Sign In Forgot Password

Yizkor, 5785: What We’ve Lost

Rabbi Rona Shapiro

Yom Kippur Sermon from B'nai Jacob on Vimeo.

 

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.

— Yehuda Amichai

It wasn’t a bomb on October 7 that killed 1200 Israelis but, as the poet suggests, its diameter stretched across the seas and around the world. This shattering loss is something I carry with me all the time now, but it is particularly acute today, when we say yizkor, a few days after the anniversary of 10/7, over a year since the families of the hostages hugged their loved ones or even heard from them. I remember losing our daughter Hallel when she was 4 or 5 in an IKEA. I don’t know how long she was missing — it could have been 2 minutes, it could have been ten — it felt like eternity. I will never forget that bottomless pit in my stomach. I literally cannot imagine multiplying those ten minutes by 372 days. It is unthinkable horror.  
The diameter of the bomb.

On October 7, 1200 Israelis were killed. 274 soldiers; 764 civilians. Two were infants, one, ten-month-old Mila Cohen, was murdered along with her father and grandmother. Twelve children under ten were killed; 36 teens between the ages of 10 and 19, and 25 people over the age of 80 were killed that day. One Beduin woman was shot on her way to the hospital to deliver a child — both mother and daughter died. An entire family, including three children ages two to six, was killed in their home at Kibbutz Nir Oz. Elsewhere, two brothers ages five and eight were shot dead in their car with their parents. A five-year-old boy was killed in the street by a rocket. A couple was killed on Kibbutz Holit while their 16-year-old son, who had also been shot in the stomach, lay under their bodies, playing dead. Seventeen Beduins were killed, along with approximately 30 other Israeli Arabs, and 70 foreign workers, mostly Thai.  
The diameter of the bomb…

On the first day of Rosh Hashanah and last night, I spoke about how community, particularly the synagogue community, is a source of collective resilience and a bulwark of democracy. On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, I spoke about our relationship to the larger Jewish community, the ways that our lives and our faith are bound up with Israel’s fate. This afternoon, before we say Yizkor, I want to talk about our losses and how very personal they are. The diameter of the bomb.

A few weeks ago, I had lunch at the Rectory of Our Lady of Assumption with other clergy from our town. When they asked me about how my community is doing in the wake of October 7, I said, “It’s personal. Many if not most of my congregants have family and friends in Israel — for us, October 7, the war, the devastation — all of it is personal.” I think the other clergy were surprised to hear this. Many Americans don’t realize how closely connected to Israel we are, how familial our ties feel.  
The diameter of the bomb.

Judith Weinstein Hagai was murdered on October 7 along with her husband, Gadi, at Kibbutz Nir Oz, ages 70 and 73. It was believed that they were held hostage in Gaza, until late January, when the Israeli government confirmed their deaths. Their bodies have not been returned from Gaza. Judith was a Canadian-American citizen, although she lived most of her life in Israel; she is the sister of Andrea Weinstein, who is a member of our community here in Woodbridge and known to many of us. On the morning of October 7, Gadi and Judith were out for an early walk outside the kibbutz, as was their custom, when they heard shots and took cover in a field. They heard a red alert from the kibbutz warning system and sent a short video to family and friends in a WhatsApp chat. That was the last anyone heard from them. They were parents to four children and grandparents to seven. Judith taught English to children with special needs and used meditation and mindfulness to help children manage their anxiety from rocket fire from nearby Gaza.

Judith also wrote a daily haiku. Here is a sampling from a year ago, when the Gaza envelope was also under fire:  


"Pilotless drones  
Patrol the night sky  
My mind on my breath," reads one entry.  


"Midnight nature call  
Phone check for rocket alerts  
Then back to sleep," reads another.  

The final day of that military operation, May 13, 2023, she wrote:  
"Quiet for eight hours  
Dare I hope  
No more war?"  

Following news of her death, her daughter wrote: “You and Dad started the day together walking outside the kibbutz as usual and you were both murdered and kidnapped to Gaza. You were always one. And, on that day, fate decided that you would end up together. What an inspiration you were together, you were complete together but also individually. Thanks to you, we all have amazing partners, we had an example at home of a healthy relationship all of our lives.

I need to digest that I no longer have a mother or a father.  
I won’t hear your voice anymore.  
Ima, you won’t call us Hamuda Gedola — big sweetie — anymore.  
Abba, you won’t call our children Hamudim Doodim — sweetie peeties — anymore.  
How did they steal you from us?  
We will celebrate you forever and thank you for how you built us!”  

Rest in peace Judith and Gadi.

