An unusual outpouring of emotion for an unusual ultra-Orthodox sect.
Yossi Klein Halevi, The New Republic Published: Thursday, December 04, 2008
Jerusalem, Israel
Gavriel and Rivkie Holtzberg, the young Israeli couple who ran the Chabad House in Mumbai and were murdered there by jihadists, died bound and helpless, like those Jewish martyrs disparaged for their quietism by the Zionist ethos. Ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Holtzbergs never served in the Israeli army--yet when they were buried on Tuesday, Israeli society mourned as though they were fallen soldiers. When their coffins arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport, they were draped in the national flag. Israeli leaders, including President Shimon Peres, who doesn't usually attend the funerals of terror victims, came to the Holtzbergs' funeral. When I came into work that morning, I found the young woman in the room beside mine weeping.
The devastating scene of the Holtzbergs' surviving two-year-old son, Moishe, calling out for his mother during a memorial service, was repeatedly shown on TV. But Israelis weren't only mourning the destruction of the Holtzberg family; they were mourning the loss of national heroes. Newspaper accounts recalled how Gavriel bribed prison guards in India to smuggle in wine for Shabbat to an Israeli inmate held on drug charges. Even after they lost a child to Tay-Sachs disease, the Holtzbergs insisted on remaining at their post--to continue, as Gavriel explained, "to do mitzvas," fulfill the commandment to help their fellow Jews.
In embracing the Holtzbergs, Israelis were restoring to the national ethos the old concept of kiddush hashem, religious martrydom--confirming a process that began with the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The iconic image of that war was a photograph of a religious soldier being led into Egyptian activity as he carried a Torah scroll. That image was so jarring precisely because it cast an Israeli soldier in the role of a pre-Zionist model of heroism. Since then, all our wars have ended inconclusively, expressions of the limitations of power. The more nuanced Israeli attitudes toward heroism are reflected in Jerusalem's renovated Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, which now not only extols the secular heroes, like partisans and ghetto fighters, but also those who responded to dehumanization by maintaining their religious dignity, running underground schools and prayer groups.
Since the Mumbai massacre, there have been calls here for the Israeli government to subsidize security at Chabad houses across the globe, seen by Israelis as extensions of home. "Our Chabad," summed up one headline on an Israeli news web site. The warmth with which so many Israelis have responded to Chabad proves--along with the growing popularity of prayer lyrics in Israeli rock music and of informal "secular" prayer groups spreading in Tel Aviv and elsewhere--that large parts of Israeli society may be entering a post-secular phase.
Still, it is doubtful the country would have reacted with the same emotional intensity had the Holtzbergs been ordinary ultra-Orthodox Jews rather than Chabadniks. Mainstream Israelis resent ultra-Orthodox Jews for separating from the state and its obligations even as they demand that it subsidize their separatism. Chabad neither separates nor demands, but gives. Israelis encounter Chabad's embrace most often abroad. When our young people just out of the army travel the most remote corners of the world (because military service doesn't provide enough dangers and thrills), they invariably encounter a Chabad house.
Israelis also love Chabadniks for their courage: Rivkie and Gavriel weren't yet buried when Rivkie's father announced his intention of taking over their work in the Mumbai Chabad house. Though few Chabadniks are drafted into the army, they don't avoid danger zones: Chabad activists rush to the front lines during war, providing religious services and dancing with soldiers to raise morale. One friend told me about her sister who was serving in a border post so sensitive that a visitor required special permission from the general in command of the front: "And then who shows up on Hanukah with jelly donuts? Chabadniks."
Contrast Chabad's embrace of the Israeli ethos with ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionists--one of whom, Leibish Teitelbaum, a member of the Satmar hasidic sect, was killed in Mumbai. Teitelbaum's family demanded that his coffin not be draped in the Israeli flag, even though his body had been retrieved and flown home by the Israeli government--a reminder that Jewish anti-Zionism is less an ideology than a character flaw, a lack of capacity for gratitude. Chabad defines itself by its love for every Jew; the anti-Zionists define themselves by the Jews they despise.
Israeli society reciprocated the Teitelbaums' contempt, barely noting that other funeral. Watching the mutual estrangement that even a common Jewish death couldn't heal, it felt like one of those moments in Jewish history when schismatic sects evolve into separate faiths.
