I want to do something I’ve never done in a Yizkor
sermon before.
I know so many of us are here with our own mourning and our memories of those we have loved and lost. And that is already painful
enough, without the weight of the deaths of this last year.
I know too of the tradition that, in that first year
after a death, we don’t even expect mourners to attend a Yizkor service. It’s
not something I would ever police, but I can understand that the experience of
a death, within the year, is too sharp for a decorous moment like this one.
And I know that there have been so many deaths for our
people, and for humanity, in this last year, that to pause overlong on just one
lost life risks, I’m not quite sure how to express it, an oversentimental
favouritism, possibly to suggest that one life takes precedence over any other
life. Clearly, I don’t mean any of that.
But I’m going to take the next minutes to share, as
this Yizkor sermon, the words of one bereaved parent, for one deceased child;
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of Hersh of blessed memory. Hersh Goldberg-Polin,
was taken from the Nova music festival on 7th October. Actually,
that’s not quite right. Hersh attended the festival to dance and fled the
terrorists who attacked it and took refuge in a roadside bomb shelter along
with twenty others who, with extraordinary bravery, survived as grenade after
grenade was thrown in and then thrown out. Then Hersh lost an arm in a grenade
explosion, and then he lost his freedom. And then nothing was heard of Hersh
until, 201 days, later there was a video, he was still alive. Then, most
tragically of all, on the 328th day after 7th October came
the news of his murder.
And throughout that unfeasibly awful time, Rachel
fought for her son, together with the lives of all the hostages, wearing a
strip of masking tape with the number of days that had passed since his capture
written on it, stuck to her chest.
I’m sharing Rachel’s words today, in some ways, as an
everyman; for all our pains of love and loss and memory and gratitude and fear
and anger and hope.
In some ways, I’m sharing Rachel’s words because it’s
been this last awful year, and I think we still need to hear how we need
to respond, even here so far away, to those awful events.
And I’m sharing Rachel’s speeches because, well I know
so many of us have heard them, because they are a kind of Torah for our age. I
am, I have been all year, in awe of Rachel’s strength and heart and also deeply
inspired by the way in which she drew on our tradition to articulate that strength
and heart. That’s helped me as I’ve done what I can for the release of hostages
and fought against the darkness that has risen against me when I’ve turned
towards the pain of the losses of this last year.
I hope it can help us all.
If you want to hear Rachel in her own voice, all these
speeches can be found on the Promised Podcast, the “Hersh Ben Perel Chana”
Edition.[1] It’s an
extraordinarily moving listen.
On Day 33 of Hersh’s captivity, Rachel said this;
There are 240
souls buried alive deep in the ground, but they are breathing, and here I wait
like Yaakov being told, here it's Yosef’s coat. It's all bloody, but just you
wait. One day, we will see them all again, and we will fall on their necks, and
we will weep when we see their faces and we see that they are still alive. When
the captives return to Seon, we will be like dreamers, and our mouths will
spill out with laughter all over the floor.
On day 67 at the United Nations in New York
City.
My name is
Rachel, and I am the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin. He is my eldest child, and
he is my only son in Gaza at this very moment, as we all stand here, there are
138 being held. They range in age from 10 months to 85 years old. They are from
nations all around the globe. They are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and
Buddhists. They have not been attended to, nor treated by any international aid
organization. And we, their families, want to ask you to look at their photos,
read their names and then replace their names with the name of Your own
daughter, son, father, mother, brother, sister, spouse, grandparent, and we
want you to tell us that you would do exactly what you have been doing for
these past 67 days to get them out. We all remain sleepless, and we all are running
to the ends of the earth. We are the best actors in the world. We act like
people, when really we are other beings, frozen in our acutely agonizing
desolation. On Friday night, October 6, right before Hersh left, one of the
last things I did was I blessed him. See on Sabbath evenings, Jewish parents
bless their children to be like specific biblical characters. Jewish boys are
blessed to be like the sons of Joseph, named Ephraim and Menasha. It's an
intriguing choice, given that there's so many more well-known biblical
characters. So why do we bless our boys to be like these two not so well-known
brothers? Up until Ephraim and Menasha, all biblical brothers suffered from
destructive hatred and poisonous rivalry; Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael,
Jacob and Easau, Joseph and his brothers. But Joseph has two children named
Ephraim and Menasha. And those brothers, they loved each other. It sounds so
simple, but suddenly, for the first time, we have biblical siblings who broke
the pattern of hatred between brothers. And every Friday night, Jewish parents
all over the world bless their sons to aspire to be like them, the brothers who
didn't fight.
We are at a
crossroads. And when I say we, I don't mean we Jews, Muslims or Christians,
Americans, Palestinians, Europeans, Israelis, Ukrainians, Russians. I mean we
humans. We can keep dividing the world into the paradigm of them versus us, or
we can start thinking about those who are willing and those who are not
willing. It's an idea that will require the most brave, creative, heroic
efforts and strengths unimaginable, for those who are willing, amidst ongoing
trauma, angst and suspicion, to build an idea of a future. We have got to learn
to live together, or all over the world, we are going to die together.