Eyal Twitto was killed on January 22 in Khan Younis. He was a platoon commander, a paratrooper, and a close cousin to Michael and Caryl Kligfeld. Eyal’s family had been emissaries in Berkeley when Eyal was a child and Eyal himself later served as a young emissary in Baltimore. His father, Moti, said at his funeral, “I never thought I’d say Kaddish for my son. Eyal, my beloved, I have no words. You grew up to be a very special person … a person who went the extra mile to succeed. Above all, you were a leader in your heart and your soul. You’d come home [from the army] and you wouldn’t sleep a wink — you’d take the car and go visit your soldiers…” His mother, Shiri, also spoke: “I had a child, and he is no more. Every Shabbat when you came home, you attracted everyone to you like a magnet. My child, you went into Gaza and I couldn’t breathe. I slept with one eye open. And then there was a cease-fire. You called and said, ‘Ima, don’t worry. Morale is high and we’re fine.’ You went into Gaza again, and I no longer worried. You said everything’s fine. I had a child, and he is no more.

Where do I go from here?”  
Eyal’s whole life lay before him. His parents’ pain is bottomless.  
Eyal, rest in peace.

Vivian Silver, a Canadian peace activist and longtime member of Kibbutz Be’eri, was also murdered on October 7. She was a close friend of my friend, Shifra Bronznick, and was due to visit Shifra in New York in early December of last year. Born in Winnipeg in 1949, Vivian made aliya in 1974. She became a revered peace activist in Israel; after her death NBC called her “the silver-haired grandmother, regarded on both sides of the border as an irrepressible force.” After the Gaza war in 2014, Vivian helped to found what became a 50,000-person movement called Women for Peace. Vivian believed that the government needed to involve more women in peace negotiations, because, she said, women knew how to compromise. “[Vivian was] a woman who dedicated her life to peace — who built bridges with Palestinians and drove sick Gazan children to the hospital herself,” said a filmmaker who interviewed her. A life-long social activist, she also helped create the Arab Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment, and Cooperation, and later became its executive director with her Bedouin colleague, Amal Elsana Alh’jooj. It grew to be one of the largest nonprofit organizations in Israel devoted to equal rights. The organization created jobs in impoverished Arab communities and brought Arab and Jewish youth together to volunteer.1 

Her son, Yonatan, a social worker in Tel Aviv would tell her, “Israel is dead. It’s hopeless,” and she would say, “Peace could come tomorrow.” After Vivian’s death, Yonatan decided to devote himself to the peace work he had spurned for years, hoping to further his mother’s legacy. Chen Zeigen, her other son, is a doctoral student in archaeology at the University of Connecticut. Vivian is also survived by four grandchildren. Described as “a woman of infinite, deep, ongoing compassion, and humanity,” Vivian is mourned by Arab and Israeli Jews alike. On Shifra Bronznick’s calendar still hanging on her wall in Manhattan, the days Vivian was meant to visit her are marked simply “Viv” at the top of each day.  


May Vivian’s memory be for a blessing.  

Awad Darawshe, a 23-year-old Palestinian medic, drove his ambulance to Kibbutz Re’im when he learned of the horrific attack at the music festival there. He had hoped to become a doctor and studied in the US, but his studies were cut short by COVID. Back in Israel, he found his true calling studying to be an advanced paramedic. He liked saving people in real time instead of waiting for them to come to him in an office, and he planned to open his own ambulance company. On October 7, when the terrorists began to fire on the tents the medics had set up to treat injured people at the Nova Festival, Awad refused to listen to his friends who urged him to leave, instead continuing to wrap bandages. He said, “I’ll stay. I speak Arabic. I will manage.” Awad was shot and killed; the terrorists stole his ambulance and drove it into Gaza. His cousin Mohammed, who is a scholar at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem said, “…in the face of unspeakable evil, he remained human and humane. [He thought] above [him]self, and not just in comfortable times but also in difficult times. He thought in selflessness. He didn’t care about the culture, identity, or the ethnicity of the people he was treating. He thought that because he had a different ethnicity, he could probably save them.”

And finally, there is Hersch Goldberg, that smiling beautiful boy, who all of us have come to embrace as if he were our son. Hersch was one of the six hostages murdered at the end of August, along with Carmel Gat, a cousin to Judy Cooper’s niece. Hersch is no more or less important than any other hostage, but his parents, through their courage, their willingness to speak out and go on speaking and speaking, believing and hoping, made Hersch the public face of all the hostages. For 330 days, thanks to their bravery, we got to know him, his sweetness, his love of music and travel, his youthful hope for a peaceful future for Palestinians and Israelis, immortalized in the posters still hanging, I am sure, on his bedroom walls. Hersch shelanu, our Hersch.

