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TSAV
by Rabbi Joel Schwartzman, delivered March 30, 2007 (12th of Nisan, 5767)
by Rabbi Joel R. Schwartzman
This week came the announcement in Israel
that IDF Major Ro’i Klein has
been nominated, posthumously, to receive the State’s highest honor, the
Medal of Valor for heroism in the heat of battle.
You might think that, given all the wars and skirmishes that Israel
has
been involved in, she would have given out many of these medals;
however, the last one of the 40 awarded was given 40 years ago.
What did Major Klein do that earned him this nomination? Listen to the
account that I down loaded from Israeli network, Arutz
7:
Maj. Klein, who volunteered to lead his Golani
Brigade Battalion 51 into
battle, was killed in the line of duty on July 26, 2006, during last
summer’s Second Lebanon War.
While fighting for control of the hostile village
of Bint Jbil
in
southern Lebanon,
Klein and his men were ambushed by Hizbullah
terrorists. Maj. Klein led a group of soldiers and tried to attack the
terrorists from behind, but they were stopped by a wall. Klein then
began treating one of the wounded, at which point a terrorist hurled a
grenade at the group. Soldiers who survived the battle - eight did not -
reported that Ro'i yelled out "Shma Yisrael" and jumped
upon the
grenade, absorbing the brunt of the explosion and saving the men around
him. A stunned silence overtook the men, and then one of them started
shouting, "He jumped on the grenade! He jumped on the grenade!"
Though
mortally wounded, Klein tried to continue to communicate by radio to his
superiors.
One of the survivors, Elad Ozeri,
later said that shortly afterwards,
when it was thought that he was dead, Capt. Itamar
Katz, who took over
the command, approached him. At that point, Klein - in his last act on
earth - raised his arm and gave his coded radio device to Katz. "Maj.
Klein always emphasized to us the importance of finding the coded
devices of soldiers who were hurt," Ozeri
said, "so that they would not
fall into the hands of the enemy."
Klein actually saved his men twice in the same battle, Ozeri
said: "At
the beginning of the encounter, he saw a grenade that had been thrown,
and was able to yell and warn the men in time."
I am in awe of such valor. I am overwhelmed by this act of self
sacrifice---not one wherein someone gave of his time or money, but his
very life! I am deeply moved by this demonstration of love for comrades,
this expression of the duty to those Major Klein led, and to the country
and the ideals he served. I also am moved to believe that this was an
act that Major Klein must have considered long before the actual
occurrence. To fall on a live grenade must have taken some premeditative
thought. I would find it hard to believe that someone would do such a
thing based on whim or impulse.
Ziva and I returned last weekend from the
Federation Mission to Israel.
We both came back exhilarated and exhausted. We spent 10 full days, from
6 a.m. until virtually 10 o’clock each night, on the move, touring
and
taking in the wonder that is the Jewish state. We heard many of the old
arguments for things we’ve long since accepted: Israel’s
strategic need
to hold onto the Golan Heights and her need for the
barrier-fence that
separates her from potential Palestinian suicide bombers. We saw first
hand how the Syrians could look down on the Galilee’s
kibbutzeem and
fire at random at the working farmers and fisherman, the inhabitants of
every settlement and city that surrounds the Kinneret,
the Sea of
Galilee. We marveled at Israel’s
narrowest corridor of land, barely 9
miles across, and the nearest Arab city which sits at the eastern end of
that corridor. We traveled past the “fence” on a road that had
purposefully been built lower and therefore out of sight and range of
Arab houses from which hostile fire had heretofore been directed at
travelers and commerce traveling along that piece of highway.
