Uri Grossman, a Symbol Indeed

August 23, 2006 - 3:54 PM by Allison

Lisa recounts how she heard the news of the death of Uri Grossman, the son of writer David Grossman:

A friend who is married to a well-known Israeli literary figure phoned me mid-morning on August 13 to ask, in a voice that cracked a bit, if I had heard the news. No, I answered. Who was it? (because between July 12 and August 15 every sentence that began with “have you heard?” meant that someone we knew, either directly or by one degree of separation, had been killed). Grossman’s son, she answered. It was Uri Grossman. I had to tell you, but please promise you won’t mention it to anyone. His parents haven’t contacted his older brother yet, he’s backpacking in South America, and the news won’t be published until they find him and tell him.

So I walked around for the next 10 hours with the heavy knowledge that the son of David Grossman, one of Israel’s most famous and beloved authors, had been killed in battle only a few days after his father, together with Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, published in Haaretz newspaper an open letter that called upon the government to negotiate a ceasefire with Hezbollah.

I was in a taxi, on my way to meet my friend Chani, when the news was released at the end of the 8.00 p.m. news broadcast, as is the custom. In a netural voice the announcer recited the names of all the young men who had been killed that day, ending with, “It is now permitted to announce that the name of the twenty-fifth soldier who was killed yesterday is Uri Grossman, 20, son of the author David Grossman. That is the end of the news, from the Voice of Israel.”

Later I found out that at least five acquaintances who work in the Israeli media had known about Uri’s death all day, but not one of us had mentioned it. I told one friend that I was really touched by this show of respect. He looked at me strangely and said, “It’s basic, no?”

Lisa translates the eulogy the famous father wrote for his son and explains why it meant so much to Israelis:

Grossman simply knows how to express what we are feeling. So when his son died, we thought about all the people we knew who had been killed or badly wounded over the last month, and we identified with him because we knew so many grieving families and friends of dead soldiers who were going through the same pain. Because this is a small country, and everyone knew someone who had received an emergency call up notice for combat duty in Lebanon, or someone who had died or been injured, or someone who had lost a loved one. And I knew a lot of people who responded without hesitation to those call up notices, even though they were ambivalent about the way the war was being directed and even though they left behind jobs and small children. And we knew David Grossman would express our inarticulate thoughts, which is what he did in the eulogy he wrote for Uri.

Go read it here.

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