One of the most powerful images in the last few days was a cartoon posted by the Israel
TV station Kan. It is a cartoon by the Israeli artist Adva Santo that depicts Batman bent over an orange tree stump, with three orange stars in the sky.
Ariel Bibas was obsessed with Batman. He dressed like him whenever he could, not just on Purim. He once wrote that he loves Batman because “he flies and saves people from the pit.” His faith in heroes was so pure, yet there was no bat signal that could summon heroes to save him from the pit. It’s all too much to bear.
Yet here we are, reeling over the actions of a profane and lawless society responsible for the murder and kidnapping of a baby, a toddler and their mother. Actually, three generations of the same family, as their grandparents were also murdered on that day.
Who among us can forget the image of a terrified Jewish mother clasping her two redheads to her chest as they were ripped from home and left off to captivity? How can that fail to evoke similar images from 90 years ago? Is there anything to say, any path forward in the face of such dispiriting news?
If you are like me, every time you’ve seen a red-headed child since October 7th, you have thought of the Bibas children – even if those gingis are your own children or loved ones.
How can we all possibly move forward after such devastating news? I believe that a path forward for us emerges from the life of a biblical character with a similar defining characteristic.
In the 16th chapter of Shmuel Aleph, G-d charges Shmuel HaNavi with the mission of anointing the next king to replace the disgraced Shaul. The king, he is told, would be found among the sons of Yishai from Beit Lechem. He is not given more instructions, only that when he arrives, G-d would tell him what to do. When he arrives at Yishai’s house, he is introduced to each of the sons, and each one seems to be more suitable than the next, yet G-d tells Shmuel each time that it isn’t the one He has chosen. All seven sons are rejected, and Shmuel doesn’t know what to do, so he asks Yishai, “Is that it? Do you have any more sons?” Yishai admits that he has another son who is a shepherd, and Shmuel sends for him:
“So they sent and brought him. He was ruddy-cheeked, bright-eyed, and handsome. And the L-rd said, ‘Rise and anoint him, for this is the one’” (Shmuel I 16:12).
The word “admoni” in this pasuk is often erroneously translated as “red headed,” but it actually means that he was ruddy in appearance, red cheeked and healthy looking. In this article, though, I’d like to employ a creative darshan’s license. For many, David’s appearance was inextricably bound up with the color red.
The primary adversary of the Jewish people at the time were the Phillistines, who lived, appropriately, in the area we now know as Gaza. In addition to their considerable forces and their military prowess, they employed sophisticated methods of intimidation and psychological torture. As they squared off against Shaul’s forces in chapter 17, they sent
Goliath – their tallest, strongest, nastiest and most heavily armed warrior – to heap verbal abuse against the Jews:
“He stopped and called out to the ranks of Israel and he said to them, ‘Why should you come out to engage in battle? I am the Philistine [champion], and you are Saul’s servants. Choose one of your men and let him come down against me.’” The Navi tells us that this served its desired effect. Shaul and his army were terror-stricken!”
What happened? David volunteered himself to fight. When Goliath saw him, he thought it was some kind of a joke. This little red one is going to beat me?! “When the Philistine caught sight of David, he scorned him, for he was but a boy, ruddy and handsome.”
He called out to David, “Am I a dog that you come against me with sticks?” But in response, David was no slouch when it came to trash talking.
“David replied to the Philistine, ‘You come against me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come against you in the name of the L-rd of Hosts, the G-d of the ranks of Israel, whom you have defied.’
“And this whole assembly shall know that the L-rd can give victory without sword or spear. For the battle is the L-rd’s, and He will deliver you into our hands.”
Goliath underestimated David, writing him off because he was red, because he was young, good-looking and seemingly inexperienced. David would not let himself or his people be cowed; he fought back, felling Goliath with a well-aimed rock launched with great velocity at his forehead.
The battle between David and Goliath is the world in which we live in today. It’s difficult to know where to even begin when we consider the ways, in the last few days alone, that Hamas has tried to break our spirit. I will not even share the revelation of the way the boys were actually killed, as it is severely triggering and traumatizing. Then they kept the bodies to serve as bargaining chips to secure the release of other subhumans, one of whom was Mohammed Abu Warda, yimach shemo. Prior to his release on February 8, Warda was serving 48 life sentences in Israel for masterminding multiple terror attacks that killed 45 people, including a 1996 bombing on a Jerusalem bus that left 24 dead.
