

Eventually she meets a fellow Holocaust survivor and marries him, and they Hebraicise their names to take on the family name of Avner, as her original family name was Lichtenstein — licht, meaning candle or ner, and shtein, meaning stone, or even, hence the name Avner: Candle to father’s memory.

So how does such a woman continue after receiving, years later, that awful knock on the door from three Israeli Army officers, come to tell her she has lost her beloved son, Chaim, a word meaning life? And most incredible, how does she sit next to his grave, with her concentration camp number tattooed on her arm, sitting just inches from the Army I.D. number engraved on her son’s grave, with a smile on her face? How does she find the strength to say to me, with almost a grin, “yehiyeh tov,” it will be good?

Indeed, this is the unasked question of the double-portion we will read this week in Israel: Acharei-Mot and Kedoshim, which literally means “after the death of holy ones.” How does one follow such loss? From whence do we garner strength and even hope after such painful losses and challenging setbacks?

I am not sure whether we are meant to answer that question in this world, but as we remember those who fell that we might have a state, and then celebrate the blessing of being the generation that almost takes it for granted, stories like the Avner family’s remind me that we have more strength than we even imagine.