Lori Klinghoffer of Short Hills, in Israel with a United Jewish Communities mission, attends the July 17 funeral of Ehud Goldwasser, whose body was returned to Israel the day before.
Photo by Bob Cumins/UJC
July 24, 2008
As the bodies of Israeli soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser reached home July 16, Lori Klinghoffer of Short Hills was touring Birkenau.
Klinghoffer, women’s philanthropy chair of national United Jewish Communities, had been on a campaign chairs’ and directors’ mission to Nazi concentration camps in Poland when the group received news of the grim exchange of the soldiers’ bodies for five Lebanese prisoners and the bodies of 200 Hizbullah militants.
A day later, she flew to Jerusalem, then on to Nahariya to attend Goldwasser’s crowded funeral service at the city’s military cemetery.
“The mood was very somber,” she told NJ Jewish News in a July 22 telephone interview from Tel Aviv. “It was of course a sad result, even though it was not unexpected — by us, by the Israelis, or by anyone — after this much time had gone by. I think there is some closure for these families now that they have buried their children, their husbands, in Israel.”
After the service, Klinghoffer spoke with Goldwasser’s widow, Karnit, who made several visits to New Jersey in the two years since her husband’s capture in July 2006.
“She was incredibly gracious and obviously felt it was her responsibility to stay on at the cemetery until everyone who wanted to express condolences had the opportunity to do so,” Klinghoffer said.
But the two women had no discussion of the controversy surrounding what some Israelis called a lopsided exchange.
“I did not discuss that with her,” said Klinghoffer, who is also a leader of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ. “All we did was express our condolences so that she and her family would know the connection to the North American Jewish community was strong.”
As Israelis debated the exchange, the deal prompted local Jewish leaders to express sympathy for the pain of the Israeli families, to acknowledge Israel’s difficult moral choices, and to push for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in the summer of 2006 just a few days before Hizbullah’s attack.
UJC president Gary Aidekman read the organization’s official statement on the exchange at a July 16 event in Montclair marking Israel’s 60th anniversary.
“We note that the Jewish values that define the nation of Israel dictate that it would do all possible to bring them home, even to make painful concessions,” read Aidekman. “We call for Shalit’s immediate release and for Hamas to act in a manner consistent with universal humanitarian standards before making demands on Israel or the West.”
The soldiers’ plight galvanized Jewish organizations and state politicians over the past two years.
In December 2006, local and national lawmakers joined Jewish community leaders and more than 100 spectators at a news conference in Scotch Plains intended to focus attention on their plight.
NJ State Sen. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Dist. 21) introduced a resolution calling for the release of the soldiers. U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-Dist. 7) was also vocal on the issue.
The news of the exchange prompted mixed feelings for Gabrielle Flaum, the Millburn teenager who founded SOS: Save Our Soldiers, a youth advocacy group for the MIAs.
“There is definitely a possibility that Shalit will be released,” said Flaum, speaking to NJJN by phone from Camp Eisner in Great Barrington, Mass., where she is working as a counselor. “If we can have this negotiation, another one can possibly happen.”
She called the return of the soldiers’ bodies “a huge step against the terrorists. Something happened. We fought against injustice, and the bodies were returned. There is finally closure for these poor families. They know what happened to their loved ones, and that is really the most important part of what has happened.”
Eighty Jewish teenagers from across the United States and Canada on a tour of Israel abandoned plans for a day of outdoor activities in order to pay their respects at the Goldwasser home in Nahariya July 16. The teens are in Israel to take part in The Jerusalem Journey, a program of the Orthodox Union’s National Council of Synagogue Youth.
“Watching on television was the catalyst. It was not a day for hiking or biking, but to connect with the Jewish people because the country was in mourning,” TJJ director Rabbi Barry Goldfischer told Arutz-7 in Israel. Goldfischer lived in West Orange before making aliya.
To Klinghoffer, there was a grim irony connected with her experiences in Poland and Israel.
As her group toured the concentration camp at Auschwitz, she happened to stand next to the mission’s scholar-in-residence, Deborah Lipstadt, an author and a professor of Holocaust studies at Emory University in Atlanta.
“She picked up a bone fragment off the ground in Auschwitz and handed it to me,” said Klinghoffer. “She said, ‘Bring it home to your rabbi and give this a proper Jewish burial.’ Then I went to the funeral in Nahariya.
“At least these boys had the opportunity for a proper Jewish burial.”
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