At the crossroads of joy and sorrow, there are words

I used to read the scene of the deaths of Nadav and Avihu, Aaron’s sons, from this past week’s parsha Torah reading, with a detached sort of sympathy. It’s hard to be truly horrified by the same story every year. Familiarity masked the horror, the impossible juxtaposition of celebration and grief. And then October 7th came and overturned a different national moment of rejoicing. More and more beautiful faces started smiling at us from heartbreaking stickers. And suddenly, the scene of the inauguration of the Tabernacle became real.

On Tu Bishvat 1949, Chaim Weizmann, the first president of the new State of Israel, presided over the very first session of the very first Knesset. But earlier that day, the first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, presided over the planting of a forest in Sha’ar HaGai, where too many young men and women fell during the War of Independence. The losses were still fresh then, mere months after the cessation of hostilities. Many of the fallen were still in temporary graves. Freshly bereaved families sat in the audience.

When Aaron’s sons died during the inauguration of the Tabernacle, their father held his pain in silence. His silence was the only vessel vast enough to hold that which overflows all words. When David Ben-Gurion stood by the young trees on the bloodied road that leads up to Jerusalem, he did not have the privilege of silence. In that moment, the people looked to him for words.

We planted a forest, and we will plant many forests to fulfill the wishes and desires of the fighters who gave their lives for the liberation of their homeland, its prosperity and building, so that all of Israel, from all its places of exile, could return and be reestablished in its country, and live in it lives of freedom and prosperity.

But the memory of the heroes who fell defending the people and their homeland, he added, will not reside in stone monuments or even in the newly planted forest. Its true seat will be “in the heart of the Jewish people, in the heart of all Israel, in our generation and throughout the ages….”

To ensure that the fallen make their way into the hearts of future generations, Ben Gurion encouraged historians and authors to collect the writings of the fallen and publish them. Immense volumes were published entitled “Gvilei Esh” — scrolls of fire.

* * *

Today, a new book fills a similar function, bringing some of the soldiers the nation has lost since October 7th to our hearts. The title is “If You’re Reading These Words,” and the meaning of these 49 letter-writers’ deaths is left for the reader to contemplate. 

Each is a bridge to an entire world, lost.

“Don’t be sad,” wrote Alon Sacgiu, 22, who resolved to do what was necessary. 

“It’s important to me that you should know that no one could be happier than I am for choosing to do what I do,” wrote Kamei Achiel, 18 years old, her whole life before her. 

“You’re strong people. There’s no point in mourning a lot. Have fun and go on living,” wrote Shimon Asulin, 24 years old and the 225th soldier to be killed in Gaza. 

Every word a will, every line a testament. An imprint that remains, even when the person — the son, the daughter, the sibling, the parent — is gone. 

With every text that Shlomo Kavas and Racheli Palant Rozen, the curators of If You’re Reading These Words, collected and annotated, the people who wrote them come to rest in our hearts, powerfully, though the vessels that held them are gone.

Ben-Gurion was right.

As long as we have a beating heart within us, we hold our people within.

* * *

This week, we once again face the juxtaposition between joy and sorrow. We will remember the fallen, and then, within a moment, we transition to celebrating the birth and continued existence of our national home. Some few months ago, together with my fellow editors at The SHVILLI Center, I started collecting words to help us face these contrasting emotional states. How do we put our vast gratitude and grief into finite sentences? How do we articulate our commitment to the vision that unites us here on this beloved land?

We approached teachers and poets, artists and scholars, some of whom are bereaved wives and mothers themselves, and we gathered their words and artwork in an anthology of prayers, Az Nashir: Between Silence and Song: Women’s Prayers for Israel’s Days of Remembrance & Celebration. Each of the prayers in this book gives voice to our gratitude for living here in our national home, and our commitment to go on building it. And it acknowledges the cost of living here and the men and women who sacrificed so much to build and to protect our home. 

“Dear God,” wrote Senai Guedalia in her prayer, “Let our pain transform into purpose.” Senai’s husband, Yosef Malachi Guedalia, fell in battle on October 7th in defense of Kfar Aza. He was a man who looked at the world through what his mother, Dina Guedalia, calls “Eyes of Jerusalem” in her own prayer — eyes that look to the shining horizon, to the redemptive promise of wholeness and good.

Each of the prayers in the book is an attempt to look at the world through such eyes, to acknowledge the pain even as we transform it into purpose, or as Dina put it in her prayer — into love.

Here is a taste of my own words in the anthology. Words fall short in the face of all we feel, but they are what I can offer. 

My words — and all my love.

***

From “A Prayer for the Ones We Lost and for Ourselves”

…Lord of Hosts and hearts and spirits,
You, Who know the hidden places of our hearts
You, Who know that we can never come to You alone
For they are with us
Always —

Please.
Dig into the earth of Your bountiful compassion.
Make a well into Your gifts of healing.
Cup the water of Your love
and let us drink.

Let us drink,
For every surface is a wound of remembrance.
Every bus stop an agglomeration of memories.
Every smiling face a reminder of another.
And we don’t want to lose them
never lose them…

Help us carry them into our lives.
Help us live with them within us…

Lord of Hosts and memories,
Make their spirits within us a blessing.
Make our lives a continuation of their work.
Make the memories sing through us
and seep into the work we do in this universe,
make them nourish it
like the water feeds the growing tree.

* * *

Az Nashir: Between Silence and Song — Women’s Prayers for Israel’s Days of Remembrance & Celebration can be purchased via The SHVILLI Center or via Amazon.