Even before October 7, 2024, I wanted to share this story with you. It’s about a war … in Israel … but mostly it’s about people and what it takes to survive.
The main character of our story is Menachem. He’s an Israeli paratrooper, now 67 years old. Tall with blue eyes. Can you picture him? One day in 1996 he and his wife go to see the movie Courage Under Fire, about the first Gulf War, with Meg Ryan as the female pilot.
Afterwards, they’re in the car and Menachem’s wife innocently asks if the movie reminded him of his Israeli Army service years ago.
All of the sudden, for the first time ever since 1973, Menachem is crying. Wailing really. A sound so strange he didn’t even recognize himself. He couldn’t see the road because he was crying so fiercely. Menachem pulls the car over.
23 years had passed and he had never spoken about his experience in the Yom Kippur War, and especially not about the dramatic and traumatic Battle of Tel Saki.
So let’s go to Tel Saki. Tel Saki is a small hilltop in the Golan Heights in Northern Israel.
In the early morning of Yom Kippur 1973, Menachem, a so-called “Commander” at age 20, is told to take 4 soldiers and a driver to the hill of Tel Saki. Their mission is to see if there is any shooting and if so, where it’s coming from.
Basic reconnaissance. Simple enough.
They look around, scout it out, no shooting, no enemy sightings. Nothing is happening.
Menachem goes back to his Yom Kippur prayers. Just another boring patrol duty.
And then, seemingly out of nowhere, the ground starts trembling, the sky is lighting up with fire, the cannons are deafening.
Column after column of tanks are rolling towards Menachem. It’s the Syrian army.
The smoke is so thick Menachem can’t see his shoes. He yells to his soldiers to get inside the bunker.
Menachem radios his commander at headquarters and starts to count the Syrian tanks he can see on the horizon. When he gets to 60 tanks, the commander realizes this is not just a division, this is a whole battalion of the Syrian Army.
Syrian artillery – almost 1000 bullets a minute – plus 900 Syrian tanks, plus 11,000 Syrian foot soldiers were barreling through Israel’s northern border.
All that stands between the Syrian army and Israeli civilians are Menachem and his band of four lookouts on Tel Saki, and a small thin line of 45 Israeli tanks. 45 vs. 900 tanks.
It’s not a fair match up – Israel is unprepared, surprised, mostly on holiday, it’s Yom Kippur afterall – and it doesn’t go well.
Over the next day, most of the Israeli tanks are destroyed. Any surviving soldiers make their way to the Tel Saki bunker for safety. Menachem gets shot in the leg but keeps defending the bunker. His men keep shooting until they are hit or run out of ammunition. Many are killed and everyone else is wounded.
The Syrians keep shooting, keep bombing, keep blowing up Israeli tanks, and worse for Menachem, they keep throwing grenades into the Tel Saki bunker.
Somehow, this sparse and injured band of Israeli soldiers holds off the Syrian army all night. The enemy does not get beyond Tel Saki.
By morning, however, Menachem prepares his soldiers for the end. He knows they can’t hold on any longer. They’ve delayed the Syrian invasion of Israel but they are out of ammo, out of able bodied soldiers, and with no reinforcements on the way, they are out of time.
Menachem destroys maps and intelligence documents, gathers the 27 surviving soldiers into the bunker – a space meant for 6 men not 28 – and radios a farewell message to HQ.
Then, he has one final idea … If anyone is alive and can walk, go out of the bunker and surrender. And tell the enemy everyone in the bunker is dead.
Yitzchak, who only 2 years ago made aliyah with his family from India – Yitzchak looks around the bunker, no one is moving.
He says to himself, I’m the only one who can walk. Who else is going to go?
So he leaves the bunker, surrenders to the Syrians, and says in his limited Arabic that the bunker is empty. Just dead soldiers there.
The Syrians grab him and hold him at gunpoint, shouting excitedly, and mistakenly, that they’ve captured a pilot.
Yitzchak is held in a Syrian prison for 8 months. He is told Israel is gone. He is told Syria won the war.
And he’s told the bunker was blown up. No one survived.
He feels tremendous guilt and shame. If he had just surrendered for all his fellow soldiers maybe they’d be alive.
Maybe they’d be in prison but they wouldn’t be buried and abandoned in enemy territory.
Back in the bunker Menachem and his men are holding on by a thread. No food, no water, no medical supplies, but finally, after 24 hours, the battle was mostly over. Menachem again radios his commander. Some of us survived. Send a rescue team. HQ promises rescue is on the way. But it isn’t … not for another 8 hours …
After 36 hours in the bunker, Menachem and the survivors are rescued.
