“Rabbi, it’s time to move on.”
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to stand up, to follow the group that I was supposed to be leading, to leave this place where the most unthinkable horrors had been inflicted on an unsuspecting and innocent family, just one year ago. I was ankle-deep in the ashes of what was once a vibrant if humble home in Kibbutz Be’eri. To my left were the crumbled remnants of a playroom, which made way to a small nursery; I couldn’t step into either of them, having seen enough footage to know what took place there, and to know that I didn’t have the strength to do so.
There I crouched in the kitchen, bearing witness to the shards of memory that it once housed, running my fingers through the ash covering the mosaic floor tiles. Pieces of a hand-painted serving dish, Armenian-styled, lay scattered about – bright pops of red pomegranates and royal blue swirls and vanilla white background stood out from the rubble, catching my eye. I reached down to pick up a piece, trying to imagine the meals that were once served on it, the hands it once passed through, the rack by the window facing the pink bougainvillea where it once drip-dried.
Holding that fragment of pottery between my fingers, I flashed back to the countless remnants I’ve held in my hands over my years in Israel, from the many archaeological sites dotting the deserts of the south. I remember holding each precious find, letting my imagination explore the myriad fates that may have befallen those who once held this very same piece. Did they die peacefully, gathered unto their fathers and mothers, each in their fullness of age, vigor unabated? Were they swept up in a sandstorm, or an earthquake, or famine, or drought? Or was it something sinister – did they die by sword, by the hands of an old foe? With mysteries still swirling in my young mind, I would reluctantly hand over the piece to our guide and go back to digging, trying to keep pace with my big brother and sister without losing that feeling of connection and wonderment that came with each excavation.
But even as I would go back to digging, I remember feeling such a profound sense of fate in those moments. There I was, visitor number 10,000 to this random site in the middle of the desert, one of dozens of similar sites in the region, digging the millionth trowel-full of dirt until I hit pottery, and I was the one to uncover this ancient piece of history. Thousands of years apart, I got to be the one that held history in my hand, and — in doing so – I got to make a direct connection to my ancestors. All of the events that had taken place since they last held onto this piece of hardened clay – the wars, the rise of new nations, the fall of others, the miracles, the tragedies, the blessed births, and the heart-wrenching deaths — nothing stood between my hand and theirs. Their history was my history, and I was privileged to play a small part in preserving it.
Once or twice, our guides would let us keep a few of the ephemera from the site — a sliver of ceramic, a shard of a bowl — and over the years, I would stash them in a shoe box in my childhood room. Every few years, I’d open up the box and lay out the pieces, trying to reconstruct the stories that I knew were waiting to be retold. Try as I did, none of them ever really fit together. Even so, I’ve always felt that they belonged together just the same.
In her groundbreaking work Salvaged Pages, Alexandra Zapruder reflected on the inherent challenges in trying to reconstruct history from disparate pieces:
“The study of history always begins with fragments. Buildings crumble; frescoes and paintings fade and crack; objects break apart, and their pieces are scattered…The pieces may be recovered intact or in parts; they may come from eras and places about which we are able to construct a great deal or only a little. Time and fate play their part in this; ancient civilizations and their cities have almost vanished or have been reduced to small fragments, their pots, paintings, scrolls, or utensils destined to be examined divorced from their original context.”
In this week’s Torah portion, Vayetze, our patriarch Jacob makes camp one night after journeying out of Be’er Sheva, not too far, perhaps, from where the founders of Kibbutz Be’eri made their first camp in 1946, dreaming of a peaceful partnership and coexistence with their neighbors. As the sun sets before him, Jacob picks up a smooth stone and lays his head upon it, falling into a deep sleep replete with vivid dreams. He sees angels climbing up towards the heavens and descending back down to earth, and to his side stands God, who makes a generational promise to Jacob — one of protection, of fruitfulness, of faith.
As this was merely a stop – previously unnamed, in fact – on Jacob’s journey, he wakes up feeling the urge to mark this moment in time, this fleeting sanctuary of his. He knows that without marking the moment, without sanctifying it somehow, it might just fade – not only from history, but from memory, too.
Uttering those now famous words – “Surely, God was in this place, and I did not know!” – he takes the stone that cradled his head during that ascendant dream and sets it up as a pillar, anointing it with oil and declaring a name for this new place: Bethel, the House of God. And, because he feels confident that this monument will stand up to the fading of time, he resumes his journey.
“Rabbi, it’s time to move on.”
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to stand up and leave this kitchen, to pause my witness of this place, because I knew it wasn’t going to last for thousands of years. It will not become a memorial site. There will be no stone monument, anointed or otherwise, to mark this place where, surely, God once was. The melted plastic toys in the backyard will not be there to remind future visitors that there was once life, precious life, celebrated in this home. The shards of Armenian ceramic will not remain to tell the stories of the meals once served on them. The shattered terra cotta planters will be swept away before another generation can pick them up, hold them in their curious hands, and picture the luscious succulents they once held.
None of these fragments of memory will await the probing trowel of a somber but eager teenager generations from now.
No, this witness of ours will be short-lived, as the organizers of Kibbutz Be’eri make plans to rebuild their homes and their community. These ashen walls will be torn down, making way for new homes, new families, new stories to be told, new meals to be served on new ceramic, new plants to be nurtured in new pots, all in due time. I was frozen by the gravity of this tremendous responsibility – to bear witness to history, fading in real time.
I brought my attention back to the shard of ceramic in my hand. I hadn’t realized that I was squeezing it so tight, and unlike the smoothed-over edges of my archaeological finds, this piece was still sharp to the touch. The passing of time hadn’t yet leveled its serrated edges.
Two weeks later, the divot in my palm is still there, although it wanes with each passing day. But the prayer in my heart as I finally stood up and left that home is the same one that stays with me today: May the memories of those precious souls taken from us on that day always be for a blessing, and may the visionary dreams of Kibbutz Be’eri’s founders come to fruition again – that they might safely and peacefully stand on that same ground one day soon, and repeat the words of our ancestor Jacob: Surely, God is in this place once again.
Rabbi Elan Babchuck is committed to leaving behind a world that is more compassionate and connected than the one he found. In pursuit of that commitment he serves as the Executive Vice President at Clal, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and the Founding Executive Director of Glean Network, which partners with Columbia Business School. He was ordained in 2012, and earned his MBA that year, as well.
A sought-after thought leader, he has delivered keynotes at stages ranging from TEDx to the US Army’s General Officer Convocation, published in The Atlantic, The Guardian, Washington Post, and Religion News Service, has a column for The Wisdom Daily, contributed to Meaning Making – 8 Values That Drive America’s Newest Generations (2020, St. Mary’s Press) and is the co-author of the forthcoming book Picking Up the Pieces: Leadership After Empire (2023, Fortress Press).
He also serves as:
a Founding Partner of Starts With Us, a movement to counteract toxic polarization in America,
a Research Advisory Board Member of Springtide Research Institute, which focuses on spirituality, mental health and Gen Z,
a founding board member of Beloved Network, a network of startup Jewish communities, and
a member of the Board of Advisors of the Changemaker Initiative.
He lives in Providence, Rhode Island with his wife, Lizzie Pollock, and their three children: Micah, Nessa, and Ayla. In his spare time, he finds sanctuary while climbing rock walls around New England and tending to his backyard garden.