Sharing grief: Of mourning Hersh and the other slain hostages

Early in the morning of October 23rd, the 17th day of the war, my family joined a throng of friends and neighbors walking towards Jon and Rachel Polin Goldberg’s home . I was holding a folded flag and my daughter’s hand. My sons ran ahead, disappearing between young men in red HaPoel shirts and mothers in blue and white who were pushing strollers towards the same destination. At the end of our street the crowed swelled and then rearranged itself into two thick lines of people holding flags and singing “Acheinu” and “HaTikva”.

We were all there to support Jon and Rachel Polin Goldberg as they set out on what turned out to be the first of many, many advocacy journeys into the wide world outside Israel, where they eloquently and forcefully plead their son’s case — and our collective case — to an often unsympathetic world.

As we stood and sang and watched them walk past us, I held onto one corner of our giant flag but found it hard to hold onto hope. “Our hope isn’t lost yet,” I sang, joining the chorus of our national anthem. But the words fell flat for me. The road before Jon and Rachel – before all of us – is so impossibly long, I thought in those moments. It’s so impossibly difficult.

The battle before them is so very hard.

I looked at the faces of the people around me, and saw, in them, the same grim awareness. They, too, were wondering if our efforts were futile. Yet each and every one of them chose to come and sing anyway. And something about this realization snapped me out of my despair.

I thought of other grim faces, at other gatherings. I thought of the men, women and children who demonstrated for Soviet Jewry and the release of my father – Natan Sharansky– from the Soviet gulag. Those people must have felt some of what I did, I reminded myself. They must have looked at my mother year after year, rally after rally, and wondered if there was any point in her efforts —- or theirs.

Yet they showed up over and over again, supported her and the cause over and over again, and in the end, their perseverance brought an empire to its knees and released my father – and a million other jews – to pursue Jewish life in freedom. Who am I to decide, here at the road’s very beginning, that it won’t lead to a similarly a happy ending?

I raised the flag higher and raised my voice higher and sang of the Jewish soul that goes on living deep inside us, giving us hope to be a free nation in our country, Zion. And as the voices of my friends and neighbors swelled together to form the “Jerusalem” at the end of the anthem, I felt a small, yet honest, seed of hope.

Many months passed since that morning. We had to nurture our hope through many difficult days — though our struggles, of course, paled in comparison to what Hersh’s brave family, and the other families of the fallen and the hostages, had to survive. We took our flag out for sad occasions, to honor the funerary processions of fallen soldiers from our neighborhood. We took it out for joyous occasions too, like our difficult, challenging celebration of Israel’s Independence Day. We hoped so much to take it out again to celebrate Hersh’s return to his family. We prayed so much to gather by his house, the house his parents left time and again to fight for his return, and watch him walking in, alive and well.

Instead, we took it out today, on the 332nd day of the war, to honor Jon, Rachel and their daughters as they set out of their home once more, but this time – for a journey that can’t have a happy ending. We watched them ride by us on the way to Hersh’s funeral, and all around us people held their flags in silence, and then walked to follow the convoy, at least a little bit.

This time, we didn’t raise our voice in song.

***

Since we heard the news about the murder of Hersh and five other hostages yesterday, many of us have been stumbling about, weighed down by a thousand tonn of grief.

And for many of us, grief very quickly turned to rage.

Like everyone else in Israel (and probably beyond), I have an opinion about this rage, its expressions, the form and shape it took. But I don’t want to write about my opinion today. I don’t want to argue.

Why argue, when every eye I meet holds the same heartbreak as my own?

Why defend this or that decision and argue against this or that measure, when all I want is to hold all of you – all of my people – as we mourn?

On the 17th day of the war I held onto the flag, but it was the people around me – united and present despite their heavy hearts – that kept hope alive for me. Today, when we need hope so very badly, why would I want to argue with anyone who feels this horrid grief?

I hold onto the memory of that somber HaTikvah, all those days – too many days! – ago. I hold onto the people around me, hoping for the song to become real for me – for us – again.

***

Last night, we came together as a neighborhood, joining  Jon and Rachel’s community – Hakhel congregation – in prayer. Candles cast their flickering light on tear-stained faces and open prayer books, as we said, once more, the old, familiar words.

Messages from friends and strangers in the communal prayer service organized by Hakhel congregation in Baka, Jerusalem

“Our father, Our king, “we begged God, “please act in the merit of those who were butchered to sanctify Your name!”

We cried. Only twenty four hours earlier, we said these words as we begged God to help Hersh amongst the other hostages. Now, we said them, knowing that Hersh was beyond help. That he was, in fact, one of those people in whose merit we beg God for help.

As twilight made way for darkness, we sang “May this hour be an hour of mercy and a time of good will before You.” We sing these words every year when Yom Kippur draws to its conclusion. We sing them feeling that the gates of heaven are about to close shut, that the books of our fate are about to be sealed, that we have this one last moment to beg God for a better tomorrow, a kinder world.

We sang last night, and I felt the same familiar urgency.

This, too, is a day of judgement.

God, please, the doors are closing.

Our hostages are dying.

I don’t know how best to help them.

God, please, please, in the merit of us all – living and dead – help them.

Write them in Your book of life, grant them a happy ending.

Let us stand together in this grief, be present for it and each other. Help us find, in this shared presence, hope.

Help us use this hope to help each other. Help us help the hostages find a better end than this.