[This is a special guest post written by Anna Geifman, Professor of History at Boston University, to commemorate the second anniversary of the death of Philip Musko. -MS]

Philip's grandfather, Israel Musko, was an engraver from Vilna. When he apprenticed for his trade in the mid-1930s, his teacher made sure that every tiny line the young man etched was perfect. Even the slightest inaccuracy had to be redone -- until his hand became completely steady and every little stroke was flawless. The engraver's line, so precise, drawn umpteen times on metal or stone, carved a parallel trace in his soul. From his trade Israel learned about choice: among various alternatives -- now and then glaringly different, at other times barely distinct from one another -- man must opt for the one which is strictly faithful to his unique life line, harmonious to who he is, and demarcating the path which is unmistakably his own.

Israel Musko's life-long commitment to the right choice was part and parcel of that unfathomable inner dynamic his family knew as his "Jewish soul". Dogmatic adherence to religious Law and the rituals did not define his Jewishness. Since the outbreak of the Second World War, when he was a soldier in the Polish army, he had not observed the mitzvot his parents had taught him as a child. Yet, as an eighty-year old man, he read from the Torah at his grandson's bar-mitzva with an ease and a clarity that revealed someone who, despite decades of living in an atheist environment, had retained the core of his learning as a heder boy. He might have been aware that the Hebrew root of the word "engrave" (חָקַק) is the same as in the word for the Torah laws (חוּ קים) -- etched on reality to underscore that to live in harmony with the existential arrangement is to reflect the underlying commandments, imprinted on the Jewish heart.² Not that Israel Musko enunciated the laws as the center of his being; yet, "one knows the Jewish soul when it reveals itself explicitly, glaringly, as it does with some people. His Jewishness was the essence of who he was--the connecting thread that ran through his entire life," says Israel's daughter Luba.

Luba Musko is the mother of Staff Sergeant Philip Musko, 21, of Ma'ale Adumim, who served as a paramedic in the 101 Paratrooper Brigade of the Israeli Defense Forces. He was killed on August 8, 2006 during a fierce exchange of fire between IDF soldiers and Hezbollah militants in the village of Dabel, in Lebanon.

Man's freedom to fashion his life out of conflicting alternatives, even -- perhaps especially -- in times of agonizing strife in the depths of his soul is intimated in the very first lines of Genesis. The indefinable "תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ", that primordial chaos or confusion, designates the pre-formative universal turmoil as the opening scene (and arguably a precondition) for a creative outcome. Creation begins with a conscious preference for harmony -- achieved via direct interaction with, and a wondrous refashioning of the primal pandemonium. To superimpose this cosmic picture onto the human condition is to assume that, likewise, the higher intervention is inbuilt in man's effort to resolve his personal predicament. This miraculous intercession indeed reveals itself as his awareness of a vital divine attribute conferred on humanity--the freedom to choose. As a consequence, we are commanded: "...I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life..."³ Bonded with tradition, Israel Musko would have been endowed with implicit knowledge of that Source which empowers man to opt for the guiding principles of being faithful to himself. As may also be his daughter, the embodiment of both turmoil and strength--in the bottomless sorrow of her laughing eyes, when she resolves: "Philip's death could not be better".

* * *

I read somewhere that grandparents, even more than parents, are the ones who pass the quintessence of their heritage to the young. Overstrained by their responsibility to convey the legacy to their children, parents sometimes project onto their sons and daughters their own sense of anxious, perhaps a bit obsessive obligation. They over-impose, causing resentment and rejection in their children, who naturally strive for something of "their own". Grandparents, on the other hand, are unburdened by any sense of urgent obligation and are frequently able to connect to young people without pressuring them, simply by sharing fortunes from their lives' treasure chests, filled to the brim with photographs, songs, and stories. They focus less on the tradition's form (i.e. its "whats" and "hows"). Intuitively, they reach for the deeper "whys". Grandparents enrich and shape the young lives in profound, unrevealed, and subtle ways, if their messages from bygone days have something important to say about the now and the always, If, in other words, their memories are not personal fetishes, used to venerate private experience; if, instead, they speak to (and of) the soul. The treasures that the old Vilna engraver shared with his only grandson Philip imparted knowledge about defining and staying on a path that one knows to be his own.

