Finding and Anchoring Jewish Life after October 7th

Sisters Perla and Chana Raczkowska fled the Russian Empire after World War I — Perla to Hamburg in the late 1910’s and Chana to New York in 1922. The sisters never spoke again. Their descendants multiplied on separate continents: Chana’s children in the United States and Perla’s four sons migrating to British Mandate of Palestine in the 1930’s. The American and Israeli cousins remained unaware of each other for over a century. Until October 7^th.

My grandfather (Chana’s son) was buried in New York at a burial ground with an archway stating “Stuchin Men’s Benevolent Society,” the burial spot for New York’s Jewish immigrants from the town of Stuchin. Casually tracing my family history, I tried to find Stuchin on a map, but was unsuccessful for over a decade, until I finally learned it was spelled “Szczuczyn.” Having reached the point where I could at last pinpoint Szczuczyn on a map, I arranged a trip in 2021 to explore this mysterious shtetl where, I learned, my family had lived for hundreds of years. Jewish life was brutally annihilated from Szczuczyn during the Holocaust, but relics remained: an outline where a mezuzah once graced a doorpost, Hebrew characters legible on a fragment of gravestone. The skeleton of Szczuczyn’s once vibrant Jewish life was faintly visible if one knew where to look. Something compelled me to bring a piece of Szczuczyn back to New York with me, and so I returned home with a hefty bag of rocks. I gave a few of the rocks to my 92-year-old aunt Judy, the eldest member from that branch of my family and the only surviving family member whose memories include Chana, who died when Judy was seven. I laid some of the Szczuczyn rocks at my parents’ gravesites. And I hoarded the rest, unsure what I wanted them for, but wanting them fiercely.

I continued researching my family history, ultimately producing a 300-page book, adding 1,600 names to my family tree, and tracing my oldest ancestors back to circa 1730. On October 7^th, I drove home from a half-marathon race, unpacked my bags and learned that while I was running a race through beautiful wine country in upstate New York, Israel was being cannibalistically decimated. Immediately, I thought of Perla’s four sons, who ventured to British Mandate for Palestine, remained there at the founding of the State of Israel, and whose descendants lived there today. Or at least I hoped they were living there today.  Were they living today? How were they? I couldn’t call them up on October 8^th, introduce myself, and ask “are you alive? Are you OK?” But I wanted to. They consumed me. They tugged at me.

I spent days, and weeks, in fruitless obsession wondering about Perla’s progeny. I spearheaded a fundraising campaign for Magen David Adom, and with each donation that trickled in, I thought: what about Perla’s children? I went on hostage marches, and I thought: what about Perla’s children? Eventually, I emailed three of Perla’s descendants for whom I found email addresses. Are you OK? What can I send you? Can I help?

I waited for a reply. And waited. There was no immediate or even prompt reply. Had they been taken hostage? Were they alive? There was no response. Days ticked by. Still nothing. I began to wonder if my gesture was unwelcome. Maybe they were okay, but wondered, “where were you during the Yom Kippur War? the first Intifada? the second? Why are you suddenly showing up now?” I realized that if I received no response, the silence was not necessarily a sign of their captivity or death, but perhaps just disinterest in me. And then — an email arrived! Doron sent an email, exposing the psyche of a man living in ongoing terror. “We need you to fight for us. Be our voice in the States and be proud to belong to the Jewish people,” he pleaded. I cried. I continued my efforts to support Israel and fight antisemitism with renewed vigor. Soon, a friend request appeared from Doron on my Facebook account. I accepted the request and began to receive encouraging comments from him when I posted photos of a protest outside the U.N., a hostage awareness march, or other pro-Israel activities.

I hadn’t been to Israel in nearly thirty years, but a few months into the war, I wanted to join the volunteer efforts there, and I wanted to connect with Perla’s progeny. I asked Doron if it would be possible to meet. He responded “I will try to arrange a meeting with the family, I will meet you anyway.” I took this to mean that he would see if others had any interest in meeting me, and if they did not, he would still meet with me by himself. And so, 102 years after Perla and Chana diverted their lives never to speak again, Doron and I were scheduled to meet.

Doron came to my hotel at 10:30 am. As I rode down the elevator, I wondered how would I pick him out from all the people in the large hotel lobby? What would we talk about? Was this going to be awkwardly uncomfortable? As I walked into the lobby, a warmth that had been brewing for over a century basked us in glory, and we each had no doubt who the other was. We hugged, we smiled, we held each other. This human touch, undiluted by barriers of distance or time, was other worldly. We had connected a gap of more than a century in our family’s history and made magic. Doron walked me to the meeting place where his sisters and cousins awaited us. I spent the entire day with them, marveling at the ordinary, from watching a daughter object as her father asked for too many licks of her ice cream, to noting disagreement among siblings as to the preferred walking route to our next stop.

