[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 11 (Thursday, January 19, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1243-S1244]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            ORDINARY HEROES

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, all of us watched with agony while a 
19-year-old, Nahshon Wachsman, was captured, made a public plea for his 
life, and then was slain.
  People on the Palestinian side, the Israeli side and people of every 
religious persuasion were hoping and praying that his life would be 
spared. But it was not.
  How do parents face such a tragedy?
  The Jerusalem Report has a story about Nahshon's parents. Because it 
has both the international dimension, and lessons about how to face 
grief and pain, I ask to insert it into the Record at this point.
  The article follows:

               [From The Jerusalem Report, Dec. 1, 1994]

                            Ordinary Heroes

   (A month after his son was executed by Hamas kidnappers, only the 
  unshakeable faith of Nahshon Wachsman's parents is enabling them to 
                         cope with their grief)

                        (By Yossi Klein Halevi)

       Yehudah and Esther Wachsman's phone doesn't stop ringing. 
     The Jewish National Fund wants to plant a forest in memory of 
     their 19-year-old son, Nahshon, kidnapped and killed by Hamas 
     terrorists in October. A Jerusalem religious school wants 
     Esther and Yehudah to address its students about the dangers 
     of religious extremism. The Kfar Saba municipality wants them 
     as guests of honor at a rally for national unity.
       Families afflicted by terror attacks are usually considered 
     victims, not heroes. Yet the Wachsmans, whose quiet dignity 
     during the kidnapping ordeal riveted the country, have become 
     symbols of strength--at a time when Israelis fear that their 
     ethos of courage is slowly being sapped by exhaustion and 
     prosperity. Rabbis who came to the Wachsmans to impart 
     religious inspiration were instead inspired by their faith; 
     Knesset Speaker Shevah Weiss and the commander of the Golani 
     infantry brigade in which Nahshon served emerged from the 
     Wachsman home repeating virtually the same words: We came to 
     strengthen the Wachsmans, but were instead strengthened by 
     them.
       Yehudah, in a knitted yarmulke and sandals, and Esther, in 
     a beret and denim skirt, shattered the stereotype of the 
     Israeli Orthodox Jew as extremist and intolerant. Esther 
     appealed to her son's kidnappers to remember that they all 
     worshiped the same God; and the army's failed attempt to 
     rescue Nahshon, Yehudah thanked the Muslims and Christians 
     who had prayed for his son, and offered to meet with the 
     parents of Nahshon's killers. And despite anonymous right-
     wing callers demanding that he stay away, Yehudah accepted an 
     Israeli government invitation and attended the signing 
     ceremony for the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, just days 
     after he completed the shivah mourning period for Nahshon.
       The Wachsmans managed to emotionally unite the country, 
     however briefly, in a way it hadn't know in years. Tens 
     of thousands of Israelis, from secularists to ultra-
     Orthodox, joined prayer services for Nahshon's safety and 
     lit an extra Sabbath candle on the Friday night that he 
     died. Weeks after Nahshon's death, thousands of letters 
     are still coming to the Wachsman home in Jerusalem's Ramot 
     neighborhood--not only from [[Page S1244]] Israelis but 
     from people around the world, many sending poems and taped 
     messages of support.
       The Wachsmans insist they are ordinary people; and indeed, 
     the middle-aged, modern Orthodox couple are unlikely heroes. 
     Yehudah and Esther, both 47, are short, sturdy, wide-faced. 
     Yehudah, with a long graying beard, paunch and piercing eyes, 
     speaks with an intensity softened by ironic humor. Esther's 
     little-girl voice--callers for Yehudah often ask her if her 
     father is home--is deliberately calm: The mother of seven 
     sons, she learned to keep steady through the chaos of daily 
     life.
       Yehudah and Esther are both children of Holocaust 
     survivors; and that experience affected them in very 
     different ways. Yehudah grew up in Romania and moved to 
     Israel at age 11. The war destroyed his father, who became 
     closed and bitter. ``I saw what anger could do to a person,'' 
     says Yehudah. ``And I decided that if I ever experienced 
     tragedy, I would react in the opposite way from my father.''
       Life provided him with opportunities to fulfill that 
     challenge. One of their sons, 8-year-old Rafael, has Down's 
     syndrome. Yehudah himself lived for years on dialysis, 
     finally undergoing a kidney transplant four years ago which 
     forced him to quit his job as a math teacher and work from 
     his home, selling real estate. Yehudah thought of his father, 
     a broken, silent man shuffling between work and home; and 
     refused to be bitter.
       Esther grew up in Flatbush, cherished daughter of Polish 
     survivors. ``I was the national treasure, the consolation,'' 
     she says, with a wry smile. ``I was never allowed to be 
     unhappy. The rule of the house was: Never tell me upsetting 
     news. And of course I wouldn't say anything that would upset 
     my parents.''
       Indeed, just after Nahshon's death, Esther had one 
     overriding thought: that her 83-year-old father, silenced by 
