Princess Leia and Our Only Hope
I learned perhaps the most important lesson of my career at a funeral while I was still in school. A well-known rabbi in the community had died, and, adding to what was already a tragic situation, his younger son had died six months earlier—both deaths sudden and wholly unexpected. And so when the community gathered for the rabbi’s funeral, in the same room we had sat months earlier, it was with the tacit understanding that our mourning, our empathy for the family, was not limited to the rabbi’s death. This was explicitly and wisely stated by the officiating rabbi, who began the ceremony by saying, “there are two arons, two coffins, in the sanctuary this morning.” That statement provided a sense of relief that was palpable in the congregation. By saying what we all were feeling, he validated our emotions and gave them permission to occupy space among us.
I value the message that providing validation for feelings is not only appropriate, but necessary, and it is something that I seek to do personally and professionally. But the lesson that I took that morning went deeper than the importance of validation.
We do not experience anything in a vacuum. We come with experience, both personal and communal. We respond to the present reality with all of the wisdom, joy and pain that defined our past.
This reality came to me twice on Wednesday, in two situations that could not be more different, but which both illustrate the weights that we carry with us.
It will not come as a surprise that I was devastated at the death of Carrie Fisher. To revert to the character that made her a household name, Princess Leia was my childhood hero—in fact, Princess General Leia Organa, remains a hero of mine as an adult. For a certain generation, Princess Leia redefined “princess.” She wore no crown, and she got her hands dirty. She did not need to be saved by a prince. She did not need to be saved at all, just ask Jabba the Hutt. Star Wars was the backdrop to my childhood—Princess Leia was a new generation of woman. We, the girls of the 1980’s, needed her.
On a very personal note, my daughter was in part named for the character. When we were researching the name “Maya,” we learned that it had meanings in many cultures. In Arabic it means princess. And everything fell into place. My grandmother’s middle name in Hebrew was Leia.
Of course our daughter would be Princess Leia.
Princess Leia didn’t die this week. Carrie Fisher did. And just as we were digesting the news that we had lost this brilliant writer and courageous advocate for mental health, the unthinkable happened. We lost her mother. If Debbie Reynolds had died a few months ago, it would have been a national story. “America’s Sweetheart” acted in roles that spanned seven decades, and starred in some of our most beloved classics. But now there is a different narrative. Two individual stories that are so interconnected that they cannot be separated, even in death. We encountered the death of Debbie Reynolds through the lens of the death of Carrie Fisher. This juxtaposition poignantly illustrates the lesson “there are two arons—two coffins—in the room.”
Yet the experiences that we associate with one another need not be linked by time. Memory is complicated. For people of a certain generation, national tragedy will necessarily conjure the Kennedy assassination. One tragic, shared, national experience informs another. And this is true on an individual level as well. For this I use the example of my mother, who lost her father in her early 20’s. That is not a particularly common experience, and carrying it often left her isolated. She was the only one of my friends’ parents who stayed for yizkor on Yom Kippur. She knew loss in a way that none of her friends could imagine. Years later, when the experience was becoming common in her cohort, a friend mentioned that she had never understood what it meant to lose a parent. She apologized for not understanding. For not making it a priority to pay shiva calls. My mother never misses an opportunity to go to a shiva house, to be there in a moment from which so many others seek to avoid.
Her entire adult life has been through the lens of losing a parent–she carries his coffin when she encounters any loss. This also invites her to bring an unmatched sympathy and compassion to friends as they lose their own parents.
I never knew my grandfather. But just as Maya carries a powerful middle name that represents his wife, I carry a powerful middle name in his memory. My grandfather’s name was Howard.
My middle name is Hope. No, it is not a reference to Star Wars Episode IV, rather a prayer offered by two people who had come of age in the late 1960’s. They had seen the world at its ugliest, but also recognized its beautiful potential. And, in what is, to me, is too extraordinary to be a coincidence, “hope,” is a national motto of the modern state of Israel.
HaTikvah, the national anthem, recalls the communal hope of 2000 years—to be a free people in our land. And even in the presence of this reality, hope remains a theme of Israel. The majority of Israelis hope for a day when the country knows peace. They—and we—might disagree on how to best arrive at this peace, but, as the late President Peres said at the age of 90, “After everything I have seen in my life, I earned the right to believe that peace is attainable.” As Jews, given everything we have seen in our lives and everything we have inherited through our collective memory, this statement must be true for us as well.
I believe that peace is attainable. I do not know how to achieve it. We need to hope that peace is possible. I think that this was the power of the Two-State solution. It depended on the hope of peace, shared by Israelis and Palestinians alike. For many years, the potential of a solution served as a road map for living side by side, even though the details for a permanent peace could not be agreed upon.
I have always supported the idea of a two-state solution. But, I have never believed that it would work. This is not a political statement, rather a pragmatic one. I am reminded of the words of Winston Churchill—“democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others…” That is how I’ve felt about the Two State solution—it’s not a good solution, but it is the best that we have and for that reason alone it is worth supporting.
I am well versed in the history of the region, and generally in favor of the concept of swapping land for peace. Yet I come with a personal history that makes negotiations difficult. I have lost friends to terrorism. I have lived in Israel during an Intifada. This is no way makes me unique, indeed the opposite is true. Every Israeli, and I’d venture to say many American Jews, have personal accounts of loss at the hands of the Palestinians. As a nation and as a Jewish people, we also have the burden of our collective losses—those whose memories have become larger than life, such as Yonatan Netanyahu. Because of this, because we always bring a coffin into the room, our emotions overwhelm our logic. Each new tragedy is paired with everything that we experienced before, intensifying our reactions. And the same is true for Palestinians. No family is untouched by tragedy and depravation.
For Benjamin Netanyahu to claim that he hopes for a peaceful coexistence with Palestinians while actively promoting the building of settlements in the West Bank feels disingenuous. That said, I do not believe that settlements in the West Bank are the greatest obstacle to peace, and was frankly confused and concerned by Secretary Kerry’s remarks this week in the aftermath of the UN resolution last week.
How can we ever reach a peace agreement with this painful, complicated history?
And that is where I return to hope. For 2,000 years we hoped for a return to Zion. This generation’s hope must be for a peaceful existence in Zion. Last week I taught the idea that we do not rely on miracles. We act whenever, wherever and however we can, and perhaps, in partnership, we may receive a bit a Divine help. The same must be said for hope.
Hope must be paired with action, challenging us to set aside real emotions for the sake of a better future. We visit Israel, not only to experience the land that spans the ages, but also to show our support. We study the present situation, remaining vigilant in our declaration that the State of Israel has the undeniable right to exist. Indeed, as I said over the High Holidays, I truly believe that the world needs Israel. Israel is a consummate reminder that greatness can be achieved—even by a minority group in living in the shadows of genocide. Israel’s stated commitment “to ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex…guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture…,” while not always fully realized, must serve as a model for the world.
We are standing on the threshold of a new year. Many have commented that they are eager to turn the page; that this year has contained to much tension, hatred and sorrow. There is no reason to believe that this year will be better than the last. But there is hope. Hope is required for perseverance. Perseverance is required for peace.
A long time ago, in a (fictional) galaxy far, far away, a young Princess Leia turned to the wise Obi Wan Kenobe. “Help us…you’re our only hope.” But as we learned through the Star Wars films, Obi Wan was not the only hope for the people. Others —including Princess Leia herself– rose to the challenge. They used the force within them, partnered with indefatigable hope, to persevere.
We cannot rely on hope, but we cannot survive without it.