Friday, December 5, 2008

Why Israelis mourn Mumbai

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Jerusalem, Israel

Gavriel and Rivkie Holtzberg, the young Israeli couple who ran the Chabad
House in Mumbai and were murdered there by jihadists, died bound and
helpless, like those Jewish martyrs disparaged for their quietism by the
Zionist ethos. Ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Holtzbergs never served in the
Israeli army--yet when they were buried on Tuesday, Israeli society mourned
as though they were fallen soldiers. When their coffins arrived at
Ben-Gurion Airport, they were draped in the national flag. Israeli leaders,
including President Shimon Peres, who doesn't usually attend the funerals of
terror victims, came to the Holtzbergs' funeral. When I came into work that
morning, I found the young woman in the room beside mine weeping.

The devastating scene of the Holtzbergs' surviving two-year-old son, Moishe,
calling out for his mother during a memorial service, was repeatedly shown
on TV. But Israelis weren't only mourning the destruction of the Holtzberg
family; they were mourning the loss of national heroes. Newspaper accounts
recalled how Gavriel bribed prison guards in India to smuggle in wine for
Shabbat to an Israeli inmate held on drug charges. Even after they lost a
child to Tay-Sachs disease, the Holtzbergs insisted on remaining at their
post--to continue, as Gavriel explained, "to do mitzvas," fulfill the
commandment to help their fellow Jews.

In embracing the Holtzbergs, Israelis were restoring to the national ethos
the old concept of kiddush hashem, religious martrydom--confirming a process
that began with the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The iconic image of that war was a
photograph of a religious soldier being led into Egyptian activity as he
carried a Torah scroll. That image was so jarring precisely because it cast
an Israeli soldier in the role of a pre-Zionist model of heroism. Since
then, all our wars have ended inconclusively, expressions of the limitations
of power. The more nuanced Israeli attitudes toward heroism are reflected in
Jerusalem's renovated Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, which now not only extols
the secular heroes, like partisans and ghetto fighters, but also those who
responded to dehumanization by maintaining their religious dignity, running
underground schools and prayer groups.


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Since the Mumbai massacre, there have been calls here for the Israeli
government to subsidize security at Chabad houses across the globe, seen by
Israelis as extensions of home. "Our Chabad," summed up one headline on an
Israeli news web site. The warmth with which so many Israelis have responded
to Chabad proves--along with the growing popularity of prayer lyrics in
Israeli rock music and of informal "secular" prayer groups spreading in Tel
Aviv and elsewhere--that large parts of Israeli society may be entering a
post-secular phase.

Still, it is doubtful the country would have reacted with the same emotional
intensity had the Holtzbergs been ordinary ultra-Orthodox Jews rather than
Chabadniks. Mainstream Israelis resent ultra-Orthodox Jews for separating
from the state and its obligations even as they demand that it subsidize
their separatism. Chabad neither separates nor demands, but gives. Israelis
encounter Chabad's embrace most often abroad. When our young people just out
of the army travel the most remote corners of the world (because military
service doesn't provide enough dangers and thrills), they invariably
encounter a Chabad house.

Israelis also love Chabadniks for their courage: Rivkie and Gavriel weren't
yet buried when Rivkie's father announced his intention of taking over their
work in the Mumbai Chabad house. Though few Chabadniks are drafted into the
army, they don't avoid danger zones: Chabad activists rush to the front
lines during war, providing religious services and dancing with soldiers to
raise morale. One friend told me about her sister who was serving in a
border post so sensitive that a visitor required special permission from the
general in command of the front: "And then who shows up on Hanukah with
jelly donuts? Chabadniks."

Contrast Chabad's embrace of the Israeli ethos with ultra-Orthodox
anti-Zionists--one of whom, Leibish Teitelbaum, a member of the Satmar
hasidic sect, was killed in Mumbai. Teitelbaum's family demanded that his
coffin not be draped in the Israeli flag, even though his body had been
retrieved and flown home by the Israeli government--a reminder that Jewish
anti-Zionism is less an ideology than a character flaw, a lack of capacity
for gratitude. Chabad defines itself by its love for every Jew; the
anti-Zionists define themselves by the Jews they despise.

Israeli society reciprocated the Teitelbaums' contempt, barely noting that
other funeral. Watching the mutual estrangement that even a common Jewish
death couldn't heal, it felt like one of those moments in Jewish history
when schismatic sects evolve into separate faiths.

Israelis know Chabad's flaws--the cars mounted with the late Rebbe's
photograph and the words "Welcome King Messiah," the replicas built around
Israel of the Rebbe's house in Brooklyn, complete with red bricks chipped in
all the original places. And also Chabad's hardline politics: There was no
territorial compromise, including Israel's withdrawal from Sinai in 1982,
that Chabad didn't vehemently oppose. But many Israelis overlook the
messianic looniness and the political rigidity because they crave a
connection with a form of traditional Judaism that loves them
unconditionally. And though it's rare in Israel's grudging public discourse
to express gratitude, this week at least, Israelis offered Chabad that same
unconditional love in return.

Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor at The New Republic and a senior
fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center
in Jerusalem.

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