It happened over lunch.\n<\/p>\n
We were sitting at a restaurant, rabbis from Israel and North America, talking quietly, circling the same question:\n<\/p>\n
How are our communities responding to this war?\n<\/p>\n
In Israel, the pain is immediate\u2014raw, unavoidable.
In North America, it is real too, but filtered through distance, politics, and fear.\n<\/p>\n
We were part of a mifgash\u2014an intentional encounter\u2014between my Hartman Rabbinic Leadership Cohort and Harabbanut Yisraeli, the Shalom Hartman Institute\u2019s Israeli rabbinic training program.\n<\/p>\n
At some point, one of the Israeli participants shared his bracelet.\n<\/p>\n
He placed it in my hand.\n<\/p>\n
On it was a QR code.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cScan it,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
It opened a site: remember.bio\/he \u2014 a digital memorial bearing the names of every Israeli who has fallen since October 7: the civilians murdered that day, and the soldiers who have died since. Thousands of names. Each one a universe. Each one a life cut short.\n<\/p>\n
He told me he wears it every day. Then he said, almost casually, \u201cYou should have it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
I put it on.\n<\/p>\n
I\u2019m wearing it now.\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s heavy.
Not jewelry-heavy.
Memory-heavy.\n<\/p>\n
It feels less like an accessory and more like sackcloth.\n<\/p>\n
And suddenly, our learning that day felt painfully alive.\n<\/p>\n
Two Responses to Catastrophe\n<\/p>\n
We had been learning a moment from the Book of Esther. The story we usually associate with costumes and joy begins in terror: a royal decree ordering the destruction of the Jewish people.\n<\/p>\n
When Mordechai learns of it, his response is raw and public:\n<\/p>\n
\u201cMordechai tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the city, crying loudly and bitterly.\u201d (Esther 4:1)\n<\/p>\n
He does not hide his grief. He wears it.\n<\/p>\n
When Queen Esther hears of this, she is shaken. At first, she tries to send him clothes\u2014to cover his sackcloth. Mordechai refuses them.\n<\/p>\n
Then Esther decides she will go to the king, an act that could cost her life. And when she does, the text says:\n<\/p>\n
\u201cEsther clothed herself in royalty and stood in the inner court of the king.\u201d (Esther 5:1)\n<\/p>\n
She does not enter in mourning garments.
She does not wear ashes.
She dresses as a queen.\n<\/p>\n
Two people.
One catastrophe.
Two responses.\n<\/p>\n
Mordechai grieves.
Esther transforms.\n<\/p>\n
From Sackcloth to Courage\n<\/p>\n
The Hasidic master Rabbi Shlomo of Radomsk, in his Tiferet Shlomo, notices this tension. Are these opposing paths? He answers, no\u2014they are stages of the same journey.\n<\/p>\n
First comes Mordechai\u2014naming the pain, refusing to normalize it.\n<\/p>\n
Then comes Esther\u2014finding the courage to step back into life, into responsibility, into shaping the future.\n<\/p>\n
Redemption, he teaches, does not come when pain disappears. It comes when simchah\u2014life, meaning, moral vitality\u2014can re-enter the heart.\n<\/p>\n
Not joy as denial.
Joy as choosing life again.\n<\/p>\n
The Bracelet as Mordechai\u2019s Garment\n<\/p>\n
The bracelet I was given is a modern Mordechai garment.\n<\/p>\n
It reminds me of the post-Holocaust custom of pairing B\u2019nai Mitzvah students with children who were murdered and never reached the age of thirteen. The living child would say Kaddish for the dead one.\n<\/p>\n
Never Forget.
Never Again.\n<\/p>\n
Memory as presence.
Grief as responsibility.\n<\/p>\n
But those rituals were never meant to be the end of Jewish response\u2014only the beginning.\n<\/p>\n
Choosing Who We Will Be\n<\/p>\n
After the Holocaust, Jews responded in different ways. As Yossi Klein Halevi has written, three broad paths emerged: the Haredi world withdrew; Zionism re-entered history as a sovereign people; North American Jewry embraced opportunity and belonging. Each response was shaped by trauma. Each was an attempt to survive.\n<\/p>\n
Now, after October 7 and the war that followed\u2014after the hostages, the funerals, the unbearable waiting\u2014Israel stands at another crossroads.\n<\/p>\n
As the last hostage, Ran Gvili, has now come home for burial, and as the war in Gaza appears to be nearing its end, a deeper question emerges:\n<\/p>\n
What kind of people will we be after this?\n<\/p>\n
Choosing Life Again: What Might an Esther Response Look Like?\n<\/p>\n
Trauma closes the future.
Esther opens it.\n<\/p>\n
She does not deny what has happened. She carries it with her as she steps forward. But she refuses to let terror be the final word.\n<\/p>\n
An Esther response begins when a wounded person dares to re-enter life.\n<\/p>\n
We are already seeing it.\n<\/p>\n
Babies are born and named for those who were lost. New life carrying old memory forward.\n<\/p>\n
Communities are beginning to gather not only to mourn, but to sing again. To study. To build. To argue. To dream.\n<\/p>\n
Israelis and diaspora Jews are choosing connection over retreat, even when we struggle to understand one another.\n<\/p>\n
Not joy as celebration.
Not joy as forgetting.\n<\/p>\n
But joy as moral courage.
Joy as choosing life again.\n<\/p>\n
The Courage to Rise\n<\/p>\n
The Torah commands: \u201cYou shall choose life.\u201d (Deuteronomy 30:19)\n<\/p>\n
Not once.
But again.
And again.\n<\/p>\n
We will wear the bracelets.
We will speak the names.
We will remember.\n<\/p>\n
But Jewish history teaches that a people cannot live forever in sackcloth.\n<\/p>\n
Mordechai teaches us to cry.
Esther teaches us to rise.\n<\/p>\n
And redemption begins when we choose not only to survive\u2014
but to live.\n<\/p>\n
That choice now stands before us.\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It happened over lunch. We were sitting at a restaurant, rabbis from Israel and North America, talking quietly,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-270910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}