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For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
Your donation will be tax deductible in the US to the extent allowed by the IRS.
To make a tax-deductible donation by wire transfer in the US, please contact:
Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
To make a tax-deductible donation in Israel, please contact:
Dina Gudai, Israeli Representative
Phone: 074-7800643
Email: dina@schechter.ac.il
Please mail your check to:
The Schechter Institutes, Inc. (a 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization)
Box #3566
PO Box 8500
Philadelphia, PA 19178-3566
Attn: Mr. Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
Please indicate the donation is "for your joint Schechter Institutes program."
Checks should be made payable to the Jewish Theological Society of Canada and mailed to:
Jewish Theological Society of Canada
c/o Camp Ramah in Canada
3845 Bathhurst St., Suite 310
Toronto, ON, M3H 3N2
Phone: 416-789-2193, ext. 2139
E-mail: accounting@campramah.com
Please mail a check to:
The Schechter Institutes
Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
Israel
For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
From the story of a life on its last journey, from words of family members gathered around the grave, rises terrible pain but also a great light. Notes from Mt. Herzl
It has been a week of funerals.
The heart breaks and widens.
Tears flow, here from pain, there from emotion.
Jewish funerals, and especially those of IDF soldiers, whoever they may be, offer a lesson in how to live. As the people in attendance listen to the eulogies, they learn more and more what life was for the deceased and his family. They discover how the soul of the one who fell is reflected in the souls of each one near and dear to him. The mirrors of the soul tell us a story of interwoven lives and relationships.
A huge crowd gathers at the military cemetery on Mt. Herzl. The hot sun of Tammuz beats down upon our heads. Mt. Herzl is a city of eternal youth – of youths who sacrificed their lives so that we may exist in our Land. We stand close together: young and old, soldier and civilian, Jews from all sectors – secular and haredim, traditional and national religious, conservative and reform. In my heart I wonder why we define ourselves in terms of sectors, and I decide that I prefer the tribal definition of yore.
Between the carefully-tended graves – for each is a garden unto itself –words of prayer cut through the choked sobs that are heard in turn from different spots within the crowd. Each word finds its way from one heart into all our hearts.
A person’s last teaching, his legacy, is delivered in condensed form by his dear ones as they part from him. In Israel, it is the words of people, more than the rites, that bring his life to the fore, and perhaps this is truer of words spoken at a funeral than those spoken at a happy occasion. Thus it is written in Ecclesiastes, “It is better to visit a house of mourning than a house of celebration.”
At this funeral I witnessed the reflection of values held by grandparents in the lives of their children and their children’s children. I was amazed at how today’s parents in Israel teach their children that modesty and putting oneself last are necessary for the social good; that what counts is the person, not titles, degrees, wealth, family connections or military rank, which without deep human essence is meaningless.
Around the grave stood four generations of one rooted family, in which the ingathering of exiles and a mixing of cultures have led not to assimilation but to mutual enrichment; A family that through quiet perseverance throughout the generations, in joy and at times in sorrow, has preserved its stake in the Land. I beheld a mother’s valor in her words, “would that I had died instead,” even as she asks God to give strength to be joyful in what there is and not weep over what might have been. I heard her clear call to those assembled to continue, throughout the years and not only in the time of mourning, to visit her home, the home of a family whose precious son was snatched from them in the flower of his youth.
Our Sages taught us not to offer comfort to people while their dead lay before them. But the presence of the community in the home does offer a bit of consolation. In recalling those lone soldiers who came from the Diaspora and volunteered to serve, we should remember that the mitzvah of comforting mourners continues after the funeral and the shiva, throughout life, and so we should maintain contact with their families. It is the least we can do for those who gave the greatest sacrifice of all for the sake of our security.
At this funeral I learned of the great power of love held in the heart of a young man for his parents and grandparents, his friends, siblings, and beloved, who would have become his bride. They were a young couple who chose to spend free moments learning Torah for its own sake. I heard that the young man’s favorite teaching of Rabban Gamliel, one of the ten Mishnaic sages who were killed in the Land by the Romans, was from Ethics of the Fathers (3:12): “…receive every man with a joyful countenance.”
As I left the cemetery, my prayer was that we shall all learn to receive each person in joy, not only now in a time of war but also when quiet is restored; that we visit families not only in times of mourning but also in times of happiness.
The funeral was of Second Lieutenant Yuval Haiman z”l from Efrat who was killed thwarting a murderous attack emerging from one of the Hamas tunnels near Kibbutz Nir Am. I work with Yuval’s mother, Zohara, but was not privileged to know Yuval until his funeral. May his memory be for a blessing, may the memory of all the fallen soldiers be for a blessing, and may their souls be bound in the bond of life.
(English translation by Penina Goldschmidt)
Einat Ramon is a senior lecturer in Jewish thought and Jewish Women’s Studies at Schechter and one of the founders of professional spiritual care in Israel (she is the writer of Israeli spiritual caregivers’ standards and ethical code.) In 2012 she founded the Marpeh program – the only academic program for the training of spiritual caregivers in the context of pluralistic Jewish studies, where she teaches and supervises chaplaincy students and Israeli pastoral education supervisors-in-training. Dr. Ramon writes academic and popular books and articles about contemporary Hassidic spirituality, the philosophy and methods of spiritual care , Zionist and North American Jewish thought, and modern Jewish women’s theology and ethics— particularly concerning family and bioethics issues. She is a third generation native Jerusalemite, received her doctorate in Religious Studies from Stanford University, she is married to (Reform) Rabbi Arik Ascherman and is a mother of two.
