The Human Spirit: Wake-up calls
September 11, 2008
Jerusalem morning. A shofar from a Sephardi synagogue around the corner wakes me before sunrise in this month of Elul. From a distance the sounds are gentle, unlike the startling blasts on Rosh Hashana. Likewise, I can feel the cadence but can't make out the words of the chanted prayers.
The scent of eucalyptus is pungent. I can't go back to sleep. Still, it's still dark and too early to get out of bed. A perfect time to reflect.
My Jerusalem summer season has been bracketed by the weddings of two young friends, both critically injured in the intifada, both married in the hills of Judea. The first, reported in these pages, was the wedding of Kenny Sachs, a reserve soldier shot at close range near Gaza, to Jerusalem Post graphic artist Judith Marks.
And then I received an invitation to the wedding of Dvir Mussai and Orly Caro. Dvir, 20, was just a few months past bar mitzva, an eighth grader literally picking a bowl of cherries on a school trip when his life was blown apart. He'd been fooling around, not taking the picking seriously, so his teacher ordered him back to the school bus. A few meters from the bus door, his foot triggered a land mine. Three boys were badly injured, but Dvir's injuries were the worst. The powerful explosion wreaked havoc on his internal organs, savaged his legs and seared off his skin.
I happened to be in the office of Avi Rivkind, Hadassah-University Medical Center's chief of surgery and trauma, while he was reviewing Dvir's chart. Prof. Rivkind, a seasoned battle surgeon, put his head down on his desk. When he lifted it, his eyes were teary. "This boy will be our patient for most of his life." Dvir's mom, Hanna Mussai, a prayerbook in her hands, was always at his bedside. After the first operation, Dvir lay in the recovery room. An American TV crew covering the intifada asked Hanna to put Dvir's story on the air.
During the intifada, many parents of terror survivors refused to appear on TV or to allow their children to illustrate the story of the daily horrors. We don't like to share our pain. But Hanna had a different idea. She would mark the stages of Dvir's recovery with these news reports. She would agree to go on air only if she received a copy of the broadcasts. And as her son underwent the long process of recovery, she would use the tapes to hearten and motivate him. If Dvir ever wavered in the recovery process, she would simply show him the old footage and remind him how far he'd come. She came up with this idea while Dvir's life hung by a thread.
For weeks, he lived in intensive care with his devastating internal injuries, shattered bones and burns. He was so badly injured that once visiting congressmen were reduced to tears.
BUT ONE after another, the medical problems were addressed. Dvir started getting better. Hanna's plan worked, too. She had it all on tape. He really had come a long way. Over some 20 operations, the 13-year old with peach fuzz grew into a tall, devastatingly handsome young man. Five years after they'd picked baskets of cherries, Dvir's classmates were drafted into the army. A young man with such serious medical concerns isn't required to serve his country in uniform; the IDF offered him a pass. Nothing doing, insisted Dvir. He would volunteer. So Dvir Mussai, still undergoing medical treatment, became an instructor on a base that trains soldiers for anti-terrorist warfare. Once he was involved in training a group of visiting US marines.
The One Family organization that is still sponsoring activities for terror survivors and their families invited Dvir to join a group of young people on a hike near the Kinneret. He was reluctant, but Hanna admits she nudged him to go.
Orly Caro, a petite and pretty young woman from Mitzpe Yeriho, spent her National Service with the One Family organization. For two years, she'd been helping arrange and facilitate activities for terror survivors and their families. She understood the pain and trauma that never went away. She escorted participants on the outing, and had a chance to talk to Dvir on the evening out in Tiberias. When the army phoned him and asked him to come back to base because something had come up, she volunteered to wait with him until the 5 a.m. bus rolled into the station. They had a lot to talk about.
Soon Orly insisted on joining Hanna and her husband Motti on the frequent visits to the hospitals where Dvir underwent additional surgery. And then they announced their engagement.
AT THE wedding hall on Kibbutz Tzora, Dvir welcomed us in the reception tent. The men were jacketless on this warm night, dressed in white shirts and the knitted kippot that characterize the national religious community. The women wore satin skirts and matching blouses, hats with applique decorations. Among the guests were medical staff, partners in the miracle, who knew and loved Dvir. On the lawn, Orly sat on the bride's throne, surrounded by friends and family. A line of young women serenaded the bride. Their soprano voices were drowned out by a line of dancing young men, singing the same words to a different tune. They have come to summon Orly to the huppa.
"I can hardly believe this," Hanna whispers to me. "That's Dvir getting married. This qualifies as a miracle. God has done hessed with us."
Hessed is usually translated as loving-kindness. It's a faithful goodness of the heart. The officiating rabbi, Moshe Eliezer Rabinovitch, spoke of hessed, too. He blessed the young couple that they should build their home with the hessed they have seen modeled in their homes and in their lives. The ceremony moved ahead with alacrity - no interruptions, insisted the rabbi. He didn't have to say why: The groom has been standing long enough.
Surgeon Alon Pikarsky, who has spent hundreds of hours in the operating room reshaping Dvir's innards, was called for one of the seven blessings. Pikarsky took a kippa from his pocket and chanted "Blessed are You Lord our God who fashions man." I smiled and thought of Hanna. The wedding was like a dream, she said. She knew she wouldn't remember the details. There would be, of course, the video footage.
At my home, the sound of the shofar is replaced by the irritating electronic beeps of my cellphone alarm, another Israeli invention. Time to get up. Awakening is, after all, what the month of Elul is about. We reflect on the past and implore the Creator to remember the good-heartedness and faithfulness of our youth, judge us gently with loving-kindness, and write only happy endings in the Book of Life.
