Mourning, Memory, and the Courage to Rebuild

 Someone recently told me my blogs are too depressing.

It made me pause. Maybe they are.  I tend to project either the mood of the situation or comments in the media, and these blogs are a form of therapy. For myself and hopefully for those reading as well.

But I wonder if that’s just because life itself feels heavy.
Still, it got me thinking—maybe I do need to find ways to bring more hope into my writing and more lightness into my perspective.

I even had an idea: I would post a light-hearted blog. As they say, man plans, but God has other ideas. After Shabbat, I got a message about my upcoming flight being cancelled, and I was disappointed.

Later that evening, I received another message, completely changing my perspective.

I received a message.
A former colleague had lost his wife in her fifties to cancer on Shabbat.
Suddenly, the flight didn’t matter.
It wasn’t annoying anymore.
It was just noise, compared to the silence and sadness that filled his home.

And then I thought about this week’s parsha, Emor, and the laws surrounding the Kohen.
How he must not defile himself with the dead.
How he is commanded to stay away from the very thing that brings us to our knees—grief, loss, and finality.

Why Must the Kohen Separate from Death?

It feels counterintuitive.
Shouldn’t a spiritual leader be present in moments of loss?
Shouldn’t he guide us, hold our hand, bury our dead?

But the Torah is sending a different message.
The Kohen represents life, continuity, wholeness.
His job is to be rooted in kedushah, in that which is eternally alive.
Death, even when dignified and sacred, is a rupture—a tear in the fabric of existence.
The Kohen must stay pure because he carries the vision of a world not yet broken.

It’s not that he doesn’t mourn.
It’s that someone must stand with both feet in hope, untouched, to remind the people that we are not just what we have lost.
We are also what we can build after loss.

Rav Kook and the 1929 Hebron Massacre: A Grief That Shook the Heavens

In 1929, the Hebron Massacre shattered centuries of Jewish presence in the city.
On August 23–24, 1929, Arab mobs brutally attacked the Jewish community of Hebron. Sixty-seven Jews were murdered, including women, children, and students of the Hebron Yeshiva—an institution connected to the broader vision of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Some victims were raped and mutilated, and many homes were looted and destroyed. This pogrom was part of a wave of anti-Jewish violence that erupted across British Mandate Palestine following inflammatory incitement related to Jewish access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

The massacre was particularly traumatic because Hebron had been home to a peaceful Jewish community for hundreds of years. Jews and Arabs had coexisted there, and the betrayal by long-time neighbours deeply shocked the survivors. The trauma echoes the horror of October 7, 2023, when Israelis experienced another unthinkable massacre at the hands of those they once believed they could live alongside.

Much like the Holocaust, the Hebron Massacre revealed how quickly neighbours could turn into killers under the sway of hatred and incitement. The British authorities evacuated the surviving Jews, and Jewish presence in Hebron was effectively ended until after 1967. The scars of that violence and the resulting tensions still shape the city and its fraught relationships today.

When news of the 1929 Hebron Massacre reached Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the Chief Rabbi of Mandatory Palestine and one of the most visionary spiritual leaders of modern Jewry, the grief struck him like a thunderclap. He fainted upon hearing the details—the slaughter of 67 Jews, including students from the Hebron Yeshiva, an institution closely linked to his ideals of religious revival in the Land of Israel.

When he awoke, he tore his clothes in mourning, recited the traditional blessing “Baruch Dayan HaEmet” (Blessed is the True Judge), and sank into a silence that even time dared not disturb. He refused food and comfort. He slept without a pillow. The pain was too sharp, too sacred to cushion.

Rav Kook’s health, already delicate, began to visibly deteriorate. Those close to him would later say he never fully recovered from the heartbreak. And yet, in the depths of his mourning, he revealed his greatness—not only as a spiritual giant but as a moral compass for a people in trauma.

When the British Acting High Commissioner extended a hand in a gesture of political sympathy, Rav Kook declined it. His voice, though soft, carried the weight of eternity:
“I do not shake hands defiled with Jewish blood.”
It was not hatred that moved him, but integrity. He would not allow politics to cleanse complicity.

But Rav Kook did not retreat into sorrow. He rose. He led. He visited the wounded and cared for the orphans of Hebron. He offered comfort to the broken, even as his own heart bled. He gave public sermons, infused with both fire and compassion, reminding the people of their mission and dignity.

He did not allow grief to crush his moral clarity.
He carried the burden—but he never let it carry him away.
His mourning became a form of leadership, rooted not only in pain but in unshakable faith and responsibility.

Footnote: A Moral Compass for Our Time

Rav Kook’s response to the Hebron Massacre offers a timeless lesson—especially now, in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, when once again Jewish blood was spilled, this time by Hamas in one of the worst atrocities since the Holocaust.

Today, we must ask: How do we engage with those whose hands are similarly stained?
What should be our posture toward Qatar, a regime that funds Hamas Terror and shelters Hamas leadership, while attempting to serve as a mediator? a honest broker? And then bribes Trump with the gift of a $400 million Jet. What do we make of the $142 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia?

