This past Yom Kippur, before Ne’ilah, I emotionally explained that the poem which we recited earlier during Mussaf, and which graphically remembers the sages of Israel who were martyrs, never really ended. In a way, the poem continues and includes all the Jewish martyrs who lost their lives ever since. Some of the victims since the previous Yom Kippur were three sets of beautiful siblings, including the two Lee sisters as well as two beautiful young brothers dressed in their Shabbat clothing and killed hours before Shabboat on the streets of Jerusalem. I continued by asking, ‘Where is the joy to our land and celebration to our city Jerusalem (Simcha Le’Artzecha VeSason Le’irecha) which we pray for throughout the Yamim Noraim?’ I then concluded by highlighting how to make things worse, we Jews are tearing each other apart with Sina’at Chinam!

On Friday and Hoshana Rabbah (the day before Simchat Torah in Israel), I cried as we recited the liturgy describing our unconditional love to Hashem despite everything we have endured: 

‘[We are] exiled and reviled, fair like a date palm, killed on account of You, like sheep to the slaughter, dispersed among tormentors, wrapped in your embrace, clinging to You, bearing Your yoke, beaten down in exile, learning the awe of You, our faces scratched, given over to the violent, oppressed and in turmoil.  Save us, Please! (See Rabbi Sacks Sukkot Machzor page 686). 

The following morning, as we celebrated the Torah which makes us the beautiful nation we are, the news started arriving. We nevertheless continued to sing, dance, and celebrate in sanctity. But after Havdallah, when we reflect on the separation between light and darkness, we learned of the unimaginable darkness we were and are in. More than a thousand and four hundred new martyrs were massacred and desecrated on Simchat Torah. Complete families, babies, children, parents, pregnant women, and holocaust survivors. Hundreds of people, including children as young as a year old only, were taken as hostages to suffer under the hands of some of the most barbaric terrorists on earth.

I will never forget how within ten minutes, a seemingly irreconcilable nation deeply split by divisiveness, reunited and became the most beautiful family, sharing grief, comfort, and hope. The unity now is cathartic. I now know that even when we eventually go back to arguing, we are still and will forever be one inseparable family.  
 

עושה שלום במרומיו הוא יעשה שלום עלינו ועל כל ישראל!

Shabbat Shalom.