In Every Generation a Hero Will Arise

By DARA HORN

Since September 2001, the heroism of Hanukkah has new meaning in America. In past years, the courage of Maccabees who fought off a formidable foe seemed abstract, but this year we have heard from passengers who planned to take on their hijackers and from firefighters who guided thousands to safety without regard for themselves. Where did they find the courage?

In Judaism, heroism is not a matter of divine intervention but rather of supreme humanity. There is a Chanukah song that claims, "In every generation a hero will arise to save the people," and what is special about this heroism is not the miracles that accompany it, but how people are proven capable, in every generation, of achieving miracles. To make miracles on earth, one need only take the advice given to Joshua before he led the Israelites into the promised land: "Only be strong and have courage." As three modern Jewish heroes have proven, that is all it takes.

Yonatan Netanyahu’s story is both familiar and inspiring this year, for it is the story of a hero who rushed into danger on an international scale—and triumphed. In July 1976, a plane bound for Israel was hijacked and rerouted to Entebbe, Uganda. While others were released, Israeli passengers were held hostage and threatened with execution. Netanyahu, a thirty-year-old Israeli army major decorated for rescuing the wounded under fire during the Yom Kippur War, led the group of Israeli commandos who saved the hostages.

The only casualty among the rescuers was Netanyahu.

One might imagine that a hero like Netanyahu possessed superhuman traits that made possible both his success and his sacrifice. But in The Letters of Jonathan Netanyahu, one does not find saintly nobility. Instead, the man who appears here is increasingly tormented; his final letter speaks of "a profound inner crisis." The letters document his army training, his university studies, his progress through military ranks, his many loves and losses, and his unshakable commitment to his country. Yet there is no reservoir of inner peace, at least none the reader can discern. And this is the great legacy of his courage. Netanyahu was a modern Maccabee, but his letters reveal that such a role requires no superhuman strength. Instead, it requires a very human strength—the ability to answer a call, to question and wonder but, more importantly, to act.

The day of the Entebbe rescue was also Natan Sharansky’s wedding anniversary—and the beginning of another story of modern Jewish heroism. In the 1970s, Sharansky became a leader among Soviet Jews fighting for the rights of refuseniks—Jews whose requests to emigrate to Israel were denied by the regime and whose few freedoms were squelched because of those requests. Aware of the risks, Sharansky continued his activism even as the KGB monitored his every move. His wife, granted a rare exit visa, departed for Israel the day after their wedding. On the night of the Entebbe rescue, she telephoned, asking, "If such miracles are possible, what’s there to be afraid of?" Sharansky was arrested in 1977 on false charges of espionage and sent to a Soviet gulag. He was imprisoned for nine years.

In his memoir, Fear No Evil, Sharansky describes how he faced the many physical and psychological tortures of the Soviet prison system. Many times, his torturers offered him release if he would agree to "admit" his crime, recant, or accuse fellow activists. But Sharansky refused. Committed to living freely as a Jew, he became a free person even while in prison.

While his wife waged heroic battles on his behalf, one senses that his triumph over the Soviet system came mainly from within his own mind. As he wins one small fight to celebrate Chanukah in the gulag, he understands the deep relevance of ancient Jewish heroes who stood up to their oppressors.

In such memoirs there lies a long chain of Jewish heroes, each taking inspiration from those who came before. Just as Netanyahu inspired Sharansky, Sharansky and Netanyahu later inspired Alex Singer, an American Jew who made aliyah in 1984 and died in 1987 defending Israel’s northern border, on his twenty-fifth birthday. Singer was deeply moved by reading Netanyahu’s letters, and after meeting Sharansky in Jerusalem just months after his release, Singer wrote to his family that "if he could maintain his hope, love and spirit through his trials, I certainly can’t let what had gotten to me bother me."

What had "gotten to" Singer, in the larger sense, was the feeling that beliefs meant nothing if one did not act upon them. But with deep roots in America, Singer found that his decision to devote himself to his new nation—first as a paratrooper and then an officer—was far from an obvious choice. In his letters and drawings, published as Alex: Building a Life, the reader sees the ordinary conflicts of growing up, along with the extraordinary conflicts of choosing not merely to express opinions, but to live them.

Singer died in the footsteps of Netanyahu; he was killed during a raid on terrorists in southern Lebanon while trying to rescue a wounded soldier under enemy fire. Though he never attained the fame of Netanyahu or Sharansky, his letters remind us of the everyday humanity that is the essential feature of Jewish heroism—and of the way that heroes are built from other heroes.

In Fear No Evil, Sharansky tells of how he came to understand the Jewish concept of "fear of heaven": it is "man’s instinctive fear of being unworthy of his lofty role." Judaism teaches us that people are capable of infinite miracles; indeed, there are times when miracles are not merely possible, but required of us.

Now may be one of those times. Last August's UN conference on racism descended into a festival of anti-Jewish hatred, and a month later, America found itself in Israel's position, attacked by vicious terrorists bent on its destruction. As both the United States and Israel struggle to defend themselves, we must hope that more Netanyahus, Sharanskys and Singers will rise among us—or we must find their courage and strength within ourselves.

This Chanukah, the stories of these heroes and those who preceded them offer an important reminder. We can do whatever must be done, so long as we follow these ancient words: "Only be strong, and have courage."

Reprinted with permission from the AVI CHAI Bookshelf, where birthright israel alumni can order free books and periodicals.