We are reading the seven haftarot of consolation from Isaiah on these sabbaths, yet experiencing gut wrenching moments that bare out the heartbreak of Jeremiah: “Rachel weeps for her children . . . for her children are gone.”
We are at rosh chodesh Elul, normally the genesis of the reflective and uplifting Days of Awe, yet it feels like instead we are in the Days of Awe-ful\Awful, still in the throes of the month of Av we just completed, living out the anguish of “Eicha-Lamentations” moments.
The grief in that scene at the funeral of Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
You could practically touch the profound pain from across the miles.
And that’s just one family.
Six hostages all together, were murdered in cold blood, executed.
Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Alex Lubanov and Ori Danino.
A few days before the bitter news of their murder, I had watched a bloodcurdling video of hostage families screaming — primal animal level screams, in desperation calling out their loved ones names into the void, hoping against hope, that somehow it would reach them.
One of the families was Hersh’s.
“Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeersh,” cried out his petite mother Rachel, her scream, so piercing it felt like she had just multiplied herself and shrieked out her pent up anguished essence distilling her pain into that one long gut wrenching scream.
The next thing I know, after a few days of hope that the hostages might actually be released, the news of Hersh, along with the other hostages, was like a slap in the face.
All I could think and hear was Hersh’s courageous and noble mother’s primal piercing scream of “Heeeeeersh” still reverberating from the recent day. Just now it carried the weight of Munch’s “The Scream.” While last time there was hope, this time, it felt like it was a scream into eternity with no terminal point.
It was over. This whole agony filled long journey of hoping, of praying, of desperation, came to a cruel and vicious halt.
For all six of these precious hostages.
Of which Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s face had become emblematic of the hostages plight.
As his parents, Jon and Rachel, whom we all grew to be in wonder of as they fought valiantly for their son’s — and all the hostages’ release, became to be the voice of the hostages.
After 11 months, it felt personal.
Personally and nationally, it felt like the damn broke, for each person differently depending on their proximity to this tragic news, wherever they might find themselves in the concentric circles of this anguished news, the families, of course, in the nucleus, in the center.
But whatever thin thread was somehow holding Am Yisrael together since Oct. 7, now it was frayed, holding on for dear life.
Aside from the obvious rage and grief at the senseless loss of innocent human life. Human beings stolen, tortured, and murdered by demonic monsters. Aside from this, the essence of the pain, I couldn’t help but also think of all the tales that could have been told that are now forever in the grave.
So much went to the grave with these six beautiful souls. So many tales of their courageous yet unlikely survival in the depths of hell, for 11 months.
Is that why these six hostages were murdered? Because “dead men tell no tales” and Hamas knows all too well the hell the tales would have revealed.
Is it Al Qadi’s rescue we all felt a surge of joy about last week, that triggered these executions by Hamas, notorious for their strategy and sick perverse devil ways in psychologically torturing people.
Letting us think there’s hope last week, when perhaps they planned this execution to follow?
Or perhaps they just wanted to ensure that we understood that if we free any hostages, they will execute the rest?
Who can tap into the malignant inner workings of evil incarnate?
This fog of war, it’s depleting. Even if on the periphery of it, it can push you to the brink.
How much more the inner nucleus of the concentric circles. The hostages families whose lives hang in abeyance. bereaved families of our precious soldiers, sacrificing them, in order to return the captive hostages from the brutality of Hamas.
The pace of life in these last days, were simply dizzying. A complex convergence.
The slap of the devastating news of the six executed hostages. The three murdered cops, dead by terror. The first day of school for children across Israel. A strike declared. Rosh Chodesh Elul. The first pierce of the shofar.
It feels like things can unravel at any minute.
And in a sense, they have.
Another six families are saying kaddish. This chant, this cadence, it’s like the anthem of this year.
All the unfinished conversations and and unanswered questions loved ones will now be haunted by and need to find a way to cope and somehow live with. All the screams, silenced and ongoing, that now pierce and mingle together with the blast of Elul’s shofar. All the unanswered prayers that feel like they still stubbornly hang in the air — or have they all crashed and exploded into smithereenes into the abyss?
This Rosh Chodesh Elul, our prayers intermingles with screams, they are drenched in tears, or are silent. Yet somehow, like so many generations before us, we grapple and try our best to carry on.
Just as Jon and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, through their profound trauma, modeled for us for 11 months. Day in day out. Endless unconditional love, unimaginable dignity, valiant grace, as they fought for their Hersh and for all the hosages in captivity.
Indeed, as we read of consolation from the book of Isaiah, it feels like it’s the book of Jeremiah that has come to life. Not only because we are weeping with biblical matriarch Rachel’s pain, but because we weep alongside another great Rachel, one who walks amongst us, our generation’s Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s tears. “Thus says Hashem, a voice was heard on Ramah, on high, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is crying for her children, she refuses to be comforted, for they are no more.”
The next part of the verse that was always so comforting, when G-d tries to comfort Rachel, about her children returning from the land of the enemy — now those words painfully feels like a taunt.
Hersh, this group of six hostages, they didn’t return from the land of the enemy, like we had hoped.
It’s an anguished moment of cognitive dissonance. We are reading about consolation but experiencing tragedy on an unprecedented level for our generation.
It’s hard not to feel broken empty and worried right now.
Right now I’m just grabbing onto the thread that weaves througout Jewish history and our previous persecutions and tragedies that our ancestors who endured. Who kept on. Who prevailed, even when they were broken. Who chose life.
I hope our people will heal and find a way to move forward with renewed understanding from this crisis and what feels like a breaking point of sorts.
It will never bring back those who have already been lost, but right now I can only hope that very very soon G-d’s promise to biblical Rachel will come to be, that they will return from the land of the enemy.
For now, the wail of the shofar continues for the next 30 days.
© IJN 2024
