When One Voice Is Missing

If the books of our lives were organized according to the Dewey Decimal System, an entire section of the Yaffe family library would be filed under one name:

If the books of our lives were organized according to the Dewey Decimal System, an entire section of the Yaffe family…

**Harlan.**

There would be books belonging entirely to Harlan—his interests, his travels, his friendships, and the life he built for himself.

Thankfully, there would also be many shared chapters.

The foreword: before Mom met Dad.

The story: when they married.

The plot twist: Dad became sick.

The plot thickens: ten years later, we were officially orphans.

The next books were the ones Harlan and I wrote ourselves.

But my favorite chapters were always the ones in which our paths crossed.

One shelf would hold memories of the years when Harlan and I participated in Jewish youth groups, traveled to regional and national conventions, attended leadership-training programs, and spent time with friends through USY, CRUSY, and Kadima.

Those experiences helped set the way.

Over the past 387 issues of this legacy blog, we have opened many of those imaginary books. Each week brings another chapter, another photograph, another memory—or another current event that immediately makes us wonder what Harlan would have thought and written about it.

This week, that event occurred at Central Synagogue in Manhattan.

During Friday-night Shabbat services on August 14, a man disrupted worship, violently assaulted a 63-year-old female congregant, spat on and headbutted a member of the security team, and damaged sacred Judaica—ceremonial candlesticks.

No one was seriously injured. The suspect was arrested and subsequently charged with state and federal hate crimes.

What I would have shared with Harlan in real time was what happened next:

**The congregation returned the following morning.**

The service continued.

The Torah was lifted high.

And from one of the loudest cities in the world came an even louder declaration:

**Am Yisrael Chai.**

**The people of Israel live.**

That response mattered.

It did not erase the fear. It did not excuse the hatred. It did not pretend that the violence of the outside world had not entered a sacred place.

Instead, the congregation answered darkness by creating more light.

They answered intimidation by gathering again.

They answered antisemitism by remaining visibly, proudly, and unmistakably Jewish.

Harlan would have written an entire article about the incident. He would have researched Central Synagogue’s history, its leadership, the people involved, and the long, painful history of antisemitism.

He would have connected the facts, challenged assumptions, and added context most of us had missed.

For this week’s legacy post, however, the story pivots back to Harlan in a much simpler and sadder way:

**What I miss most this week are Harlan’s ears—the ears I would have whispered this to.**

And then his voice—the voice that is absent at a moment when it needs to be heard.

During the years Harlan lived in New York, he had his own experiences with synagogues and Jewish communities. Later, after the Internet made geography less important, Harlan and I followed the services and leadership of congregations including Park Avenue Synagogue and Central Synagogue.

Even in Miami Beach, we sometimes found ourselves in a small Orthodox shul, helping to make a minyan together.

Different cities.

Different congregations.

Different approaches to Judaism.

**The same Torah.**

**The same people.**

**The same responsibility to stand together.**

This week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei, contains more commandments than any other Torah portion. Among them are instructions to protect the vulnerable, return what has been lost, pay workers fairly, and remember what happens when hatred attacks the weak from behind.

The Torah does not allow us to treat hatred as somebody else’s problem.

It tells us to remember.

It tells us to protect.

It tells us to act.

And it reminds us that memory is not passive.

**Memory carries responsibilities.**

That is also what we have tried to do through these 388 issues.

We remember Harlan by continuing to use the values and lessons he left behind. We raise his voice when the world needs more thought, more compassion, more knowledge, and more courage.

We cannot always prevent poison from entering the world.

But we can decide what we do with it.

We can turn the poison of antisemitism into education.

We can turn fear into solidarity.

We can turn absence into memory.

We can turn memory into action.

We can turn poison into medicine.

And we can answer hatred with something stronger.

As Bad Bunny recently taught the world:

**The only thing more powerful than hate is love.**

May the coming week bring healing to the congregant and security officer who were attacked, strength to the Central Synagogue community, safety to every person entering every house of worship...and the courage for all of us to keep lifting the Torah, lifting one another, and lifting our voices.

**Am Yisrael Chai.**

**Peace, Love & Equality For All!**

**Shabbat Shalom.**

*Hal & Peggy Jo*