LANCE LAMBERT
A GREAT TREE HAS
FALLEN IN ISRAEL
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Shalom to all,
I wanted to share a personal tribute to my dear friend Lance Lambert Dobski, who as many will already know, was "upgraded" to be with the Lord at Jerusalem's Sha'are Zedek (Gates of Justice) hospital at around 3:15 on Sunday afternoon, May 10. On the exact same date last year, my sweet mother went to be with the Lord. This past Sunday afternoon, Mother's Day in America, I placed a basket of flowers on her grave not far from my new northwest home, thinking of her and of Lance as well. Lance's human remains are being laid to rest today in Jerusalem in a private ceremony, with a public celebration of his life scheduled for May 27 at the Jerusalem Pavilion.
I was recently with Lance at his home this past Palm Sunday along with his good friends Helen Reiss and Chuck and Karen Cohen.
I could, and maybe will someday, write a book about Lance and the many amazing people I met through him and the many good times we shared. I once jokingly told him and his family that I would title such a biography "The Secret Life of Lance Lambert," which sparked off laughter from all.
The truth is that Lance's fine life was not at all lived out in secret, but was publicly shared for many decades with untold thousands of people around the world who were blessed and enriched by his wisdom, biblical insights, sharp wit and equally sharp mind, eloquence, and many other positive things. Yes, he had his flaws, and I knew most of them quite well, having been friends with Lance since the early 1980s. But overall, he was "a great tree that has fallen in Israel" as his doctor and friend (and mine as well) wrote to me soon after his passing.
Lance Lambert Dobski was the first Messianic Jewish Israeli speaker that I heard after arriving in the Lord's special Land in late 1980. He had come to a place called "Baptist Village" (still there today) just outside of Tel Aviv to share with a group of around 100 young Christian believers, including myself, who had traveled from all over the world to live and work together for one year in teams on several kibbutz communities scattered around the small Jewish state. I would later learn that Lance never deemed any group too small to share with, even if it meant, as in this case, a little travel on his part to get to his venue.
I knew moments after the tall, dark haired, lanky Lance first opened his mouth that this was not an ordinary speaker, nor an ordinary man. It was soon obvious that he was a very gifted and intelligent orator with a lot of information and probably wisdom (later confirmed) to share. I never dreamed as I closely listened to his salient words, salted by lots of humor, that we would not only become good friends within a few years time, but that he would basically become a mentor to me in both spiritual matters and in everything to do with Israel and its history and contemporary situation. This was behind the dedication of my first book, Holy War for the Promised Land, to Lance just over ten years later in 1991.
Just two years after moving to Jerusalem from the northern Galilee region in early 1984, I became a regular guest at Lance's beautiful home with its fantastic views of the nearby walled Old City and Jaffa Gate. His place featured an interesting mix of traditional old world English furniture and art work with Oriental items that entered Lance's family via his uncle who worked in Shanghai before the Communists took over China in 1949. Most Sabbath meals that I would enjoy in Jerusalem after that time would be at his three story home, if he was in the country that is! International guests often included people from the Far East, an area Lance especially loved after earlier training to be a missionary in China. Frequently among the guests were government, church, and security leaders from Singapore, Hong Kong and other parts of Asia, and from the rest of the world.
Being single all of his 84 years, Lance always lit the Sabbath candles himself and recited the traditional Sabbath blessing in Hebrew over them, with myself, his sister Teresa, her husband Achim, and their daughter Sophia nearly always in attendance along with other invited guests. The meals were mostly cooked and served by one or two of the young male Christian volunteer workers who lived in Lance's home at any given time, although Lance himself usually presided over the very spicy soups that preceded the main meal. In order to observe Jewish kosher dietary laws (which Lance kept not out of religious conviction, but so that he could serve any Israeli guest in his home, Orthodox or not), yummy cakes and pies and other goodies with dairy products in them were eaten at least an hour before the main "meat" meal, accompanied by strong British tea. So dessert came first at Lance's comfortable home! The occasional child in attendance usually acknowledged that this was a truly brilliant way to serve a meal!
The most memorable festive meals were shared on the Jewish feast of Passover, when the full moon was rising over the nearby Old City walls, and on the Feast of Tabernacles when we ate in Lance's upstairs open sky balcony which became his "succa" every year. Scrumptious foods were also served on Christmas and Hanukkah, when a beautifully decorated Christmas tree glowed near Lance's large silver eight-branched Hanukkiah. Next to that, a bronze statue of Moses that I gave him reminded us all that both Hanukkah and Christmas have Jewish biblical roots.
The most memorable moment was when one of Lance's talking parrots (he had two cockatoos and several parrots) broke into the meeting to basically tell a woman
The most memorable regular Sabbath meal occurred during the first days of the Gulf War in 1991. A phone call from a close friend who worked in army intelligence, and whose Israeli wife was at the meal, revealed that Saddam's first Scuds had just been launched at Israel and would be landing soon. I and other guests, including two elderly Dutch sisters who had saved Jewish lives during Hitler's war, quickly grabbed his two cockatoo birds and some food and skedaddled downstairs to Lance's basement "sealed room." Normally just his library and television room, it had earlier been prepared with plastic sheeting over the windows to prevent potential chemical weapons from seeping in.
Lance Lambert Dobski was an expert on the Jewish roots of the Christian faith, which was apparent to all who knew him well or read one of his many books or heard him speak on the topic. He himself stated that this was largely due to the fact that Adolph Hitler and his cronies had stolen Lance's Jewish identity from him, which prodded him in later life to study his Jewish roots in depth.
