This letter, written a few months after the Yom Kippur War, is the modest contribution of one eye-witness to the recording of a moment in Jewish history fraught with the gravest implications for the future of Israel—the State and the people. On that unforgettable Yom Kippur, none of us could possibly have surmised that our collective fate hung in the balance.
None, except of course, the high command was aware of the depth of the Egyptian-Syrian penetration and the imminent perils it posed. During those first three days, Israeli military censorship saw to it that as soothing a face as possible be put on a desperate situation by our media. Once more, it was a case of eyn baal haness makir benisso. This time, the inexplicable saving wonder was that the Egyptians and Syrians, having once broken through the thinly-manned Israeli defenses, did not maintain their momentum. Instead of plunging ahead towards the heartland of Israel, they halted their advance long enough for Israeli forces to mobilize and rush to the front.
But of all this, we on the home front, were happily unaware. For us, Yom Kippur day dawned with skies as unclouded as our hearts and minds. True, there had been a newspaper item on the previous Thursday to the effect that Egyptian and Syrian troops had been noted massing on the borders. Such notices, however, were fairly regular occurrences and had heretofore proved nothing more than false alarms. That Yom Kippur morning, on my way to shul in Netanyah (where I was conducting services for the local Conservative congregation), the sight of three Phantoms flying north failed to recall the relatively small item in Thursday’s paper. The sight merely evoked some astonishment that the Israeli Air Force would dispatch a routine flight on Yom Kippur. Those planes were just about the only machines in motion one could see that Yom Kippur morning in Netanyah or, for that matter, anywhere in Israel. From my seat in the synagogue which looked out upon one of Netanyah’s main thoroughfares, not a car or taxi was to be seen all morning. The total quiet of Yom Kippur had descended on the town, as it had over all Israel.
At two in the afternoon—the fateful hour—as previously announced, our musaf service ended. There would be a three-quarter of an hour recess before Minḥah. As I left the synagogue with a few friends for a brief stroll, I noticed, to my amazement, clusters of people huddled around transistor radios as well as a sudden movement of traffic. (I knew, of course, that Israel’s radio broadcasting goes off the air on Yom Kippur.) To my incredulous question about what had happened, I got the answer that at ten minutes of two, the Egyptians and Syrians had attacked in force.
Within minutes, a police patrol car went through the streets with its loudspeaker blaring, calling on the populace to turn on their radios. Taxis were soon racing through the town with hastily drawn signs in their windshields: besheyrut tzevai, in Army service. Their drivers were handing out mobilization orders. I saw several men receive them on the street. As they did, they went back into their homes, reappearing in a few minutes garbed in their army uniforms and carrying their guns. With a hasty farewell to their families, they were on their way to the predesignated assembly points to await the trucks or buses that would take them to their units at the front. One noticed a growing number of men in uniform going to the assembly points, most of them accompanied by a mother, a wife and, in some instances, their children. (Some wag remarked that it was the first time in history that Jewish women sent their menfolk off to war on an empty stomach.) To judge from the remarks I overheard, the mood was one of grim seriousness spiced by a supreme confidence as to the outcome of the war: “We’ll finish them off in three days.” That mood was to be echoed by both Dayan and Elazar in their speeches that evening on television.
A much diminished congregation reassembled for Minḥah. People were glued to their radios to catch the news, which was now being broadcast every fifteen minutes. (For the duration of the war, Kol Yisrael was to be on the air twenty-four hours a day, broadcasting news every hour on the hour.) By the beginning of neilah, the synagogue began to fill up. During the service, I noticed several women enter and whisper something to their respective husbands. The latter, thereupon, removed their talleitim and left. Obviously, their wives had brought the message that their husbands had received a call-up notice.
At 5:00 p.m., the gabbai informed me that we would have to vacate the building and remove all our paraphernalia by 6:00 p.m. The building—the local headquarters of the Gahal Party—would be taken over by the army at that time. I had planned to conclude neilah at 5:42 p.m. (strange, how such details remain starkly sketched in one’s memory, as if the events of the afternoon were things one would never forget); however, the service was not destined to continue to that time. Precisely at 5:30 p.m., we had our first air raid alarm. I instructed the Cantor to proceed immediately to the Shema. We rose, blew the Shofar and with a lusty cry—leshanah habaah beYerushalayim habenuyah—the entire congregation, the men still wrapped in their talleitim, proceeded to the adjacent shelter. The tension was palpable. I asked the cantor to lead us in singing kadsheynu. The kavanah in the shelter, I suspect, was even more genuine than it had been in the synagogue. In about twenty minutes, the all clear sounded and we emerged to face the blackout that was to last for eighteen nights.
Sunday morning, after an 8:00 a.m. air raid alarm, I was driving back to my home in Jerusalem. The road was lined with soldiers on their way to army bases. Every ten or fifteen kilometers, I was stopping to pick them up or drop them off. Ordinarily, the parting greeting to a soldier to whom you have given a “tremp” is “kol tuv.” Under the circumstances, I felt it singularly inappropriate. In a few hours, these boys would be under fire. So, as they left, I called after them, shetachzor beshalom.
My car radio informed me that the hospitals in Jerusalem were calling for drivers with cars. I made straight for Shaare Zedek. Yes, they could use me to transport hospital personnel to and from the hospital. Overnight, public transportation, including most taxis, had all but disappeared. The army had mobilized thousands of buses and drivers.
For the next two weeks, I lined up with my car at the tiny transportation office of the hospital and conveyed doctors, nurses and patients. I learned that at the outbreak of the war, the hospital had been cleared of all but critically sick patients in order to make room for the expected war casualties. The latter were not slow in arriving. In the courtyard that fronts the hospital, a squad of white-coated teenagers wearing kippot—volunteers from a Jerusalem yeshivah—awaited their arrival, ready to serve as stretcher bearers. Late Sunday afternoon, the first contingent arrived. To transport them from the Jerusalem airport, where they had been brought from the front by helicopter, commercial panel trucks had been pressed into service to supplement the few ambulances available.
