The mix of emotions permeating through my very being during the funeral for Dr. David Applebaum and his daughter, Nava, prevented me from articulating my thoughts in a civilized manner. I decided to wait a few days in an attempt to compartmentalize and appropriately pontificate.
Barely containing myself just prior to the beginning of the funeral, I mentioned to a friend that I was so frustrated by the events and the tragic loss that I wanted to lash out, to do something. I even opined that everyone attending should march on the government instead of going back to work, going shopping, going to school, as we usually do in these circumstances.
My friend, with whom I stood throughout the event, wisely responded that I was wrong. "Everyone has a responsibility to do what they can. If your job is carrying a gun, then you carry it, if your job is to go back to work at your mundane job, then that is your assigned task and you are required to carry on." (Actually, I paraphrased what he said, it was kind of hard to remember exactly what he said - but suffice it to say it was excellent advice.)
The funeral, attended by thousands, was more surreal than a Salvador Dali painting hanging inside the living room of a gorilla in the local zoo. "This can not be happening," I thought. "Surely, I will wake up momentarily in a cold sweat to find that I was present in nothing more than a really bizarre dream."
But I could not wake up, I was already up and I was living a nightmare.
I admit, I knew Dr. Applebaum on a more "acquaintance basis". I cannot accurately put my finger on the first time that we had met. Suffice it to say that over the last eight years I had probably had about two dozen chance meetings with him and many more shared experiences - mutual friends, smachot, etc. Dr. Applebaum also made sure that extra tests were conducted on me when I visited Terem (the Emergency Service he founded) as a result of my none too elegant fall in the bathtub that resulted in a few ribs having been broken. Dr. Applebaum wanted the on-call physician to be extra sure that no vital organ was punctured or scraped. Dr. Applebaum made sure that every "i" was dotted and every "t" was crossed.
But I digress.
My friend was correct in his analysis; everyone must put their shoulder to the grindstone and do their duty. I do not carry a gun, I am not a military strategist, nor am I a politician. I am simple father, husband and businessman. While I go about husbanding, fathering and businessing, I also profess to be a writer and I will therefore write and hope that my pen (or rather my keyboard) will be as effective as a sword in the hands of a fencer.
We Jews are a rather predictable bunch. Each week, we read a portion of the Torah. No matter the circumstances surrounding us, the weekly Torah portion remains constant. Two weeks ago, we read the portion in Deuteronomy (the fifth book of the Five Books of the Torah) called "Ki TeTze LaMilchama" - "When you go out to war". God has codified the very behavior that we must use in times of war. A Jew does not simply fight, he is to wage war with the same fervor that God expects of him performing any other mitzvah - be it building a succah, eating matzoh or blowing the shofar.
The last three sentences in Ki TeTze discuss the biblical commandment to obliterate Amalek - the perennial enemy of the Jewish people. We are commanded to eradicate the people who attacked the nation of Israel when it was "weak and tired". In essence, Amalek attacked the young and the old, the defenseless? the people drinking coffee, the young women who were praying, the retired mikva (ritual bath) lady, the emergency room doctor, the young bride on her wedding day. This is Amalek.
And coincidence of coincidence! This group of sentences, this vital mitzvah of eradicating all memory of this type of, dare I say, human form of vermin, precedes the next week?s Torah portion, which begins "Ki TavoU El HaAretz" - "When you come into the Land (of Israel)".
Amalek must be erased before we can actually enter the land.
Oh, don?t get your ire up. I am not talking about killing innocent people. Amalek is a personality type. Sort of like Type A personalities are more prone to heart attacks, Type Amalek personalities are prone to violence, killing, murder, mayhem, evil subterfuge. It's an incurable personality type. And we had better deal with it now.
To paraphrase the desk sergeant on the classic television show Hill Street Blues, "And remember, lets do it to them before they do it to us." There is no mitzvah in being sitting ducks. There is no virtue to pontificating peace with an enemy for whom logic is not merely suspended, but does not exist.
