“Victory”

It has been a few days since I wrote anything, in no small part because the semester started yesterday, and there are too many distractions that go with that.  The real reason though is that we have reached the point when the topics I want to write about take a little longer, and are a little bit more difficult.

The following pictures are not yet on facebook, because I wanted to tell the story first.

A few days into our trip we were joined by a group of young Israelis.  Two of them were still in the military, while the others had finished their service and were now university students.  One of those students was Ofir.  Ofir grew up in Jerusalem, served in the Army and is now a law student.

On the second day with the Israelis we went to Yitzhak Rabin’s memorial, and got a taste of Ofir’s personal experience with terrorism, and he gave a brief insight into the mind of those who disagreed with Rabin’s vision for peace.  The space was less than ideal, and our time was short, so we left it at that.

The next day we were in Jerusalem and went to Mt Herzel, Israel’s version of Arlington, after having been to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial that morning.  While there we stopped at the memorial for terrorist victims and Ofir told us the full story.

 Ofir finding his friend's name on the wall. 

When Ofir was 16, like many he enjoyed going out with friends. On that night he and his best friend went to Ben Yehuda Street, even though their parents had asked them to not go out. They went out anyway, and fatefully agreed to have their pictures taken by the old man offering cheap pictures of people. A few minutes later a bomb went off and his friend was killed.

In telling his story it was clear that almost 10 years later it is still incredibly painful for Ofir, but I don’t think he was the only one with tears in his eye after telling the story.

Later that evening, our schedule sent us to Ben Yehuda Street for a relaxing night out.  While walking we passed a water fountain, which Ofir pointed out was the memorial to a victim of terrorism, killed by rooftop snipers. A few blocks later, as the group spread out, Ofir showed us the place where his friend was killed. The buildings around still had some marks, including a metal overhang still marked by shrapnel that was a good 75 feet away from the spot.

 The spot is just to the right of the Change store. The awning with shrapnel is out of the picture to the left on the same side of the Ben Yehuda but across the alley.

What this story is really about is the question I asked Ofir.  While standing in front of the memorial to his friend and a dozen other Israelis, many of them teenagers, I asked “How does it feel to come out and drink and go to clubs in the place where your friend was killed?”

Ofir looked me in the eye and said one word: “Victory”.

I can’t think of any phrase that better sums up the very fact that Israel exists.  While at the memorial Jamie spoke a little to the fact that there was a movement for many years to build something commemorating the victims of terrorism and it was resisted. After the Second Intifada, there came a point of view that Jamie described with, “Simply by choosing to continue to live here everyone is serving and being brave.”

As I have discussed in prior posts, there was an effort in the early days of Zionism to create a new kind of Jew. This new Jew would be different from the ultra religious Jew hiding in the shtetls of Eastern Europe. This new Jew would fight for the right to survive and would win.

The question formed in my mind after visiting Yad Vashem, “Did we create a new Jew or did we simply put a new emphasis on something that has been there for 2000 years?”  The Jewish state was destroyed in 70 CE, yet we still existed when Zionism was founded at the turn of the 20^th century.

Our last day in Israel we stayed at a Kibbutz in the hills outside Jerusalem built in the 30s, about 6 months after 5 Jewish farmers were killed by terrorists. Its existence is the Jewish response everywhere in Israel (and in Ofir’s answer), “We will build”.  When they fight us we will continue on.  But to me that same streak existed even in the victims of the holocaust.

When a young man my age can get children to sing traditional songs as they are taken into a gas chamber, that is the same courage and faith. When a rabbi says the Shema and thanks God for existing as he is killed, that is the same courage and faith; the belief that we as Jews will always survive and prosper and grow no matter how many obstacles are thrown in our way.

Of course, the question is, where do we go from there as Jews who do not live in Israel or who do not live with the threat of pogroms?  It is easy to be Jewish in America, even in the South when I have lived in places surrounded by prejudiced people at times I have never felt unsafe or threatened. On Saturday night if I want to get a beer I will just drive downtown and not think twice about it. The idea that by going to a place like Glenwood South I could be killed by a bomb at any time is something that would never even cross your mind.

So are we part of the old Jews, that may have had courage, but spent their lives hidden in their religion and culture? Or are we part of the new Jews, forged by the Holocaust and the fight for Israel’s existence that grow and prosper and maintain our culture while changing that culture? Do we have to choose?