In May 2024, I visited Kibbutz Nir Oz. Our group met with an October 7th survivor. We walked around a place where families simply lived and loved the people and the land. As we finished our time there, we stopped at the home of the Bibas family. I had seen the pictures on TV, but this was different. We were standing at their front door. I will never forget: The toys turned upside down, the smiles of the pictures posted on the door, and the green grass with scorch marks. In our sanctuary, every Shabbat, I have looked at the pictures of those little boys as we prayed for their return. It is unfathomable and heartbreaking; no words are enough to describe the feeling knowing Ariel and Kfir Bibas, brutally murdered by the bare hands of Hamas along with Oded Lifshitz, are now home in Israel–not in life but in death.
And where is Shiri?
As I watched the people of Israel line the roads with Israeli flags, paying respect to these innocent souls, I am reminded of the words we say every morning, Elohai Neshama Shenatata Bi Tehora Hee: The soul God has given me is pure.
Yesterday, one of the Flesh Family Sinai Temple Israel Center Rabbinic Fellows wrote a heartbreaking response to the events we all witnessed.
In these moments, we ask, “God, where are you?”
Dear God,
Are you seeing the news? While it was not unexpected, it is hitting Bnei Yisrael like a freight train. The Bibas family was the emblem of the hostage crisis. We all have been hoping, praying, dreaming, against all odds that they would come out of that hellhole Gaza alive. We’ve prayed and blessed Your name too many times to count. Baruch Atah Adonai, Matir Asurim. Baruch Atah Adonai, Gaal Yisrael. Do those blessings reach You? What about our cries? We learn in a Midrash about how the cries of Bnei Yisrael during their 400 year enslavement in Egypt did not come before You for a long time. The cries of our ancestors only came before You once the designated time occurred according to what you told Avraham Avinu in Genesis. Do our cries reach You now? Or must we wait another 400 years for our cries to reach You at the designated time? We will never stop blessing Your name. We will never stop needing the call to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. And yet, our collective Jewish soul, the essence that permeates Bnei Yisrael, the soul that stretches across denominations, continents, centuries, and political parties, the force that connects all Jews to our history and our ancestors, the millions of Jews who lived for the sake of Your name and Your people Israel, and all of the Jews that will come after us, that soul is crushed, defeated, torn to pieces. You once called out to humanity in the Garden so long ago: Ayeka- where are you? In this nightmare, I ask you, in love and in pain, on behalf of Your people Israel: where are you, God?
