I walked over to the Moetza Mikomit (City Council Building) this morning (Sunday, Nov. 17). But not to go to the post office, located on the first floor. No, I wasn’t sending out mail today, but sending away three Jewish heroes. I wasn’t paying a bill today; they had already paid it for me.
Yitzhak Bo’anish, Alex Duchan, and Alex Tzvitman were killed Friday night. I stood there listening to the hespedim (eulogies) as I have so many times before. While looking around, I noticed standing just next to me Etta Leibovitz, glum look on her face. Her daughter came over and handed her a Sefer Tehillim (Book of Psalms). I had been to her son’s funeral a just few months ago (Eleazar Leibovitz, gunned down while driving on the road between Hebron-Kiryat Arba and the towns of the Har Hebron region to the south, along with the Dickstein family).
Rav Lior (chief rabbi of Hebron) talked about gevorah (courage & strength) and how we will go on to continue building Eretz Yisrael. Earlier, as I was arriving, I passed by Tzvi Katzover, rosh hamoetza (mayor) of Kiryat Arba and Yossi Dayan, the s’gan rosh hamoetza (deputy mayor). They both looked devastated.
The next speaker, Rav Ben-Amram from Yeshivat Nir (the Kiryat Arba Hesder military rabbinical school), spoke of the three men’s courage and selfless devotion to Hebron-Kiryat Arba. He said that we must learn from them.
He spoke to us about the past week’s Torah reading, Vayetze, in which Yaakov leaves Eretz Yisrael to go to Uncle Laban’s house. The biblical commentator Rashi points out that when a tzaddik (righteous man) leaves a place, everyone feels the loss but that a roshem, a residue or spiritual impression, is left behind. Rav Ben-Amram told us that the courage and self-sacrifice of these three members of our community would leave that impression. We will be stronger because of their strength. We will be better because they were great.
I picked up my head again and saw Aryeh Weiss. His son was one of the soldiers killed in Jenin last April, during the so-called “Jenin Massacre.” Yes, it was a massacre — a massacre of our soldiers, 23 of them, sacrificed when we chose to fight house to house rather than just carpet-bomb the place and kill everyone inside — all because we saw ourselves as more “moral” than the enemy.
The hespedim went on. More than a thousand had gathered in the parking lot of the City Council building and the surrounding roads.
Member of Knesset Uri Ariel was there. He spoke, but nothing he said could make the gloom go away. My knees bothered me and I had to sit down. I walked over to the low stone wall next to the City Council Building. I saw Gershon Goldman and Hana Shvili, social workers whose offices are in the building. They and their colleagues are the people who will have to deal with the trauma, the stress, the losses.
I passed Eliyahu Ackerman, head psychologist in Kiryat Arba’s Educational Psychology Dept. He said shalom to me, but I didn’t reply. Not because we’ve had our differences in the past. Not because we don’t see eye to eye on a list of issues. It just seemed miyutar — useless, needless — to respond. We don’t have shalom, I thought. We won’t have shalom until we absorb the roshem of the three who lie before us. They have Peace Now. Is that what it means?
I saw Eddie Dribben, an “old-timer” in Kiryat Arba. His son was murdered by terrorists a few years ago, in Maon (a small town to the south of Hebron). Maon Farm, David Dribben’s farm, the so-called outpost next to the community of Maon in Har Hevron, was set-up to strengthen Maon’s borders (it was part of their allotted territory, it had been zoned for Maon’s usage). Its dismantling took place later, no connection to Dribben’s murder.
