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.

We don’t know each other, though I’ve known of you and your work for some time.  Like many others, I recently read your “How I’m Losing My Love For Israel” in the Forward.  Because you write so articulately, and because your column has attracted such widespread attention, I’m taking the liberty of responding.

The truth is, you and I agree about a lot.  We’re both worried about some of what’s happening to Israeli society.  We’re both tired of all the equivocating (though probably for different reasons).  We’d both love some real leadership around here.  We’d both like peace.  And we’re both exhausted.

That exhaustion is the first reason you give for that fact that your “love [for Israel] is starting to wane.”  But frankly, Jay, when you began to write about your exhaustion, I began to lose you.  For, I have to confess, I don’t see the connection between exhaustion and losing love, or between exhaustion and committing oneself to what’s right and just.

I suspect that the Partisans were pretty exhausted, and they might even have debated some of their own tactics; but those were the least of their problems.  Their main worry was that evil might triumph and transform their world into an uninhabitable hell, and their bone-aching fatigue notwithstanding, they committed their lives to making sure that human freedom survived those who wished to eradicate it.

The GI’s who slogged their way across Europe, up the cliffs of Normandy and across the frozen, bitter winters of that blood-soaked continent, were pretty exhausted, too, I’d imagine.  Yes, many of them were kids, following their orders.  And many of them were probably distraught that innocent Europeans were getting killed by the thousands in the process of saving the west.  But many, I would also like to believe, knew that what they were fighting to preserve was infinitely more important than their own personal exhaustion or the tragic innocent losses that war always entails.  Or even their own lives.

That clarity of purpose was, in the end, why we won, and why you and I live in democracies where we can write and say whatever we like.  Had the Partisans and those GI’s given in to their fatigue, would you and I have the very liberties we so easily take for granted? I doubt it.

So, yes, we’re exhausted.  And, if you’ll forgive me, I suspect that those of here are more exhausted than are those of you over there.  Life here is conducted under a pervasive cloud of exhaustion that my most of American friends simply don’t comprehend.  It’s the exhaustion that comes from coming home at the end of the day and finding on your door a diagram distributed by the Home Front Command showing you how many seconds you have to find shelter if a missile should be aimed your way.  What do you do with that information?  Ignore it?  Or put it on the fridge as the sign instructs you to, so you can live with the looming warning every time you go to get a glass of OJ?

But that’s really the least of it.  The real exhaustion here comes from sending a smart but relatively naïve nineteen-year-old daughter off to the army (in Intelligence, in this case) and have her begin to learn things about Israel’s enemies that she will never be able to discuss.  The exhaustion comes from the hollow look of an unfathomable sadness in her eyes when she’s home, from her bewilderment at the evil of which human beings are capable – an awareness a young woman shouldn’t have at that age.  And you grow exhausted because you want to take care of her, to protect her.   But you can’t.

You can’t take care of your kid because this is Israel.  Because she can’t tell you what she knows.  She can’t talk to you about the human capacity for hatred that she now confronts every single day.  And because this is Israel, you can’t take of her – because here things are reversed.  She’s out there taking care of you.  So you get into bed each night knowing that you’ve sacrificed a part of her innocence and her youth on the altar of your beliefs and ideology, and you wonder, each and every day, if what you once thought was a noble life choice might have been the most unfair thing you ever did.  That, Jay, is more exhausting than I’d ever imagined it would be.

She’s out of the army now.  But her brother’s not.  And there are those days, only once every few months, when I’m either leaving the house in the morning to go to work or coming home at the end of the day, when on the sidewalk outside our building are two IDF officers, and it appears that they’re walking to our entrance.  Then comes that split second moment of breath-stopped horror, the fear that they’re coming to our house, bearing tidings that would be ­wholly unbearable.  It’s only happened three or four times, but it’s enough.  They walk past the building, Jay, barely even nodding to me because they’re in the middle of a conversation, unaware that I’ve even noticed them.  But I’m a mess.  Drenched with sweat.  Shaking slightly.  Knowing that the rest of the day or the evening is going to be a utter waste of time.

