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Because when a mother and her children are stolen from their home and returned in death, we do not look away.
By JACOB SCHIMMEL FEBRUARY 26, 2025 17:10
Israelis at the Bibas family funeral on February 26, 2025.
(photo credit: CHEN SCHIMMEL)
The roads are lined with people.
They are here.
From the early hours, they have stood - fathers lifting their children so they can see; mothers holding hands too small to understand but know; soldiers at attention; young men with heads bowed; elderly women with tears on their cheeks who have seen too much but still stand.
The boys on their bikes have stopped. The shopkeepers who have stepped outside. The bus drivers who have pulled to the side of the road.
They do not move because some things cannot be borne alone.
Because when a mother and her children are stolen from their home and returned in death, we do not look away.
This is what it means to be a people.
And doesn’t it feel—just for a moment—like something greater is here?
Not something abstract. Not something far away, but something real. Something you can almost reach out and touch.
Not in the arguments. Not in the divisions. Not in the endless debates over who is right and who is wrong. But in this—this standing. This silence. This knowing.
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Here, now, when all the noise is stripped away, when there is nothing left but grief and love and the instinct to stand together, this feels more like presence than all the shouting ever does.
And yet, we know this moment will pass.
“V’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham.”
Build Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them (this week’s Torah reading)
Not in a place. Not in a structure.
But in them.
Maybe that’s what this is.
Maybe we spend so much time tearing at the walls of the sanctuary that we forget what it feels like to stand inside it.
Maybe this is a reminder.
Because if there is something sacred in this world, something worth holding on to -
It is not just that we stood together today.
It is that we still can.
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