Breaking and Strengthening at the Same Time: Using Loss as a Motivation
“We are broken.” She looks down, then right at me, sitting thousands of miles away, sorrow etched on her face. “So many people whose children were killed on October 7th developed cancer and died.”
How to respond? The gap—between a tumult of emotions, the inability to discern between them, and the ability to articulate a reply beyond tears—is almost as vast as a parent’s pain.
What do I feel? The rip to hearts that are not mine shreds mine in empathy and solidarity.
Sorrow. Grief. Pain. Isolation. Anger. Sadness. Abandonment. Loss.
I do not know the people that my British-Israeli friend mentioned in our recent conversation. I do know that they carried such an immense, heavy, unfathomable, burden. The burden that they never asked for, but which was dropped on them by the inhospitable, intolerant, resentful world because they are Jewish and they live in Israel.
The horrible spreading impact of antisemitism.
The murderous result of Jew hatred.
There are those who are in pain. There are those who cause pain. There are those who want to make the pain go away. There are those who want to comfort those in pain and confront those who cause pain. There are those who don’t know and don’t care. There are those who look at the other side and let themselves feel their pain as an added burden. There are those who don’t want to recognize the humanity of someone else’s pain because they are from “over there.” So much pain. So much unnecessary pain. Let us each live our life.
Empathy. “Identification with or understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or emotional state of another person.” Compassion. “Deep awareness of the suffering of another, coupled with the wish to relieve it.”
If only compassion wasn’t throttled by hatred, envy, ignorance, antagonistic righteousness.
As I thought these thoughts, this lyric came to me:
What the world needs now is love sweet love,
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.
What the world needs now is love sweet love,
No not just for some but for everyone.
Love. One definition is “self-giving concern for the well-being of others.”
If only song lyrics could come true.
I want my heart to expand to those who hate me/us, but it is so hard when blocked by anger, disillusionment, confusion, horror, disgust.
Then this biblical phrase came to me:
Love your fellow as yourself: I am the Lord/G!d.
וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ אֲנִ֖י יְהוָֽה
Three points here: Love others. Love yourself. Do this because “I am G!d.”
How does this work when others don’t have this commandment? How does this work when we Jews hold ourselves to this? How does this work when we are not seen as individuals simply living, trying to be good, to elevate our relationships with G!d and with each other? This has been the scenario, seemingly, since the beginning of time.
How to go forward when whatever Jews or Israelis do is seen through a dense filter that warps perception? How to protect Israeli parents and their children?
It is not to apologize.
It is not to join the blinded chorus. Because what they offer, show, embody, represent is not a desirable alternative.
It cannot be to always live in pain, or the expectation of pain, or to be thrust aside and out. No.
Yes. It is to live within the understanding that my being has a right to exist as it exists, within an understanding that I will live my life as thoughtfully, compassionately, Jewishly as suits me.
Living as a realistic optimist, with some very realistic pessimist mixed in, is to acknowledge that we each have a right to exist. And that the wall which prevents others seeing clearly is so very high. But that wall is instilled in the mind, it is not an intrinsic obstacle. Just because this has been the world for time immemorial does not mean that it needs to be so going forward. “If only it were different” is a valid wish.
How to make a wish come true?
And then I heard this: “Every day we wake up means G!d has something for us to do.”
Each of us needs to take our beating heart and think about what we can do to generate a future that is not a dire repetition of the past. I know this is simplistic and that most of us has such a short reach.
Then I remembered this story: On his deathbed, Reb Zusha speaks of what he fears. “I am not afraid of being asked why I was not Moses,” he explained to his students. “After all, G!d already has a Moses. I am afraid, however, of being asked, ‘Zusha, why weren’t you Zusha?’”
I commit to being me. To shaping my tiny snowball and pushing it along.
I ask each of you to do the same.
Not only for those bereft Israeli parents and aching Jews, but for a humanity that accepts G!d shining down on us and reflecting it back to each other.