In the haftarah for the second day of Rosh Hashanah from the book of Jeremiah, we read of Rachel, our mother, refusing to be comforted, weeping for her children, ki aynenu, because they are no more. Rachel, our mother of sorrow, buried on the road to Jerusalem, risen from her grave, as it were, mourning, sitting vigil, as she watches her children, the exiles of Jerusalem, as they march into captivity in Babylon. Her refusal to be comforted represents, I think, a kind of steadfast hope, a kind of defiance, even in God’s face — her children may be going into captivity, they may be dead, but she is not moving from this spot until God answers her prayers, until they return.

That is who Rachel Goldberg became, Rachel Imenu, our mother, the mother of the Jewish people, and her stoic refusal to be comforted, to believe that her beloved son Hersch was dead, gave us all hope and strength. Rachel, with her drawn but undefeated face, her masking taped number affixed to her shirt, “carried us across an abyss of brutality with her clarion calls for Hersch’s freedom and freedom for every hostage. She was, at once, ethereal and practical, strong and vulnerable. She explained her pain, injected us with optimism, and charged us to join her in her fight for Hersch’s and all the other hostages’ freedom. She never gave up, so we could not." 2 Defeat was not in her vocabulary. Over and over we heard her tell Hersch, “We love you, survive, stay strong.”  

And when the awful news of Hersch’s death, so brutal, so unnecessary, so tantalizingly close to having been saved, when that news reached us, Rachel, that lioness of courage, remained steadfast.  

In the face of overwhelming pain, anger, and grief, she was still able, in her eulogy for her son, to have the presence of mind and generosity of spirit to thank God for the gift of Hersch’s life these last 23 years, the privilege of being Hersch’s Mama, only wishing that there could have been more years. She looked forward to a time when the family might heal, when they might laugh again. She said that Hersch would always be with them “as a source of love and vitality…our superpower.”

She concluded her eulogy, “I will love you and I will miss you every single day for the rest of my life. But you are right here. I know you are right here, I just have to teach myself to feel you in a new way.”  


And, just as we had heard her say so many times to Hersch, she turned, this time to him and said, “And Hersch, I need you to do one last thing for us… Now I need YOU to help us to stay strong. And I need YOU to help us survive.” Rachel Imenu, Our Mother Rachel, Our Lady of Tears, of courage, of strength. If Hersch became our son, Rachel became our mother, illuminating a path of endless love and hope even through the depths of darkness. Like the biblical Rachel, she protects us and teaches us what it is to be a mother, to love your child, to lose him, and to still hold on to hope, and faith, and goodness, through the tears.  


The diameter of the bomb.

Each of the 1200 who died that awful day, each soldier in Gaza, each hostage, was a whole world unto themselves. Each tears a hole in the web of those who loved them, and even we here, ever so slightly removed, are torn. Today, as we sit here mourning the losses of loved ones, the losses in Israel also cut close to the bone. They are family. We are family. I feel right now that I am standing with every Jew across the world who is also observing Yom Kippur. I am standing with every Jew across time who ever celebrated Yom Kippur. All of them are my family. They are all in this room. And my heart is broken.  
The pain of the losses we mourn today is magnified by the pain of recent events. They reverberate within us. It turns out, it seems, that sitting in this pain, feeling its ripples from far around the world, mourning not only loved ones but loved ones of loved ones of loved ones, is the consequence of our love, a consequence of being part of this small but large raucous family. And losses of this magnitude, all at once, lives cut short that didn’t have to be — cut deeper.  

When Yom Kippur ends in a few hours, we will chant, “Next year in Jerusalem.” After all our prayers, after recounting all our sins, after all these hours, after saying Yizkor, mourning our losses, after chanting unehtaneh tokef — who shall live and who shall die — and being reminded that we might not be here next year and that one day, for sure, we won’t be here — after the shofar is sounded one last time, we end with hope. We end imagining ourselves gathered in with the exiles, the Jewish people from all over the world, singing, celebrating, breaking fast together in a world that no longer knows war and bloodshed.  
Next year in Jerusalem!  
L’shanah ha’ba’ah b’yerushalyaim!


Sources: 
1. Emma Goldberg, “Vivian’s Land,” in The New York Times Magazine, October 6, 2024.  
2. Erica Brown, “We are So Sorry and We are Still Here from You,” in ejewishphilanthropy, September 3, 2024.

Wed, November 13 2024 12 Cheshvan 5785