Rabbi Janet Marder

May 7, 2010

Blessed is the Match

Sunday, April 17 – a cool and breezy evening in Jerusalem. Together with hundreds of others, Shelly and I gather at the Western Wall for the official ceremony marking the start of Yom Hazikaron, the Day of Remembrance, Israel’s national day of mourning for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. This year we mourn for 22,684 soldiers killed in the line of duty since the founding of the state and 3,971 civilians killed by terrorists.

At 8 p.m. the flag of Israel is lowered to half-mast. The ceremony begins with the blast of a siren sounded for one minute all over the country. All business stops abruptly; traffic in the street halts and the nation mourns as one family, united in sorrow as they reflect on lives cut short and the terrible price paid for the Jewish State.

Throughout the simple, one-hour ceremony at the Wall, I hear no whispering or fidgeting. Israelis are generally a chatty, irreverent bunch, but all around us the crowd stands silent as they listen to Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, and Gabi Ashkenazi, Chief of Staff of the IDF. They offer us no pompous platitudes or pious clichés – only a compassionate acknowledgement of the pain suffered by grieving families and the determination to give meaning to their sacrifice. We end with El Malei Rachamim, a prayer that the souls of the dead might find peace, and we join in reciting Kaddish. Then in silence the crowd disperses.

All radio and television programs are cancelled for the next 24 hours. Shelly and I sit up late in our hotel room watching the broadcast of a memorial gathering in Tel Aviv – no speeches, just sad songs and poetry recited by Israel’s best-known performers to an audience of thousands who sit quietly in the moonlight, some of them weeping. All night long they show short films on TV about those who have died – pictures of the fallen soldiers as sweet-faced young children, as high school students arm in arm with their friends. All of them are heartbreakingly beautiful. There are interviews with their parents, brothers, sisters and wives about who they were and what they believed in.

I remember two films in particular. In the first, a middle-aged father from Iraq talks with barely-controlled grief about the death of his son, and how he had taught him to respect the State of Israel and serve it loyally to the best of his ability. When his son was killed, the man says, he decided to volunteer himself for army service so that he could help in some way to continue his son’s work. In the second film, an interviewer visits the home of a young widow and her four year old daughter, and talks gently with the little girl about what she remembers of her father. “Where is your daddy now?” he asks. “He is in heaven.” “And what is he doing there?” “He watches me all the time and thinks about me.”

Here, in this place, the dead are not anonymous statistics. The country remembers together its lost children who will never come back. Everyone knows their names; everyone sees their faces; everyone suffers along with their loved ones.

Monday morning, April 18 dawns bright and hot in the State of Israel. There is another siren – this one for two minutes, at 11 a.m. We are at the Artists’ House in Jerusalem when the siren begins, standing in the courtyard as the vibrant city comes to a standstill and the wailing sound goes on and on. Then, as the siren slowly dies away, we watch as cars and busses start their engines and the hum of conversation returns to the streets. The gardener nearby picks up his tools and get back to work.

Throughout the day there are public memorial ceremonies at every cemetery in Israel where soldiers are buried. In the afternoon we go to Har Herzl, the military cemetery at Mt. Herzl where the architect of Zionism is buried. We walk past endless rows of simple, identical stones -- they are all the same, regardless of the soldier’s rank – reading the names of boys killed at the age of 19, 20, 21 and the countries where they were born, and the year they made aliyah to Israel, and the battle in which they lost their lives.

We find ourselves in an area where there are graves of soldiers killed in the last few years. Quite suddenly we see David Grossman, one of Israel’s greatest writers, standing with his wife and speaking quietly to a crowd of friends who have come to console him for the loss of his son Uri, killed in Lebanon in August, 2006 at the age of 20. Just two days before his son’s death, Grossman and his fellow-writers Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua had made a public plea to the Israeli government to reach a cease-fire agreement.

Then we come to an area that is set apart from the others. Here are the remains of some who died outside the land of Israel – young soldiers from Palestine who parachuted into occupied Europe during the Holocaust to try to rescue Jews and organize resistance. Before me is the grave of the most famous of these – Hannah Senesh, who came from Hungary to Palestine in 1939, then went back three years later as a paratrooper. Dropped from a plane over Yugoslavia, she and her companions walked for four days and nights until they reached the Hungarian border.

There she was captured by the Gestapo, who soon discovered that she was carrying secret radio codes that could help them in their fight against the British. They interrogated her, tortured her for hours, even brought her mother, still living in Hungary, to her cell to try to force her reveal the codes, but Hannah refused to give up any information. Months later, still in prison, in November, 1944, she was executed by firing squad at the age of 23. In 1950 her remains were brought to Israel for burial at Mt. Herzl.

Hannah Senesh wrote her last poem in that Hungarian prison. It is called “Ashrei Ha-gafrur – Blessed is the Match.”

Ashrei hagafrur shenisraf v'hitzit l'havot.

Ashrei halehava sheba’ara b'sitrei l'vavot.

Ashrei halvavot sheyad'u lachdol b'khavod.

Ashrei hagafrur shenisraf v'hitzit l'havot.

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.

Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart's secret places.

Blessed is the heart with strength to stop beating for honor's sake.

Blessed is the match consumed in the kindling of flame.

Sooner or later, whenever I go to Israel, I know I will be overwhelmed by emotion. This time, witnessing Yom Hazikaron, followed that night by the joyous celebration of Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Independence Day, the emotions were especially intense.

My feelings centered on a quality that we don’t talk about very much in the liberal Jewish community. It is called in Hebrew “mesirut nefesh” -- literally, “handing over one’s soul” or “the readiness to give one’s life.” Mesirut nefesh can refer to the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. Its origins are biblical: it is why Abraham went into battle to rescue his kidnapped nephew; and Judah offered himself as a slave in place of his youngest brother, Benjamin; and Queen Esther risked her life and security when her people were in danger.

