March 1st, '02
Thoughts on Re-Entry

This beautiful essay by Daniel Gordis connects the dots between the tragedy of the Shuttle Columbia with the "state of the State" here in Israel. Reprinted by permission.

Sometimes you just know it's going to be a long flight. We were all seated and ready for take-off at JFK ready to come back home, when the flight attendant asked the guy sitting next to me to please fold his footrest for takeoff. He ignored her. She asked again, relatively nicely I thought, but he refused. His logic wasn't bad -- we were in the very first row of the plane (the only advantage of flying this often is that you occasionally get the coveted upgrade to First Class), he had the window seat, and all the exits were behind us. His footrest wasn't going to impede anyone's exit, so he wasn't going to fold it. She gave up, and walked away. Satisfied that he'd won, he looked behind us to make sure that she wasn't watching, and then folded his footrest.

Welcome back to Israel, I thought. A classic moment. That macho need to transform everything into a confrontation is one of the things about Israeli society that I really detest. So, rather than staying awake and thus having to acknowledge his existence, I went to sleep, and slept almost the entire flight back. But, alas, you do have to wake up to get off the plane.

They ushered the First Class out of the plane first, but when we got into the arrivals hall, the lines at Passport Inspection were incredibly long because another 747 had landed just moments before us. So, the twelve of us were ushered to the side, where we were told to wait on the "Crew" line which was very short. We were waiting rather patiently, and the line was actually moving, when a young guy in jeans, a seemingly painted on T-shirt and those ubiquitous curved sunglasses perched atop his crew-cut head approached and proceeded right to the head of the line. The flight attendant who was still attending to our welfare told him to wait at the end of the line. He, too, refused. She asked who he was, anyway. And like a peacock in mating season, he puffed up his chest, and announced, "I’m a pilot. This line's for me, not for them, and I'm not going to wait." I was about to tell him to take a hike, but this is Israel, where pilots are demigods, and I realized there was no point. As I expected, he got his way.

I always worry about these re-entries to Israeli life. After a few civilized days in Manhattan, with the array of offerings at Barnes and Noble and the decent service even at Starbucks (to say nothing of the veritable fawning at Banana Republic), I dread those first bumps that will inevitably remind me that we live in the rough-and-tumble Middle East, not the long since civilized North American continent. On the ride home from the airport, I thought about that second little demonstration of Israeli ego-strutting, and that rather disheartening (to put things mildly) pilot-syndrome. And then, I remembered Ilan Ramon. How different he was. How self-effacing he was. And how tragic it was -- for so many reasons -- that he was gone.

Never in our conversations or in the e-mails we'd exchanged had Ramon ever mentioned to me that he had been one of the pilots in the raid on the Iraqi reactor. (I only found out when I read it in the paper a few days after he died.) Even when we'd talked about the book he wanted to write when he returned to Earth after his mission, he mentioned the Houston and the shuttle, the Holocaust and Israel, but not the Air Force. And as our e-mail correspondence moved from his book-idea to discussions of Aliyah to the future of Zionism (something he'd begun to think about quite a bit after four years of living and training in the States), one thing remained consistent. The discussions were never about him. They were about ideas, about Israel, about the future.

I wondered, as the taxi meandered its way between the hills that separate Tel Aviv from Jerusalem, how you create more people like that. What would it take for this country to produce more people like Ilan Ramon, rather than the guy next to me on the plane, or the pilot who was too important to wait on line with mere mortals? And what, I wondered, could we do to have our kids remember Ilan Ramon, to remind them that he embodied much of what we want for them? He had, after all, a profoundly historical sense of the Jewish people. His life wasn't about the Shoah, but neither did he deny that the Shoah made Israel ever more necessary. He believed in Israel. He believed that Judaism isn't just for the religious. He was enormously talented. He was very accomplished. He was bright. He was modest. How do you get your kids to focus on that set of ideals when they're surrounded by the footrest-revolutionaries and pilot-egos of the world?

And then, I remembered the three envelopes Ramon had given me for the kids. It was at the end of our conversation during a cocktail party at the General Assembly in Philadelphia. The formal part of the dinner was about to begin, and we'd been assigned to different tables. As we were about to part, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out some "date of issue" envelopes with stamps that the Israeli government had printed in honor of his mission, and asked for our kids' names. I told him, and he inscribed an envelope to each of them. They were all simple. "To Micha, Be-Hatzalachah [Best of Luck], Ilan Ramon." And so on.

