To Live for a Cause
by: Rabbi Koval
by: Rabbi Koval
"Bonjour. Tu parles Francais?"
I heard a lot of French spoken during my whirlwind trip to Israel this week, much more than I recall hearing in previous trips.
In fact, one of the victims of the recent tragic terrorist attack in the kosher supermarket in Paris, Phillipe Braham, was brought to Israel for burial. His family was sitting Shiva for him in the same hotel where I was staying, and I joined thousands of fellow Jews in paying a Shiva call to his family.
Unfortunately, anti-semitism in France is a serious problem, and many French Jews are choosing to leave and to make Israel their new home. Click here for a fascinating interview with Zarie, a cashier who survived the French supermarket attack and hostage-taking. She tells of a horrific quote from the terrorist as he haunted his hostages:
"I want to die a a a martyr and avenge the name of Allah. The difference between us is that you Jews think that life is the most important thing, while for us it is death."
How right he is. They glorify death and pray to die for their perverted cause, while we celebrate life, and do whatever we can to preserve it. We hope and pray to never have to choose martyrdom. It is our goal to live as Jews. However, if G-d forbid, we are forced to die to defend our cause, we pray in the Shema for the strength to do so with dignity.
On Wednesday I had the privilege of celebrating my cousin's bar mitzvah in Jerusalem! At the breakfast reception, my uncle shared an poignant and heartbreaking story about my great-grandmother that during place during the dark years of the Holocaust.
When the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944, my great-grandmother and her sister flanked their elderly mother (my great-great-grandmother) and remained at her side as they entered the dreaded gates of the hell called Auschwitz. When the monster, Dr. Joseph Mengele, saw them assisting their mother, he said to them sadistically, "You want to join your mother? Go with her to the right." They never returned. However, they died as martyrs for the cause of the great mitzvah of honoring their mother.
It is our hope that our people are always able to live for our causes. In Israel, in France and wherever they may be.
L'chayim, to life. Shalom and bonjour!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Koval
