It’s been almost a year since St.-Sgt. Dvir Emanuelof became the first casualty of Operation Cast Lead, losing his life to Hamas mortar fire just as he entered Gaza early in the offensive. But sitting with his mother, Dalia, in her living room last week, I was struck not by loss, but by life. And not by grief, but by fervent belief. And by a more recent story about Dvir that simply needs to be told, especially now at Hanukka, our season of miracles.

This past summer, Dalia and some friends planned to go to Hutzot Hayotzer, the artists’ colony constructed each summer outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls. But Dalia’s young daughter objected; she wanted to go a week later, so she could hear Meir Banai in concert.

Dalia consented. And so, a week later, she found herself in the bleachers, waiting with her daughter for the performance to begin. Suddenly, Dalia felt someone touch her shoulder. When she turned around, she saw a little boy, handsome, with blond hair and blue eyes. A kindergarten teacher by profession, Dalia was immediately drawn to the boy, and as they began to speak, she asked him if he’d like to sit next to her.

By now, though, the boy’s father had seen what was unfolding, and called over to him, “Eshel, why don’t you come back and sit next to me and Dvir?” Stunned, Dalia turned around and saw the father holding a baby. “What did you say his name is?” she asked the father.

“Dvir,” responded Benny.

“How old is he?” Dalia asked.

“Six months,” was the reply.

“Forgive my asking,” she continued, “was he born after Cast Lead, or before?”

“After.”

Whereupon Dalia continued, “Please forgive my pressing, but can I ask why you named him Dvir?”

“Because,” Benny explained to her, “the first soldier killed in Cast Lead was named Dvir. His story touched us, and we decided to name our son after him.”

Almost unable to speak, Dalia paused, and said, “I’m that Dvir’s mother.”

Shiri, the baby’s mother, had overheard the conversation, and wasn’t certain that she believed her ears. “That can’t be.”

“It’s true.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Emanuelof.”

“Where do you live?”

“Givat Ze’ev.”

“It is you,” Shiri said. “We meant to invite you to the brit, but we couldn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dalia assured her – “You see, I came anyway.”

And then, Dalia told me, Shiri said something to her that she’ll never forget – “Dvir is sending you a hug, through us.”

At that point in our conversation, Shiri told me her story. She’d been pregnant, she said, in her 33rd or 34th week, and during an ultrasound test, a potentially serious problem with the baby was discovered. After consultations with medical experts, she was told that there was nothing to do. The baby would have to be born, and then the doctors would see what they could do. A day or two later, she was at home, alone, anxious and worried. She lit Hanukka candles, and turned on the news. The story was about Dvir Emanuelof, the first soldier killed in the operation. She saw, she said, the extraordinarily handsome young man, with his now famous smile, and she felt as though she were looking at an angel.

A short while later, Benny came home, and Shiri said to him, “Come sit next to me.” When he’d seated himself down next to her, Shiri said to Benny, “A soldier was killed today.”

“I heard,” he said. “What do you say we name our baby after him?” Shiri asked.

“Okay,” was Benny’s reply.

They told no one about the name, and had planned to call Dalia once the baby was born, to invite her to the brit. But when Dvir was born, Shiri and Benny were busy with medical appointments, and it wasn’t even clear when they would be able to have the brit. By the time the doctor gave them the okay to have the brit, it was no longer respectful to invite Dalia on such short notice, Shiri told me. So they didn’t call her. Not then, and not the day after. Life took its course and they told no one about the origin of Dvir’s name, for they hadn’t yet asked Dalia’s permission.

So no one knew, until that moment when a little blond-haired, blue-eyed boy – whom Dalia now calls “the messenger” – decided to tap Dalia on the shoulder. “Someone’s looking out for us up there,” Shiri said quietly, wiping a tear from her eye, “and this no doubt brings Him joy.”

IT WAS now quiet in Dalia’s living room, the three of us pondering this extraordinary sequence of events, wondering what to make of it. I was struck by the extraordinary bond between these two women, one religious and one traditional but not religious in the classic sense, one who’s now lost a husband and a son and one who’s busy raising two sons.

Unconnected in any way just a year ago, their lives are now inextricably interwoven. And I said to them both, almost whispering, “This is an Israeli story, par excellence.”

As if they’d rehearsed the response, they responded in virtual unison, “No, it’s a Jewish story.”

They’re right, of course. It is the quintessential Jewish story. It is a story of unspoken and inexplicable bonds. It is a story of shared destinies.