In contrast to Major Klein’s nomination, let me explain that we
witnessed other, less dire types of sacrifices that Israelis had made
throughout the history and prehistory of the state which, in their own
right, were not very much less impressive. On one rainy afternoon, we
made a diversion in our itinerary and went to a museum at a settlement
named Ayalon. Ayalon
was ostensibly a training center for potential
farmer-settlers—a place where they could train themselves so that they
could later go and succeed in setting up their own kibbutz, Magan
Micha’el further to the north. What the Palmach, the pre-war strike
force of the nascent, illegal, pre state Jewish army didn’t let on was
that below the settlement was an ammunition factory where, in total
secrecy, workers fashioned millions of rounds of life-saving ammunition
for the Yishuv. They kept the secret even from
the others who trained
and worked above them, whom they called “giraffes” because their heads
were always above ground, in the trees as it were and ignorant of what
was going on, virtually below their feet. The heroism of these munitions
workers is beyond description, because had the occupying British forces
discovered them, their punishment would have been hanging. But the need
for their product was dire because producing bullets was wholly illegal
and nearly impossible to smuggle into Palestine
whose Arab population
seemed to have no problem securing their own weaponry. In those ominous
times as with our own today, great courage often is needed.
Ziva, the Mission group,
and I spent the last three days of our trip in
the Negev Desert.
Let me tell you that the spirit of self sacrifice and
pioneering courage is alive and well today in that area of the country.
While some entrepreneurs have struck it rich by dint of innovation, hard
work, and great marketing, many others are showing their dedication to
making the desert blossom and by trying to attract more Israelis to this
more distant and rugged part of the country in order to establish a
greater Jewish presence there, and to bring the promise of reclaiming
the desert and making it prosper something more than a dream. In point
of fact, Israel
recently held a conference within it demonstrated how it
was staving off desertification and claiming whole tracts of the desert
for cultivation and reforestation.
We witnessed two small experimental villages wherein young adults, just
done with their army service, are giving up their chances to travel the
world as so many army graduates do before they begin their university
studies. These “kids” have dedicated themselves, instead, to a regimen
of community service amidst their studies and their efforts to attract
even more kids to live this lonely, courageous life--in effect,
establishing themselves as the newest Israeli pioneering generation that
is engaged in this effort to settle the Negev region.
These weren’t the only examples we saw of this kind of self sacrifice.
We briefly stopped at a distribution center for the indigent and helped
sort clothing that would be resold at much reduced prices…because the
gulf between rich and poor in Israel
has grown much as it has here in
the United States.
Even though the Israeli economy is booming, there is
still great unemployment. Worse, along with an educational disparity
come the burdens of grinding poverty for many of Israel’s
citizens. A
report I read last night claims that fully a quarter of all Israelis
live below the poverty line. There are, then, more than ample
opportunities for people in Israel
to sacrifice to help each other and
to address the despair that living in poverty so often brings.
All this is not to say that we here in America
don’t have opportunities
to be everyday heroes. Camp Rainbow,
for example, gives our teens the
chance to be there for a child who has cancer; and to know, first hand,
the challenges life can throw our way. In volunteering a summer, they
come to learn a great deal about themselves; being exposed to a world of
controlled responsibility and the rewards of sharing their love with
someone a whole lot less well off than themselves, they come away from
the experience with a working meaning of the word, “sacrifice.”
Like our Israeli counterparts, if we Jews, in this country and in this
generation, are to raise responsible kids, we are going to have to
challenge them to find purpose greater than being able to apply
cosmetics adroitly or score goals on a soccer field. Not that these
activities don’t teach something about life. But they don’t begin to
give life its direction; nor do they impart lessons about finding deeper
meaning to being on earth.
The Torah portion for this week, */Tsav/* speaks
of the various kinds of
sacrifices—animal, bird and grain---given on the altar by the priests to
accomplish a variety of purposes. Some were offered as Thank Offerings;
others were expiations for sin. Still others were to ask for peace or to
acknowledge its importance in the lives of petitioners.
In our day, the notion of sacrifice comes to us in various guises, from
the dedication of one’s life to a given cause to the ultimate sacrifice
of giving life for fellow soldiers, family, friends and country. But the
notion of giving of oneself in accomplishing something noble is one of
the gifts that God has enabled us to achieve that enriches our lives and
gives us a chance of achieving and attaching deeper meaning to them in
our time on earth. Seen thusly sacrifice is both gift and challenge. It
continues to be a way of serving our Creator and, indeed, our fellow
human in helping to make this a better world, and ourselves, better
human beings.
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