Bring Them Comfort

I woke up and learned the tragic news in the middle of the night and cried out. I finally fell back asleep last night around 4am. Woke at 7:30am sobbing uncontrollably. My daughter was already awake, very quiet. She then came into my room saying, “Mom, Hersh was only a year older than me.” Now we’re crying together.

His mom, Rachel, and I shared a similar kind of mom. A mom devoted to volunteer work, helping others. Back then in Buffalo and Chicago, two extremely cold cities, my mom and her mom helped to uplift what was referred to as ‘inner-city, underprivileged children’, through educational services. Rachel’s mom Marcy tutured kids personally every week, later fostered/sponsored a family of kids whose mom was hooked on drugs. My mom, Eve, created the first Head Start pre-school program in NY, one of the first of its kind in the nation.

Nearly 10 years ago, the co-founder of BLM, Patrisse Cullors, announced that BLM needed to eradicate Israel. I missed it at the time. 10 months ago I finally understood that reciprocal allyship was a myth.

Rachel and I attended the same university for college, Brandeis University just outside Boston – about 10 years apart. We grew up in homes lighting Shabbat candles and having Shabbat family dinners on Friday nights. This was our Friday Night Lights. She loves her child/children with the same fierce passion and devotion as I do. We are Jewish moms first in this great big world. When I think of the depth of agony and pain she’s in, the tears won’t stop.

There but for the grace of God go I, too.

A day or two ago the families of the hostages ran to the Gaza border, some even broke through and ran into Gaza. Right at the very edge, the moms used powerful megaphones and called out to their children, one by one. I have to believe Hersh heard his mom. Even if he was already in heaven, he heard and felt her infinite love. “Hersh, it’s Mama!”

Around that same time, as Jewish mothers were calling out their love, Hamas executed, up close and in cold blood, 6 hostages they had held in their pitch black terror tunnel in Rafah. All those eyes on Rafah were blind to the hostages suffering 10 miles underground. The brave IDF found them yesterday and brought them home.

Every day for 10 months I have done everything I could to raise awareness, to advocate for the hostages, to defend tiny Israel’s right to defend itself. I feel like I’ve been shouting into the abyss. It was a tiny reflection of the magnitude of advocacy Rachel and Jon did for their son and all the hostages. Yesterday was day 330.

My daughter is in a Jewish Justice book club. She’s reading Dara Horn’s brilliant People Love Dead Jews.

L’dor V’dor.