And as is true of this little country we call home, it’s often impossible to know which part of the story is the real miracle, and which is the doing of extraordinary people. In the end, though, that doesn’t really matter. When I light Hanukka candles this year, I’m going to be thinking of Dalia. Of Shiri. Of Dvir. And of Dvir.

I’m going to think of their sacrifice. Of their persistent belief. Of their extraordinary decency and goodness.

And as I move that shamash from one candle to the next, I will know that Shiri was right. These are not easy times. These are days when we really could use a miracle or two. So perhaps it really is no accident that now, when we need it most, Dvir is sending us all a hug from heaven above.

It was an interesting, though hardly relaxed, Shabbat afternoon.  (The conversation took place in English ironically, since even though the Arab woman spoke a mellifluous Hebrew, our American Jewish leader friend didn’t. But the abandonment of Hebrew on the part of American Judaism is a subject for a different conversation.)

Though it’s been years since that lunch, I thought of it again this week, particularly one moment at the end of the afternoon.  Lunch was breaking up.  The Arab woman left, as did our American Jewish friend.  My brother was still around, as was our son’s friend, who, by the way, had been born in Israel and lived here his entire life.  We were all catching our breath from what had been a pretty intense conversation.

Then the friend said, “That was really interesting.”  I, frankly, hadn’t noticed that he was paying much attention to the discussion, and was surprised.  “What did you think was particularly interesting?” I asked him.  “Well,” he said, “I’ve never met an Arab before.”

That line stunned me more than the rest of the conversation.  He’d been in Israel for fifteen or sixteen years, and had never met an Arab?  Part of me couldn’t believe that.  But I knew that it was not only possible, but it’s common.  (Israel’s no different than America in this regard, by the way.  In Los Angeles, for example, how many Hispanics or Asians did I really meet socially?  Very, very few – and in my community, I was the norm, not the exception.)

Why did I recall that conversation this week?  Because I got a response from Dr. K.  A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for the Jerusalem Post that I subsequently distributed here, about a correspondence I had with a certain Dr. K about the Jerusalem home in which he’d grown up prior to the War of Independence.  (You can read the responses to that column here, too.)  Just as I was preparing to write Dr. K and to tell him about my column, I heard from him.  He’d come across the article on the web, it turns out, and wrote me.  I asked him for permission to post his response here, and he agreed.

I was struck, in reading the many responses to my column that were posted on my site that many of the people writing had probably not ever met anyone like Dr. K before.  Like my son’s friend at that Shabbat lunch long ago, they are passionate about much of what goes on here, but haven’t actually conversed at all with significant swaths of the “players” in his complex situation.

So (yes, with his express, written ­permission), I’m posting Dr. K’s response to my article, and his invitation to others to engage in conversation.  The issue, I believe, isn’t the disposition of his particular house (about which I’ve done no research, as my column was about the uses of memory and how we overcome loss and work for a better future).  The issues that ought to concern us are broader than that.  But feel free to engage him on whatever subject you’d like.  Any comment that’s respectful in tone will be permitted.  In this week prior to Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Reunification Day), what subject could be more pertinent?

As Dr. K asks below, is it possible that we might begin to know each other and to hear each other in ways that we haven’t so far?

I am the Dr. K that Dr. Gordis refers to in his post above. The responses to his column raise so many issues that I find myself unable to respond to all of them. I will be short.

My father had this house built in 1932, and I was born in Jerusalem in 1937. My family left Jerusalem because of the state of war that occurred in 1948. Regardless of why we left (it was not voluntary), why should we lose title to our home because of that war? The Israeli government did not allow us to return to it (nor to pay taxes on it!) after May 1948. To this day we have never been offered compensation nor any acknowledgement by any party for our loss.

My original purpose in communicating with Dr. Gordis was to try and connect with another human being who can help provide me a sense of connection with my home and land of birth. I am a realist and not stuck in living in the past. Yes, I was shocked at the changes that have occurred but who wouldn’t be?

I am interested in a dialogue and not in having people talking at me and telling me how I should be feeling or behaving. I hope we can talk about ourselves and not lecture others. Is this possible in this forum?

Interested in responding to Dr. K?  Post your comments here.

Attached was a note from Munir K., who had written to my friend asking for information about his erstwhile home on Graetz.  Dr. K., now a physician in the States, had lived on Graetz Street in the 1930′s and 40′s, and was wondering what had happened to his house. (For the record, Dr. K. gave me explicit, written permission to use both his letter and his name any way I wished.  I’ve used only parts of the letter, and not his name, simply to ensure that he’s not harassed in any way. )

Who couldn’t easily understand his curiosity, even his longing?  I took a camera with me to work one day, snapped some shots of the neighborhood and of the house in question,  and emailed them to him.  I introduced myself, explaining how his email had ended up with me, answered his questions about the neighborhood today, and wished him well.