And at moments like that, you want to call your kid.  Not for anything in particular; just to tell him that you love him.  That you miss him.  That there really isn’t a moment when you’re not thinking about him, or praying that he’s OK.

But you can’t.  Because he can’t use his phone.  Because he’s busy.  Because he’s out there protecting his parents.  And his brother.  And his sister, who used to protect him.  Simply because when he was a very little boy, we decided we wanted to live here; and now he’s out there, doing this, year after relentless year.  Loving Israel is exhausting, Jay, you’re right.   But really, it’s way more exhausting here than it is over there.

So the real question isn’t whether or not we’re exhausted – lots of us are tired.  (I keep this picture on my desktop for those moments when I feel exhausted … to remind myself that no matter how tired I am, there are people out there (this is not my kid) who are way more exhausted than I am.)  The real question, I think, is not whether we’re exhausted, but rather what we do with our exhaustion.  What makes all the difference is not our fatigue, but what keeps us going when our tank feels empty, when it feels like all that’s left is fumes.

Like you, Jay, I know that I was raised on an image of Israel that doesn’t really exist.  Maybe it never did.  Like you, there were open fields in Jerusalem that I used to love (for you, it was Churshat Ha-Yaraeach) that are now filled by large apartment buildings.  But when we lived in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, our older neighbors used to reminisce about the days when our neighborhood had been all orange groves.  Did they stop loving America because fields got built on?  I didn’t sense that.  When we live in America and watch fields get built up, we sense progress.  But when it’s a field in the Israel of our youth that’s now gone, we feel betrayed.  What’s that about?  Maybe it’s time we all moved beyond puppy love and ventured into something more mature, a sort of love that knows that the object of our love cannot, and should not, remain unchanged year after year, decade after decade.

Like you, Jay, I am concerned about some of the injustices that Israel commits.  But unlike you, I could never be “more relaxed [in Berlin] than in Jerusalem.”  You wrote very compellingly that you felt relieved that though there was political baggage in Berlin, “none of it was mine.”

But you know what I love about this place, Jay?  I love that all the political baggage is mine.  The Palestinians.  The Israeli Arabs.  (Some of) the Haredim.  A collapsing educational system.  Murders on the streets with a constancy we never used to have.  A nation of roads and drivers that kills many more Israelis than our enemies do.  That’s all my baggage.

But living here, my baggage is also the sight of young secular and religious Israelis going from restaurant to restaurant, inspecting not their kashrut, but how they treat their workers, and depending on what they find, giving them a “social kashrut” certificate.  It’s the sight of many hundreds of people coming out to hear Rabbi Benny Lau on the Shabbat afternoon before Yom Kippur in a synagogue that couldn’t begin to accommodate them all, because, they knew, he would be the one guy in the city among all the derashot that afternoon who would tie whatever he was saying to a vision for a different kind of society, and call on them to do something about it.  Living here is about spending a morning on Sukkot, going to the Church in Kiryat Yearim and joining a capacity crowd of Jews and Christians, largely secular but also some people wearing kippot, listening to the choir perform Bach motets on precisely the spot where the Ark of the Covenant once rested.  It’s about the vision of people who, no matter what CNN will tell you, really can live with people who are different from them; it’s about a blending of the ancient past and the complicated present, of setting aside the equivocations of which you write so articulately for a beauty about which you say very little.  Living here is about feeling the pulse of people who still have hope, who desperately want to build something different here, and who would never dream of saying aloud that they’ve given up.

Which is why, Jay, I can’t imagine leaving this place, and angry as I sometimes get, I could never write about losing my love for what we’re building here.  Because I know that this is our last chance, and I know without a shred of doubt that the robust Jewish life that exists everywhere – in Manhattan as well as in Los Angeles, in London no less than in Johannesburg – exists because of Israel.  Two generations ago, Jewish life in America wasn’t the Jewish life that you and I were raised on.  It wasn’t nearly so secure after the war.  And though 1948 made a bit of a difference, the secure and self-confident American Jewish life that you and I take for granted really emerged in 1967, when Jews around the world finally stood tall because they were no longer the objects of history, but were now the shapers of their own destiny.

