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September 29 At the passing of the year...Tonight marks the start of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. In Jewish homes around the globe, families will sit down to the traditional festival meal. The menu will vary from community to community, and will probably include fish in one form or another, but whether Ashkenazi or Sephardi, North African or Yemenite, Iraqi, Kurdish or Persian - the feast will start off with apples dipped in honey, to symbolise the hope that the coming year will be a sweet one.
This past year hasn't been so sweet for us here. The kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit notched up another year in captivity, Two others, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, were returned to Israel in their coffins in exchange for hundreds of (all-too-alive) terrorists. Eight teenagers were butchered by a Palestinian from East Jerusalem as they studied Talmud in their Yeshiva, ordinary citizens were crushed by terrorist-driven bulldozers as they sat in their cars or walked along sidewalks. Nor was all the pain and suffering inflicted by terrorists. Inter-gang warfare cost the lives of innocent citizens caught in the crossfire, including a young mother gunned down on the beach in full view of her husband and children, other children were abused by their parents, a little girl, just four and a half years old, was murdered by her grandfather - probably with the connivance of her own mother. Hundreds were killed and maimed in traffic accidents. The world-wide economic crisis is threatening the life-savings and pension plans of hundreds of thousands of workers (though one might think this but a small worry, when the Iranians are pursuing a course that seems designed to lead to nuclear war).
Where will it all end? What lies in store for us in the coming year?
In the Jewish tradition, on Rosh Hashana, God decides the fate of all, Man and Beast - who will live and who will die, who at the measure of Man's days and who before his or her time, who by fire and who by water, who shall suffer sickness and who shall enjoy good health, who shall wax rich and who shall be condemned to poverty, who shall have peace and who shall be doomed to wander. On Rosh Hashana, it is written down and on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the Book is sealed, for good or for ill. But between the two festivals, are the Ten Days of Penitence. Penitence, Prayer and Charity, it is said, avert the evil decree. Thus, the Ten Days of Penitence, starting on Rosh Hashana and ending on Yom Kippur, are a time for soul-searching.
This year, Rosh Hashana coincides with the Muslim festival of Eid el-Fitr, the three-day feast marking the end of Ramadan.
A timely reminder, perhaps, that both Jews and Arabs are children of Abraham. That we all pray to the same God.
This then, is my prayer for the year 5769 - that the spirit of peace may descend, the greatest gift of all. For Jews, Muslims, Christians. And for Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Taoists, Shintoists... Even for the agnostics and the atheists.
Before it's too late. Before we destroy ourselves.
Beshem Adonai, El Rahum vehanun. Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim. In the Name of the Almighty.
Translation
Our Father, Our King, Hear our prayer
Our Father, Our King, We have sinned before Thee Our Father, Our King, Have compassion upon us and upon our children Our Father, Our King, Bring an end to pestilence, war, and famine Our Father, Our King, Cause all hate and oppression to vanish from the earth Our Father, Our King, Inscribe us for blessing in the Book Of Life Our Father, Our King, Let the new year be a good year for us. Our Father, Our King, Hear our prayer
לשנה טובה תיכתבו ותיחתמו September 20 Anthem for Doomed YouthHis name was Yonatan. "The Lord hath given." His parents called him Yoni. He was nineteen years old.
I first met him when he was eight, the youngest son of my upstairs neighbours. He used to scrawl grafitti in the newly-painted stairwell, bang doors, storm out of the building yelling abuse at his father and mother.
"Hyperactive" his parents called him.
"A troublemaker" said the other residents of our apartment block. No doubt many of them heaved a sigh of relief when the family moved, five or six years ago, and left the neighbourhood, taking their troubled adolescent son with them.
I next heard of him last summer, when he appeared in court charged with threatening his mother and assaulting his father. Of the years between, the drug abuse, the convictions for petty crime, leading eventually to an eight month prison term, I knew nothing. The prosecution was demanding that he be remanded in custody until the end of proceedings. His parents, the victims, as so often happens in cases of domestic violence, wanted him back home, under their supervision. Despite our objections, the court acceded to their request, and ordered him confined under house arrest, under parental supervision.
A year later, he was up for sentencing. The probation officer's report - the last in a long line of them - was, like its predecessors, not favourable. In fact, the Probation Service, unusually for them, had given up on Yoni. The long and detailed report described the many chances he had been given, the failed attempts at drug rehabilitation, the tensions between Yoni and his parents leading to his leaving their house, in violation of the house arrest order, and culminating in his father's demand to be be released from the duty of supervising him.
That was in July of this year. As expected, his parents accompanied him to court and it was then that we learned, from his father, what the Probation Service did not know, because Yoni had broken off all connection with his probation officer. Earlier that year, he had overdosed on cocaine and heroin and been hospitalised, at death's door. Yoni and his parents felt that the shock of the experience had wrought a change in him. He was now ready to return to the care of the Probation Service and make another attempt at drug rehab.
Should I, as the Prosecutor, have opposed this? Should I have insisted that sentencing take place immediately? Should I have asked for a prison term? This was the son of my former neighbours, remember, a kid I'd known since he was eight years old. To be perfectly honest, if I had known before arriving in court, who he was (I didn't connect the surname with my erstwhile neighbours until I saw his parents in court), I would have done my best to get someone else to appear in my place. I told the judge I wasn't even sure if it was fitting, ethically, for me to appear in this case, but the family didn't seem to mind and the judge wouldn't let me off the hook (although, as she told me afterwards, she could see I was - as she put it - "squirming").
I did have a way out. As I said earlier, the Probation Service was unaware of the drug overdose that had nearly killed Yoni a few weeks earlier and it seemed to me that before deciding this young man's fate, when so much depended on the probation officer's report, the court should know if the close encounter with the Angel of Death had changed anything in Yoni's attitude. So I left it to the court to decide, and sentencing was postponed, pending an updated probation officer's report, to mid-September.
Yoni should have come up for sentencing last week. A few days before the appointed date, quite by chance, I met his court-appointed attorney outside the Judge's chambers. He had come to notify her that there would now be no need for sentencing. Yoni had once again taken an overdose of drugs. This time, it had proved fatal.
I ask myself, again and again, could I have done anything to prevent his death? If I had resolutely opposed delaying sentencing, if I had held out for a prison term, would he be alive today? I have no answers. People tell me that it's no problem to obtain drugs in prison and that incarceration would have changed nothing. Yes, I reply, but maybe he would have been unable to obtain such a large quantity of drugs if he had been behind bars. Maybe the warders would have got to him in time. But then, again, as the judge remarked to me afterwards, maybe this time it would have succeeded. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. We can't know what really happened. We shall never know .....
He was nineteen years old.
His name was Yonatan.
"The Lord hath given."
The Lord hath taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
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