We are in a national nightmare – slaughter and massacre, the border breached, missiles raining down on our cities. Whole families have been kidnapped, soldiers and security forces murdered. Children taken hostage. Thousands of wounded.
It feels like a horror movie. We are threatened, vulnerable, and under attack. We are all in mourning and in shock.
The families who have lost loved ones, as well as the families of those who were kidnapped or are missing, are the bearers of the pain, but the collective grief is enormous, unbearable.
In a country this small, we will all know somebody who was murdered. I just learned that my friend’s son, Dr. Eitan Neeman, was murdered at the front. My son was at a funeral today of a young soldier who left behind a wife and two small children. We will all be at many more.
All we believed true – that we could defend ourselves, that we were strong, that our army was the best – has been deflated.
But we are not defeated.
How can we find hope?
As someone who has faced the worst, whose son Koby was 13 when he was murdered in 2001 by terrorists, I know there is hope.
And hope, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks tells us, is not optimism, a trait that a lucky few are born with. No, hope is an ability we all have – the will to make things better, to work to make sure that we find a way for this national catastrophe to lead us toward victory and national unity.
As a co-director of the Koby Mandell Foundation which works with bereaved families, and as a pastoral counselor, I have worked with many bereaved families who have risen from their pain, who have found their own ways of doing good in the world. And I think what is true for the individual is true for the nation. Because we, as a nation, will emerge stronger. Eventually.
First, we need to deal with our sadness. The pictures of the adults and children and families who are missing are unbearable.
The photos of the dead shatter our hearts. The photo of mourners at a funeral in Jerusalem lying down among the graves because a mortar has been launched, shows our vulnerability. The number of casualties as well as wounded, the bloodiest days in Israeli history – we are outraged and broken.
IT SEEMS impossible to bear this pain. But know this – pain is power if we find a way to carry and process the pain.
Believe that we can handle this somehow.
Because while it is true that with all of this slaughter and tragedy, many of us feel terribly vulnerable and in danger of post-traumatic stress disorder, we can also hope for post-traumatic growth – personally and as a nation. And the first step in post-traumatic growth is processing our pain.
The most important part of our work at the Koby Mandell Foundation is giving bereaved families and children a place to express their feelings and pain through support groups and creative therapies. The bereaved are able to transform their suffering so that the bereaved mother or father or child has the ability to tell a new story – not just the story of the catastrophe but the story of how they were helped and loved by others, the story of how they continued on and found new gifts, enlarged compassion, developed a stronger relationship to their communities, and maybe even to God. And after a while, many of our bereaved go on to do great things, to use their pain to help others, to run activities and organizations that help heal the world.
Of course, those who are fighting, our defense forces, do not have the luxury of feeling right now, never mind processing their pain. That will come later. But we who are not actively fighting can let ourselves feel the pain so that we can transform it into action.
That’s not to say that we should begin to blame, although there is plenty of blame to go around.
As a pastoral counselor, I’ve worked with people facing their own fatal illnesses. One said to me, “I refuse to blame the doctors.” She wanted to live in a positive way for as long as she could.
And this is the sad positive: If this war has taught us anything, it’s that we are a we, part of a nation. A friend told me that she had canceled her session of therapy – her personal problems paled compared to those of our nation. The tragedy is that it takes catastrophe to bring us together and to realize who our real enemy is.
And in same way that illness can refine our perspective and make us appreciate life, I pray that this tragedy will lead us to understand and appreciate that we are one people – and that we should never sacrifice that unity.
The next step in empowering ourselves is to cling to our community – to give and receive kindness. Look for the helpers all around us. They are already in action – kids who are babysitting or running camps for children, yoga teachers teaching relaxation techniques on Zoom, therapists offering free sessions.
THE KOBY MANDELL Foundation has opened a hotline and is sending therapists and counselors to help the people who are displaced and those who have lost children.
Look at all of the goodness in the world. Be part of that goodness. Let your children know that we are hurt but we are not destroyed; we will let ourselves be sad, but that sadness is the power that will catapult us toward kindness and ultimate victory. Tell them that the Jewish people are responsible for each other and will take care of each other.
While too many of our enemies celebrate death, we celebrate life. We choose life. And the power of life is always victorious – eventually.
And finally remember, the war started on Simchat Torah, the time that is supposed to be a day of happiness. The Torah reading that day is the last parsha in the Torah, Zot Habracha, “this is the blessing.” But we also read the beginning of Bereshit, Genesis. In every end is a beginning, although in the midst of this colossal mistake in national security, in the midst of heartbreak and shattering, it’s hard to believe.
But we can hope and pray that this is the beginning of the end of Hamas, the beginning of national unity, and the beginning of a new Israel that will be one where we can all work together to arrive at a new height of national resilience.
The writer is the author of The Road to Resilience. Reach her at sherrimandell@gmail.com
For more information on the Koby Mandell Foundation: kobymandell.org