Dear Israeli Soldier, Dear Aviah

The cherub face in the photo is yours, Aviah, my beloved cousin and a counter terrorist in the West Bank.

Since 2004, you have served in the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) elite Paratroopers Brigade. You passed arduous physical and mental tests to gain admission into this highly trained unit with a history of carrying out special forces-style missions. You have participated in countless operations, among them Israel's unilateral disengagement plan — also called the Disengagement plan or Gaza Pull-Out plan (2005) and the Second Lebanon War (2006). Most of the time, we haven't known your whereabouts or doings, and this is how it must be.

You have worn ceramic bulletproof vests, helmets, night vision goggles, and camouflage face paint (as shown in this photo you gave me on your return from the Second Lebanon War). You have marched for days bearing 60 kilos (132 pounds) and more of combat gear, canteens, backpacks, and injured comrades. You have endured weeks of fighting, intense hunger, fear, frustration, and physical and emotional exhaustion. And, for the rest of your days, the echoes of conflict and war will accompany you.

While your compulsory military service has been my personal grim reminder that freedom is not free, and that the freedoms I enjoy daily I can never take for granted, you are another kind of hero, too. When doctors diagnosed Ohad with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), you asked the army for leave to be present 24/7 for your youngest brother. So for one month, you were his constant companion, support, assistant, driver, and advocate during initial therapeutic treatments at Hadassah Medical Center. While jobs kept your parents from a round-the-clock presence for Ohad, you stood in for them and for your siblings who are either full-time students or workers.

Last Thursday, when you were honorably discharged from full-time duty (like all Israeli veteran soldiers, you are a reservist until age 50), I telephoned to speak with a sweet, life-affirming, bright young man. I wanted to congratulate and thank him for protecting his family, community, and nation, and for helping to safeguard the dreams, prayers, and labors of peace-seekers everywhere.

Dear Aviah, I felt my words inadequate and, humbled by your family's signature calm and unassuming courage, I stammered and talked nonsense. So, I am expressing my gratitude (and sadness) more fully by sharing parts of the comment I left on Stephanie's blog last spring, when, deeply affected by the Iraq War, she began, Dear American Soldier.

And though my comment was in response to Stephanie's letter, I was thinking of you, Aviah, and I was raising you up when I wrote —

I often speak with my beloved Israeli cousin, 20-year-old paratrooper Aviah, and I ask him endlessly your question, I wonder how you feel when you hear fellow[s…] criticize […] war and your role in it. . . .

When I spot soldiers in USA uniform at airports . . . I ask your questions— name, family, home, dreams, and responses to criticism by fellow citizens (and others) on the war they are fighting. It is easy for me to speak with them because . . . I almost automatically see all nations' soldiers as somebody’s son, husband, father, cousin, friend, classmate, neighbor, or ally.

And I have come to see most soldiers as children serving for many reasons and almost always at the behest of old men. And I always weep inside, often out loud, and like you, feel a lump in my throat and an almost paralyzing sadness.

May we pursue dialog instead of war and teach compassion in place of hatred. Always. All ways.

Wrestling with texts and observing shoes in an ancient learning partnership, a havruta

While a quick glance at the photo might suggest that I am promoting a popular coffeehouse chain, I aim to show — and to raise up another kind of commerce. It is a transaction in which no monies are exchanged and whose value is incalculable: an ancient learning partnership, a havruta (Aramaic term for study partner).

The glowing, incandescent young woman on my right is Felegosh, my havruta. Eighteen years ago, this Sherut Leumi (Israel National Service Corps) volunteer alumna rode on her father’s shoulders as he walked Ethiopian lowlands, steppes, and semi-desert six months with his family and extended community. Their destination: Addis Ababa, this ancient African nation’s capital from where a plane brought them to their ancestral home, Israel.

(This year, Felegosh is an emissary in Atlanta, Georgia, where her team of Bnei Akiva volunteers is working with others to strengthen Jewish identity and instill a love for Israel and study of Torah through havrutot [plural of havruta], Shabbat and festival celebrations, community programming, and other informal education activities. More than seven years ago, I learned with my first havruta, Shimon, in the Atlanta Torah MiTzion program.)

While Jewish tradition has always valued learning with others, learning with one's peers is special.

I have learned much from my teachers, but from my friends more than my teachers.
From the Talmud (BT Ta'anit 7a)

For this most heterogeneous pair of peers, mutual respect and affection help bridge obvious differences in age, physical appearance, and cultural background. And though Felegosh and I approach our tradition from vastly different worldviews and assumptions and our practice of religious observance is at almost polar-opposite levels, we are learning much and well as we tap into each other’s sometimes radically different lives.

