by Yochonon Dovid
Tension was high; you could sense it palpably. The absolute
silence which reigned in the cemetery at midnight was
disturbed only by the measured hacking of pickaxes.
In the circle of dim light provided by hand-held flashlights,
one could see a group of men standing around one of the
graves. Two of them, in work clothes, were digging up a grave
whose tombstone had been removed and lay ineffectually on the
side. One lone woman stood there as well, an elderly mother
supported on either side by two sons in their late fifties.
All eyes were riveted, as if mesmerized, upon the rectangular
plot of land which was being assaulted by the steady blows of
the pickaxes and spades, rhythmically, again and again, and
as the sods of earth were cast upwards and sidewards, the pit
below deepened and widened.
The two men finally reached the desired level and the stones
by the corpse were revealed. One of the workers descended
into the trench, a small hole about the size of a four-year-
old, as the old, discarded tombstone testified. He lifted one
of the thin cement slabs and heaved it out. Everyone leaned
forward to stare at the space underneath to study what was
left of the small, shrouded remains of a body, now -- after
decades of burial.
"It's empty!" exclaimed the man below, in shock and
disappointment, as he lifted and hurled the final cement slab
out of the grave and climbed out, himself. This uttering,
which had been muttered as if to himself, resounded like a
supersonic boom that came crashing back down to reverberate
throughout the cemetery. Everyone stared unbelievingly at the
empty grave whose rock bottom had blackened with ancient
mold. Then came the cry, the shuddering, spine tingling
scream of a mother: "Where is my son? I've been visiting this
grave site for the past fifty years to pray for my dead son,
year after year! I've lit a memorial candle for his soul for
the past fifty years! Where is he? Where is my son?"
The two sons supported and steadied their faltering mother as
the doctor in the group came forward with a hypodermic,
prepared in advance for this expected contingency. After the
tranquilizer had been administered, the sons led her slowly
to the car parked by the path. The motor was ignited and
within moments, the car had zoomed off.
The climactic episode behind them, the two gravediggers began
filling up the empty tomb and when they were finished, set
about replacing the falsified gravestone, taking care that no
vestige remained of this illegal investigation. The group of
remaining men stood by the side. It included several family
members, a doctor, a psychologist, and a rabbi who had once
worked in the Chevra Kadisha, all of them friends of the
family. They exchanged comments sotto voce as they awaited
the completion of the activities.
"If you hadn't been so quick with the needle," noted the
psychologist to the doctor, "I would have had the chance to
tell her the good news that her son was probably still alive,
and that she had an excellent chance of being reunited with
him."
"The possibility of finding him is nil," said the uncle. "My
brother, of blessed memory, this child's father, overturned
the entire country in his search for him. But all in
vain."
"How terrible to think," remarked the doctor, "that somewhere
in the world there lives a man of fifty- four who never knew
his father or mother. He lives his life routinely,
obliviously, while his natural mother aches to find him, and
his real brothers and sisters yearn to know him."
"I can't understand such a person," said the rabbi. "He is
the one who should have overturned heaven and earth in search
of his real parents. What did he do when he was fifteen?
Twenty? Thirty? Forty? And at fifty? Why did he just sit
complacently and not take any action during these many
decades gone by?"
"Perhaps he really doesn't know anything," the uncle
attempted to defend the unknown son. "Perhaps the couple who
raised him made him truly believe that he was their child.
And he trusted them, just like every child trusts his
parents. Why would he have any reason to go looking for a
different set of parents?"
"I can't `buy' that," stated the psychologist. "Do you know
what a child of four is? Even today, as a man of fifty-four,
he must have memories of his real parents. Sights and sounds
he can recall from before, experiences and emotions which
were engraved in his mind and heart. These cannot be erased
with one swipe."
"That's clear," agreed the rabbi. "A four-year- old is
already a small man, a person. How is it that as an adult, he
did not rouse himself to solve the riddle of a double set of
memories, of different parents and siblings, of a home and
background completely other than the one he subsequently grew
up in? It doesn't make sense."
"If I were to attempt to outline a possible psychological
explanation to such indifference," said the psychologist, "I
fear that it would emerge as a terrible ethical accusation
against his adoptive parents. They must have provided him
with a highly material, pragmatic, self-serving rearing. They
must have transformed him into an egotistic creature without
morals, without a conscience, without a care for anyone
beyond his own self. Since he feels content and secure within
his environment and framework, he must be afraid of any
exposure to his past that will challenge or change his
convenient lifestyle, that will force him to alter his
identity and impose a different set of obligations upon him.
Since he doesn't want that, he brakes his natural and normal
desire to discover his roots, to find his parents, to learn
about his origin. He stifles his yearning to know who he
really is and to find out his true qualitative identity,
which he can only learn from getting to know his real
parents, his biological source.
"And so, he arbitrarily decides that as far as he is
concerned, his personal history begins at the age of four,
and whatever happened before does not interest him in the
least. He thus absolves himself of all obligation towards his
natural parents and of all sense of gratitude towards them.
He liberates his conscience from any feelings regarding them
and does not devote as much as a passing thought to his real
mother, who continually mourns the loss of a living son."
"It is also possible," adds the doctor, "that his adoptive
parents deliberately disreputed his real parents as
irresponsible, uncaring, primitive and so on, in order to
sever any connection between the boy and his past. It is
shocking to think that people could stoop so low, but it has
happened."
"Why do you find this so terrible?" asked the rabbi. "In this
very country there live thousands, if not tens of thousands
of people who have decided that their history begins
somewhere in 1948, with the `birth' of the State. They
systematically and deliberately conceal from their children
vital information concerning the cultural treasures of their
ancient heritage. They discredit the past of our people and
the ancient traditional way of life as if it were something
to be ashamed of. Descriptions such as "a golus
mentality," backwardness, medieval, benighted,
Fundamentalist, Houmeini-ism, are forever on their lips with
regard to our spiritual heritage. Our ancestral graves are a
subject for desecrating archaeological rummaging, with no
respect for the historically great figures reposing there.
"What sort of identity does the secular educational system
inculcate in its charges? What sense of obligation or respect
does a student of this system feel towards his ancient
people, his parents, his unique heritage, history, and those
who have preserved it intact over the millennia? The low,
base ethical code which the adoptive parents have bequeathed
this poor child fits the very description, on a national
scale, of those who severed themselves and their children
from their source of identity -- in name, modesty in attire
and sense of propriety in outlook."
The two gravediggers sealed the opened grave and set the
tombstone back in place. This time, the grave was not empty.
In it were buried the rootless, devitalized personalities of
severed sons denying their parentage. The revival of all
these dead-living begs for the advent of the one who will
"restore the hearts of sons unto their fathers."
