Sixteen years have passed since my last trip to Israel. While I am aware of many changes in that time, I, like many other Jews around the world, still feel close ties to the land and its people, follow its news and try to keep up with the latest events through reports from colleagues and friends. In spite of the passage of time, I still remember so much of my first trip to Israel nearly 58 years ago, just weeks after the Six Day War in 1967. I spent nearly a year studying at Hebrew University in 1969 – 70 and returned in the midst of the Yom Kippur War to study at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Israel campus in 1973 – 74. I haven’t been able to travel there as frequently as many of my colleagues, but have made at least another half dozen trips to visit or for meetings over the years. These ongoing connections have created a sense of community with our brothers and sisters, colleagues and friends living in the State of Israel.
In a letter to the JTS Community this week, the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Dr. Shuly Rubin Schwartz, writes of her current visit in Israel, “In Israel – such a small country – personal and communal pain are inextricably bound. The Jewish people are so tiny in number that we often remark to one another that only two degrees separate us from our fellow Jews, not the proverbial six. Nowhere is this more evident than in the State of Israel.”
If you listened to or watched the reports of the Bibas funeral on Wednesday, you could not help but feel the pain and suffering not only of the family members who are living through this tragedy, but of the entire country. Masses of people lined the street to honor Shiri and her two sons, Ariel and Kfir, as their bodies were returned to Israel and buried in Israeli soil. Dr. Schwartz writes of grief, tinged with regret and guilt. She reports, “amidst tears, one heard again and again ‘s’licha,’ ‘forgive me.’ For what, for everything, for not preventing such a brutal attack on Israeli soil, for the suffering they had to bear in captivity, for not being able to influence Hamas to release them and all the other hostages sooner.” For over 500 days, Jews in Israel and around the world have been praying for the hostages. We have seen the posters and the on-line posts, the ribbons and stickers and dog tags, the empty chairs on the bimah, and more. We have heard pleas from the family members of those taken captive and seen the lobbying efforts urging action by elected officials in Israel and around the world to free the hostages. We have also seen people in Israel and elsewhere rejoicing and celebrating as some hostages have come home. Tragically, we have also shared the mourning of the nation as we have learned of the deaths, the murders, and torture of other hostages, some of whose bodies have recently been released and returned to their families.
Shuly Schwartz writes, “to a large degree, the Bibas children and their mother Shiri, symbolize the larger tragedy of the hostages: the heartbreak, the innocence, the barbarism, the pain that every mother, every parent, every human being could so viscerally connect with as we imagined innocent children suffering and dying and the pain of a mother witnessing this without agency.” This national tragedy has affected us all. At the same time, this is more than a national tragedy. It is a very personal one as well. Yarden Bibas suffered in captivity and was released a few weeks before he learned that his beloved wife, Shiri, and his precious young children had been brutally murdered. He spoke at graveside on Wednesday and he too, though powerless to do anything more, begged forgiveness from his wife and sons for his failure to keep them safe. It was truly heartbreaking to hear his words and all through Israel where so many have also suffered loss and bereavement there were tears and cries of pain and sorrow for this young family. How does one live through such an overwhelming loss? How does one go forward in such circumstances?
Dr. Schwartz cites the well-known passage from Jeremiah that we read on Rosh Hashanah, “Thus said God: A cry is heard in Ramah – wailing, bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, who are gone.” Shuly Schwartz writes of how deeply this verse affects her for she is a mother who has herself lost a child twenty-one years ago and still feels Rachel’s pain. “This sense of loss accompanies me throughout my life, the weeping for one’s children continues; loss of this magnitude, in this unnatural way of things, is life-altering. And yet, we also must each find a way to live life fully even with our loss.”
Jeremiah quotes the Almighty who tells Rachel, “Restrain your voice from weeping, your eyes from shedding tears; for there is a reward for your labor – declares God. They shall return from the enemy’s land. And there is hope for your future – declares God: your children shall return to their country.” We too have been praying for the hostages to return to the land of Israel. We’ve chanted, “Bring them home now.” We’ve asked God in our prayers to return all of those taken captive and while some have come home and we still have hope for those who remain alive in captivity, it is hard for us to find much comfort in the words of the prophet or in our prayers when we experience the tragic loss of life, the brutal destruction of old and young on October 7th, those young soldiers who have given their lives in the ensuing war, and now as we receive the shattered bodies of beloved family members, babies, children, mothers and fathers, grandparents, who deserved to live, whose bodies have been exchanged for the release of murderers from Israeli jails. These promises of future redemption ring hollow. They fail to bring comfort and consolation to a sorrowing nation. There may well be hope for the future, but we live in the here and now and must grapple with loss and go forward in life.
I have spoken before of a rabbinic colleague who, some years back, suffered the loss of a young child. He gave a talk before a large gathering of rabbis and Jewish educators where he spoke of this loss and how he and his wife have struggled to live with it. He said he had long been puzzled by the traditional words of consolation said at graveside and uttered by visitors during shiva, “HaMakom y’nachem etchem b’tokh sh’are aveilei Tziyon viYerushalayim.” May the Makom comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. “Makom,” literally “place,” is one of the names the rabbis apply to God who is, they tell us has no place, for He is “the place of the world,” the Omnipresent One. The bereaved rabbi, wondered how the Makom would bring comfort. As he reflected on it, he realized that with the loss of a child or any loved one, there is an empty space, a makom, left behind within the family, within the hearts of the surviving family members. He spoke of people coming to the house during shiva and trying to fill that empty space with gifts of food, to no avail. The presence was appreciated. But the space, the makom remains. Over time, he said, one learns to live with that makom. It never goes away. It is always there, but living with it, one begins to fill it with memories, and one learns to live with it. It ultimately becomes a source of comfort itself – an empty, yet comforting, presence in our lives.
The first phase of the ceasefire has been completed. What comes next remains unclear. Hostages are still being held. Bodies have not been returned. The twin brothers, relatives of our own members, for whom we set seats on the bimah, are among those still unaccounted for. We continue our prayers for Ziv and Gali Berman and all of the others still being held by Hamas. May all of them soon be returned safely to their families. Those who remain of Hamas continue to put on a show of strength, continue to disregard human life and dignity and continue to threaten the peace of Israel as well as of their own people. They continue to demonstrate their unfitness to govern. The resolution of this conflict remains uncertain and opinions in Israel remain divided as to the best path to follow. As we share the grief of our people in Israel, we share their hope for an end to terror and warfare and our age-old hope for peace for Israel, for the entire region and for our world.
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