Every new year comes with the opportunity to look back on the past one and look forward to the one ahead. But this year, there is no doubt that as we look back, the primary emotion we are all feeling is one of pain.
Whatever remarkable accomplishments our nation and army have achieved in defense of our people, as we are ringing in this new year (as of this writing, and I pray it will change by the time you read these words), there are still 101 hostages still in captivity in Gaza.
Like all of us during these days, my thoughts are constantly returning to that awful Simchat Torah morning when our lives changed forever.
I recall a knock on the door as a neighbor came and told me that a war had started in Israel’s south. We certainly had no idea what was really happening. Some type of war in the south happens every few years and doesn’t usually have any immediate effect on us.
With those thoughts in mind and not yet appreciating the gravity of the situation, we went to shul for the Simchat Torah dancing. We kept hearing rumors about what was happening, but I refused to believe it was true. It just didn’t seem possible. People being kidnapped? Thousands of terrorists in the street?
A little while later, my husband, like all the reservists, went home to check if he was being called up. I remember seeing him walking back to synagogue in his uniform. When I saw him standing there, I was thrown back to the Yom Kippur War, and those images we were raised upon, of all the men rushing out of synagogue to go fight for our country. My husband was being called up, and so our entire family was also being called upon.
I realized at that moment that we were witnessing first-hand Israel’s next great battle. I fought to remember that just like in the past, we are a strong and resilient people.
After Shabbat ended the news started rolling in; the numbers of people murdered, kidnapped, the pictures, the videos.
Then, as we all feared, the horror began to become personal.
I texted a friend Michal, who I knew was staying at her in-laws’ house in Ofakim. She told me that terrorists had entered the family home. Her brother-in-law was shot and killed, and the entire family had hid on the roof for over four hours until they were rescued to the neighboring house. She has four children, one of them a newborn. She told me that all the children, including the newborn, stayed silent on the roof the entire time.
Even as we struggled to deal with the initial shock and as the scope of the tragedy grew and grew, I began to realize that professionally my life would also never be the same.
As the Executive Director of The Koby Mandell Foundation, founded following the murder of my brother Koby by terrorists in 2001, we have spent more than two decades working with Israelis of all ages who have lost loved ones to tragedy – many of them terror victims. While we had never imagined such a massive increase in demand for our services in such a short amount of time like that with which we now faced, we also knew that our experience and insight would be critical in helping our nation cope.
As we worked to organize all our resources and staff, we were also facing the very same staffing challenge as almost every Israeli employer; the men and some women were being called to the front, and many women faced the prospect of saying goodbye to their husbands and being left alone with children – and a terrifying fear of the unknown.
I and my fellow team members made the decision that we would focus our attention on the job at hand. That near-obsession with work was almost therapeutic in getting us through those early few weeks. We knew we were doing something meaningful which gave us back that sense of control which helped us withstand the daily blows of life, of husbands out of contact and children asking incessantly when Abba would return.
Looking back, those early days are a blur of bereavement. We created a network of hundreds of volunteers who traveled to the homes of the fallen to talk to the families, to tell them we were there for them.
As the situation began to stabilize, we implemented a longer-term resilience strategy. In coordination with the families and parents who were dealing with loss, we offered a series of healing seminars and retreats.
Our vision was both simple yet life-changing: There is no specific way to grieve, and while life goes on, the pain never truly goes away. Victims of such tragic loss need to be able to be with others who have experienced similar pain and be given the freedom to express their emotions – for some that is tears and talking about their loved ones, for others it is humor and escape.
This summer, Camp Koby, the camp we started over 20 years ago for bereaved children, welcomed over 600 campers – many of them directly affected by losses from this war. Over the past few months, I have met hundreds of new people who are now part of this community of the bereaved. Rather than be depressed by the scope of our pain, I am inspired by our collective spirit of resilience.
We could choose to look back at the past year and only mourn – and certainly there is so much to mourn. But as Israelis and Jews, we have also risen to the occasion to prove that we are so much stronger than we could have ever imagined. When we needed each other, together with our friends and supporters from all across the globe, we have been there for one another.
In face of the incredible pain, loss and fear of the past year, I choose to focus on the hope and confidence that this next year can – and will be – so much better.
