I normally have words to write but this morning I don’t.
I don’t typically struggle with finding the right words to write but this morning as hard as a I try, nothing seemed to be sufficient.
21 soldiers!
21 souls!
Fathers!
Husbands!
Children!
All in one night!
How and why? Simply because they were defending our nation?
Since when is defense considered a sin?
When did the world change that this appears to have become the norm?
Sitting here, contemplating how can I go about my day and go to work after a night like this?
These are our brothers, our family!
21 of our family were taken!
Leaving behind orphans and widows whose lives will be changed for all of eternity!
How can I go to work today with this heartbreak in my soul, in our souls, in the soul of the Jewish nation as a whole?
Do I pretend it didn’t happen when it did?
Do I pretend I’m fine when I’m really not?
I’m not questioning God as I know with every fiber in my being, that everything, even something of this enormity was preplanned and precisely designed. The good in life, the tragedy in life, the big and the small, all have an exact explanation that us finite beings can’t fathom.
However, still in all, how can I simply go to work?
I don’t know but perhaps I can learn from the strength of our fallen hero’s.
They went to battle despite having their own comrades killed and wounded.
They went to battle despite knowing the horrific dangers involved.
They went out to the battlefield leaving a family because this is what we do.
If they can do it, perhaps I can as well.
If they fought and put their heartbreak aside, perhaps I can as well.
So today, in their memory, when my heart is so heavy; when all of Jews feel so united but still so alone in the world, I will go out and go to work. Not because I’m forgetting about them but because I’m living their legacy as well as our holy Jewish nation that “a yid never breaks.”
They took a simply mundane act of fighting and created holiness out of it.
Perhaps I can do the same.
Perhaps I, we all, can go to work today and create holiness.
To perpetuate our rock solid legacy that we bend but we don’t break.
That we cry but we don’t fall.
That we mourn but we continue, through the tears and haze of sadness.
That’s us. That’s what we do!
