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Helen Weiss Pincus

You Were Right, Avi

One Shabbos afternoon, years ago in my parents’ home, when my older brother, Avi and I were home from college, lunch progressed as usual until at some point in the conversation my brother, said, in a voice to which I was unaccustomed, in response to a comment I had made, “We should tear down the Mosque of Omar.”

I don’t remember exactly what we had been discussing. Recently, I had returned from a year in Israel with about 40 other members of my Zionist youth movement . Towards the end of that year, which included several months of study in Jerusalem, living and working in a moshav and a kibbutz, the Six day War erupted. I was living on Kibbutz Beeri at that time, not far from Gaza which was then under Egyptian control. My brother had decided to make aliyah and live in Israel forever, had moved there 2 years before my visit, and joined the IDF as as a paratrooper, an elite Israeli army unit.

I was a naive American kid then and even though we were close to the border at the beginning of trouble, I had no sense of personal fear, but my brother was in combat in Jerusalem and that was worrisome. His unit, which sustained many casualties, had liberated our holy city from Jordan and united it under Israeli rule. Subsequently, my brother and I never discussed his war experiences. We talked about how grueling basic training had been, about his first jump out of a plane, which, as often happens, was aided by a well-placed hand of the commanding officer. We had talked about how much he loved living on the kibbutz to which he had been assigned as part of his orientation to life in Israel. We talked about homesickness, Israeli food, his new friends. Not the war, not death, not fear.
“I say we should tear down the Mosque of Omar,” Avi said again, at lunch. “But, Avi,” I said, you can’t tear down a religious site of …” “I say we should tear down the Mosque of Omar,” my brother interrupted me, again in that voice I did not recognize.

His hands were on the table; he was about to get up. “My friends died fighting there.” His eyes were strange, his voice had a tone I had never heard, even when we argued. “Okay, okay, whatever,” I murmured, desperate to end this conversation. It took me awhile to understand the trauma he had been through, the pain the anguish. I can’t tell him anymore that I agree with him; he passed away. But I want him to know I get it – Avi, you were right. We should have torn down the Mosque of Omar, and a few other structures up there.

About the Author
Award-win­ning jour­nal­ist and free­lance writer, Helen Weiss Pin­cus, has taught mem­oir writ­ing and cre­ative writ­ing through­out the NY Metro area to senior cit­i­zens and high school stu­dents. Her work has been pub­lished in The New York Times, The Record, The Link, The Jew­ish Stan­dard, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions.
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