Although this story is worth at least a chapter in a book, the short version is that Lance's father was an Italian Jewish nobleman who met his mother Laura (who I met at his home in Jerusalem before her death in the early 1980s) while he was working as the economic attaché for the Italian embassy in London in the early 1930s. Having been summoned back to Rome by King Victor Emmanuel just before Mussolini rose to power in Italy, he never made it back to London but ended up some years later at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp where he perished along with over 60 members of Lance's extended Jewish family. Listening one evening as Lance detailed how he discovered his Jewish roots and biological father's existence—all hidden from him and his sister Teresa by their mother as Hitler's buzz bombs rained down on London during World War II—was one of the most moving moments of my life.
Lance Lambert only discovered that his real last name was Dobski after he became an adult. His widely known surname, Lambert, actually belonged to his stepfather, a close friend of his father. Soon after Hitler rose to power in Germany in 1933, Lance's dad was summoned back to Rome. Many years later, his mother shared with her offspring the jarring news about their biological Jewish father and how she learned about his tragic end from the Red Cross after the war. Stirring Lance very deeply, she added that one of his father's last requests was that if a Jewish state actually arose in the Middle East one day and he was not able to return to his family, she would ask their son and daughter to immigrate to it. This was fulfilled in the early 1980s as both Lance and Teresa and family settled in Jerusalem.
Even before he learned of his natural father's identity, Lance already had a love for the Jewish State and a desire to travel there. He was in Jerusalem when Egyptian and Syrian troops launched their surprise Yom Kippur military attack in October 1973, even as his close friend Derek Prince had been during Israel's 1948 War of Independence.
I first met Derek at Lance's home, where I joined him and his wife Ruth and others for a weekly prayer meeting that really took off at times. The most memorable moment was when one of Lance's talking parrots (he had two cockatoos and several parrots) broke into the meeting to basically tell a woman who was standing on her feet and praying fervently and loudly to sit down and shut up!
Along with his well-earned international esteem, Lance was considered a virtual "apostle" by many Messianic leaders in Israel and abroad. Indeed, I often thought I was listening to Paul or Peter when he spoke about spiritual matters, usually with great clarity and authority.
Lance's personality was unique in so many ways. He was very practical and down to earth, yet he had his "boys" take a full silver tea set to the Tel Aviv beach when they traveled there for occasional ocean outings. If tea spilled on his fine white linen tablecloths either there or in Jerusalem, he would throw a small fit even if the spillage occurred via his own hands (usually the case). Yet when one of his longtime faithful workers could not avoid skidding Lance's new BMW into an oil truck that suddenly moved into our lane north of Jerusalem in 1987 (I was riding in the passenger seat and nearly impaled during the accident), he reacted quite calmly to the news that his vehicle was totaled, only asking if we were both OK.
I was especially privileged to spend many vacations with Lance and other friends at his wonderful summer place on the Greek island of Naxos. Every year he would take a different friend or worker or a set of the same to one or another Greek island for a month long visit. In 1995 I was finally able to arrange enough time off from my radio work with CBS to travel with him. It was Lance's first visit to Naxos, situated between the more famous Mykonos and Santorini islands. While there, we checked out a home building project on the side of a hill facing the sea. Lance immediately fell in love with the spot and later purchased a lot there and had a small house built. I was blessed to help him establish and care for a large and verdant garden around the white and blue Greek style house, including many fruit and olive trees and colorful bougainvillea plants. I had learned much about gardening in 1981 while assisting the chief gardener for one year on Kibbutz Hagoshrim near Israel's northern border with Lebanon.
There was another link between my late mother and Lance besides their shared date of death….both never saw a shop or store that they did not want to enter! My family joked that mom was keeping several large department store chains afloat by her frequent purchases from them. Lance also helped keep world commerce flourishing by his periodic international shopping sprees, being especially fond of Asian jade and anything silver or gold! The sale of some of his jade collection actually helped fund his medical needs in his final months on earth.
A special shout out must be given to Lance's niece, Sophia Rentzing, who sacrificed much of her private time since Lance returned home from Greece in December to care for her frail uncle. You did a wonderful job Sophia, and the Lord was watching. Also greatly assisting Lance in recent years was longtime friend Helen Reiss, an Israeli believer from the UK, along with Dr. Kent Bar Shuv and his wife Yael, who helped Lance set up his medical insurance and many other things.
Lance Lambert Dobski will be sorely missed by me, by his family, and by his many friends and fans around the world. I arranged a trip to Israel this past March just a few days before I learned in late September that Lance had fallen seriously ill while visiting Greece. It turned out to have been the Lord's perfect timing, as I was able to spend many hours with Lance during that month long visit and share a few final meals and tea with him in his special Jerusalem home. While a Great Tree has indeed fallen in Israel, it has been replanted in full in the Lord's presence in heaven! May you rest in peace there dear brother! We look forward to meeting up again with you there, probably over some divine tea!
PS: I was blessed to partake in a short discussion about Lance Lambert and his life with American-Israeli musician and speaker Barry Segal. We recorded it in front of Lance's Jerusalem home at the end of my last day in Israel on March 31. Barry has informed me that the interview will be broadcast next week (May 17-21) on the Segal's weekly "Roots and Reflections" television program, broadcast on the God Channel on Mondays in America and on the Daystar network each Friday. Check your local listings to view the program.
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David Dolan, 2536 Rimrock Avenue, STE 400-383, Grand Junction, CO 81505, USA
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