Graffiti comes home

I was in the hyper, pre-Sukkot multitasking mode of checking guest lists, recipes, unpacking groceries and just getting off a phone interview with a reporter from the local newspaper when I noticed a call and text from Jack. “Have you seen your lawn?” No, I had not. Though yes, I had just come in the house through the front door – but I was on the phone and carrying too many bags.

Rushing out, I saw it. The neighborhood graffiti I had been combatting with a grey spray can – still in my glove compartment – had now landed on our front lawn. A sign carefully and deliberately created reading “genocide” was surprisingly firmly affixed to our “We Stand With Israel” lawn sign.

It felt harsh. Clearly not a spontaneous act of violation. No, this was a planned, carefully crafted, neatly penned meticulously glued-on – a violation of property. An intrusive, invasive – uninvited breach.

I wish they had knocked on our door and had the mettle to open a conversation. I am more than ready to talk. Instead, a graffitied attack at a raw moment on the calendar between October 7, Yom Kippur and Shemini Atzeret / Simchat Torah. A year later.

This Yom Kippur my Machzor was, “One Day in October, Forty Heroes, Forty Stories”.  And when I say it was my Machzor I mean that it was the book I held in hand during the in between moments of tefillah. It elicited tears, pleas and raw moments of despair. It catapulted me to the very Gates of Heaven, to the very foot of the Throne of Glory.

As Abraham Joshua Heschel prayed with his feet back in Selma – I prayed with this book.

Each episode, intense. Each story a jagged broken piece of a rough stone in a horrific mosaic of October 7. As I sang from our liturgy, “Chamol, Have Mercy on Your Creations”, tears were pouring forth uncontrollably – the begging was real.

So yes. I’m more than ready to talk about genocide.

The reporter who had been in touch with me was working on a piece on how local synagogues were planning to commemorate the Shemini Atzeret – Simchat Torah observance this year. I tried to keep from laughing – ironic laughing. Mixing the bitter and the sweet is what we do. There is nary a day in Jewish history that is not marked by violent persecution, pogrom or expulsion. Check your “This Day in Jewish History” book or website.

I told him that I had spoken on Kol Nidre night in Shul and shared the sentiments that a young person – a former student – had captured in an essay after visiting the horror sights of actual genocide in Poland. There her teacher had framed their task, as they traveled from sites of ghettoes to death camp to pits in the forests to “lift up the Kedusha the holy remnants” that lingered there still.

And that is what we shall do at 7:29 pm Shemini Atzeret night, October 23 – one year to the minute after the sirens began to ring out – we will lift up the Kedusha – the bravery, the self-sacrifice, the martyrdom and we will lift our voices in song until those very notes reach the Gates of Heaven – and maybe reach the purveyors of graffiti. You never know.