Early this summer, my mother passed away. As one might expect, I was washed over with grief, devastated by the loss. My father and siblings and I sat shiva together, seven days of mourning, where we sat and cried and grieved. At the end of the seven days, Jewish custom is to get up from our mourning chairs and take a small walk around the block. This is to signify that life must continue and that we must go on. This does not mean that we no longer mourned. This does not mean that we no longer grieved. In fact, we continue to formally mourn for an entire year. But what it does mean is that we are not allowed to remain paralyzed in our grief. We are forced to return and take care of our families, run our businesses, and perform our routine, daily tasks. And I can tell you from experience that it is really hard. It is hard to go back to doing the usual, because there is still so much sadness and pain. I remember smiling for some of my YouTube videos that I made for you, when I didn’t feel like smiling at all. Slowly it becomes easier, but there is still that tinge of pain in the background.
Last week, we suffered from enormous pain. So many of our Jewish brothers and sisters were killed, tortured, taken from us. We watched with horror and tears as we learned just how many we lost and how they had been treated. Shock and grief reverberated throughout the Jewish community and around the world. We sat and prayed for the safe return of the captured, for the souls of the dead, for the healing of the wounded, for the safety of those in harm’s way, and for the success of those that protect. Here in the US, we donated money, donated items, went to rallies and prayer groups, and did anything else we could think of to help from such a distance.
The pain is still fresh and our dead are not yet all buried, yet we begin to hear echoes of the past already. As we send our precious men and women, boys and girls into battle to destroy those who want to wipe us from this earth, we already begin to hear many blaming us. It is always so easy to blame the Jews. We see the rallies around the world chanting for death to the Jews, we hear the news anchors already beginning to turn on us, watch as colleges and businesses allow for hate speech to run rampant when it is directed towards us. We once again face the fear that the world that promised ‘never again’ may forget that promise. This weekend, in addition to all of the pain and sadness, there was an added fear of attacks throughout the Jewish world. We are grateful for the police departments and politicians that stepped up to help ensure we stayed safe in our schools, businesses, and shuls (synagogues). But there was a worry that we all felt, a worry that any of us could be attacked, a worry about what news we would see after Shabbos when we turned our phones back on. We could have stayed home in fear this weekend, but we chose to go to our shuls and pray for the safety of the Jewish people.
And so, as a new week starts, I was struck with a thought that I felt compelled to share. We have grieved and are grieving still. We are feeling the intense sorrow for those we lost, the pain for those still held captive, and the concern and worry for what is to come. We will continue to daven (pray) for those missing and injured. We will daven for those brave soldiers heading into war and for the safety of the people of Israel and of the Jewish people around the world. We will continue to help in any way we can. And in addition to all of that, it is time to do one more thing. Now it is time to fight back against the hatred and against their evil goals by doing something that will feel hard, but is necessary. It is time to do exactly what they don’t want us to do. Live. It is time to live. We must live our lives. We must not allow them to paralyze us in anguish or fear. Just as we force ourselves to get up at the end of shiva, no matter how much we still grieve, no matter how much pain we are still in, so too here. We must continue to pray, must continue to help, and must continue to show the world that we will still proudly live our lives. We will still go to work, go to school, celebrate important and special occasions. They may try to defeat us, but we will fight back in body and in spirit. We will live. Am Yisrael Chai.
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