Yom Kippur - Reflections for Us...and Iran

Yom Kippur is an amazing day in Israel. It is the one day that no one goes anywhere. In almost all cities in Israel, cars don't move, taxis, buses - nothing. Everyone stays home or goes to the synagogue. It is the time we take out the past year, look it over, and do our best to make good on what we did bad; make better what we can; and beg...really beg...for the year to come.

Jews do not bow. We do not kneel on our knees in prayer; we do not lower ourselves to the floor...except on Yom Kippur. It is the one day we are brought to the ground before God, asking Him to help us, save us, forgive us.

During this time, we don't eat; we don't drink. We talk of solemn and serious things. We pray and spend most of the day in the synagogue. In 1973, on Yom Kippur, our enemies took advantage of our having pulled into ourselves and attacked our country.

To our great shame, we were not prepared for this treachery. We were naive in believing that no one would violate this holy day. We learned and we learned fast, though the cost was incredible. Our army consists of two main groups. There is the standing army - typically young men and women between the ages of 18 and 22 doing their national service...boys for three years, girls for two. Some choose to go in later, as Elie did, and so he'll finish the army a few months before his 23rd birthday, as his brother, already 19, will enter.

The second large group is the reservists. These are typically men up to the age of around 40, who can serve as much as a month a year. Up until the last war, these were the most experienced fighters; the ones who went to war. The standing army maintained; the reservists fought the battles. In the Second Lebanon War, things began to shift and in this past war in Gaza, the reservists were used less than the standing army.

When holidays come, the army does its best not to take the reservists from their families. And so, on that fateful day in 1973, most reservists were sent home...and it was left to the young soldiers to try to deflect the sudden and unexpected attack.

Israel learned - our holiness is not theirs; what is precious and honored here means nothing to our enemies. The war in Gaza began on Shabbat, our holy day. Why? I asked Elie - why did our army have to begin it on Shabbat and his answer was that it was because our enemies didn't expect it. We turned their desecration to our advantage.

This Yom Kippur, as the people of Israel begin our fast day, our holiest on the Jewish calendar, we are no longer naive, no longer fooled by the depths of evil our enemies can show to us. Two things will happen in the hours to come. Iran will begin war games and fire missiles that are strong enough to hit our country. They send us a message, they taunt, they dare.

The second thing that will happen is that our soldiers will go on alert. The majority will fast, where they are...and guard our borders while doing this. Elie is luckier than many. After so long in the army, he is one of the senior soldiers in his unit and so his position will place him inside an air conditioned control room for much of the time that he is on duty. Iran can threaten, but there is no fear here. Their threat is nothing compared to the determination we have, the commitment to our land, our faith, our nation.

And one more thought. There is a tradition, even perhaps a law, that a man puts on phylacteris (tephillin), each day (except Shabbat and holidays). These are small boxes, bound to the upper arm and the forehead during the morning prayers.

The small box on the head contains four parchments; the one on the arm contains only one. I once heard a beautiful explanation of this. The head has four - to encourage us to think freely in all directions. The one on the arm shows us that there is only one proper way to behave.

The arm of Israel, the strength, is a combination of so much of what we are. It is our faith, our beliefs. It is the army, our sons and daughters.

Tomorrow night, we will enter the synagogues with our heads clear and focused. We will search inside ourselves, in all directions, through the months of this past year to find ways to be better, stronger, kinder. That is our job, this year and every year on Yom Kippur. And while we do that, the arm of Israel will act as it must. Iran will flex its muscles in the next few days, but that is nothing to what Israel will do in the next day or so.

Our sons and daughters guard our borders, protected by a God who has promised us this land again and again. A God who has seen us brought home after more than 2,000 years to a land that was always ours, and always will be. The greatness of that covenant makes a mockery of Ahmadinejad and Iran. They are nothing, their missiles a joke compared to the Might of Israel.

May God grant the people of Israel a good year. May we be inscribed in the Book of Life and may we be granted peace. May our enemies know of our great love of our land and our God...and of God's great love for his people Israel.

