Israel Remains in Deep Grief

As I made plans for my annual summer trip to the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where 200 rabbis gather for 10 days of intensive study, friends and family were very concerned. “Are you sure it’s safe to travel to Israel in the middle of this war?” “Maybe you shouldn’t go this year?” they mused. But I knew plenty of colleagues who had gone and were still going, and I wanted not only to learn with the most brilliant minds but, also, to express my solidarity with Israel. So on June 28th, I boarded an El Al flight to Tel Aviv.

I expected to see a nation at war. What I saw instead were people going about their lives: shopping, sitting at cafes and restaurants, accompanying their children to their summer activities. The friend who picked me up brought me to a beautiful outdoor restaurant with a spectacular view of the Mediterranean. Wow. How could this be? On the other hand, how could this not be? People have to get on with their lives, after all.

But then I noticed the signs posted everywhere: “Bring Them Home” referring to the 110+ hostages still in captivity with Hamas. At the train station, stores, banks, on street corners, on overpasses – everywhere you look – there are these signs and pictures of loved ones who have yet to return.

New poetry has arisen to articulate what people are going through.
If you start asking people how they are doing, the answer invariably is: “Not so well.” Lital Kaplan articulates the difficulty with this question in “Home Front Command’s New Regulations for Small Talk”:

Instead of the rude “How are you?”

We must frown in the face of our friend and ask –

“How war you?”

And instead of the standard response,

Forbidden by strict veto power:

“I’m fine, in fact.”

It is required to say – “Everything’s cracked.”

And the truthful ones will answer –

“Everything is shattered. Everything is shattered”

There is deep, deep grief and profound trauma in Israel that is hard to put into words and hard to convey if you are not there. The words we have are inadequate or mean something very different and new now. This is captured by Michael Zats, in “A New Language”:

Once again

I feel like an immigrant child.

Pretending that I understand

Nodding in agreement

Shaking my head in disagreement

But everyone around me

Is speaking another language

One that I relearn anew.

After October 7th

Hebrew.

It’s a small country so everyone has had the experience or knows someone who has suffered a loss or even multiple losses. A friend who works at the Israeli public television station told me about a pal of hers who lost two family members on October 7th, as five family members were kidnapped and four eventually freed, while one still remains in Gaza. Tali Asher, in “Almost Bereaved,” expresses this reality:

I am an almost bereaved mother

Each day a bit more bereaved

I am on the threshold of bereavement

A pre-bereaved ante-bereaved under-bereaved mother

Equal to a bereaved mother

I am a sacrificing mother

My bones shiver as I am all bereaved

Forgive my bereavement

Little by little becoming bereaved

Soon

Bereaved.

One of my friend’s archival projects is documenting what went on during that horrendous day in October: It has been so difficult for her staff that she has had to hire a therapist to process the horror with them. There are images one cannot get out of one’s mind after having seen them.

In the US, the focus is on rising antisemitism and there is so much attention to the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza. In Israel, many of the most compassionate of folks don’t have the bandwidth to be concerned about them. That sounds awfully cold but, truly, how much heartache can anyone bear? Dael Rodrigues Garcia captures the anguish but also the resilience of the Israeli people. Note that “cleared for publication” is what announcers on TV and radio say before reading the names of the soldiers killed on a given day. It means the families know already:

Cleared for publication:

That our hearts are broken

And in hidden places**

In empty rooms

Thousands of sobs

Are choking silently.

Cleared for publication:

That open season was declared on us

We were plundered in the dark

Of the most precious of the precious

It is already cleared for publication:

That the magical shining light

Of our beloved’s face is extinguished.

However, beneath the same soil

A stubborn plant is sprouting

Sending roots without end

Tightly grasped with love

Unfortunately, we are a people used to destruction – but also of rebirth and reinvention. Let us remember one of the Haftarot of consolation, Isaiah’s Nahamu, Nahamu – “Comfort, comfort my people.” Let us believe that we can survive and even thrive during the dark days we are living.

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Note: Translations of these poems, originally written in Hebrew, are by Michael Bohnen, Heather Silverman, Rachel Korazim except for “Home Front Command’s New Regulations for Small Talk” which was translated by Maya Valentine.