They had a very special relationship, the grandfather and the grandson, from the very beginning. When Philip was born in still-Communist Russia in 1984, Luba gave him his grandfather's family name because he was the only one who could keep it alive.⁴ As a young man, Israel Musko had lost his parents, two sisters, two brothers, and at least twenty-four other relatives in the Holocaust. He was the sole survivor, and his pain-filled battle for life--which entailed armed combat against the Nazis as a decorated Red Army soldier--eventually brought him to Moscow. He lived there for half-a-century, read Russian fluently, and wrote with faultless syntax -- reflecting his painstaking efforts with any type of inscription, be it on metal or on paper. But he always kept his heavy Yiddish accent, and his speech was punctuated with an occasionally awkward turn of phrase, lest one forgets that it is quite natural for a Diaspora Jew to be out of his element for as long as he continues his wanderings. Until, he reaches his Homeland, that is -- which the Musko-Eidlin family did finally in 1991.

The land of Israel was the focus of all for which the grandfather aspired for himself and for everyone he loved. It was the centerpiece of what he understood as personal fulfillment. At the time when thousands of Soviet Jews cringed with humiliation whenever anyone mentioned the name of the officially condemned and publicly despised "aggressive Zionist entity", for the elderly Musko every reference to the Jewish state was a moment of elation. His daughter smiles and recalls: "You should have seen his eyes twinkle when he read out loud clichés about the 'Israeli occupiers' denounced in Pravda headlines". Every success in Israel he celebrated with pride; any achievement was his own private triumph. He always dreamed and talked about going there. Whereas many apprehensive Jews in the USSR did everything to dissociate themselves from anyone they knew in Israel, he never missed a chance to show off his distant relatives who had made Aliyah before the war and had settled in Rehovot.

Not that this proud and brave man was desperate for a place of refuge, although his personal experience more than slightly insinuated that a Jew could be safe only in his own, well-protected home. He was not a helpless victim and did not think twice before smashing his factory first party secretary into a wall for calling him a zhid. Nor would this traditional, if non-observant, man employ the language of the Torah to justify settling the land of Israel as a mitzva, although in his eyes it was "naturally holy". For him, living in Israel was simply an indisputable axiom of the Jewish life. In the ongoing debate between secular and religious Zionists, his perspective was as intuitive as it was confident, and as uncontrived as it was astute.

The Musko-Eidlin family settled in Jerusalem. At the time of the Aliyah Zionist Israel Musko was seventy-four; his grandson, Zionist Philip Musko was seven. It might have taken Philip serious effort to find the Jewish state on the map, but this did not bother him in the least. While still in Moscow, this full-cheeked, cheerful six-year old, proud of his pseudo-military hat with a big red star, would stop in the middle of a crowded street, let go of his mother's hand, and, looking as if he were about to make everyone happy, announce in a loud voice: "Do you know who I am? I am a Jew!"

Somehow Philip managed not to develop that painful inhibition and uneasiness that was almost universal among Russian children in the Soviet and the perestroika periods. He was reserved but never apprehensive -- perhaps because he was always very tall and well-built, much bigger than children of his age and much more mature. Nor did he show a trace of anger or hostility, also common to Russian boys. His mom worried that he might grow up spineless because, although stronger than his peers, he would not fight, even when other kids punched him. He was sure he could stand up for himself and for him that was enough. "Every time the children had a bike race, Philip would take off full speed, quickly leave others behind and then, almost at the finish line, slow down, stop, and calmly look around, smiling. He had enjoyed the race, knew that he could finish first, but victory over others did not interest him in the least". To his grandfather's dismay, his little boy hardly qualified as a personification of Israeli toughness.

The relationship between Israel and Philip was not about special "quality times" or gifts, although when Philip's parents would pick him up from a Shabbat visit, the grandfather never failed to ask his wife: "Did you give him all he wanted?" Nothing came of their sincere effort to spoil this boy because he did not care much for things -- toys and later, when it would be typical for a teenager to start caring, clothes. They were just there for one another, he and his grandfather; it was a non-verbalized, deeply empathetic meeting of hearts. The only time Philip cried since he was very little was when his grandfather passed away in November 2005, nine months before Philip himself was killed.

