Celebrating the Havdallah in Vukovar

From our interfaith journey to Macedonia and Croatia.

On Saturday evening we stood together in a circle holding candles flickering in the wind under a starry sky on a weathered wooden pier on the Danube River in the town of Vukovar as Rabbi Steve led us in the Havadallah, the traditional ritual to close of the Sabbath. Together we sang the traditional chorus. Then, holding high a glass of red wine, Steve spoke, in Hebrew and in English, the words of blessing of the wine, invoking the sweetness of the Sabbath.

Then we sang the same chorus with increasing confidence and he spoke the blessing of the spices as he lifted a bowl of spice high. Then we passed the cinnamon from hand to hand, its aroma reminding us again of the goodness of a Sabbath spent with God and loved ones. My heart was warmed by the growing bond with my fellow pilgrims on this journey – Muslim, Christian and Jew.

As Steve blessed the flame, reminding us of the illumination available to us on the Sabbath, I reflected that we were standing literally over the Danube, a mighty timeless river that has witnessed so many joys and sorrows, victories and defeats, triumphs and tragedies all occurring on this same site. I was also touched to be participating in a stream of tradition that flowed back through the centuries for probably 4000 years. I felt for a few moments an intense sense of connection to Jewish families closing the Sabbath by celebrating the Havdallah.

But it was as Steve began to sing the traditional song calling for Elijah to come to usher in the Messianic age of peace and the candles were snuffed out in the glass of wine that a wave of emotion swept over me. I recalled that earlier that day we had learned that there had once been Jews living in Vukovar but after World War II not a single Jew resided there. All were displaced or killed in the Holocaust. Then it hit me, this night, for perhaps the first time in 65 years, the Havdallah was being sung in Vukovar.

Finding Hope in Vukovar

This has been a day of emotional extremes. This afternoon we visited the memorial to the deaths of 261 wounded men, physicians and hospital staff who were removed from the hospital, after the fall of Vukovar in 1991, taken to a hangar in the country outside of town and systematically tortured and beaten before being executed and pushed into a mass grave.
The hangar where they were tortured and where four of the men were beaten to death has been transformed into a memorial. Photos of each of the men line the walls. They are illumined a few at a time in a seemingly random way and as they go dark others are illumined, reminding us all of how their lives were snuffed out prematurely by their captors. I thought of their pain and the pain of grandparents who would never see their grandsons in this world again, of parents still grieving six years later as the bodies of their sons were exhumed and finally laid to rest, of wives bereft of husbands, of sons and daughters who would never feel the strong arms of their fathers. I left the memorial almost overwhelmed with sadness at the senselessness of such suffering.

And then I thought, will it never end? There have been so many mass graves, so many atrocities, and so much brutality. But I did not contemplate the savagery of human beings as if I could hold myself aloof from such misshapen individuals and peer down at them from a position of superiority.

I know the violence of my own heart too well. The line between good and evil runs not along the boundaries between nations or tribes but down the middle of every human heart. An exaggeration, you say? Well then at least down the middle of this human heart.
I crossed the street from the memorial with arms crossed, head bowed, and eyes fixed firmly on the ground. All I could feel were a deep sadness and sense of near hopelessness. As I stepped onto the sidewalk across the street, I glanced up to look for our bus and saw instead that a field of dirt stretched away for hundreds of meters. I could not help but think “how appropriate” - a barren field across the street from the site of atrocities.

But then as I continued to stare woodenly at the field, I realized that I could see lively green shoots timidly poking up out of that dirt that my own mood had painted as barren. Those signs of life and hope brought to mind the hope filled stories of the morning – stories collected by Srdjan Antic of neighbor helping neighbor survive the war here without regard to their ethnicity.

Srdjan had also shared with us the work that he has done to bring about reconciliation between the rival factions in his society. He told of how his own transformation occurred almost eleven years ago at the ROM Leadership Development and Peace Gathering.

It was at ROM that he met people who did not even ask if he was Serb or Croat. Instead they greeted him with obvious acceptance without regard for his ethnicity. He told of how he went up to his room and turned to his friend and asked, “What is wrong with these people?” As the days passed he realized that they were just fine and it was he that was abnormal. He left ROM three weeks later determined to see others as fellow human beings, deserving of respect. He also began immediately to plan the first projects to bring that renewed mind to others.
Seeing those green shoots reminded me that in the midst of all the misery and pain, there will be hope as long as we commit like Srdjan to not accept the brutality of the status quo but to work to transform cultures of violence into cultures of peace.