By Esti DeAngelis, Staff Writer
As Shabbos ended a few weeks ago, I found myself pushed into a painful stillness. The IDF had found hostages’ bodies, and the public was implored not to feed into the already-spreading rumors, to not be the one who inadvertently informed a parent or sibling or child about their captive loved one’s fate. And so, as the IDF began knocking on doors, we froze.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Ori Danino. Eden Yerushalmi. Alex Lobanov. Carmel Gat. Almog Sarusi. One by one, their photos came across my news feed as their families made the devastating public announcements we all prayed would never come. Six young people with so much life to live, murdered after eleven months of torture, just before the IDF reached them. We all sobbed with their families that night.
The next morning, I was sent a screenshot from the Yeshiva World News WhatsApp status. The headline read, “DISASTER FOR BOCHURIM: Ben Gurion Airport to Shut Indefinitely Monday Morning as Thousands Plan Return to Yeshivos.” The lack of sensitivity for the reason for the looming shutdown, a strike in demand of a hostage deal, seemed almost unbelievable. I checked the publication’s website and found a similar headline at the top of their page.
I felt almost embarrassed, seeing this fresh tragedy so blatantly skipped over by my own Orthodox community. But, more than anything, I was deeply sad as I scrolled all the way to the bottom of the website to find the images of our six precious siblings whose deaths we had learned of just twelve hours before. Some had not yet even been buried. Checking the site again that night, their faces had disappeared from the first page of the feed entirely, relegated to a narrow column labeled “Popular Posts,” just above a story titled “MUST WATCH: Young Trump Impersonator Steals the Show at Pennsylvania Rally.”
One commenter under the article about the strike noted this subtle cruelty. “Calling [the airport shutdown] a DISASTER is ridiculous. Re-evaluate. What happened today IS. Bochurim going to yeshiva a few days later is NOT. Grow up.” I happen to be opposed to the conditions outlined in the potential hostage deal for which hundreds of thousands are protesting and striking across Israel. However, as this commenter relays, these political differences felt so insignificant that day, as I watched a video of Eden Yerushalmi’s father Naor, who had collapsed from the news, being wheeled to his precious daughter’s 79-pound body at her funeral. They felt insignificant as I stared at the adorable face of a baby Hersh Goldberg-Polin with his mother Rachel on her first Mother’s Day. I may be concerned about the turmoil spreading across the country, but I would not call a canceled flight a disaster in the face of real, disastrous loss.
The attitude of pretending away this year-long calamity is astonishingly more common than many of us may admit. It is subtle, true, but it makes itself known in one million little ways, in the overpublicized displays of wealth and comfortability so problematic in our online Jewish world and the underpublicized tragedies that are shoved into a corner with Trump impersonators and drowned in a vast sea of normalcy. The tragedy is acknowledged, almost as an obligation, and then life continues.
At the beginning of the war, the question was often addressed: what is the proper approach to nosei b’ol im chavero, the Jewish commandment of carrying the burden with one’s friend, at a time like this? The suggestion was made that each person take on one physical action as a reminder of the pain so many are experiencing. If you sleep with two pillows, start sleeping with one. Pick an extra comfort in your life and remove it.
However, one caveat was added: don’t pick something too extreme because you also need to live your life. I fear some may have taken this to mean that one can live the rest of his life normally, save some small actions that, once completed, can allow him to put the tragedy out of mind. However, the true purpose of these physical manifestations of nosei b’ol, as I know these rabbis and teachers surely understand, is not to clear your conscience and allow you to live the rest of your life unchanged; it is to instill in you an awareness that perhaps you should not.
Some rabbanim have already addressed this issue. Rabbi Shaya Karlinsky, in an important piece for Cross-Currents, criticizes those who sent complaints to Mishpacha magazine for publishing photos of the October 7 massacre. He quotes a midrash that teaches that when Moshe saw his Jewish brothers and sisters suffering in slavery, he went out and physically helped them carry their loads (Shemos Rabbah 1:27). Referencing Rav Wolbe, Rabbi Karlinsky clarifies what was and wasn’t Moshe’s intention here. “Even if he helped each Jew for one minute to carry the load, not much of an assistance, the amount of time required would not be reasonable.” Rather, “he demonstrated to the people, in a concrete and tangible way … that he was personally pained by what they were going through.” The action itself was not the point, but it was to communicate a broader connection to his people’s struggle. True, this connection involves “some measure of discomfort,” Rabbi Karlinsky acknowledges, but perhaps one is not supposed to be wholly comfortable right now. Or maybe ever.
The past few weeks have been immensely difficult. A friend of mine confided in me that some small part of her wished she had not become so invested in the stories of our hostages because it has made their deaths all the more devastating. I told her what I believe wholeheartedly to be true: the fact that you have been made uncomfortable by this, that you have been emotionally moved to such a degree, is a testament to nosei b’ol done right. Allowing oneself to be not just inconvenienced by a tragedy but deeply heartbroken by it indicates that one has been selfless enough to connect to it. I fear that some in our nation, perhaps all of us at times, have inadvertently sucked the selflessness out of nosei b’ol, removed the life force that gives this great endeavor its meaning. I would not call these people selfish, but I would say that if one’s nosei b’ol feels more like a technical obligation to be fulfilled to clear one’s conscience rather than an attitude through which to view life in the midst of a national trauma, he may not be doing it right.
Don’t get me wrong, I live my life. I go to weddings and participate in all the simchas a Jewish 20-year-old has the opportunity to participate in. The key is, though, that I try to live this life, in some small way, for those who are suffering. At these weddings, I pray for my brothers and sisters in Gaza at the chuppah, and I try to connect to the deep spirituality of the event as a zechus for them. The point is not to stop one’s life, but to allow the tragedy to peek its head inside of it. Some, I am afraid, may wish to shut it out, to paper over this calamity with plane tickets, Instagram aesthetics, and expensive clothing. Because letting these feelings in means admitting things are not okay. It means acknowledging that you can take a vacation, but perhaps that vacation should be subdued by some small measure, to leave cargo space for the struggles of our nation not to be abandoned on the tarmac.
Dear Hersh, Ori, Eden, Alex, Carmel, and Almog, I dedicate this piece to you. Because nosei b’ol does not mean I must tear my clothing and not get up from the ground until everything is okay again. It means I grieve for those we have lost, and then I stand up, I dust myself off, and I live for them.
Photo Caption: Hostage posters hung in the lobby of 245 Lexington Avenue at SCW
Photo Credit: Emily Goldberg