By now, who among us doesn’t recognize the devastating countenance of Yarden Bibas or Eli Sharabi? Sometimes their eyes are glazed, faraway; sometimes their faces are fixed, determined. Sometimes all you can do is look upon them and know you’ll, hopefully, never even be close to that level of grief and pain.
You feel for them, how could you not?
It would seem there are some – many – among us who indeed cannot. Tragically I have seen examples of that to the left of me and just as tragically, to the right.
And they occur in the absence of eye contact, from heartless ministers to keyboard warriors.
For those of us who have functionally beating hearts, it’s not far fetched to remind ourselves daily that there are countless fellow citizens suffering grief and pain and trauma, making micro choices every day to keep it together, to move forward, to collapse but get back up. Families, veterans and emergency professionals who have lived hell, who have been changed forever. In every corner of Israel and even many abroad. Across ages and demographics. Across, yes, even religious affiliations.
They’re standing in front of you in line at the supermarket. They’re driving in the next lane over on the 1. They’re on the other end of the call where you’re handling the customer service.
Mourners, grievers, the ones who lost whole worlds on or after October 7th. The ones swallowing their trauma, whether they fought, were fought with, came to the rescue.
Or got horribly lost, drowned in a situation no one asked for, no one deserves.
It’s easy to forget on the daily when we haven’t ourselves sat up front at someone else’s horror show.
So I don’t understand why it seems so many fellow Jews – Israelis – are blind to the way they inflict more pain on a grieving mother or father or child with unchecked comments, unthoughtful expressions of judgment? Why people feel they have a right to leverage pain for their point, without first acknowledging it, without any compassion, without understanding we’re all in this, we’re all targets at any time, we’re all potential grievers at any time? Is the superficial pleasure of political condemnation more valuable than creating space for a modicum of compassion?
Do you want mashiach now? Do you want tikun olam?
After all, we know how it goes – whether your grandparents were Holocaust survivors, expulsion survivors, pogrom survivors; a Jew is a Jew is a Jew, no matter how you look or what you say or how much you beg for your life with a barrel at your back.
And yet – here are the armchair opinionists who are also my and your neighbors, the 1 or 2 degrees connections of grieving people. Not thinking before posting. Not pausing before ranting.
Wouldn’t it do well to pause and acknowledge before launching keyboard warfare against your own?
Didn’t most of us, no matter sect, grow up with similar Jewish core values of compassion? That אהבת חינם is a key ingredient to crawling out from the oppression of our enemies? What else are we fasting on Tisha B’av to acknowledge? To repent for?
If we’re gonna continue existing as a nation, we have to start hard conversations with acknowledging there is a ton of invisible pain and grief in this country for decades to come. Nothing at this point can change that fact; nothing can make it disappear.
Never assume the person you’re picking a fight with in the supermarket line or seems to have cut you off in traffic hasn’t been to hell and back.
We don’t get to be a long lasting nation if we can’t show our own people baseline compassion during tragedy.
Whadya got: