Terror Victim’s Funeral Highlights Longtime Bond Between Chabad and IDF

by Bruria Efune – chabad.org

After Meir Tamari, a 32-year-old father of two young children, was killed in a terrorist attack outside of Hermesh, a town in northern Samaria, it was not at all unusual for hundreds of mourners to turn out for his funeral. Every fatal terror attack in Israel results in a kind of national mourning, and when a victim is laid to rest, people of all backgrounds and beliefs show their support.

What stood out at Tamari’s funeral, though, was the large presence of two identifiable groups who shared their mourning with the victim’s family and each other: men and women from the Chabad-Lubavitch community around Israel, and veterans of the Israel Defense Forces.

The victim grew up in the Chabad community of Safed, Israel, and later served with distinction in the IDF. His father, Chabad Rabbi Moshe Tamari, is a retired IDF officer who became Deputy Chief of the Northern Command.

The relationship between Chabad and Israel’s armed forces is a longstanding and mutually supportive one that encourages service while recognizing the unique roles of both scholars and soldiers, in ensuring the safety and well-being of the Jewish people. This idea was echoed by both Meir Tamari’s friends and family, as well as rabbinic and military leaders in Israel.

Tamari’s aunt, Hedva Elman of Milwaukee, grew up in Kfar Chabad, a village in central Israel. She spoke of Chabad’s twin devotion to the Torah and the security of Israel. She vividly remembers the outbreak of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and how many people from the Chabad village took up arms. “I was in sixth grade, davening [‘praying’] in shul on Yom Kippur,” she recalls. “There are no cars driving around Kfar Chabad on Shabbat, let alone Yom Kippur! Suddenly, we heard that armored vehicles were driving into the village, and soon, they arrived at shul. Soldiers came out and started to call out names—Rivkin, Shaikevitz, Raichman and more. While fasting, being wrapped in their tallit, they jumped right into the vehicle and went to defend Israel at the front lines.”

Elman wasn’t surprised when almost all of her Chabad nephews enlisted in the IDF, or to see Meir grow into a treasured soldier. “He was such a phenomenal soldier that even after he left the army, when a different commander needed somebody to be sent from one platoon to the other, they used to tell the commander in charge: “Please send me another Meir Tamari,” she says. “He was the example of the ideal soldier!”

Fulfill Your Obligation by Protecting the Land

Chabad’s unique relationship with the IDF has its source and ongoing inspiration from the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson of righteous memory—who for decades offered encouragement, support and advice to those serving in the IDF and their families—from active-duty combat troops to senior IDF officers, from wounded veterans to the families of those killed in battle.

Former Maj. Gen. Yossi Ben Hanan, now 78, is one of the many senior IDF personnel who sought and received the Rebbe’s direct guidance, which exemplifies the Rebbe’s approach to IDF service.

A decorated soldier who sustained wounds during the Yom Kippur War, Ben Hanan’s relationship with the Rebbe began in 1979 when he brought his young family to the United States to study at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where he enrolled his son in a Chabad kindergarten. Ben Hanan later returned to Israel and became head of the Department of Weapons Development and Technological Infrastructure. At 43, he began to plan retirement from active service, when then-IDF Chief of Staff, Gen. Moshe Levy, called him and requested that he take command of the Armored Corps. Instead of retiring, Ben Hanan was being asked to leave his position at a desk, put on his boots and return to the field.

At the time, Ben Hanan was planning a visit to the United States and decided to seek the Rebbe’s advice in New York. “I was very hesitant,” Ben Hanan later recalled in an interview with JEM’s My Encounter with the Rebbe oral-history project. “My wife was expecting another child, and I had really planned to wind down my career. But I said, ‘I must think about this. I need to seek some advice.’ ”

The next week, he joined thousands in line to receive a dollar and a blessing from the Rebbe, pausing to pose his question. The Rebbe’s answer moved him.

“You should fulfill your obligation by defending the Land, by protecting the integrity of the Land of Israel, the integrity of the Nation of Israel and the integrity of the Torah,” the Rebbe told him.

Ben Hanan understood that the Rebbe was telling him to fulfill his obligations as a Jew by defending the Land of Israel and agreeing to the Chief of Staff’s request. Ben Hanan would go on to hold the position for the next four-and-a-half years.

“Whenever he articulated a position concerning Israel,” says Ben Hanan, reflecting on his relationship with the Rebbe, “he always did so with great love, with careful deliberation and with tremendous respect for those in the field, for the IDF and the political. Israel’s leaders came to him as students before their teacher. Yitzchak Rabin came, as did Ariel Sharon, who told me personally about several encounters he had with the Rebbe, and Menachem Begin and Zalman Shazar. They all came and listened to his guidance.”

