I attended a funeral yesterday.
The deceased was a 21-year-old soldier who was killed in Gaza. He lived 100
meters from the synagogue where I pray every morning. He prayed there sometimes.
I didn’t know him well, but a friend of mine was at his bar mitzvah eight years
ago. The family is from England. My friend noted how polite the boy was. “Very
English,” he said.
A group of around 500 friends
and neighbors gathered down the street from the family home to send them off.
The mother approached on foot. She was so distraught she had to be held up by
two escorts. The father was the same. They were shaking with grief.
We took 6 buses to the
funeral at the military cemetery. Usually at cemeteries you see the graves of
old people. 80 years old. 95 years old. Sometimes you see that of a young
person. These graves had photos on the tombstones – all youth.
It gets to you. But when the
pallbearers bring out the coffin, then it really gets to you. The photos of the
soldiers that are getting killed every week and the photos of the victims of
the Gaza pogrom as I call it and the photos of the Gazan children, it’s
heartbreaking. But they are photos of the people when they were alive, usually smiling
for the photographer. But when you see a coffin, you don’t picture a living
person, you picture a motionless corpse inside the box. Then you start to
understand what war really is. I have been running into bomb shelters for a
month. My body has shaken from explosions overhead. One time I was outside with
my son and we couldn’t get to a shelter so we leaned next to the wall of a
health clinic. With us was a young couple with an infant child. The Iron dome
projectile hit the terrorists’ missile right above our heads. It certainly felt
that way. I know of numerous soldiers who are now in Gaza. I know of people who
were killed in the pogrom. But this was my first glimpse of a coffin. This is
for real.
The ceremony went on for two
hours in the pouring freezing rain. Nobody moved. The feeling of camaraderie
was extraordinary. I can’t say I ever felt anything like it before. I saw that
in New York after 9/11. But this was on another level.
The speeches were heart
wrenching. The father talked about what a fine boy he had – an idealistic boy
who never asked for much, who was embarrassed by attention, who was helpful and
funny. The mother spoke as did his younger siblings. One promised to teach her
even younger siblings about their big brother. Rabbis spoke. At several points
the rain came down in buckets. It may seem cliché to say, but it did feel as if
heaven was crying.
The war isn’t over. There no
doubt will be more like this. We are still learning more about the atrocities
of October 7. And we have video. When you were a kid in school
learning about Atilla the Hun you imagined things. Here, you can watch it. No
imagination required. The arrogance and violence of the terrorists is something
to behold. And there are 240 hostages being held by the fiends who would do
such things. Among the hostages are infants and other children, several whose abduction
we have on video, including that of a terrified little boy. The young man whose funeral I attended – he went into Gaza to try to rescue those people.
Today I’ll do a shiva call to the family. I’ll appreciate that I am
alive and try to figure out a few ways to be a better person. And I’ll try not
to be bitter about the human race. All my friends from America that have called
me over the month to express their support, and the feeling of unity around
here, that surely has helped remind me that people aren’t all bad. The bad ones
are bad. So I send my support back to the good ones. They need encouragement too.
