Blood. Blood soaked into the tallitot. Blood smeared on tefillin. Blood streaked on the floor. Searing images of five people stripped of life. In a synagogue in Jerusalem. Four Jews killed during prayer. A Druze police officer killed seeking to save lives. The killers? Two Palestinian cousins from East Jerusalem. The tools of death? Knives, axes and a gun.
Early in our Torah portion, we read of Esav returning from the field, famished, asking his brother for food. “הַלְעִיטֵ֤נִינָא֙מִן־הָאָדֹ֤םהָאָדֹם֙הַזֶּ֔ה, Give me some of that red, red stuff.” For the rabbis, Esau came to symbolize the bloody violence of the Roman Empire, and later, Christianity, toward the descendants of Yaakov, the Jewish people. “Esav hates Yaakov” became a template description of the relationship. We understood the non-Jewish world to want that red, red stuff—not lentils, but blood. In anger and anguish after the attack, many quoted those words.
Terrorism is always terrible, but its arbitrary horror is felt most keenly when you can imagine yourself in the same location or you have a connection to one of the victims.
My friend, Allan Nadler writes about his former roommate, Rabbi Moshe Twersky, who was killed in this attack. His late father was a distinguished professor at Harvard and a H̱asidic Rebbe. His grandfather was the renowned Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. His brother-in-law is a teacher and friend of my son.
Daryl Roitman just returned from a bike ride for the Alyn orthopaedic hospital for children. The guard on the ride was Zidan Saif, who was killed Tuesday while trying to save the lives of the men in the downstairs minyan of the Har Nof synagogue.
One of the severely wounded is Rabbi Chaim Howard Rothman, 54, a Toronto native and CHAT graduate (same class as Ian Zadganski). This father of ten, who suffered multiple stab wounds to his head, neck, eyes and arms, also has been brain damaged. He has relatives and high school friends in our Congregation. His mother and brother daven at Beth Torah. A special fund has been established to assist the family.
The First World War, which set into effect the events that led to the Long War against fascism, communism and, now, radical Islam, began with an act of terror. The essence of terrorism consists of random attacks on innocent people. They are going about their daily business, in the street, in the marketplace, in restaurants or coffee houses, in houses of study or worshipping in the neighborhood synagogue. During the second Intifada, a friend wrote about two Australian girls who came to his door dripping blood into his floor. The bombing of Café Hillel brought the war into his livingroom.
The film, “Battle of Algiers,” celebrated the use of terror as part of the Algerian struggle for independence. I rejected this type of political action because I saw its human consequences when the Weatherman Underground blew up the Math Building at the University of Wisconsin. I have lived through terrorist activity in France and in Israel.
There is a three-fold repetition of despair in our Torah portion. When Rivkah experiences the pain of her pregnancy, she exclaims, “If this is so, why am I living? אִם־כֵּ֔ןלָ֥מָּהזֶּ֖האָנֹ֑כִי.” When Esav returns hungry from the hunt, he says, “הִנֵּ֛האָנֹכִ֥יהֹולֵ֖ךְלָמ֑וּתוְלָמָּה־זֶּ֥הלִ֖יבְּכֹרָֽה׃, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” At the end of our reading, Rivkah tells Yitzhak that if Yaakov were to marry “one of the local women, what good will my life be to me? לָ֥מָּהלִּ֖יחַיִּֽים׃.”
When facing repeated acts of terror that seek to disrupt our daily activities, destroy our lives and disturb our connection to Israel, it is easy to slip into feelings of despair, dread and despondency. Many wonder whether the violence will ever cease. I shared some of those feelings this week.
Over the years, I have counselled strength and solidarity against those who attack us. Whether these pigu’im involve the bombing of buses or ramming those waiting for one, whether the incidents are in urban areas or away from the city centre, we cannot allow terrorism to traumatize us and to dominate our lives. We certainly have to be vigilant and strong. But, as Erica Brown writes, “we cannot lose hope. We cannot lose faith, and we cannot lose trust because when we lose those three precious spiritual commodities—hope, faith and trust—we lose Judaism.”
Yakov faced many challenges in his life: conflict with his brother, escape to Haran, night-wresting with the stranger, deception by his uncle, competition between his wives, fleeing from his uncle, confrontation with his brother, the death of his beloved Rachel, feuding among his sons, the disappearance and assumed death of Joseph, famine and the potential loss of baby Benjamin. Yet he did not give up hope, faith and trust. He continued, trusted that the blessing would continue through his family. His family will become the Children of Israel.
