Shabbat Va-Yishlach

Written by Yuval Keren Monday, 15 December 2008

Happy birthday little Moishe. Little Moishe is looking forward to his second birth-day party. There will be cake, candles and lots of yummy sweets. There will be music, singing and dancing and friends and neighbours are going to join him, cele-brate with him and bring him presents. Little Moishe hopes that daddy will blow up balloons and mummy will prepare the birthday cake. 
But where are Mummy and Daddy?

Little Moishe did not see Mummy and Daddy today. In fact, he didn’t see them yes-terday either.  It is very strange that mummy did not sing for him at bedtime last night because she always, always sings for him at bedtime. And where is Daddy, he always reads the Shema with him at night, but yesterday there was no Shema, and no daddy.  In fact yesterday was a very strange day. Moishe had to hide in the cup-board with his nanny, for a long time. There was a lot of noise around house, there were big bangs and people were screaming and shouting.

They then had to leave the building very quickly and they are now surrounded by strange people, some of them carry guns.

But where are mummy and daddy? Little Moishe does not understand but with his strong child-instincts he senses that something has gone terribly wrong. There will be no birthday for Moishe today and there will be no song and no Shema at bed-time with mummy and daddy, today, tomorrow or any other day.

Little Moishe will never see his parents alive again. Moishe is the son of Gabriel and Rivka Holzberg, the Rabbi and his wife who were in charge of Beit Chabad in Mum-bai. They were both inside Beit Chabad two weeks ago when terrorists stormed the building and killed everyone in sight.
This attack on the Chabad House in Mumbai attracted relatively little attention in the British and international press. During the awful days of the attack the BBC re-ported that ‘the gunmen were attacking a cafe, two luxury hotels and a Jewish cultural centre.’ The BBC did not even bother to mark Beit Chabad on their map of the Mumbai incident. Other papers showed little interest and most concentrated on places where the casualty rate was higher, much higher.

Yet, there is something very strange about this attack of Beit Chabad. During the horrid days of the attack on Mumbai it was apparent that none of the targets was chosen at random. The attack was planned for months in advance and the targets were selected carefully in order to raise the profile of the grievance of these ter-rorists against the government and people of India.

It is unclear whether the attack on Beit Chabad was triggered by an attempt to in-flict vengeance on a Jewish target on behalf of the Palestinians or whether they were merely trying to add magnitude to their actions, and Jewish targets are al-ways a good option. Yet, the terrorists did not target Beit Chabad because they thought that it would be front page in the Guardian or the Daily Mail. They did so because they knew it will be the front page in the Jewish Chronicle and other Jew-ish newspapers around the world. They knew that other Jews will care about this attack.

Jews cannot help but feel responsible for the fate of other Jews. We can sit here in our relatively safe home and feel the pain and suffering of Jews in other parts of the world. The fate of Jews in other parts in the world is our concern. We do so because we believe in the principle of ‘kol Yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh’, all Jews are responsible for one another (1).

Hillel, the Tannatitic sage tells us to ‘never separate ourselves from the commu-nity’ (2).  The Talmud teaches us that when the collective is in trouble then we should not just go home, eat and drink and pretend that it is none of our concern (3). 

Gabriel and Rivka Holzberg took on the mission of running the Chabad house in Mumbai because they, and their community, felt that they had a responsibility to-wards the physical and spiritual well-being of other Jews who visit India or make India their home. India is a very popular destination for young Israeli backpackers who want to get away after the army and who often are interested in exploring the its spiritual dimensions. The Holzbergs were there to offer support to those who could not find a shelter for the night, for those who were stuck in India without any money, but also for those who wanted to join a minyan for prayer, for those who wanted a kosher meal and for those who wanted to celebrate the Passover Seder together with other Jews. The Holzbergs felt that they had a responsibility towards other Jews, wherever they are both physically and spiritually.  But they are not alone in their mission. All Jews should feel responsible towards other Jews wherever they are.
If we have a responsibility towards the wellbeing of other Jews, does it mean that we have a responsibility towards those whose actions we find abhorrent? A few weeks ago a group of Jews took possession of a house in an Arab neighbourhood in Hebron, the city of the Patriarchs, in the West Bank. From this house they launched repeated attacks on the locals, throwing verbal abuses at their neighbours, hurling stones, damaging property, desecrating a Muslim graveyard nearby and even using live ammunition. The news from this house that was branded by the Israeli media as beit ha-meriva – ‘the house of strife’ – seemed to me as if taken from the darker days of pogroms, only this time it was carried out by Jews, the majority of whom would define themselves as religious and obser-vant.

I feel that I cannot exclude myself from feeling responsible towards these people. Their actions have implications on the way that Jews are perceived beyond the neighbourhood of this house, beyond the city of Hebron and beyond the boundaries of the State of Israel. The actions of this small minority have implications for all of us.

In the book of Numbers we are told that Korah challenged God’s choice of Moses as a leader. God was so angry that He asked Moses and Aaron to step aside while he eliminates the rest of the People of Israel in an instant. The surprised Moses and Aaron asked God: “Just because one man who committed a sin, will You be angry with the entire community?” (Num. 16:22).

R. Simeon b. Yohai tries to explain this situation in a Midrash:

This may be compared to the case of men on a boat, one of whom takes a drill and begins drilling beneath his own place. His fellow travellers say to him, ‘What are you doing?’ He responds to them: ‘What does it concern you, am I not drilling under my own place?’ They replied, ‘[It is our concern] be-cause the water will come up and flood the ship for us all.’ 

The actions the Jewish settlers in Hebron cannot be taken in isolation. The grave-yards they desecrate, the stones they hurl at Palestinians and thuggish behaviour they display in front of the watchful eyes of the entire world make us blush here in London. They have a responsibility for the reputation they give to all Jews around the world, and we have a responsibility to ensure that they know that and that they stop their actions. We cannot stand by while they drill a hole at the bottom of our ship and we need to ensure that God’s wrath does not fall upon the entire people of Israel because of the immoral actions of a tiny minority within it.

Little Moishe is now an orphan. He will have to carry the loss of his parents with him to his third birthday, and for the rest of his life. He will probably spend a life-time attempting to make sense of it all. But little Moishe does not have to carry this burden on his own. We, and the rest of the Jewish community suffer the pain of his loss together with him. We will also continue and try to make sense of it all.

All Jews feel Moishe’s pain because we all have responsibility for one another, be-cause ‘kol Yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh’.