What A Price We Paid

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In a few weeks we will celebrate the holiday of Hanukkah, commemorating the victory in 167 BCE of the Maccabean army over the Greek-Seleucid Empire, the recovery of Jerusalem, the rededication of the Second Temple, the establishment of the Hasmonean Dynasty, and the associated miracles. Imagine the euphoria when the battle was over. The Temple Mount was in our hands and the idolatrous enemy had been defeated. The Jewish nation was free and autonomous once again.

And then consider the cost. Hannah and her seven sons, among other less famous martyrs. All the Jewish warriors who died in battle against a numerically and tactically superior enemy, including Judah Maccabee himself, his brother Eliezer, crushed to death by an elephant, and his brother Jonathan, killed by the General Tryphon even after a ransom had been paid for his freedom. The surviving brother Simon, who assumed leadership and was later murdered by his son-in-law Ptolemy, who himself fled from Yochanan (John) Hyrkanos, Simon’s brother.

And, of course, before 250 years had passed, the Romans, invited to Judea by the Hasmonean monarchs themselves, laid waste to the Temple, slaughtered millions, and ushered in a two thousand year exile.

As for us, we spin the dreidel, light the candles, eat the latkes and/or doughnuts, and celebrate the victory and the miracles, but we barely give a second thought to the price that was paid.

The Exodus from Egypt occurred about 3500 years ago.  Every year we celebrate the event at a festive family dinner/psychodrama during which we are obligated to imagine having experienced the Exodus ourselves. We eat the bread of affliction.  We recall the plagues that resulted in our freedom. We recount the miraculous parting of the water. We imagine ourselves part of the new nation, exultant, free at last after centuries of oppression and tribulation. We say Hallel, praise to God for our redemption.

We even refer, in passing, to the horrific burdens of slavery, the murder of our male children, the arduous work, the hundreds of years of bondage. How many sons and daughters of Israel must have perished in pain during those centuries of servitude?  How many mothers had their babies ripped from them and drowned in the Nile? How many families were shattered by the whims of the cruel slave masters? We don’t really know. We choose not to dwell on the price that was paid before we could emerge as a new and consecrated nation, bound for the promised land.  We prefer to think about the exultant joy of the freed slaves, free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last.

After the 1967 war, a similar euphoria reigned, in Israel and throughout the Jewish world.  We were so proud of the seemingly miraculous accomplishments of tiny Israel.  Threatened by annihilation, with superior Arab forces marshaled at its borders, Israel wiped out the Egyptian Air Force in a bold lightning maneuver.  Its ground forces swept through the Sinai and took the Golan Heights. In the emotional and historical apotheosis of a brilliant campaign, the Temple Mount was taken and Jerusalem reunified under Jewish rule.  

Understandably, there was an efflorescence of interest in all things Jewish, from Moshe Dayan to the chassidim of the European shtetl, from the intellectual to the artistic.  We still sing the patriotic songs that emerged from the victorious war.  The very talented Dan Almagor, a giant of Israeli culture,  wrote two musical revues, Ish Chassid Haya (Once There Was a Chassid) that was a huge hit in Israel, and then worldwide.  He followed that with Yerushalayim Sheli (My Jerusalem), which was a far more textured and ambivalent treatment of the spirit and religion of Jerusalem.

I haven’t been able to put my hands on the script, so I apologize if my memory of a performance over half a century ago is not precise, but I recall one vignette from Yerushalayim Sheli that has stayed with me.  A soldier from the group that captured the old city is making a condolence call on the grandmother of a comrade who fell in the battle.  He tries to comfort her, finally saying that her grandson’s sacrifice and that of others enabled us to retake the Western Wall.  The grandmother looks at him, shakes her head, and says, “The Wall is not worth one fingernail of my Moshe.”

Similarly, in the amazing song Hakotel (do yourself a great favor and listen to Yehoram Gaon’s version), the famous phrase, “There are people with a heart of stone; There are stones with a human heart” balances the momentous and miraculous achievements of the war against the sacrifices of the paratroopers and the mother of one of the fallen infantry soldiers, who declines to leave a note in the kotel, explaining that what she contributed to the kotel the previous day was greater than words or writings.