He was at the hand-off of the Bibas coffins, presiding over it and vowing “continued resistance.” Before the hand-off, the coffins had to be inspected by a bomb squad to make sure they weren’t booby-trapped, and the coffins were handed back locked but with no keys. On the coffins, it said “Date of Arrest: 10.7.23,” as if a 9-month-old baby was a criminal, and inside the coffins there was propaganda material. Children were on a stage when the bodies were given over, cheering, and one of the bodies wasn’t even that of Shiri. Speaking of bombs, it is only through an open act of Divine providence that 15 buses didn’t explode Friday during rush hour, and causing casualties in the hundreds, chas v’shalom. According to some unverified reports, these bombs were to be joined by five others detonated by suicide bombers on the lightrail. But all these were supposed to serve as distractions. When the buses blew up, a massive breach of the security fence between Israel and Judea and Samaria was to take place, with many terrorists streaming in and carrying out a massacre in every major Israeli city.
In trying to break our spirit, our enemies have successfully recruited many willing participants:
They have recruited civilians in Gaza who participated gleefully in the torture of hostages. Even in Nazi Germany, there were civilians who risked their lives to save Jews, but no one in Gaza did the same thing. The fourth hostage whose body was returned on Thursday was Oded Lifshitz, who dedicated his life to helping Palestinians in Gaza – and they betrayed him and his legacy.
They have recruited college students who publicly show support for Hamas, while cravenly shielding their faces; who call babies colonialists and claim that Israel kills babies, when Hamas puts their own babies in harm’s way.
They have recruited Palestinians and their friends who marched last week in Borough Park in Brooklyn, yelling, “Zionist, go home,” despite Borough Park hardly being a hotbed of Zionist activity. These kinds of protests have happened all over the world, including in Amsterdam, London and Sydney.
They have recruited so-called rabbis and as-a-Jews who protest genocide in Gaza, whether in newspaper ads or public gatherings, but have precious little to say about hostages and the treatment of their own people.
They have recruited media outlets who are complicit, giving platforms to the worst kind of Jew hatred and the most imbalanced reporting. Al Jazeera reported the event as if it was a state ceremony!
They have recruited other malicious or ineffective organizations like the Red
Cross, that didn’t visit the hostages even once. Only yesterday did they declare that protests and demonstrations when handing off the bodies of the hostages violated international law – a declaration they apparently backed down from when
Hamas threatened to renege.
Like Goliath, our enemies are threatening, and they underestimate us; they think we are just “little and red,” that we can be easily beaten. Our response is that of David: We will not be intimidated.
“You come against me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come against you in the name of the L-rd of Hosts, the G-d of the ranks of Israel, whom you have defied.”
If Hamas waves flags and cheers while bodies are handed over, we line the streets defiantly with Israeli flags, in solidarity with Yarden Bibas and in mourning with one another. If Hamas does not care about the lives of its own babies, we will affirm life with ours.
Last Thursday, a convert to Judaism chose the name Kfir Ariel as his Jewish name, and there will be plenty of others named in their honor. The name Kfir means a lion cub, and Ariel means the lion of G-d – and we will continue to roar.
Children in Gaza dress with guns in their hands and bombs around their waste; maybe this year, for Purim, our children will wear Batman costumes, as Ariel Bibas loved to do. They are trying to drive us away from Israel, but our connection will draw ever stronger- through aliyah, through political activism, through financial support. They are trying to scare us away from Yiddishkeit, but we will strengthen our Jewish identity ever more.
There are so many communal and philanthropic dollars being channeled into fighting antisemitism, but that shouldn’t be our job anyway. Now is the time to invest personal and communal dollars in initiatives and institutions that create proud, committed, identifiable and, yes, observant Jews. It also means we need to redouble our commitment to being the same, through learning, tefillah, mitzvah observance, chessed and kindness.
The present seems dark and the future is uncertain, but the memories of Kfir, Ariel and
Shiri Bibas and Oded Lifshitz challenge us to respond to this evil with an equal and opposite force of goodness and godliness. May we rise to the occasion.
