Redheads

Before the blessing of turning snowy white, my father-in-law was a redhead.

His mother was, too.

I have the sweetest, gingiest nieces and nephews.

And tonight, as I sang “Hamalach” with my kids and patted their soft blonde and brunette heads,

I was grateful for their lack of auburn locks.

Because I don’t think I could handle the pain.

We view them as rare, yet most people don’t know that redheads make up only 2% of the world population.

They also have a gene mutation that gives them a higher pain tolerance…

Plus a greater concentration of Vitamin D, making them stronger than most.

They’re also extra sensitive to sunlight.

For the past 503 days, despite becoming so intimately familiar with pictures of the Bibas family, as if they were my own (and in a way, they are)…

It always puzzled me how two brunettes could have such flaming red offspring.

Not only one, but two beautiful brothers with hair brighter than the sun.

Skips a generation, sure.

But genetically, something seemed unique.

The Bibas family before Gazans brutally kidnapped them.

It also struck me as interesting that in reality, “redheads” often have orange hair.

As someone obsessed with color theory, there’s no denying red is a strong color.

We all know red.

Red is stop signs.

Ambulances.

Anger.

The Red Cross.

A beating heart.

On the positive side, red symbolizes strength, passion, and confidence. But it can also be aggressive, symbolizing rage, alerts, or danger.

As for orange?

Just like the juice –

a symbol of optimism, happiness, enthusiasm and youthful connections.

Nerd alert, but something that fascinates me even more than color theory is names.

I beg to help friends choose baby names, and like a secret code, I Google almost any name I come across.

Don’t even get me started on Zodiac signs and birth charts.

Either way, names are not random.

From the very creation of Earth, names are our essence —

The manifestation of our strength, weakness, and purpose in this world.

Which is why the irony was not lost on me when the 2 redheaded, brotherly symbols of this excruciating genocide were named Ariel, “Lion of God” (as well as another name for Jerusalem and the Beit Hamikdash)…

and Kfir, “Lion Cub”.

Glance in any direction in Jerusalem and you’ll see lions everywhere.

Gracing flags to statues –

representing the blessing, majesty, and even divine protection of the Jews.

This is why, until the very last moment, we would not – could not – give up hope for our precious Bibas family.

For 503 days, we bled orange.

An orange flame both painful and eternal burned in our hearts.

Orange tears ran, unbidden, from our eyes.

The fate of this heroic Lioness clutching her little Lion men –

equal parts steel bravery and searing fear-

was as intertwined as a yellow ribbon with the fate of this war we didn’t start.

Shiri, this Mother of Mothers, Woman of Valor’s name means either “My Song” or “Song of God.”

It’s not that I think God is singing. Bitter tears are more likely, as shown by today’s relentless downpour.

But “Shira” is a name closest associated with Miriam in Tanach, in “Shirat Miriam”.

A woman who risked her life to save her Jewish baby brother from death at the hands of the Egyptians. Miriam does not accept reality as the final answer. She challenges cruelty and power dynamics.

If this trio of strength and resilience and a Mother’s Love didn’t make it, well, neither would we.

The higher our hopes were (and dare I say they were high), the higher they came cascading down.

The unfathomable has been confirmed. The remains of Ariel and Kfir have been sent back and identified by Israel, while the third body awaiting identification is not that of Shiri, as we were led to believe.

We’ve come face-to-face with the depths of evil. How will we survive?

It’s been said, and painfully experienced, that if we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.

So too, in the upcoming holiday of Purim, where the evil villain “Haman” is just one letter off from “Hamas”…

A terrified orphan girl is thrust into Queenship and faced with the destruction of her nation.

God chose Esther as the messenger to save her People from not the first instance of Jew-hatred…

and certainly not the last.

My favorite line in Megillat Esther is something her uncle Mordechai tells Esther.

When she fears for her life before approaching King Achashverosh to plead that he revoke his decree to annihilate the Jews…

Mordechai tells her, (ומי יודע אם לעת כזאת הגעת למלכות” (אסתר, ד, יד” –

“And who knows whether you have attained royalty for this very purpose?”

Indeed, through uniting the Jews and using her feminine intuition…

Queen Esther succeeded in cancelling the decree. What should have been a day of bloody mourning – not unlike the horrors of October 7th – turned upside down and became a day of joy.

Here’s the part I never knew though:

It’s possible that Esther and Mordechai may have met a tragic end.

According to an article in the Jewish Chronicle,

“If we accept the scholarly consensus identifying Ahasuerus with Xerxes I, we know he came to the throne in 486 BCE and met an untimely and violent death in 465 BCE as a result of a court revolution. This was instigated by one of his own ministers, Artabanus, with a view to enabling Artaxerxes — Xerxes’s son by his first marriage to Vashti — to succeed to the throne.

It is not unreasonable to assume, therefore, that those around the king — Queen Esther and Mordechai who was “ranked next to King Ahasuerus” (10:3) — would have met that same tragic end. Artaxerxes would have sought revenge on them for having usurped his mother’s throne, while also resenting their having imported an alien religion into the palace.”

It’s sobering to think that Queen Esther, the heroine, the savior of the Jewish People, may have accomplished this task yet was ultimately killed. It doesn’t make for happy reading on the most joyful holiday – which is why it’s not included in the Book of Esther.

But as I grapple with my bleeding heart…

My brain replaying a looped visual of a mother with the most raw terror in her eyes as she shields her babies in her arms from the clutches of evil…

I need some comfort. Something to acknowledge that yes, this is the purest form of cruelty; the devil embodied. And for that we must grieve.

And also, that there is purpose in the pain.

It made me think about how we each come into the world with a destiny and the tools to fulfill it.

Whether it be our mama bear instincts…

Our penchant for the crime-fighting, moral-upholding Batman…

Or our flaming red hair and all it represents.

My heart weeps, tears seeping through the shattered pieces.

For what was. What could have been. What will be.

And with a prayer on my lips, I beseech God with every fiber of my being to help Yarden (Jordan) Bibas…

The broken husband, father, widower, soul – delve deep into the meaning of his name.

Because yes, it does translate to “descend”.

But in the Torah (Devarim 30:18-20), the waters of the Yarden river represent freedom from oppression…

Breakthrough…

and deliverance. It is here that the People of Israel (yes, I said it) reached the end of our journey through the wilderness en route to the Promised Land.

May it be His will, speedily.

And may the brutal Bibas murders and all those who were killed in God’s name be avenged.

May their memories be a blessing, and a revolution.