Walking up to Bagel Bite, a restaurant on the corner of
Derekh Bet Lekhem and Yehudah Street, I noticed two things. First, the restaurant was refurbished
presumably for the first time since I ate there nearly twenty years ago. Second, there were no tables available for
inside seating. The sun was still out
and the wind not too intense so I thought to myself: “It’s much colder in
Chicago than it is here. What could be
bad?” I chose one of the many empty tables and sat down to enjoy a breakfast of
bagel, coffee and the Middle Eastern equivalent of the skillet breakfast known
as shakshuka, two eggs cooked in a steaming skillet of tomato sauce, peppers,
and onion. Yochi, the waitress, brought
me the newspaper to read while I enjoyed breakfast. I sat, taking in the entire scene, breathing
the Jerusalem air, and feeling at Peace.
Opening up the paper, I read an article about International
Holocaust Rememberance Day. I had not
realized that the commemoration was today, January 27, set by the UN according
to the date of the liberation of the death camp at Auschwitz – Birkenau. After all, we commemorate the Holocaust on
Yom HaShoah so I never paid much attention to the recently declared official UN
remembrance. Nevertheless, here I sat at a corner café in Jerusalem, in the
heart of the Jewish State, at a moment of an amazing confluence of events: It was International Holocaust Remembrance
Day, erev Shabbat of Parashat Bo, and I, a committed Jew, was sitting having
shakshuka in Israel.
In Parashat Bo, we read the continuing saga of a
recalcitrant Pharoah refusing to free the Israelites from slavery. We are taught the mitzvot of the Passover
Sacrifice, the Korban Pesah, the prohibition against eating leavened bread, and
learn the reason for eating Matzot. At
the climactic moment of the parashah, after the final plagues of darkness and
death of the first born of the Egyptians, our ancestors are liberated from
slavery, from the torture of Pharoah and his minions, from starvation,
deprivation, physical abuse and death.
Adonai is the liberator who brings B’nai Israel to freedom with “a
strong hand and an outstretched arm.” The symmetry between this week’s Parashah, the
beginning of the Exodus and freedom, and the liberation of the death camp at
Auschwitz commemorated by the international community on this date is as
inescapable as it is powerful.
Last night, I stood in the dining room at the Fuchsberg
Center on Agron Street with a combination of shlichim, Israeli staff members,
from the 2011 camp season, North Americans who have made Aliya, and camp staff
members here for the year on Nativ - USY’s gap year program - Kivvunim, another program, as well as those
who are working in internships through the MASA program. I listened to the North American’s stories of
the first half of their year in Israel.
I learned about how the experience of being shlichim impacted the
shaliach just as much as she or he impacted North Americans. I heard about everything from studying for
exams to relatively spontaneous trips to Rome to joint theater projects of
Israeli Jews and Palestinians trying to create more positive dialogue between
the two groups. From updates to everyone
about the 2012 camp season to news from the Chicago office, the discussions
ranged from the mundane to the sacred, from the superficial to the most
soulful. At the time, I was unaware of
the impending International Holocaust Remembrance Day. I was just enjoying time with Israelis and
Americans in Israel while being reinvigorated by the palpable if unarticulated
Zionist energy in the room.
Putting it all together this morning over coffee, a bagel
and shakshuka, however, I realized the much deeper power of the meeting the
night before, of the parashat haShavua, of the international commemoration of
the Holocaust, and of the location of my breakfast. In exile in Egypt, one half of the promise to
Abraham and Sarah was fulfilled: a mass of descendants almost impossible to
count. Yet, these descendants suffered
horrible torture by Pharoah until they were redeemed, saved by God. While they would not reach their desired
destination for ages, they were on their way to receiving the second of the two
promises to Abraham: a homeland. While
the Holocaust did not bring about the immediate establishment of the State of
Israel (there is a modern scholarly and political argument about this position
– some argue that the groundwork done by the early Zionist, by David Ben Gurion
and others, would have come to fruition regardless and that the Holocaust
actually made it more difficult while others argue that the shame of the Shoah
on the international community accelerated the establishment of Israel and make
a direct linkage between the two), many survivors emerged to freedom, found a home with the yishuv and fought for
the land promised to our ancestors.
Their actions led to the successful establishment of a national state
for the Jewish People in our ancestral homeland. And here I sat, a free Jew sipping coffee at
a Jewishly owned coffee shop in the Jewish State, preparing for a week of work
dedicated to hiring the best Americans and Israelis to inspire the next
generation of Ramah campers to become committed, observant, knowledgeable Jews.
In the week to come, I will be sending blog updates of my
trip, of my meetings, and of the exciting conversations I have throughout
Israel. As we leave the suffering of
Egypt and as the international community remembers the Holocaust, let us all
remember the beauty and power of our tradition, of our unique relationship with
The Divine, of the beauty of Torah and Mitzvot, of Peoplehood and of God. I pray that our knowledge, our values, and
our way of living is a source of blessing and freedom for all of us.
Shabbat Shalom.
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