SURPRISE SHLOSHIM

Rabbi Stewart Weiss’s reference to President Herzog’s observance of the 30-day mourning (shloshim) period for his recently deceased mother (“Can a Jews be ‘too’ Jewish?,” February 11) triggers a memory worth sharing.

My family arrived in Israel in 1985, at the point when Shimon Peres was completing the first year of his two-year period as a rotating prime minster with Yitzhak Shamir. A pivotal representative of the government during this period in which inflation was running rampant was finance minister Yitzhak Moda’i.

Moda’i was a liberal secularist who dressed more like a staid European than a laid-back Israeli. Unlike the then-standard local dress code of unbuttoned collars and sandals, the minister was never seen in anything other than a perfectly creased suit, matching shirt and impeccably knotted tie. Without a hair out of place, Moda’i presented himself very well in the high-profile position he held for several years.

Until one evening, that is, when he was seen in a TV interview with an unsightly growth of stubble covering his face, his hair in dire need of grooming and an altogether disheveled appearance. I was certain, initially, that he had taken ill, but then I remembered reading several weeks earlier a small item in The Jerusalem Post (I had not yet graduated to the Hebrew-language media) that the finance minister’s father had recently passed away. I realized that he was observing shloshim and, quite frankly, was more than a little surprised.

During my time in the US, it was common for non-religious Jews to sit shiva for a departed parent, but I cannot recall anyone other than the religiously observant adhering to the 30-day mourning period, not publicly anyway. I learned that in Israel there is no issue of being or appearing too Jewish.

The question, of course, is whether Moda’i (or Herzog, for that matter) would have been similarly respectful of a deceased parent had they been posted in, let’s say, Belgium or Canada. It’s more than likely that the two would have applied the saying “When in Rome...” and would have chosen not to make their Jewishness overly conspicuous. Truth be told, it is not unreasonable for officials of foreign governments to ask that Jewish public officials express evenhandedness regarding dual nationalities and loyalties. Responses are obviously individualized: Some will shrug resignedly and downplay public expressions of Jewishness, while others will defiantly support Jewish and Israeli perspectives whenever possible and as the need arises.

This should be a rallying call for aliyah: Israel, when push comes to shove, should be the ultimate destination of all Jews, regardless of which side of the hyphen their Jewishness lies.

BARRY NEWMAN

Ginot Shomron