Parashat Beha'alotecha: This One's For You, Dad

 Dedicated to the memory of my dear father, R’ Yitzchak Asher ben Yechezkel Shraga on the anniversary of his passing.

Dear Dad,

I’m writing to you because you’ve been on my mind throughout the last year, particularly over the course of this week.

I am writing these words on Tuesday evening, in the knowledge that in just over 48 hours, I will be reaching the end of my year of aveilut/mourning for you.  I will mark the occasion by switching off the electric light imprinted with the words ‘Ner Neshama’ – ‘a light for the soul’ at the end of the day, once darkness has fallen.

The light has remained on since 3^rd July last year, corresponding with 14^th Tammuz which was the day your soul left the home it had inhabited since the end of 1927.

Actually, I’m not being wholly accurate.  The light was damaged when your step great-grandchildren dropped a board game on it causing a temporary blip!  Thankfully Benjamin, Stephnie’s youngest son and Adam, Gabrielle’s boyfriend, worked their magic to restore it. Sorry about that!

As you know, in this week’s Parasha of Beha’alotecha, we read that G-d told Moshe to instruct his brother Aharon on the process of preparing and kindling the Menorah for its daily use in the Mishkan. These instructions were passed on to his sons and descendants.

To this day, every shul in the world has a ner tamid/everlasting light to remind us of the Menorot in the Mishkan and Batei Mikdash/Temples.  This is in addition to our recreating the act over the eight days of Chanukah in our homes.

Dad, you know that in Judaism, we put great emphasis on the importance of light.  Every Friday night, we light candles in honour of Shabbat and bid farewell to our holy day through the kindling of the Havdalah Candle the next day.

We appreciate that, just as wicks or candles bring light to the world, so do people.  When you smiled, your soul shone through your eyes.  You lit up a room and brightened the mood.

Your ner zikaron, though small and placed in the corner of our living room, has been a lasting reminder of how missed you are and the modest light it emits has been a constant reminder that, by your loss, our lives have been darker.

The practice of lighting a Yartzheit candle for a departed relative on the Hebrew anniversary of their passing probably goes back to Mishnaic times, whilst the lesser known minhag/custom of keeping a light on in the home for a year is more recent.  In the past, Chabad communities would ensure that a candle was lit over the period of the year in the shul.  These days, we use electric memorial boards instead.  They are probably safer too!

A contemporary Rabbi, the Nitei Gavriel, Rabbi Gavriel Zimmer, who lives in Boro Park (which isn’t far from where you lived) quotes the Ruach Chayim (Rabbi Chaim Palagi d.1868) who was the Turkish (and therefore Sephardi) Chief Rabbi of Smyrna as being the source for this custom.  I remember when you honoured your parents by keeping a light on for an entire year upon their passing (along with mum’s departed relatives).

Dad, you and mum provided much of the spiritual light that powers me today.  You encouraged me to develop my knowledge and share it with others.  You lit the internal menorah that burns brightly inside me to this day, replicating the beautiful acts performed by Aharon as described at the start of Beha’alotecha.

I therefore feel a modicum of sadness knowing that when I push that switch, the light that served as a bridge between the day you passed away and the end of my year of mourning will be extinguished.

The consolation I will have lies in the knowledge that, although the physical light will return to the drawer that keeps it safe on non-Yartzheit days, the spiritual light that I received from you will never be diminished inside me.

As Jews, we understand the concept of darkness.  At times like these, it sometimes feels that we are enveloped deeply inside it.  But, dad, you always taught me that each day brings new hope and you made me realise that we should be thankful for the light we are blessed to have through the family we have and the friends we treasure.

Sure as last summer was followed by autumn and then winter, before I knew it, spring had arrived and now, in early summer, it is the time for me to end my year of mourning for you.

I want to start this new year remembering you without the bitterness of mourning and although that means moving on, it also gives me the opportunity to bathe in the light that you provided for me.

Thank you, Dad and take care of Mum up there for me.

Your loving son, Claude.

Shabbat Shalom.

Parashat Bemidbar: Saving Private Cohen

Note: The following Drasha/Sermon was written before the extraordinary (and miraculous) rescue of the four hostages from Gaza on the morning that I delivered the sermon (I only found out about the events after the termination of Shabbat). The courageous joint operation by the IDF, Shin Bet (Security Services), Yamam (National Counter-Terrorist Unit and Police) emphasised the message that I am conveying in these words.

This Drasha is dedicated to the memory of Police Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora, zichrono livracha (of blessed memory) who was tragically killed during the rescue.

Twenty-four minutes.

If you’ve seen the film ‘Saving Private Ryan’, this is the length of the vivid recreation of the  D-Day landings that introduces the story.  It is so graphical in its depiction of the horrors of war, that once witnessed cannot be easily forgotten.  At the time, one of the veterans of the 101st Airborne Division was quoted as saying, “it felt like I was right there again.  It was so damned real.”  Another one said, “That’s as real as a movie could get without the smell of gunpowder and putrefying bodies.” A third, representing the views of many, spoke to CBS News and said how, “watching the movie was like being back in battle.” (https://tinyurl.com/y6z5dewn)

In fact, the depiction of the Normandy Invasion (and the subsequent story) was so accurate that the United States Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) provided a free telephone hotline to help any veterans who had viewed the film cope with the PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) they experienced from watching the film.  Some veterans found it difficult to sleep and found solace in the fact that the screen they were watching it on ‘could block the barrage of bullets that were coming their way’.

Those twenty-four minutes are, at least in my mind, some of the most harrowing scenes I have ever witnessed on the silver screen.

