This is the Jewish Way
Visiting Kibbutzim in the South and the Nova Party Site. Read because the world needs to know each story, because it feels like they don’t care if it happens again.
It was the darkest of times. It was the lightest of times. Every day in Israel we do not know what the next day will bring. This is war. It has been almost a year. “Can you believe it?” Is repeated over and over again. “A year, I thought it would be a few weeks. A few months.” A year of war.
War. Friendships have been lost. Friendships have been made. Sons and daughters have been lost. Sons and daughters have been born. (I myself — a nephew died. A niece was born.) There has been deep mourning and despair; Druze children bombed on a soccer field, hostages executed, 101 missing hostages still missing. There has been deep hope and celebration; daring hostage rescues, exploding beepers, then walkie talkies, beheading the head of the snake. Life and Death and Life. War.
And every day is different for every person. Like fractured light and dark, we live in our individual war realities. Last week I visited the Nova Party massacre site with a mission group of South Africans. All I could think was, did I really want to visit Nova again? It was a year later. A year. I remembered we have a duty to bear witness. One year has passed. We have a duty to hold our stories. One year on, I wanted to see how we are holding? We have a duty to hold each others stories.
One year on, we have a duty to remember how this all began. Why we were are deep in a war not of our choosing. One year later.
We had been in Tel Aviv the night for the tour. The sirens went off at 6:30 am. We scrambled into the basement shelter (a yoga, wall to wall mirrored lounge) with groggy eyed, bath robed hotel guests, huddled, not speaking, not smiling. There was a young couple, the woman pregnant with a big white Labrador. They had sought shelter from the street. There was a little girl on her mother’s lap, huddled. I smiled at the little girl. I said Boker Tov - Good Morning. I did not care if I looked like a grinning idiot. It helps I’m an early riser. It helps I was dressed. It helps to remember that we owe it to children to smile, to create safety as much as we can.
October 7 also began with sirens. We now carry the memory of so many sirens. This was a new one. I snuck a quick coffee in one of the Rothschild boulevard coffee booths before we had to catch the bus South. I marveled at the wizzing skaters, bikers, mothers pushing prams. Life goes on. Coffee is ordered. As if there wasn’t a siren that morning, as the Houthis lobbed another missile at Central Israel. I knew the cost of the normalcy. Underneath is a strain I felt in my wrist, in my pulse, scratch the surface of my skin, scratch the surface of my smile and you will find deep anxiety, deep worry, deep prayer. My son is in the army.
We know the cost of this war.
We know the cost of going on. I pack a memorial candle in my bag to light at the Nova site. But the first stop on our bus down South is Kibbutz Mefalsim, where we are met by Yarden. He is 39. His background is South American. This kibbutz of 1050 people was established by Argentine and Uruguayan Jews in 1949. He is a dad with two young children who picked up his gun on the morning of October 7 when he understood terrorists were invading. He describes fighting for 14 hours straight. His jeans cutting into his thighs so they bled. The knowledge that if he didn’t fight to protect his family and neighbors there was no one else.
This was a happy kibbutz to visit. The miracle was when the terrorists broke through the kibbutz’s defenses, they turned left — towards the industry, the cows, the sheds — not right, towards the homes. The miracle is the IDF showed up. The miracle is no one was killed or kidnapped, only wounded. Even the Thai workers who the terrorists tried to take were saved by the kibbutz members. The Thai workers are forever grateful. They have returned to the kibbutz to work. One tattooed himself with a Star of David and proudly calls himself an Israeli Thai.
Perhaps the biggest symbol of this kibbutz, after ten months of displacement, is the full communal noticeboard. Most of the members have returned. Although only 50 of the 200 children have returned. (We ourselves were startled by the booms from Gaza in the South.) There is a black and white photo of kibbutz members holding babies, next to another photo of the babies from that photo all grownup posing as pregnant mothers. Most beautiful of all are the children’s drawings for the New Year under the Hebrew year 5784 (The Jewish year number is different from the Gregorian calendar, it counts from the Genesis creation story.) Here is hope painted in many colors, by so many small hands. A sign for the new year.
Our next stop was to visit Kibbutz Re’im. A less happy ending than Kibbutz Mefalsim. We met General Brigadier Dedi Simchi. He showed us where his son was killed, Staff Sargent Guy Simchi, 20, an elite paratrooper who was off duty, reveling at the Nova party and saved over 30 partygoers by driving them to the Kibbutz to shelter from the rockets. Guy insisted on not sheltering himself, even though his father told him on the phone to shelter. Even though he didn’t have a gun. Guy insisted on staying with his friend Harel as the terrorists invaded the kibbutz. He strangled a terrorist with his bare hands. He could not stop the grenade.
