By Leah Garber
The days of stillness are coming
After the great and terrible quake
We can now rest a bit on the balcony
and collect the fragments of the storm.
The days of stillness are coming
I already forgot what they look like
We can now open the door
send the birds to the wind.
— Days of Quiet, Yarden Bar Kochba
Unfortunately, Yarden Bar Kochba’s beautiful lyrics are a distant dream. The time has not yet come to rest on the balcony, but maybe the new year carries with it the promise of peace, comfort, and recovery. After all, what is left for us without hope?
Tomorrow evening, in the seam between sunset and twinkling stars, millions of Jews around the world will gather around festive holiday tables, dip an apple in honey, and greet 5785—wishing for this new year to be as sweet as honey.
Almost two thousand families will sit at tables with empty chairs. Last year’s full and joyful tables are quieter, smaller now. Their loved ones were killed, murdered. Children who were supposed to pick pomegranates as a harbinger of the holiday are now angels, shedding sparkling tears on the sad holiday tables. They all died too soon, so young.
Too many tables will remain fully deserted, orphaned entirely. “Their” families, who 12 months ago filled homes with joy and happiness have all been slaughtered. Mom, dad, and their kids were killed together, embraced as one body. Their holy souls ascended to heaven, leaving behind this cruel world—and us. We remain to mourn their loss, to miss them so, to count more and more families who paid the price of living here.
One-hundred-and-one families will force themselves to mark the holiday. How can they? More than any other day, holidays are the time for families to be together, but their family is missing a spouse, a parent, a sibling, a child. Not knowing what happened to their loved ones, the hostages in Gaza who have been buried alive in terror tunnels for 361 days, gnaws at them.
And all of us, Israelis and Jews around the world, will set aside one chair, dedicated to the hostages. A vacant chair that has been empty too long, yearning to offer the tired hostages a rest, to hug their bruised, battered bodies and allow them, finally, to feel at home.
It will be a different holiday.
The streets here in Israel will be filled with people wearing festive white, wholeheartedly greeting one another with best wishes for the new year. Migratory birds will soar to the chants of the prayers from various synagogues. The aroma of traditional holiday dishes will fill the air. Autumn winds will carry holiday melodies from one home to the other.
All these holiday attributes, as they do every year, will try to decorate the holiday with the festive colors it deserves, but those who are not here with us and the pain of the past year, will blur the glow, dim the joy.
Our prayers this year, possibly more than ever, will come from broken hearts. The shofar will sound like crying, reminding us of the slaughtered babies’ wails, of the bereaved moms’ lamentations.
The sounds of the shofar and our prayers will surely be particularly loud this year, overpowering the sounds of war. They must reach the hostages held captive in the dark, and our soldiers who have been fighting fiercely on several fronts for 361 days.
Can the voices of all shofars carry our pleas? Can the sounds of the saddest symphony that will tear the sky apart and crack the gray clouds invite bright light to finally, finally shine with the promise that the new year will be a good one, that the hostages will be back home, that days of stillness are coming? It’s no dream.
Shana tova. Wishing us all a good and sweet year ahead.
Leah Garber is a senior vice president of JCC Association of North America and director of its Center for Israel Engagement in Jerusalem.
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