A vigil

They were alive. Hersh, Carmel, Eden, Alex, Or, Almog. They were all alive a few days ago. They survived eleven months in capitivity. And then they were shot at point blank by Hamas in the back of the head. What was the point? The strength it must have taken them to survive all of that. Hersh with one arm this whole time. Carmel keeping other hostages safe with yoga and meditation exercises. Eden leaving her sisters with the final words they heard from her: “Find me, ok?”

The sorrow is unlike anything I’ve ever felt. For the innocent lives executed in the manner our people have been executed for thousands of years. For the blind eye turned by the masses just like in every generation. For the total abandonment by the societies and people we have given our hearts and souls to. We must live. We must live. And yet, I scream why. How. Why. Why.

I do not recall the last time I have felt like I was going to a funeral. The sun was still bright and the air hot as I approached the hangar in Culver City that houses the Nova exhibition this evening for a special vigil to commemorate the deaths of our six hostages. But I felt cold to the bone. It may as well have been the depths of winter outside. A chill runs through me. A void between the brain that understands the message and the soul that just cannot.

Last night – no sleep. Just faces. Screams. Dismembered bodies. Body bags. The ash in the cars. The distress calls coming through Instagram direct message on October 7. The smell of the bomb shelter on the highway in the South. The blood in Kibbutz Nir Oz – on the door handle of the safe room. The GoPro Hamas videos. On a loop. In my head. The faces. Hersh’s smile. Eden’s eyes. Carmel’s glow. Their families. I promised their families we would do whatever we could. I promised. “We will bring them home,” I said. I meant it. I wanted to mean it.

This year is a living nightmare for us all. And the heartlessness of those who have not been able to lift their heads to say anything to their Jewish friends is beyond my comprehension. We walk this path alone and our few allies are the most righteous people there are. I found myself in the wee hours as the daylight crept in, hiding inside my sheets, wailing alone. An anguish stemming from my stomach that I have never known before. We need a new word for anguish. We need a new word for strife. There must be a Yiddish word that describes the unique emotion we all feel today; a day that feels no different to October 8, other than that our circles are now much smaller, albeit far safer. We are in a ghetto without walls. The lessons of betrayal still sting. I will always hope for more to speak up, to find a righteous person within themselves. But it's a hope, and not a need. We cannot afford to need.

Hersh wanted to travel the globe. Eden's sisters were waiting to hug her. Ori was going to marry his fiance Liel. Carmel was set to complete her studies as an occupational therapist. Alex has a newborn son he will never meet, named Kai. Almog suffered the same fate as his partner Shahar. They are together now.

The mainstream media did not recognize any of that humanity today. They reported, as per usual, en masse, that the hostages had just died, somehow. They just died. I am so ashamed to live in a world that does not regard this situation with moral clarity.

The six hostages were kidnapped and tortured for 11 months and then shot in the head on the verge of freedom. They were executed in an identical manner to the way the Nazis executed Jewish people when they had exhausted all other logistical options. The same media minimizes the Holocaust every year and has universalized it as a word to describe every bad thing that happens. Institutionalized antisemitism flows like a river through mainstream media. People still refuse to recognize this bias and engage in independent critical thinking. If Jews ran the media, they'd be reading the truth. Not a single “humanitarian” spoke up today. Not one. Amal Clooney, who took Israel to court at the ICC, however, was seen on a red carpet at the Venice Film Festival, on a double date with husband George Clooney, and wifebeater and child abuser Brad Pitt, and his new girlfriend, god help her. These human rights lawyers are scum of the earth. They are literal starfuckers.

In Culver City, after going through the security barrier, there was a table with stacks of masking tape and Sharpies for entrants to write the number of days - 331 - of hostage captivity, as a nod to Rachel Golberg Polin, who began to do this every day for her son Hersh, since October 7.

Onstage, Scooter Braun spoke with a lump in his throat (see video below), Noa Tishby wept through obituaries to the six dead, and rabbis and cantors led us in prayers for the dead in front of a group of Nova survivors flown in from Israel, who also shared their testimony and stories. When I was a child I used to call the way cantors sang “crying music”. Why does it sound like crying? I would ask my mother, in the gallery above the men’s section in synagogue. There is so much pain in the ancient songs. What came first? The persecution, or the music?

I closed my eyes, holding a candle and a picture of Eden Yerushalmi, a friend wrapped her whole body around me, and I listened to the cantor’s psalm 23. In between listening to a recording of Eden Yerushalmi’s mother, whose birthday was yesterday, screaming for her child at her child’s funeral. Slicha!!!!!!! she shries. (Sorry - in Hebrew.) I thought of my former cantor, Ernest Levy, a Holocaust survivor, who sang with that same hurt in my synagogue growing up, in a dwindling community. I remembered a feeling I had the first time I went to Kol Nidre evening service on Yom Kippur. I must have been around 11-years-old and I thought of my friends at school not knowing this experience. There was barely anyone in the synagogue, but there were enough of us. And I remember saying to myself: “We are very special people. Nobody else understands.” I felt that tonight. We are very special people. Nobody else understands.

On my right a man held a picture of Sagui Dekel-Chen, whose father I have met, and on my left a woman held a picture of Romi Gonen, whose sister and father I have met. Both are still in Gaza and unaccounted for. I can barely look at the faces of the 101 remaining hostages any longer, wondering their fate. Today that has become even harder. I hope to any god above that this is not the first of several vigils.

I looked down at my jacket with my little piece of masking tape. 331 days. How is that possible? It’s September 1. How? Has there been any time at all since October 7? I guess that was Hamas’s objective this week. Kill some of the best known hostages, and let the world understand that nothing has changed at all since that black day. It’s all a blur for me. I have lost entire months. I don’t know what I did with them. Was I here? I feel so absent. What have I done? Can things go back to normal yet please? Will they ever? There is no going back.

These days happen and it rips band-aids off unhealed wounds. I am not healed. How are we to ever heal? And where oh where did my people go? Did I used to have other people in my life? Were they even real? Or did I make them up? Haven’t I mourned enough since October 7? Why do I have to mourn those who could just pick another moment? Why now? Why do we have to mourn the things that shouldn’t need mourning right now? What is so wrong with people that we cannot be treated with compassion and grace? Did we build a rod for our own backs? Were we too amenable?

Hello there. Do you remember me? The Jewish person you once knew? The person who believed in and championed you? The person who’d turn the universe inside out for you? The person who always remembered the anniversaries? The person who never left you hanging on a text? The person who went out of their way to find the words you could never find? The person who never let you down when you were in your hour of need? The person who took care of you when you were sick and danced with you when you were happy? Do you remember me? Do you remember us? We're wondering where you are. Where. Are. You.

We are only 15 million Jewish people on this planet. We are a sliver of a minority among far more voluminous minorities. But in our isolation we roar clearer than the whole world.

Rachel’s mantra to her son that she repeated at the DNC and at the border with Gaza over a loudspeaker only mere days ago was: “I love you. Stay strong. Survive.”

I love you.

Stay strong.

Survive.