“All the truly courageous people I’ve known are those who spent their lives valuing character over accomplishment”

T

he events at Bondi Beach have given rise to many conversations about courage, including an excellent piece in the New York Times by David French, “Bravery and Cowardice are both exemplary teachers.”

Of courage there was plenty. The best-known video from the shootings is of a middle-aged, Syrian-born man, Ahmed al-Ahmed, who snuck up unarmed behind one of the two shooters and wrested his gun from him. He simultaneously performed two crucial functions: He took one of the shooters temporarily out of commission for decisive moments, and thereby likely saved many lives. And second, he demonstrated the error of lumping together all Muslims, or all Muslims from Middle Eastern countries, and arguing that none can make good citizens in Western democracies.

Apparently, Ahmed al-Ahmed was aided by an Israeli living in Australia, Gefen Bitton, whose phone showed that he had rushed to the heart of the danger in an effort to distract the shooter and make it possible for al-Ahmed to sneak up on him from behind. Bitton is still in critical condition, after being shot multiple times.

At least three Jews were murdered in attempts to fight with the shooters. Boris Gutman, 69, succeeded in wresting away the gun of one of the shooters, only to be shot and killed, along with his wife, Sofia, when the shooter retrieved another gun. Reuven Morrison deliberately walked around in the open to draw fire away from other Jewish celebrants rushing to take cover, and was later seen throwing a brick at one of the shooters. He, too, was killed.

Jessica Rozen, expecting her third child, grabbed a three-year-old girl, who was momentarily unattended when the shooting broke out, and lay on top of her to shield her from bullets, while repeating in a remarkably calm voice, “I got you. I got you. I got you,” over and over. “No one is going to hurt us, okay?”

The girl’s father later thanked Mrs. Rozen for saving his daughter’s life, but she denied she was a hero, insisting that “any mum is going to do that.”

Chaya Dadon, 14, climbed from under a bench where she had taken cover and grabbed two children and sheltered them with her body, while reciting Shema with them. When interviewed from the hospital at which a bullet was removed from her leg, she said that she felt Hashem whispering in her ear, “Go save those kids,” and that she had made up her mind to do so, even at the cost of her own.

DAVID FRENCH quotes British theologian C.S. Lewis’s definition of courage: “[Courage is] not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.” By which I think he means that one cannot possibly know whether the lives of his loved ones — or even those of complete strangers, as was the case with many of the Bondi Beach heroes — is dearer than one’s own, or whether one really holds the beliefs he professes (e.g., the willingness to sacrifice one’s own life in a case where kiddush Hashem requires it) until that love or those beliefs have been tested by one’s courage.

Most of us hope we would pass the test of giving our lives if saving those of our children, or spouses, or parents required it, or that we would profess our belief in Hashem, even with the sword on our necks, as hundreds of thousands of Jews have done throughout history. But who can be sure until put to the test?

That is why for so many soldiers the experience of combat is the high point of their lives: They passed the courage test in circumstances unimaginable for anyone who has never seen combat — the overwhelming noise that makes thinking all but impossible, the knowledge that one’s life depends, in many cases, less on one’s skill and training than on whether one’s name is on a particular bullet or not.

How did those troops lowered into the water offshore at Omaha Beach manage to put one foot after the other, as they came under unrelenting German fire from pillboxes on the cliffs above and saw their comrades falling on every side?

One of those soldiers at Omaha Beach was Lieutenant Meyer Birnbaum. (A younger brother was killed in the same landing.) Nearly seventy years later, at the age of 88, he was at Jerusalem’s Bikur Cholim Hospital for a medical appointment, when he saw smoke coming out of the building. After locating a fire extinguisher, he plunged into the fire to put it out. When his son, Rabbi Akiva Birnbaum, asked him later what had led him to do something so dangerous, he replied that he was thinking of the pain of all those whose medical records might have been lost.

From Lieutenant Birnbaum’s example we learn two things. First, having discovered in oneself the capacity to act courageously, it is easier to do so the next time circumstances demand it. That does not mean courage in one realm necessarily transfers to another or provides the power to conquer one’s yetzer hara. The career of Ehud Barak, Israel’s most decorated soldier, proves that. But having placed one’s life in jeopardy once makes the next time easier. Second, the capacity to identify with others and their real or potential loss often serves as the source of courage.

FRENCH MAKES ANOTHER instructive observation: “All the truly courageous people I’ve known are those who spent their lives valuing character over accomplishment.” Great ambition or the sense of being destined for “great things” can be the enemy of courage.

