This week, Israel has been plunged into unimaginable grief. Family after family has had their loved ones returned from the hell of Gaza, their lives forever shattered.
I wept together with Yarden Bibas as he delivered a heart-wrenching eulogy for his beloved Shiri, Kfir, and Ariel, his words cutting deep into my soul.
I held my breath as we waited for the return of Ohad Yahalomi, who was murdered in captivity, returned in a coffin. Returned to his family—his 12-year-old son Eitan who was also taken but released after 52 agonizing days, and his wife and two daughters who were abducted on October 7th but miraculously escaped when their captor fell off his bike en route to Gaza.
I cried for Tzachi Idan, who witnessed the brutal murder of his 18-year-old daughter while Hamas terrorists held him and his wife hostage inside their home for hours, live-streaming the ordeal on his wife’s Facebook—a cruel and twisted act that defies comprehension. Alas, he was returned in a coffin.
Shlomo Mansour, who survived the Farhud pogrom in Iraq as a child, was brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists during his abduction on October 7th. Itzik Elgarat was captured alive, only to be murdered in captivity.
The anguish is suffocating, the grief unbearable.
Yet, it's precisely this pain that reveals our deepest strength. We feel the weight of each other's suffering because we care profoundly. We may never have met, but we are nevertheless family.
When one Jew is in pain, we all feel their pain. It's a unique quality that does not exist anywhere else. So a Jew in Miami, London, Paris, Cape Town or Sidney feels the pain of every single hostage and their families. Which other nation can say that all 16 million members cry so deeply for each other's pain?
We are like the hardy olive, which produces its best product—oil—when squeezed. Our love and connection comes to the forefront in times like these.
This is why we will emerge victorious in this war. Why we are invincible. Our capacity to feel, to empathize, and to support one another is the armor that shields us from forces of hate and destruction.
In the face of unimaginable tragedy, we find solace in our unity, our resilience, and our unwavering commitment to one another. We will continue to stand together, to mourn together, and to rebuild together. For we are a people who refuse to let the forces of evil extinguish our light.
And it's this boundless love that will hurry us through the end of this current dark exile and bring us to the light, to Redemption, to Moshiach.