And in Syria, eventually – after 8 months – Yitzchak is released in a prisoner swap. He is still filled with shame – he believes his friends in the bunker were all killed because of him.
Yitzchak arrives at Ben Gurion Airport and is so sure he’s going to be either arrested or killed for treason, he waits at the back of the plane. He doesn’t want to face the disgust he’s sure he’ll receive from his country.
But of course, his family is overjoyed to see him. He hugs his parents, he is reunited with his girlfriend.
Yitzchak is leaving the airport and a man approaches him saying, “Do you remember me?”
Yitzchak does not.
I’m alive because of you, he says. I was in the bunker with Menachem and 27 others. We’re all alive because of you.
Yitzchak feels born again.
Upon Yitzchak’s release, Menachem, the commander, decides it’s time to make good on a promise he made in the bunker.
He takes out an ad the local papers:
With the return of our friend Yitzchak from captivity in Syria, all those who were stranded in the bunker on Tel Saki from 6-8 october, and all those who took part in rescue attempts, are requested to contact Menachem in Jerusalem to prepare for the party.
Sadly it was an awkward and somber event. Only a handful of people showed up. There were snacks and some small talk but nothing of significance. They couldn’t make eye contact. They couldn’t talk about what had happened or how they were feeling. And they didn’t do it again. They continue suffering or coping as best they could on their own in isolation.
But the real reason I’m telling you all this story and history is because of what happens over 20 years later.
Remember Menachem after the movie? Remember his breakdown in the car with his wife? 23 years after the war?
That moment finally motivates him to get help. He goes into therapy, learns about PTSD – which was not recognized in the 70s – and starts to understand his life experience and himself for the first time.
Menachem is in his mid-50s.
And then Menachem does something really radical … he writes a book and goes public.
He says: It was very challenging when I showed my family the book.
I was sure the world would explode on me.
Because my kids grew up under the impression their father is a hero, a tough guy.
And I had to tell them I’m sitting and crying like a little girl. It was unacceptable.
But of course, his family loved him and understood him even more because he shared his vulnerability.
For Menachem, the people he really wanted to talk to were his former soldiers. It had been decades since they stepped out of the bunker.
He gathers up his courage and writes this email to his soldiers:
My physical wounds were treated in the hospital, but I hid my emotional wounds from the world, and especially from myself. I worked hard concealing them, afraid that like a dam, any small leak would bring everything down on me. I made many mistakes during this period.
If a commander allows himself to receive treatment from a psychologist, maybe you will as well.
The major aim of the book is to tell you, you can go into it and maybe your life will be better.
He attaches his book, hits send on the email, and prays his message will resonate with his soldiers.
It resonates.
One soldier reads the book in one sitting.
Another said the first line of the book: “When you come to hell, hell never comes out of you,” that broke him.
One soldier, Dan, who had been living in America for all this time, receives the email and writes to Menachem immediately,
“Do you remember me?”
Menachem responds within seconds with the numbers 2148787.
Dan’s military ID number.
Menachem’s book began a healing process none of them had been able to do on their own. They organize their first gathering at Tel Saki since the awkward party after Yitzchak’s release from Syrian captivity.
They meet at the bunker … 10 long lost brothers, Dan flies in from the US … they drink some wine, make some coffee and just talk. They meet at Tel Saki at 11 in the morning and they sit in that bunker until it’s dark – after 9 pm.
Menachem said: It was very emotional. It was the first time I could tell them how proud I am of them.
We just look in each other’s eyes and allow ourselves to weep if needed.
There is something here uniting us and it’s okay to talk about it.
And they come up with a masoret – a tradition- to gather at Tel Saki twice every year. Once on Yom Hazikaron – Israel’s Memorial Day, and once on the “birthday” of this band of brothers – right after Yom Kippur.
HOW DO WE HOPE?
To me, the lessons from Menachem and Tel Saki are not only about brotherhood and the interwovenness of trauma and healing, but it also speaks to the challenges we are facing today.
October 7 broke our world, shattered our world really, and shattered our hearts.
It broke our trust in Israel’s military superiority, it broke our trust in our leaders’ ability to protect Jewish lives, both in Israel and elsewhere.
It broke something in each of us.
How can it be that Jewish students aren’t safe at college? How can it be that Jews aren’t protected in the Jewish homeland or here in our other “promised land”?
How can it be that civilians,elderly, women and children are kidnapped and tortured and the world isn’t outraged?
