Parashat Toldot: The Perennial Wanderers

 Looking through my parents’ documents recently, I came across my father’s British Certificate of Registration booklet which was issued to him on 26^th November 1963.

 

 

My mother and father had emigrated to this country just over a month before, on 20^th October (which was a week after Simchat Torah) and this was his ‘passport’, as it were, to settle in the United Kingdom.  A month later, and coincidentally exactly 62 years ago today, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

My parents had a framed photo of JFK on a shelf in our kitchen.  When I was old enough to understand, they explained what had happened to him.  His youthful demeanour and the tragedy of his untimely death filled my thoughts as I grew up.

Most crucially, the fact that his picture sat there for decades was a testament to my father’s wish that to his dying day he was, and would always be, American.  His levaya/funeral on 4^th July 2023 was proof (in my opinion at least) to his tenacity in holding on to his US Citizenship for the rest of his life (he refused to be naturalised in the UK).  I am in no doubt that he would have found the date on which he was buried highly appropriate and amusing!

Both of my parents were born in Antwerp, Belgium.  During World War II, my mother and her family lived in fear under semi-curfew in Spa, a village in the Ardennes, half-an-hour’s drive from the German border.  My father managed to escape to the US with his parents in April 1940 and grew up in New York City.

My mother’s parents were born in Australia and Poland respectively whilst my father’s began their lives in Belgium and The Netherlands.  My daughters’ maternal grandparents were born in Turkey and pre-state Israel.

This week’s Parasha of Toldot is very dear to my heart as it is my Barmitzvah sedra.  It begins with this verse (as translated in the Hertz Chumash):

And these are the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham begot Isaac (Bereshit 25.19)

Toldot details the lives of two of these generations, that of Yitzchak, Rivka and their twin sons, Yaakov and Eisav.  Within the first few verses, we learn that Yaakov has prepared a pot of lentils for his father Yitzchak, who is mourning the death of Avraham, the first of the Avot/Patriarchs.  At the tender age of 15, the youngster recognizes the significance of his grandfather’s passing whilst his eldest twin brother, Esav is more interested in feeding his stomach than aggrandising his soul.

By the end of the Parasha Yaakov, due to circumstances many of which are beyond his control, finds himself running for his life away from Eisav who wishes to kill him.

Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov were the first Jewish wanderers although Yitzchak, who moved around the country, was instructed by Hashem not to leave the land of Israel.  Grandfather and grandson began their lives in one country and found themselves having to leave it to reach another.  In Avraham’s case, initially from Ur Kasdim (in modern day Iraq) to Charan (in Southeast Turkey) and eventually to Eretz Yisrael.  In Yaakov’s, a journey in the opposite direction, culminating in Charan.

However, whenever they arrived in a location, they found themselves having to leave it, facing hostility and envy engendered by the local inhabitants.  Twice, Avraham had to pretend to be his wife’s brother to escape death and Yaakov had to deal with the machinations dreamt up by his deceitful uncle, Lavan.  Once settled back in Canaan, he found himself embroiled in the terrible events at Shechem (revolving around the violation of his only daughter, Dina) and in old age, when we are told that he finally settled (the first word in Parashat Vayeishev), his beloved son, Joseph was sold by his brothers and then taken down to Egypt.

There is a line towards the end of Fiddler on the Roof following the wistful song of Anatevka where Mendel the Rabbi’s son says, “And our forefathers have been forced out of many, many places at a moment’s notice.” To which Tevya shrugs and replies, “Maybe that’s why we always wear our hats.”  As a child of refugees, I can certainly relate to this.

We seem to be the perennial wanderers.  How many of us are still in the locations where we grew up?  There are many reasons why we may have moved.  Life has a way of opening up new paths and sometimes, financial constraints limit our abilities to stay where we would wish.  However, I also believe that there is something nomadic in our DNA, an internal drive to remind us that, as much as we would like to feel settled, we simply can’t.

