- Clergy
- Shabbat
My heart shattered on Wednesday, when Hamas announced they would be returning the bodies of Kfir, Ariel, and their mother, Shiri Bibas. For 500+ days, all I needed, all I prayed for, amidst the months of agony, was to see that fiery red-headed duo come bounding out of a Red Cross ambulance, into the loving embrace of family. Instead we all watched in horror, as 2 coffins were returned to a broken father, and their mother, Shiri, left alone in Gaza. Two little boys, two entire worlds, full of so much good and promise, lost to a conflict they didn’t even understand or could begin to pronounce…
I couldn’t sleep last night, I was tossing and turning, thinking about what their final moments might have been: Were they together? Was Shiri able to hold her babies close as they took their final breath? Did they know they were loved and a symbol of hope for so many…
Questions kept racing through my head, and then my own baby awoke. In the still hours of the night and the endless zooming of my mind, I was grateful for the soothing reprieve of his soft breathing and his warm, tiny body close to mine.
My babies are safe.. my babies are alive… my babies are safe.. my babies are alive, I kept repeating to myself as tears streamed down my face. For the first time, in what seemed like months, I was able to cry. Something cracked inside of me.
As I felt Declan settle back to sleep, I whispered a promise to Kfir and Ariel, and to all the children, Israeli and Palestinian, that we have failed. A promise that I am making before all of you, to ensure that their lives and the horror that was their deaths, will not be in vain. I promise to hope.
Hope is not easy, hope is not pretty, hope is not a zero sum game, but it’s who I believe we are. It is what has sustained us through plague, pogrom, and endless persecution. In the darkest of times, when the anger and the rage threatens to become all consuming, we choose hope. We have to believe that things can be better than our current reality.
Hope, much like love, is an action and a choice. A choice that I am making to honor those sweet babies and their brave mother, wherever she may be.
May we have the strength in the coming days to welcome our dead, to bury them in dignity, to mourn them as our tradition outlines, and to rise from our days of mourning, determined, as impossible as it feels at this moment, to plant the seeds of peace and of hope. No, not for tomorrow, and maybe not the next day, or maybe even the one after that, but for some day.
Those red-headed angels deserved better. My baby deserves better. Our future babies deserve better.
May we fearlessly demand a return of all of our remaining brothers and sisters, and may we continue, while under this heavy blanket of darkness and despair, to hold onto our hope.
Rest in peace, sweet ones. We will never forget you.
Am Yisrael Chai
#BringThemHomeNow
Shabbat Shalom
Cantor Lisa Peicott