For the uninitiated, the film, though fictional in nature, tells the story of a group of soldiers led by Tom Hanks’ Captain John Miller, who are sent on a mission in occupied Europe to rescue Private James Frances Ryan.  Following the battle, we are told that two of his brothers were killed on the beachhead and a third had been killed in action in New Guinea.  Subsequently, their mother would receive three of the dreaded telegrams on the same day.  To alleviate the grief she would be feeling, it is known that there is a fourth son and that their mission is to bring him back home.  At this time, it is not clear whether or not Private Ryan is still alive.

The tagline for the film was: ‘In the Last Great Invasion of the Last Great War, The Greatest Danger for Eight Men was Saving...One.  The mission is a man.’

The true story which inspired the film derived from a 1944 application of the ‘sole-survivor policy’ with regard to repatriating to the United States Paratrooper Frederick Niland who had lost his three brothers in the war.  To spare his parents the agony of losing all four of their sons.

On Thursday, we commemorated the eightieth anniversary of that invasion.  The US National D-Day Memorial Foundation has calculated that 4,414 allied personnel were killed on 6^th June 1944.  This included 2,501 Americans, 1,449 British, 391 Canadians and 73 from the other Allied contingents.

Wednesday marked the fifty-seventh anniversary of another battle and one that was arguably just as significant to our people.  I am of course referring to the liberation of Jerusalem on 7^th June 1967 (corresponding with 28^th Iyar 5727).

776 IDF soldiers were killed in action over the course of the Six Day War which is less than 20% of those who fell on D-Day.  However, the reunification of Jerusalem is as significant a part of our Jewish history as D-Day was to the countries fighting each other over the course of the Second World War.  In both cases, the outcome led to the eventual defeat of nations who were sworn enemies of the Jewish people (setting aside the Japanese who are not included here).

The Nazis wanted to rid the world of its Jews.  The Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians wanted to rid Israel of its Jews.  Their methods may have been different (and I am not comparing the Arab Armies to the Nazis and their allies) but they were united in their hatred of our people.

Fortunately, after nearly a hundred years, we are at peace with all our former enemies (aside from Syria).

I haven’t come across a film called ‘Saving Private Cohen’ set in a period which would recreate events from the first few weeks of June 1967.  I also can’t recall sitting through a twenty-four-minute depiction of what it must have been like to liberate the Old City as an IDF Paratrooper (for the record, it was the 55^th Paratrooper, Jerusalem and Harel Brigades along with armoured support that liberated the city…and of course Gd’s Divine Assistance!)

I have however found something else and you can read it in this week’s Parasha.

Bemidbar starts with Gd telling Moshe to take a census of the Bnei Yisrael just over a year after they had left Egypt.  Rashi tells us that Gd told Moshe to count the nation several times including a tally that took place following the sin of the Golden Calf followed by a further two in the desert.  The first census is detailed in this week’s Parasha near the start of the forty-year period and the second, later in the book, as they were about to enter the Land of Israel.

Rashi states that the reason why Gd wanted to count us was because of his love for the Jewish People.  As anyone who values something will tell you (such as a collector of artefacts), you derive a great deal of pleasure from numbering the items you own.  So it is with Gd who loves us so deeply that he wants to know how many children (in the widest sense of the word) He has fathered.

We are those ‘children’.

It is well-known that the IDF has a policy that they will never leave an injured or dead soldier on the battlefield.  To Tzahal (army), every soldier counts.  Every single chayal (soldier) is an extended member of the IDF family.  So, if Hollywood ever made a ‘Saving Private Cohen’ film, it’s accurate tagline would be: ‘In Every Israeli War, The Greatest Danger for Eight IDF Soldiers was Saving...One.  The mission is a man or a woman.’

We have witnessed this time and again in these last impossibly challenging and heartbreaking months where soldiers are being killed in their efforts to find our hostages.  Which other nation would see its nationals rushing to a war zone from every corner of the world as happened following the massacres of 7^th October?

On a daily basis in Gaza, our teenage brothers and sisters, accompanied by older soldiers, are literally risking their lives to save ‘Privates Berman, Ohana, Bibas, Sharabi, Bohbot, Goldberg-Polin, Shem-Tov’ and over a hundred other hostages.  They are fighting against an enemy who eagerly embraces the ideologies of those who brought savagery and evil into our world for the six years between 1^st September 1939 and 8^th May 1945 and the six days between 5^th and 10^th June 1967.

They do so because they understand that, in the words of the Talmud (Sanhedrin 37a):

‘Anyone who sustains one soul from the Jewish people, the Verse ascribes him credit as if he sustained an entire world.’

The fictional soldiers who risked their lives to save Private Ryan might have been based on those who brought Paratrooper Frederick Niland back to the bosom of his family.

Over 290 IDF soldiers have been killed trying to save the notional privates that I listed above.  Not to forget those who lost their lives trying to protect civilians on 7th October itself.

In the past, it was easy to distinguish between the oppressor and the oppressed.  That Israel, the true victim of Hamas’ genocidal policy, is treated as the enemy by some that we mistakenly considered to be friends is both shocking and deeply worrying.

We are so proud of our boys and girls in the IDF who are continuing the tradition that every single person counts.

We don’t need another 6^th June or 7^th October to remind us of what happens when evil is allowed to flourish.

May Gd who loves His people so much that He wanted to count us, take another census and help them to save our real ‘Private Ryans’ and hopefully, this will be the one which precedes the coming of Moshiach.

May he come speedily in our days and bring and to war forever.

Amen.

Shabbat Shalom.