Monday Night, 18 Kislev 5769
”Though I may be standing in front of you, I am not here. I am still in Lebanon, in Bint Jabell…”
Tonight I heard one of the most powerful and saddening speeches in my life. Avichai Yaakov, a graduate of and current tutor in my Mechina, told his story of the Battle of Bint Jabell in the Lebanon war three summers ago.
There he found his unit, Golani Battalion 51, ambushed in a heavily outfitted Hizbollah village. They were in an open area, surrounded by sniper fire on all sides. There he watched his superiors, subordinates and friends get shot and blown up by grenades. He saw Major Roey Klein run out to assist some wounded soldiers. Roey saw a grenade thrown in his direction. Instantly, he realized that he had a choice: be killed along with all of his soldiers or die alone. Flattening himself on the grenade, he shouted out the same last words as a countless amount of his ancestors, “Hear O Israel, G-d is the L-rd, G-d is One.”
Avichai ran back into the crossfire again and again to bring back his wounded and dead comrades. As he went to retrieve a fallen colleague, another grenade was thrown in his direction. With a great explosion he flew backwards, bleeding from shrapnel in his right arm and leg. After checking that all his limbs were still in working order, he went back into into the mayhem, again and again. The entire time there was precise sniper and bullets whizzed around his feet as he ran. It was too dangerous to carry fallen soldiers the conventional way, across the shoulders. Instead, two soldiers grabbed the wounded man under his armpit and dragged him backwards on the ground. At one point in time, Avichai found his strength failing him. Turning to the wounded man he was dragging he said, “You’re going to have to help me out.” and the injured soldier began pushing himself along the ground with his one good leg.
Roey Klein once wrote, “True heroism is acts of kindness.” This 31-year-old father of two died embodying these words, jumping on a grenade to save his soldiers’ lives. Avichai Yaakov was awarded the nation’s highest honor, the Medal of Bravery, on national television for his heroic courage in battle. Today he is married with a baby daughter, studies Torah in my Mechina, and serves a month a year in reserve duty.
It was very humbling to watch this muscular warrior wipe the tears from his eyes as he spoke of his fallen comrades. For two hours, thirty teenagers with A.D.D. sat silently, riveted to Avichai’s tale. I left the study hall feeling a combination of sadness for the young lives cut short and a burning desire to be in the army already. On this intense emotional background, I received the news from my brother, “Nechama had a baby girl; you’re an uncle twice!”
I immediately made a rare phone call to my older sister in Los Angeles. She picked up the phone sounding happy and tired. I heard the baby crying in the background and I was dying to be there. “I don’t know when I’m going to see this baby,” I remarked over the phone.
“Well, when are you coming home?” she asked.
“Don’t you mean when am I leaving home?” I replied, in the Jewish tradition of answering a question with a question. I can’t leave this land of mine, even for a visit. Not yet. I must keep my full focus on the task that lies before me: enlisting in the army in a few months.
However, I am comforted by the Divine coordination of the two contrasting events. For I know that though there is still death in the Jewish people, there is also birth.
True, Gavriel and Rivki Holtzberg were murdered in cold blood in Mumbai, simply for being Jewish. Two of the most pure and selfless contributors to the Jewish people were slain. The scene was frighteningly reminiscent of the Munich Massacre of eleven Israeli athletes in 1972. Again, innocent Israeli citizens were held hostage in a big building by Muslim terrorists. Like the Germans in 1972, the Indians attempted storming the building with inadequately trained commandoes on international television. And like the Germans, they botched it, and the hostages were murdered.
Yet a ray of hope shines through the ashes. The tragedy in Mumbai has brought unprecedented international attention to the Chabad movement and the work of the selfless emessaries of the late Grand Rabbi of Chabad, Menachem M. Schneerson. Every newscaster in the United States now knows how to pronounce the word “Chabad”. The entire world now knows of the extraordinary sacrifice of the Holtzbergs; how they left all their friends and family forever to move to Mumbai, where they had no Jewish community, no Kosher food, and did not speak the local language. Arriving with little more than a few holy books, they dedicated their lives to helping Jews with everything from getting out of prison and getting off of drugs, to teaching Torah classes and hosting massive free Pesach Seders. Chabad emissaries around the world, as well as Jews in general, are now doubling their efforts to help their fellow and spread the light of Torah in memory of the couple.
The Jewish people will always carry on. No matter how much we may be persecuted across the globe, we will always persevere. Roey Klein and Gavriel and Rivki Holtzberg, may G-d avenge their blood, will always be in our hearts and will give us strength to endure what lies in the future. We will always have hope.
With Love from the Holy Land,
Elisha
Elisha
