We are returning once again to Yemin Moshe in Jerusalem from the Mt. Herzl Military Cemetery after attending the shloshim service (30-day service) for a fallen relative.
The mourners spoke of the love of country and prayed for the return of the hostages. There were heartfelt calls for unity in the politically polarized Israeli society. Yishai Ribo attended the ceremony and sang. Not a dry eye.
Another group of mourners was waiting for our service to end so that they could use the same hallowed ground for another fallen soldier.
No words. Only tears.
The Psalmist stated: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps 119-105). Rabbi Soloveitchik in his essay on Hanukah (Days of Deliverance page 176) highlights the difference between the light of the Shabbat candles (“lamp to my feet”) which we are encouraged to use and enjoy versus the light of the Hanukkah candles (“light to my path”) which we are only allowed to observe.
“The symbolism of the ner, (the candle) is in general, a double one…a candle is at times the symbol of a bright light, at other times it is a symbol of remoteness, of unlimited stretches, of guidance from afar” the Rav stated.
There is an enigmatic ceremony that took place in the Temple as related to the lighting of the menorah.
“Aaron shall burn the incense, every morning when he dresses the lamps, shall he make it burn… When Aaron lights the lamps at dusk he makes (the incense) burn. A perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations.”
At the precise time when the Temple candles were lit the incense was burned on the altar. “… the vapor, the cloud of smoke rises and saturates the air of the sanctuary, the lights can hardly shine brightly since they must penetrate the haze.”
The Rav posited that the Hanukkah candles, evocative of the Temple lights, represent the twinkling of a remote flickering star whose beam reaches us and directs us from a mysterious dark universe shrouded in a puzzling enigma. Out of the darkness of hester panim when Jewish survival is threatened, a guiding light appears.
In a landmark 1956 essay titled Kol Dodi Dofek (My Beloved Knocks printed in an English edition entitled Fate & Destiny), published eight years after the Holocaust, Rabbi Soloveitchik describes six post Holocaust historical phenomenal events associated with the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel. Based on Shir Hashirim (Song of Songs) the Rav characterized these events as “knocks on our door,” calls by the All Mighty to respond to these monumental events, these wakeup calls and to “open the door.” This, to avert the unfortunate consequence of “I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned away (and) gone! (Shir Hashirim Chapter 5, verse 6).
There are compelling parallels between the 1948 knocks and the 2023-4 post Oct 7th events. Several of these events border on the miraculous while others serve as wake up calls.
- First Knock: POLITICAL
1948- in an unprecedented UN vote, bitter rivals the United States and the Soviet Union voted for the establishment of the State of Israel.
2024- The unexpected landslide election of Donald Trump and his selection of an unmatched pro-Israel administration dramatically changed Israel’s strategic political and security situation. The appointment of Mike Huckabee, an enthusiastic supporter of Israel and its right to the Land is remarkable especially after the policies and enormous inappropriate pressures exerted by the outgoing administration.
- Second Knock: MILITARY
1948- During Israel’s War of Independence, the nascent poorly trained and poorly equipped IDF army successfully battled and defeated seven well organized established armies.
2024- the IDF fought on seven fronts, threatened by hundreds of thousands of rockets and drones, battled in heavily populated areas and in some 300 miles of unground tunnel systems.
-The Mossad successfully utilized unprecedent clandestine ingenious techniques such as exploding beepers and walkie talkies to eliminate or injure three thousand terrorists within minutes.
-After the battles in Gaza and Lebanon the Syrian government collapsed, their president fled the country and much of the weaponry the Syrians accumulated over sixty years was destroyed by the IDF in mere days.
-Iran launched hundreds of missiles carrying five hundred tons of explosives targeting Israel which resulted in minimal casualties and negligible damage.
- Third Knock: RELIGIOUS
1948- Prior to the establishment of the State of Israel Christian theology held that the Jewish people are forever destined to be in exile, the curse of the “Wandering Jew”. The establishment of the state presented Christianity with a reality inconsistent with this long-held ideology.
2024- the war on Israel was defined by Israel’s enemies as a religious war, a jihad, “The al Aqsa Flood” Their devastating losses undoubtedly constitute major religious significance. The Vatican, deafeningly silent during the Holocaust is now promulgating antisemitic blood libels. The idea of Jewish soldiers, children of the “Wandering Jew” settling scores with their most heinous enemies, is difficult for the Vatican to accept.
- Fourth Knock: NATIONAL
1948-The establishment of the State of Israel had a formidable impact on the identity and national pride of Jews everywhere, especially on assimilated Jews.
2024- Diaspora Jews of October 8th woke up to a new reality where their Jewishness became a critical component of their persona. The Israelis living in the UN recognized Negev in the Gaza Envelope realized that the attackers saw them as "Jewish settlers" not Israelis. A knock. A wakeup call.