My late great-grandfather, Aron Vecht, was born in Elburg, a historic town in the province of Gelderland and lived in London, Melbourne, Sydney, Cape Town, Buenos Aires and finally Antwerp where he passed away. He was later reinterred in the new city of Tel Aviv.  He was known as ‘The Wandering Jew’ and carries on this tradition.  Referencing Tevya’s response to Mendel, he also had a very distinctive hat!

There is a famous song from the early 1960s called ‘The Wanderer’ which was a sizeable hit for Dion DiMucci, a New York native with a proud Italian Catholic heritage.  Although the context is different, I think we can all relate to the line:

Oh well, I'm the type of guy who will never settle down… they call me the wanderer, Yeah, the wanderer.  I roam around, around, around…

Jewish history has branded us the Wanderers who roam around, around and around.

One day our dream, unlike Dion’s protagonist and ironically Dion himself, has been happily married to his wife Susan for the same period of 62 years, is to settle down in security, peace and harmony with our Gentile neighbours. Please Gd may it come to us and all of Israel very soon but until then, I’ll make sure to keep my hat nearby because you never know when and where I might have to wear it again.  Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov would no doubt agree.

Shavuah Tov.

Parashat Lech-Lecha: Avraham and Yitzchak (Rabin z'l)

 

Motzei Shabbat, 4^th November 1995, 11^th Mar-Cheshvan 5756

ISRAEL PM YITZHAK RABIN ASSASSINATED

The big capitalised yellow letters on Ceefax say it all:

 

I can hardly believe the news.  This evening after a peace rally as Rabin was getting into a car, he was shot at close range by an Israeli law student, Yigal Amir aged 25 who belonged to ‘The Jewish Vengeance Organisation’.  He died on the operating theatre at the Ichilov (Hospital).

I’m horrified by the news.  Truly and completely horrified.  I was no big fan of Rabin, far from it but I never, never wished him any personal harm.

This is a tragedy for him and the Jewish People.  Never, in the history of the State of Israel has a leader been assassinated.  And by a Jew...in my eyes, after the Yom Kippur War, this is the greatest tragedy to have hit The State of Israel.

That a Prime Minister was assassinated.

That Jew killed Jew.

I am crying inside for what has happened…

This extract comes from a diary entry I made, almost to the day, thirty years ago.  Before the internet took over and revolutionized our lives, Ceefax (you may need to look it up if you were born after the year 2000) was our digital source of information.

Who knew that within three decades, we could imagine a historical event that was on par and arguably even worse than either the Yom Kippur War or Rabin’s assassination?

Reading my words written so many years ago is a sobering experience.  I was three decades younger, recently engaged and ready to take on a very different world.  The one that existed before the 11^th, September 2001.  The Oslo Accords had been signed two years previously and we hoped, albeit naively, that there was a chance the matzav, the ‘situation’ in Israel, could change for the better.  Little did we know…

Like today, we had just read Parashat Lech-Lecha that Shabbat morning when Hashem tells Avram (as he was then) to:

“Lech lecha mei’artzecha u’mimoladetecha u’mibeit avicha el ha’aretz asher areka“

“Go forth from your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”

Rashi understands Gd’s command to Avram as being, not only for his physical betterment, but at the same time, for his spiritual benefit.  He was being told to leave behind everything that he knew, his geographical location, culture, identity and comfort to take on a radically new existence in a land that was pretty much foreign to him (although the Midrash tells us that he had already journeyed through Canaan at this point).

At the age of 75, two years older than Yitzchak Rabin was at the time of his murder, the Rambam admonishes Avram for going down to Egypt to escape the famine in Canaan.

 “Avraham sinned unintentionally by bringing his wife into danger.”

His honesty reminds us that even the greatest leaders, and Avram was one of these, are ultimately fallible.  Their journeys through life are not linear.  They are marked by missteps, by complexity and by the weight of responsibility.

Rabbi Shamshon Refael Hirsch sees Gd’s command as being a directive for Avraham (the name he will be given by Gd towards the end of the Parasha) to go alone.  This is a call to moral independence.  He is being told to detach himself from the society he inhabited in the past and to look to his own conscience to lead the way for others, irrespective of how popular it will make him.  In short, Avraham is the very definition of what it means to be a Jewish Leader.  He isn’t following the crowd but in fact, Gd’s call.  This is not an easy path to take.  He is being asked, as the old joke goes, to be the Prime Minister of what would become, 15 million Prime Ministers (not to mention the billions of Christians and Muslims who would venerate him in the future as the founder of monotheism).