On day 166
I think of
Ishmael from Sefer Bereshit, when he and his mother, Hagar, were cast out into
the desert. You know, Ishmael runs out of water, and he begins to die. And the
text describes him crying out to God to save him. And just as [God] is about to
save him, our [classical Biblical commentators] tell us that the [angels] say
to God, God, what are you bananas? Do you know who this person is going to be,
the father of don't save him. He's going to be the father of all the future
enemies of your people... But our God is a God of mercy. Our God is a God of
compassion. Our God is a God of grace, and he saves him. We are told, in
Devarim, “walk in God's ways and be godlike.” And I think to myself, If God
saved Ishmael, who he knew, would be the progenitor of all our future enemies,
how much more so must we save our people now in Gaza, right now this morning. We
have grandfathers, brothers, sisters, fathers, spouses, sons and daughters. We
need to save our people. We say we are an Am Kadosh. Kadosh is a
funny word. It's always hard to explain in English. We like to say it means
holy, but actually, Kadosh means different, separate, special. Part of
being different and special is that we will do things that seem extraordinary.
For example, we will pay a high price to get innocent people back, because we
value life, and we think it's precious, and that is what makes us a holy
people, an Am Kadosh. And so paying a high price should be something we
are proud of, and we lean into and we embrace. As my husband John has said, the
price to bring home these people will be high, but the price not to bring them
home will be higher, because we will never recover as a people. We will no
longer be the nation who can claim to value life, and we will have to look our
children and our grandchildren in the eye and say to them, I love you in Sweet
dreams, but if someone comes and drags you from your bed in the middle of the
night, we are not coming, and then we really will have lost because we will not
be recognizable to ourselves. We will look in the mirror and see a stranger
blinking back at us.
On day 201
Hersh, if you
can hear this, we heard your voice today for the first time in 201 days. And if
you can hear us, I am telling you. We are telling you we love you. Stay strong,
survive.
On day 311
I am desperate
to be able to use masking tape again for normal reasons, for normal reasons,
like closing the rice when I'm making rice, not having my name change every
single day.
And on day 332, Rachel’s gave this eulogy
at the funeral of her son
I have had a
lot of time during the past 332 days to think about my sweet boy, Hersh. And
one thing I keep thinking about is how, out of all of the mothers in the whole
entire world, God chose to give him to me. What must I have done in a past life
to deserve such a beautiful gift? It must have been glorious. And I am so
grateful to God, and I want to thank God right now, in front of all of you for
giving me this magnificent present of my Hersh, for 23 years, I was privileged
to have the most stunning honor to be Hershey's mama.
I'll take it
and say thank you.
I just wish it
had been for longer.
Part of what is
so deeply crushing and confusing for all of us is that a strange thing happened
along this macabre path upon which our family found itself travelling for the
last 332 days, amidst the inexplicable agony, terror, anguish, desperation and
fear, we became absolutely certain that you were coming home to us alive, but
it was not to be. Now I no longer have to worry about you. I know you are no
longer in danger.
I send each of
the families my deepest sympathies for what we are all going through and for
the sickening feeling that we all could not save them, I think we all did every
single thing we could, the hope that perhaps a deal was near was so authentic,
it was crunchy, it tasted close. But it was not to be. So those beautiful six
survived together, and those beautiful six died together, and now they will be
remembered together forever.
At this time, I
ask your forgiveness. If ever I was impatient or insensitive to you during your
life or neglected you in some way, I deeply and sincerely request your
forgiveness. Hersh, if there was something we could have done to save you and
we didn't think of it. I beg your forgiveness. We tried so very hard, so deeply
and desperately. I'm sorry.
Now my Hersh, I
ask for your help as we transform our hope into grief
and this new,
unknown brand of pain. I beg of you, Hersh, please do what you can to have your
light shine down on me. Dada, Libby and Orly, help shower us with healing and
resilience, help us to rise again. I know it will take a long time, but please,
may God bless us one day dada, Libby Orly, and I will hear laughter, and we'll
turn around and see it's us and that we're okay.
I often think,
indeed some of you have heard me say it, that the pain of loss is the cost of
love. And I hear that in Rachel’s extraordinary words.
And then there’s
the call for us all to do whatever we can to fight for the release of those
other brave and equally each-in-their-own-way hostages. And I hear that.
And then there’s the way that the pain, the fear during that awful 10 months of captivity and even the pain Hersh’s murder, has brought Rachel, and so many, many others, to actions of courage and beauty and power.
That, I think, is the meaning of what we say
when we say of someone, Zichronam L’varachah – may their memories be for
a blessing. We mean, may we be changed and lifted and inspired and challenged
and may we rise to that challenge in their memory to do good in this world.
May all the hostages be released.
May peace come to the region.
May the memories
of all we have loved and lost be, forever, a blessing.
Amen.
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