How does one move from a place of despair to a place of faith and holiness?
Ruth Farhi’s eyes clog with tears and her gaze turns from the camera recording her story as she tells of a memorable night, January 15th, 1948. That night haunts her to this day. She and a bunch friends were crammed into her one room rooftop apartment sitting at the same upright piano with wooden inlay that sits just feet away from her now as she is recording this interview, siniging and laughing late into the night.
The revelry ended only iwhen the 15 young men among them, all fighters in the Haganah, all promising university students, stood up and said their goodbyes. The moment then became somber. Those 15 were going off on a perilous mission from which they might not return.
They were part of 38 university students, members of the Haganah, that were sent to deliver supplies to a group of kibbutzim about 20 kilometers south of Jerusalem. They were under siege by Arab villagers. The kibbutzniks were in dire need of food, medicine, and ammunition. If the supplies did not reach them soon, they would not be able to hold out. Of the 38 that were sent, three were sent back because one man sprained an ankle and two accompanied him. That left a convoy of 35.
Remember this is January, four months before the official start of the War of Independence.
Looking back at the camera, Ruth continued. “I lived across the street from the Jewish Agency and by the next morning, the place was full of activity.” She knew in her gut what that flurry of activity meant. Not long afterwards she learned that every one of her friends from that night, the 15 young students in the Haganah to whom she had said goodbye, had been killed later that night along with the 20 others. It was one of the bloodiest and most painful episodes in the struggle for Israel’s independence.
Two Arab women had spotted the young men and reported their presence to two scouts. Having been alerted to their presence, Arab villagers set up an ambush, trapping them from all sides and massacring the entire contingent. The victims became known as the Lamed-Hey fighters, using the Hebrew letters that equal the number 35.
It wasn’t until after Israel’s War of Independence that the 35 bodies were finally returned to Israel. They were buried in Israel’s National Cemetery on Mount Hertzel. Their story has been burned into the Israeli consciousness. A street in Jerusalem was named for the convoy of 35, Lamed-Hey Street.
A group of halutzim — pioneers — established a kibbutz near the convoy’s route, and named it Kibbutz Ha-Lamed-Hey — The Kibbutz of the 35, in their memory. They also established a memorial there as close as they could at that time within the armistice line to the place the massacre took place.
Many of you who traveled with me to Israel visited Kibbutz K’far Etzion and the city of Efrat, two of the communities reestablished in the Etzion Block after the area was recaptured in the Six Day War. We hiked to that memorial where our guide Yitzhak told us this story.
On May 14th, 1948, David ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel at a ceremony in Tel Aviv. One might have hoped that this day would be a day of celebration, and it was, but it was also a day filled with a great deal of trepidation. The next day, the new state was invaded by armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq. There was an extensive toll on both the Israeli and the Arab sides. More than 6,000 Israelis were dead, almost 1% of the total population. And so many wounded, so much death.
How does one function and reestablish life after all of this death? How does one move from a place of despair to a place of faith and holiness? How is that possible?
It seems fitting that the Torah portion that we read the Shabbat following Israel Independence Day is Aharei Mot, which translates as “after death”. The name of the portion derives from the story in last week’s reading of the traumatic death of Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu.
Experiencing such immense grief, we were told last week that Aaron was silent. He was unable to speak. He was unable to proceed with his regular practices and rituals. He was paralyzed by his grief. He needed time to feel despair, to dwell in the darkness of his sorrow.
But what happens after that? How do you move from that sorrow back into life? How do you move from the end of Shiva to the world around you? How does Aaron move to a place where he is able to respond to the expectations of the Israelites and of God?
That’s where this week’s Torah portion begins. Aharei Mot — after the death. This portion is about picking up the pieces of a broken life, figuring out how to put them back together and to continue living.
There is a Japanese art form called kintsugi in which broken pottery is repaired with dust made of powdered gold or silver. The gold or silver powder is mixed with the glue and used to repair the brakes. The cracks in the repair in this way, rather than being hidden are highlighted. They become glittering, elegant lines that run through the vase.
The idea behind kintsugi is that we ought not erase or try to hide evidence of brokenness. Instead, breakage and repair become part of the history of an object, part of its story and even part of its beauty.
After the loss of his sons, just like kintsugi pottery, Aaron’s brokenness becomes a part of him. His life will never be quite the same. Aaron will have new rules to follow and will live according to different boundaries. Before this tragedy, Aaron might not have thought twice about approaching the kodesh-ha-kodashim — holy-of-holies — and interacting with God. Now, Aaron must be very apprehensive.
God recognizes that adjustment by introducing new rules. Aaron may only approach the kodesh-hakodashim — holy-of holies — in the tabernacle at God’s request. Aharei Mot — after the death of his sons, Aaron is only allowed to enter into God’s presence if he is shrouded in a cloud of incense. He must keep a physical distance between himself and God’s presence.
But that is not where the story ends. The portion Aharei Mot is followed by the portion Kedoshim — holiness. God goes on to give Moses and Aaron and the Israelites laws of morality, laws about taking care of the stranger, about how to rid oneself of personal and communal sin, about how to do business ethically, how to live a life filled with compassion and with love, warnings even about sexual immorality and laws about keeping the Sabbath.
Why does God use this moment, after the death of Aaron’s sons, when he is immersed in his grieving, after pushing Aaron back into service in the tabernacle, to introduce a new set of rules to guide him? Why is this the moment the God chooses to command the Israelites about being a moral people?
The answer is embedded right in the Torah. In Kedoshim,, God says, “You shall be Holy for I the Lord your God am holy.”
God is teaching that life can be challenging and filled with moments that we might not wish had ever happened. Because of those encounters our lives will never be the same. Yet, despite that, we must still strive to attain holiness, even in our sorrow, even when we feel broken. We have to strive to lift ourselves higher, to find wholeness and sanctity in our life and in our world.
It’s as if the Torah is telling us, “Don’t return to your old way of life, that would be useless. You must take your broken shards and repair them with gold dust and powder.” Know that your brokenness is part of what makes you holy.
The great Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught, “If you believe it is possible to be broken, then believe it is also possible to repair, to be healed.” One of God’s greatest gifts to us is the ability to allow even our most painful and difficult experiences to transform our essence.
We are who we are because of our story. The State of Israel stands as a testament to the power of kintsugi, learning how to find wholeness not by hiding our pain, but by embracing it and letting it change us, elevate us, teach us to be holy.
So too in this pandemic. Over these past weeks, we have experienced a kind of mourning, a grieving for the loss of the world we once had. Our world and our lives will never be the same as they were before this crisis. The very structures of our society, our modes of interaction, our ways of socializing, our very way of life has been irretrievably lost. We wonder whether we will ever get back to what used to be known as normal, but we should not expect to get back to the same place.
Like the title of Thomas Wolfe’s famous work, you can’t go home again. But that does not mean that we cannot recreate a new home, a new world that is even more beautiful and filled with more love and more blessings than the world we leave behind.
Doing so requires not erasing the past but embracing it, learning from it in order to transform ourselves, to allow the gilded cracks in the vase to shine through.
May we together achieve new insight and healing in this time of pandemic and may it bring holiness into our lives. Shabbat Shalom.