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17 Shevat 5759 - Feb 3, 1999 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Exhuming the Hearts of Sons

by Yochonon Dovid

Tension was high; you could sense it palpably. The absolute silence which reigned in the cemetery at midnight was disturbed only by the measured hacking of pickaxes.

In the circle of dim light provided by hand-held flashlights, one could see a group of men standing around one of the graves. Two of them, in work clothes, were digging up a grave whose tombstone had been removed and lay ineffectually on the side. One lone woman stood there as well, an elderly mother supported on either side by two sons in their late fifties. All eyes were riveted, as if mesmerized, upon the rectangular plot of land which was being assaulted by the steady blows of the pickaxes and spades, rhythmically, again and again, and as the sods of earth were cast upwards and sidewards, the pit below deepened and widened.

The two men finally reached the desired level and the stones by the corpse were revealed. One of the workers descended into the trench, a small hole about the size of a four-year- old, as the old, discarded tombstone testified. He lifted one of the thin cement slabs and heaved it out. Everyone leaned forward to stare at the space underneath to study what was left of the small, shrouded remains of a body, now -- after decades of burial.

"It's empty!" exclaimed the man below, in shock and disappointment, as he lifted and hurled the final cement slab out of the grave and climbed out, himself. This uttering, which had been muttered as if to himself, resounded like a supersonic boom that came crashing back down to reverberate throughout the cemetery. Everyone stared unbelievingly at the empty grave whose rock bottom had blackened with ancient mold. Then came the cry, the shuddering, spine tingling scream of a mother: "Where is my son? I've been visiting this grave site for the past fifty years to pray for my dead son, year after year! I've lit a memorial candle for his soul for the past fifty years! Where is he? Where is my son?"

The two sons supported and steadied their faltering mother as the doctor in the group came forward with a hypodermic, prepared in advance for this expected contingency. After the tranquilizer had been administered, the sons led her slowly to the car parked by the path. The motor was ignited and within moments, the car had zoomed off.

The climactic episode behind them, the two gravediggers began filling up the empty tomb and when they were finished, set about replacing the falsified gravestone, taking care that no vestige remained of this illegal investigation. The group of remaining men stood by the side. It included several family members, a doctor, a psychologist, and a rabbi who had once worked in the Chevra Kadisha, all of them friends of the family. They exchanged comments sotto voce as they awaited the completion of the activities.

"If you hadn't been so quick with the needle," noted the psychologist to the doctor, "I would have had the chance to tell her the good news that her son was probably still alive, and that she had an excellent chance of being reunited with him."

"The possibility of finding him is nil," said the uncle. "My brother, of blessed memory, this child's father, overturned the entire country in his search for him. But all in vain."

"How terrible to think," remarked the doctor, "that somewhere in the world there lives a man of fifty- four who never knew his father or mother. He lives his life routinely, obliviously, while his natural mother aches to find him, and his real brothers and sisters yearn to know him."

"I can't understand such a person," said the rabbi. "He is the one who should have overturned heaven and earth in search of his real parents. What did he do when he was fifteen? Twenty? Thirty? Forty? And at fifty? Why did he just sit complacently and not take any action during these many decades gone by?"

"Perhaps he really doesn't know anything," the uncle attempted to defend the unknown son. "Perhaps the couple who raised him made him truly believe that he was their child. And he trusted them, just like every child trusts his parents. Why would he have any reason to go looking for a different set of parents?"

"I can't `buy' that," stated the psychologist. "Do you know what a child of four is? Even today, as a man of fifty-four, he must have memories of his real parents. Sights and sounds he can recall from before, experiences and emotions which were engraved in his mind and heart. These cannot be erased with one swipe."

"That's clear," agreed the rabbi. "A four-year- old is already a small man, a person. How is it that as an adult, he did not rouse himself to solve the riddle of a double set of memories, of different parents and siblings, of a home and background completely other than the one he subsequently grew up in? It doesn't make sense."

"If I were to attempt to outline a possible psychological explanation to such indifference," said the psychologist, "I fear that it would emerge as a terrible ethical accusation against his adoptive parents. They must have provided him with a highly material, pragmatic, self-serving rearing. They must have transformed him into an egotistic creature without morals, without a conscience, without a care for anyone beyond his own self. Since he feels content and secure within his environment and framework, he must be afraid of any exposure to his past that will challenge or change his convenient lifestyle, that will force him to alter his identity and impose a different set of obligations upon him. Since he doesn't want that, he brakes his natural and normal desire to discover his roots, to find his parents, to learn about his origin. He stifles his yearning to know who he really is and to find out his true qualitative identity, which he can only learn from getting to know his real parents, his biological source.

"And so, he arbitrarily decides that as far as he is concerned, his personal history begins at the age of four, and whatever happened before does not interest him in the least. He thus absolves himself of all obligation towards his natural parents and of all sense of gratitude towards them. He liberates his conscience from any feelings regarding them and does not devote as much as a passing thought to his real mother, who continually mourns the loss of a living son."

"It is also possible," adds the doctor, "that his adoptive parents deliberately disreputed his real parents as irresponsible, uncaring, primitive and so on, in order to sever any connection between the boy and his past. It is shocking to think that people could stoop so low, but it has happened."

"Why do you find this so terrible?" asked the rabbi. "In this very country there live thousands, if not tens of thousands of people who have decided that their history begins somewhere in 1948, with the `birth' of the State. They systematically and deliberately conceal from their children vital information concerning the cultural treasures of their ancient heritage. They discredit the past of our people and the ancient traditional way of life as if it were something to be ashamed of. Descriptions such as "a golus mentality," backwardness, medieval, benighted, Fundamentalist, Houmeini-ism, are forever on their lips with regard to our spiritual heritage. Our ancestral graves are a subject for desecrating archaeological rummaging, with no respect for the historically great figures reposing there.

"What sort of identity does the secular educational system inculcate in its charges? What sense of obligation or respect does a student of this system feel towards his ancient people, his parents, his unique heritage, history, and those who have preserved it intact over the millennia? The low, base ethical code which the adoptive parents have bequeathed this poor child fits the very description, on a national scale, of those who severed themselves and their children from their source of identity -- in name, modesty in attire and sense of propriety in outlook."

The two gravediggers sealed the opened grave and set the tombstone back in place. This time, the grave was not empty. In it were buried the rootless, devitalized personalities of severed sons denying their parentage. The revival of all these dead-living begs for the advent of the one who will "restore the hearts of sons unto their fathers."


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