LUCKY MIRACLES AND OTHER DIVINE PARADOXES

My father-in-law David Merkur was in the habit of regularly enriching us with a variety of witty sayings and puns. He had a wealth of them, so that whatever situation in life presented itself he could pull one out the hat and express his feelings, or teach us some lesson that he thought was appropriate. One of his favorites went something like this:

"Luck always seems to have an exaggerated role to play in many of the successes we have in achieving our goals in life. It is just that I tend to be luckier - in direct proportion to the amount of effort that I put into achieving those goals."

On a very different note, my wife Shauna and I decided to invite many of our friends and neighbours over to our house for a Kiddush reception after prayers one Shabbat a few weeks ago. I suggest we should organize something simple in the courtyard in front of the local synagogue, something quick requiring a limited amount of effort. In the end I was overruled by Shauna, and we had about 100 or so people the the garden of our house in Neve Daniel and the very enjoyable celebration stretched out over about an hour and a half with everyone wandering in and out of our garden according to their personal schedules. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the death of my father Leibel Tepperman. He was a Holocaust survivor who suffered from heart disease and suffered a massive coronary at the age of 59. I was all of 16 years old. 

I got up midway through the Kiddush and spoke for a few minutes. Without quoting the entire speech I can say that I quoted a strange metaphor from the Book of Yeshayahu (Isaiah 51) that calls upon the People of Israel to never give up hope. Yeshayahu urged them to remember all of the tribulations of their fore-parents Avraham and Sarah. For decades, those two Biblical icons had been promised a child and endured disappointment after disappointment. However they never lost hope and they never doubted G-od's benevolence. Yeshayahu calls on his people to demonstrate the same kid of resolve as Avraham and Sarah, and to begin to rebuild the country of Israel, recently pillaged and decimated by the Assyrian army of Sanchereb.   

Finishing my comments, and attempting to tie everything together, I said more or less the following. Fifty years ago my father passed away - too early to see his son and daughter grow up and without seeing his children get married or meeting his grandchildren and great grandchildren. That was tragic. But 72 years ago, only 22 years earlier, he was lying in a hospital bed in a converted monastery called St. Otillien north west of Dachau and Munich Germany. There he was recuperating from an operation on his upper thigh to treat a serious infection. He was slowly gaining back the majority of the body weight he had lost as a slave labourer in the German Concentration camps in Lodz, in Auschwitz and in Dachau. His wife and two children were certainly dead as was all of his family from Poland. If you had suggested to him then that 72 years later his son and grandchildren and great grandchildren would be living in Israel and host a kiddush in his honour, attended by 100 or so complete strangers - perhaps he would have laughed in your face, perhaps he would have cried, but he certainly would not have believed you. Yet, somehow he did gather together the moral strength to come to Canada and rebuild his life, with a family to replace the one he lost. He embodied that moral strength, and yes, that faith in the future, that the prophet Yeshayahu was talking about so many years ago.

I don't think my father could ever understand why he was one of the ones to survive. Was it luck that he survived. Was it just of series of fortunate circumstances that allowed him to succeed where so many other younger and perhaps stronger than himself had failed, and paid for it with their lives. Or perhaps as my father-in -law would say it was "Effort" that got him through. He was mentally tougher than the others. As he told me and my sister Susan several times; on the occasions when they were issued a few slices of bread - others would eat it all at once struggling to relieve the pains of starvation screaming in their bellies. Leibel would eat a part and hide away part so he would have something left over to eat later when there wasn't any other food to be had. That required unusual self control. And then there is that third possibility the third word that some people have difficulty talking about. Perhaps it was a miracle.

This year marks not only the fiftieth anniversary of my father's passing, it also marks fifty years since an event that many consider to be another much larger miracle, the Six Day War. As I toured the battle sites with one family recently, I tried to emphasize the desperation and the determination and skill that the Israeli Defense Forces brought to the table in the war. One can easily argue that biggest mistake made by Nasser and the other Arab leaders was to threaten murder and destruction so vociferously, and thus push the Israelis to the point where they felt their back was to the wall and they had nothing to lose by giving everything they had. No-one, to my knowledge, has investigated what percentage of the soldiers fighting the the critical battles of the war, in the air force in Jerusalem, in the Sinai and in the Golan, were descendants of holocaust survivors or survivors themselves of the Holocaust, or frantic escapees from Arab countries. They knew they were fighting for the lives of all those they held dear. Does that mean that they won the battles because of greater determination or a desperate need to survive?  Or did they manage to defeat the enemy because of dumb luck? Should we substitute the word luck with the word miracle?

When Uri Ben Ari was inspired on his own initiative to send a third column of just 7 tanks up a goat path trying to reach Tel El Ful and the northern crossroads to Jerusalem before the division of Jordanian Patton tanks approaching from Jericho, was that genius, or perhaps it was divine inspiration. Some would argue that it was the success of 5 of those 7 tanks in reaching the El Ful crossroads first, and forcing the Jordanians to stand down that won the battle for Jerusalem. That maneuver took the more powerful Jordanian tanks out of the equation, and allowed Uri Ben Ari and the rest of the division of Israeli Shermans to arrive three hours later and control the road to Jerusalem. The absence of those Jordanian Patton tanks set the stage for the rest of the battle, and gave the Paratroopers and Jerusalem Brigade the opportunity to liberate the Old City and reunify Jerusalem. Genius or Divine Inspiration, Effort or a Miracle - you will have to choose for yourself. The only thing I am certain of is - that it was't luck.

In the news today, we are witness to an amazing phenomenon. Israel is still castigated by the left, on campuses all over the world and its supporters are still kept busy counteracting calls by various BDS movements to isolate and boycott Israel, but there is a difference. The prevailing feeling in Israel is that "They" are losing. Perhaps I am deluding myself, but it seems to me that the halls of academia remain open for Israeli scientists despite all the call for ostracizing them, and the Boardrooms of commerce are opening up to Israeli entrepreneurs despite the calls for boycott. The leaders of several countries from Africa, the President of India and the leaders of Eastern European countries are all flocking to Israel to learn from our experts how to grapple with the most important problems humanity is facing today. Israel is on the cutting edge of so many critical world problems. There are water shortages all over the world - Israel has all but solved its water problem. Terrorism is a global plague - Israel has learned techniques to control and minimize it. Cyber criminals are hacking their way into computers all over the world - Israel is in the forefront of developing ways to stop them. The list goes on and on. Throw away your copies of the Protocols of Zion, we have no interest in taking over the world, but certainly you can say that Israel is earning respect and adulation from corners of the world where not so long ago, one would never have seen it coming. 

Here the question becomes even more difficult to answer. Is this just because Israeli's try harder? Or is is there some divine hand at work here. Is Israel, despite all it's faults and serious internal problems, actually capable to taking a leadership role in the world?  I for one am not sure. Whichever way you are leaning, I am reminded of the words of Peter Parker's Uncle Ben. With great power comes great responsibility. 

May we Israelis be worthy of the burden of responsibility if and when it comes, and endeavor to improve the world for ourselves, and to improve the world for all of humanity, to the best of our ability.