March 16, 2008 / 9 Adar II 5768
The following was written by Noah Jacobson, a graduate of the Robert M. Beren Academy, in the week following the attack at Yeshivat Merkaz Harav in Jerusalem. Noah is currently studying in Israel for the year at Yeshivat Shaalvim.
It was around nine thirty on what had been a routine Thursday night in the yeshiva as I sat in the Beit Midrash (study hall). I was focused intently on the Gemara (Talmud) in front of me, immersed in a world of my own, when my concentration was suddenly broken by three loud bangs coming from the center of the room. I looked up from my study and saw one of the rabbis standing at the bimah, silently waiting for our attention. He made his announcement quickly and in Hebrew and I wasn't able to make out every word. Nevertheless, from the serious tone of his voice I could tell that something bad had happened. I leaned over to an Israeli student next to me for an explanation. There had been an attack at Yeshivat Merkaz Harav in Jerusalem, he said. There were students of the yeshiva in critical condition. We were urged to dedicate our learning that night to the merit of those who had been injured so that they should have a refualh shalayma, a complete recovery. Naturally, a nervous chatter broke out amongst those of us in the room but we were reminded of the rabbi’s words and struggled to get back to our sefarim (books of Torah). I tried to refocus myself and continue my learning where I had left off but the apprehension and adrenalin triggered by so many unanswered questions made this almost impossible. Soon, more details followed. Within the hour all of the Americans were gathered into a separate room where we were given more information. A terrorist had entered Merkaz just a few hours earlier carrying an automatic weapon. He had fired hundreds of bullets at a group of around eighty boys who had been gathered in the yeshiva's library. At least six boys, at that point, were believed to have been killed. More were injured. We were told to call home and let our parents know that we were safe.
It could have been me! That was the thought that immediately entered my mind, planted itself there and stubbornly refused to go away. These boys, all basically my age, were sitting and learning on a Thursday night in a yeshiva, thirty minutes away from my own. They may have been studying a different tractate or a different topic, but the bottom line - the frightening and humbling reality - was that these boys, who had so much in common with me, were doing the exact same thing that I had been doing at the exact same time. The only difference was that the loud bangs that interrupted their learning were the bullets bursting forth from a machine gun coming to end their lives whereas the loud bangs that interrupted my learning were harmless noises coming to inform me of their tragic death. My parents got a call that I was OK. Their parents got a call that brought a pain into their lives that will never end. This was the thought that shook me to the core and left me confused, scared, and totally dejected, all at once.
That night was Rosh Chodesh (the first day of) Adar, the month in which we have the holiday of Purim, the happiest month in the Jewish calendar. After our studies, in the wee hours of the morning, we were supposed to sing Purim songs, dance, and eat chocolate rugelach to welcome in the month with joy and elation. Instead we sat around a small candle in a dark room singing somber songs, trying to figure out what to make of such terrible tragedy. In the middle of one song, a friend of mine got up and, choking back tears, cried out what we were all thinking to ourselves: Our Rabbis instructed us that "When Adar enters we must increase in happiness." How could we possibly fulfill this obligation now? Purim is the holiday of "nahafochu", the holiday where everything was turned upside down, where the Jews were taken from the lowest of the lows and elevated to the highest of the highs, just when all seemed lost. But this was the "nahafochu" of the wrong sort. In a moment where we had prepared to reach the greatest heights, the culmination of our year in Israel to that point, we felt as though we had been abruptly grabbed and thrown to the ground.
The next morning I went to the funeral service for the eight boys who had been killed. Thousands of Jews gathered at Yeshivat Merkaz Harav to mourn the loss of eight precious souls. Somehow I managed to squeeze to the front, into the courtyard where the friends and families of the deceased had assembled. I found myself surrounded by students of the yeshiva, all crying and holding each other as Tehillim (psalms) blared out over the huge speakers to the huge crowd of people that had assembled.
What happened next was undoubtedly the most intensely emotional experience of my life. The name of one of the boys was announced over the loudspeaker, and within a few moments, a body wrapped in a tallis was carried into the courtyard and placed carefully on one of the eight benches that had been set up. At the mention of each name, and the emergence of each lifeless body, the students around me erupted into what can only be described as a wild, unrestrained moan. I had been to funerals before and had heard crying before. This was not crying. This was moaning. This was wailing. This was some primal expression through sound waves of a pain that neither tears nor words could articulate. As each name was called, as each boy was carried out, the wailing grew stronger. When it was all over, I felt as though I had been stabbed eight times in the heart. The feelings of pain, loss and sadness were truly overwhelming.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I noticed something. I recognized one of the families who were sitting around one of the bodies. I would find out after the funeral that one of the boys had been a nephew of a family that I and my family were close with. They lived near my yeshiva and often had me over for Shabbos meals. I knew the grandparents too. I couldn’t believe it! I was numb! It now felt as if this tragedy had become a part of me. I was already connected in so many different ways to what had happened and now I was even connected to one of the victims! I felt as though I had a hole punched in my soul that had to be filled. I needed something. I needed a message. I needed to somehow make sense out of what had happened.
