May 06, 2008
Forty eight hours before writing this, I was in Israel with a mission from the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County. So much is seen and experienced on a mission that we spend weeks trying to put it all into context. That is especially true as Israel prepares to celebrate her 60th anniversary.
Early Friday morning, our group boarded the bus, as we had the previous four days. We had started every day with a song. That day, our tour guide — an Israeli man in his 50s who still bore himself with a confident military air — said, “Please, not today. It’s not appropriate.”
We were on our way to Mount Herzl, the site of Jerusalem’s military cemetery.
Once at Mount Herzl we gathered at one of the cemeteries. The dates on the headstones dated from the 1970s and 1980s. It is located on a hill between two other burial sites, one below and one above.
On the cemetery site below is an older cemetery. There stood an old woman, bent with age and grief. The few of us who saw her sensed immediately that this is where she came every Friday morning. This was her pre-Shabbat ritual.
The woman’s attention was centered on three stones, all in the same row. We felt like intruders, but could not take our eyes off her. She walked from grave to grave and lighted the candles in the holders on each stone. She said a prayer at each grave, kissing her hand and then touching the stone.
The woman then tended to each site, brushing away a bit of dirt, pulling a stray weed.
Were these the graves of her children?
Perhaps also a brother?
Her husband?
The old woman lingered for a while, slowly said goodbye to each grave, and then limped down the path, leaving the three of us in tears.
With silence now the norm for a group that had spent the previous four days in active schmoozing, we walked the path to the cemetery on the rise above. This is the cemetery of those killed in the last Lebanon war; the newer cemetery. Many of the headstones in this cemetery contain the picture of the young man whose name is on the stone.
We walked among the graves, reading names and dates…and ages. All young, teenagers or in their early 20s. My wife told me to look at the faces.
“They all have features of our sons and their friends. There is one with Jed’s nose. That one has Eli’s eyes. There is their friend Adam’s chin. These are our children. You see these same faces as we walk around.”
There were only two other people there, a father with his young teenage son, standing in front of a grave, prayerbook open. The grave was that of his son, killed in Israel’s most recent war.
We asked if we could say Kaddish with him. For a few moments we shared his mourning and grief. At the conclusion, some shook his hand; others hugged the man and patted his son on the shoulder. We then drifted away, leaving the father and son with their private thoughts and prayers.
A couple came into the cemetery. They looked like working people. Their clothes were modest; the man had the rough hands of someone used to doing labor. They stopped at a grave. They were crying. The man saw a stool off to the side near the foot path and brought it so the woman could sit. She sat, he kneeled next to her. They just looked at the grave stone and cried.
We had to leave. Out of respect — respect for those whose grief will not fade with time, respect for those whose weekly Friday ritual we had intruded upon, and respect for those who lay in those neat rows of graves.
These are the graves of those who gave their lives so we Jews are now able to shape our own lives for the first time in our history. For the past 60 years we are the ones responsible for our own existence. We are not guests in someone else’s home. This is but one of the promises of Israel.
The day before, Thursday, we saw another one of the promises of Israel, and how we in Middlesex are connected to that promise.
We were at Alyn Pediatric and Adolescent Rehabilitation Hospital in Jerusalem. Alyn is known worldwide as being in the forefront of innovation in pediatric rehabilitation. We were there to dedicate a special room, funded by our federation.
The Maayan Demonstration and Display Center Room will be used to display the specialized equipment needed by children with disabilities. This will enable specialists to select correct equipment for each child. Specialized engineers will then adapt and customize equipment to each child.
We quickly realized the message of Alyn goes far beyond that of rehabilitation and equipment. Forty percent of the children treated at Alyn are Arab children. Jewish parents and Arab parents, sitting side by side, sharing the pain of an injured or permanently disabled child.
Sharing struggles as children work to walk again or lift an arm. If peace is to come, it is because of the message of Alyn and similar places of hope.
How do parents hate after sharing the pain of their children?
That message travels far beyond the walls of the hospital.
Contrast that with the fact that the favorite times for Hamas to send rockets towards Sderot are 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Those are the times children are traveling to and from school.
As Israel celebrates her 60th anniversary we do not ignore her problems. Returning from a mission we also recognize the hope that Israel represents for all Jews and the enormous significance and accomplishments of these past 60 years.
Lee Livingston is president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County.
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