At the age of eleven, he informed his mother and father that he had registered himself in the school of his choice. By that time Philip's parents were already accustomed to respecting the decisions of their self-reliant son because "they were real, lacking ulterior motives and reflecting who he was from very early age". Philip had excellent academic skills. Yet, while "not rebelling against authority on principle, he did not accept diktat and refused to follow directions blindly, if he did not see logic in them," remembers one of his teachers. It was of no use to urge him to pay attention to material that he felt he did not need and brushed off with his favorite English expression: "Big deal". Philip spoke and read English fluently, and anything else he decided was worth learning he studied thoroughly down to the last detail--exactly the way his grandfather approached his work. Neither of them cut corners.

190 centimeters in height and overweight at 120 kilograms at the age of seventeen, Philip grew up to be a gentle giant. He was exceptionally strong and lifted heavy weights. His large hands appeared clumsy but only until the moment one would see them at work, when they moved with elegance and agility as he busied himself with his favorite hobby, assembling elaborate multi-piece models of planes, tanks, and cars. For nine years he ignored his mother's hints that it might be a good time to quit playing the violin, which, she admitted, probably helped in developing his incredible fine-motor skills. "He would fix fragile objects, use threadlike parts, and nimbly manipulate minuscule pieces one could see only with a magnifying glass. When he was working on a project, the resemblance to his grandfather was amazing": he would be totally concentrated and utterly "focused on the line", absorbed entirely in his own delight, projecting quiet joy.

He was a very joyful boy; almost all of Philip's childhood photographs show his face radiant with laughter. He grew to be a happy, unassuming and genial young man, who was always making jokes, spirited and, despite his weight, neither lethargic, nor inert. He felt big. As teenager, he was embarrassed of his large body, which he would rather hide. He knew that he couldn't and redirected attention from himself to what he was doing. He was always occupied with an on-going project, which invariably emphasized the axis of his personality and its underlying trait -- not merely a desire but a genuine, habitual need to give. One of his teachers called it "active giving". Philip could never be generous enough, says his mother: to make himself happy on his birthday he gave presents. "His selflessness irritated me even," adds his father Zeev: in essence, Philip turned his entire being into a conduit of generosity, which he refined to perfection.

He was fourteen when he asked his mother for a book on first aid. He read it as if it were an adventure story, even though the textbook Luba bought was for adults aspiring to a medical career. As she went through a collection of his childhood drawings Luba found a picture, bearing an inscription: "To grandparents from Philip, three-and-a-half years old." The drawing featured an ambulance, which became his workplace when, at the age of fifteen, he passed a special course and became a volunteer at Magen David Adom (MaDA), Israel's national emergency medical service.

From the first day he sought to be a pro. While performing hands-on tasks he learned as much as he could from experienced adult volunteers. He read books on medicine. He completed MaDA programs in cardiology, pediatrics, reanimation, and trauma. He always took specialized courses. After his death, his mother found all of his diplomas and certificates -- "30 or 40 times as many as I have received during my entire life", she says. "An adult with child's face", he was uniquely mature and conscientious, confirms every medical volunteer who worked with Philip. He was hundred percent reliable, adds Luba, "exactly like his grandfather, who was a rock".

Israel's buoyant character has hardened into a rock during the Holocaust, which forever remained his open wound, even in the happiest times, even in Israel. In the last years of his life, he began every morning by listening to a cracked recording of the Yiddish songs his sister used to perform as an operetta singer in pre-war Vilna. The old man listened, and listened, and listened again to the youthful voice, hoping to make out a beseeching message after all those years of silence. The silence he understood: everyone Israel Musko had known in Jewish Vilna had been shot, or gassed, or starved to death. Not a soul alive could share his past; no one could say anything personally meaningful to him about his lost world. And every morning he listened to the recording, nursing an inkling that, hidden in the Yiddish lyrics, his sister's message might reveal that which was beyond the unspeakable finality of the common grave.

Can it be that with his anguish Israel Musko carved a throbbing line in the mind of his grandson and imparted him with the urgency to get to the bottom of what happened and what was left to do? Philip knew a great deal about his grandfather's Jewish world in exile. At home there were numerous books on the Holocaust; according to his mother, Philip read and re-read them till the pages began to fall out. And much more than he understood from the reading he could intuit by watching his grandfather take to a photograph repair shop not dozens, but hundreds of times the only picture he had managed to save -- that of his brother Yakov -- lovingly to revitalize his fading memories. Sharing his grandfather's life, a life built against the background of the catastrophe, Philip sought to understand how he fit into the story: to see with his own eyes how the Diaspora world perished, to grieve, and take it from there. So, he went to Poland for a two-week trip with a group of MaDA volunteers.

