Looking Back, Going Back

Vayera 2011/5772

Looking Back, Going Back

This past Wednesday evening, we had the privilege of hosting at the Jewish Center Col. Jack Jacobs, winner of the Medal of Honor for heroism on the battlefield in Vietnam. 

In the Question and Answer session, a member of the community, who himself had fought in Vietnam, asked Jacobs how could he have gone back to Vietnam, greeted and hugged the Brigadier General who had fought against him.  Jacobs in fact did shake hands, and spend time, talking, and remembering with the opposing general. 

The individual who asked the question found it morally problematic to shake hands with the person who was responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in the field. 

Jacobs responded that he was on a search for answers to questions he had been carrying with him for over 40 years.  And in the television coverage of that meeting, he said that he and the Vietnamese general were alike – They both were in command of soldiers, and responsible for the lives and actions of the soldiers, just on opposing sides.

Jacobs returned to Vietnam not only as a way to look back but as a way to look inward, inside the present, into feelings and memories that were, that are, real and present, persistent thoughts following a time of great trial.

Is there danger in looking back?  Is there danger that we will find empathy where there once was none?  Will we question ourselves and our actions?

The angels who save the Life of Lot and his family warn them not to turn around and look back at the city they are leaving.  Why do they offer this warning?

Rashi explains that Lot had been corrupted by living amongst the people of Sodom and only by Abram’s merit did he escape—therefore, he must not look back on the destruction while he escapes. 

Here, Rashi argues that the warning is meant to prevent Lot from thinking that he escaped because of his own merit, and perhaps even to prevent schadenfreude—a sense of relief we feel when we witness the suffering of others and realize that we are not touched by it.

Radak explains the warning as a measure to prevent Lot from waiting to leave.  Do not look back, they warn, lest you get caught up in the destruction.

Rashbam suggests that the warning is a timeless one, that people must not gaze upon the presence of Divine beings and their actions, just as Moses himself would not be able to actually ‘see’ God one day at Mt. Sinai despite an earnest desire to commune with the Holy One.

It is interesting that there appears to be no warning against basic sentimentality, no warning against the possibility of returning someday to revisit the place where Lot and his family experienced conflict and later great loss of their home and possessions.

After hearing Col. Jacobs respond to the question, I find myself wondering whether Lot might have similar feelings, a need to search for answers to his practical and existential questions.  I wonder if Abram himself wants to revisit the cities that he tried to protect and search for evidence that there had in fact been 10 righteous people.

As we gather this evening and as Veterans Day, 11/11/11 comes to an end, I feel compelled to look backwards, to try to envision the individual journeys of millions of veterans who left home and went to serve all over the world.  And I recall hearing from a veteran of the Israeli army how he only knew the war from what happened between himself and the soldier marching in front of him, and I quote from Remarque’s classic book on WWI All Quiet on the Western Front “We have lost all sense of other considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important to us. And good boots are hard to come by."(Ch. 2) It is up to the community to keep alive the stories and energy of our veterans, to appreciate the causes for which they fought and their individual experiences on the way to battle, out in the field, and back on the homefront.

Lot also was in a conflict, and got out, so he is a veteran, too – a veteran who suffered great loss but also kept marching, kept moving toward the future.