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Click here. Rabbi Karp's Sermons ... ROSH HASHANAH
MORNING 2002 Can we even begin to imagine what it must have been like for Abraham? How it must have felt to be a parent who was required to destroy the life of his child? The rabbis tell us that Abraham really struggled in his attempts to avoid that severe decree, but it was to no avail. As they read the text, they also perceived the unspoken words between the lines. As God commanded Abraham, “Take your son,” he responded, “Which son?” - “Your only son” - “But I have two sons, Ishmael and Isaac” - “The one you love” - “But I love them both” - “Isaac.” How must Abraham have felt when he heard God’s voice say that word, loudly, firmly, definitively - “Isaac?” Those of us who are parents know how dear our children are to us. Their death would be our worst nightmare. But Isaac wasn’t just Abraham’s child. He was Abraham’s ben zikunim, the child of his old age. All their lives Abraham and Sarah yearned for a child, but had none. It was only when all hope was lost - when Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah 90 - that Isaac was born. There are those among us who know first hand what it is like not to conceive children easily, or not to conceive them at all. While many couples have little or no trouble bearing children at the socially appropriate child bearing ages, there are others that wait and hope, sometimes in vain. When those couples have their children, either through late childbirth or through adoption, their hearts are as if they have wings, for they, more than most parents, know the feeling of having their fondest dreams fulfilled. That must have been how Abraham as Sarah felt when Isaac was born. But now, he was about to die. How devastating! How agonizing it must have been for Abraham as he and Isaac walked up that mountain toward the sacrificial site. What a terrible thing to demand of him, not only to lose his son but to be the agent of that loss. Going up that mountain, Abraham carried the fire for the sacrifice in one hand and the ritual slaughtering knife in the other. What heavy burdens they must have been. How his arms and his heart must have ached. Isaac walked along side of him, carrying on his shoulder the wood for his own destruction, asking question after question, as children will do. How could Abraham have found the strength to look upon him without bursting into tears? Sweet, innocent boy, totally unaware of what was yet to come. When they reached that spot on the top of the mountain, Abraham gathered the stones and built the altar. How he must have cursed each stone as he lifted it. How he must have cursed the very ground he stood on, for soon it was to be soaked with the blood of his precious son. And this is how we, as Jews, for the first time in our history encounter that mountain which we will later call Zion. This is the first exposure of our people to what will become the holy city of Jerusalem. We will come to call it the “City of Peace,” but in our first meeting, far from being a “City of Peace,” it is a mountain of sacrifice. Here we are today, 4,000 years later, and it is still difficult for us to think of Jerusalem as a “City of Peace.” As the events of the past two years have shown, Jerusalem is still far more a mountain of sacrifice. While 4,000 years ago Isaac’s life may have been spared, since then, and especially of late, its soil has been soaked with the blood of far too many other children of Abraham, far too many of Isaac’s descendants. According to the statistics compiled by the Israel Defense Forces, over the past two years - since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada, the bloodshed which began at the very site of this morning’s Torah portion - terrorist attacks have taken the lives of 613 Israelis, 427 of them being civilians, and have inflicted injury upon 4,497 Israelis, 3,201 of them civilians. Yes, Isaac’s life was spared, but too many other lives have not been spared on this mountain of sacrifice. In just a few days we Americans will commemorate the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11th. This will be a painful anniversary for us, as those events themselves were extremely painful. Who among us was not overwhelmed by the tragedy of it all? Who among us was not fixated on the TV images of that plane crashing into the World Trade Center and of those buildings collapsing in that dull gray cloud of smoke, ash, and dust? Who among us was not grief stricken, finding it hard for weeks, if not for months, to simply get on with the business of daily living? Who among us was not gripped by fear, afraid to travel? Last Fall, we held Bar and Bat Mitzvah services in this congregation in which there were some out of town family members who refused to come because they were afraid to get on an airplane. We Americans were transformed by September 11th, for we came to know intimately the pain of personal sacrifice at the hands of terrorists. We came to know what it means to lose loved ones violently, brutally, at the hands of crazed hate-filled fanatics. Our congregation may be in Iowa, but we, too, suffered a loss; the loss of Chuck Zion, son of our former rabbi, Martin Zion; a man who grew up in this community. Almost no American was untouched by this tragedy. A year has passed, but we have not forgotten. A year has passed, and we still reel under its blow. A year has passed, and the pain of it all may be somewhat dulled, but it has certainly not gone away. A year is passed and we still feel fear. This is how we feel, a year later, after but one day of living the terrorist nightmare. While in Israel, in Jerusalem, atop that mountain of sacrifice, our fellow Jews live that terrorist nightmare week in and week out, and sometimes day in and day out. Indeed, hardly a day goes by when I do not receive an email notice of another attack and more victims. For our brothers and sisters in Israel, who dwell in the land of the mountain of sacrifice, almost every day is September 11th. In spite of our own national experience with terrorism, still for many Americans, the violence in Israel seems distant and abstract. It is more a matter