We were victorious, but what a price we paid.  The subtext in all of the victories that we quite properly celebrate is that we must never forget those who paid the price and that it is our sacred mission to assure that the price they paid was not in vain.

And now, God willing, we are poised at a truly historic moment, one in which it seems that the balance of power in the Middle East has been transformed by a sequence of events that do not even require the passage of time for their unbelievable, unaccountable, uplifting, and miraculous character to be revealed and appreciated.  Whether or not one is a believer, the word miraculous–in the sense of totally unanticipated and unimagined–must come to mind when we realize how far we have come from the depths of degradation, despondency, and depravity of October 7.  Following the devastating intelligence and military failures, the heart-rending losses, the brutal savagery, and the national despair into which we had fallen, this tiny country, its brave people, its stalwart leaders, and its blessed armed forces accomplished feats that truly transcend our powers of description and imagination.

It is futile to even attempt to list the wonders that we have witnessed. The individual heroism of those who fought off attackers and rescued survivors. The courage of the hostages and the grace and dignity of the hostage families.  The coalescence of an entire home front to support the war effort and the displaced.  The women and men who never stopped praying.  The brilliant planning and execution of military operations.  The strategic creativity in managing and fighting a seven-front war.  The exploding beeper phenomenon.  The operational precision of the coordinated air force, tanks, infantry, and navy.  The volunteers who stepped in to sustain morale and the war effort in innumerable and creative ways.  The total evisceration of Hamas despite their years of preparation in the most challenging urban war environment.  The decapitation of Hezbollah leadership wherever they were cowering and the methodical destruction of its arsenal. The unprecedented success of the defense against the Iranian missile barrages, followed by the humiliating exposure of Iran’s inability to contest Israel’s air superiority and protect its most valued assets.  The literally unbelievable destruction of 90% of the weaponry of Syria in a matter of hours.  The courageous ability of a much-maligned and besieged Israeli leadership to stand up to continuous and powerful internal and external pressure and threats in order to resist a cessation of hostilities that might imperil the existential goals that they felt could not be abandoned.

Once again, we are at a juncture where we can, perhaps, envision the euphoria that might accompany a victory, the scope of which could barely have been imagined.  If, indeed, Hamas is now finally willing to release the hostages it has so brutally taken and held, that will be yet another opportunity for thanksgiving.

But . . . for God’s sake, let us learn from the past.  Let us acknowledge and never forget the high price our people have paid:  the lives lost, the dislocation, the families and dreams shattered.  Let us never forget the agony of the hostages and the hostage families, whose bravery and love were on display throughout, no matter what their convictions and commitment led them to do and say.  Let us keep etched into our memories those seemingly endless pictures of smiling young men and women whose faces appeared daily in the news media, each one a universe of lost possibilities, each one a terrible squandering of talent and potential.  Let us remember the widows and orphans, as well as those who lost their homes and their livelihoods.

And . . . for God’s sake, let us make sure that whatever peace is negotiated after any victory does not permit the evil that has been overcome to survive in any form that will permit it to emerge again.  I am neither politician nor statesman and I stand in awe of those who have shouldered this awesome responsibility.  But I pray, I beg, I implore them to assure that these achievements and the possibilities they engender, for which such an enormous price was paid, not be frittered away.

The price that was paid and the sacrifices that were made demand that as much thought and planning and wisdom and talent be dedicated to building a peace that will endure as was devoted to winning the war.  The enemy must be defeated to such an extent that it no longer represents a risk, that it lacks the wherewithal to inflict damage or fear.  After the military victory, there will need to be economic, social and educational measures that will allow the value of the triumph to be preserved.  These must be carefully designed and implemented.  All necessary demilitarized buffers, monitoring mechanisms, and international assurances from responsible and reliable parties must be obtained and maintained.

I wish I had the wisdom to prescribe the programs that must be implemented.  I wish that I had the confidence that those who will be negotiating and executing the work that must be accomplished to preserve the victories will be effective, cooperative, and non-political in their work.

For now, I just want everyone to remember, and never to forget, even as we celebrate whatever success we are fortunate enough to enjoy, what a high price was paid, and that we must never, never, never, never, never allow it to have been paid in vain.