Parashat Tazria Metzora: My Israel

 It is a memory emblazoned in my brain.

It was the mid-1980s.  I was in my late teens and having a glorious time working on kibbutz Rosh Tzurim.  It is located in the Gush Etzion region between Bethlehem and Hebron.  It lies just over three-and-a-half miles away from Efrat, the home of Rabbi Leo Dee and his family.

Back to my memories.

I had volunteered to work on the kibbutz and spent the morning picking nectarines.  This was the life!  I was due to return to London to complete my ‘A’ Levels but soaking in the atmosphere served to convince me of something that I had wanted to do for a very long time.

I stood at the rusty phone box and called home.

“Mum?  Hi.  How are you?”

“Fine.  You?”

“I’m great and I’ve decided that I’m not coming back.  I’m staying here.  Israel is my home.  That’s it.”

Silence.

At that moment, nothing in the world would convince me to change my mind.  I’d sort myself out.  I had family and friends in Israel and they would help me settle.  This was it.  I was going to make Aliyah.

It didn’t hurt that my first love lived (and still does) in Israel and she really wanted me to stay.

My mother however, knew better and soon she and my girlfriend, with whom she had a very special relationship, decided that it was best that I returned to the UK, finished my studies and then came back.  When you’re in love, everything your lady says makes sense, even if you don’t think it does.  To sum up, she convinced me to listen to my parents.  I came back and that Israel dream still lies unfulfilled, nearly forty years later.

There were other opportunities and I even came close to applying through the Aliyah department of the Jewish Agency but my efforts came to nought.  As an only child, leaving your parents behind is not an easy option and, in hindsight, despite my hopes and aspirations, I now realise that it was the correct course of action to take. 

What is it about Israel that ignited my inner passion, from the moment I entered the country for the first time at the tender age of seven?  What is it about Israel, a country which has witnessed some of the most devastating and cruel terrorist attacks on Jewish men, women and children since the end of the second world war, that fills me with such a longing to be there?

A country which has so much promise but, at the same time, is so fragile and faces existential threats from within and without?  Why does that memory burn so fiercely inside me?

During the night of 15^th January 1948, a convoy of thirty-eight Hagana soldiers was sent to the Gush region to deliver much needed supplies to the residents of the four kibbutzim who were blockaded by Arabs and militiamen in the surrounding villages.  They had no option but to travel by foot, following previous attacks on motorized convoys.  After three of the group were sent back as one of the men had sprained his ankle, the others were unable to reach their destination before the onset of daylight.  Having been spotted, they faced hundreds of armed Arabs who blocked their way and although the ‘35’ fought as valiantly as they could, they did not stand a chance and the last of the group was killed at about 4.30 pm that afternoon.  By the time the British authorities had reached them, a number of reports stated that their corpses had been ‘mutilated beyond recognition’.

This convoy, which had originally been called "Machleket HaHar" (The Mountain Platoon), was renamed as the ‘Lamed Hey’ – the ‘35’ even though only 23 could be identified when they were interred on Har (Mount) Herzl in Jerusalem.

All of this taking place not far from where I made that phone call.

So, what is it about the country that calls me to return again and again and again?

Rav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of (pre-State) Israel (who died in 1935) wrote that the sacrifice of thousands of Jews (who would tragically include the thirty-five a decade later) was not only physical but spiritual too.  These men knew what they were doing but like countless others before and since, they risked and tragically lost their lives to protect those of their fellow Jews. 

Israel has always been the spiritual centre and beating heart of the Jewish people.  For thousands of years, between the destruction of the Second Temple and the rebirth of the State (Hakamat HaMedina), it could not serve as a physical home but in our hearts and souls it cried out to us ‘from the depths’.  Throughout history, we looked to Zion as a beacon of hope – Tikva.  And seventy-five years ago, this coming Tuesday night and Wednesday, our prayers were finally answered.

This week’s double Parasha of Tazria and Metzora focusses on the inexorable connection between physical and spiritual health.  The plague of Tzara’at (which has been erroneously translated for centuries as ‘leprosy’) came about when a Jew spoke Lashon Hara (gossip) about another Jew.  What was manifested on the body, could spread to the person’s clothes and finally the home.  Why?  Because, when our spiritual health is diseased, it automatically impacts on our physical health.  It destroys everything in its wake.

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the tongue is more destructive than both.

Those thirty-five martyrs sacrificed their physical beings to protect the spiritual health of our nation.  It is the actions of these brave men and subsequent generations of Israelis, that called out to someone like me to make that phone call.  As it transpired, my modest contribution to our spiritual welfare lay beyond the borders of our beloved country.

Yom Ha’atzmaut always follows Yom Hazikaron.  One cannot appreciate the miracle that is Israel without first mourning those of our brethren who paid the ultimate price for its establishment.  Life and death are intertwined.  One cannot exist without the other.  But whereas death is the final step in our physical existence, it does not extinguish our spiritual entity as the soul lives forever.

So, despite all the deadly knocks that our Israel endures on a frequent basis, she refuses to give in.  She epitomises the Jewish soul which never gives up.

Today, it is Rosh Chodesh Iyar.  If you write the name Iyar in Hebrew (אייר), you have the acronym of Aleph Yud Yud Resh which can stand for ‘Ani Hashem (the two yuds) Refo’echa’ or ‘I am the Lord, your healer’.

This month contains three notable days which are (as I mentioned), Yom Hazikaron, Yom Ha’atzmaut and Yom Yerushalayim (which as we know is the anniversary of the recapture of our capital, Jerusalem in 1967).  Despite everything that our people endured, in this month, within the last three-quarters of a century, Gd healed us through the gift of the State of Israel.

And returning to the story of the ‘35’…Could they have envisaged that nearly half-a-century later, one young man, proudly wearing a kippah, standing in a tee-shirt and shorts at the end of a hot, sunny day clinging onto a telephone line (it was a collect call!) would have the opportunity to tell his mother that he wanted to live in the Jewish homeland?

A few hundred feet away from the place the ‘Lamed Hey’ fought for the heart and soul of Am Yisrael – the Jewish people.

That, my friends is but one reason why I made that call and would hazard a guess that it’s why every time we leave Israel, a piece of us stays behind waiting to be reclaimed when we return.

Kol od ba’le’vav p’nima,                                                                                                                    Nefesh yehudi ho’miyah.                                                                                                                               U’lefa-atei mizrach kadimah,                                                                                                                      Ayin le’Tziyyon tzofiyah.                                                                                                                                              

Od lo avda tikva-teinu,                                                                                                                                 Ha’tikvah bat sh’not al-payim                                                                                                                      Lih-yot am chofshi b’ar-tzeinu                                                                                                              Eretz Tziyyon v’Yerushalayim.

As long as within our hearts

The Jewish soul sings,

As long as forward to the East

To Zion, looks the eye.

Our hope is not yet lost,

It is two thousand years old,

To be a free people in our land

The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

 

Shabbat Shalom, Chodesh Tov and Chag Sameach