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May 14, 2004/Iyar 23 5764, Vol. 56, No. 34
Return in peace
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
The Israeli Scouts bound onto the stage at the community Yom Ha'atzmaut celebration and in minutes the crowd is swaying to the music, clapping their hands and tapping their feet. The music is infectious, the spirit contagious. We are entranced. The sounds are the sounds of Israel, as is the face - young, handsome, alive. The best of Israel, I think, applauding wildly. Yup, the best of Israel - and Israel's best.
The best and brightest, they sing and dance their way across the Diaspora as Israel's goodwill ambassadors, yet when called on to trade their dancing shoes for combat boots, their microphones for automatic weapons, they will. And they do. Two of the 20 join the army this summer; another four, next year.
A sobering reflection, as I delight in Israel's 56th birthday. A cause for celebration, to be sure, but also a cause for consternation. Even as we revel in Israel's founding and amazing accomplishment, there lurks the reality of the price it has paid, and continues to pay, in the faces of these beautiful young people.
Those thoughts resonate again, just weeks later, as I receive news of yet another young man, also strong, good-looking, talented. Avi Taff, whose dad was cantor and mom, preschool director, at Beth El Congregation, was inducted as a paratrooper in the Israeli army last week. Moshe Tutnauer, who served as Beth El's rabbi nearly 40 years ago, was at the ceremony, along with his wife, Margie, and a phalanx of other former Phoenicians now Israelis.
Moshe writes: "The hundreds of young men, some new olim from all over the world, marched into the open square in front of the Western Wall wearing their new uniforms. They were so beautiful. And the girl friends, who crowded close, but behind the barrier, were gorgeous."
The commander of the paratroopers made a short "yizkor" speech about the heroics of the paratroopers, writes Moshe, as fathers with cameras jostled for position, and mothers whispered silent prayers. The ceremony ended with the singing of "Hatikvah," the Jewish anthem of hope.
Such courage, such pride, such hope.
That the induction was held at the Western Wall, a sacred place for prayer and petition where the divine presence has been said to reside since the fall of the second temple, is most fitting. That the ceremony comes just days before Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day, May 19, which marks the triumph of Israel's might with the return of the Kotel to Israeli control in June 1967, is significant.
No wonder countless scraps of paper, with handwritten messages, kvitlech, are stuffed between the wall's massive stones.
And they will multiply, as ever more sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and cousins and friends are called to serve. "Elohim yishmor otam veyachziram b'shalom" is the prayer of the mothers: May God guard each one of them and keep them safe until they return in peace.
Amen.
Contact the writer at vicki_cabot@jewishaz.com.
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