Our sages from the Talmud were truly prescient when they stated that those who are merciful to those who perpetrate evil will inevitably have caused evil to befall innocents.
Oh why bother, Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres won't read this anyway....
Barely containing myself just prior to the beginning of the funeral, I mentioned to a friend that I was so frustrated by the events and the tragic loss that I wanted to lash out, to do something. I even opined that everyone attending should march on the government instead of going back to work, going shopping, going to school, as we usually do in these circumstances.
My friend, with whom I stood throughout the event, wisely responded that I was wrong. "Everyone has a responsibility to do what they can. If your job is carrying a gun, then you carry it, if your job is to go back to work at your mundane job, then that is your assigned task and you are required to carry on." (Actually, I paraphrased what he said, it was kind of hard to remember exactly what he said - but suffice it to say it was excellent advice.)
The funeral, attended by thousands, was more surreal than a Salvador Dali painting hanging inside the living room of a gorilla in the local zoo. "This can not be happening," I thought. "Surely, I will wake up momentarily in a cold sweat to find that I was present in nothing more than a really bizarre dream."
But I could not wake up, I was already up and I was living a nightmare.
I admit, I knew Dr. Applebaum on a more "acquaintance basis". I cannot accurately put my finger on the first time that we had met. Suffice it to say that over the last eight years I had probably had about two dozen chance meetings with him and many more shared experiences - mutual friends, smachot, etc. Dr. Applebaum also made sure that extra tests were conducted on me when I visited Terem (the Emergency Service he founded) as a result of my none too elegant fall in the bathtub that resulted in a few ribs having been broken. Dr. Applebaum wanted the on-call physician to be extra sure that no vital organ was punctured or scraped. Dr. Applebaum made sure that every "i" was dotted and every "t" was crossed.
But I digress.
My friend was correct in his analysis; everyone must put their shoulder to the grindstone and do their duty. I do not carry a gun, I am not a military strategist, nor am I a politician. I am simple father, husband and businessman. While I go about husbanding, fathering and businessing, I also profess to be a writer and I will therefore write and hope that my pen (or rather my keyboard) will be as effective as a sword in the hands of a fencer.
We Jews are a rather predictable bunch. Each week, we read a portion of the Torah. No matter the circumstances surrounding us, the weekly Torah portion remains constant. Two weeks ago, we read the portion in Deuteronomy (the fifth book of the Five Books of the Torah) called "Ki TeTze LaMilchama" - "When you go out to war". God has codified the very behavior that we must use in times of war. A Jew does not simply fight, he is to wage war with the same fervor that God expects of him performing any other mitzvah - be it building a succah, eating matzoh or blowing the shofar.
The last three sentences in Ki TeTze discuss the biblical commandment to obliterate Amalek - the perennial enemy of the Jewish people. We are commanded to eradicate the people who attacked the nation of Israel when it was "weak and tired". In essence, Amalek attacked the young and the old, the defenseless? the people drinking coffee, the young women who were praying, the retired mikva (ritual bath) lady, the emergency room doctor, the young bride on her wedding day. This is Amalek.
And coincidence of coincidence! This group of sentences, this vital mitzvah of eradicating all memory of this type of, dare I say, human form of vermin, precedes the next week?s Torah portion, which begins "Ki TavoU El HaAretz" - "When you come into the Land (of Israel)".
Amalek must be erased before we can actually enter the land.
Oh, don?t get your ire up. I am not talking about killing innocent people. Amalek is a personality type. Sort of like Type A personalities are more prone to heart attacks, Type Amalek personalities are prone to violence, killing, murder, mayhem, evil subterfuge. It's an incurable personality type. And we had better deal with it now.
To paraphrase the desk sergeant on the classic television show Hill Street Blues, "And remember, lets do it to them before they do it to us." There is no mitzvah in being sitting ducks. There is no virtue to pontificating peace with an enemy for whom logic is not merely suspended, but does not exist.
Our sages from the Talmud were truly prescient when they stated that those who are merciful to those who perpetrate evil will inevitably have caused evil to befall innocents.
Oh why bother, Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres won't read this anyway....