How can it be that whole families have been wiped out?
Today, I could have shared with you many stories of tragedy and heroism from October 7.
But I chose to go back to Yom Kippur 1973 and to learn from Menachem and his soldiers because they have done what we need to do. They survived and they found hope.
Like that band of brothers who suffered alone for so long, maybe it’s hard to see a brighter future. Maybe this is just the way it is. A confusing, complicated, polarized world. Maybe we just need to accept it.
Understandably, we may have become skeptics if not cynics over these recent years.
You know me … as positive and grateful as I strive to be … I do lean towards the darker side.
People can be cruel. Terrible things happen – a lot. Life is unjust.
I for one don’t believe that a good attitude or “everything happens for a reason” is going to magically improve the way of the world.
What can we do? Where can we find hope? Is there anything we can do so we don’t keep repeating the insanity of these difficult years?
I learn from the history of Tel Saki that change, both personal and communal, requires two ingredients.
One ingredient is obviously each other.
The ability to talk openly, to share their fears and traumas safely, to know they’re not alone … that was the magic pill for healing their wounds.
After a few years of the annual gatherings at Tel Saki, one of the wives got permission to bring in a PTSD specialist to talk to the group.
One soldier remembers:
The PTSD specialist guy comes and he’s sitting between us and he saw the meeting and after hours he said, listen guys, what you’re doing is the best thing to do. I have nothing to say.
Instinctively they were already doing what they needed most.
It’s not surprising that communal support is essential after a trauma.
We know that from our own life experiences and from the way support groups have flourished in our lifetimes.
MUTUAL AID
But did you know that new research actually shows that cooperative communities actually function better and are happier than competitive communities?
I find this fascinating.
Especially as Americans, we have been taught that competition is necessary, it’s our nature. In science class and beyond we have been socialized to believe that humans, like the animal kingdom, need to compete and dominate in order to survive.
Darwin’s Survival of the fittest – it’s how the world works.
How many times have we told ourselves or our kids … do one more practice, one more piece of homework, one more hour of preparation in order to be the best, get to the top, to win?
We have to fight to get to the top, right? If we want success in life we have to beat out everyone else, right?
Rarely if ever, do we say before a big work event, a test or a sporting event …go see who you can cooperate with and get better together?
But guess what? Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest is just a theory, and a misunderstood theory at that.
Dr Jamil Zaki, a Stanford sociologist, teaches that a new theory, Survival of the Kindest, is a more accurate description for how human civilization has evolved.
All the way back in the 1800s, a Russian Prince turned biologist, named Peter Kropotkin, observed that there is cooperation in the animal kingdom. Peter’s story is phenomenal but I only have time for a snippet here…
As a young scientist, Peter gives up his aristocratic life and travels to Siberia in order to observe animals in the wild. He spends 5 years and traverses 50k miles by dogsled in brutal conditions in Siberia.
Peter expected to see what Darwin described: Whatever has to be done to get more resources and produce more babies, that’s what is done. He expected to see intense competition. He expected to see an animal bloodbath.
Instead, Peter Kropotkin saw what he called mutual aid.
Everywhere he went, saw animals cooperating with each other in the face of a harsh environment.
Termites collaborate in building their hives.
Wolves hunt in packs.
Horse and deer gather together as protection from predators.
Even a solitary beetle who gathers food for its larvae underground all alone, when a dead bird or mouse appears in the environment, 4, 6 or 10 beetles arrive to lend a hand.
There is competition. But it’s competition against the harsh natural world, not against each other.
Animals know instinctively, that when they help each other overcome the harsh environment, they all do better.
And guess what? Peter observed the same behavior in remote human communities.
Russian peasants were not hoarding food and competing for supplies, they were working in collaboration to help each other to survive.
In a nutshell Peter Kropotkin’s theory is:
Cooperation (not competition) within a species has been a historical factor in the development of the species and it’s society.
And in fact, the avoidance of competition greatly increases the chances of survival and raises the quality of life.
Long before Dr Zaki and even long before Peter or Charles Darwin, Judaism taught that human beings need each other and are responsible for each other.
Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. This is a phrase we’ve heard often this year. All Israel is responsible for one another. It’s why we say – we’re all prisoners in Gaza. It’s why we hold the government accountable to bring home every single hostage, every single soldier’s body.
As Jews we are not okay if even one of us is not okay.
There is a deep spiritual bond that ties us all together.
There is a lesser known moment in the Torah we read just a few weeks ago.
