These past few weeks in Israel, there have been moments when I forget that there is a war going on here just 40 miles south of where I am staying. There have been moments – in the middle of a meal with a friend or a walk on the beach – when I forget that there are dozens of hostages trying to survive (we pray) in some underground tunnel in Gaza. Sometimes I forget that I could drive there in under an hour.
But just when everything begins to feel normal, I am reminded of why nothing is. For Israelis, each and every day since October 7 is a life lived in trauma.
It’s the faces of each hostage still in Gaza that you pass on your way to passport control in the airport. It’s a banner hung from a building or a state-of-the-art digital display, demanding their release. Maybe it’s old fashioned graffiti on a building around the corner from where you’re staying. Leaving a restaurant after celebrating Jacqueline’s birthday the other night, we walked past a giant “Bring Them Home Now” painted on a building by a group called “Artists 4 Israel.”
There’re the daily “Red Alert” notifications on my Apple watch – today I received 34 of them announcing rockets fired from Lebanon and Gaza at communities including Kfar Szold in the north and Kfar Maimon in the south.
And everywhere the bumper stickers – stuck on a park bench or the wall of a restaurant; each one memorializing a fallen soldier, or a kibbutz resident, or a young adult who headed off to dance at the Nova festival and never returned. A name, a photo, and sometimes a motto or tribute.
“We miss you and think of you every day” – Adi Margalit
“Live every day – die just once” – Ori Gerby
“Your joy will never be extinguished” – Stav Basha
“You only live once. Just f*cking do it!” – Ron Yehudai
“I’m with you ‘till the end of the line” – Tomer Ya’akov Ahimas
And almost every day, usually in the morning, we read the news of another fallen soldier – today it was Captain Elay Elisha Lugasi, 21, zichrono livracha (of blessed memory) from Kiryat Shmona.
As painful as these reminders are, I find meaning as well as a sense of solidarity in the knowledge that an entire nation bears witness together. It is inescapable and overwhelming and painful and strangely beautiful, too.
And because it is experienced collectively, we are able as a community, a people, and a nation to share the burden of remembering, bearing witness, and expressing our pain, horror, and outrage. It’s not just in Israel, of course, although here it is so much more powerful. That shared burden exists throughout the Jewish world; in our synagogues, in our social media, in our daily conversations, and in our prayers each day.
To be part of a People is to share in each other’s sorrow, pain, and concern. They aren’t just names – Ariel and Kfir, Ori and Stav, Tomer and Ron, Hersh and Eden – they are our family.
As we celebrate in America this week the 248th anniversary of our freedom and independence, we should be especially mindful of eight of our fellow citizens who were also kidnapped by Hamas on October 7: Edan Alexander; Itay Chen (z”l); Sagui Dekel-Chen; Hersh Goldberg-Polin; Gadi Haggai (z”l); Judith Weinstein Haggai (z”l); Omer Neutra; and Keith Siegel. Our elected representatives should be advocating for these Americans every single day.
We have a sacred obligation to remember and advocate and to raise our voices in sorrow and protest for however long is necessary, until every last one comes home, until this terrible war is finished and Hamas is removed from power, until the daily bombardment of the north ends and people can at last return to their homes.
These people aren’t strangers, they are our family. We see them, we think of them, every day.
Am Yisrael Chai!
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Yoshi