Return and Remember, Fear and Triumph

Last year around this time, Elie's division decided to send their soldiers to Jerusalem. I've written about what happened then (It Could Have Been Elie) , and this year when Elie joined his unit (We’re Brothers). Elie came home a few days ago for the Rosh Hashana (Jewish new year) holiday and we talked about several things. It had been a while since we talked, so it was nice to have this time as we did a quick shopping and drove home.

He told me about meeting his brother, and laughing at the soldier who didn’t know they were brothers. “You don’t look alike,” I said.

Elie dismissed that – as if the whole world should know. I loved the story of their meeting at the Kotel (the Western Wall, which is actually the retaining wall of the Holy Temple…and all that remains of it). I wanted to hear it from Elie’s side.

“How many went to the Kotel?” I asked.

“A lot of us. The g’dud Rav (the Rabbi of the unit) wanted to do something special since last year but nothing happened, so he decided this time a lot of us would go.”

“Did some of the same people from last year go?” I asked him.

He wasn’t sure about the ones who were injured, “but there was one girl who was there last year. She was really scared to go this time.”

They took them to the top of the Mount of Olives. From there, the view of the Old City of Jerusalem is simply breathtaking. It is, according to Jewish custom, from the Mount of Olives that the Messiah will come. The soldiers walked down the mountain, across the valley of Kidron, and up to the Old City walls.

I think that’s a triumph – to have these soldiers, from the same unit that was hit last year, walk to the Western Wall. There is a road that enables someone to drive right up to the very gates beside the Western Wall. There was no need to have these soldiers walk down the valley and back up…and yet there was every need.

As they walked, the commanders moved to the sides of the group. They kept with them light sticks and as they came to the roads, the commanders took up positions in the middle of the street, waving the light sticks to alert oncoming traffic. The soldiers passed in safety. I can’t imagine that the incident last year wasn’t in their minds.

Even now, a year later, as I pass bulldozers traveling slowly in the streets of Jerusalem, I think of the four times Arabs have used these bulldozers to ram into buses, cars, and pedestrians. It is an automatic thought that comes to my mind; how could the soldiers not have thought of what happened just last year, to their own unit?

And so they returned, remembered. They conquered whatever fears they might have brought with them to walk the beautiful streets of Jerusalem. There are major triumphs in life, and there are small ones that go unnoticed by most of the world.

A young girl, in uniform, walking amidst a large group of soldiers may not appear to have been triumphant. Had I witnessed her walking with the other soldiers, I never would have known, had Elie not explained. She was one of those who was in the attack last year; one who saw her friends hit by a speeding black BMW that wanted to kill them.

She saw the car, the bodies flying through the air. She saw the soldiers take aim and fire, stopping the terrorist from reversing and hitting the injured soldiers around her.

This year, she came with fear, remembering having been attacked last year while simply walking to the Western Wall. But she came anyway, and it is that silent bravery that touches my heart…that, and the commanders, my son…who guarded their soldiers with extra care this year so that their return to Jerusalem would be a triumph.

No newspaper did a story about their return; no radio announced it. No parents witnessed it; no one spoke of it. The soldiers of Israel came to the Western Wall of our Holy Temple, to Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. They came, they saw, they returned in triumph.

A Shot in the Air

Sometimes, you measure your progress in milestones, ones you knew would come but forgot you were expecting. Actually, in all likelihood, this latest milestone has come and gone (I'll have to ask), but this is the first time I'm hearing about it, so it is new to me.

I drove Elie to my office today, there to wait an hour until he could catch a bus to his base. He surfed the Internet and played games at the table in my office; I sat behind my desk answering emails and planning my week. It was quiet, but pleasant as the moments ticked away. We'd talked quite a bit over the long holiday weekend; sometimes the quiet is a comfort.

Too often on this winding street where my offices have been for the last few years, we hear a screech of brakes and wait. Sometimes we hear a thud; sometimes we don't.

Today we heard a thud, both going quickly to the windows that overlook the street. We saw a woman with her hands held to her head, obviously distressed, run around the car. She got into the driver's seat and sat there. She was fine. No injuries; but clearly she was upset and from all that we could see, it was her fault.