What have we been studying since Felegosh arrived in August?

• Selected paragraphs on repentance by Shlomo Aviner and Rabbi Avigdor Neventzal (contemporary Jerusalem rabbis and ideologues of the national camp in Israel) and excerpts from Hilchot tshuva (Laws of Repentance) by Maimonides, the 12th century Spanish-born Talmudist, philosopher, astronomer, and physician.
  
  
• The d'var Torah (words of Torah) that my cousin wrote on the presentation of a hand-lettered Torah scroll. The scroll was commissioned as an ilui neshama, an elevation of soul (or spirit) of Noam Yaakov Mayerson, of blessed memory: son, brother, uncle, and friend killed in the Second Lebanon War.
  
  
• Psalm 119
  

Yet I am learning not just by studying texts but also by noticing the attitudes that drive much of my partner’s input.

Last week, for example, we sat at a table where Felegosh was squinting in the light of the setting sun while the speakers broadcast loud music over our heads. Both distractions bothered me, and so I asked, “do you want to move to a shadier spot and should I ask the barista to lower the volume?” “Not at all,” her reply. “These are mere incidentals to our business, our learning. Almost nothing merits distracting or interrupting us.”

It has been said that if you want to learn from your rabbi (teacher), study how the rabbi ties his shoes. And I am studying how Felegosh “ties” her turquoise Crocs!

l'ilui nishmato, to elevate the soul of Noam Mayerson

לוּלֵי תוֹרָתְךָ שַׁעֲשֻׁעָי אָז אָבַדְתִּי בְעָנְיִי

תהילים קי"ט

Had not your Torah teaching been my delight,
I would have perished in my affliction.
Psalms 119
So begins the invitation (excerpt shown on the left) from my cousins Gila and Chaim to join them today in a Hachnasat Sefer Torah, presentation of a Torah scroll in Tekoa, an Israeli settlement near Jerusalem.

The photo is of their son Noam Yaakov Mayerson, in whose blessed memory Isaac Leib and Ruth Rennert commissioned the hand-lettered Torah as an ilui neshama, an elevation of soul (or spirit) of the departed through the mitzva, good deed done in his name. On August 7, 2006, Noam was killed in the Second Lebanon War when Hezbollah terrorists opened fire on an IDF (Israel Defense Forces) unit in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil.

My pious cousins' choice of verse reflects their love of Torah, which guides and sustains their lives. They have come together before with family, friends, and community in sorrow. Today, was a coming together of more than 400 people to show respect for Noam and to celebrate a simcha, a rejoicing in the Torah presentation!

I shared the invitation with my friend Rabbi Dr. Michael Berger, who commented —

Just beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing this – it is one of the real differences between living in chu”l [outside Israel] and in Aretz [the Land] – these “simple” invitations remind you of the existential realities of living in Israel much more than here [in the USA].

Days before the presentation, at the Siyum Sefer Torah (completion of the scribal process), a few honored people penned the last letters. In the photo shown here, Chaim, quill in hand, calligraphs on the parchment.

For centuries, Jews have dedicated the scribing of a Torah scroll to commemorate, honor, or strengthen other Jews. Of 613 mitzvot, commandments in the Torah, the final one is to scribe a Sefer Torah.

Today, the Torah was brought on permanent loan to Yeshivat Hesder Tekoa, where Yehoshua, Noam's elder brother teaches and where his youngest brother, Yoni, studies.

The procession began in the settlement synagogue from where the Torah, carried under a chupa (bridal canopy) and dressed in fine velvet cover and sparkling silver crown, continued to the Yeshiva.





















Once there, throngs danced with the "tree of life" (Proverbs 3:18).
















Among the celebrants was Adin Steinsaltz, head of the Yeshiva and noted rabbi, scholar, philosopher, social critic, and author who, in 1988, Time magazine called a "once-in-a-millennium scholar."
















Noam's close friend Daniel also danced with the Torah
















. . . while the band played music and sang.
















In the Sukkah, Yeshoshua read aloud Chaim's reflections on the celebration and on Noam's life.





















Everyone in the Sukkah feasted
















. . . and Noa and Noam, both named in memory of their uncle, enjoyed getting to know one another.
















About the photos. Thanks to Noam's friend Gadiel Boar who took the first photo, and to his aunt Lynn Mayerson Berger who took the rest.