This week I was witness to the tremendous inner strength and resilience of the Jewish faith and the Jewish people.
A certain Moroccan-born Jew, passed away this week in Boise. It was her wish to be buried in Israel, near her family in Ashdod.
Her daughter took it upon herself to ensure that her mother’s wish was correctly fulfilled. But burying a loved one in the Holy Land might be a fairly simple task if you live in New York or Los Angeles. Embarking on such a mission from Boise can be challenging at best. Especially when trying to adhere to Jewish tradition’s directive that the deceased be buried as quickly as possible. And even more so, when dealing with the State of Israel’s strict (but necessary) regulations.
In short, aside from the great expenditure, the tedious paperwork, the numerous mortuaries, and multiple flights, it takes a great amount of flexibility, faith and fortitude.
In this instance, the burial in Ashdod was only able to transpire prior to Shabbat (five days after her passing) thanks to the selfless help of a Rabbi in Israel whom she had never met. In middle of the night I placed a call to a colleague in Ashdod and said, “There is a Jewish woman’s body in Ben Gurion airport and she needs to get buried today, before Shabbat.” Rabbi Schneur Goodman, director of Chabad in Ashdod, dropped everything he was doing and went far beyond the call of duty to loan thousands of dollars for a burial plot, arrange transport to Ashdod, and facilitate a funeral service – all while serving as translator as well. This all had to be accomplished within the several hours that remained before Shabbat.
I was truly humbled by his noble acts of kindness.
To me the entire episode begs the questions, why? Why go through so much trouble?
And perhaps a more salient query: Why in the first place would a woman who lived so far from Israel yearn to be buried there. Why would the daughter of a non-Jew go through so much trouble to bury her mother in a foreign land, where she cannot even speak the language, away from her own husband?
Struggling to find a rationale for this exceptional behavior, I turned to this week’s Torah portion, Terumah. We read about the construction of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. This traveling Sanctuary housed the sacred articles, such as Menorah, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Altars. The Torah conveys that it was constructed of many materials, including cedar wood.
The Midrash wonders how the Jewish people procured cedar wood in the wilderness. It seems odd that there would be cedar trees in the desert.
The Midrash offers the following fascinating explanation:
Our patriarch Jacob prophetically foresaw that the Jewish people would need to build a sanctuary in the wilderness. Thus he brought cedars with him to Egypt and planted them there. He commanded his sons to take these with them when they leave Egypt.
Looking more deeply into the prescience of Jacob to schlep cedars to Egypt, an even greater foresight emerges.
The cedar trees did not serve simply as construction material, but as a spiritual cue that one day we’d be free and build a sanctuary for G-d.
Let’s imagine we were living in Egypt with this stash of cedar trees. Every day we’d pass the stockyard on our way to the demeaning and painful labor of slavery. This would be our beacon of light. Our promise for a better day. And our reminder that Egypt is not our true home.
This remarkable spirit that was instilled in our people during its infancy is still alive today. It’s this voice that continues to remind us in exile, “You’re only passing through.”
No matter where we may find ourselves and regardless of the personal degree of observance, at the core every Jew feels connected to the Holy Land.
Two indomitable ladies never gave up. One great Rabbi in Ashdod never forgot. And one small Rabbi in Boise was reminded.