Israelis know Chabad's flaws--the cars mounted with the late Rebbe's photograph and the words "Welcome King Messiah," the replicas built around Israel of the Rebbe's house in Brooklyn, complete with red bricks chipped in all the original places. And also Chabad's hardline politics: There was no territorial compromise, including Israel's withdrawal from Sinai in 1982, that Chabad didn't vehemently oppose. But many Israelis overlook the messianic looniness and the political rigidity because they crave a connection with a form of traditional Judaism that loves them unconditionally. And though it's rare in Israel's grudging public discourse to express gratitude, this week at least, Israelis offered Chabad that same unconditional love in return.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor at The New Republic and a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.
Showing posts with label Israelis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israelis. Show all posts
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Jews rally to help in search
The Jewish community from throughout the world has rallied behind the mounting search for missing Israeli backpacker Liat Okin, last seen on the Routeburn Track more than two weeks ago.
Two Christchurch-based New York rabbis from the international Jewish outreach group Chabad-Lubavitch were contacted by the parents of the missing 35-year-old Israeli social worker on Tuesday, just as the pair were about to fly to Queenstown after hearing of her disappearance.
Chabad New Zealand director Rabbi Mendel Goldstein said offers had flooded in from Israeli backpackers who have served in the infantry, and the New Zealand Jewish community, to help in the search.
Rabbi Goldstein and his assistant Oren Raz flew over the search area on Thursday witnessing first-hand the rugged terrain confronting searchers.
A copy of a Southland Times story given to them yesterday, recounting the miracle survival and rescue of two Israeli tourists off the Routeburn Track in 1987, was like an answered prayer to Rabbi Goldstein.
Udi and Nitzan Milo survived on a 2m by 3m ledge for five freezing nights below Emily Pass, where searchers have been looking for Ms Okin.
The Milos had fallen and fortuitously landed on the tiny ledge above an 80m waterfall. In desperation they flashed a mirror and Invercargill man Stuart Ryder noticed a flickering light from the Routeburn Falls Hut, raising the alarm.
In 1997 the pair flew back to Queenstown to thank their hero, rescue pilot the late Dennis Egerton.
"This story is just so inspiring — this is exactly what we've been envisioning," Rabbi Goldstein said.
"We keep telling her (Ms Okin's) parents what Grand Rabbi Menachem Schneerson has always urged us in such times as this, to think good and it will be good, remain positive and keep believing," Rabbi Goldstein said.
"She has been missing longer but not necessarily lost longer in her mind. She was very adventurous and fluid in terms of her plans," he said.
Ms Okin was renowned for her enormous willpower.
"Family and friends say she would never, absolutely never, give up," Rabbi Goldstein said.
Rabbi Goldstein said funding had been approved by the Sydney base of Chabad for extra search helicopters if required.
Two Christchurch-based New York rabbis from the international Jewish outreach group Chabad-Lubavitch were contacted by the parents of the missing 35-year-old Israeli social worker on Tuesday, just as the pair were about to fly to Queenstown after hearing of her disappearance.
Chabad New Zealand director Rabbi Mendel Goldstein said offers had flooded in from Israeli backpackers who have served in the infantry, and the New Zealand Jewish community, to help in the search.
Rabbi Goldstein and his assistant Oren Raz flew over the search area on Thursday witnessing first-hand the rugged terrain confronting searchers.
A copy of a Southland Times story given to them yesterday, recounting the miracle survival and rescue of two Israeli tourists off the Routeburn Track in 1987, was like an answered prayer to Rabbi Goldstein.
Udi and Nitzan Milo survived on a 2m by 3m ledge for five freezing nights below Emily Pass, where searchers have been looking for Ms Okin.
The Milos had fallen and fortuitously landed on the tiny ledge above an 80m waterfall. In desperation they flashed a mirror and Invercargill man Stuart Ryder noticed a flickering light from the Routeburn Falls Hut, raising the alarm.
In 1997 the pair flew back to Queenstown to thank their hero, rescue pilot the late Dennis Egerton.
"This story is just so inspiring — this is exactly what we've been envisioning," Rabbi Goldstein said.
"We keep telling her (Ms Okin's) parents what Grand Rabbi Menachem Schneerson has always urged us in such times as this, to think good and it will be good, remain positive and keep believing," Rabbi Goldstein said.
"She has been missing longer but not necessarily lost longer in her mind. She was very adventurous and fluid in terms of her plans," he said.
Ms Okin was renowned for her enormous willpower.
"Family and friends say she would never, absolutely never, give up," Rabbi Goldstein said.
Rabbi Goldstein said funding had been approved by the Sydney base of Chabad for extra search helicopters if required.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Jerusalem 2 Jersey
...New Jersey’s Israeli immigrant experience
[excerpt]
The Jewish connection
Hebrew school can affect more than just the children, though. Parents want to see their children become part of American life, said Hyman, but after a few years, they realize it is not just the children who are forgetting their Israeli and Jewish heritage.
