By Esther Korson<\/p>\n
We lost one of our heroes last week, a man by the name of Meir Har Zion. Whenever that happens, even though I know it is someone who will be remembered, I always feel sad, because the world feels a little emptier somehow. Meir was one of the legendary IDF fighters in the early days of the State and passed away Friday at the age of eighty. He was one of the founders of the historic 101 unit led by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that conducted innumerable retaliatory raids against terrorists in the mid-1950\u2019s, for which Ben Zion was decorated with the medal of valour. After having been seriously injured while serving as the commander of the paratroopers, he later returned to the army to establish the elite Sayeret Tzanhanim, the famed recon unit. Top military figures past and present attended the funeral. Monday, where Prime Minister Netanyahu praised Meir Har Zion for his legacy of courage.<\/p>\n
I read an interesting blog for \u201cThe Times of Israel\u201d written by Marc Goldberg called \u201cBurying our Heroes\u201d. He told the story of how Meir Ben Zion changed his life. As Marc explained, \u201cI remember walking through the corridors of a new school, a tiny, newly bar mitzvah\u2019d \u2018man\u2019 looking for his place in the world. The school was so big and I was so small. I knew no one and no one knew me. In class I always sat by the window and watched the world outside, wishing that I was out in it instead of stuck in a classroom\u2026in a place instead where I could feel as if my life had meaning. A place beyond the grey clouds of London, a place beyond the uncertainty of being a Jew in a world where a Jew was nothing to be proud of, a guilty secret grudgingly admitted to only when asked\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
It brought me back to my childhood in a second. Even though I have spent more than half of my life in Israel, I grew up in Massachusetts as a Jewish minority in a Gentile country. I was very shy as a child, and therefore hated anything that made me \u2018different\u2019. I hated having to wear glasses and I hated being Jewish. Many times I was beaten up on my way to school by children who called themselves Christians and who blamed me as a Jew for the death of Jesus. They would form circles around me and tauntingly call, \u201cDirty Christ killer! Dirty Christ killer!\u201d I hardly knew what they were talking about, but I hated the way I was treated because I came from a Jewish background! I grew up thinking that being Jewish was something terrible. So in every way I could relate to what Marc was describing!<\/p>\n