Would that 1967 war prove to have a very complicated aftermath?  Yes, it would – we’re still trying to figure it out.  But it changed everything, Jay, for me and for you.  For my neighbors and for yours.  I can’t imagine a world in which I’d want to be alive in which this country didn’t exist; which is why I’m constitutionally incapable of saying that I’m losing my love for it.

That’s the real difference between us, Jay, and it’s the reason that your exhaustion leads you where it leads you, and mine leads me to dig in my heels.  You write that as you notice your love starting to wane, you feel a “sadness that accompanies the end of any affair.”

That’s a fascinating metaphor.  Because at the end of an affair, most people put their lives back together by telling themselves that despite the pain of the moment, there will be someone else.  “A lot of fish in the ocean,” we told each other in college when relationships broke up, which was to say, “she’s not the only one out there, and she’s not the last one you’ll love.”

Which may have been true of our youthful relationships back then, but it’s not true of Israel.  This is the only one.  This is the last chance we get.  We lose this, and the Jewish people heads into dark, uncharted territory that I don’t think you or I can begin to imagine.  You yourself wrote that you “still awed by the tkuma, the resurrection and rebirth of my ancient people.”

You’re absolutely right.  This country is the very foundation of the resurrection and rebirth of our ancient people.  Given that, how dare we not love it, even with all its faults?  Is love Israel exhausting?  Of course it is.  Does it require lots of equivocation?  Yes, it does.  Is it very unpopular in lots of circles?  No question.

But it’s bigger than me.  And it’s bigger than you.  It matters more than all of us.  So given that, I don’t think we have a right to exhaustion.  Or, if exhaustion is inevitable, then the only thing I think we have a right to is a few hours of sleep, until we get up the next morning, roll up our sleeves and get to work again.

Because loving Israel isn’t like an affair.  It’s a totally different thing.  In a relationship, the person I love and I both matter – more or less equally, I guess.  But not here.  In this, I don’t matter.  You don’t matter.  Only justice matters.  Only the future matters.  Only the Jewish people’s survival matters.  And without this place, there is no future, no Jewish people.

Given that, what’s the alternative to a deep and abiding love?  I can’t think of one.  So tonight, I’m going to roll up my sleeves and head off to shul.  I’m going to put the news out of my mind, and for a few hours, I’m going to forget about the equivocation, about the fatigue.  I’m going to hold on to my son, the one kid still left at home – and when the singing starts, I’m going to dance.

Shabbat Shalom, Jay, and Chag Same’ach.

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.

No one, it was clear, had asked any of us that question in a long time. It took a few minutes for anyone to formulate an answer, though the answers eventually did flow. But we’ll return to that.

A few days earlier … This is a complicated country to return to. I landed last Tuesday from a trip to the States, and met my regular driver outside baggage claim. As we started to pull out of the airport, he asked me, “Do you want to hear the news?”

That’s a loaded question, and he knew it. On one hand, you’re home, and you want to know what’s going on. So you figure you should listen to the news. But on the other hand, the news is often not very good, and it can be a lot to absorb just after getting off a long flight. But we turned it on anyway, and got the full dose: the ongoing coalition negotiations, the possibility that Lieberman would be appointed Foreign Minister, the ongoing fruitless negotiations to free Gilad Shalit, the number of days he’s been held captive (990+ at that point), the ongoing serious water shortage despite the rain, estimations of how close Iran was to getting a bomb and what the (slowly) incoming government might or might not do about that, the continuing investigation of (former) President Moshe Katzav on rape (yes, rape) charges. And maybe some sports – I no longer recall.

No wonder he’d asked me if I wanted to hear the news. After a week away and a long flight, it was pretty stark reminder of what coming home means. Why, indeed, one could ask, would you choose to live here?

