WE NEVER FORGOT OUR HOME

In 1970  Chaim emigrates from New York to settle in Jerusalem.  He applies for a phone to be installed in his apartment.  

Weeks go by, and no phone.  Exasperated, he goes to the phone company headquarters located in the main Post Office in Jerusalem.  He says to the clerk, "when will my phone be installed?"

"Sir", responds the clerk, "Israel has a major shortage of phone lines.  There are Government Ministers, Army Generals, and Hospitals ahead of you on line, waiting for a phone to become available."

So", says Chaim, "you are telling me that I have no hope of getting a phone?"

"Heaven forbid," the clerk reassures him.  As a Jew, I am forbidden to tell you that there is no hope.  There is always hope!

Excited, Chaim repeats, "there is hope!"

"Yes", explains the clerk, "there is hope, just no likelihood.

The beginning of this week's first portion, Tazria, discusses the offering every Jewish woman would bring during the Temple days following the birth of a child. This offering, representing post-birth healing, was brought forty days after the birth of a male, and eighty days after the birth of a female.

The Torah says "She shall bring a sheep within its first year for an elevation offering, and a young dove or a [mature] turtledove… But if she cannot afford a sheep, then she shall take two  turtledoves or two young doves…

There is, surprisingly, one exception. In our portion, the Torah states, "She shall bring a sheep within its first year, and a young dove…

Wherever the bird offering is mentioned throughout the Torah, says The Baal Haturim, it is always in the context of a pair.

The only exception is the woman possessing greater means, who, following childbirth, offers one sheep and one bird.   Why?

To understand this, I am going to change the subject but it will allow us to perceive the organic unity of Torah thought.

Seventy three years ago, G-d once again gave the Jewish people the historic opportunity of returning freely to our ancient homeland, Israel, with the ability to govern our own affairs, protect our borders, and live freely as Jews.

This was by no means inevitable. It took extraordinary courage and a miracle.

From the moment the United Nations passed the partition resolution on November 29, 1947, the Arabs, desperate to thwart its implementation, ruthlessly intensified their attacks on the Jewish population of Israel.

Nearly 1,200 Jews, half of them civilians, were murdered by Arabs in the six months between November 1947 and May 1948. That instability – and fears for the survival of this remnant of Jewry that had survived the Holocaust.

General George Marshall, President Truman’s secretary of state, warned of an impending massacre of Jews that American soldiers would not – and could not – prevent.

No less a great sage as The Brisker Rav, living in Jerusalem, strenuously opposed a declaration of statehood on the grounds that it would precipitate a war, and lead to the “destruction, G-d forbid, of the entire yishuv.”

These sentiments were fomented by voices in the Arab world predicting just that, most prominently the infamous boast of Azzam Pasha (secretary-general of the Arab League) on the radio that “this will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”

The United States government was fragmented in a remarkable and public way. President Truman wavered, though he was reasonably inclined to push for statehood and immediate recognition. Secretary Marshall was vehemently opposed.

Further muddying the waters, the Soviet Union in early May 1948 (perhaps anticipating that the Jewish state would become a Soviet client) called for Jewish statehood and announced that it would recognize the Jewish state.

In Washington, Truman defied most of his cabinet and the political establishment and sent word to Marshall that if a state were declared, the United States would recognize it.

In Israel, Ben-Gurion, argued that if statehood were not declared immediately, history would not be forgiving, and the opportunity lost might not be regained for generations.

At 4 p.m. that Friday, the 5th day of Iyar, May 14, 1948, with the British Mandate due to end at midnight, Ben-Gurion, out of respect for the sanctity of the approaching Shabbat, read the Proclamation of Independence. He declared to the world the establishment of a Jewish state, “by virtue of our national and intrinsic right.” Statehood went into effect at midnight in Israel – 6 p.m. Washington time. At 6:11 p.m. the United States extended de facto­ recognition to the Jewish state. The Soviet Union, several hours later, became the first nation to recognize Israel de jure.

This was incredible. Both the United States and the Soviet Union agreed on the establishment of the Jewish state. They would agree on little else for the next 50 years.

That same Friday, the last Jewish defenders of Kfar Etzion were taken captive. The provisional Government of Israel, in its first official act, abolished the British White Paper of 1939 that had cruelly barred the gates of Israel to European Jews during the Holocaust, and plans to evacuate Jewish displaced persons from European camps were immediately put into effect.

The British authorities and most soldiers sailed that night from Haifa harbor. Early on Shabbat morning, the Egyptian Air Force bombed Tel Aviv, the armies of seven Arab nations invaded Israel in an effort to carry out Azzam Pasha’s “war of extermination,” and the deadliest of Israel’s wars ensued.

When hostilities ended, approximately 6,000 Jews – 1% of the population – had fallen in battle, but Israel had successfully expanded its territorial holdings far beyond the boundaries of the 1947 Partition Plan that had been summarily rejected by the Arabs.

Israel’s sovereignty extended over the Galilee and the Negev all the way to Eilat, the coastal plain was expanded, and Jerusalem itself – the “New City” – came under Israeli jurisdiction.

In retrospect, Ben-Gurion, forced to make an agonizing decision, was right, and Truman’s judgment was vindicated. When Israel’s chief rabbi, Rabbi Yitzchak Isaac Halevi Herzog, visiting the White House in 1949, told Harry Truman, “G-d put you in your mother’s womb so you would be the instrument to bring the rebirth of Israel after two thousand years,” the president burst into tears. Ben-Gurion, who knew that war was inevitable, chose to fight it on his own terms from a position of moral strength – a nation fighting for its independence and not relying on the kindness of strangers or the cult of victimization.

