The difference between the survivors and Rabbi Groh was that most of the survivors had never dreamed of immigrating to Palestine before the rise of the Nazis. The religious among them prayed for the advent of the Messianic era, in which God would magically gather the Jews from the four corners of the globe and restore them to their ancient homeland. The less devout before the war simply made do with their lot in life. Many were happy and lived in villages or towns where Jewish life was thriving. There were some Zionists from every city that made the trek eastward, but the majority of Jews remained behind with no real plan of leaving for Palestine.
Rabbi Groh, on the other hand, had thought about Palestine every day of his life. Studying holy texts was his passion, and often he tried to place himself in the shoes of the Talmudic rabbis eager to return to Israel after the destruction of the Holy Temple. For him, immigration to Eretz Israel had been a lifelong fantasy. The irony was not lost on him that the survivors who’d never dreamed of aliyah before the Nazis were here to stay. And he, who’d always had this dream of moving to Palestine, would soon be returning to the United States.
Despite this hard realization, the rabbi did everything he could to help survivors get accustomed to their new home. On the first day, he was given the task of escorting each survivor to the kibbutz doctor for a physical. The Haganah knew that many of the survivors had a deep fear and mistrust of doctors after what they’d witnessed in the camps. The rabbi was asked to reassure each survivor that the doctor was a Jew who was only there to make sure they were healthy, and to give them any medications they might need. Most of the survivors were too tired to protest, but the rabbi had to coax a couple of them into trusting that the doctor meant them no harm.
At meals, the rabbi sat in the dining hall with the camp administration. They spoke in Hebrew that was difficult for the rabbi to understand. He understood most of the words they were using, but the speed with which they conversed left him behind in most of their conversations. Some of them spoke English and others Yiddish, but for the most part, the rabbi had to decipher their Hebrew the best he could.
The camp director spoke English and sat next to Rabbi Groh at dinner the first night.
“Shalom, Rabbi. Thank you for everything you are doing to help us,” the director said in his trademark monotonous tone.
“My pleasure. I am honored to be here,” Rabbi Groh responded.
“Tonight we will have an assembly here in the dining hall, and we would like you to offer the prayers. Would that be ok with you, Rabbi?”
“Which prayers?”
“I think we will have a memorial prayer for all who did not make it here. And then we will sing together the HaTikvah. Nice and easy,” the director said, again with no inflection in his voice.
“It would be my pleasure. Thank you for the honor,” Rabbi Groh answered.
After dinner, Rabbi Groh went back to the cot he’d been assigned in the infirmary and rested for an hour before the ceremony would start. When he began to hear voices heading towards the dining hall, he popped out of bed and exited the infirmary. Within moments, he was following the crowd to the dining hall. Upon entering, the director waved him over to the makeshift stage upon which he was standing.
“Rabbi, when it quiets down, you will begin, beseder?”
“B’seder,” the rabbi responded, proud that he’d just conducted a conversation in Hebrew.
Once everyone was seated, the rabbi began the ceremony in Yiddish. He didn’t say much, but when he uttered the memorial prayers, everyone instinctively rose to their feet and joined in the prayers. In that moment, he was their rabbi. It did not matter that he was not a survivor or a sabra. He was a rabbi. He was a rabbi for the survivors and the soldiers, for the experienced kibbutzniks and the new immigrants. In that moment they were a group of Jews, and he was their connection to their faith.
That night Rabbi Groh fell asleep content that though he was headed home in a few days, his trip had been worthwhile. He’d helped his people. The neediest of his people. And these people were ensuring that his people would always have a home to protect them from others bent on their destruction. He had helped their effort, and for this he was proud. He was headed home, but this would not be his last visit to the land of his people. Nevertheless, a gnawing feeling still ate at his insides. By leaving now, what would he be missing?
* * *
The camp director informed Rabbi Groh three days after his arrival in Palestine that a plane was prepared to take him back home. Within a couple of hours of saying goodbye to everyone he had met on the kibbutz, Rabbi Groh found himself on a rickety Haganah-owned plane headed first to Greece and ultimately back to America. On this trip, the rabbi would be accompanied by two Haganah men. They were headed back to the States for reasons they were not willing to disclose. Rabbi Groh didn’t care. His mind was back on the bus that had taken him from the port of Haifa to Kibbutz Nof Kinneret along the Sea of Galilee. For almost the entire flight back home, he replayed in his mind the conversations he had had the last couple of days.
“If your life is about serving the Jewish people as you say, then why aren’t you staying in Palestine? Don’t we need rabbis in Palestine? Isn’t the story of the Jewish people unfolding in Palestine? Hasn’t reality changed for the Jewish people? Don’t all Jews need to help build the new homeland?”
Rabbi Groh was in a different place than the survivors. His home had not been ripped away from him. His family had not been massacred. His community had not been destroyed. He was not penniless. He wasn’t someone who had nowhere else to go. He had a lot waiting for him in Miami. Family, friends, livelihood, community. But yet he yearned for the same things the survivors did. A safe and secure homeland for the Jewish people. An army committed to protecting them. Political influence on the world stage. All of these were things that could not be achieved in the States, no matter how safe and secure the Jews of America considered themselves. Only an independent Jewish state could provide those assurances. These things, the things that he dreamed of, were what the Jews of Palestine were fighting for. And as they were, he was headed home in the opposite direction of that fight.