He answered me almost immediately, thanking me for the note and the pictures.  But then his tone changed.  “I was shocked and appalled,” he wrote, “to see that the Israeli government granted rights of ownership to another individual of my home of birth to which I own title (my father willed it to me) without any consideration of who the original and legal owners are. ”  Like many of us, he has powerful memories of his childhood home, and I’d just unwittingly undone them.  “I have always maintained an image of a one-story red-tiled quality home with a beautiful garden as the one my father built and in which I was raised for the first ten years of my life. That image is now shattered in view of the … email and the photos you sent.”

It was one of those “road to hell is paved with good intentions” moments.  Had I been in his shoes, I’d thought as I took the photos, I’d want someone to do for me what I was doing for him.  But memory is treacherous territory.  It can nourish us, giving us a sense of where we’ve come from, or, it can ossify us, rooting us somehow in worlds which (however tragically) no longer exist and are gone forever.  And the choice between those two stances makes all the difference.

Sixty years had passed, but Dr. K.’s memory remained sharp.  “I was born on 8/28/1937 at the Government Hospital where Dr. Gmelin was the obstetrician. … The house across that road from us was owned by family friends, the Maloufs, who rented to it to German Jewish refugees, the Jafet family. … The house immediately next door to us (to the west) was owned by the brother of Dr. Itayyim, who was a government chemist. They stayed in their house till the late fifties. The Itayyims and Maloufs all ended up in Lebanon.”

His was clearly no ordinary family.  “My mother always prepared a formal four o’clock tea – we learned that from the British. We had a live-in maid, and my father was the highest ranking Arab in the British Mandate government. He was the Assistant Director of Education for all Arab government schools.”  One can understand his longing for that world of honor and privilege.  Who hasn’t read compelling and heartbreaking narratives by Jews about the lives that they lost in the 1930′s and the 1940′s?  And if we can weep at the latter, surely we should feel enormous pain for his lost world, too.

But here’s the rub.  Even this week, awash in Yom Ha-Shoah on TV and in the papers, we all read and listened to the accounts of people who lost everything – not just homes, but families – to the Nazis and to Europe’s murderous venom and hatred.  There were tears.  Recollections of indescribable suffering.  But these were mostly memories in which people celebrated what they’ve created since: families rebuilt, traditions perpetuated, a state that emerged from the ashes.  And they are memories that have accepted, even with all the anguish, what is gone.

Not here.  Dr. K. ended his note:  “I have very strong feelings about Palestine and my Jerusalem home. … My son-in-law is Jewish, and I have willed my Jerusalem home to him and my daughter (his wife). Isn’t there a Jewish prayer that includes this statement: ‘If I ever forget thee O Jerusalem….’  That describes my feelings.  … Do stay in touch.  Munir K.”

I didn’t stay in touch, I confess, though I meant to.  I didn’t write because I don’t know how to relate to his kind of memory.  It’s the sort of memory that makes demands that cannot be accommodated and ultimately condemns us to conflict.  It’s a form of memory that makes inevitable more losses of the sort we’ll mourn on Yom HaZikaron.  What I would have wanted to say was that we live in a country that, for all its many faults, uses its abundance of memory primarily to propel us forward, to give us a sense of what we have to (re)build, of what cannot be recreated or returned but that still ought to animate us.

Dr. K.’s is a gentle form of a very different sort of memory.  It yearns to restore the status quo ante.  It’s the American version of the Lebanese refugee with the keys to his erstwhile home in his pocket, or much worse, the enemies just across our border who will not rest until all their former land has been restored to them.  That memory, we’ve learned, does not accommodate new realities.  It almost invariably leads to war.

In the next couple of days, though, I’m going to force myself to answer him.  It will be a useful exercise.  Especially this week, we could all use reminders of how powerful, necessary but also dangerous memory can be.  I’ll write him and explain as gently as I can, that one of the things I love about this country is not only about that we remember, but how, and why.

Foreign workers are a major dimension of Israeli life, and not a necessarily pleasant one. Israel has allowed thousands of people to enter to work here, but their status is often grey, and their conditions sometimes deplorable. This movie actually addresses the case of foreign workers in reasonable conditions, and even so, points to the underbelly of Israel’s underclass, an issues Israel is eventually going to have to confront.  See this movie, and you’ll understand the issue better than ever before.

The Ma’aglei Tzedek Website