The Israelites are getting ready to enter the land and God places them on the top of two mountains.
God instructs them to face each other and enter into a holy community with each other. To pledge loyalty to each other.
Before they can enter the Land of Israel, they need to look each other in the eyes and pledge loyalty to each other.
It’s not a commitment to God, it’s a commitment to each other.
What is one of the key preparations we must do before asking for forgiveness from God on these holy days?
Face each other and ask for forgiveness, person to person. It’s part of why we are here today.
The other ingredient the soldiers at Tel Saki needed is not as obvious as community, but it was essential: they needed structure.
When the men met that once, after Yitzchak was freed from Syria – for the awkward cheese party – it didn’t work. They didn’t know what to do or how to be with each other.
But when they met years later, thanks to Menachem’s book it was different. They made a ritual and a structure for themselves.
They agreed to meet at Tel Saki twice a year. They took on projects together like making the monument to their fallen brothers and setting up educational tours. Only when that had that structure of when they would meet and what they would do together could heal and move forward..
Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson teaches that the opposite of hate is not love, but it’s law.
When we want to fight against Anti-Semitism or Jew hatred or Israel hatred, we can’t simply love away the hate.
We have to take action against the hate.
Judaism, above all else, teaches that love is doing.
May your memory be a revolution … Hersh’s father Jon Polin said at his funeral.
We all have been awed by this mother and father who did every single action and more – no stone, no pebble, no spec of earth untouched to bring their son and others home.
They did everything from commissioning a Torah Scroll to meeting the Pope … we’ve all been touched by their pleas, their strength and their faith.
With every fiber of their being they said to Hersh: We love you, so we will never stop doing.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin were the ultimate doers.
As Jews, doing is our love language.
This year has been unbearably painful. I’ve felt helpless and overwhelmed and unmoored.
Until the last few weeks of Israel’s incredible military successes, hope has seemed like a long lost dream.
Even as Israel entered Rosh Hashanah just days ago, Iran escalated hostilities by firing 180 ballistic missiles at Israeli civilians. Israelis were celebrating and taking shelter at the same time.
But when I look at the long arc of Jewish history, we have proof that things can change –
sometimes in one moment like as we read about in holiday Torah portion – Isaac being spared from sacrifice –
and sometimes over time: like the rebuilding of Jewish life after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70CE,
like creating a homeland from the ashes of the Holocaust.
Our love language is doing.
Doing has sustained us through every tragedy and challenge for 2000 years.
On Rosh Hashanah, when we are commanded to reflect and return, I am drawn to this concept of simply doing and I am drawn to our Jewish faith in Survival of the Kindest.
Not because kindness cures all evils – it surely doesn’t – and not because I naively want to cooperate with just anyone – definitely not.
But I am drawn to Survival of the Kindest because it gives me hope.
And I am guided back to the wisdom of our tradition, that commands us to be doers, to do holy acts, which we call mitzvot.
I think of the parents of all the hostages who have not rested from their doing the mitzvah of redeeming captives.
I think of the families of all the deceased soldiers and civilians who are doing the mitzvah of mourning and remembering.
I think of all the reserve soldiers, away from their families and civilian lives for a year, doing their mission of defense.
I think of all the young soldiers like Menachem and Yitzchak, doing the impossible for the sake of each other.
And I know we, even as diaspora Jews, as civilians, even as private individuals, not on the world stage, I know we can do our part.
Our tradition gives us 613 mitzvot – many, many ways to do, to speak our Jewish love language.
When we’re short on optimism and hope, do a mitzvah.
When we’re hurting and alone, do a mitzvah.
When we’re grateful and feeling life’s miracles, do a mitzvah.
When we’re confused and just not sure what’s next, do a mitzvah.
I’m almost embarrassed to suggest such a simple answer. Something that’s been with us all along, right in front of our eyes, right here in our midst. But simple doesn’t mean easy and that’s also why we’re here today.
Doing never fails. Doing is the change. Doing is the revolution.
Life is hard and it is confusing, so Judaism ushers us back to our halakha – our derekh – our walkway, our path and that path is built on individual actions, one by one.
Mitzvot always matter and mtizvot always move us in the right direction.
In this year 5785 … May we move in the direction of Survival of the Kindest … finding mutual aid rather than competition within our friendships, families.
And this year, more than ever, may “doing” whatever mitzvot speak to us most, be our love language.
To Hersh z’l and the 1200 other Israeli souls we’ve lost this year, may you finally rest in peace, and may your memories be for a revolution.