Written 85 years after Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, a series of Nazi-led pogroms against he Jewish community in Germany and incorporated territories.
I am shattered.
Bits and pieces here.
Bits and pieces there.
A hole here.
Another one there.
7 October 2023 in Israel.
The days that have followed.
The brutality.
The murders.
The rapes.
The kidnapping.
The incessant rockets.
The air raid sirens.
The fleeing from towns.
The destruction.
A modern-day pogram in my safe place.
In Israel.
The Jewish homeland.
I am shattered.
The threats from the north.
Hezbollah.
Iran.
Hamas in the South.
The Islamic Jihad and their rocket falling on a hospital in Gaza.
An irresponsible global media that grabbed hold of lies that blamed Israel.
An ignorant global community eating it all up, waiting to blame Israel, just waiting to attack Jews.
I am shattered.
And I’m not even in Israel.
I didn’t live the hell on earth.
I am here.
I don’t need to hide in a safe room.
I know where my family is.
And, yet I am shattered.
I am tired.
I am angry. So angry.
I am devastated. So sad.
I am scared, at times feeling so alone, so misunderstood, so despised.
Grateful for the support of some, but still feeling like a vulnerable target of so much hate.
Alone.
Grateful for my synagogue family.
Disgusted that we need to live behind armed guards and gates.
I am infuriated by the protests on our college campuses, in cities across the globe, in comments online, in news headlines that are nothing more than the terrorists’ propaganda.
No human being with a moral conscience can support Hamas.
No one who supports Israel can support Hamas.
No one who loves Jews can support Hamas.
No one who cares about the wellbeing of innocent Palestinians can support Hamas.
No one who loves, truly loves, can support Hamas or any of her co-conspirators.
I am shattered.
Some say just annihilate Gaza. Level it. Wipe them all out.
This is rage talking.
Understandable rage.
But rage will lead to more shattering.
And then what?
What will we have?
More destruction.
More shattered pieces.
Palestinians are victims of Hamas too.
But our rage doesn’t let us hear this. Feel this.
Our rage doesn’t let us think about what to do with Gaza after the war.
And there will be an after-the-war.
And in this after-the-war, what happens to Gaza matters.
I want every kibbutz, every Israeli village rebuilt on the Gaza border to be rebuilt with no safe rooms,
Because they won’t be needed.
Because Israelis will be guaranteed safety and security.
But if we don’t think about what happens to Gaza after the war, safe rooms will still be needed.
Shattering will continue.
And if we think that a ceasefire right now will stop the shattering, stop the attacks, stop Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Jihad, stop Iran from inciting hatred and funding terror, we need a reality check.
It has to stop.
Hamas has to be stopped.
Amidst all of this shattering, there is no Shalom. There is no peace.
There are broken pieces. Broken bodies. Broken souls.
Synagogues desecrated across the world. Threats against the Jewish community. Embassy threatened. US bases attacked. A Mulism boy in Chicago murdered. Jews being harassed here, attacked there. Even killed. In Paris. In Los Angeles. Jews at risk everywhere. A 1180% increase in antisemitism globally.
Shattered.
But, a still small voice within me says, look more closely.
Look at the shattered pieces.
Standing there in between the broken shards, look:
There are the brave members of the IDF willing to put themselves on the line for the love of the Jewish State.
There are the countless Israelis rolling up their sleeves to help these soldiers, help each other, lift each other up.
There are Jews with diverse backgrounds coming together to stand with Israel.
There are Christians and Hindus and members of other faiths who are standing with us.
There are many in the US government standing with Israel (but we need to stay on top of this and demand that the US continues to support Israel).
There are some brave members of the Muslim world condemning the terror.
There are good people across the world reaching out to lift Israelis and Jews higher.
Amid the broken pieces.
This is happening.
HaTikvah is still being sung.
The Jewish soul is still singing:
“As long as forward to the East
To Zion, looks the eye –
Our hope is not yet lost.”
Jewish babies continue to be born.
Jewish weddings continue to happen.
Young men and women still commit to our faith through B’nai Mitzvah.
And Jews, despite heavily armed guards, still show up at synagogues.
And our real friends reach out to us.
Amid the shattered pieces.
Someday soon, I hope peace will descend on us all.
In this broken world, a world none of us imagined possible in 2023,
In a world where we said and believed “Never Again,”
I imagine what peace will look like.
Amid the broken pieces.
For me, it will look like one of my grandmother’s old china plates – beautiful in its day.
She loved it.
But it fell and hit the floor and broke into many small pieces.
For her, too beautiful to discard, she glued it back together.
Some pieces were missing. Holes.
Others fit together pretty well.
The lines were visible.
But mended, the plate was still beautiful and told a story of its fall and its coming back together.
Its scars told the story of just how special it was.
For me, peace will be like my grandmother’s broken plate.
Glued together with love and justice.
Held together by people who truly care.
By Zionists and our supporters.
By centuries of connections to the land, to our faith.
By good actors on the other side of the border who can lift up their people.
There will be holes.
There will be jagged edges.
But there will be a coming together of the shattered pieces because we know how precious Israel is.
How precious the souls of those we lost on October 7 are.
How precious Judaism and the Jewish people are.
How precious life is.
Peace will come when the broken pieces are mended.
In time.
After the war.
After the shattering.
Justice and love.
A coming together.
The pieces reuniting.
This is what peace will look like to me.
It will come.
Not right now.
But with your help, we can start to pick up the pieces,
Nurture the love,
Support the justice
That will be the glue
That heals.
There will be holes.
Jagged edges.
Visible lines.
But, in this coming together, there will be peace.
In time.
As we remember Kristallnacht, we are reliving the shattering that rocked our people 85 years ago.
But with strength, with courage, with support from each other, with love from our supporters, with the foundation of the Jewish State of Israel, and with the resilience of our people, we must defy the hate, the terror, the missiles, the threats, the violence and gather the broken pieces because one day, we will bring them all together, creating, once again, a testament of the power of our tribe.
Am Yisrael Chai.
