The hespedim were ending. The head of the Moetza HaDatit (Religious Affairs Council), Shmuel Margi, spoke through his bullhorn, describing the itinerary of the livaya (funeral procession). The army trucks carrying the flag-draped caskets began their journey (although civilians, the three slain men had been involved in Hebron security, and so were accorded a military funeral).
Their journey had begun in France and the former Soviet Union, passed through Hebron and now would end in a Jerusalem cemetery. They were immigrants in the Promised Land, just as the Patriarch Abraham long before them. I walked toward the trucks to accompany the dead. Yossi Leibovitz appeared next to me. Just a few months before, he had buried his 19-year-old soldier son and I had walked alongside his son’s casket. We are all soldiers here today, I thought.
It reminded me of another funeral about a year and a half ago, of a former neighbor, Yechezkiel “Chezy” Muallem. He was shot just outside the gates of Kiryat Arba while protesting the murder of someone else earlier in the week. We had lived across the hallway from Chezy. He was always a friendly guy. He always had a good word. He was a former chief engineer for Luz, the now defunct solar energy company. Too many funerals.
They’re leaving from the Moetza, passing the meduragim, new buildings, where Yitzhak Bo’anish lived. Going down the road that passes the #400 buildings, they turn left past Baruch Goldstein’s grave by the mercazia (shopping center). Bank Leumi and most of the shops were closed today.
At one point the army trucks sped up, and few of the hundreds of mourners who had been walking alongside the trucks were able to keep up. I ran, pushing myself to stay with the dead. Only twenty or thirty of us had that privilege.
These three men had been heroes, and though my knee hurt and my leg throbbed, I wanted to gain from their strength. It seemed somehow symbolic that the trucks bearing the men’s bodies sped ahead of everyone — just as in life they had always been ahead of everyone else during emergencies.
We then turned left, up Calev Ben Yefuna Street, named for another Jewish hero. Calev was one of the twelve spies Moshe sent out to scout Canaan. He and Joshua brought back positive reports of how good the land was. The other spies looked only on the tactical level, reporting to Moshe and the people how well fortified the Canaanite cities were, how strong they looked, how hopeless it was to think we could build a life there. The same type of people who wanted us to return to Egypt now called for Peace Now as a preferable alternative to fighting for, and liberating, the Promised Land.
But Joshua and Calev were different. They looked at the strategic level, the inner spiritual level, and reported: It’s a good land, and G-d is with us; we can conquer it and live here as G-d promised our forefathers. Maybe Joshua was naturally courageous or maybe it came from years of serving as Moshe’s assistant. Maybe in the presence of a tzaddik like Moshe, he absorbed Moshe’s faith, Moshe’s greatness.
As for Calev, we read in the Torah that, in the midst of doing his logistical survey, he went to pray at the Me’arat HaMachpela (Cave of the Patriarchs) in Hebron. He was, in a sense, an early precursor of the IDF’s Hesder yeshiva soldiers, dedicated warriors of Israel who take time to pray to the G-d of Israel.
Calev needed to connect to our forefathers and foremothers who are buried there. He needed, it seems, to draw inspiration from their vision, courage from their lives, strength from the knowledge that generations before they had been promised this land by G-d, and now that promise was about to be fulfilled. Calev prayed in Kiryat Arba, that is Hebron (Gen. 23:2).