It could have been so very different.

The evening of 4th November at Kikar Malchei Yisrael, as it used to be known, (or the King’s of Israel Square) had seen Rabin singing ‘Shir Lashalom’ or ‘A Song of Peace’ which had long been the anthem of the Shalom Achshav/Peace Now movement.

On its initial reception in 1969, it caused a stir, due to its anti-war message, particularly in light of the recent stunning (and miraculous) victories of the Six-Day War.  Over time, however, it gained wider acceptance, particularly following the discovery of a blood stained copy of the song’s lyrics in the Prime Minister’s pocket following the assassination.

Yitzchak Rabin, like Avraham, had forged a brave path of his own, firstly as the IDF Chief of Staff during the Six Day War, then as Israel’s Ambassador to the United States and finally as it’s Prime Minister.  He was remembered for his decisive decision-making during the famed Entebbe Raid of 1976 and then, in September 1993 as the leader who tried to forge peace with Arafat in the White House Garden under the watchful eye of his close friend, President Bill Clinton.

And like Avraham, he heard a call, not directly from Gd, but from history.  He understood that sometimes, leaders need to make choices that will be unpopular with their electorate, that will require the kind of decision-making that means risking everything to pursue a goal that lies in an unknown future – for the benefit of everyone else who doesn’t share the same vision.

Avraham left behind the land he grew up in, the culture in which he was immersed and every comfort he had derived from living physically and metaphorically in the shadow of his father’s house.

Yitzchak Rabin could trace his military experience to the War of Independence.  A soldier to the core of his being, he ended his speech on that warm September afternoon by quoting the famous verse from Kohelet (he was famously unable to pronounce the word ‘Ecclesiastes):

"A time to hate and a time to love; A time of war, and a time of peace.”

Adding sadly, ironically, considering what was about to transpire.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the time for peace has come".

We have encountered the many episodes which marked Avraham’s difficult and long journey through Eretz Yisrael.  However, we will note in a few weeks’ time that he ‘died in a ripe old age, aged and satisfied’.

This cannot be said of Rabin whose difficult and long journey helping to protect the country and nation he loved was curtailed.

Not by famine, not by Pharaoh, but by a fanatic.  By his assassin’s refusal to accept that within Judaism there must be room for disagreement without demonization.  That the covenant of Avraham is not only about land but about ethics.  About how we treat one another.  About how we disagree and how we resolve these arguments peacefully and respectfully.  About ensuring that our meeting places, from the Knesset to the Shul boardroom are oases of tolerance and peace.

Rabbi Sacks ztl once wrote

“The test of faith is not whether we can believe in Gd.  It is whether we can believe in one another.”

Lech Lecha is the beginning of Jewish history but Yitzchak Rabin’s assassination reminds us that history can unravel when we forget its moral core. 

Sadly, thirty years on, I fear that we have not learned from our mistakes.  The divisions within our people, both in Israel and abroad instil a fear in me that, Gd forbid, we could turn on one another again.  Perhaps not the extent of what transpired on that terrible night but in terms of the manner which loses the moral glue that binds us together as a nation.  Where the concept of ‘Kol Yisrael Areivim e la ze’ or all of us are responsible for one another becomes nothing more than a meme (again, you may need to look it up if you were born before 2000!)

As we join Avraham on his journey this week, what can we learn from his experiences?

·         What physical or spiritual journeys will we need to take as we look beyond this year?

·         What comforts will we have no choice but to give up as we leave them behind?

·         And finally, how can we ensure that our internal disagreements can never result in the tragedy that took place almost thirty years ago today?

Let us walk together, hand in hand.

Not in fear but in faith.

Not in silence but through singing.

Whether we choose ‘Shir Lama’alot’ or ‘Shir Lashalom’, let the song that we sing together bring us peace, both within our Jewish nation and in our dealings with our non-Jewish neighbours.

Shavuah Tov.