When we heard that Michal was missing, we didn’t know what to hope for.
She, like so many other young Israelis, had attended the music festival attacked by Hamas on October 7th.
Her mother, our friend, couldn’t find Michal in any of the hospitals. Was she wounded in the bushes, where no one could see her and help her? Was she taken by Hamas as a hostage, abducted, and held in Gaza? Was she dead?
It is really hard to know what is better… Is it preferable to be alive, terrorized and brutalized, held in inhumane conditions in Gaza, or is it better to be dead?
For the past week, like we waited for the news that would either be bad or worse. Almost a week after the massacre, the knock on the door came. Michal had been found.
She’s dead.
Jewish tradition dictates that the dead must be buried before nightfall, on the day of death. The fact that so much time passed is horrifying in and of itself. Hamas terrorists slaughtered so many Israelis that it is difficult to go through the process of identifying them, notifying their families, and bringing them to a proper burial. Worse, many of the bodies were mutilated in such horrific ways that it is necessary to use DNA testing to identify them. I hope to God that it took so long to identify Michal because she was shot in the face or among those who were blown up and not because she was among those tortured and mutilated.
I’ve known Michal since she was a child. Today I am going to her funeral.
This is a photo from years ago when she and my boys were children. Michal is the dark-haired girl in the center, her sister next to her and you can see me talking to her mom in the background.
What song did Michal love? What food did she hate? What made her giggle? I don’t know all the nuances or richness of her personality as a grown woman. What I do know is that a hole has been ripped in the soul of her family and friends. A gaping, ragged, and painful wound that will never heal.
A hole exists where Michal is supposed to be. In a single day, more than 1300 such holes were ripped out of the fabric of our Nation. We are such a tiny people, no one is untouched by this.
I can’t wrap my mind around the enormity of the atrocity our Nation is experiencing. I can barely comprehend that the little girl I once knew, the girl the same age as my boys, is dead. Murdered.
I feel soul-sick.