How do we speak to so-called “potential partners for peace?” who simultaneously promote anti-Israel and Jewish hate in the media, campuses supporting the incitement of violence, glorify terror, and bankroll murder?

Rav Kook teaches us to lead with integrity, not naïveté.
He refused to normalise moral corruption, no matter how diplomatically convenient. His refusal to shake the hand of the British official was not about pride, but principle. He would not allow Jewish suffering to be trivialized with symbolism.

In a world increasingly willing to blur the lines between victim and aggressor, Rav Kook’s clarity is more needed than ever.

Engagement without accountability is not peace—it is moral failure. 

Just as Rav Kook stood firm, we too must ask hard questions:

• Can those who sponsor terror be an ally?

• Should Jewish memory and dignity be sacrificed on the altar of geopolitical strategy?

• Where do we draw the line?

We must remain open to peace, but not at the cost of justice.
We must remain compassionate—but never confused.

To carry the pain of our people is a sacred task. But we must carry it with our heads held high, and our moral compass intact—just like Rav Kook did.

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The Rambam and His Brother

On a personal level, consider Rabbi Moses ben Maimon—the Rambam. In his early adult life, he and his younger brother David were business partners. David supported the family financially through a jewelry and gem trade, enabling the Rambam to devote himself to Torah study and writing.

Tragically, while on a business voyage—likely to India or the Far East—David drowned at sea. The loss was devastating, not only emotionally but financially. According to the Rambam’s own words in a letter written later (found in the Cairo Geniza), he said:

“On him I laid all hope for support. He drowned at sea, and was lost with much money… For a year after this I lay on my bed, afflicted and stricken.”
(Iggeret HaNechama / Letter of Consolation)

And yet—from the ashes of that grief, he rose. In the years that followed, he rebuilt his life, taking on the burdens of family, community, and scholarship. He became a physician, the leader of Egyptian Jewry, and ultimately penned his magnum opus, the Mishneh Torah—a comprehensive code of Jewish law that still shapes halachic practice to this day.

He never forgot the pain. But he didn’t let it destroy him.
His grief became part of his greatness. His healing became a light for generations.

October 7: Where Do We Go From Here?

Since October 7, the grief is everywhere.
The funerals. The families. The photos that should never have to exist.
The widow with shattered eyes.
How much can people bear?

Add to that the sheer madness of the world.
There is evil and incitement everywhere.
And we just want to live.
We are not colonisers.
We are not aggressors.
We are a people yearning for peace, for safety, for life.
And we are tired—so tired—of mourning, wary of a situation will real solution or end game, tired that we continuously need to defend ourselves, to live.

The Kohen’s Calling Is Ours

In a world that wants us to sink into mourning, into despair, Emor reminds us:
Someone must stay above the grief.
Not to ignore it, but to carry the torch through it.
Someone must model what it means to hope.

The Kohen is not separate because he’s better.
He’s separate because he’s needed.
Because the community needs at least one person to stay connected to life and the possibility of healing.

That, perhaps, is our task now:
To walk with grief, but not be swallowed by it.
To cry—and then to build.
To mourn—and then to lead.

Lessons from the Holocaust: From Ruin to Rebirth

And we’ve seen this before.
After the Holocaust, the Jewish people were shattered.
Many carried unspeakable grief.
Some succumbed to it, quietly withdrawing from life, as anyone might.
But many, many chose another path.

They rebuilt. They remarried. They started new families and created new communities.
They carried their pain in silence and in strength.

The Klausenberger Rebbe, who lost his wife and eleven children in the camps, went on to build Laniado Hospital in Netanya, a living monument to healing and hope.
Survivors joined the army, helped found kibbutzim, built the economy, and gave heart to the fragile dream that became the State of Israel.

Their strength tells us that it’s possible—not easy, but possible- to turn the ashes of grief into the soil of renewal.

This is our heritage.
Not only trauma, but triumph.
Not just memory, but mission.

So, Where Does That Leave Us?

Maybe the world is heavy.
Maybe the flight was cancelled.
Maybe the news keeps getting worse.
But Emor—and the Jewish story—tell us something else:

You are allowed to mourn.
You are commanded to rise.

Like the Kohen, like Rav Kook, like the Rambam, like the survivors who built a country from brokenness—

We move forward.
We build.
We bless life in the shadow of death.
And somehow, even now, we begin again.

Pesach Sheini –  a Second Chance

I invite you to read my reflections why Israel and the world needs a second chance.

https://upgradingesg.substack.com/p/the-worlds-second-chance

About the featured video

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, calling it Operation Al Aqsa. For journalist Yardena Schwartz, the massacre was a chilling echo of the 1929 Hebron Massacre—the brutal slaughter of nearly 70 Jews, incited by propaganda that Jews sought to seize the Al Aqsa Mosque. At the time, she was deep into writing her first book, Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict. In this episode, Yardena shares how history repeated itself, how the October 7 attack reshaped her book, and why understanding the past is essential to making sense of the present.