A few hours later, it was time to welcome in the Shabbos which I was spending in Jerusalem. My shir (class) from the yeshiva was having a shabbaton (Shabbos retreat) with our rebbe at my friend's apartment in the German colony. When we arrived at the apartment, we went up to the roof for Friday night services. I walked to the rail and looked out at a gorgeous view of Jerusalem. I began to reflect on everything that had happened in the last twenty four hours. It’s said that there are two questions that can be asked when confronted with a tragedy. One is "lamah", "why". Why did God allow eight boys who were sitting and learning Torah to be killed? Honestly, this is a question that can never really be answered with any sort of clarity, especially concerning an event as tragically mind-boggling as this one. Only God knows the answer. He sees the big picture - we don’t. This first question I didn’t have to have an answer to. The second question is "lemah", "for what". What was I supposed to take from all of this? What was the message I was suppose to get? What was the lesson I was suppose to learn? That was the question that was driving me crazy. That was the question that I had to ask and answer. It seems to me, that’s the question that everyone must ask and answer, each in his or her own way. As I peered out at the beautiful Jerusalem sunset, almost too beautiful in light of the bloodshed the city had witnessed that day, I wondered when I would ever answer that question for myself. Little did I know that the answer would literally fall into my hands in the next few moments.
One of the guys came over to me and draped a tallis over my shoulders. I was going to lead the Friday night services. The second that I felt the tallis cover my body I got the chills. As I folded it over my shoulders and prepared to lead the prayers, my thoughts shot back to the funeral that morning. Just a few hours earlier I had stood fifty feet away from eight boys who had each been wrapped in a tallis as well, identical to the one that I was wearing now. They had donned a tallis to go to their graves. I did not. I had donned my tallis to sing and to pray. I had donned mine to dance. I had donned mine to bring in the Shabbos in Jerusalem with my friends and my teacher who I had been learning Torah with for an entire year. I had donned my tallis to LIVE!
It could have very easily been the other way around. It could have been my yeshiva. It could have been my family and friends wailing uncontrollably with tears streaming down their faces. The tallis that I was currently wearing could have been wrapped around my body for another reason entirely. But it wasn’t. I was to live. I was to have Shabbos. I was to have Adar. I was to go on and live my life, at least for another day, for another moment, for this beautiful, perfect moment in my life. I realized that no one has an automatic entitlement to life. Life is a gift, an opportunity. I don’t know why these boys weren't given the gift of Shabbos, why they weren't given the gift of Adar, why they weren't given the opportunity to continue life, or to have the beautiful moment that I was having right then. But I was given those gifts, and the true appreciation of them was something that I was only able to obtain as a result of their sacrifice, having been killed Al Kiddush Hashem (in the sanctification of Hashem’s name). It dawned on me, maybe this was it. Maybe this was the message I was supposed to get from all of this.
On Monday I went to where the family that I knew was sitting Shiva. When I walked in, the father handed me the book that his son was learning when he was killed. Blood was splattered all over the pages and the binding. When I opened it up, someone showed me the bullet markings. The image of this blood-spattered sefer was one that stayed fresh in my mind as I returned to the yeshiva. When I sat down to learn, I imagined what blood stains and bullet holes would look like on my own Gemara. I thought about what a book is. A book isn't a scroll; you can't unravel it and see it all at once. You can only take it one page at a time. If you try to skip ahead and read, even the next page, you probably won't know what's going on. All you really have is the next word on the page. Life is a book. We are all tempted to look ahead to the next chapter of our lives. We love worrying about what will be. We think it will make us feel more secure. This is especially true in yeshiva. Guys love to look ahead to the next holiday, to talk about summer plans, or even to discuss plans for after yeshiva. The image of that boy's bloody sefer reminded me that the next word in our Gemaras, the next page in the book of life, isn't guaranteed to us. The pages following the ones soaked in these boys' blood would never be turned to – many of them would accompany their owners to the grave. How can we allow ourselves to flip the pages and worry about something that hasn’t even happened yet? I imagined what would be going through my mind if I had found myself in the library of Merkaz when the bullets were flying. At that moment, staring death in the face, would any of my stupid worries about things down the road make any difference to me? At that moment, would all of the time spent worrying about things yet to take place be worth anything at all? Certainly not! Life is about moments. We cannot let those moments slip away. It takes a tragedy like this to make us realize just how precious those moments are. We cannot let another tragedy take place by squandering them.
