An Aside From My Trip Directly: RIP Teddy Kennedy, Israeli Style

During a break from class today, I learned that Senator Edward M. Kennedy had passed away, and it has been occupying much of my thoughts today as I prepare for a final exam tomorrow. Hence, I have obviously been very busy. I can report now that the Ulpan is almost over -- it will be completely over in about 12 hours. I still have more to tell you all about it, though; I will get to that once the end has allowed me to relax.

For the time being, I wanted to share a write-up by M.J. Rosenberg that remembers The Lion of the Senate through a little-told story about the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin. I felt it was appropriate for this blog. Here is his post in full:

It is a small part of his great legacy but it should not go unmentioned that Ted Kennedy was one of the few senators who rarely, if ever, yielded to the pressure to join the Israel-is-always-right caucus. The mindless jingoism of his colleagues was not his way (nor is it John Kerry's) and when he addressed the Israeli-Palestinian issue, he was compassionate and even-handed. He was not your standard "liberal on everything but Israel" type.

Professor Leonard Fein from Boston (of Americans for Peace Now) -- who has spent a lifetime struggling for Middle East peace -- offers this beautiful remembrance of Ted Kennedy today. He describes a small incident in Kennedy's long life but one that tells us a lot about the man.

"On the morning of the day before the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, Senator Ted Kennedy called the White House to inquire if it was appropriate to bring to the burial some earth from Arlington National Cemetery. The answer was essentially a shrug: Who knows? Unadvised, the senator carried a shopping bag onto the plane, filled with earth he had himself dug the afternoon before from the graves of his two murdered brothers. And at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, after waiting for the crowd and the cameras to disperse, he dropped to his hands and knees, and gently placed that earth on the grave of the murdered prime minister.

No spin, no photo op; a man unreasonably familiar with bidding farewell to slain heroes, a man in mourning, quietly making tangible a miserable connection."

Miserable it is. But how much more miserable it would be if we never had these heroes at all?