Fashioned in the womb by Sherri Mandell
Jerusalem Post, June 23, 2002
The writer is the author of Writers of the Holocaust and co- director
of the Koby Mandell Foundation's Healing Retreat, a therapeutic program
for bereaved mothers and widows of families struck by terror.
Rahamim Zidkiyahu is the name of the 51-year-old bus driver who was killed
on Tuesday morning in the Jerusalem bus bombing, along with 18 others
including an 11- year-old Ethiopian fifth-grader on her way to school.
There are so many others, and the list keeps on growing, to our sorrow.
In Jewish thought a name is prophetic, determining and defining a person's
character and personal history. In memory and in honor of Rahamim Zidkiyahu,
it is our duty to look at his name and understand its meaning and what
it tells us about our destiny as a people.
Rahamim is the Hebrew word for compassion. We Jews are a people of compassion.
Even now, in the midst of war, Jews are reaching out to the Palestinians,
trying to understand their pain, inviting them to work together, to speak
together, to study together. We teach our children not to react in violence
when they are targeted - not just by the Palestinians, but by too many
of the world media, who rationalize Arab cruelty as a justified response
toexpression of "desperation."
Cherie Blair and Ted Turner were but two examples this week of people
who refuse to condemn terrorism as inexcusable.
What does compassion mean in our situation? The Hebrew word for womb,
rehem, has the same root as the word compassion. The womb is the innermost
area of the feminine part of ourselves, the place where life is created
and formed.
Now in the womb of Palestinian culture, Palestinians are being shaped
to hate - to their lives and national aspirations into the slaughter
of innocent Jews. Too many Palestinian mothers are applauding their children's
deaths, appearing in videos the night before suicide attacks clutching
rifles like teddy bears, enjoining their sons and daughters to kill as
many Jews as possible. Those who could be creating life are destroying
it.
This cruelty has become so confused with the Palestinian national struggle
in such a way that cruelty has become a dominant form of expression in
the Palestinian community.
But iIt is our duty to proclaim, over and over - no matter how many Cherie
Blairs or Ted Turners erroneously fall under the false argument of Palestinian
despair - that terror cannot be justified as a form of resistance or defense.
Once cruelty is in the womb it gives birth to more cruelty, and a political
solution cannot expunge it.
The truth is that the rest of the world is also at risk: The Palestinian
strategy - tragedy - of cruelty is an evil that undermines civilization
and can erode our most basic value, the fundamental sanctity of life itself.
Unfortunately, I am intimate with Palestinian cruelty. When I close my
eyes to go to sleep, I see the face of my 13-year-old son, Koby, bludgeoned
to death, face-to-face, with rocks. He was killed cruelly in cold blood
not because of poverty or desperation, but because of the Palestinian
Authority's embrace of cruelty as a political strategy - paid for, endorsed,
adopted and legitimated by the Palestinians and their supporters.
My son didn't get the chance to study for his master's degree, as did
the "desperate" terrorist suicide bomber, Mohammed al-Ghoul,
who blew up the bus on Tuesday. How odd that his name means evil demon,
a person who revels in what is revolting, who feeds on human beings and
preys on corpses.
The PA is preying on the dead bodies of both Israelis and Palestinians
by honoring martyrdom, honoring killing as the highest value in its culture.
Despite Yasser Arafat's lip service against terrorism, Arafat says that
he himself would like to be a martyr for Jerusalem.
We Jews have never honored cruelty. And we never will. Our heroes are
those who can control their evil impulses, those who give, not those who
destroy.
True compassion means tempering kindness with strength. It means the ability
to give what the other needs to receive. It means balancing giving and
holding back.
The rabbis warn us against giving wantonly to the undeserving: He who
is merciful to the cruel will end up by being cruel to the merciful, they
admonish us.
Rahamim's family name, Zidkiyahu, means "God is my justice."
Zidkiyahu was a king who tried to escape Jerusalem and the fate of the
Jewish people. But he could not escape. He was punished by being blinded.
We cannot be blind. We must join kindness with strength to achieve true
compassion. No "security" fence can stop cruelty. Fences are
made to be breached.
Justice demands that we fight for the lives of our children, and for our
nation. We must insist that we are not cruel, even in war.
But we must fight. We must fight in the name of Koby, in the name of Yosef
Ish-Ran, his friend who was murdered along with him, in the name of Rahamim,
and of all the others. That is our justice, and our compassion.