‘Because They Were Jews’

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The New York Sun

Amid all the dramas of the day — the tragedy in Japan, the war in Libya, the vote at the United Nations, to cite but three — many New Yorkers took time out to either attend in person or watch online the memorial service for the members of the Fogel family slain last week at the Israeli village of Itamar. Even against the killings of so many other Jews, the murder of the Fogel family stands out for its barbarity. The killers, a pair of them, entered the family’s home and attacked the parents, Udi, as he slept, his wife Ruth, as she fought back ferociously, and three of their five children, Elad, Yaov, and the littlest, Hadas, age three months. We once found it hard to imagine a killing more cold blooded than the one that took place at Hebron almost exactly a decade ago, when a Palestinian Arab sniper, peering through the telescope of a rifle, focused on the head of a 10-month-old Jewish girl named Shalhevet Pas and killed her from a hundred or more yards away. But the man who set upon Hadas put his hands on a three-month-old child and slew her with a knife.

The service at which the prayers were said included a broad spectrum of the Jewish community, and others who aren’t Jewish, and was memorable for its passion and dignity. The leader of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein, said that when he called Rabbi Lookstein of Congregation Kehilath Jeshrun in Manhattan to say that something needed to be done, he needed such a service for his own spirits. It turned out, he noted, that he wasn’t the only one. For the hunger for such a service was felt by many, the thousand who packed the synagogue and thousands more, here in New York and elsewhere, who watched online. Everyone understood the truth Mr. Hoenlein spoke of when he noted that the Fogels were killed not because of where they lived, the West Bank, but “because they were Jews living in Israel.” They were spoken of this afternoon as the royalty of Israel for their willingness to sacrifice for their love of the land and the Jewish people and for the simple, peaceful, religious life they sought to live there.

Mr. Hoenlein spoke of a sense that in the world today there is an echo of the 1930s. He touched on Rabbi Rabbi Lookstein’s book about the period, “Were We Our Brothers’ Keepers?” The comments reflected a growing sense in the room and among those watching on the Internet that the Jews have been abandoned, in some cases even turned upon, by a press that has long since forgotten the lessons of the pre-war period. One of the speakers, Reverend Jacques DeGraff, pastor of the Canaan Baptist Church at Harlem, spoke in the language of the civil rights movement to convey solidarity with the Fogels and those who were gathered to mourn them. Rabbi Yaakov Kermaier of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue made reference to the custom of begging forgiveness of the deceased. He spoke of how the Fogels had “carried the weight of our people.” He asked: “Did we protest loudly enough? Did we fight strongly enough on their behalf?” It was a service that reminded us of how the Jews survive and — as the national anthems of Israel and America were sung at the end by a cantor — of the fact that Israel and America are in a common struggle.


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