The casualties brought to Shaare Zedek were the relatively lightly wounded. Most of them were discharged after a week or so. According to Zahal regulations, they were entitled to some days of relaxation at the army rest home in Netanyah. Most of them refused to go and insisted instead on returning to their chevrah at the front line. One fellow—the story made the newspapers—had some surgery and in a few days was ambulatory. Anxious to return to the line, he put on a coat over his pajamas and walked out of the hospital. He had been wounded on the Golan and by hitchhiking managed to get back to where he had been stationed. To his dismay, he discovered that his unit had in the meantime been transferred to Sinai. Undaunted, he hitchhiked to Sinai and rejoined his unit.
Perhaps the following small incident reflects the spirit of Israel’s essentially civilian soldiery. On the day after Yom Kippur, the police were suddenly flooded with reports of stolen cars. Investigation revealed that the cars had not been stolen but merely borrowed by men anxious to get to the front. The cars were found on the Golan and in Sinai, some of them with notes reading: “Excuse me, but there was no other means of transportation. Thanks for the use of your car.”
With such spirit animating the army, it was no wonder that our civilian population responded in kind with an avalanche of volunteers. Within a few days, one could see the following sign on the main entrance to Hadassah: “Sorry, we can not use any more volunteers. Thanks.” The story going the rounds was that one needed “protekziya” to get a volunteer job.
It was not, however, in service alone that the Yishuv responded with a tremendous outpouring. On the third day of the war, the government announced a Compulsory War Loan, beginning with seven per cent of one’s monthly salary. Two days later, a Voluntary War Loan was launched. In my bank, I found that I had to stand in line to buy war bonds. I could not help but overhear the transactions of the two women ahead of me. One had come to buy a war bond for a hundred lirot; the other made a purchase for two hundred lirot. These people, and thousands like them, were obviously scraping the bottom of the barrel. As of this writing, upwards of five hundred million lirot has been raised by the Voluntary War Loan; this is in addition to the Compulsory Loan.
Life in blacked-out Jerusalem was far from normal. Virtually all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five had disappeared from the streets. Suddenly, there was plenty of parking space in downtown Jerusalem. At nightfall, the streets were deserted. The few bus lines still operating stopped running shortly after dark. Restaurants, movies, concert and lecture halls were closed. If one had to go out at night, one walked with a searchlight in hand. Most of us stayed home in the evening to listen to the radio and watch television.
Between the hourly broadcast of the news, the radio treated us to a twenty-four hour flow of music. I now know the words of every Israeli hit song of the past ten years. If they had read Tanakh instead of playing popular music, I might conceivably know the Bible by heart, for like most Israelis, I became a radio addict and would jump out of bed at three or four in the morning to catch the news. Aside from remarkable reportage from the front, the television also treated us to impromptu entertainment.
For two hours every night, the radio served as the means of communication for many families to their menfolk at the front. The messages ran something like this: “Chayim X: Your mother has returned from the hospital and is recuperating nicely after her operation.” “Yosef Y: Your wife had a baby boy. Weight three kilos. Mother and child doing well. Mazal Tov.” “David Z: Where did you leave the keys to the car?”
Communication between the front lines and the home front was twoway. Within forty-eight hours of the outbreak of war, mobile phones were installed at the front and soldiers were telephoning home to inform their families that all was well. However, thousands of Israeli families have yet to acquire telephones. Spontaneously, business firms and organizations inserted ads in the newspapers giving their phone numbers and informing the soldiers at the front that they could call any hour of the day or night and their message would be relayed to their families by messenger. In this bizarre fashion, the old irrefragable Jewish value of strong family ties surfaced and found expression. The war transformed us from a people notorious for its lack of civility into one mishpachah, deeply concerned for one another and touchingly eager to help one another.
The early days of the war found Jerusalem rife with rumors as to the number of casualties. The first official announcement, on the eighth day of the war, came as a thunderclap. Anxiety and tension gave way to collective grief as we learned whose son or husband would not be coming back. In the States, the government informs families of fallen soldiers by telegram: “The Secretary of Defense deeply regrets,” etc. In Israel, the fearful news is brought by volunteer committees of at least three people. Usually, the committee includes a doctor or psychologist who, of course, tries to cushion the blow. The committee does more than inform the family. It stays as long as necessary. Later, some member of the committee returns for the shivah.
The mood at this moment? Concern, anxiety, depression. But there is something else. And on that something else our whole future may hinge. Nothing expresses it better than a small item in the paper. The senior classes of the high schools of the kibbutzim have presented an appeal and a petition to the Minister of Education requesting that their studies be accelerated so that the current school year be terminated by this coming Pesach. “In the present situation,” the students write in their appeal, “we cannot go on with business as usual as if nothing has happened or is happening. We are all anxious to enter the army as soon as possible or perform some other service in these days of national emergency.”
Can such a people be defeated?
Rabbi Theodore Friedman (1908-1992) was a congregational rabbi from 1931 to 1954 and Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Beth El of South Orange, New Jersey from 1954-1971. He served as president of the Rabbinical Assembly (1962-1964), Chairman of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (1951-1954), and, after making Aliyah, as first chairman of the Israel RA’s Va’ad Halakhah. Rabbi Friedman held a Ph.D. from Columbia University and taught on the faculties of the Jewish Theological Seminary, The Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, and the Seminario rabinico latinoamericano named for his son-in-law, Marshall T. Meyer. Rabbi Friedman served on the editorial board of this journal’s precursor, Conservative Judaism.