Gabe Ende: ISRAEL-The Cantorial Concert: One Tiny Forgotten Detail
I was invited by my son Ezi and my grandson Avsha to join them for a performance at the Cantorial School in Petach Tikva. The performance was very enjoyable , but a dissonant note early on revealed the problematic nature of its “National-Religious” auspices.
The event was preceded by greetings from dignitaries, including one of the directors of the Cantorial Institute, who noted in her remarks that the date of the concert –the Eleventh of Heshvan– enjoyed special significance as the Memorial Day for…” Rachel Imeinu”, our Matriarch Rachel. Not a word about Yitzchak Rabin, whose assassination on that very date was declared by the Knesset as the subject of an annual memorial day…
I was tempted to cry out: ” But there is also another memorial event on this date. Have you forgotten so quickly??”
My high school years were spent at an Orthodox yeshiva, during which not a single word was mentioned about the yahrzeit of the younger daughter of Lavan, wife of our patriarch Jacob. So what prompted the “National-Religious” crowd to suddenly hold the event in such great esteem?
The parliamentary enactment of “the Eleventh of Heshvan Law” led the Ministry of Education to instruct all schools to conduct ceremonies and classroom discussions on that day. The directive, however, was overwhelmingly greeted by the general community and posed a dilemma for quite a few educators in the “National-Religious” system. Identifying with the basic values of Rabin’s murderer – “one of their own”—more than those of the victim, what could they do?
Torah trivia experts offered a solution. Discovering that Rabin shared his yahrzeit with Rachel Imeinu, a process was initiated that culminated with the focus of the state-mandated Eleventh of Heshvan Memorial Day devoted entirely to Rocheleh in many “religious” schools! I’m willing to conjecture that if our experts had revealed that Rachav Hazona—the prostitute Rachav, who assisted the spies sent by Joshua to Jericho —was the Biblical personality who died on that date, the same process would have occurred…
And how did the speaker conclude her remarks?…”Beyachad Nenatzeiach”. We’ll win this war only as a united people!”
Should the current coalition remain in power, it is not unlikely that Rabin’s murderer will ultimately be released and enter public life. But not in Ben-Gvir’s Otzma party. Feelings running as they are in the Likud, he would more likely accept an invitation to join them, seeking complete rehabilitation.
And now for a brief historical note…After the Bar Kochba Revolt (ending in 135 C.E.), Roman emperor Hadrian decided to destroy the Jewish character of the land in order to avoid future insurrections. One of his tools was to change the official name of the Roman province from Judea to Syria Palestina ( the Philistine part of Syria). This was a gross historical error. The Philistines had left the stage of history even before Herodotus had coined the term some six hundred years earlier. But as we all know, the name stuck.
Our latter-day Hadrians are feverishly at work trying to eradicate Rabin’s heritage in Israeli public life—and they have quite a few supporters. The Rabin family thus acted wisely, asking the Knesset to cease having a special session in his memory on the eleventh of Heshvan. There is already an insufferable glut of hypocrisy in Israeli public life.
