Isn’t it amazing the things from
childhood that stick in one’s mind? Why
do we remember some things, and not others? Psychologists tell us that events which are
emotionally charged with surprise, joy, anger, shame, or fear are more
frequently recalled than neutral ones. As Maya Angelou says, “I've learned that
people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people
will never forget how you made them feel.”
I remember one such event with my
father that occurred on April 12, 1963. That night, my dad and I were watching
the Jack Paar show. I know the date, because I was able to find information on
the broadcast of this particular show on the internet. It was a Friday night, and there was no school
the next day, so I got to stay up late! Jack Paar was showing some home movies
of his recent trip to Jerusalem in honor of Good Friday. I remember watching with
my dad as donkeys carried satchels on their backs through the dusty streets of
the Old City. That is all I can remember of the show. But I clearly can
remember the conversation that occurred afterwards. Turning to my father I asked, “Wouldn’t you
love to go visit Jerusalem someday?” My father answered, that no, he did not
want to visit Jerusalem someday. He had been there as a soldier during World
War ll and he had not been impressed. It was hot, and dusty, and smelly, he
said. It was not a place to which he had any desire to return.
I have to admit that I felt deeply disappointed
and let down by my Father’s response. And I felt confused, because I knew
Judaism was very important to my father. How could he NOT want to visit Israel?
We had been learning about Israel in our Hebrew School and I, at least, was
very interested in going. I remember in the 6th grade scouring the
current events magazine for schoolchildren, “My Weekly Reader” for news of
Israel, and never finding a mention of it. That disappointed me too! Now my Dad not only said he did not wish to visit
Israel, but he had strong negative feelings about Jerusalem, our Holy City! I
did not yet understand that the Old City was under Jordanian rule and was not
part of Israel proper. I also did not understand that, while, Jack Paar , a Christian, was permitted to
visit Christian holy sites in the Old City, Jews were barred from visiting any of the
Jewish holy sites that the Jordanians had been unable to destroy when they
captured the city in 1948.
A few weeks ago, Rabbi Mitch Wohlberg of
Baltimore wrote a sermon that helped me to understand my father’s attitude
toward Israel so many years ago. In 1966, Mitch Wohlberg was a 22 year old graduate
of Yeshivah University with a Master’s Degree in English. His father, a prominent
Orthodox rabbi, had been a delegate to the World Zionist Congress in 1935 and
rose to become President of the Religious Zionists of America, an Orthodox
Israel advocacy group. As a child and young adult, Rabbi Wohlberg recalls prominent
Israeli religious and political figures speaking at his father’s synagogue and
having dinner at their home. Yet Rabbi Wohlberg writes that he felt very little
connection with these people. Israel, he says, seemed so distant to him. His
father’s guests might have been from Afghanistan, or China for all it mattered! When
he married in 1966, he and his wife were given Israel Bonds that, they were
told, could be cashed in when they went to Israel. But they had no intention of going to Israel either! They were honeymooning
in Caribbean!
Rabbi Wohlberg goes on to tell us how
his feelings towards Israel changed a year later. On June 7, 1967, Israeli
Defense Forces Paratroopers advanced through the Old City of Jerusalem toward
the Western Wall, bringing this holiest of Jewish sites under Jewish control
for the first time in 2000 years. The lightening victory in the Six Day War of
Israel over the combined forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan captured the
imagination of people all over the world. Overnight the image of the Jew as
weak cowards was replaced by one of the Israeli soldier, combat helmet in hand,
Uzi slung over his shoulder, gazing in awe at the Western Wall. Shortly after
the victory, Rabbi Wohlberg and his wife did travel to Israel. In his sermon he
writes about the transformative effect that this post Six Day War visit to
Israel had on his life:
“All of a sudden, words of Torah
that I had been taught as a child were unfolding before my very
eyes. All of a sudden, there was talk of the Temple Mount and the
Beit Ha-mikadesh. All of a sudden, there were victorious Jewish
soldiers and there was talk of the return of the Maccabees……….And I was never
the same. Being Jewish was no longer an
accident of birth. It was a source of
pride!” …………. “All of a sudden,” he
writes, “I could trade in the bonds and was loaded with cash. All of a sudden, my Masters in English lost
all meaning and I wanted to be a rabbi.”
If the son of a leading Orthodox
rabbi so involved in Israel could feel so disengaged from Israel prior to the
Six Day War in 1967, I can understand how my Dad, the son of a small grocer in
Northeastern Pennsylvania, could have felt so detached from the Jewish state back in 1963. For many
Jews around the world, that apathy was transformed into pride fifty years ago
this week. Whereas in 1963 I longed to see Israel featured at least one time in
“My Weekly Reader”, suddenly Israel was all over the news – and it has stayed
that way!
The news of Israel’s victory
even penetrated the Iron Curtain. Natan Sharansky, who would go on to achieve
world-wide fame as a symbol of Soviet Jewry, was a 19 year old at the time of
the Six Day War. He writes about the effect the Israeli capture of Jerusalem
had on Soviet Jews who were denied the right of religious expression by the
communist government:
“And while we had no idea what the
Temple Mount was, we did know that the fact that it was in our hands had won us
respect. Like a cry from our distant past, it told us that we were no longer
displaced and isolated. We belonged to something, even if we did not yet know
what, or why.”
Our Haftorah for this week, from
the Prophet Zachariah, begins with the stirring words, “Rejoice and be glad, O
Jerusalem, for G-d returns to dwell in your midst….. G-d will choose Jerusalem
once more.” Fifty years ago this week that hope for a return to Jerusalem
expressed by the Prophet Zacheriah was fulfilled as the young nation-state of
Israel captured the Holy City and began a new chapter in the story of the
Jewish people.
Shabbat Shalom
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