13/7/97

Pride of a lioness

    When Esther gave birth to twin boys, it was a mother's greatest joy -- until she got the news. One of them, Raphael, had Down's.
    A hospital social worker suggested she go home with the healthy baby and "forget about the other one."
    Abandon a child?
    Never!
    That uncompromising principle may well have served as the family motto for Esther's seven sons. Eight years later, it nourished one of them during his last days alive on this earth when Raphael's brother, Nahshon Wachsman, fell into the grips of Hamas kidnappers.
    For a tortuous week, a pack of savages dangled the life of a teenage boy before the eyes of the civilized world. The Wachsmans heard thousands of reassuring voices -- but not then, and never since, from the two who counted most: Nahshon and Raphael, each a captive in his own solitude.
    Nahshon died. Raphael has never lived in reality.
    Now 10 years old, Raphael does not speak. He is low-functioning, even for a Down's child. He understood nothing about Nahshon's ordeal, that he would never see his brother again.
    "I don't know how much Raphael ... I don't know what's in there," Esther says tenderly. "Raphael understands things like 'go to the refrigerator and take out the milk'; 'go to the bathroom'; he doesn't understand 'your brother was killed.'
    "He can't understand; he can't talk. All he can do is point to Nahshon's picture."
    Esther is beyond ducking the truth. "Raphael is severely retarded," she states forthrightly, dispelling a stranger's awkwardness. "But he's very warm, loving ... anyone who's met Raphael, he hugs and kisses and smiles, and sings and dances. He brings a lot of life into the house."
    Esther would be just an average, unremarkable woman had not grim fate aroused valor she didn't even know she had. It might have been easier to sink into the comfort of self-pity, but Esther Wachsman bears her grueling grief in the mawkish glare of the public. Think of it: a woman  who had never before faced an audience suddenly finds herself in the middle of Madison Square Garden as the keynote speaker in front of 10,000 rapt listeners.
    Would 10,000 people have come to hear her talk about the ordinary joys of motherhood?
    There is the indelicate question of why someone would travel the world and stand in the spotlight to talk about personal tragedy. The reason is itself extraordinary.
    Esther and her husband Yehuda look like "typical" Orthodox settlers (they're not; they live in Ramot), and for a couple that has lost a son to terrorism, it should be easy to guess their message: the need for a secure Greater Israel cleansed of those evil Palestinians.
    Not quite.
    The Wachsmans preach tolerance and coexistence. Yes, neighborliness with the people who barbarically killed their son. They've established a center for understanding and tolerance, in Nahshon's name.
    To underscore the message, Yehuda did something for peace more astoundingly gutsy than you'll ever see from a Nobel prizewinner: he shook the hand of Sheikh Bader Yassin, whose son murdered his.
    Only after Yassin agreed to Yehuda's preconditions -- that Yassin denounce terrorism and state that his own son deserved to die for his crimes -- the two men met in mutual respect a year after the murder. They issued a joint statement and have continued to maintain contact. Both men endured the rancor of some of their countrymen -- Yehuda was bodily thrown out of a synagogue, Yassin received death threats and was shot at -- but for many others, their gesture was the pinnacle of courage.
    Yehuda is an independent thinker, one of those rare Israelis who sees matters not in terms of right and left, but right and wrong. He weighs with wisdom, adjudges with justice.
    "My husband's the cerebral one; I'm pure emotion."
    Much of Esther's persona is the product of "second generation syndrome"; her parents survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Esther was born in a German DP camp. "I was typical of the 'second generation': I had to be perfect, I had to excel, I had to make up for everything they lost. I was their Great White Hope."
    And then, she gave her parents an imperfect grandson.
    "They went into total denial. I was brought up in a family where things were hidden, nothing was ever said, everything was always OK, I was never allowed to be unhappy or depressed because 'What do you have to be depressed about!' So for me to have this baby, it was traumatic: I had an imperfect child? This can't be, I'm the perfect person!"
    Yehuda reacted to the social worker's suggestion with white rage. He told Esther, with eerie prophecy: "This is our child, and he's growing up in our home, with our love. What if something ever happens to one of our other children, will we abandon him too?"
    The emergence from the closet was difficult and painful, but the family learned a lesson when one day, Raphael's twin stood up to the taunts of other children in a playground. "God made him like this, and you laugh at him? You should thank God he's not your brother." He was only four years old.
    Family life revolves around Raphael's needs, but they have help. Shalva, a marvellous volunteer organization that cares for handicapped children, has been like a second family for Raphael. The Wachsmans' appreciation is mutual: in May, Shalva honored Esther as its Humanitarian of the Year, and lined up Jeanne Kirkpatrick to present the award in New York.
        In conversation with Esther, one is struck by the quick transition of her expressions from cheery to melancholic. When she swings back, her eyes may still be moist when she is smiling luminously again. It's a bit like a rollercoaster ride in a sun-shower. 
    We all have ups and downs, but not like the Wachsmans:
    Twins of whom one is severely retarded, the other, classified as intellectually gifted;
    The drawn-out murder of a son followed by the weddings of two others and the bar mitzva of a fourth, all within six months;
    Tribute and tribulation: the day Esther was supposed to fly to the US for the Shalva ceremony -- and a week after her granddaughter was born -- she got word that her father had just died.
    How does a person endure all this?
    How does a mother bury one son, then marry off another?
    "I put on my wedding mask. These are my sons -- I'm very happy for them. And I smile and I laugh and I sing and I dance. And then I go to the bathroom, and I cry. And then I come back and I dance some more." And she is smiling and laughing and crying as she says it.