When I sat in yeshiva on the night of the massacre in that dark room singing those somber songs, I could not possibly understand or imagine how I could fulfill the words of the Rabbis that "When Adar enters we must increase in happiness". But from the moment that I put on that tallis the following night, those words took on a whole new meaning. All we can do, as these boys taught me, is to thank Hashem for right now. To live in the now. To capitalize on now. To serve God in this very moment. As I stood on that roof on Friday night, all I could think of was: “I am alive! I am alive right now!” And when I realized the magnitude of this thought, as its true meaning permeated my very being, a big smile came over my face. This may not have been the lighthearted happiness that I had expected to feel in Adar but it was certainly much more meaningful. It was a happiness that I could now take with me to wear on my face and to draw upon every second of every day for the rest of my life. It was the happiness of having received the greatest gift in the world: the gift of life.
A Final Thought
As I write these last few sentences, it is Thursday night. I am sitting exactly where I was exactly one week ago when I heard the news.
A few hours ago the yeshiva had a "Hachnasas Sefer Torah" celebration. A new Torah had been written and it was being escorted to the Aron Kodesh (Holy Ark) of the yeshiva, surrounded by boys singing and dancing and kissing its soft velvet cover.
A talmid chacham (learned Jew) is compared to a Torah scroll. Those eight boys were walking, breathing Torah scrolls in life, and they were buried as Torah scrolls in death, each precious Torah wrapped in a tallis along with their bloodied sefarim. But just as I had witnessed those eight precious Torah scrolls being escorted to their graves, I was now singing and dancing and escorting a new one to its rightful place in the Aron Kodesh.
Torah is never lost. The Jewish people are never lost. Jews have been persecuted for centuries. Haman tried to destroy us as we learn in the story of Purim. Hitler tried to destroy us in the Holocaust. This gunmen and every suicide bomber who ever spilled Jewish blood tried to destroy us with their terror and with their weapons. But we will not let them succeed, and neither will Hashem. We come right back. We are relentless, unwavering. In the midst of our mourning over our eight lost Torah scrolls, in the middle of the week of shiva for their mourning families, we sang and danced with a new Torah scroll and with the memory of those boys firmly in our minds. We sent a message loud and clear to all of our enemies and to the world at large in that Beit Midrash on this night. We Jews will persevere no matter what you do to us. We will persevere for as long as it takes until the day of our ultimate Redemption. This, God promised us and with every passing day we long to witness it with our own eyes.
Our Sages teach the following story: After Haman built the gallows upon which he planned to hang Mordechai; he went to Mordechai who was sitting in the Beit Midrash wearing sackcloth and weeping with all of his young students in front of him. There were twenty thousand students there with him. Haman had all of the children chained together and promised that the next day he would kill them all and then hang Mordechai after them. Their mothers brought them bread and water and said to them, ‘Children, eat and drink before you die so that you do not die of hunger!’ The children placed their hands over their seforim and swore: ‘By the life of our teacher Mordechai, we shall not eat or drink, but shall die fasting!’
They all burst into tears, weeping until their cry ascended above and God heeded the sound of their weeping…At that hour, God’s mercy was awakened, and He rose from the "seat of judgment" and sat on the "seat of mercy". Said He: What is this loud sound I hear, that is similar to kids and sheep? And Moshe stood before God saying: Lord of the Universe, these are not kids or sheep. They are the little ones of Your people who have been fasting for three days and three nights. Tomorrow, the enemy wishes to slaughter them like kids and sheep.
At that hour, God took the decrees he had issued against them which had been sealed with clay, and tore them. That night he cast confusion upon the king. 'That night the sleep of the king wandered .' (Esther Rabbah)
We are in the midst of a long and difficult golus (exile). We've been through inquisitions and holocausts, and even after our triumphant return to the Land of Israel, the blood of our children is still being spilled. The Redemption is close, we can feel it - but it isn't here yet. We sit and wait for the day when Hashem will get up from His seat of judgment and sit on His seat of mercy, for the day that Hashem answers our cries. These eight boys were weeping, seforim in hand, as they were killed Al Kiddush Hashem (in sanctification of Gods name).
May Hashem hear their cries, the cries of their families, and the cries of the entire Nation of Israel just as He heard the cries of the children in the Purim story. And this time, in their great merit, may He hasten our final Redemption with the coming of Moshiach, the rebuilding of Jerusalem and our Holy Temple, and may we witness it all with our own eyes speedily in our days.