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Searching for Batya. In Gaza
At the time of this writing, if he is alive, Kfir Bibas just turned two years old.
I can imagine him in a dark tunnel. Maybe his mom is with him. If she is alive, if she knows what day it is, teaching Kfir how to hold up two sweet pudgy little fingers.
Ani Shnei Shanim.
I am Two.
Kfir, the world’s youngest hostage, was brutally abducted on the morning of what would have been his first Simchat Torah. It is one of the happiest Jewish holidays of the year that literally means to rejoice with the Torah. It is geared for kids with dancing, flag waving and candy.
Instead, he was abducted from his home of Kibbutz Nir Oz with his brother Ariel, his mom Shiri and his father Yarden.
Hamas and their enablers – maybe Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or members of UNRWA, or “ordinary average Palestinians” also murdered Shiri’s parents, Margit Shnaider Silberman and Yosi Silberman who also lived on Nir Oz. In fact, Yosi immigrated to Israel over 40 years ago and was instrumental in bringing new agricultural techniques to the farming community’s crops.
If he is alive, Kfir has spent most of his life not free, in captivity, somewhere in the depths of the tunnels of Gaza.
For over 400 days, Jews all over the world and a precious few of their non-Jewish allies have held out hope that this baby is still alive and growing each day. That baby, seen the world over with his toothless smile, a pink rattle in hand, and the most delicate red peach fuzz atop his head, might have grown into a toddler like Ariel, who may now be five.
Around the world, in cities from New York to Tel Aviv to London, there were small, somber birthday “parties” for Kfir.
Some dressed in orange, to represent that beautiful redhead.
Some held orange balloons.
In London, pro-Palestinian protesters thought it was noble and virtuous to crash the party. Perhaps they were the same ilk that for 15 months viciously ripped down posters of the baby, as to deny his abduction.
Over 70 of them were arrested for breaching their protest parameters, carrying their swastika-laden placards too close to a synagogue where pro-Israel Londoners were holding a somber birthday commemoration for Kfir.
In the Torah cycle, Jews around the world have entered into the Book of Exodus, and in it, the depths of slavery in Egypt.
Egypt. Mitzrayim is literally translated as a “narrow place.”
At the beginning of the book, Parashat Bo, we learn that the current Pharaoh is distressed that the Hebrew slaves are strong and growing in number. To prevent more of them from overpopulating Egypt, and perhaps birthing a leader in their ranks who will rise to a leader, defeat Pharaoh and free the slaves, Pharaoh orders a decree that all Hebrew baby boys are to be slaughtered after birth by their midwives, or drown newborn babies the Nile.
Pharaoh’s predictions were right. We know the story of mother Yocheved placing baby Moses in the basket of reeds at three moths. Of Moses being watched by his sister, soon-to-be Prophetess Miriam, as the basket floated away from Goshen, down the Nile, to wind up at the feet of the bathing daughter of Pharaoh.
As the Torah’s text teaches us:
“The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile, while her maidens walked along the Nile. She spied the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to fetch it. When she opened it, she saw that it was a child, a boy crying. She took pity on it and said, “This must be a Hebrew child.” Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a Hebrew nurse to suckle the child for you?” And Pharaoh’s daughter answered, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will pay your wages…Exodus 2:5-10
The Pharaoh’s daughter named Judaism’s greatest prophet with the Egyptian name Moshe, which means drawn from the water.
Only then was Pharaoh’s daughter bestowed with the name Batya, daughter of Gd, for defying her father’s orders and saving the life of infant Moses and for her eventual turning away from the false Egyptian gods and towards the one true Gd.
Batya was the only named Egyptian. She had compassion. Time and time again Moses, as an adult, asked Pharaoh to let his people go.
But the Egyptians, whether they were powerless to disobey the Pharaoh’s orders to be our taskmasters or gleefully partook in enslaving us for hundreds of years, did not let us go.
How fitting we read this on Kfir’s second birthday.
Is there a Batya in Gaza?
Is there some woman left in Gaza with any moral clarity who could have compassion for a young family? One with an innocent man and woman and an infant and a toddler?
Has there been a Batya in Gaza to feed, clothe and bathe baby Kfir?
To share food rations?
To make sure Kfir and Ariel could have access to vaccines provided by UNRWA as allowed and facilitated by Israel?
Outside of some midrashim that the rabbis have crafted over the centuries, we do not know much about Moses’ upbringing in Pharaoh’s palace.
And we do not know, or we may never know, how Kfir has spent the last 15 months of his very tiny life.
This is assuming that please, Gd in Heaven, he is alive.
A child will learn more before their fifth birthday in terms of development than at any other point in their life.
Where, how, by who, has Kfir learned from to sit up, crawl, walk run?
Who was there to witness these first precious milestones?
If Kfir is not with his parents, is there a compassionate Batya somewhere in the tunnels of Gaza watching over this child?
I write this, of course, in the dark, not knowing if this child, his brother or his parents are still alive.
Evidence over the last 15 months has given me little hope in the existence of such a Batya in Gaza.
Early into the hostage crisis, three hostages escaped their captors.
Did any “ordinary” Palestinian offer to help?
To give them food, refuge, or best yet, direct them to an IDF brigade for their redemption?
No.
They were handed back over to Hamas and were most likely paid a handsome wage.
No ordinary Palestinian living in Gaza to this point has taken up Israel’s offer to be paid upwards of 5 million for information on the whereabouts of Kfir or any hostages.
There do not appear to be any Batyas among the employees of the Red Cross.
Yet it is us, the Jews, who are asked by the world’s virtue signalers that we must demonstrate compassion on the innocents in Gaza “stuck in the crossfire.”
As if the sides carry the same moral equivalent weight.
As these hours will drag by in the next 42 days, just as the Hebrew slaves were in a narrow impossible place that we eventually escaped, hope and prayers are the only solid things to grasp onto right now.
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