It is that time of the year, again, and my mind goes back to a
war, soon after our family settled in Israel.
Yom Kippur.
The men were all in shul. Suddenly, sirens began to wail.
Women ran into the hallways to find out what was happening.
Everybody knew that something must be wrong because, despite
Bnei Brak being closed to traffic on Shabbos and Yom Tov, the
rumbling of tanks and careening of jeeps had been heard all
night long.
A neighbor, still wrapped up in his tallis, ran home
from shul to find the key to the shelter. He began pounding on
all the doors and yelling to all the neighbors that Israel had
been attacked. One young woman came out of her apartment and
stood hanging on to the bannister laughing hysterically.
Once the key to the shelter was found, the women started
sweeping it out and stocking it with tremendous pots of water,
basic foodstuffs and bedding, reluctantly recalling the last
time they had stayed there during the Six Day War.
The very neighbors, who in the past had been cool and distant,
were suddenly full of good-will and friendship, extending
themselves with a generosity and concern, utterly incompatible
with their past aloofness.
Afraid to leave the children alone, I took them along to shul.
The streets were full of people, the rabbis of many
congregations having sent their flocks home to be close to a
shelter, since most synagogues didn't have one.
Jeeps screeched to a stop in front of all the shuls and the
rabbis were given lists with the names of all those who had to
immediately report for active duty. As the rabbi called out
each name, a young man kissed his siddur shut and,
still enveloped in his tallis and white Yom Tov
kittel, hurried to the vehicle waiting outside.
Women wept, men swallowed hard, children wailed inconsolably
as they hung on to their fathers, already in the jeeps. On Yom
Kippur.
The chazzon continued the prayers with more fervor than
before. Another siren began screaming. Those women who were
still in shul grabbed their baby carriages and strollers and
dashed out with all of their children to the nearest building
with a shelter. Loud voices of protest could be heard as the
tenants of that building argued that there was no more room,
that the shelter had been built for the nine (large) families
who resided in that house and not for those who had been
praying in shul.
I kept my children close to me and continued davening.
The words of the prayers were suddenly so meaningful:
"Take pity on Your creatures,
Give honor to Your nation...
Hope to those who seek You,
Joy unto Your land,
Happiness to Your city."
Everything evoked a surge of emotion, everything seemed
suddenly so relevant.
"Israel is redeemed through Hashem,
An eternal redemption.
Today, also,
They will be saved with Your word...
Hide us protectively in the shadow of Your tent,
Beneath the wings of Your Shechina."
Cars braked to a stop in front of the swaying, sobbing figures
that still prayed.
"Pray for us, too!" the drivers cried out with a sudden love
for their religious brethren, which up to that moment they had
not known they felt.
*
The succeeding night was spent glued to the radio. Children
wet their beds, crept into parents' for safety and
reassurance.
There was no patience for anything, not even for prayers, just
an overwhelming nervousness and great unrest.
There was a call for drivers with cars to help transport
medical and army supplies to Tel Hashomer Hospital. The place
was dark and silent, all faces were grim. Seriously wounded
soldiers kept arriving by helicopter. There was no doubt that
a serious battle was being fought, that great losses were
being suffered.
Total blackout at night. There were almost no men in the
streets. They were all guarding the country, either as
soldiers at the front or in kollel through Torah study and by
praying non-stop. Eyes of the women were far off, distant.
Even when they spoke, they were vague, as though they were
somewhere far away.
Israel prepared for the festival of Succos with an intensity
as yet unmatched.
All the foodstores were jammed. In no time, the shelves were
empty. There was neither fish nor meat for Yom Tov, nor eggs
or sugar, either.
Ironically, the Transport Administration announced that to
compensate for the many inconveniences that Israelis were
suffering, public transportation would operate on Shabbos.
No overseas mail was being distributed, probably to prevent
our finding out how bad things really were from friends
abroad, where the truth could be told.
Groups of women gathered together to pray, reminding one
another that troubles befell Jewry when the orthodox didn't
behave: a totally different approach than that of an American
we knew who yelled, "The secular camp lit the fire, let them
put it out!"
Sirens shrieked at four in the morning. Everyone proceeded
grimly down to the shelter, but before all the neighbors had
arrived, the all-clear signal sounded and everyone trekked
back up again.
Some people laughingly complained about why they had had to go
through the whole trouble for nothing, while Baila, who had
fallen off the upper deck of her bunk bed at the first wail of
the siren, cried hysterically of pain in her back and
chest.
Haphazard highs followed all reports of victory, fear grabbed
us all when the sirens wailed.
All Yom Tov, the house was crowded with sleepover guests,
apprehensive to be on their own or afraid to walk home in the
dark. One American woman stayed on all week with her son
because bus service to Bat Yam had been suspended and to get
there by taxi was too expensive.
With a blackout stringently enforced every night, we either
sat in darkness, glued to the radio, or hung heavy blankets on
the windows, so that not a sliver of light would escape. The
streets at night were pitch black. Moving cars were forbidden
to use head lights and street lamps had been disconnected.
Life seemed to have stopped. People went about with a haunted
distant look in their eyes. There was suddenly no sense in
doing the things that just days before had seemed so
important. The only thing that mattered anymore was the radio
and the news reports from the front.
