The Angels of Parshat Terumah

Today marks day 511 of Israel at war. Throughout this past year I have often felt upset with myself for feeling somewhat removed from these tragedies affecting my people, maybe some of you have felt that way too and are somewhat ashamed like I am. I went to Israel to connect there in person, I went to the traveling Nova exhibit, I read constantly, and I try to advocate in my own small way. Still, guilt would creep in and make me wonder, shouldn’t I feel more distraught? Shouldn’t I feel even more devastated and depressed than I do? Eventually I realized that this is normal. It is literally impossible for us as individuals to feel all the despair, all the rage, all the sorrow that each of the thousands of tragic deaths combined would cause us to feel. If we did feel all of that, we might not survive. It is us subconsciously protecting ourselves from feeling all the feelings, lest we remain paralyzed in mourning or depression forever.

This is likely what many people feel when talking about the Holocaust, of course 6 million souls murdered is much bigger in terms of numbers. Many might not be able to truly connect that kind of sorrow. I remember as a child when learning about the Holocaust I was told that if one were to have a moment of silence for each of the 6 million victims, we would be standing in silence for years. So what can we do? We can use symbols to help us grasp the enormity of huge tragedies. For example, in 2004 the documentary Paper Clips told the story of a middle school class in Tennessee who collected 6 million paper clips to represent the lives lost in the Holocaust. Paper clips were symbols we used to try to understand.

Today on Day 511 at War, I can think of only one symbol, the color orange. It is the color that the Bibas family has used to symbolize their fight to save their family members who were kidnapped and murdered so viciously by Hamas. In the last few days dozens of monuments all over the world were lit up in orange in honor of the Bibas family. A main bridge in Budapest, the Empire State Building, Christ the Redeemer statute in Rio de Janeiro, the Obelisco in Argentina just to name a few. The flaming orange hair of those angelic children has invaded our hearts, it has let our tears flow and our anguished prayers rise up to Heaven. Yarden Bibas, the sole survivor of his family, buried his precious children and his soulmate. He spoke directly to them, breaking through barriers of our world and the next, as if they were right there next to him where they had been meant to be all along.

As Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir are buried together in one single casket and the world watches us mourn our innocent red-haired babies I cannot help but imagine the Keruvim, the Cherubs described in this week’s Parshat Terumah, as the faces of Kfir and Ariel, the rosy cheeked red haired beautiful baby boys. I cannot help seeing the wings of the Keruvim as Shiri trying to shield them, only her wings of love and of courage at asking to take their place to save them, was tragically not enough.  God asks us to house the holiest of holies, the Ark of the Covenant which contains the Torah, the object that links us most profoundly and directly to the divine in this world to be adorned by the Keruvim. The Bibas family is precisely the intersection with the holiest of holies.

There are many interpretations as to what the Keruvim actually looked like, were they child-like angels with wings? Were they a mix of various animals? Were they a couple in love? We don’t know but we can imagine, and from now on I will always see the Bibas family. The Gemara discusses that their position in relation to one another was most important. Their faces miraculously changed directions reflecting the Jewish people’s relationship to God. When the Keruvim faced each other, the Jewish people were aligned with and doing the will of God. When the Torah describes the Keruvim faced away from one another, it reflected that the Jewish people were not obeying the will of God and something serious was amiss. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explained, “God speaks to us and engages with us when two persons turn their face to one another in love, embrace, generosity and care.” While I watched footage of the funeral of golden-haired Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas I cannot get that picture out of my mind. They are our Keruvim. Our orange angels. It is true that in Israel thousands of people have lovingly attended funerals that many of us abroad have also watched of many more victims, each and every one of them just as precious a loss, just as tragic. Just this week alone four more families that have been ripped apart are tasked with burying their sons, brothers, fathers. But symbols capture complex emotions in such a powerful way, and we can look at that color orange as a symbol of each of them.

In the midst of all this unspeakable anguish and despair, it is difficult to find hope and positivity. But it is there. As Dana, Shiri’s sister, who’s parents were also murdered by Hamas on October 7^th said at the funeral, “I promise you, as I promised Mom and Dad, that the monsters beyond the fence will not succeed in their mission. They will not defeat us, they will not break us. On the contrary, their mission failed because we united, because we grew stronger because we became invincible. They lost.”  Let us remember the red-haired babies and their brave momma forever not only for how they were taken from us but more so for how they lived, lives of love, innocence, and joy. Let that orange glow illuminate hope – we must seek it out, we must create it, and we must become a people who looks toward one another with love, instead of away from each other, even when we disagree. When you get together with your extended family for Pesach, don’t demonize or ignore the family members who voted differently than you. Instead talk with them on a personal level, hear their concerns, open your minds and your hearts. Don’t name call and insult people who disagree with you, who have different religious perspectives, or quite simply look at the world entirely differently than you do. Sometimes you’ll agree to disagree but do it civilly. We must become the Mishkan, the sanctuary, for God to dwell among us and help bring peace amongst us and all the world and truly bring about a Shabbat Shalom.