Lobrede auf einen Soldaten

In der Nacht vom 12. auf den 13. August sind wie an so vielen Tagen zuvor israelische Soldaten im Kampf gegen die Hisbollah gefallen. Einer von ihnen war nicht nur einer der gefallenen Kameraden, sondern in gewisser Hinsicht besonders. Als am nächsten Tag die Zeitungen voll von Bildern dieses jungen Soldaten waren, musste ich natürlich erst mal wieder nachfragen, wer das denn sei. "Uri Grossman, der Sohn von David Grossman, dem Schriftsteller", lautete dann die einhellige Antwort.

Gehört hatte ich den Namen ja durchaus schon, aber genaues wusste ich mit David Grossman, geschweige denn mit seinem Sohn Uri, nicht anzufangen. In ihrem gestrigen Posting schreibt meine - nach wie vor - favorisierte Bloggerin, die israelische Journalistin Lisa Goldman (auf dem Bild rechts), über David Grossman und seine Bedeutung für die Israelis.

Einige Passagen davon möchte ich (von mir übersetzt) zitieren und so auf die von David Grossman verfasste, am 16. August in der auflagenstärksten israelischen Zeitung Yedioth Achronoth erschienenen Lobrede auf seinen Sohn Uri einleiten. Die Übersetzung vom Hebräischen ins Englische leistete erneut Lisa Goldman, die Lobrede ist auch Teil des oben verlinkten Beitrags ihres Blogs. Das wiederum werde ich nicht ins Deutsche übersetzen, erstens weil der Text recht lang ist, und vor allem zweitens weil es so schön geschrieben ist und ich das nicht im Deutschen versauen möchte. Eckige Klammern stammen von mir und liefern Zusatzinformationen, Umformulierungen, Auslassungen und in der Lobrede Grossmans ein paar Übersetzungsvorschläge für einzelne Worte.

Ich lasse jetzt erst mal Lisa Goldman zu Wort kommen.

"Ich denke, für die, die weder Israeli sind noch Hebräisch sprechen, ist es sehr schwer zu verstehen, warum die Israelis Uri Grossmans Tod geschlossen beklagt haben. David Grossmans Sohn war kein politisches Symbol. Sein Tod war nicht einer der Momente, in denen Ikonen zerstört werden. Israelis, die David Grossman nicht persönlich kennen, haben mitgetrauert, weil David Grossman die Stimme ist, die unsere intimen Gefühle ausdrückt. Über die Familie, über den Tod. Seine Geschichten für Kinder sind sehr bekannt und beliebt - Geschichten wie die Itamar-Reihe oder das Buch Uri's Special Language ("Uri ist fast zwei Jahre alt und beginnt zu sprechen", fängt diese an, "nicht einmal seine Eltern verstehen, was Uri sagt."), das er schrieb, als sein Sohn Uri zwei Jahre alt war. [David Grossman ist so bekannt und beliebt, weil] seine Kurzgeschichten wie Someone to run with (für Teenager) [jetzt im israelischen Kino] und See under: Love so wunderschön geschriebene Ausdrücke zweier universeller Themen und besonders israelischer Erfahrungen sind. [...]

Gewöhnlich wird Grossman zur Gruppe Autoren der Generation of the State gezählt, die [...] sich sehr stark mit den großen Themen Zukunft des Staates und Situation der Juden beschäftigen. Grossman, der in der Mitte der achtziger Jahre berühmt wurde, schreibt auch über diese Themen, aber er hat einen viel sanfteren, zugänglicheren, menschlicheren Blickwinkel und ist viel näher am aktuellen Zeitgeist. Unvorstellbar etwa, dass [Amos] Oz oder [A.B.] Yehoshua [Zwei israelische Autoren, auf die sie sich vorher bezogen hat, den Part hab ich weggelassen.] den Text für einen erfolgreichen hebräischen Hip-Hop-Song schreiben würden.

Grossman weiß einfach, unsere Gefühle in Worte zu fassen. Als sein Sohn starb, dachten wir an all die Gefallenen oder Schwerverletzten des letzten Monats, die wir kannten, und wir konnten uns mit ihm identifizieren, weil wir so viele trauernde Familien und Freunde gefallener Soldaten kennen, die den gleichen Schmerz ertragen müssen. Weil Israel so ein kleines Land ist, kennt jeder jemanden, der eine Nachricht über seine Einberufung für den Kriegseinsatz im Libanon bekommen hat, oder jemanden, der gestorben ist oder verwundet wurde oder jemanden, der einen seiner Liebsten verloren hat."

Die sehr persönliche Lobrede des Schriftstellers David Grossman auf seinen Sohn Uri ist daher wohl vorrangig als ein wunderschön formulierter Zugang in die Gedankenwelt der Israelis zu werten. Trotz ihrer Individualität und Intimität und vielleicht sogar genau deswegen bildet sie vielleicht das ab, was viele Israelis denken und fühlen.

