Three Days That Changed Jewish History April 16, 2010

Three Days That Changed Jewish History

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

April 16^th, 2010

 

In the post Pesach season, there are three special commemorative days on the Jewish calendar for events in recent Jewish history. Two are for sadness and one for joy. They have changed the course of Jewish history. Last Monday, 28 Nisan was Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. This coming Monday, 5 Iyar, is Yom HaZikaron, Israel's Remembrance Day and Tuesday, 6 Iyar is Yom Ha'Atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day. Usually, Yom HaZikaron is on 4 Iyar and Yom Ha'Atzmaut is on 5 Iyar, but both observances are deferred one day so that Yom HaZikaron would not start at the end of Shabbat, leading into Sunday.

 

Living in the Diaspora, these three days have a diminished presence in our lives.

That is a great tragedy!

These three days encompass the sweep of Jewish history.

They are the culmination of two thousand years of homelessness and helplessness.

They embody the depth of the dilemma of our powerlessness and the height of our salvation and reemergence onto the stage of history as a nation.

 

I don't know Jewish life without the Holocaust. I don't know Jewish existence without Medinat Yisrael. It is impossible for me to imagine "my" Jewish history without both events. They are as real to me as Thanksgiving and Independence Day here in the land of my birth. We cannot be oblivious to these three days! These days are crucial!

 

The Jewish people as a faith community has a history of being the bearers of the faith.

What has happened to us in history is precisely because we have carried the unique Jewish faith to the world.

We have been witness to the faith in an incorporeal God who demands through law universal morality and the recognition of the holiness of every man, woman and child.

We have born every burden in our trek because we believed in our God, believed in our mission and believed in ourselves.

If God did not want us here, I doubt that we could have survived.

If we did not want to be here, we certainly would not have survived and been reborn.

There is no faith without a history.   There is no history without a faith.

These three days are living proof!

 

One thousand, nine hundred and forty years ago ended the Second Commonwealth of the Jewish people with the destruction of the second Temple and of the city of Jerusalem, our capitol, by the Romans. The worst and longest dispersal of the Jewish people had begun. It became worse after the bloody end of the Bar Kochba revolt sixty five years later in 135. While Jewish communities would continue to exist in the land of Israel they would be fragmented. In the grand sweep of Jewish history one great center of Jewish life and learning will develop after another, only to be destroyed in turn. Israel will be followed by Babylon, which in turn will be followed by North Africa. That will be followed by Spain which will be followed by Western and then Central Europe, which will be followed by Eastern Europe. And then it will all be destroyed - but for us and a very small presence in the British Mandate of Palestine. While Yom HaShoah focuses on the destruction of European Jewry, the true Jewish eye must look at the events spanning our entire existence, Pharaoh and Egypt, Assyria denuding us of ten tribes, the Babylonian destruction of the First Commonwealth and Solomon's Temple, the confrontation with the pagan Greco-Roman world and its ethos, and then the termination of our independence and immense loss of life by the Romans. In Israel they do not call the day just Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Day, they append the term v'hagevurah–and of heroism.

 

In the first instance Israel added this term because of the expanded focus upon those who fought the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto, as well as the uprisings in other ghettos, not as well documented nor publicized, but utterly heroic in each instance. Israel wanted to include the acknowledgement of the Jews who fought against the Nazis as partisans by themselves and with other partisan groups. After the initial focus on the death and destruction of the Jews, Judaism and Jewish life of Europe in the Shoah, the wider vision included numerous heroic chapters such as the singular and young Anne Frank. Yet Jewish heroism has been evident in every chapter and in each location in the entire span of our history. Our Jewish history, our Jewish identity – we are defined by the tragedies and the triumphs, the catastrophes and the courageousness of all the generations. We might be third, fourth and even fifth generation Americans. We are always first generation Jews.

 

When you come to Israel, fly over the coastline, you see the magnificent city of Tel Aviv. Come to Jerusalem you will soon be able to ride the light railway system throughout the city. Soon there will be fleets of electric cars who can swap out batteries faster than we can fill our tanks with gas, plugging them into to charge over night. Yet when you ascend to Jerusalem, don't miss the rusting tanks in Sha'ar HaGai; walk Israel's Burma Road that saved the city from siege; go to Yad Mordechai who held back the Egyptian advance on Tel Aviv; climb to Golan Heights and see the Galilee laid out before the Syrian advance. Israel never takes its existence for granted. Jews the world over can never take Israel's existence for granted. We pay homage to those Jews who laid down their lives, veterans of the kibbutzim, immigrants out of the DP camps, new olim from Russia who stopped the waves of Egyptians at the Canal on Yom Kippur, those who made bullets in secret underground, those who clawed their way up the Golan Heights twice to stop the bombardment of the Galilee, and those who fought now in Gaza to stop the reign of terror upon the Negev, Ashkelon, Ashdod and Sderot. The saga of their heroism and of their deaths is observed in Israel with a long minute of silence as the country halts. Buses stop. Taxis stop. Classes stop. For without these heroes, Jewish history in the holy land, the core of our Jewish history would have stopped. I shudder when I think that; when I say it. Their stories are our story. We can have our pride in Israel because they died for us to have it.

 

The synagogue was never the place for flags. There is the Aaron HaKodesh, holy Ark, the Ner Tamid, eternal light, lecterns and chairs. In older synagogues there is a place to wash hands and bookcases for books to study. I am not sure when the creation of memorial boards for the dead began to appear. But the modern synagogue has added memorials for the Shoah in the special candelabra and a Torah saved from the Holocaust. Since the creation of Medinat Yisrael we have added its flag, and therefore the flag of the United States as well. We do recognize and give thanks for the security and safety that America has given to the Jewish people. It is like no other place in human history. Yet we specifically place the flag of Medinat Yisrael for it is more than just a flag.

 

It embodies our national reclamation, the eternal reconstitution and the everlasting existence of Am Yisrael, the people of Israel.

It validates all the sacrifices and all our deaths along our long and ancient road.

It blue stripes it represents the Talit, symbol of the Torah and its mitzvot. The Magen David, legendary attached to King David, roots us our ancient history. The white is the purity of our faith and purpose in history. But when I see the Magen David flying proudly in the stiff breeze of Israel I see its triumph over all those who burnt our books, who burnt our bodies. Our flag waves. Our people lives. Our faith is unflagging.  Our flag is unfurled for all to see, just as they see us in every country upon the earth.

Medinat Yisrael Chai V'Kayam.

Am Yisrael Chai V'Kayam.

Israel lives.

The Jewish peoples lives.

Forever.                                                           Shabbat Shalom.