Thursday, October 19, 2006

The Seventh Yahrzeit

Now, for a change, some personal thoughts, dedicated to the memory of my father Yisrael ben Zvy [Israel ("Srulec") Lieblich] (6th June 1924 – 30th September 1999)....

[For those unfamiliar with Yiddish or Hebrew expressions, there's a glossary below]

I look at the photograph of my father, which arrived this week by email from Austria. He is being attended by medics; a gaunt skeletal figure with a calmly determined face, being literally brought back to life from the brink of death. It’s a photograph he never saw, but which my sister discovered in the Mauthausen Museum 18 months ago; an image captured by US forces when they liberated that concentration camp near Hitler’s home town of Linz: that vicious place of “death by work”, the “mother” camp of human cruelty.

We observed Dad’s seventh Yahrzeit[1] this week. Until now, I’ve thought that his sudden death was just a “short while” ago. Now seven years have passed; no longer such a short while. We count seven days to Shabbat[2]; seven weeks from commemoration of the going out of Egypt[3] to that of the giving of the Torah[4]; seven years to the Shmitta[5] year, when land lies fallow and debts are extinguished. At each of these shevi’i[6] milestones, we forsake the physical and material, and we rely more heavily on the spiritual. We teach ourselves to be unselfish and remember the greater good.

Reb Loewy of Prague in Tiferet Yisrael, chapter forty describes the significance of the number seven. He points out that physical reality as we know it is defined by the number six. It’s the number of physical directions that we wave the four species[7]: front-right-back-left-up-down. On Hoshana Raba[8], the seventh day of Succoth[9] (and the day of Dad’s Yahrzeit) we focus on the seventh dimension, the centre-point, and the point of repose, the holy, and the spiritual. This seventh Yahrzeit seems to me like a very important milestone; a significant new stage in my life.

When Dad died, we lost his physical expressions of love and material support; we had to learn to nurture the memory of his love in our own hearts and to draw spiritual support from his neshama[10]. More than that, we were now called to nurture his neshama by continuing his life’s work, by adopting his mission. Now, seven years later, I feel this message even more strongly. So I ask myself: what is my responsibility? What is my mission?

I can draw so many lessons and so much inspiration from his 75 years of life. 15 years of happy Polish-shtetl childhood in a close-knit extended rural family, six adolescent, earthly years of unspeakable cruelty, horror and the loss of six million during the Holocaust, then 54 years of determined rebuilding initially in Europe, then Israel, then Perth….

I draw the greatest inspiration of all from his decision, immediately after being brought back from the brink of death at Mauthausen, to make Aliya[11]. After his liberation from Mathausen Concentration Camp, his primary motivation was to rebuild the family that Hitler had all but destroyed. But where was he to do this? Where was his “home”? Clearly the village where he grew up to witness his whole extended family cruelly destroyed, would not provide his safe haven. His Yiddishe folke[12] would … He needed to be part of a greater cause, to join with Klal Yisrael [13]in a national project, in order to create a home, to fulfil his own dreams for a new family, and to give meaning to his indestructible, iron will to survive.

He joined the Haganah[14], where he proudly served for seven years, 1947 -1955. It was only after he had started his new family that he realised that although Israel was a paradise compared to the Holocaust, the struggle for survival continued unabated. Israel was surrounded by enemies and life was hard. It was when he received a parcel from American friends, including vitamins for me, his new baby boy, that he determined to emigrate to Australia to join his surviving brother in the new world, where he would not have to rely on charity.

Here in Perth he built his family; two children and six grandchildren. His life was dedicated to us and to the family life he knew: Shabbat, yom-tovim[15], shul [16]…. and to the welfare of Israel.

And so what, now, is my mission? Clearly it is to continue to build the family. This is the primary mission.

But just as Dad recognised a greater cause, that would create the ultimate safe haven for this family: Zionism and the building of Eretz Yisrael[17]; so we can be inspired to a greater cause too: tikkun Olam[18] to create a better world in which the ethics of our fathers, and Eretz Yisrael, are loved and valued; to provide a safe haven for Klal Yisrael.

In a world where Israel’s right to exist is questioned by some, and the UN can’t even define terrorism, let alone defeat it, there is much work to be done. We may not complete the task, but we should not desist from it.

[1] Yahrzeit – the Jewish custom of annual commemoration of the death of a parent, sibling or child. The commemoration is in accordance with the lunar calendar, as is the determination of the Jewish festivals.
[2] Shabbat – the Sabbath.
[3] commemoration of the going out of Egypt – this is done by observing the festival of Pesach or the Passover.
[4] commemoration of the … the giving of the Torah - this is done by observing the festival of Shavuot (“weeks”) seven weeks after Passover.
[5] Shmitta – the sabbatical year (every seven years).
[6] Shevi'i – “seventh”
[7] wave the four species – during the festival of Succoth, Jews wave examples of four species (three types of twig and an Israeli citrus fruit) during prayer.
[8] Hoshana Raba - the seventh day of Succoth.
[9] Succoth – the feast of the Tabernacles.
[10] Neshama – spirit / soul
[11] Aliya – “going up”, refers to emigrating to Israel.
[12] Yiddishe folke – in Yiddish “Jewish folk”, refers specifically to the traditional eastern European Jewish culture.
[13] Klal Yisrael – refers to the Jewish world globally and all-inclusively.
[14] Haganah ­– “defence” refers to the Israel Defence Force, particularly at the time of independence.
[15] yom-tovim – Jewish festivals.
[16] Shul – the synagogue.
[17] Eretz Yisrael – the Land of Israel.
[18] tikkun Olam – “repairing the world”, refers to doing good deeds and making the world a better place for all.

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