A Story Worth Sacrificing For

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Rabbi Aaron Feigenbaum

Rav Avi Goldberg with his family.

For these things do I weep, my eyes flow with tears:
Far from me is any comforter who might revive my spirit;
My children are forlorn, for the foe has prevailed.
Lamentations 1:16

I first met Avi and Rachel Goldberg in their cramped kollel apartment in the Old City of Jerusalem in March of 2008. Rachel was a nursing student in university; Avi was an aspiring educator at Yeshivat HaKotel. I was in Israel looking for a rosh kollel for our Torah MiTzion Kollel in Memphis, Tenn. We needed someone who could relate both to high school students and to adults. Someone who could both teach and inspire. Someone authentically Israeli, yet fluent in English. Someone with the knowledge base to give a high level Gemara shiur, the gravitas to win the respect of the city’s rabbinic leadership, the patience to introduce Judaism to the uninitiated, and the warmth to make everyone feel at home.

Torah MiTzion had provided me with a list of CVs and set up a series of interviews. But I felt like we needed to cast the net wider; to make sure we were turning over every stone. So I reached out to people I knew in Israel, shared with them what we were looking for and asked for recommendations. Rabbi Reuven Taragin at Yeshivat HaKotel responded by saying that he knew just the guy: Avi Goldberg. I forwarded his suggestion to Torah MiTzion. They were unsure. They didn’t know him. He hadn’t undergone their training. His experience was somewhat lacking. I told them that I wanted to meet him anyway and that I had set up a time to watch him teach. Once I did, there was no doubt in my mind that Rav Avi is what our community needed.

Avi had a smile that lit up the room. He had eyes that cared and a heart that never judged. He was deeply learned yet remarkably humble. He and Rachel were both talented musicians. They wanted to expand minds while elevating souls. They were looking for a community in which they could teach and from whom they could learn. They wanted a place where they could open their home to any and all, where they could create relationships that were deep, meaningful, and long lasting. I told them that there were few places better for doing so than Memphis. And then they proceeded to do it better than anyone I’ve ever seen.

In the sixteen years that have passed, Avi and I followed each other from afar. When we’d catch up he’d tell me about his high school teaching, how he was constantly looking for opportunities to continue his communal work with the less affiliated, and about the opportunities for career advancement that he turned down in order to stay deeply connected to the classroom and the lives of his students. He was the ultimate mechanech. He taught through text and by example. He loved his students and he loved watching them grow. As much as he valued his time in the States, “life/work balance” was one of many American concepts that remained foreign to Avi. His classroom was his home. His home was an extension of his classroom. His wife and eight children were constant companions in his mission to educate and inspire. Together they taught everyone who walked into their home what a family can and ought to look like. What it means to partner with one’s spouse in love and in life. What it feels like when a home is infused with a sense of purpose, an aspiration toward holiness, and a commitment to kindness. And as much as his family were also teachers, Rav Avi’s countless students over the years were also family. He took pride in their accomplishments. Danced with them at moments of celebration. Cried with them in times of anguish.

This week they all lost a father. We all lost a friend. The world lost a light that will be hard to replicate. The world is colder without his warmth. Sadder without his smile. Less profound without his insight. Less grounded without his Torah. Less elevated without his music.

In one of countless conversations Avi and I had comparing the idiosyncrasies of the American Jewish community with those of Israel, he expressed his utter inability to understand the appeal of American college campuses to the American Jew. And that was over a decade ago. Today I only wish that those on college campuses could have known Rav Avi Goldberg. I wish that instead of the villainous caricatures they have been fed of land hungry, blood thirsty, racist, imperialist, cold-blooded Israeli soldiers, they knew Rav Avi Goldberg: kind-hearted, sensitive, open minded, loving, and gentle husband, father, brother, and son. I wish they understood that Avi didn’t volunteer to serve as an army chaplain long after completing his mandatory army service because he loved violence, but because he so desperately wanted peace. I wish they could peer into the overflowing heart that guided him at the age of 43 back into the hills of Lebanon not because he wanted to spend 250 days separated from his wife and eight kids this year, but because the idea that he might sit at home with his family in the relative quiet and tranquility of Jerusalem while tens of thousands Israelis had been uprooted from their homes in the north was unconscionable. Because if he had the power to prevent another ruthless attack on his beloved land and people, his moral imperative was unquestionable.

Soon after Rav Avi returned to Israel from his stint in Memphis, I had the opportunity to visit him in his apartment, then in a high rise building in Jerusalem’s Talpiyot neighborhood. At one point the conversation turned to some of the challenges facing teens in our respective schools. I remember vividly how he explained to me that if a student of his was questioning the existence of G-d or His active role in our world, he’d invite them over to his home and simply walk with them onto the balcony. There they’d look out together at the magnificent vista of the splendid and sprawling city of Jerusalem. A thriving modern city rebuilt from ashes in a matter of decades against incalculable odds. Rav Avi would point to it and say to his student that the best answer he could offer of G-d’s existence and His involvement in this world was right there before them. Despite the pain and the suffering, the one step back after two steps forward, from his balcony in Jerusalem Rav Avi saw a story unfolding. A story of redemption: personal, societal, ethical, national, and universal. A story that he was part of. A story that we are part of. A story that was worth sacrificing for.

I don’t know that I will ever be able to replicate the clarity of Rav Avi’s conviction. But I do know this: the next time I am traveling with teachers in Israel and they want to know what it looks like to live for others, to give without limits, to teach without judgment, and to be adored without an ounce of arrogance, I’ll take them not to Talpiyot, but to Har Herzl. There I’ll find the final resting place of Rav Avi Goldberg, zt”l, and tell them that the best answer I can offer is right there before them.

The next time I am in Jerusalem with my students and they want to know what this all means and why they should care, why the story of this land and its people is still relevant to them and the lives they lead, I’ll walk with them not out to a balcony but into a military cemetery. Together we’ll find the final resting place of Rav Avi Goldberg, and I’ll tell them that the best answer I can offer is right there before them.

May his legacy be a source of inspiration, his example a source of strength, and his memory a source of blessing to us all.