     a stroke and living in Queens, mustn't be told. ``The same 
     business: Don't upset them.''
       Esther says that, as a teenager, she was a ``typical JAP. 
     If I wore the pink dress on Tuesday that meant I couldn't 
     wear it for another week.'' But then her life changed when 
     she visited Israel in 1967, and fell in love with the 
     country. Back in New York, where she was studying to be a 
     teacher, she felt like a hypocrite, praying for a return to 
     Zion when Zion was so easily accessible. In 1970, she 
     returned to Jerusalem, and got a job helping run a Jewish 
     Agency summer camp for American teenagers. One of the camp 
     counselors was Yehudah Wachsman. Four months later, they 
     married.
       Becoming the mother of soldiers--Nachshon and his two older 
     brothers all served in Lebanon--forced Esther to confront 
     mortality, and reconsider the values on which she was raised. 
     ``I spent years glued to the radio, waiting for news,'' she 
     says. ``Living in Israel made it impossible for me to remain 
     what I was.''
       Less than a month after the tragedy, the atmosphere in the 
     Wachsman home is deliberately normal. Friends drop by, 
     everyone speaks in conversational tones, the Wachsman boys 
     exchange small jokes. Immediately after the shivah, each of 
     the boys individually approached Esther and Yehudah and said: 
     Let's not allow this home to turn gloomy. ``I realized I had 
     no choice but to go on,'' says Esther. The boys were sent 
     back to school, and Esther resumed her job teaching English 
     at the elite Hebrew University High School. Most of all, the 
     family has tried to maintain the home's relaxed atmosphere--a 
     place where friends of the Wachsman boys feel so comfortable 
     that over the years some have virtually moved in.
       Even now, grief doesn't suppress the good-natured teasing 
     that marks Esther and Yehudah's relationship. When they 
     discuss their political positions with me--he supports the 
     peace process with reservations, she opposes it with 
     reservations--they pretend to be exasperated with each other. 
     Esther: ``My husband is unique, there is no one else with 
     quite his point of view.'' Yehudah: ``If she says so, it must 
     be true.'' Then they smile: They are amused, not annoyed, by 
     their differences.
       Inevitably, though, the home bears traces of the ordeal. A 
     table in a corner is piled with prayer books and yarmulkes: 
     During the week of the kidnapping, there was non-stop 
     communal praying here. On a makeshift charity box are written 
     words urging those who place money into it to say a prayer 
     for Nahshon's safe return. And mounted on the breakfront is a 
     picture of Nahshon, smiling and wearing a T-shirt with the 
     words: ``I've been drafted.''
       Esther manages a smile when speaking of Nahshon. ``He was 
     in an elite unit, the shortest, thinnest kid among big, 
     brawny fellows. They called him the baby of the unit. But he 
     was the one who encouraged them in Lebanon. They used to say 
     to him, `Nahshon, this is hell, wipe that smile off your 
     face.' And he'd say, `Everything will be okay, let's just do 
     our job.'
       ``Nahshon epitomized non-conflict. He couldn't stand it 
     when his brothers fought. If his parents argued about 
     something, he'd say, `Is it really so important?'''
       Esther and Yehudah see that quality of peacemaking as a 
     hint of Nahshon's destiny. Everyone has a mission in life, 
     they believe; and since the kidnapping created such a 
     powerful sense of unity among Israelis, perhaps that was 
     related to Nahshon's mission.
       Esther says that, during the entire week of the kidnapping, 
     she was certain that Nahshon would return alive, that the 
     out-pouring of prayer around the country would somehow 
     protect him. She doesn't believe those prayers were wasted. 
     ``Prayers don't get lost. Jews prayed for 2,000 years to 
     return to Israel. Our generation made it back. Eventually the 
     time comes for the fulfillment of prayers. The soldiers who 
     tried to save Nahshon could have all been killed--maybe the 
     prayers protected them.''
       She rejects self-pity as firmly as religious doubt. ``I 
     don't ask: `Why me? Why anyone?' Look how many people lost 
     entire families in the Holocaust. You pick yourself up and go 
     on. That's part of Jewish history.''
       In fact, both Esther's and Yehudah's fathers lost their 
     first wives and some of their children in the Holocaust. And 
     though neither says so, it is clear that their parents' 
     ability to create new families after the war has strengthened 
     their own life-force.
       But for all their optimism and faith, the Wachsmans have an 
     account to settle with God. Esther: ``When Yehuah was on 
     dialysis, I said to God, `This is as bad as it can get.' Then 
     my son Rafael was born with Down's syndrome and I said, `OK, 
     God, You can't do anything worse to me than this.' When 
     Nahshon died, I thought, `You really did do something worse.'
       ``I work with non-believing people. They think I'm 
     protected from pain by my faith. But the grief is just as 
     severe; the only thing faith does is keep me sane. I`d break 
     down if I didn't believe there was some master plan, that 
     every person was put on Earth for a purpose. But''--her voice 
     turns to an emphatic, almost angry whisper--``it does not 
     lessen the pain.''

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