Auschwitz was his first contact with death. His father recalls that after Philip returned from Poland, he did not talk about what he had seen there. When the dead are anonymous, the name of every unidentified victim may be honored only with silence. But perhaps there was something more than sensitivity to the trivialization of tragedy in the young man's refusal to share details of his encounter with triumphant homicide. In Auschwitz, where the world of his grandfather was burnt to ashes, Philip declared his private war on death and did not want to pay tribute to the enemy by dwelling upon its utmost moment of glory. The experience provided focus and alerted him to what he had to do: the way to fight death was actively to affirm life.

His volunteering at MaDA now acquired a new meaning. He wanted to know everything there was to know about emergency medicine--every possible way to save a life. He kept reading "everything medical" he could get his hands on; this is when his excellent English came in handy. He was thrilled when his parents bought him the best stethoscope they could find. Philip identified himself with his emergency rescue efforts, says his father; "he simply did not separate himself from his job".

He rarely wore anything other than his MaDA uniform, even to school. There he scored an unbeatable record in the history of skipping classes, when they interfered with his ambulance work--long and multiple shifts days and nights. He was too busy for common teenage mischief, and "retrospectively, it seems as if he were in a hurry to accomplish as much as he could, as if he knew how little time he had", says Philip's Hebrew teacher and adds: "His short life reminds of a vector directed towards a single point". His studies were important only insofar as they contributed to his sole purpose, "for which Philip lived," says Rivka, an emergency nurse who worked side by side with him since he was fifteen. "He always laughed," this serious and strong-minded boy, she says fondly and describes Philip's happiest moment--when for the first time he cut the umbilical cord of a newborn: "His face glowed with infinite joy" at the appearance of new life.

While continuing his training in MaDA, Philip volunteered with the Civil Guard, where he used his emergency rescue skills when dealing with highway accidents. After he turned eighteen, he received permission to carry arms. One week he found a supply of drugs, discovered an underground weapon reserve, and arrested a suspected terrorist--his parents found out about all this from his Civil Guard commander years later; for Philip nothing he accomplished was such a "big deal".

He was about to be mobilized, and his dream was to be accepted into the elite IDF paratrooper task force, but the army would not assign him to a combat unit because of his weight. Over the period of four months, he lost twenty-four kilograms, ruining his gall bladder in the process. He had to go to the hospital. Four days after a long operation, he was back in the IDF recruitment office. This time, the army offered him a field paramedics' course.

Army paramedics are trained to make critical decisions and proceed with first aid surgery when doctors are not available in the line of fire. During very intensive training, they use human dummies equipped with computer programs to practice resuscitation techniques and other emergency procedures. The computers react to every faulty move: one imprecise motion and the soldier-trainee "killed" his "patient". Philip's grandfather would have understood this demand for perfection well.

When Philip joined the 101 Paratrooper Brigade as a paramedic "he was worth several doctors". He was a true "mur'al", which in Israeli army slang means that he loved his work to the point of obsession. Anything that had to do with field medical emergencies was of utmost importance to him; he remembered in detail the history of each wounded IDF soldier treated and evacuated under fire. Philip studied constantly because "he simply couldn't afford not to know how to behave in a particular situation," confirmed his friends among the medical personnel, who nicknamed him "Encyclopedia". General erudition aside, they respected and counted on him as an excellent diagnostician, prompt in identifying the injury, precise and fearless in treating even the most uncommon cases. "He just knew what he was doing", said his colleagues, and he "instilled trust, conveying the feeling that a patient is in confident hands". Medical workers argued over who would join Philip's team in the next mission.

He had not received combat military training and could have remained behind the frontlines; yet, there was no way to keep him away from the battlefield, where he knew he was most needed, relates the chief physician of the Paratrooper Brigade, who was Philip's commander for nearly two years. During counter-terrorist missions in Shechem and Ramallah he refused to wait for the wounded to be evacuated and provided emergency treatment in the most dangerous areas. By the time Hezbollah rockets hit residential neighborhoods in Haifa and the towns of northern Israel in the summer of 2006, he had acquired extensive experience in giving first aid under fire. Stationed on the border, he now tormented his officers with requests to be allowed to join the other paratroopers on their way into Lebanon. The commanders repeatedly denied his requests; Philip would not yield until he received permission to go to war.

