Seidemann: Goodbye to the Arch of Titus

From the other side of the bench

by David Seidemann

Issue of July 16, 2010/ 5 Av 5770

One plus one plus one does not always equal three. I love my children, you see, love the concept of summer camp, and love to visit with my children. But I detest visiting day. Driving from camp to camp, then to activities, then to lunch, onto supper and then back to two different camps is more than I can handle.

Visiting Day did not begin well last Sunday. As I was driving on Route 17 on the way up to the mountains a tattoo-covered creature sporting a bandanna decided that I was driving too slowly. First he tailgated me. Then he passed me on the right and while cutting back in front of me hurled a bottle of water in the direction of my windshield. Fortunately, it missed, and I continued on what seemed to be my 40-year journey in the Catskill desert.

I couldn't erase that episode from my mind for a good hour or so. The thought of what might have occurred had the bottle hit my windshield was frightening. I was saddened at how selfish and self-centered humans or reasonable facsimiles thereof could be. I couldn't believe that someone, who was obviously in need of anger management training, would risk injury to himself and to others simply because he couldn't speed down 17 at his desired rate.

I was hoping that sometime during the day my faith in humanity would be restored.

It did not occur at my first stop, the camp attended by my 12-year-old daughter. My daughter's counselor, junior counselor, assistant counselor, assistant to the junior counselor, and the junior assistant to the assistant junior counselor, immediately greeted me. In unison they told me how wonderful my "granddaughter" is. I politely explained to them that it is my daughter whom they have the pleasure of spending the summer with, and not my granddaughter.

Fearful that their tips were in jeopardy, the cadre of counselors apologized for the unintended snub and assured me that if indeed I were a grandfather, I would be a very young looking one at that.

My wife and I and our daughter embarked for camp number two in our minivan, which at that point looked like a garbage can on wheels. Within minutes of arrival my faith in what we as parents, our schools and our camps, are teaching our children was immediately restored. By the looks of it, our two youngest children, attending sleep away camp for the first time, adjusted to the separation better than I. They ran to us, jumped in our arms, smothered my wife and me with hugs and kisses, and showed us to their bunks.

Before introducing us to their counselors, they took pride in how tidy their cubbies were and showed us where they hid their nosh. As we were about to depart the grounds, my nine-year-old whispered in my year, "Daddy, there is a girl here from Illinois. Her parents couldn't come in for visiting day. Her grandparents live in Monsey and were supposed to come to spend the day with her, and she just found out that they couldn't come. She has nobody to spend the day with; can I invite her to come with us?"

"Of course," I answered. The smiles on my daughter's face and on her friend's face were secondary only to the smile in my heart as I realized that somewhere along the way, in teaching our children, we had done something right.

We made the appropriate arrangements with the camp administration and took this little girl with us wherever we went. She swam with us, ate with us and, in true visiting day tradition, shopped with us.

And that's how we entered the nine days, the period of national mourning for the Jewish people, when our temples were destroyed because, perhaps, we were bottle throwers and tantrum throwers, as opposed to "embracers of other people's children."

The Roman leader Vespasian and his son and successor Titus laid siege to Jerusalem in or about 70 CE. Titus's successor Flavius Silva finished off the conquest of the Holy Land approximately two years later at Masada. It was there that a thousand men, women and children decided to die as Jews, rather than live as Romans.

Our challenge is a lot more difficult. Our challenge is not to die as Jews, but to live as Jews. Titus's arch in Rome with those painful words "Judea Capta" speaks only of the physical structures that comprise Jerusalem. We have not rebuilt those structures and therefore Titus's words, painful though they are to read, are nevertheless still true.

But neither Titus nor Nebuchadnezzar before him, or Hitler after him, or our modern-day enemies, has ever succeeded in capturing the Jewish spirit. And so while Judah might have been captured and destroyed, the Jew himself was not. I found uplifting the simple words of a nine-year-old: "Daddy, can she come with us; she is all alone," as a harbinger, hopefully, for the rebuilding of our nation, our people and our structures.

Those simple words, "She is all alone; can she come with us," bespeak the care, concern and sensitivity that Titus and his ilk will never conquer.

A few more moments like that and perhaps the Arch of Titus will go the way the Berlin Wall.