"Uri my dear,

Over the past three days almost every thought has begun with the word "no". No, he won’t come back. No, we won’t talk, and no we won’t laugh. No, there won’t be another boy like that, with the ironic look in his eyes and the fabulous sense of humour. No, there won’t be the young man who was so wise beyond his years, no there won’t be that warm smile and healthy appetite. No, there won’t be that rare combination of determination and gentleness, no there won’t be his straightforwardness and his wise heart. No, there won’t be any more of Uri’s infinite gentleness, and no there won’t be his inner quiet that calms every argument. And no we won’t watch The Simpsons or Seinfeld together, and no we won’t listen to Johnny Cash. And no we won’t feel your strong hugs. And no we won’t see you talking to Yonatan as you gesticulate wildly, and we won’t see you hug your beloved sister Ruthie.

Uri my love, throughout your short life we all learned from you. From your strength and your insistence on going your own way. For choosing your own path even if there was no chance you would succeed. With astonishment we watched your struggle to be accepted to an officers’ training course. You knew you would be a good officer, and you were never satisfied with being anything but the very best you were capable of. And when you succeeded I thought, Here is a man who has such a simple, sober understanding of his own abilities. He is completely free of pretension [Anmaßung] and arrogance. He is completely unaffected by what others say about him. His source of strength lies within himself.

That is the way you were from the time you were a child. You were a child who lived in harmony with himself and his environment. A child who knew he belonged, who knew he was loved, who knew his limitations and understood his uniqueness. And truly, when you forced the army to submit to your will and accept you as an officer, it was clear what kind of an officer and human being you would be. And now we hear from your friends and your soldiers about the officer and the friend, about how you would wake up before everyone else to arrange everything and go to bed only after everyone else had fallen asleep.

And yesterday, at midnight, I looked at the house that was quite a mess after hundreds of people came to visit and comfort us, and I said, Well, now we need Uri to help us tidy up.

You were the leftist [politisch links; in Israel: Friedensbewegung, Rückzugsbefürworter (Gaza, Westbank)] of your battalion, and they respected you, because you stood by your beliefs while carrying out all the missions you were assigned. I remember your telling me about your “checkpoint policy,” because of course you spent a lot of time at the checkpoints. You said that if there was a child in the car you stopped, you always started by trying to calm him down and make him laugh. And you always reminded yourself that the child was about Ruthie’s age, and that he was very afraid of you. And how much he hates you, and that he has reasons to hate, but in spite of that you would do everything in your power to make that terrible experience easier for him, while simultaneously doing your job without compromising.

When you entered Lebanon, Mum said that the thing she feared most was your “Eliphelet’s Syndrome.” [Eliphelet is the hero of a poem by Nathan Alterman, about a naïve soldier who unquestioningly sacrifices himself for others; the poem was set to music and sung by Arik Einstein, amongst other famous Israeli singers. According to the Hebrew bible, Eliphelet was the name of one of King David’s sons; Anmerkung von Lisa Goldman]. We were very afraid that, like the Eliphelet in the poem, if it was necessary to save a wounded soldier, you would run straight into the line of fire, and you would be the first to volunteer to “restock the supply of ammunition when it ran low” [a line from Alterman’s poem; Anmerkung von Lisa Goldman]. And that just as you were your whole life, at school and at home and during your army service, just as you always volunteered to give up your furloughs ["Fronturlaub"] because another soldier needed the break more than you did, or because someone else’s situation was more difficult – so you would behave there, in Lebanon, in the terrible face of war.

You were my son and also my friend, just as you were to your mother. Our souls are connected to yours. You were a person at peace with himself, a person whose company was a pleasure. I cannot express properly the extent to which you were someone to run with [reference to the title of Grossman’s novel for teenagers, Someone to Run With; Anmerkung von Lisa Goldman]. On each of your furloughs you would say, "Dad, let’s go talk." And we would go out together, usually to a restaurant, and sit and talk. You told me so many things, Uri, and I was so proud to be the keeper of your secrets. That a man like you chose me as your confidante.

I remember how you deliberated [gründlich überlegen] once whether or not to punish one of your soldiers who had committed some disciplinary offense. You really suffered over that decision, because you knew it would enrage your soldiers, and also other officers who were more forgiving than you of certain offences. And you did pay a high price for your decision to punish that soldier, but afterward that event became one of the legends of your battalion – a sort of measuring stick for proper behaviour and sticking to the law. And on your last furlough you told me with bashful pride that your commanding officer held up your decision as an example of correct behaviour for an officer.

