By Toby Klein Greenwald
(Photo: Laura Ben David)
EFRAT, Israel — Miriam Peretz has become a legend in Israel and the translation of her riveting book, Miriam’s Song, written, with her, by beloved Israeli author Smadar Shir and expertly translated by Jessica Setbon, will now ensure that she becomes a legend in the English speaking world as well. I could hardly put the book down from the moment I picked it up.
Two of Miriam’s six children, Uriel and Eliraz, were officers in the Golani sayeret (commando) brigade. Uriel was killed by Hezbollah in 1998 at the age of 22, in Lebanon, and Eliraz, a father of four, was killed by Hamas in Gaza in 2010, at age 31. By all accounts, they were remarkable young men, with dedication and caring for their families and for the soldiers under their command, courageous and kind in their lives, and heroic in their deaths. Their deaths were devastating to the family, yet Miriam Peretz has become a symbol, in Israel, of unfathomable faith and courage.
Miriam’s positive attitude to life was apparent from a young age. She describes her life in a home of twenty-one square feet in Casablanca, until the age of ten, when, in 1963, the family moved to Israel. It was like a miracle for them, in a journey that began in the dead of night and took several weeks and ocean voyages. She grew up first in the poverty of a transient camp for new immigrants and then in Shikun Daled of Beer Sheva, hardly a bourgeois location, but a palace to her family, as they finally had an indoor bathroom.
Miriam worked as a cleaner from a young age, even when she was in Morocco; her mother cleaned in the home of a local Baba, a rabbi, but the attitude in her parents’ home was always to be thankful for what they had. In Israel they were a welfare family, but, she writes, “[I] considered my cup half-full. I was proud of the state and the people in the welfare office, as both took care of us. How wonderful it is to be here, I thought, how lucky that we don’t live in a country that abandons its poor.”
She didn’t speak Hebrew well, yet after several months was moved from a vocational class to an academic class. She writes, “Something inside me burned, urging me on, ‘You can do it.’” She eventually completed two academic degrees and became a teacher and then a principal, always choosing to work in secular, not religious schools, in order to share her Jewish values with those who she felt may not received them at home.
She married Eliezer, ten years her senior, when she was 21, and followed him to Ofira (Sharm el-Sheikh), at the bottom tip of the Sinai desert, where they lived happily for the next seven years. She taught in the local school, until the evacuation from Sinai. She gave birth to six children but describes the birth of her first-born, Uriel, as the most difficult and traumatic. She also describes how difficult it was for herself and Eliezer, and her two sons, Uriel and Eliraz, to leave their Sinai paradise.
The book is a tribute not only to her son’s deaths, but to her family’s life – a family filled with laughter and joy and passion and caring for each other, and her own depth of communication with Uriel and Eliraz that seems to move between worlds.
Miriam met with twelve journalists before her book launch, three days before Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) and then Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) and shared her thoughts:
“This week my heart is broken because we begin the week of pain, of sorrow, but on Wednesday we celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut. How can we? Do we wear masks? It is difficult for me on Yom Hazikaron.” 500 people, including the friends of Uriel and Eliraz, come to her home. “They each bring love, they speak about how they continue. We don’t ask them to speak about our sons. They speak about their homes, their lives, their jobs.
“At 8 p.m. on Wednesday they go. I used to love Yom Ha’atzmaut, but from the day that Uriel fell, from the middle of the day of Yom Hazikaron, I go to bed to be alone, to cry, and in the morning I go to Mr. Herzl. Why? Because the day before is for all the people in Israel. I don’t need a day. Every day is Yom Hazikaron for me. So on Yom Ha’atzmaut I go to the graves of my children. I clean the graves from all the flowers, I speak with them and ask them to let me be happy. And then I leave and do what all Am Yisrael does. I spend time with my grandchildren, I barbecue…
“Everyone has one question: How can I continue to live? I was born with optimism. When I hear a song I begin to dance. What gives me strength? One thing – my faith in G-d. I know I have many questions to this G-d; I dance with him every day. Sometimes he helps me, sometimes I cry and scream and ask, ‘How do You do these things to people in the world?’ But I don’t let Him go. I ask him, ‘Why my children? What did they do wrong?’ There is no answer to this question. My children have fallen so I can today be here with you… Someone has to ensure the existence of the Jewish land…Before them, we had the Maccabees and others. Now it is my children’s turn. Our enemies killed my children’s bodies but they will never kill the spirit of this nation and I continue this spirit, for what did my children die for, if I don’t continue to live? And for the children of Eliraz…
“I wrote this book for them. Eliraz fell in battle two days before Passover. There is no father that can tell the children the story. So as the grandmother, I am here for them, to tell them the story of our nation. This includes a chapter about how I felt lighting a torch on Yom Ha’atzmaut [at the annual ceremony on Mt. Herzl], ‘for the glory of the State of Israel.’ When I lit the torch, I understood the meaning of glory.