His father showed us the walls they scraped his blood off for burial — this is the Jewish way.
Dedi spoke of his son’s bravery, but he also spoke of his other sons, how they visit families who are depressed, who are not coping with the loss of their children. How they offer comfort and hope. This is the Jewish way.
Dedi said, “This is my story this is the story of the state of Israel.
We are at a biblical moment in Israel and outside of Israel.
We need to be strong together”
He added, “In every generation they rise up and we overcome, because of God.”
One of the men recited kaddish, the mourners prayer. And heads down we all wept with General Dedi.
This is the Jewish way.
Subdued we bussed to the Nova site, the festival of ‘friends, love and infinite freedom’. I had a memorial candle. A single one. I wondered where to light it. Amongst the hundreds of sticks stuck in the ground bearing posters of beautiful young smiling people, the flowers, the notes, the burned out candles, this single candle felt so small. I didn’t even have matches. I asked a police woman for a lighter. She helped me light the candle. But the wind blew it out.
I approached another man, an older, tall man with a small white beard, who looked like he’d carry a lighter. I held the candle out, and he told me about his daughter, Maya. Only then did I notice he was with an old woman who was weeping and repeating, “Moi Dieu, Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu.”
His daughter Maya was murdered with her fiancé on October 7. A few weeks before their wedding. His mother was from Algeria. His father was from Morocco. They had met in Israel in the 50’s and moved to France. He had immigrated from France to Israel as a young man. He had three children. One of them was Maya.
“This candle is for her,” I say. Flicking his lighter, we light, but the wind blows it out. We light again, this time in the tin can he has covered with a piece of aluminum foil. We place it on the memorial mound of sculptured red anemones around her and Eliran’s poster. It remains lit.
Her father tells me that yesterday they dedicated a Torah scroll for the massacred. Each name engraved. He shows me his daughter’s name engraved on the silver cover. They couldn’t fit all the names. There were too many. Some names are inside.
“Maya Bitton” say her name. It is humbling. “Maya Bitton” say her name again. And “Eliran” her fiancé. “Maya Bitton” I repeat as I take the black plastic bracelet her father offers me with her name and Eliran’s name printed in white on it, with two flying doves, free.
Their love lives on over the pulse of my wrist.
I wear the bangle next to the bracelet I was gifted on the tour, engraved with the words “Never Again”. I say Maya’s name and light candles at home. I think of the memorial candle. I think of how each face on the poster has someone who loves them, have set up visitors books, have created memorial stickers and logos, who visit to lay flowers, engraved stones and dashed dreams, and light more candles.
I think the world needs to know each story,
because it feels
they don’t care if it happens again.
I think about the words Am Yisrael Chai — The People of Israel Live.
I think, These people are dead, but I am alive and lighting candles.
Maybe this is how the people of Israel live, through each other.
Breath to breath.
I say Maya’s name. I feel her father’s strong hug as we say goodbye. I feel her grandmother’s trembling hand pressed against mine as I give her my yellow ribbon hostage pin, when she asks where I got it from. I say Maya Bitton’s name aloud. I let it sit on my tongue. Let it sit on your tongue too, let her name be digested in your stomach. Let her merge with your cells. So she stays alive one more moment in you. In me.
Maya Bitton and Eliran Mizrahi
In each other we stay alive.
We give life.
Breath by breath.
Light by light.
I am late returning to the bus because I need to visit the forest of eucalyptus trees newly planted. It seems there is one for each of the 364 Nova festival victims’ names and faces. My mind is dark, it thinks more trees for Jews to hide behind. It will take a hundred years for them to grow broad enough. My mind is light, it thinks this is what we do with our grief, we plant it, we make it grow.
Wishing you all a new year of love, light, safety and all that grows grief into joy,
Sarah
(Don’t forget to view the notes below!)
Notes
To read more about Maya Bitton and Eliran Mizrahi and the joint funeral they had instead of a wedding read here.
To read more about Guy Kimchi and his father IDF General brigadier Dedi Simchi returning to service right after his son’s death read here.
Edith Eger Book Review - For an uplifting interview by Barbara Beitz from the wonderful blog Jewish Books for Kids, with Dr Edith Eger about her latest YA memoir based on her book “The Choice” - here.
Rosh Hashana Harif Event - For a recording and recipes of the Harif event - More than Apples and Honey - here.
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In each other we stay alive and in each other we find courage and hope to go on. Thank you, Sarah.