We meandered our way up the hill to Jerusalem, and in the neighborhood called Rechavia, slowed to a crawl in the ever-present traffic. We passed what used to be the Moment Café, where, as I’ve described elsewhere, my driver’s sister was killed in a bombing. Her picture used to be on his dashboard. Now, it’s not. But it always gets quiet in the car when we pass that building. This time, he spoke. Five quick Hebrew words. “Danny, yesterday was seven years.” I didn’t say anything. What can you possibly say?

Fifty meters further up the street, a small crowd had gathered. It was the now ongoing protest in favor of getting Gilad Shalit out of captivity, no matter what the price. His parents, I knew, were in the tent. And I thought that the right thing to do would be to stop, to get out of the car, and to go say something to them. It wasn’t like there were thousands of people there. I knew I could get to them. And just say something, anything. What, I wasn’t sure. But there just had to be something to say.

But there was a lot of traffic, I was hungry from having fasted most of the flight (it had been the Fast of Esther when the flight took off), tired from not sleeping and wanted to shower, and I was sure that my driver was in no mood to wait for me. So again, I said nothing, and he took me home.

But all day, it bothered me. I’d driven right by them, and hadn’t stopped. What made that OK, I kept asking myself. That I was a little bit hungry? They’re dealing with a lot more than being a little bit hungry. That I wanted to shower after a long flight? They’re living in a tent. That my driver might have been in a rush? Surely he, of all people, given what happened to his family only a few yards away, understands how important public support can be to a family.

The next day, Purim in Jerusalem, I kept thinking about the fact that I’d driven by and hadn’t stopped. And still, I did nothing. And then I went back to work. And then it was Shabbat. I thought of going then, but we had that above-mentioned lunch, it was raining lightly after lunch, and we’d promised to walk to my parents for a visit. So I didn’t go on Shabbat, either.

By Monday, though, I was out of excuses. I could still see myself in that taxi, just driving by, and with each passing hour, it felt increasingly wrong. So towards the end of the work day, I called my wife. The car, she said, was at home. I walked home, got in the car, and drove to the Prime Minister’s house. Surprisingly, and sadly, there was no trouble getting a parking space. Just a few yards away, the “protest,” such as it was, was in high gear. There were numerous posters, a relative of a terror victim holding a sign that said “free those who killed our loved ones to get Gilad Shalit back.” And a few dozen people. I didn’t see Shalit’s father, but his mother was there, speaking to someone. I waited a few minutes, and when she was free, went up to her.

What can you say that’s not totally banal? I said what I thought was the least absurd thing to say, and we chatted for a couple of minutes. She thanked me for coming, I wished her well, took some bumper stickers from a table, and gave a young woman my cell phone number – they wanted to be able to send text messages if they needed a massive rally at a moment’s notice. Then I went back to the car.

Driving downtown to pick up something we’d ordered for the house, I couldn’t get Shalit’s mother’s face out of my mind. Though I imagine that she’s approximately my age, she looks old enough to be my mother. As I tried to wrap my head around what it would be like to live the lives they’re living, the misgivings that I’ve long had (that my wife does not share) about the trade began to dissipate. When I got to the shop downtown, and the man from whom we’d purchased the items was wrapping them up, I told him where I’d been. We’ve known him casually for years, but I don’t know very much about him. He’s an immigrant (so he obviously believes in this place). He’s an exceedingly nice guy. He doesn’t wear a kippah. And he’s an exceptional artist. That’s about all I know.

He was wrapping the items, listening to me, and said, “Well, I’m probably a minority in this country, but I’m against the trade. We refuse to trade, they’ll stop kidnapping soldiers. We make this trade, and we’re just begging them to capture another one.” He finished his wrapping, took my VISA card, and looked at me, saying, “But thank God I don’t have to decide. It’s too horrible.” And then he basically made it clear that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore, that he couldn’t talk about it any more. Usually, we chat quite a bit in his shop. This time, almost nothing. After all, what was there to say?

He stamped my parking lot ticket, and I walked out of the shop with a brief thanks.

Micha got home shortly after I did, and saw the bumper stickers on my desk. “Where did you get these?” he wanted to know. I told him about my afternoon. “You talked to his mom?” I told him I had. “What did you say?” What was there to say?, I essentially asked him.

