Jewish Choices
PERSPECTIVE Jewish Choices It is a year now since our son Alex, zichrono I'vracha (may his memory be for a blessing), was killed in a terrorist ambush while on patrol in Lebanon. The cycle of...
...I rejoice still in the Jewish choices that each has made—two in Israel, one in service to the same kind of ideals in the United States—choices of commitment to Judaism and to lives that strive toward tikkun olam...
...We believe he considered and accepted the risk of his own death...
...In the years that followed Daniel's aliyah, we feared for our sons many times...
...we feared when Daniel and Alex were serving on the northern border...
...Nor do I withdraw those messages from our three other sons...
...We were proud of their independence and courage...
...you have much more strength than you ever realized...
...Israel needs me...
...It was our home-grown rite of passage in the beautiful mountains where my mother's father had peddled at the turn of the century, as a recent immigrant from Russia...
...Some things happened right away—kashrut at home, family Shabbat dinners, Jewish day school for Daniel...
...When we returned to Washington, we each carried different residues from Israel...
...When we decided to remain in Israel beyond the first year, we realized that one or more of the boys might choose to return some day...
...He was loved and respected for his joyous spirit and for his commitment...
...The other shoe had dropped...
...I feel Israel is home...
...The questions—sometimes explicit, often veiled—carried the pain people shared with us as well as their bewilderment...
...Alex died doing exactly what he chose to do...
...The message was simple: Look how much you were able to do by yourself, with your own power and your own will to overcome discouragement...
...we feared careless drivers when they hitchhiked...
...Six years later, the day came when Daniel, who was spending the second half of his senior year with his day school class in Israel, told us that he wanted to move to Israel...
...Are you going to a dream Israel or to a real Israel...
...So we moved to Jerusalem in the summer of 1973...
...we were apprehensive that some of their abundant talents would be wasted coping with Israel's difficulties...
...Other changes occurred slowly...
...A theme recurs: "How did you bear having Alex—and Daniel even before Alex, and Benjy who joined them one and a half years ago—move to Israel and join the IDF...
...We were concerned about future economic struggles...
...But it seemed to us that living in Israel for a year would be one way to transmit something meaningful about Judaism...
...Their answers satisfied us...
...I think I can help to protect Israel and to make it better...
...We feared when Daniel was in Lebanon in 1984...
...My being in Israel can make a difference...
...Saul, the eldest, was 12...
...Daniel's answers and Alex's and Benjy's in years following were very much the same...
...I want to try to answer by telling about these choices and about two messages we decided many years ago to deliver to our four sons...
...Being Jewish had become part of the way each of us defined ourselves, and Israel was our other home...
...The story goes back to when each of the boys became six and we took the new six-year-old to a mountain in the Adirondacks...
...Alex lived with immense joy, with satisfaction and completeness that few of us are privileged to know...
...I grieve unendingly for the loving son that is gone and for the man he would have become...
...How blessed we are that our children's Jewish choices can be made in the United States—the greatest country in the free world—as well as in the state of Israel, the struggling Jewish miracle of our own lifetimes.—Suzanne F. Singer...
...He wanted to make aliyah as soon as he graduated from high school, and he planned to do his army service right away, like other Israelis...
...Alex believed he was doing work that fulfilled God's purpose for Jews, tikkun olam, to "perfect the world," and he was determined to make his small piece of the world—the young men in his platoon—into better people, part of a better Israel...
...How do you continue to support the decision of two of your three remaining sons to make their lives in Israel...
...Are you moving away from something here...
...The cycle of Alex's year, marked in his lifetime by his birth on September 15, is now marked by his death on the same day 25 years later...
...During the months since last September, friends, interviewers, people moved by Alex's story who never knew him, have asked us questions...
...We had hardly any notion of what that should mean for our sons, or for that matter, for us...
...For me, it is a time to reflect...
...We asked Daniel the questions we would later ask Alex and Benjy: Why are you going...
...The other message we tried to deliver was that being Jewish was important and should in some way become part of their lives...
...With him we climbed to the summit of one of the High Peaks, usually a several-hour trek on trails with just enough rock-scrambling to test short legs...
...After his death one of Alex's commanders described him as shalem, a Hebrew word meaning "whole" that carries in its root the echo of shalom, the peace that comes from wholeness...
...And the unspoken question: "Do you regret the decisions you made that led to Alex's death...
...Alex, 11...
...The boys were independent, confident Jews making a Jewish choice: to help build the first Jewish state that affirmed the intention of our people to survive and flourish even after the cataclysm of the shoah...
...The beginning and end of Alex's cycle almost mirrors the cycle of the Jewish year...
...I want to share the responsibilities of Israelis for our home...
...Yet I would change none of our messages to him...
...On the other hand, we did not worry about purposelessness, boredom, alienation, intermarriage and loneliness...
...The boys learned Hebrew, attended a variety of Israeli schools, hiked all over the country with us and began to anticipate and participate in the cycle of the Jewish week and the Jewish year...
...He chose to live in Israel, he chose to join the IDF and he chose to be a platoon commander in the Givati brigade...
...We felt that someday we would join them and that the bonds between us could survive the distance...
...The messages of years ago had taken root...
...Daniel, 7; and Benjy was 6. The year, marked by the Yom Kippur War, stretched out to four years...
Vol. 13 • October 1988 • No. 7