‘Exceptional Soldiers’

The Rebbe’s interactions with the IDF were not limited to senior officers. In 1976, for example, the World Paralympic Games were held in Toronto, and a large Israeli delegation attended, most of them IDF soldiers wounded in battle. During their trip, they flew to New York to meet the Rebbe, who received them with great honor.

In a special address to the group, the Rebbe noted that when someone has a physical weakness or lacking, it is no reason to be dejected; rather, it is proof positive that the Creator has endowed him or her with special spiritual powers that enable him to overcome and succeed where the ordinary person cannot.

“The term ‘handicapped’ should not be used for anyone,” the Rebbe told the soldiers. “To the contrary, he is someone special and exceptional by the Creator, with special powers above and beyond the capacity of an ordinary individual. They should therefore be called what they truly are: “exceptional.”

Among those who attended was Yosef Lautenberg, who was injured in the 1948 battle for Jerusalem and later founded Beit Halochem, a rehabilitation facility for injured soldiers. Lautenberg recalled in a 2009 interview with JEM that after the talk, “The Rebbe came down to us—something we were told was completely out of the ordinary. He came down to shake the hand of every member of the delegation. It was a sight that is hard to describe … and he gave one of his famous dollars to each person. This took at least an hour, maybe more, but the Rebbe made sure he went over to touch and converse with each and every one of us.”

“We felt that [the Rebbe] truly loved us—that he loved those who had sacrificed their bodies for the preservation of the Land of Israel. It was palpable.”

Misunderstandings Among Some

While Israeli leaders across the political spectrum are aware and appreciative of Chabad’s role in the IDF, there are some misunderstandings. Last month, amid the high-tension anti-judicial reform protests across the country, Rabbi Zalman Gorelik, director of Chabad of Beersheva, woke up to find graffiti on the walls of his synagogue and Chabad center.

The graffiti, written in Hebrew, read: “Go to the army!”

Chabad responded with a photo of Rabbi Gorelik in uniform during his service in the IDF, and a call for unity, forgiveness and love for one another.

“My kids at home also scribble on the wall sometimes,” Gorelik joked on a national radio broadcast, before quoting the classic phrase from the Torah. “It says, ‘Love your fellow as yourself,’ just as you easily forgive yourself for mistakes, give the same opportunity and understanding to other humans when they make mistakes.”

Gorelik served in a small, singular unit: the one responsible for identifying the bodies of fallen soldiers at war. Gorelik continues: “In the army, there are many different roles and each one is important. The chef who prepares nutritious meals for the soldiers, mechanics, technicians, cleaners, each role is important. We need them all to complete each other, to fill the puzzle. Each one gives dedication for the sake of Israel and our nation, and I think during these days we need to remember this.”

The Terror Victim’s Father

It was the Rebbe’s well-publicized guidance and attitude to service in the IDF that helped sway Meir Tamari’s father, Rabbi Moshe Tamari, to embark on his long and admired career as an officer. In 1977, he was a combat commander, and in 1981, he became the lead training officer for the first troops to be equipped with the Merkava tank.

The elder Tamari fought on the front lines in the Golan Heights during the First Lebanon War, during which he experienced his own miraculous escape. One morning after his prayers had taken slightly longer than usual, he set out to his office a few minutes late. Upon arrival, he found that moments earlier a missile had landed precisely where he would have been sitting, and had completely destroyed his office.

In 1988, Tamari received the Rebbe’s blessing to serve as a military rabbi, a position in which he excelled for the next 25 years. After being promoted to deputy chief of the Northern Command, Tamari was entrusted with the solemn duty of caring for fallen soldiers and their families—a service for which he never dreamed of being on the receiving end.

“When a parent has to bury his child, it’s the greatest sorrow possible,” Tamari says. “We know from King David that when his son Avshalom was stabbed with a bayonet, he asked the army to keep him alive. When he found his son dead, he cried: ‘Avshalom, my son, I wish to die in your place.’ ”

“My son Meir is not only a loss for the Tamari family or for the Arnon family or for his wife, Tal, and their two little children; it is a loss for all the people of Israel because Meir was killed only because he was Jewish and for no other reason.”

In his correspondences, the Rebbe would frequently highlight two interconnected life lessons taught in the military: First, that a soldier’s training primes him to accept his mission without questions—similar to the Jewish people’s response to G‑d when He offered the Torah, “We will do and we will hear”—and second, that each individual soldier’s mission impacts the collective.

“Therefore, the soldier carries it out without questioning whether it or its components are important,” the Rebbe observed. “Only the Commander-in-Chief truly understands the importance of every single detail.”

Donations to a special fund established to support Meir Tamari’s wife and children can be made here.