The Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit
Midrash by Rav Bick
13 Nissan 5762
Dear Talmidim,
Two weeks ago, without any warning, and rather
surprisingly at my age, I received a late-night phone call calling me up for emergency reserve duty in the IDF, for the following morning. For
the next eleven days, I spent some ten hours a day doing guard duty in a small town a few minutes away from my home. Intelligence reports were
the basis of a high alert for attacks on the civilian settlements and it was felt necessary to add extra guards.
This gave me a lot
of time to stare at the beautiful countryside of Gush Etzion and think, not always in an orderly logical manner. One night, shortly after
midnight, alone in a guardpost, I found myself staring at the outline of the hills above me, a hill on which I built my home 17 years ago. Gush
Etzion is approximately 200 meters higher than Gevaot, where I was stationed, and the hills were outlined against the starry night, with a thin
line of lights where kibbutz Rosh Tzurim hugged the edge of high ridge. It was totally quiet and still, the wind softly sighing among the trees
of the forest in which Gevaot is situated. Despite everything, despite the M16 on my shoulder and the weariness of several late nights in a
row, despite the 1 AM news which I had recently heard, there was an overwhelming sense of peace in the air, which for a moment covered the
muffled cries of the bleeding land. It was just a week since my neighbor, Aharon Gurrov, who had taught my daughter to play the organ, had been
murdered not far down the road. The lights of two Arab villages were clearly visible to the west, one of which is notorious for producing
terrorists and murderers. Yet, the call of the outline of the land on the hill above me, beneath the dark heavens, was not shrill or angry, not
at that moment. I realized that the voice of the land was older than the present war, and deeper. I realized, I was suddenly confronted with
what in the every-day routine of life is often forgotten, pushed to the recesses of the subconscious - that this land was home, that it had
been home not for the twenty-five years I have lived here, but since Avraham had walked these paths three thousand years ago.
Seventy-seven years ago, my grandfather left Russia, seven years after the communist revolution. He was the rabbi of a small but
famous town in the Ukraine, Medzibozh, the home of the Baal Shem Tov. When he left, the entire town accompanied him to the train station. He
turned to the people of the town in which he was born, in which his father and grandfather had been rabbis before him, and told them that they
would be reunited some day in the Land of Israel. Very few of them survived the German occupation of the Ukraine, and only two or three of
their descendants have made it to the Land of Israel. Aside from myself and my family, there is nearly no one who fulfills that promise today.
But I believe that I am here because of that promise. That promise ensured that the years I grew up in America would not drive my roots too
deep in a foreign land, because my home was still waiting.
I remembered, as I stared at the lights on the hill above my guardpost,
the first time I visited Jerusalem. It was 1967, two months after the liberation of the city. I was only seventeen, and one night, taking a
wrong turn - or perhaps not so wrong after all - I found myself lost in the park that lies at the center of the new city of Jerusalem. Those of
you who are from New York will understand how I, NY born and bred, should have felt when lost in a dark park in the center of a city. And yet,
I felt none of the tension that I had been taught to feel. There was no rush of adrenaline, no wariness rising to my eyes. I recall how amazed
I was at myself, and I realized that I was home.
Once again, I was alone in the dark in what is, after all, a dangerous place. Fifty
meters from my post, there had been three incidents of roadside ambushes in the last year. I was wary, on guard, for that was my job. And yet,
at least for a few minutes in the stillness of that night, I sank into the soft embrace of the hills of Judea. Once again, I realized I was
home, despite all.
For eighteen months the land has been bleeding, with the blood of our brothers and sisters, young and old, spilt
on the roads, in the cities, on the streets. There is hatred and evil walking in these hills, as in perhaps no other place on the globe. A
kilometer from my home, alongside the road that led Avraham from Hebron to Mt. Moriah, children worship death and exult in bloodshed. There is
a valley in Jerusalem, the valley of the son of Hinnom, where once men sacrificed their children to the Molech, passing them through the fire.
The worship of the Molech is alive and thriving once again all around the house of God. The dust at my feet has seen much blood over the years,
and the end is not now in sight, at least not in the sight of rational man. Yet I have heard the earth call in a young voice, though laden with
age, "welcome home," as a mother calls her children. I know I have come home.
This Pesach, when you sit at the seder and relive the
exodus, and find within yourselves the wellsprings of renewal and freedom, remember the wounds in the land of our forefathers, in the land
which is our home. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, the throne of God. The seder is reputed to be the most popular of all Jewish rituals. On
this night of freedom, it would be fitting if each Jew united in the pain of the land and the people, and turned to God to remember His promise
and His love. When you have thanked God for taking you out of Egypt and redeeming you from the house of bondage, I would suggest you add a
short heartfelt request that He redeem us again from oppression and death. Pass on this message to your neighbors and friends, to all who walk
with us from slavery to freedom, to all whose home is aflame in these days.
Today, while cleaning for Pesach, I came across a few
seeds that I must have lost a few years ago. I do not even know what plant they are from. I spread them in the small plot of land behind my
house. Perhaps they will grow into I know not what. Perhaps my son, whom I accompanied to the beginning of his army service two days before
receiving my callup, will see them flower when he comes home.
I wish you all a happy and kosher Pesach.
Pesach.
Chag kasher ve-sameach, ugeula kerova lavo,
Ezra Bick
