Ever since the news reported their disappearance, we
have been hoping, praying, and some pleading for the safe return of Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16,
the three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped on June 12. Yesterday, all those
words that each of us kept repeating seemed to fall short as reports quickly
spread that those three boys were found murdered with the last whispers of one
of the victims recorded by a phone call placed to 100, Israel’s emergency
hotline. “They’ve kidnapped me.”
This
national and international tragedy came to a tearful conclusion today… while
difficult for me to express, the first line I read in a Times of Israel article
today perfectly captured that whish we are all experiencing:
“Despite frantic prayers and more than two weeks of
desperate searching, the saga of the three kidnapped boys ended Tuesday with
the mourner’s kaddish, the traditional prayer for the dead, with three families
clasped in prayer and an entire country standing behind them.”
I
heard the news, debates, and questions on the radio all morning and watched as
the news streamed across my screen all day but until I read my email this
evening I wasn’t even sure I would be writing this post (I encourage you to
read the email pasted below from Rabbis Shraga Sherman & Mendy Cohen of Chabad of the Main Line). There are few words that can be
said at this time that mean anything. It may be difficult for some to
understand, and I have had to explain it a few times, but our connection to
Israel is not just to a piece of land. We are one with Israel in body, mind,
heart, and soul. No matter where we are in this world or where we are in life,
we are one. These are our boys.
Unfortunately,
as we still mourn we know that soon we will be defending ourselves to the same people
that now offer their condolences because we are allowed to mourn and suffer
tragedy but we are not allowed to fight back and defend ourselves against
future tragedy. It is this constant back and forth of the emotional pendulum
that also binds us together but, right now, we mourn. We silently remember ‘our
boys’ and ask that our renewed prayers are heeded… let them be the last.
B"H
Shalom,
Yesterday, we all heard the tragic news from Israel. There
are few words. Only grief. Sadness. Pain. For 18 days, the Jewish world was so
united. We became one family. Our differences and labels of affiliations were
pushed to the side. These 3 boys united us. They made us one. Eyal, Gilad and
Naftali became our sons... our brothers... No, we never met them but they were
OURS... We prayed, we cried, we demanded, we posted - BRING OUR BOYS HOME! It
was OUR boys. The power of this unity deserved a different ending. Deserved a
reunion of the Jewish world with their boys. Deserved an all night/all day
dancing session at the Western Wall celebrating their safe return to their new
large family, the family of Klal Yisroel. But it was not meant to be...
We are left heartbroken... numb... in grief... and angry...
First, we must mourn. There is a need for us to realize it
is okay to cry and mourn the loss of a loved one... it is beyond words of
consoling... it is real pain and tears... We lost 3 children... 3 brothers...
As those families are now sitting shiva, we too feel that the deep sense of
loss and the love we have for these children and their families.
It is only after we mourn that we will need to deal with our
anger. The united Jewish family will have to stand strong and give the Land of
Israel the support they will need and deserve.
Today is also the 20th yahrtzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe,
On the anniversary of a tzadik’s passing, all the light that he planted in this
world—his teachings, good deeds, and everything in which he invested his life
and being—all this shines brightly, so that anyone connected to him can receive
blessings of life, happiness and wisdom. Today more than ever the world needs
the comfort, the insight and the fortitude which the Rebbe taught us.
I have pasted below an article just released by Rabbi
Jonathan Sachs, very well said…
Just as we mourn together today, so may we very soon
celebrate together. May there be many Simchos by all of us, with the ultimate
Simcha, the coming of Moshiach. May it already take place.
Rabbis Shraga Sherman & Mendy Cohen
P.S. - There will be a Farbrengen this evening at 9:15 p.m.
(Chabad of the Main Line, 625 Montgomery Ave, Merion) marking the Rebbe’s 20th
Yahrtzeit. It is a good time for us to be together and hear words of strength
and inspiration. Please join us.
In memoriam Eyal, Gilad and Naftali from Rabbi Jonathan
Sacks
This past Shabbat we read the parsha of Chukkat with its
almost incomprehensible commandment of the red heifer whose mixed with
"living water" purified those who had been in contact with death so
that they could enter the Mishkan, symbolic home of the glory of God. Almost
incomprehensible, but not entirely so.
The mitzvah of the parah adumah, the red heifer, was a
protest against the religions of the ancient world that glorified death. Death
for the Egyptians was the realm of the spirits and the gods. The pyramids were
places where, it was believed, the spirit of the dead Pharaoh ascended to
heaven and joined the immortals.
The single most striking thing about the Torah and Tanakh in
general is its almost total silence on life after death. We believe in it
profoundly. We believe in olam haba (the world to come), Gan Eden (paradise),
and techiyat hametim (the resurrection of the dead). Yet Tanakh speaks about
these things only sparingly and by allusion. Why so?
Because too intense a focus on heaven is capable of
justifying every kind of evil on earth. There was a time when Jews were burned
at the stake, so their murderers said, in order to save their immortal souls.
Every injustice on earth, every act of violence, even suicide bombings, can be
theoretically defended on the grounds that true justice is reserved for life
after death.
Against this Judaism protests with every sinew of its soul,
every fibre of its faith. Life is sacred. Death defiles. God is the God of life
to be found only by consecrating life. Even King David was told by God that he
would not be permitted to build the Temple because dam larov shafachta,
"you have shed much blood."
Judaism is supremely a religion of life. That is the logic
of the Torah's principle that those who have had even the slightest contact
with death need purification before they may enter sacred space. The parah
adumah, the rite of the red heifer, delivered this message in the most dramatic
possible way. It said, in effect, that everything that lives - even a heifer
that never bore the yoke, even red, the color of blood which is the symbol of
life - may one day turn to ash, but that ash must be dissolved in the waters of
life. God lives in life. God must never be associated with death.
Eyal, Gilad and Naftali were killed by people who believed
in death. Too often in the past Jews were victims of people who practiced hate
in the name of the God of love, cruelty in the name of the God of compassion,
and murder in the name of the God of life. It is shocking to the very depths of
humanity that this still continues to this day.
Never was there a more pointed contrast than, on the one
hand, these young men who dedicated their lives to study and to peace, and on
the other the revelation that other young men, even from Europe, have become
radicalized into violence in the name of God and are now committing murder in
His name. That is the difference between a culture of life and one of death,
and this has become the battle of our time, not only in Israel but in Syria, in
Iraq, in Nigeria and elsewhere. Whole societies are being torn to shreds by
people practicing violence in the name of God.
Against this we must never forget the simple truth that
those who begin by practicing violence against their enemies end by committing
it against their fellow believers. The verdict of history is that cultures that
worship death, die, while those that sanctify life, live on. That is why
Judaism survives while the great empires that sought its destruction were
themselves destroyed.
Our tears go out to the families of Eyal, Gilad and Naftali.
We are with them in grief. We will neither forget the young victims nor what
they lived for: the right that everyone on earth should enjoy, to live a life
of faith without fear.
Bila hamavet lanetzach: "May He destroy death forever,
and may the Lord God wipe away the tears from all faces." May the God of
life, in whose image we are, teach all humanity to serve Him by sanctifying
life.