- Fifth Knock: JEWISH DIGNITY
1948- The establishment of the State demonstrated that Jewish blood is not hefker (ownerless property). Jews can and will fight to defend themselves.
2024-Following the atrocities of October 7th Israel’s enemies suffered massive losses and overwhelming destruction. Despite unbearable international pressure, Israel was able to persist and attain most of the military goals to date except for the release of the remaining hostages.
- Sixth Knock: HOMELAND SHELTER
1948- Jews acquired a homeland which could serve as a beacon and shelter for Diaspora Jews now and for those who do not make aliyah, when conditions deteriorate.
2024- Diaspora Jews are exposed today to antisemitism unheard of since the Holocaust, especially in Europe. Jews have a homeland to which they can return. A knock. A wakeup call.
The twinkling of a remote flickering star whose beam reaches us, directs us from a mysterious dark universe shrouded in a puzzling enigma following the worse pogrom since the Holocaust.
Do we hear the knocks?
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I traverse the Knesset with its prominent Menorah at the edge of the Rose Garden. It depicts bronze reliefs with historical Jewish struggles of exile and return and seems discordant with the raucous anti-government demonstrations I encounter.
I reach King David Street and turn into Heinrich Heine Street leading to Yemin Moshe. On the right is the Begin Center and Mishkenot Shananim, the 19th Century first Jewish settlement outside the Old Jerusalem Walls overlooking the Biblical Valley of Hinnom and the Old City’s Zion Gate.
In 1822 Henrich Heine wrote:
“A single fir-tree, lonely,
On a northern mountain height.
Sleeps in a white blanket,
Draped in snow and ice.
His dreams are of a palm tree.
Who, far in Eastern lands,
Weeps, all alone and silent.
Among the burning sands.”
There are no weeping palm trees planted on burning sands on Heine Street. Instead, there is a long tract of ancient burly and convoluted trunks of olive trees, looking like survivors from a different era, carrying beautiful branches laden with fruit.
Is Heine, who converted to Christianity 250 years ago yearning to return to his roots? Heine once declared to a friend, “I make no secret of my Judaism, to which I have not returned, because I never left it.”
In the early 1980s the popular folk singer trio of Peter Paul and Mary sang about the Hanukkah candle: “Don’t let the light go out it lasted for so many years”. Was that candle still burning in the fog of discrimination and assimilation of 19th Century Germany? Was it still burning in the heart of Heine who predicted that “in the place where books are burnt, they will burn people?.”
As long as the candle burns….
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At the end of picturesque Heine Street sits the famous old Montefiore windmill.
S.Y. Agnon wrote about the building of the windmill in 1857 in his book “Only Yesterday”: “And the Arabs saw and were jealous. They hired an old man to curse the windmill. He turned his eyes to the windmill and said, “I guarantee you that when the rains come and the winds come, they will make it into an everlasting ruin, and the rains came, and the winds came and didn’t do anything to it.”
Years later Yehuda Amichai authored a poem entitled “The Windmill of Yemin Moshe” in which he poetically claims that, though it never ground flour, it grounds holy air and now grinds us to make flour and bread as peace for the future. “… now she (the windmill) discovered us and grinds our lives every day to make of us flour of peace, to bake from us the bread of peace for future generations.”
"Tilting at windmills" is an English idiom that means to fight imaginary enemies or to pursue a pointless goal, taken from the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. In the novel, the main character, Don Quixote, charges windmills with his lance, believing them to be giants.
“… You can see there stand thirty or more monstrous giants with who I intend to fight… For this is a just war and it is a great service to G-d to wipe such a wicked breed from the face of the earth”-so said Don Quixote when he mistook a windmill to giant foes.
After Don Quixote is injured by the rotating blades of the windmill Sanchos turns to him:
“Didn’t I tell you to be careful what you were doing, didn’t I tell you they were only windmills? And only someone with windmills on the brain could have failed to see that!’
“Affairs of war even more than others, are subject to continual change.’” replied Don Quixote
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The political turmoil, infighting and the toxic narrative contemporary with Israel’s multi-front existential battles are baffling and highly disconcerting. Do we see the sparks of light through our aching pain and omnipresent loss?
Rabbi Israel Salanter once noted a shoemaker working late at night by the light of a flickering, almost extinguished candle.
'Why are you still working?' He asked the shoemaker.
The shoemaker, undeterred by the rabbi's words, replied: As long as the candle is burning, it is still possible to repair.'
As long as we can hear the knocks, as long as the Hanukkah guiding light is still visible to us, it is possible to repair.
It is possible to repair.
Itzhak David Goldberg MD, FACR is Professor Emeritus at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.