"That’s when they join the shuls, send [the children] to Hebrew schools to learn traditions, and then after a while, [the parents] feel they miss Jewish life," Hyman said. "In Israel, it’s part of daily life. Here, you have to be a member."
Because of synagogues’ emphasis on membership, Hyman said, many Israelis are drawn to Chabad, which offers an open-door policy and no membership fees. "They welcome everyone," Hyman said. "You can come in your jeans, drive your car."
While Americans typically wear suits and ties to shul, Israelis will show up in jeans, said Rabbi Mordechai Shain, director of Lubavitch on the Palisades in Tenafly. "We don’t look at that," he said, explaining the attraction of Israelis to Chabad. "They get the same royal treatment, making them feel they’re still part of us."
A lot of Israelis, he said, are looking for Judaism when they come to America because they want to connect to something that’s still Jewish. "In Israel, they’re living in a Jewish country. Here, they’re not living in a holy, sanctified land and environment. They look for more Yiddishkeit, so they tend to come to [Jewish] programs much more than they would in Israel," he said.
On average, Friday night is the big draw for Israelis, Shain said. While some 120 out 170 people who come to Chabad on Saturday are American, about 50 out of 70 people on Friday nights are Israeli. Of the approximately 700 people who attended High Holy Day services this year, about half were Israeli, he said. Shain credits Chabad’s services, in part, for this influx of Israelis, describing them as like typical services in Israel.
"They feel like they’re in a shul in Israel," he said. "They don’t feel like they’re in some Americanized setting. They feel at home."
Although the service is Orthodox, Shain said the vast majority of Israelis who attend are not. In fact, many Israelis tell him that they are Israeli first and Jewish second, a perception that Shain tries to reverse. Secular Israelis, though, put their Israeli identities first, Sarna said.
"It’s so important to give a Jewish education to the children because in Israel you don’t have to be traditional; you know you’re Jewish," she said. "But here, if you’re not observant, then you really don’t have anything. Parents feel they are almost losing the kids."
The welcoming atmosphere at Chabad definitely helps counter that, Sarna added. "There are no preconditions. It’s open to all and [Israelis] feel very fortunate they have this home," she said.
[excerpt]
The Jewish connection
Hebrew school can affect more than just the children, though. Parents want to see their children become part of American life, said Hyman, but after a few years, they realize it is not just the children who are forgetting their Israeli and Jewish heritage.
"That’s when they join the shuls, send [the children] to Hebrew schools to learn traditions, and then after a while, [the parents] feel they miss Jewish life," Hyman said. "In Israel, it’s part of daily life. Here, you have to be a member."
Because of synagogues’ emphasis on membership, Hyman said, many Israelis are drawn to Chabad, which offers an open-door policy and no membership fees. "They welcome everyone," Hyman said. "You can come in your jeans, drive your car."
While Americans typically wear suits and ties to shul, Israelis will show up in jeans, said Rabbi Mordechai Shain, director of Lubavitch on the Palisades in Tenafly. "We don’t look at that," he said, explaining the attraction of Israelis to Chabad. "They get the same royal treatment, making them feel they’re still part of us."
A lot of Israelis, he said, are looking for Judaism when they come to America because they want to connect to something that’s still Jewish. "In Israel, they’re living in a Jewish country. Here, they’re not living in a holy, sanctified land and environment. They look for more Yiddishkeit, so they tend to come to [Jewish] programs much more than they would in Israel," he said.
On average, Friday night is the big draw for Israelis, Shain said. While some 120 out 170 people who come to Chabad on Saturday are American, about 50 out of 70 people on Friday nights are Israeli. Of the approximately 700 people who attended High Holy Day services this year, about half were Israeli, he said. Shain credits Chabad’s services, in part, for this influx of Israelis, describing them as like typical services in Israel.
"They feel like they’re in a shul in Israel," he said. "They don’t feel like they’re in some Americanized setting. They feel at home."
Although the service is Orthodox, Shain said the vast majority of Israelis who attend are not. In fact, many Israelis tell him that they are Israeli first and Jewish second, a perception that Shain tries to reverse. Secular Israelis, though, put their Israeli identities first, Sarna said.
"It’s so important to give a Jewish education to the children because in Israel you don’t have to be traditional; you know you’re Jewish," she said. "But here, if you’re not observant, then you really don’t have anything. Parents feel they are almost losing the kids."
The welcoming atmosphere at Chabad definitely helps counter that, Sarna added. "There are no preconditions. It’s open to all and [Israelis] feel very fortunate they have this home," she said.
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