You lit up our lives, Uri. Mum and I raised you with love. It was so easy to love you with all our hearts, and I know that your short life was a good one. I hope that I was a fitting father for a boy like you. But I know that to be your mother’s son means that you were raised with generosity and kindness and infinite love, and you received all of that in plentitude. And you knew how to appreciate that, to be grateful and not to take any of it for granted.

For now I am not going to say anything about the war in which you were killed. We, your family, have already lost this war. The State of Israel will have to do its own self-examination. We will retreat into our own pain, surrounded by our good friends, enveloped in the enormous love that we feel today from so many people, many of whom we didn’t even know, and I am grateful for their boundless support.

I only wish we all knew how to provide this kind of support and solidarity in different times. This is perhaps our greatest and most treasured national resource. I wish we knew how to be a little gentler with one another. I hope that we succeed in extricating ourselves now, at the very last minute, because even more difficult times are waiting for us.

I would like to say a few more words.

Uri was a very Israeli boy. Even his name was very Israeli, very much a Hebrew name. He was the essence of Israeli-ness as I like to see it. The kind that has been almost forgotten, that is sometimes considered almost a curiosity. Many times I looked at him and thought that he, like Ruthie and Yonatan, was almost an anachronism. Uri with his uncompromising directness and acceptance of complete responsibility for everything that happened around him. Uri who was always the one to take initiative, who was always completely reliable. Uri with his deep sensitivity for suffering, for all emotional pain.

Uri was a man of principle. That word has often been mocked over the past years. Because in our mad, cynical, world it is no longer “cool” to be principled. Or to be a humanist. Or to be truly sensitive to the suffering of others, even if the Other is your enemy on the battlefield.

But I learned from Uri that it is possible to be both principled and cool. That we do need to uphold our values and defend ourselves simultaneously. We have to insist upon upholding our values in the face of temptation to give in to power and simplistic thinking, to give in to the corruption of cynicism and contempt for humanity, which are the true, great curse of those who have lived their whole lives in our disaster-prone [zur Katastrophe neigend] region of the world.

Uri simply had the courage to be himself, always, in every situation, and to find his own voice in everything he did and said, and that is what protected him from the destruction, pollution and constricting of his soul.

Uri was also incredibly funny and witty. It is impossible to talk about Uri without mentioning his hilarious brilliance. For example, when he was 13 I once told him: “Imagine if you and your children were able to fly to outer space just as people fly today to Europe.” And he smiled: “I’m not so attracted to outer space, you can find everything on planet earth.”

Or another time, we were driving in the car, and his mother and I were discussing a new book that was attracting a lot of attention and talking about various authors’ reviews, and Uri who was 9 years old piped up from the back seat: “Hey, you elitists, remember that there are simple people back here who don’t understand a word of what you’re talking about!”

Or for example Uri, who really did not like figs [Feigen], once held a bunch of dried figs in his hand and said: “Remind me, aren’t dried figs just regular figs that sinned in a previous life?” Or when I once hesitated over accepting an invitation to Japan, Uri said: “How can you not go? Can you imagine what it’ll be like to visit the only country in the world where there are no Japanese tourists?”

Dear friends, on the night between Saturday and Sunday, at twenty minutes before three in the morning, our doorbell rang. The voice at the intercom said it was from “the municipal officer,” and I went to open the door and I thought to myself, “That’s it. Life is over.”

But within five minutes, when Michal [Grossman’s wife; Anmerkung von Lisa Goldman] and I went into Ruthie’s room and woke her up in order to tell her the horrible news, Ruthie, after her first tears, said: “But we will live, right? We will live just as before, and I want to continue to sing in the choir, and that we will continue to laugh as always, and I want to learn to play the guitar.” And we hugged her, and we told her we would live. And Ruthie also said: “What a fantastic threesome we were, Yonatan, Uri and I.”

And you really were a fantastic team. Yonatan, you and Uri were not just brothers, but soul mates, with your own world and your own private language and your own sense of humour. And Ruthie, Uri loved you with all his heart and soul. He always treated you with such gentleness, and I remember how during our last phone conversation, when we were so happy that the UN was about to declare a ceasefire, he insisted on speaking with you. And how you wept afterward. As if you already knew.

Our lives are not over. We have just suffered a very hard blow. We will draw the strength we need to absorb the blow from one another, from our togetherness, from Michal and from me and from our children and also from the grandparents who loved him with all their hearts – “neshumeh,” they called him, because he really was all soul – and from your aunts and uncles and cousins and from all your many friends from school and from your comrades in arms who accompany us here with such concern and deep affection.

And we will also draw our strength from Uri. He had such a plentitude of strength that it will serve us for many years. He radiated such strong vitality and vibrancy, such warmth and love, and his light will continue to shine on us forever – even if the star itself is extinguished.

Our beloved one, it was our great privilege to live with you. Thank you for every moment you were ours.

Mom, Dad, Yonatan and Ruthie"