of statistics and pictures on the news than a matter of human suffering and painful sacrifice. We know about what is happening there, but it is difficult for us to know what it feels like to be an Israeli. And I include myself in that analysis, for I thought I understood what it was like for the Israelis, but then my family went over there last March, to visit Shira and attend a rabbis’ convention, and I found that my empathy only began to scratch the surface of their suffering. For until one has been there, it is hard to comprehend the overwhelming sense of personal insecurity that Israelis feel; to not know, every time you walk out of your door whether or not you will return home; to not know every time you say goodbye to a loved one whether or not it is yours or their last goodbye. The violence touches everyone. You cannot meet an Israeli who does not personally know a victim and who hasn’t got their own story about having missed an attack by a matter of minutes or by deciding to turn right instead of left. Just within the few days of our stay, we, too, felt that brush with death. One night, we had coffee and desert in a restaurant, and the next day, at lunch time, in a restaurant across the street from where we had eaten, a waiter tackled a suspicious man who was walking in. As it turned out he was a suicide bomber. Two of my colleagues and their wives were eating in that restaurant at the time. One Shabbat afternoon, the Cantor, Shira, Helene, and a seven year of friend of Helene’s went into a public park which was next to our hotel. I and a wife of a colleague later followed in search of them. Halfway through the park, I was ordered to leave. Outside the park we met the Cantor, Shira, and the girls. From them we learned that the reason that park was being evacuated was because an unmarked abandoned package was found, and the Cantor and the girls had been right there on the spot. In fact, Shira took digital pictures of the robotic device removing the potential bomb. And then that night, we heard sirens outside of our hotel. Sirens that would not stop. I went to the lobby to find out what was going on. In front of the hotel a small crowd had gathered. We stood there, in stony silence as we watched emergency vehicle after emergency vehicle whiz by. They were racing to a restaurant called Café Moment, just a few blocks away. This restaurant, which was across the street from the Prime Minister’s residence, was the latest target of a suicide bomber. As the stories around Café Moment would unfold, a friend of Shira’s, a rabbinical student, was supposed to have had dinner there, but was delayed due to a tardy friend. But there was somebody else who was not so lucky. Helene’s seven year old friend was living in Jerusalem while her rabbi-mother was on sabbatical. She was enrolled in an Israeli public school. Just a couple of days earlier Helene went to class with her. Among those injured at Café Moment was a little boy from that class. On the Friday night during the convention, we all went to different Reform synagogues around the country. Our family went with a group to a synagogue in Haifa. That night, on the bus ride back to Jerusalem one of my colleagues confided in me, “I can’t wait to get home!” This was the first time I had ever heard a rabbi visiting Israel make such a statement, but I understood from whence he spoke. The stress of this danger - the Israelis call it the “matzav,” the “situation” - weighed heavily on us. And we were just visiting. How can one actually live under it? Now, especially in these times, I doubt that many of you will go to Israel in order to heighten your awareness of what it must be like for the Israelis. I would not expect you to. But still, we need to take our understanding of their situation beyond the statistics and the TV images. We need to identify with their suffering and their sacrifice on a personal level. To that end, I wish to take a few moments to tell you about some of those who lost their lives to terrorism over this past year; not just their names and the circumstances of their death, but a little bit about who they were as people. Monday will mark the first Yahrzeit for Sima Franko. She was just 24 years old when she was killed. Sima, a kindergarten teacher, was on her way to class at Kibbutz Gilgal. Every morning she traveled to school in a van with other teachers. On this particular morning, that van was overtaken by a car carrying terrorists, who sprayed the van with bullets, instantly killing Sima and the driver. A fourth year student at the Gordon Teachers College, Sima had just begun this job two weeks earlier. According to her sister, “she was a good girl and always loved children.” Her parents, Ya’akov and Fanny Franko, had sold their home in order to pay for Sima’s teaching studies. That day, when she failed to arrive at school, her disappointed students asked, “Where is Sima?” Shortly after 4:00 p.m. on January 22nd, 79 year old Sarah Hamburger was standing at a bus stop in downtown Jerusalem, on the corner of Jaffa Road and Harav Kook Street, when she was killed by a Palestinian terrorist who opened fire with an M-16 assault rifle. Sarah was a seventh generation Israeli, who was born in Jerusalem and who grew up in Hebron. There, at the age of five, she and her family survived the Arab riots of 1929 because they were saved by an Arab neighbor. She was the widow of Rabbi Pinchas Hamburger, one of the founders of the modern city of Jerusalem. According to her daughter, Rivka, she was young at heart - a courageous, open, kindhearted, talented and energetic woman. In fact, she was waiting for that bus because she was on her way to attend a lecture on Jewish mysticism. Two of her grandchildren were married this past summer. Sarah had been looking forward to attending those weddings. For many years, Eliezer Korman and his wife, Yehudit, had attended the Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya. However, this year they were not planning to attend because of the dangers of terrorism. But the hotel called and offered to host them at last year’s price, so they decided to take a chance. For Eliezer that was a fatal decision. That night, just as the 