“Can I have this one?” he asked, holding up the bumper sticker that says “Hatzilu,” “Save Me!”, in handwriting that had been culled from the note that Shalit sent from captivity many months ago. “Sure,” I told him, a bit surprised that he would want it.

“What was his mother like?” he suddenly asked me again. I looked up from the computer. “I didn’t really get to know her,” I told him. “She’s really sad. But today it’s looking good. He might actually get out. The negotiations are continuing, Ashkenazi [the IDF’s Chief of Staff] is returning early from America, so who knows? Maybe he’ll get out. She’s hopeful, I think. Scared, but hopeful.”

He was quiet for a minute. “I don’t think we should make the trade,” he said. “It’s horrible that he’s there, but letting hundreds of murderers out, when we know they’re just going to kill more people? It’s dangerous for the country.”

I looked at him, and asked him the question that every Israeli family asks itself, usually unspoken. “What if it were Avi? [his older brother, now in the army]”

He stared at me. “That would suck.”

OK, so my son’s unlikely to make his living as a poet, but he can still think. “That’s all?” I asked.

He was quiet for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “That would really suck.” And with that he climbed the stairs and went to his room, presumably to do some homework.

And then I thought about it. Maybe his power of expression isn’t as limited as I’d feared. Perhaps that’s just the situation. It would really suck. What more, after all, is there to say?

The evening progressed, and scanning the various news-sites while trying to get work done, I couldn’t help but notice a gradual crescendo of optimism on the web. Something was happening in Cairo. The numbers of reporters and photographers around the Shalits’ protest tent grew a bit. Elisheva, long in favor of the trade – any trade, went to sleep, hopeful. I stayed awake, working.

And then, somewhere around 11 or 11:30, it all changed. Nothing was going to happen. The negotiations were over. Hamas had hardened. Or Israel chickened out. (It depends on which web site you read.) But Gilad Shalit wasn’t coming home, at least not yet. I could scarcely believe it. I waited another half hour or so to see if the news would flip again, but it didn’t. I had an early morning and a long day coming up. I needed to get some sleep.

So I got into bed. But that brief conversation with his mother, and the look in her eye, simply wouldn’t go away. There’s a limit to how long you can stare at the ceiling before you know that sleep is simply not going to happen. So I went back downstairs, and back to the web. Nothing. The negotiations were dead. I tried to read, unsuccessfully. And I was too tired to work. So I took out a bottle of scotch, and poured myself more than I probably should have. Half an hour later, having scanned the web again only to see that nothing had changed, I went to sleep.

In the morning, when Elisheva came downstairs, she saw the scotch and now, the Tylenol. She’d obviously heard the news. “Shitty night, huh?” Hardly looking up from the keyboard, I told her I hadn’t been able to fall asleep, that I couldn’t stop thinking of that mother, and of that son. “I know it sounds nuts,” I said to her.

She came over and looked at me. “It’s not nuts,” she said. “In some strange kind of way, he’s sort of our son, too. And that’s why it’s so painful. But that’s what it means to live here. Living here means having an inner circle that’s incredibly wide. Life here, sometimes, is simply too raw, too powerful. And that’s why you’d never leave.”

She was right, of course, as she usually is. Finally, someone had said something that made some sense.

And suddenly, I wished that we’d had that snippet of a conversation prior to that Shabbat lunch. Because that, more than anything that any of us said to that mother’s thoughtful question, was the real answer. You live here, and you feel things that you don’t feel anywhere else. You just do. You’re part of things that you wouldn’t be part of anywhere else. You care about people you wouldn’t care about in the same way anywhere else. Other people’s stories are your stories in ways that they couldn’t be anywhere else. You cry, and you laugh, and you mourn and you celebrate, with people who elsewhere, might not matter to you at all.

You may not even be sure that we should make the trade to get their kid out, but you cry when we can’t. And given the choice of living life this way, or not, there’s really only one question that matters:

Why would I think of living anywhere else?

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