I showed the kids the envelopes when I got home, but to say that they weren't terribly impressed would be to put it mildly. At that point, in November, no one was thinking about the shuttle, and the kids had never heard of Ramon. "Cool, but what do we do with them?" Somewhat annoyed by their being so blas? about the whole thing, I nonchalantly tossed the envelopes into a drawer in the study, and forgot about them. Even when he wrote a few days later with some questions about his book, and I wrote back, giving him some ideas for the writing, thanking him for the gifts and wishing him a safe flight, it never occurred to me to fish the envelopes out of the drawer.

And then, he died. I was on Long Island that weekend. We began to hear the first rumors that something went terribly wrong even in shul that Shabbat morning, but obviously, couldn't listen to the news. By the afternoon, we'd heard enough rumors to know that it was over, that there was no hope. After Shabbat, I turned on the laptop and checked the web, and then my e-mail. The web had only bad news. On the e-mail, there was a message from Avi. "Dear Abba: I don't know if you've heard what happened to the shuttle, but it exploded and all the astronauts were killed. Ema's really depressed about it, so I’m trying to be especially good while you're gone. It's so sad. After all the pigu'im [terrorist attacks], you'd think that a person would at least be safe if they left Earth and were in space. Don't you think? Love, Avi."

You'd also think that a thirteen year old kid wouldn't have to see the world that way. A kid who's barely a teenager shouldn't have to think that the only way to be safe in the galaxy is to leave the planet. Don't you think?

I was musing on that little note, and the childhood innocence and goodness that it bespoke, as the taxi got closer to Jerusalem. I asked the driver, the same guy who always picks me up from the airport, if anything was new in the country. "Nothing that you don't know. The shuttle broke apart, and the war continues. And we idiots risk our kids to save their buildings."

He was referring to the events of February 6, when police sappers detonated an explosive belt found in a Taibeh mosque, shorlty after they arrested two Islamic Jihad militants on their way to carry out a suicide bombing in Israel. The police found the belt, and its 15 kilograms of explosives, in the mosque's toilet. Two sappers worked for hours to remove the belt from the mosque, to avoid any damage to the building. "What do you think they'd do if it was our holy place and they were the ones in charge?," my driver wanted to know.

We actually didn't have to wait long to find out. Just days ago, an item appeared in the Israeli press (and not surprisingly, has not been mentioned much outside of Israel) about what's happened to Joseph's tomb since it was abandoned by the IDF (and subsequently taken over the by Palestinians) at the start of the war. Jews are not allowed to go there any more, even according to Israeli security forces, but Bratslav Hassidim continue to enter illegally. They reported this week that the grave has been reduced to rubble. It's been pounded with hammers, there are used car parts strewn above, trash all over, and a huge hole has been smashed into the dome. (I do suspect that the international press might have picked up the story had the roles been reversed. Don't you think?)

I understand my driver's frustration, and if it were my kid who was the sapper, risking his life so that the mosque didn't get destroyed, I'd undoubtedly have second thoughts, too. But I'm still glad that we asked those kids (because that's who many of our soldiers are -- they're really just kids who, if they lived in the States, would be gallivanting around some college campus somewhere) to do what they do. I’m glad that in the face of everything, there are still forces in this society that are about goodness, about being better. About not letting the frustrations not only of this war, but of five decades of war, erode our sense of what's right and what's wrong, what's honorable and what's not. I don't think we're idiots. I want my kids to grow up worried about being decent, not about getting even. Worried about being good, more than being concerned that someone might be getting the better of them.

And even though they meet people like Mr. Footrest and Captain Ego every day, it seems to be working. They read the newspaper accounts of what those sappers did, and they're mystified, but still proud. They read about what's happened to Joseph's Tomb, and they conclude -- I think correctly -- that the people who did that are barbarians. I just hope that they don't lose that take on the world.

Which is why I finally fished those envelopes out of the drawer. I took them to our favorite framer near the Russian compound and had them matted and framed, so that they'd last. So our kids would remember, whatever the future may bring, that there are people who grow up here who stand for all the right things, who manage to withstand the cynicism, who fiercely protect this country without growing callous, or ugly. Last night, we gave each of the kids their framed envelope. This time, they knew who Ilan Ramon was. And this time, they weren't nonchalant. They knew what he represented, and they understood why we want them to remember him.

Today, I imagine, we'll hang the frames in each of their rooms. And in the months and years to come, I hope that they'll be reminded that with all its traumas and with all its pain, this place still produces real heroes. Real people who remember what the dream is all about, real people, like Ilan Ramon, who with all they've accomplished, could choose to be anywhere, but chose to be here. Real people for whom decency, modesty, goodness, Jewishness and Zionism were all fully compatible. Can one simple framed envelope remind them of all that? Probably not, but I hope it's a decent start.

Yehi Zikhro Barukh -- may his memory be a blessing. To his kids, to our kids, and to the generations of kids who will follow.

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