As we continue to mourn the losses of October 7, and pray for the safe return of the hostages and the IDF troops, this week’s kavannot will focus on Israeli poetry and music.

Each Friday, I log on to my computer to lead Mourner’s Kaddish for over 75 people from all over the United States — and sometimes the world. Beginning early in the COVID lockdown, My Jewish Learning has been offering a daily chance to say kaddish, and over these three-plus years, we have created a small community that holds each other briefly each day and each week. I am the Friday leader, and each week, I watch new and now-familiar names scroll through the chat, as each person names the loved one — or ones — they are remembering.

And so I found myself sitting outside on a beautiful Los Angeles day, wondering how to lead kaddish for these individuals on October 13, 2023. How do we each remember our beloveds — our husbands and wives, our children, our parents, our friends — when our community is mourning 1,400 souls taken brutally and far too soon?

It is not the first time I have pondered this question. As a rabbi in New York City, we read the kaddish list each and every week. And on the anniversary of 9/11, I always thought about families who had to mourn a “normal” loss — someone felled by disease or other natural cause — in the midst of a national tragedy. And then, as I did in the Southern California sun a few weeks ago, I turned to a poem by Yehuda Amichai, one of Israel’s best known and beloved poets. Entitled And Who Will Remember Those Who Remember, he writes:

And how does one stand in a Memorial Ceremony? Erect or bent,

rigid like a tent or limp as in mourning,

head humbled like the guilty or raised in defiance against death,

eyes wild or frozen like the eyes of the dead,

or shut, to view the stars within?

And what is the best time to remember? Noon

when the shadows are hidden beneath our feet, or dusk

when the shadows grow long like longings

with no beginning and no end, like God?

And what shall we sing in the service? Once we sang the song of the valley,

“Who opened fire and who there fell,/ between Beit Alfa and Nahalal.”

Now I know who it was that opened fire

and I know the name of the one who fell.

He was my friend.

Tonight, in Israel and here at Stephen Wise Temple, we will begin to gather, marking the beginning of shloshim for those 1,400 souls. It is an unfathomable number, and yet — among that number are 1,400 individual losses, 1400 brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, grandparents, friends. And so, we will stand — tall and proud or bent and weeping — and we will remember.

— Rabbi Sari Laufer