In Solidarity and Sorrow: Bearing Witness to One Year of Empty Chairs
By Rabbi Jonah Pesner
I write these words as I return from Israel as part of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations mission commemorating the first anniversary of the October 7th attacks on Israel – the most violent massacre of Jews on a single day since the Shoah. I share the following to record in perpetuity what I saw and what I heard. If nothing else, I am obligated to honor the brave people who told their stories by sharing them as widely as I can.
It is almost impossible to describe the depth and the breadth of the trauma our Israeli family is experiencing. In many ways, October 7th never ended, despite one year having elapsed. What occurred and continues to occur is still too raw for meaning making. So please – join with me in bearing witness.
The likeness of the hostages are everywhere. One hundred and one souls – some dead and some alive. Their faces are on billboards, placards, road signs, at Ben Gurion airport’s passport control, protest sites… and their stories are told over and over by their friends and family who gather in groups large and small not allowing us to forget, turn our backs, or move on. Almost without exception, Israelis agree that the wound of October 7th cannot heal until we Bring Them Home.
When I first visited Israel with URJ leadership in the wake of October 7th, organizers set a huge Shabbat table with an empty chair for every hostage held in Hamas’ tunnels of hell. Then in April, it became a Seder table. Now, the table is set in the Sukkah, like the ones we saw at Kfar Azza, now frozen in time, on the morning of October 7th, 2023. The agony of a year.
Keep in mind, amidst all we experienced, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis were launching missiles constantly impacting the length and breadth of the country. Red alerts sounded constantly around the country. A pall of dread was constant over what Iran and its proxies might send.
The ceremony on October 7th to honor the dead, lift up the hostages, and gather in song was significantly scaled back because of the threat from Iran. Forty thousand tickets were shared, and then cancelled. Only two thousand of us were allowed to attend the outdoor gathering in the middle of Tel Aviv. The impacted families invited us to be with them so we could be in solidarity and return to North America to amplify their cries.
One by one, loved ones told stories of loss and grief. Of homes destroyed, families burned alive, women raped, children kidnapped. Of young female soldiers not believed and then abandoned. Of festival go-ers now mourning murdered spouses and friends. Of screams unlike those ever before heard.
One by one, loved ones pled for the release of their children, lovers, friends, and family from unbearable captivity, enduring unimaginable torture.
One by one, loved ones told stories of remarkable heroism and courage. The soldier who died so that whole groups could survive. The volunteers, Jewish and not Jewish, who rushed in, willing to sacrifice their own lives so that others might live.
I saw a poster of Ilan Ohel who was kidnapped on October 7th. The poster was familiar, because after a vigil in Washington last year, we took it home and hung it in our front window so everyone who visited would know about Ilan and 100 others like him are trapped by Hamas in a tunnel. I approached his family, introduced myself, and explained. They asked if I knew Ilan. No. We embraced and wept.
We had dinner with a soldier who was deployed in emergency response on October 7th and was severely injured that day. With a remarkable smile, happy to be alive, he shared that before the operation, his elite unit made a circle and promised each other: “we fight not because we hate them; we fight because we love each other.”
I had breakfast with Ariel, the talented educator on URJ staff who runs Yallah! Israel. He has been constantly called up for reserve duty. His unit educates soldiers on the context of the war, so they know why they are fighting; and the ethics of war so Jewish values guide how they fight. He reminds them: we do not fight to take vengeance; we fight to protect a community at risk from attack.
We heard from four remarkable women whose families are part of the 60,000 people who have been forced to evacuate their homes, schools, and communities in the north because of constant rocket attacks from Hezbollah. These are the leaders holding communities and families together. As we were meeting, the news came in that a couple was killed in Kiryat Shmona from a missile attack – an attack I imagined western media wasn’t reporting. And a dislocated community many people aren’t even aware of. Maya,a medic,burst into tears, overcome with guilt that she was with us and not there to help.
Hamutal told the story of returning to the north despite the constant missile attacks so her kids could be home. Last week, her son was in a car accident on his bike when a red alert sounded. Her dilemma: risk taking her son to the hospital during an attack or wait and hunker down in a safe room. Hamutal asked us: how can any mother be confronted with such a dilemma?
One Israeli noted, even before October 7th, Israelis have become acclimated to daily red alerts and missile attacks. He asked: how can anyone be expected to accept this as a normal way to live?
We travelled to the south, to Yad Mordechai, named for the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and made famous in 1948 by the kibbutznikim’s (those who reside in a collective, formerly agricultural community in Israel) surprising and heroic resistance to the siege by the Egyptian army. Families described the terror of hiding in their safe rooms and desperately securing the perimeter. For months they have lived as refugees, in one hotel room for a family of six, far from home, community, and school.
Barak, a resident of neighboring Nativ Ha-Asarah explained that his community wasn’t so lucky. Many were massacred that day. Few have returned.
We visited Har Herzl, Israel’s military cemetery. We began our visit at the memorial to victims of terror attacks. It was deeply personal to me. It is the site where plaques are dedicated to Joan Devaney, Matthew Eisenfeld, and Sarah Duker, all Jewish American students who were killed in Hamas bus bombings in 1995 and 1996, when I was a student in the Senior Educators Program at Hebrew University. Joan was in my class, and I missed the bus she was on.
We then joined with families at the Hall of Fallen Soldiers to say Kaddish for those whose yartzheit fell on the day of our visit, October 8th. Each day, a ceremony is held to read the names of those who fell in battle that day. The grief of families whose loved ones were killed rushing in to respond to the Hamas attacks one year ago was almost overwhelming. They asked me, as a visiting rabbi, to participate in the service. I was deeply moved to be asked given historic attitudes in Israel against Reform Rabbis. As it turns out, Israeli Reform Rabbis like David Azoulai are changing the culture of Israel as families discover the deep, spiritual impact of mourning with creative and inclusive rituals for Israeli Jews who used to think that only orthodox practice was authentic.
While there, I found on the Wall of the Fallen the brick of Yannai Kaminka, the brave officer who had attended URJ Eisner Camp with my daughter and on October 7th lost his life protecting nearly one hundred new recruits to the army, as Hamas assaulted their base at Kibbutz Zikkim. Yannai’s parents chose Rabbi Azoulai to bury him, recalling his positive experience with Reform Judaism at Camp Eisner.
During the service, at their request I shared Psalm 16. I read in Hebrew: “I am ever mindful of the Eternal’s presence; God is at my right hand; I shall never be shaken. So my heart rejoices, my whole being exults, and my body rests secure. For you shall not abandon me to Sheol or let your faithful one see the Pit.”
“Sheol” and the “Pit” are Biblical metaphors for death.
As I gazed into the eyes of the devastated parents and siblings and spouses and friends – so appreciative of my prayer – I couldn’t help but wonder how hearing, “so my heart rejoices…” was landing for them. But we hugged and held one another and wept with no words between us
At our final dinner at the Rabin Center for Peace in Tel Aviv, Maya, the medic from the north, thanked us for coming, and said: “I have lost some hope in the world. Often, I feel so alone. I try not to read the news, because I have too much to deal with.” When we embraced at the end, I promised Maya she was not alone. I write these words to all of you my friends in North America and across the world because Maya is truly not alone. Ilan Ohel is not alone. Ariel, Barak, and Hamutal are not alone.
Kol Yisrael arevim ze b’zeh: all of Israel, we are responsible for one another.