I think I know what French is talking about. When the Six Day War broke out, I was a 16-year-old, tooling around my leafy suburb in my father’s convertible, and wondering why I was leading an almost carefree life, with few worries beyond acne and finishing my Harvard application, while Jewish boys little older than I were risking their lives.

I did not have a good answer, but neither did I enlist in the IDF when I turned 18. I consoled myself that when I became president I would do so many good things that it would be a pity to get killed before even starting college. (Forgive me, I was young.)

That is what French meant about accomplishment being the enemy of courage: “An emphasis on accomplishment can actually breed cowardice. Courage can cost you your career. Courage can cost you your life. And so, the careerist learns to adapt, to hide when the bullets (real or figurative) start to fly.”

In that vein, I experienced profound embarrassment, the embarrassment of mediocrity confronting greatness, when many years later I read the Letters of Jonathan Netanyahu. Yoni, of course, was the commander of the Entebbe rescue and the only IDF soldier to fall in that operation. He was very bright, athletic, and handsome, someone already spoken about as a future chief of staff. And yet his immense potential never led him to push off present responsibilities and dangers to ensure some brighter future.

A vignette in Miles Away... Worlds Apart by Alan Sakowitz, an observant attorney in North Miami Beach, revealed the error in my youthful excuse making. Sakowitz was the whistleblower on a massive Ponzi scheme, at great danger to himself. The author of that Ponzi scheme had extensive connections with all branches of law enforcement in Fort Lauderdale and with every major politician in Florida. In addition, at least one attorney in his office had already been murdered.

When Sakowitz blew the whistle, his family had to leave the state and go into an FBI witness-protection program. What gave him the courage to act as he did? The answer lay in a family vacation he took with his parents and brothers to Mexico City in his younger days. They saw a gang of young men pounding a man on the sidewalk across the street. Alan’s father, Theodore, did not hesitate before rushing across the street in the direction of the gang, who, to his son’s amazement, took flight. Later, Theodore explained why he had acted as he had: “Unless today is well-lived, tomorrow is not important.”

Nor was that the only example of courage that inspired Alan to act as he had. (Another rule: Courage inspires courage.) His father-in-law Benzion Leibowitz developed a plan to escape from the Nazi work camp in which he was interned. His chances of success were far greater if he escaped alone. But he felt he could not leave others behind, especially when Jews were dying from the brutal work or being shot for falling behind in their work quotas. So he shared the plan with others, who escaped with him.

IN THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH of the Bondi Beach shootings, Liel Leibowitz wrote an essay in Tablet magazine called “The People of Forever Are Not Afraid.” In it, he lists many of those who came to wipe out or enslave the Jews and who are no more today. And he confidently predicts that Klal Yisrael will carry on after Bondi Beach, if anything stronger, more determined than before: “We’ll mourn the dead, we’ll comfort the afflicted, we’ll carry on. It’s been millennia now; we’ve gotten good at it.” That’s why he calls us the “forever people.”

We will do so because “we draw our courage and our resolve from that ancient covenant that charges us, always and forever, to spread G-d’s light and love to a benighted, blood-soaked world.” As an example of renewed resolve in the face of attempts to make us afraid, he cites the Simchat Torah Challenge, which encourages Jews to come together and read the weekly Torah portion together, and which has drawn tens of thousands of Jews so far and continues to grow rapidly.

To tell the truth, when I first read the essay, I thought it was mostly bluster. Yes, we have always survived, in the long run, as a solitary lamb among seventy wolves. But how does that solve the quandary of Jewish parents who have to decide whether to let their sons wear their kippot in the street or whether to send their children to easily identified Jewish schools?

But like many of my initial thoughts, I’ve decided that that first reaction was wrong. Being part of an eternal people does make it easier for us not to cower and to conduct ourselves with courage. Knowing that we are descended from an unbroken chain of ancestors who passed the various tests to which they were subjected does make a difference for us, and provides us with models.

The ability to act with great bravery, even to the point of sacrificing one’s life, is the result of identifying with something bigger than oneself. That is what drives a soldier to throw himself on a live grenade to save all those in his unit. It is what drove one of the sons of Mattisiyahu, Elazar, to sacrifice his own life in order to remove one of the Seleucids’ war elephants.

And surely the decision to act bravely and to risk one’s own life is made easier by the knowledge that it will not be in vain, and that the Jewish People will ultimately prevail when our enemies are no more.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1093. Yonoson Rosenblum may be contacted directly at rosenblum@mishpacha.com)