A few days later, more relatives learned of my visit, and nine members from another branch of the family hosted me for dinner. The family matriarch, Marion Pnina, glowed as she described her joy in seeing, for the first time, a photo of her namesake and grandmother Perla (in Hebrew, Pnina). Marion and I sat side by side, holding hands, saying more to each other through silence than through words. A week later, cousin Eli invited me for Shabbat with his wife and three children. They shared with me their custom of drinking from a shared kiddush cup in age order, taught me to play manqala and told me about Eli’s agronomy magic in reviving a long lost cocoa bean from the rainforests of the Philippines.

Our extraordinary family connection did not change the war or bring back the hostages, but this ray of light shined into our darkness and balanced despair with a taste of joy. Our visit was far too short and we barely scratched the surface of knowing who each other are. We needed more time. And so, my return visit was scheduled. As I looked ahead to my return visit to Israel, I decided to bring my Israeli cousins some of  the rocks I had collected several years ago in Szczuczyn. I put each rock in a crystal box engraved with the name “Szczuczyn” in English and Yiddish, and with the town’s latitude and longitude: one box for each of the ten family groups in Perla’s progeny.

I returned to Israel a week after six hostages were found in the tunnels of Gaza, executed in cold blood. I saw a country bitterly divided by the hostage crisis, focused on an existential war, and aching from the most savage calamity in the country’s history. Cousin Eli arranged to bring me to the Gaza envelope, to walk the path of destruction and stand where so many had perished. I did not realize that, beyond taking me to the public commemorative sites, Eli had also arranged for us to be escorted into closed quarters, past armed guards, to view things not accessible to the general public. As we approached Kibbutz Nir Oz, soldiers guarded the entrance, our credentials were verified and after a thorough vetting, we were paired with a man who chaperoned us into this barricaded shell of what was once a kibbutz. The homes were either burnt to the ground, ransacked to bits, or some combination. A child’s sock graced the patio furniture at the home of Kfir and Ariel Bibas. Hostage posters haunted the doorframes of the former homes of captives. It felt something like the living ghost town of Szczuczyn, except that the wounds were still festering, the blood still dripping, red and wet.

The next night was a Shabbat dinner with family members, a celebration of togetherness: everything lovingly cooked to perfection, anticipating an upcoming Bat Mitzvah, and reveling in the everyday joys of life lived near and among those we love. This picture repeated itself for several Shabbat dinners and lunches, where ultimately 37 of Perla’s descendants made my acquaintance and embraced me into their large Israeli family. These Shabbat gatherings were punctuated by some of the family’s young adults preparing for army service, others currently in service, some just finishing service, and one volunteering in the reserve. Marion’s granddaughter Maya is currently fulfilling her military service and is stationed to guard Kibbutz Nir Oz; she was acquainted with the man who chaperoned us through the shuttered kibbutz.

Notwithstanding the ravages and darkness of war, I saw in my cousins an unwavering determination to carry on, to overcome, to heal, to celebrate and to sustain happy Jewish lives. This spirit landed on me in a way that was unfamiliar and extraordinary. As I gave each family their Szczuczyn rock-in-a-box, we reveled in the fact that the century of silence between us was over, and we were ushering in centuries of shared Jewish life ahead.

With my new/old cousins, I explored much of the Israeli landscape: harvesting grapes in the Negev at sunrise, enjoying the sea breeze by the Mediterranean, and watching ibexes gallop along the Ramon Crater. In Caesaria, I walked past artifacts from the time of Jewish King Herod (into whose kingdom Jesus Christ was born); and I saw the prison cell that Rabbi Akiva was held in before his execution in the second century. I noticed some of the rocks strewn about the ruins of this famous port city. These rocks had met many Jews through the ages: King Herod, Jesus Christ, Rabbi Akiva; and now Doron, Eli and me. I picked up a rock, stared at it, and tossed it back on the ground. I had no urge to take these rocks back to New York. I began to understand that I had taken the Szczuczyn rocks home with me so that a piece of Szczuczyn would always be surrounded by vibrant Jewish life. But these Israeli rocks? They do not need my help. They will forever be surrounded by vibrant Jewish life right where they are sitting now. Am Yisrael Chai.