Adapted from Rabbi Disick’s remarks to CBY’s Board this past week:
In the 1300s when the Muslims of Jerusalem beat back the Christian Crusaders, they built a Muslim neighborhood in Jerusalem to within a few feet of the Western Wall, and for most of that history, Jews were forbidden to pray there. When the Israelis liberated Jerusalem’s Old City in 1967 the area at the Western Wall, became a Jewish place for the first time in 1900 years and quickly became the induction site where Israeli soldiers took their oath making them members of Israel’s
Defense Forces. Before then, the induction ceremony was atop Masada. The symbolism of both is not lost on us.
During our religious school services this past week, our Director of Lifelong Learning, Brad Zicholtz, showed a live feed of the Western Wall Plaza to our students. There were a few signs that something serious had just taken place. Rows and rows of empty chairs surrounded a very large memorial flame by which a young soldier stood guard, and next to it was a scrolling list of names, dozens became hundreds, and hundreds through the night would become nearly 26,000 Israeli names, each name of each Israeli soldier killed in the line of duty which includes the 900 service members killed since October 7, 2023. Including including 26 year old reservist Asaf Cafri, who was hit by sniper fire in Gaza a few days ago, unbelievably Cafri’s great-grandmother, 96-year-old Holocaust survivor Magda Baratz, was attending a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany at the time of his death.
This week marked Israel’s Memorial Day, Yom HaZikaron; as we know nearly everyone in Israel serves in the military, and
Israel’s reserves thereafter, men for about a month a year through the age of 44, and more and more women since October
9th Everyone in Israel is connected to at least one of those 26,000 names intimately.
At the Kotel, which is the Hebrew word for the Western Wall, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog opened his speech according
to the Times of Israel with a message to the 59 hostages who remain captive in Gaza, telling them: “A whole nation is missing you, worrying for you, crying your cry.”
Israel is “a nation tormented beyond measure,” “A nation that knows — deep in its soul, burned with longing and anxiety — that the wound cannot heal until you return.”
“Here, at the place where our soldiers swear to defend the homeland and the freedom of Israel — we too swear, I
swear, not to rest and not to be still. Not to rest and not to be still. Not even for a moment. To act with all our might,
by every means, to take one more step, and another, until all of you come home.”
We all pray for the peace of Jerusalem, Am Yisrael Chai.
