Chaim Lindenbaum, a 77-year-old man from Haifa, was diagnosed with aggressive leukemia in 2022. Doctors said the grandfather could only survive with a life-saving bone marrow transplant. Dr. Daniel Levi had signed up to be a bone marrow donor after moving to Israel from Peru and he came up as a match for Lindenbaum, even though they were not related. After finding out he could be a donor, Levi had about one week to prepare for the urgent stem cell transplant, which was arranged through Ezer Mizion, the world’s largest Jewish bone marrow registry. The transplant was a success, and the older man wanted to thank his benefactor. But donor rules forced the men to wait a year before the donor’s identity could be revealed.
A year later, Chaim Lindenbaum and Daniel Levi were anxious to finally meet each other. They scheduled to meet after the Jewish holiday season that ended with Simchas Torah on October 7. But that meeting never happened. Daniel Levi and his young family lived in Kibbutz Be’eri and on October 7, when terrorists infiltrated the kibbutz, he answered the frantic calls from the medical clinic. He ran into the trouble, racing to treat the severely injured. As his wife Lihi, 34, daughter Emma, 5, and son Liam, 2, were hiding in a safe room for seven hours, Levi calmly texted her, “I love you” while Hamas terrorists opened fire. After treating many people and saving lives, Dr. Daniel Levi was killed on October 7.
Lindenbaum never did get to meet the man who saved his life, but he did get to meet his family. A few weeks after the horror at Be’eri, someone from Ezer Mizion was trying to arrange the meeting and kept called Levi but didn’t hear back. She looked at his file and saw he was from Be’eri. She did more research and learned he had been killed. She decided to call Lihi nonetheless to see if a meeting could be arranged. During an “exciting and emotional” meeting for the two families, Daniel Levi’s widow got a chance to do what her husband dreamed of doing for more than a year, hug his bone marrow recipient.
Bending down to little Emma, Lindenbaum explained, “I was very sick – my blood was sick. And today I’m healthy, thanks to your daddy’s blood.” He continued: “I was very sad, I wanted to thank him. His blood system is in my body. In compatibility we were like brothers.” He added that a part of Levi still lives on in him: “He left, aside from his two beautiful kids, his blood, which is my blood.”
The truth is this principle is not limited to Chaim Lindenbaum and Daniel Levi, but all Jews are brothers and sisters, we must work to be perfectly compatible.
In describing the most seminal moment in history, the revelation at Sinai, the Torah tells us: Va’yachanu ba’midbar, vayichan sham Yisrael neged ha’har, they encamped in the desert and the Jewish people camped opposite the mountain. Rashi famously comments on the change in tense—from the plural “Vayachanu” to the singular “Vayichan”—that we stood “k’ish echad b’lev echad, like one person with one heart.” The Ohr HaChaim writes that this mindset was from “ikarei ha’hachana l’kabbalas ha’Torah” a critical part of preparing to receive the Torah. It was then, and it is again now, as each year we accept the Torah together anew
The simple understanding of this concept is that we were united, cooperative, caring and loving of one another. We were a family, a community, a people instead of just a gathering of disparate individuals. But the idea is deeper. Indeed, we can’t fully observe and keep the totality of Torah unless we are united and as one. We are all obligated in Taryag mitzvos but yet can’t observe every one of them because we can’t simultaneously be a man, woman, Kohen, levi, Live in Israel and outside of it, during the Beis HaMikdash and without it, etc. The Kiryas Sefer explains that only through the principle of Kol Yisroel areivim zah la’zeh can we fulfill the entire 613 commandments. By being guarantors one for the others, we can be motzei each other and thereby all fulfill it all. It is not a coincidence that areivim is the same word as ta’aroves, a mixture. When we guarantee one another and have each other in mind, we become a mixture together.
The Baal Shem Tov understands this idea in an even deeper way. The only way to fulfill Taryag Mitzvos, he says, is to not only exist independently, but also to see ourselves as part of one organic, integrated whole, one unit. קיום תרי״ג מצוות אינו אפשרי אלא ע״י שכל אחד כולל עצמו בתוך כלל ישראל באהבה ואחוה ע״י זה יש לכל אחד חלק בתרי״ג מצוות. This is why Chassidim say before each mitzvah they perform, “בשם כל ישראל”.
But perhaps there is yet another explanation. We all know the name of the mountain the Torah was given on is Har Sinai. The Gemara (Shabbos 89a) tells us the etymology of the name Sinai.
דְּרַב חִסְדָּא וְרַבָּה בְּרֵיהּ דְּרַב הוּנָא דְּאָמְרִי תַּרְוַויְיהוּ: מַאי ״הַר סִינַי״? הַר שֶׁיָּרְדָה שִׂנְאָה לְאֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם עָלָיו.
It is called Har Sinai because it is the mountain from which sinah, hatred descended against the Jews. While countless explanations have been offered for antisemitism, the world’s oldest hatred, there is no unifying explanation because it has reared its ugly head in times of prosperity and poverty, in times of assimilation and strong Jewish identity, throughout history and across the globe, when we have been in our homeland and when we were dispersed in galus.
Ultimately, our rabbis taught, we are hated because we stood at Sinai and accepted a great role and responsibility, a mission to be models and examples, to improve and repair the world. Subjective cultures and systems of morality challenge the objective moral timeless truths of our Torah, but they don’t endure. We are meant to be the moral conscience of the world, an example of creating an ethical and holy society and community, and the people of the world don’t like that.
The sinah, the hatred of the Jew, goes all the way back to Har Sinai when we stood at the mountain, three thousand, three hundred and thirty-seven years ago and accepted to live lives informed, inspired, and guided by the Torah. We have faced discrimination, bias, double standards, tropes and hate since the very moment we began. We have been forced to live with and navigate sinah since we first stood at Sinai.
How? How has our people not only survived this sinah but thrived despite it throughout the millennia? What is the explanation for our endurance, resilience, strength and capacity to still be here standing, to be back at that same mountain that brought this hatred?
The answer, the secret to our surviving the sinah, also goes all the way back to that mountain and the way we gathered there. כאיש אחד בלב אחד, we stood together as one: undivided, invincible, ready to confront and overcome whatever sinah would come our way.
A study released on friendship in 2008 by professors from four universities in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found something remarkable about companionship and community. Participants in their studies were asked to estimate the incline of a hill in front of them. Over and over again, those who were accompanied by a friend estimated the hill to be less steep than participants who were alone. The researchers concluded that the more one is connected with others, the more we are part of a community, the more we feel we can climb whatever mountain is in our way.
Long before researchers, our Torah understood this. The Navi Yeshayahu (41:6) said:אִ֥ישׁ אֶת־רֵעֵ֖הוּ יַעְזֹ֑רוּ וּלְאָחִ֖יו יֹאמַ֥ר חֲזָֽק׃ , Each one helps the other, saying to his fellow, “Take courage!” We have overcome the sinah since Sinai because we stood and we stand together k’ish echad b’lev echad, as one, turning to each other over and over and saying, “Chazak! Be strong.” We have not just stood united, we have become united, like one, laughing together, crying together, davening together and feeling together with our lev echad, one heart.
As we prepare to stand at the mountain again to re-accept the Torah, the sinah from Sinai continues to rage in Israel, on college campuses, in some offices of Congress, and in too many countries around the world. Our response now must be as it was then, to turn to one another with a sense of oneness, love and unity and to wish each other chazak. If we are going to not only survive but thrive, we must be in compatibility like brothers and sisters, like one.
{Reposted from the Rabbi’s site}
