Most Israelis around my age and older can tell you where they were and what they did at around 2pm of Yom Kippur 1973 as the sirens of war started wailing. The war of disillusion and price paying for the national high induced by the miracle of the Six Day War.
I was 13 and as in previous years, I spent Yom Kippur with my grandparents Meir and Chava Pechthalt in Haifa, the place I was born. They fled Romania with their five children, including my mother, through Ukraine and survived many unimaginable things that were barely talked about throughout my childhood and to date, were sent to the internment camps in Cyprus and eventually made their home in Wadi Salib, a very tough and rugged mixed neighborhood (Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish newly arrived immigrants, most came from Morocco, and Palestinian Arabs) while maintaining their faith and orthodox religious practices throughout.
Saba Meir eventually became a high level employee at a local bank in Haifa and prospered, yet they stayed in the same house in the poorest neighborhood in town till he had a stroke and was unable to stay. The only reason for that was the smallest synagogue I have ever been at. There were not many Ashkenazi Jews left in the neighborhood and when at a time he contemplated moving to a better area, the congregation told him that if he moves, he should take the keys to the temple with him. He stayed.
At two o’clock the sirens started wailing and the draft trucks started lining up in front of the Sephardic synagogues picking up all the reserve soldiers and those at leave plucking them from their prayers. No trucks came to ours. Our entire congregation was too old or too young to be drafted. No one knew what was happenning since in this holiest day of all no radio, television or newspapers were operating. At that time my grandfather made a decision that made a great impact on how I view the world and society. He sent one of the children living closest to the synagogue to bring a radio set for the terrified congregation to listen to, an uncomprehensible act on any regular Yom Kippur. This was not a trivial decision, it was a moral one.
I do not believe in higher powers and view organized religion as dogmatic and unforgiving, exactly the opposite from my grandfather. I have learned from this God’s servant that attending to human needs, understanding and accepting people regardless of how different they are from you, taking responsibility, loyalty, and respect being more important than your personal benefit, what humanism is.