Israel’s founders, despite being secular, had a profound knowledge of the Bible, of the eternal rights of the Jewish people to the land, and of the wars that needed to be waged to found and preserve the Jewish state. They never ever doubted that the Land of Israel belonged to our people.

It is an absolute miracle, by G-d’s grace, that Israel is in a remarkably good place as its seventy third anniversary is celebrated, even though it has its profound challenges. Literally, a “sheep surrounded by 70 wolves,” in the expression of the Midrash, it has emerged strong and cohesive. We should not take this for granted.

Many would never admit it publicly, but Israel is perceived as a beacon of morality and human rights.

But today, I want to address Israel, from yet another perspective. For this, I will employ once of the most majestic prophecies of Isiah about the time of our imminent redemption.

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has shone upon you…

Let’s reflect on this verse. The prophet describes the Jewish people returning to their eternal homeland, in two ways: flying like a cloud, and flying like doves returning to their dove-cotes.

What is the significance of this?

There is a fundamental difference between a cloud and a dove.

A cloud moves from one place to another place only because the winds move it along. The cloud has no particular desire or passion to “fly” to this place.

The dove, does not fly to his or her dove-cote, because the wind blows it there, only because it wants to go home! In fact, the dove is unique even among other birds and animals. There are a few exceptions to the non-monogamous trend among animals; one of them is the dove. The Talmud states that if the Torah had not been given, we would have learned how to be loyal to our spouses from the behavior of doves.

And this is how the Baal HaTurim appreciates the above discrepancy in our Torah portion. Therefore, in the case of a woman offering only one dove, the Torah is urging us to avoid taking a single mature dove as an offering, since we might be depriving its partner from his or her mate which has ascended to G-d. The preference must be the young dove which has not yet began to mate.

It conveys, for one, a profound lesson on the sensitivity the Torah demands of us toward feelings of animals, Certainly, it tells us how we must honor the dignity and feelings of a fellow human being.

When Pope Paul VI criticized Israel's "fierceness" during a private audience with Golda Meir, she replied: "Do you know what my earliest memory is? A pogrom in Kiev. When we were merciful and when we had no homeland and when we were weak, we were led to the gas chambers."

One of the great rabbis of our times was Rabbi Yisroel Zeev Gustman. His exalted position of religious judge in the Rabbinical Court of Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski at around the age of 20 was the stuff of legend -- but Jewish life in and around Vilna was obliterated by the pain and fear of World War II. Rabbi Gustman escaped, though not unscathed. He hid among corpses. He hid in caves. He hid in a pig pen. He somehow survived.

 At the invitation of the previous Rebbe, in 1946, he became the Rosh Yeshiva, the chief Talmudic teacher, at the central Lubavitch Yeshiva at “770.” Later he moved to Jerusalem, where he founded a yeshiva.

One of the regular participants at his Talmudic lectures was a professor at the Hebrew University, Robert J. (Yisrael) Aumann.

The year was 1982. Once again, Israel was at war. Soldiers were mobilized, reserve units activated. Among those called to duty was a reserves officer, who made his living as a high school teacher: Shlomo Auman, the son of Prof. Yisroel (Robert) Aumann. On the eve of the 19th of Sivan, Shlomo fell in battle.

Shlomo was married and had one child. His widow, Shlomit, gave birth to their second daughter shortly after her husband was killed.

The family had just returned from the cemetery and would now begin the week of shiva -- mourning for their son, brother, husband and father. Rabbi Gustman went the funeral, then to the cemetery, and from there went straight to the home of the broken family for a shiva call. He entered and asked to sit next to the father, Professor Robert Aumann. The father said, "Rabbi, I so appreciate your coming to visit… but you have spent all day with our family, feel free to go back to the yeshiva. I am sure the students are waiting for you.”

Rav Gustman spoke, first in Yiddish and then in Hebrew, so that all those assembled would understand:

"I am sure that you don't know this, but I had a son named Meir. He was a beautiful child. He was taken from my arms by the Germans and shot in front of my eyes. I survived. I later bartered my child's shoes so that we would have food, but I was never able to eat the food -- I gave it away to others… My Meir he is holy -- he and all the six million who perished are holy."

Rav Gustman then added: "I will tell you what is transpiring now in the World of Truth high in Heaven. My Meir is welcoming your Shlomo into the minyan and is saying to him 'I died because I am a Jew -- but I wasn't able to save anyone else. But you -- Shlomo, you died defending the Jewish People and the Land of Israel.' My Meir he is holy -- but your Shlomo is a Shaliach Zibbur -- a Cantor in that holy, heavenly minyan."

Rabbi Gustman continued: "I never had the opportunity to sit shiva for my Meir; let me sit here with you just a little longer…"

42 years after the death of his son, Rabbi Gustman sat shiva together with the Aumann family…

Professor Aumann listened to the story. And then he said silently: "I thought I could never be comforted, but Rebbi, you have comforted me."

Rav Gustman and his wife would attend an annual parade where children would march on Jerusalem in song and dance. A rabbi who happened upon them one year asked the Rabbi why he spent his valuable time in such a frivolous activity. Rav Gustman explained, "We who saw a generation of children die, take special pleasure in a generation of children who sing and dance in these streets."

On December 10, 2005, Professor Yisroel, Robert J. Aumann, the father of Shlomo, an observant Jew with a long white beard, was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, because of his incredible contribution to the Game Theory of Economics.

This is the story of the Jewish people, and it is the story of Israel. We never forgot our home, and we never forgot our G-d. And today, our brave holy soldiers protect the romantic doves who have come home.

And very speedily, we will all experience the fulfillment of the words of Isiah:

Lift up your eyes all around and see, they all have gathered, they have come to you.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky