Teach Your Children Well

My great grandfather, Shmuel Bloom, was orphaned at a young age in his little hometown in Lithuania. Barely surviving, hungry, weak of body – but never of mind or spirit – he would earn some precious money by reciting the Megillah on Purim for women and girls. The custom of Mishlo’ach Manot – of sending packages of food on Purim, insured that he would not starve, at least for a few days. In his memoir, my great grandfather, understandably, mentions Purim with great affection. You would think that with such sweet beginnings I would be reared with a deep love for Purim.

Every Passover, my gentle and brilliant grandfather, Rabbi Harry S. Davidowitz, would conduct a Seder for our entire family in Tel-Aviv. It was my favorite holiday – the occasion I would wait for the entire year. It was a festive, beautiful setting, with all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered around the exquisitely prepared table at my grandparents’ home.

Inevitably, reading through the entire Haggadah – my grandfather did not believe in shortcuts – we would arrive at the moment of opening the door for Elijah, the prophet. My grandfather would stop reading and with a look of horror on his face he’d pound the table with his fist and cry out: “Who placed this awful text in my Haggadah? How did this violent text make it into the sweetest of holidays? I refuse to read this passage!” He’d stop and he’d look around the table at all of his grandchildren. Silence. Finally my grandfather would relent. “Fine,” he’d say. “I’ll read it – but just so that the children can see why I refuse to read it.” He would then recite the “Sh’foch Chamatcha…” “Pour your wrath on the gentiles who do not know you…” “You see!” he’d shout – “You see why I won’t read this passage? Such violence; such anger!”

This scene would repeat itself for the 25 years I was privileged to bask in my grandfather’s holy light. He wanted us to know – to know and remember – that there was danger lurking even in the holiest and sweetest places; that there was violence and vengeance lurking in our holy texts. He believed with all his heart in preserving every word of our scripture, but only if we commit to highlighting the darkness embedded within it alongside the light; the bitter and poisonous along with the sweet and the holy.

My grandfather taught me that all religions have dark verses embedded in their sacred texts along with the sweet and the holy ones and that I must never castigate other religions for their dark passages without first knowing my own religion, with all its problematic verses.

My beloved and fierce wife, Terry, went to the Flatbush Yeshiva in Brooklyn for her entire childhood – up to college. One of her classmates, Benji, was a shy boy my wife remembers as one of the gentlest kids she had known. Benji ended up making Aliyah to Israel and eventually found himself living on the West Bank, serving as a compassionate Physician. Early one Purim morning, on February 5th, 1994, Benji, who by then had dropped his given American name for his Hebrew name, Baruch, which means Blessed, donned his reserve military uniform, took his Galil submachine-gun, loaded up some serious ammunition, went to the cave of Machpella, the tomb of our ancestors in Hebron, as well as a holy site for the Muslims, and gunned down 29 Palestinian men and children during their morning prayers, wounding more than 125 people before being killed himself. He was avenging Amalek, our eternal enemy whose memory we are commanded, in Deuteronomy 25:19,  to eradicate off the face of the earth. He was avenging Amalek on Purim, of all times, because that is the holiday in which our ancestors managed to do away with 75,000 Persians, followers of Haman the wicked, who, the Megillah tells us, was a descendant of Amalek. The Jews then sang and danced and rejoiced greatly. So endeth the Megillah of Esther.

Many Jews on the West Bank then sang and praised Baruch Goldstein, erecting monuments for him, calling him a martyr and a holy man. Many on the West Bank still revere him and hold up his actions as an example of pure devotion and love of Israel. When they sing the blessings after the meal, they regard the sentence: “Baruch hagever…” “Blessed is the man who trusts in God…” as referring prophetically to Baruch Goldstein.

Contrary to our own myth, the Jewish people were never a peaceful people in Biblical times when they dwelled in the Promised Land. They were a garrulous, cantankerous people with a vengeful God on their side. Read Joshua, read Judges, and Samuel I and II. Exile changed all of that. Funny how peaceful a people can become when they are an exiled, reviled, and oppressed minority for 2000 years.

But the Jews are back home again after 2,000 years, sovereign and mighty in their ancestral homeland and God, once more, is on their side. It is not the God of mercy, of justice, of love, and of nurturing that I am referring to – it is the Lord of Hosts, the Man of War, the God of Vengeance I am speaking of, because that is the God of choice for zealots everywhere and metaphor, allegory, and imagination have given way to literalism and action.

It takes one literalist with anger issues and deep, distorted religious convictions out of a class of 100 students to murder 29 people. It takes one person who was not fortunate enough to sit at my grandfather’s table to ignore the danger lurking beneath the surface of holy scripture – scripture I adore and have spent a lifetime studying and absorbing.

I have taught my boys about Purim ever since they had the capacity to learn. They still dressed up in costumes on occasion; still ate Homentachen and went to Purim parties, but they did so with full awareness of the dark side of this holiday.

Let us vow to teach our children well. Let us give them the tools with which to navigate through the waters of contention awaiting them when they reach college – when they reach military service; when they are confronted by the texts they were never taught – their own holy texts that were never fully revealed to them. Let us prevent their future disappointment and dismay in a tradition they thought was only peaceful and benevolent. Let us be truthful with them because that is true compassion. Let us do all we can to avoid future Baruch Goldsteins – there are no guarantees; there is no sure way to avoid all bloodshed in the world, but we can at least do all we can to prevent hatred and vengeance so that we may face ourselves in the mirror and say – I taught my children well.

***

I first wrote this piece fifteen years ago for my congregation in Los Angeles. Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine that acolytes of Baruch Goldstein and his mentor, Rabbi Meir Kahane, would be seated in the Knesset as members of the Israeli cabinet, openly advocating ethnic cleansing. We no longer need to imagine what such people would do. These cabinet members cheer the devastation of the Gaza Strip, claim that there is no such thing as an innocent adult in Gaza, and are, at best, indifferent to the violent death of multitudes of innocent Palestinian women and children.

Clearly and tragically, we have not done all we could have to prevent hatred and violence in our midst. Painfully, too many among us have not taught their children well.

It may be too late for some zealots whose minds have been poisoned, whose hearts have been hardened, and whose souls have been tainted beyond redemption, but we still have the opportunity and the obligation to try and reach those hearts that are still open to the beauty embedded in our tradition so that we may affirm the words of Proverbs 3:17: “…her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace.”