Ceremony at Conservative Synagogue in Lima, Peru, Tues. 7 October, 2008

No sign or plaque identifies the low, gray buildings that house "La Asociacion de Beneficiencia y Culto de 1870," the Conservative Synagogue in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima. Before entering you are screened through a one-way mirror, and you must pass through two security doors. Once beyond the barriers, you are in a spacious, attractive facility, well-maintained but not lavish or over-impressive - pleasant and comfortable.

In the early evening, two days before Yom Kippur, we held a small reception in the synagogue auditorium (not the sanctuary), attended by Rabbi Guillermo Bronstein, several other members of his community, the staff of the Israeli Embassy in Lima, and two high officers of the High Mountain Rescue Unit of the Peruvian police force, along with one of the men from the unit in Arequipa. They had never been in a synagogue before and had no idea what the building was.

We held the reception there because the World Council of Conservative Synagogues had helped us handle contributions made in Asher's honor, and we were concerned with emphasizing the Jewish and Israeli aspects of our project.

The Rabbi and I both spoke briefly. I spoke in Hebrew, and the Rabbi translated sentence by sentence into Spanish.

Afterward we showed the film that Ofer and Lael Kline made about the search for Asher and the ultimate discovery of his body, emphasizing the devotion and self-sacrifice of the members of the High Mountain Rescue Unit.

I had just arrived in Peru that morning with our daughter Hannah, and we had spent most of the day arranging to receive the funds that we had transferred to the synagogue. We ultimately received just short of $10,000 in cash, and I was extremely nervous about carrying that much money around me in the streets of a city that I imagined to be full of thieves.

The following day, Ofer was due to go shopping with Robert Grandez, the commander of the rescue unit, for equipment that will help the men do their jobs better. In my short speech, I said that the fact that Asher had died in Peru had created a connection between us and the country, a painful connection, but also one of gratitude. I explained that the contributions were not from us personally, but that many of our relatives and friends had contributed generously to this cause, and we hoped that this equipment would help the rescue unit to do its job better on behalf of all other tourists in Peru.

This was the first step in implementing the plans we had been making in the previous months.

If such a ceremony had been held in the United States or in Israel, someone would have made sure that there was press coverage, but it seemed rather clear that the Jews of Lima are interested more than anything in remaining inconspicuous.

It takes a long time to get from Israel to Peru. Hannah and I left for the airport at eleven in the morning on Monday and arrived in Peru at seven the following morning. As usual, before a trip, I was extremely nervous, reluctant to go in fact, and very apprehensive about Peru, though also curious.

Before the trip I had felt listless and indifferent, as if I'd spent all the momentum that had existed in my life before we lost Asher. We undertook this trip out of a sense of duty, not with enthusiasm, and not with the expectation that we would find that cliche of "closure." Before Asher's body was located, we were in terrible doubt, and going back to Peru revived the memory of that period. Once he was buried, our doubt was gone, but so were our hopes.

It was gratifying for us to have the embassy people attend, people we'd spoken to by telephone time and time again during the searches. In a short conversation with our ambassador, a retired Druze army officer named Walid Mantsur, I told him what I've said to many people on many occasions: I didn't want the people who had done so much to find Asher to think that we wealthy foreigners expect poor Peruvians to risk their lives for us. I wanted to emphasize our personal gratitude, as Asher's parents and siblings, for the humane efforts they made on behalf of a total stranger.