We looked to the second car and at the people around the street. No one seemed concerned; no one was racing to help; I could tell that Elie was trying to determine whether there was anyone injured. The other car door opened and a man stepped out. No injuries, a fender bender.

Elie stayed with me as we watched. The woman got out of the car, walked across the street...and put on her shoes that were on the sidewalk. Huh?

So, the best we could figure was that the woman had pulled up to the curb to buy something in the coffee shop on the ground floor of our building. She must have forgotten to put the car in park (did I mention that my street is a hill, gently sloped?). We assume her car began to roll backwards; she watched in horror as it slammed into the back of a car that had just passed in the opposite lane. In her haste to get to her car, she must have kicked off her open sandals. A mystery solved - not even 9:00 in the morning.

They exchanged information; the excitement was over, thankfully, no one was injured. Back to the computers for a few more minutes. All too soon, it was time for Elie to leave.

He picked up his heavy backpack and swung it onto his back. Without thought, I leaned over and picked up his gun to hand to him. It seemed silly for him to bend with the heavy backpack on his back.

"You aren't scared to hold it anymore?", he asked, clearly amused.

"Well, it's not like I'm firing it," I answered back.

"Not like me last week, huh?"

Okay, this was new. We'd just spent the last four days together and I hadn't heard anything. As calmly as I could, I asked him to explain. No big deal, an ordinary event, Elie said. Too ordinary, too common. An Arab approached the checkpoint and was asked for his identification. He handed it over and it was clear that it wasn't his; he'd stolen it and was trying to cross into Israel illegally for purposes unknown. It could have been to work...it could have been to steal, to harm, to kill. At that moment, it was anyone's guess...and you don't risk people's lives on a guess.

When the soldiers began to question him, the Arab took off. There are clear instructions on what to do in this instance...and who is to do it. Elie was the senior commanding officer at the checkpoint. He raised his gun, cocked it loudly, called out demanding the Arab stop, and then fired in the air. In the split second before the Arab stopped, Elie had already taken aim at the man's legs.

Thankfully for all sides, the man stopped and was arrested. My son shot in the air; as he was trained. That he was prepared to fire goes without saying. After two years in the army, my son is a soldier.

For a while now, I've viewed this soldier's parenting business much as a roller coaster. I can feel the times when I know I am climbing up this big hill, certain there is a fall ahead of me. I didn't know about the fall that comes after the climb at the beginning; the fall is that plunging fear that steals your sleep and leaves you wanting to cry. At first, I thought it was all about climbing, and learning, and then flat areas of calm and adjustment.

After the first few plunges, I realized this army thing was very much a roller coaster, each fall different in length and severity. There are great highs...not all followed by the fall, and sometimes, you can fall, even from the flat area of the roller coaster (which technically shouldn't be possible if you were following this analogy, but there you go).

Gaza was the greatest plunge for me, the deepest and the longest...and yet, I'd been in this wonderful flat zone until Elie called to tell me that where he was (in the center of the country) isn't where he would likely be in a few hours. That began my fall and it pretty much continued for the next several weeks.

Since the Gaza War ended, the last few months have been very much in the flat zone. I have even been playing with the idea that maybe I've passed my last plunge with Elie. Today wasn't a plunge - after all, no one was hurt; a warning shot was fired in the air. Nothing happened...except my son raised a weapon and fired it.

I guess it's a relatively new sensation - maybe I'll call it a hiccup. A little bump up and back into flat mode. Yes, that's it...today, I experienced a hiccup.

Later in the day, my middle son called to tell me that a boy Elie had known for the last few years had been killed in a traffic accident. He had crossed a road last night and a car hit him; the funeral was today. Shmulik went - he was friend's with Elyassaf's brother.

A bump, a plunge, a climb, a flat zone, and a hiccup - I'll take them all and pray my sons and daughters remain safe.

May God bless Elyassaf and send comfort to his family. May they be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem and may they know no more sorrow.