In Auschwitz he had resolved to partake of the fight against death and, as a seventeen-year old, had designated death his eternal enemy. Like his grandfather, from whom Philip inherited the deep awareness of choice, he opted for the path of struggle rather than victimhood and armed himself with the expertise of a medical emergency professional to uphold life. Eventually, he would equip himself for great medical victories with the proficiency of a fully-trained physician, but as long as Israel Musko's life-long wrestling with the Holocaust merged into the new war against terror, Philip had to remain by his grandfather's side, at the frontline.

Can it be that the old meticulous craftsman and brave fighter also passed on to his grandson the knowledge of how to put one's life on the line? Certain of his skill, Philip tended to the wounded, devoted, caring and careful about every detail, like his grandfather at work -- only in the line of fire. The young craftsman worked silently, bent low and fully focused, scalpel hidden in his huge and dexterous hand like an engraver's carving knife -- only now the surface was not metal but blood-covered human flesh.

When Philip was on the way to his third volunteer mission in Lebanon, Luba said to him: "Grandpa took part in three major Russian offensives during the Second World War. Each time it was a bloodbath; Red Army soldiers were not spared, and one had to be killed not to be counted among the wounded. Grandpa was wounded three times and survived. So, don't be afraid". In the compelling connection between her father and her son Luba found an unfathomable source of strength for herself, as well as for Philip.

If he could not be a soccer player, announced eight-year old Philip, as a grownup he'd be a rabbi. On second thought, he decided that he'd simply become observant after he'd get married. For the present, he was quite happy with the highest school admission score of 98 in Talmud and with "just being Jewish". "...גַּם כִּי אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת" ("Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...") was the last thing his family expected him to quote at the end of his high school graduation speech. "לֹא אִירָא רָע--כִּי אַתָּה עִמָּדִי", the Psalm continues, ("I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me"), but Philip paraphrased it: "אני לא מפחד" ("I am not afraid"). As if at the age of seventeen he knew where he was going and calmly reported how he felt about his destiny.

He appeared really not to be afraid when treating the wounded under an avalanche of bullets, laughing off death with his famous "big deal". Those fighting at his side teased him for his ability to fall asleep peacefully during ten-minute rest stops and for violating safety regulations with his thunderous snoring. He made fun of himself, boasting that he lost nine kilograms during the first nine days of fighting; the war, he would say, benefited his health. He was indeed "a big man in every sense of the word: big in size, big in his soul, big in his gifts, and big in his death".

"Who can take away such a giant," cried his MaDA partner; "it would take a whole platoon of the angels of death". By making the decision to go to war, Philip did not surrender his own life to the mercy of his arch-enemy; on the contrary: his choice meant that he was the one who dictated the terms. So did his father, who volunteered to go to war four days after his son was killed, astonishing Philip's commander on a condolence visit to the Musko family. So did Katya, Philip's younger sister, now the only child in the family, who joined his 101 Paratrooper Brigade upon graduating from high school. So does Philip's mother, who turns the world over with her pain when she says that her son could not have chosen a better way to die. For Luba, his final choice is invested with profound meaning, invalidating any claim death has over his life.

"You've no idea how brilliant Philip is", his chemistry teacher said to his parents when he was in tenth grade. "His mind should not remain solely his; it should belong to the entire nation of Israel". It did, together with his exceptional professional skills, and all his time, all his effort, his body and his soul. The Hebrew phrase מסירות נפש (mesirut nefesh) best describes such all-embracing giving, the central line of Philip's life, from which he would not deviate a step.

Jewish tradition attributes very special significance to one's name. Its meaning is a bond between bygone and future generations, and its import is measured by what the human being has left behind in this world. To his heritage Philip owed the knowledge that a life does not begin with birth and does not really end, being intimately connected to the infinite story. His own line in our common story came out beautiful, all that generosity carving a perfect trace -- deeply in tribute to his grandfather and to his living name -- Israel.

--

^{1 [Title]} וְשָׁבוּ בָנִים, לִגְבוּלָם (Jeremiah, 31:16) I am deeply grateful to my friends Mark Sopher and Dr. Jeffrey Woolf for their suggestions and thoughtful editing of this essay.

² "The message and the medium are entirely one: the heart is nothing else than these" immutable fundamental laws. (Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz, Toronto)

³ Deuteronomy 30:19.

⁴ Philip's sister Katya received their father's name -- Eidlin.