You slept with one ear open; you woke at every sound.
When sirens pierced the night, children groped their way
through the darkness of blacked-out rooms, seeking the comfort
and security of an adult's presence. "I'm afraid," they
whimpered as they cuddled deeper into the crook of a mother's
arm before the hurried, silent descent to the shelters began.
Sleep disheveled adults hugged robes more tightly round them;
distraught mothers unsuccessfuly attempted to quiet their
crying babies and startled children. Many times, neighbors met
one another for the first time, nodded to each other with the
questioning eyes of people who wondered what same fate had
thrown them together.
Life hung in the balance. The Judgment that had begun
on Yom Kippur continued to be rapped out in the lists of dead
and wounded and captured. After the first initial cry of
bewilderment, the mourners sat down on their stools and
bemoaned the young and the innocent who would never return.
For them, those parents and widows and orphans, the victories
and peace that would follow would always be hollow: their
sacrifice had been very great.
Throughout the day, schoolchildren formed groups and sat in
circles on the grass, chanting Tehillim. Throughout the night
prayers shattered the silence. Wherever you went, you saw
people looking up to Heaven and speaking directly to
Hashem.
On the front, the Yom Tov of Rejoicing passed silently.
Bayonets were laid aside as esrog and lulov were
passed wordlessly along the lines, from hand to hand, from
heart to heart.
"...Who has sanctified us with His commandments" was shouted
out above the scream of war. "...Who has sanctified us with
His commandments," was shouted out amidst the stench of death.
"...Who has sanctified us with His commandments" and connected
us to Him in holiness in both life and death.
*
The United Nations announced a cease-fire.
The Americans were overjoyed; not so the Israelis, who felt
that they had been short-changed, if not openly double-
crossed. Why was it, they asked, that only when Israel had the
upper hand in a conflict did the world powers suddenly
intervene and stop hostilities, whereas when the Arabs had the
upper hand, the same administrants of justice took their
time?
A Rebbe in America phoned one of his close chassidim in
Israel to express his great joy that at last there was peace
in the region. The chossid never hesitated to inform
him that until Moshiach came, there would never be peace in
Israel, and that the Rebbe should keep on praying for
Moshiach.
Sometimes, though, I had the feeling that perhaps we weren't
exactly ready for Moshiach to show up right away. Rumors
circulated that according to Kabbalistic numerical equations
and calculations, Moshiach should truly be arriving on Hoshana
Rabba; a feeling of nervousness set in. Whether it was the
apprehension of the Judgment that would follow his arrival or
just plain laziness to have to readjust to a `New World Order'
is hard to say. But maybe, it was much simpler than all that.
Maybe many of us today have become so anesthesized and blinded
by both the physical and spiritual blessings in our lives that
we don't even realize anymore what we're missing.
For the Jews in the death camps, there was no such problem. As
they starved and bled and suffered each day a hell on earth,
they had no doubt for whom they were waiting: Moshiach. Ani
maamin was their theme song.
Must we really hit rock bottom before we realize how much
we need him? Must we really be reduced to the lowest common
denominator before being sure that we really need him to
come?
Had my mother been alive and heard that Moshiach was going to
show up on Hoshana Rabba, and that everyone was expected to
sit in his succa holding his lulov in hand, she
would have dug up her most precious jewelry and put on her
chasuna outfit and sat in the succa waiting...
forever... certain that he would come. And I, just one
generation removed, just one generation deeper in the darkness
called golus, was too exhausted, physically,
emotionally, battle-fatigued, I guess, to even get out of
bed.
"But Ma," my ten-year-old daughter burst out, completely
broken, unable to accept my unenthusiastic response, "Moshiach
is coming and all you're interested in is going back to
sleep!"
Perhaps it was my fault that he didn't come...
How disappointed my children were, when after sitting all
afternoon in the succa with lulov in hand,
Hoshana Rabba passed and he still hadn't come!
*
Whenever Israelis passed us on the street, they stopped to ask
in disbelief, "What! You're still here?"
They were certain that at the first sign of trouble, the
Americans had all run back home.
I was equally surprised with their reaction. Hadn't we, by
coming to live in Israel, openly declared that our destiny was
interwoven with that of our people's, that nothing would
separate us from our nation's fate?
Suddenly, I could imagine how the Jews in Europe felt when the
Nazis came to power and began their mass annihilation of them
as a people, while Jews, safe in their peaceful havens the
world over, were silent, not even aware of the atrocities
their European brethren were suffering as a korbon, for
all of Jewry.
I was suddenly overwhelmed with remorse and guilt for not
having related with more compassion and empathy to the
survivers of the Holocaust who had been resurrected from the
Valley of Death, for not having understood that their crushed
spirits and wrecked lives were the price they had paid for
carrying the burden of all Jewry on their broken backs.
But then, on Yom Kippur, I realized that my sin could be
erased. Having come to live in Eretz Yisroel with our family,
we had proclaimed that our own personal destiny was now
knotted with the destiny of our people. In a way never to be
undone. If Jews in Israel were going to suffer because they
were Jews, we were going to suffer there together with
them.