“This is my home. Life is stronger than death. It’s always a matter of choice. Every morning I wake up and look at the miracles of G-d. I thank G-d for the little lights he gives me. I change my glasses and I begin to see in every moment of darkness the little lights. I can create the living light, giving life, and must remember that when G-d created this world He first created darkness and from darkness He created light. [When I die] I want to go to my children proudly and when I will meet them I want to tell them that Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave me a big trial and I must tell them, ‘Like in Golani, we never go back, only forward’…I want them to call me once again, ‘Ima.’”
Miriam speaks of a dire premonition she had, when she says, “I knew Uriel would die. I didn’t think Eliraz would die. I didn’t think G-d would try me a second time. We will never understand…I felt in this moment that I could change nothing in my reality…When I was very down I understood that only Hakadosh Baruch Hu could give me comfort. I thought that Eliraz was protected. No one is protected. We are in the hands of G-d.”
Miriam said that she wants, with her book, to show that, “In times of crisis, we can grow. This is, again, a matter of choice.
“It is a privilege to be inducted into the IDF. It is a privilege to defend our land. In Morocco I walked with my head down; here I walk with my head high. And when I see people walking in Jerusalem, I know it is in the zchut (merit) of those who fell in battle, and not everyone received that privilege, the privilege of defending our homeland.”
Unfortunately she is not the only parent who has lost two sons who were soldiers or officers who fell in battle. Parents who have lost one child must sign their agreement in order for a second child to be accepted to a combat unit. Many do not sign, and Miriam and her husband Eliezer faced the excruciating decision about whether or not to sign for Eliraz. Eliraz went off to the mechina (pre-army prepatory program) in Atzmona, led by Rabbi Rafi Peretz (today the chief rabbi of the IDF) to think and learn and meditate on his decision for a week.
Miriam says, “He asked himself, Who am I? What do I want to do with my life? What kind of life do I want to live?” At the end of the week he decided to follow in his brother’s footsteps and be an officer in the same commando brigade. His parents, after much painful soul searching and sleepless nights, signed that they give their permission. Miriam told us, “We didn’t stop our praying. It was after Rosh Hashana. We felt like akedat Yitzhak (the binding of Issac) at the moment that we signed…” She describes the terrible premonition she had about Uriel. “I knew Uriel would die. I didn’t think Eliraz would die. I didn’t think G-d would try me a second time.”
But what has morphed Miriam into a legend is how she reacted to the double tragedy. Actually, triple tragedy, for only five years after Uriel fell, her husband Eliezer died at only 56. She believes he died of a broken heart.
She writes about a time that she was very ill, yet tried to keep going. “I don’t make an effort to be a hero; I just make an effort to live. When I see how much the kids worry and hurt, I say to myself, ‘Stop it, they’ve suffered enough,’ and I force myself to stand up, not out of heroism, but out of a powerful will to live. So it’s strange to me that others view me as inspiring.”
Miriam took her tragedy and used it not only to grow, but to help others to cope. She travels throughout Israel and the world, speaking to soldiers and school children and to families in mourning. She has met with prime ministers and with presidents, including the presidents of Israel and President Obama. She offers a special thank you, in her book, to Howard Jonas, who made the English publication, by Gefen, possible. She writes about the warm hospitality at the home of Esther and Jerry Williams in Lawrence, in the Five Towns. She had hoped to rest there after a whirlwind speaking tour, but after three days in their home, Hurricane Sandy broke. Eventually (it’s a long story), on her way back to Israel, she ended up in a hotel room with some El Al flight attendants and one of them told her how she had read a book that had changed her life. Miriam asked her what the book was, and it was hers.
She writes, “The characters of Uriel and Eliraz became a national legacy. I would meet soldiers, and out of their shirt pockets they would pull little notes with quotes from the book. I would see Uriel’s sentence peeking out from behind their insignia: ‘With all the thorns and barbs that have scratched my body, you could put together a three-foot hedge. But these aren’t just ordinary thorns – they’re thorns from the Land of Israel…’” She was deeply moved to see both her sons quoted, but write, “How I wish that my two sons were alive, and that no one was citing them.”
The extent to which Miriam Peretz is a living legend was reinforced for me the evening I attended her book launch at the Begin Center in Jerusalem. When I walked up to the security gate in the building’s entranceway, the young man on guard duty asked me the standard question, “What are you here for?” When I answered, “Book launch of Miriam Peretz” his eyes lit up as he said, “Ah, the mother of the soldiers?” A few days later I was back at the Begin Center for another event and I told the guard I was quoting him in my column on Miriam Peretz. He said, “Mother of the soldiers? She’s the mother of us all.”
Read Miriam’s Song, by Miriam Peretz, the mother of the soldiers. It will change your life, too, forever.
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Greenwald is a freelance writer based in Efrat, Israel. Comments intended for publication in the space below MUST be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the United States.)