When Moshe offers his farewell address, he notes that the family has become “as many as the stars in the sky” (Deut 1.10). The dream and promise to the family founders—Avraham, Yitzhak, Yaakov and their partners—had been achieved. Moshe warns the people that there will be difficulties and that some will lose hope and others will fear facing the enemies ahead. He seeks to reassure his people: See, the Eternal your God has given you the Land. Go up and take possession of it… Do not fear and do not be discouraged” (Deut 1.21).
Erica Brown writes: “You can be afraid to start a new venture or be scared to confront a problem. But then you take a leap of faith and jump into the unknown. The trick at that point is to not lose resolve, to keep going because new fears and anxieties will surface and present their challenges. You have to keep renewing your sense of resolve that inspired courage in the first place, not despite the dangers and risks but because of them. Risky, impossible challenges are often the only ones worth making.”
She points to a new book by Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair. Lamott asks how we can find meaning in a world where we lose people to ALS and dementia, fire destroys a community, children are attacked in school, and heartbreak happens. These pieces of sadness lie about, like rags, with no coherence, making no sense.
Lamott develops a metaphor for responding to pain: "We live stitch by stitch… You start wherever you can. You see a great need, so you thread a needle, you tie a knot in your thread. You find one place in the cloth through which to take one stitch, one simple stitch, nothing fancy, just one that’s strong and true.” We take the rags and strich them together into a quilt. We create a pattern. "You have to keep taking the next necessary stitch, and the next one, and the next… Without stitches, you just have rags. And we are not rags.”
We are not shmattes. It is important to recognize that this recent attack is not a modern version of Bialik’s “City of Slaughter”. It was bloody and horrific, but Israelis are not 19th century weaklings facing a pogrom. The government of the State of Israel has the capacity “necessary for the defence of the nation and the moral authority to exhort that the response is to seek justice, not revenge.” (Michael Rosenberg).
At a brit milah we quote from the prophet Ezekiel (16:6): “I passed over you and saw you wallowing in your bloods, and I said to you, ‘In your blood you shall live’; and I said to you, ‘In your blood you shall live.’” Twenty-four hours after the attack, in the same synagogue, a baby had his brit milah. The mohel, Rabbi Hayyim Miller, said, “We have to pray over the past and hope for the future.” The father of the child said his family decided to hold the ceremony as planned in the synagogue, and not despite the massacre – but rather because of it: “My grandfather built an empire of Torah… after the Holocaust. This is Judaism – from tragedy to joy.” In a similar way, the grieving families have asked that Jews pray, recite Psalms, and add mitzvot to our lives in memory of those who were killed.
Jews are strong. Jews have guts. We must stitch together our pain and our purpose, our mourning and our joy. Our legacy is not only of a persecuted people. “We gave the world hope, faith and trust. We are still here. We are still thriving and actualizing a beautiful future.” At times the price seems impossible, “but the cost of losing hope is [even] greater” (Erica Brown).
May the lives of Rabbis Moshe Twerski, Kalman Levine, Avraham Goldberg, Ariel Kupinski and Officer Zidan Saif be a blessing. May those who kill and maim be stopped and brought to justice. May those who mourn be consoled and those in grief find healing. And may all of us be resolved to go forward with hope, faith and trust.
From the depths of our broken hearts, dissolved by our tears over the blood of the martyred heads of our households, may God avenge their blood:
We turn to you, our brothers and sisters of the House of Israel, throughout the world: Let us unite, all of us, to bring God’s mercy upon us, by taking it upon ourselves to increase our love and compassion for one another, whatever our community or faction.
We request that everyone accept upon him or herself, on the eve of Shabbat Parashat Toldot, to dedicate this Shabbat, which is the eve of Rosh Hodesh Kislev, as a day of unconditional love, a day in which we will refrain from divisiveness and contention, from evil speech and gossip.
By doing so, let us elevate the souls of our beloved husbands and fathers who were slaughtered in sanctification of God’s blessed name.
May the Lord look down from the heights, may God witness our suffering, wipe away our tears, and put an end to our suffering, and may we be privileged to see the arrival of the Messiah, soon, speedily and in our days, and let us say, Amen.
Ways to help:
Rabbi Howard Chaim Rothman: https://jewishtoronto.com/news-media/uja-federation-establishes-fund-to-help-family-of-former-toronto-man-severely-injured-in-jerusalem
Masorti synagogue security: http://www.mercaz.ca/Donate-to-Masorti.html
Victims of Terror: http://onefamilyfund.ca/
Sources:
http://www.cija.ca/jerusalem/rabbi-moshe-twersky/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom
http://faculty.history.umd.edu/BCooperman/NewCity/Slaughter.html
Erica Brown, “On Resolve”. http://www.ericabrown.com/new-blog-1?category=Latest%20WJW
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/anguish-and-anger-after-har-nof