Mesirut nefesh led Hannah Senesh to go back into the hellish place she had fled; it led other young Jews who could have escaped the Nazis to stay behind with their parents and grandparents rather than abandon them. It led prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union to teach Torah and practice Judaism even if it meant being exiled to Siberia. Every year mesirut nefesh leads 18 year old Israeli boys to volunteer for the most dangerous and heroic service in the army in order to protect their family and their country.

In the broadest sense, mesirut nefesh is an act of devotion performed on behalf of others. It goes against the grain of a culture that focuses on individual rights and every man for himself. In these hard and cynical times, it insists on affirmation. It is the conscious decision to live for a larger purpose, to give oneself to the service of an ideal, to expend one’s best energies for the sake of something beyond the self.

This week the Jewish people lost a man who exemplified mesirut nefesh. When Rabbi David Forman was 20 years old he joined the Freedom Riders – civil rights activists who went down south to challenge racism and Jim Crow laws. In 1972, shortly after he was ordained at HUC in Cincinnati, he made aliyah, giving up a comfortable existence to carve out a life and career in Israel. Rabbi Forman served for several years in the Israeli army, worked as an educator for the Reform movement, was founding chairman of the Jerusalem Council for Soviet Jewry and chairman of Interns for Peace, married and raised four daughters.

In 1988 he founded Rabbis for Human Rights, an organization devoted to protecting minority rights in Israel and the territories by sounding the alarm whenever Palestinian rights are violated. Rabbi Forman saw his protests and his sometimes controversial stands as acts of love and patriotism; he was determined to create an Israel that would live up to the noble ideals of its founders. His favorite texts were from Deuteronomy – “Justice, justice shall you pursue” and from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: “Some are guilty, all are responsible.”

He was also a passionate Zionist and an articulate defender of the State of Israel who did not hesitate to speak out whenever he felt that anyone – including the organization he had founded – was unfairly attacking the Jewish State.

“His love of Zion was expressed in his ongoing efforts to make Israel an exemplary society,” said one of his colleagues. “He didn’t let his love of Israel get in the way of his criticism of it, nor did he let his criticism of the state ever cast a shadow over his love of it.” Another said: “Although David spent his entire adult life as an activist, in truth he wasn’t really a political person….He was a person whose heart and direct personal life experience simply drove him in the direction of the pursuit of justice. He felt he had no choice.”

Rabbi Forman was our scholar in residence here at Beth Am just six months ago. Though already ill with liver disease, he addressed our congregation with spirit, wit and erudition, pointing out the moral complexities involved in living in a country which must defend itself against daunting enemies while remaining faithful to its ideals.

I spoke to David just a few days before he died in a Dallas hospital while awaiting a liver transplant. In his last hours he said that he hoped he would be remembered primarily as a loving husband and father – for indeed he was. He passed away just ten days before his 66th birthday.

Upon learning of Rabbi Forman’s death, one of our members sent me a message: “A terrible, heartbreaking loss,” she wrote. “He was a remarkably gifted and forthright spokesperson for what is good and decent, and I'm grateful to have spent even a few days in his presence at Beth Am this past year.”

I think about this man, whom I first met 36 years ago, when I was a first-year rabbinic student in Jerusalem and he was our Assistant Dean – lively, funny, outspoken, determined to make us love Israel as much as he did; this man who was never much interested in material things and who lived his entire life in joyful service to his highest principles.

Tonight I honor his spirit of mesirut nefesh – the willingness to give oneself to something greater than the self; to sacrifice comfort and convenience for the sake of the Jewish people; to be a match consumed in the kindling of flame and yet to call oneself “ashrei” – blessed, happy and fortunate.

It is the same quality that burns in the hearts of all who serve our people, including the leaders of this synagogue. Quietly, without fanfare or expectation of accolades, all of them made the decision to offer themselves to our congregation and to build their lives around a larger purpose. Tonight we pay tribute to their commitment and devotion, to the sacrifices they and their families make during this period of service – a sacrifice we hope will be richly repaid in fulfillment and spiritual reward.

Tonight is our opportunity to recognize and thank these outstanding men and women who exemplify the quality of mesirut nefesh and who therefore have our affection and respect. As they begin their term of service to Beth Am, I’d like to call the members of our board of directors to come forward for a blessing, and I ask that you rise in their honor:

Don Allen, Barry Asin, Ann DeHovitz, Loree Farrar, Diana Friedman, Bill Greenwald, Jeff Hickman, Mark Holtzman, Brian Kaplan, Robert Lerner, Ben Lloyd, Stacy Mason, Mark Ostrau, Dan Rubin, Dan Siegel, Inna Spier, Neil Tuch, Barbara Windham, Jean Wolman, Sofia Zaslavsky, and our president, Rachel Tasch.

Blessing: Members of the Board of Directors: You have come to a place of honor in our congregation. With deep gratitude for the gifts of heart and mind you bring to board service, we offer this prayer: May the Holy One bless you with health and strength as you take on the holy work of synagogue leadership. May you find the wisdom to listen carefully to one another – and to all of us; the confidence to speak your mind and the courage to make difficult decisions. From the bottom of our hearts we thank your families for sharing you with the community; may they sustain you and laugh with you, and give you lots of love and kindness and understanding through the months ahead.

As Beth Am completes its 55th year, we give thanks for those who stand ready to accept the responsibility of leadership in every generation. Through our synagogue, the tradition endures in strength. Because of you, our leaders, this synagogue lives. Ashreinu – blessed, happy and fortunate is Congregation Beth Am. Thank you, God, for giving us life, and sustaining us in life, and bringing us to this time.