Michael Levin, Zichrono LiVracha

Today, the 3^rd of August 2006 and Tisha B’Av 5766, hundreds of people filed through Mount Herzl military cemetery for the levaya (funeral) of St.-Sgt. Michael Levin, twenty-one years of age, who was killed fighting in the south Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab, along with two other comrades, St.-Sgt. Yonatan Einhorn and Lt. Ilan Gabbai. As we made our way through cemetery we walked past numerous graves of soldiers, all younger than me, who had fallen “whilst fulfilling their duty”, as their epitaph read. Some had pictures by their grave, a hauntingly graphic memorial of the terrible sacrifices made by the young men and women who have defended Israel with their lives for the past 58 years. During the eulogies I wondered how much longer mothers and fathers will have to bury their children, how much longer until we can rest from our enemies and live in peace. Many of the soldiers in Michael’s company came in wheelchairs, on crutches, with bandages and neck braces and their heart-wrenching eulogies reduced over 500 people to tears. I am not comforted by the statement of the Rabbis of the Talmud that ‘Eretz Yisrael is acquired through suffering’. That the levaya took place on Tisha B’Av, the day of utter calamity for Am Yisrael, made this saying especially poignant, and the fast and all the terrible disasters that befell us on this day throughout history seemed very real and immediate.

Still, there is always hope and whenever I go to a wedding or Sheva Berachot here I am always blown away by the words ‘soon HaShem our God, let there be heard in the cities of Yehudah and the courtyards of Yerushalayim the sound of rejoicing and the sound of happiness, the voice of a groom and the voice of a bride, the sound of celebrating grooms from the chupah, and of youths from their feasts and song’. This prophecy has already come to be, we just have to work a bit harder to realise the others.

‘St.-Sgt. Michael Levin was laid to rest on Thursday afternoon in a funeral that began at 5:00 p.m. in Jerusalem's Mt. Herzl military cemetery...St.-Sgt. Levin was one of three soldiers killed Tuesday in the southern Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab, along with St.-Sgt. Yonatan Einhorn and Lt. Ilan Gabbai.... Michael Levin was visiting his parents in the US when fighting erupted in northern Israel. So he cut his vacation short, hopped on a plane and rejoined his Paratroop Brigade unit’.