250 guests sat down to begin their seder, a suicide bomber walked into the dining room and set off his devise wounding 140 and killing 22 immediately and 7 who would die later, Eliezer being one of them. Eliezer was born in Poland. At the start of World War II he and his parents fled to Siberia. After the war, he traveled throughout Germany, Austria, and Italy, in search of his brothers and sisters but was never able to establish what happened to them. He immigrated to Israel and took part in the 1948 War of Independence, fighting in the Battle of Latrun. After the war, he met and married Yehudit. They recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. He earned his living as a construction worker and worked till the day he died. What a sad irony to survive the Holocaust and all of Israel’s wars, only to be killed in old age, at the hand of terrorists. On May 27th, in Petah Tikva, Lior and Chen Keinan went with their 14-month old daughter, Sinai, and Chen’s mother, Ruth Peled to an ice cream parlor. Around 6:40 that evening, a suicide bomber, using a bomb containing about ten kilograms of explosives and packed with metal objects to maximize casualties, detonated himself near that ice cream parlor, killing little Sinai and her grandmother, Ruth, and wounding Lior and Chen. Sinai was Lior and Chen’s first child. According to a family member, “she was their whole world.” Ruth had worked as a medical secretary. She had recently suffered kidney failure, and on the morning of the explosion had undergone tests for a possible transplant. Her husband, Natan, said, “If Ruthie had known that Sinai was killed she would not have wanted to live.” Her daughter Chen said, "I would need 30 years to write about my mother. It was 30 years of love, friendship and happiness. Not every mother is also a friend." 36 year old Janis Ruth Coulter was not an Israeli, but an American. For the past three years, she served as assistant director of the Hebrew University's foreign students department in New York. Each year, as part of her job, she would accompany to Israel the group of American students who had chosen to spend their junior year at Hebrew University, and she would help get them settled. Last year, my daughter, Shira, was one of those students. She knew Janis. On July 31st, at about 1:30 in the afternoon, Janis was sitting in the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria of the University. She had just arrived in Jerusalem the day before, with her 19 students. That day, having just finished lunch, the students had headed back to their dorms to get unpacked. Janis was enjoying cup of coffee and a moment of respite when a bomb exploded and took her life. Janis was not a born Jew. She was raised Episcopalian and had converted to Judaism in 1996. Friends say that she had been influenced by a lecture on the Holocaust given by Elie Wiesel. Even before she started working toward her conversion, she had learned Hebrew and was enrolled in a religious studies program at the University of Denver, where she was about to earn a masters. She studied for conversion with Rabbi Barbara Penzer, of West Roxbury, Massachusetts. About Janis, Rabbi Penzer said, "Her grandmother was Jewish. She saw it (conversion) as going back to her roots. Intellectually, Judaism appealed to her - it made sense to her and that she found it beautiful. Janis was an inspiration to everyone she met." Another victim of the Hebrew University bombing was 24 year-old Marla Bennett, of San Diego, California. She was in the second year of a three-year master's program in Judaic Studies. She had been at the University that day to take a final exam. Marla knew that every day she stayed in Jerusalem, the simple choice of whether to turn left or right each morning could make the difference between life and death. In a column for a hometown newspaper, published on May 10th, she wrote, "This question may seem inconsequential, but the events of the past few months in Israel have led me to believe that each small decision I make, by which route to walk to school, whether or not to go out to dinner, may have life-threatening consequences. My friends and family in San Diego are right when they call and ask me to come home, it is dangerous here. I appreciate their concern. But there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be right now. I have a front-row seat for the history of the Jewish people. I am a part of the struggle for Israel's survival." How prophetic! How chilling! I am not about to pontificate on how the Israeli-Palestinian crisis can be resolved. Of course, I have my opinions, but who doesn’t? This is an extremely complex situation, and it will take minds far greater than mine to discover a way out of this bloodshed. I fear - we all fear - and we all know - that far more sacrifices are yet to be offered up upon this mountain of sacrifice. But my greatest fear is that, God forbid, there is no way out, short of all-out war and destruction. Yes, dark times lay ahead for our brothers and sisters in Israel. What I can hope for is that when it comes to us - we Jews, we Americans, we comrades in the war against terrorism - that we do not lose sight of the human dimension of Israel’s suffering and sacrifice. For Israel has so few friends in this world. She needs each and every one of us desperately. She needs us to remind the rest of the world that far from being the brutal aggressor so many paint her to be - especially over in Europe - Israel is a nation struggling to protect her people and the guests of her nation. Israel is a nation which does not want to bury any more Sima Frankos and Sarah Hamburgers and Eliezer Kormans and Sinai Keinans and Ruth Peleds, nor does she want to ship home the bodies of any more Janis Coulters and Marla Bennetts. These people are not mere statistics. They are flesh and blood human beings. They are our brothers and sisters. We must mourn them. We must do whatever is necessary to help Israel to protect her children from the sacrificial slaughtering knives of those who would see her destroyed, and help her in doing whatever is necessary to bring to an end the grisly process of adding to these sacrificial ranks. AMEN |
