Please join us as we share our words of war: our mother’s words, still remembered and inspiring us, 80 years later

Words of chizuk. Political discussion. Military analysis. Psychological studies. Stories of horror, stories of heroism. Words that warm our hearts… and words that break them….

Innumerable words have been written about the matzav — the pogrom of October 7 — and the ensuing and ongoing war. We Sisters asked ourselves — do we have something to add? Something new to say? Something that hasn’t been written before?

The answer, of course, is yes. We have something new to express. As does every Jew….

The trauma we’re facing, the fears, the hopes, yes, those are shared. We’re one people, one family, facing the same tragedy, the same threats. But while being Jewish means being part of the klal, we never forget the importance of the prat, of each individual.

That’s why when we see thousands of men in wrinkled green uniforms, we don’t see a mass of soldiers — we see individual brothers, fathers, sons. And why, when we think about the captives, Hashem yerachem, they’re not just hostages — they’re Emma and Yuli, the three-year-old twins; four-year-old, redheaded Aryeh; 85-year-old Yaffa, who needs kidney medication….

Please join us as we share our words of war: our mother’s words, still remembered and inspiring us, 80 years later; words we listen to and words we speak as a form of therapy; and the bittersweet words spoken by children trying to make sense of the chaotic world of war.

Miriam is inspired by...

Mommy’s Wartime Gift

My mother, Rose Stark a”h, gave me many gifts. The gift of life of course, and the gifts of her warmth and her love. Now, more than ten years after her passing, during the first pain-filled, terrifying days that followed our most joyous holiday, she gave me still another gift. A gift that only a Holocaust survivor could give, in the shadow of atrocity and horror: optimism, determination, and unyielding faith.

Those first few days are hazy in my mind, clouded in a mist of tears. I was journeying through an emotional landscape I’d believed we’d left behind years before. Words, horrible, dark words, words like pogrom and Holocaust, words like kidnapping and atrocities and unthinkable desecrations — had jumped out of history books and become today’s headlines.

And there were so many questions. Practical questions: Is our building miklat (shelter) open, clean, and accessible? (Yes.) How much time do we have to get into shelter when the siren goes off? (Ninety seconds in Yerushalayim; all of 15 seconds in the war-weary south.) Will there be enough food? (There was.) What about school? (Mostly, there wasn’t.)

Emotional questions: How much do I need to know, what clips and photos do I need to see, in order to be “nosei b’ol chaveiro” — and how much will paralyze me? How do I balance the demands of real life with my desire — no, my profound need — to help out the mounting numbers of evacuees and soldiers?

And what about simchahs? Big ones, like a neighbor’s son’s bar mitzvah. Small triumphs, like finishing a chapter from my serial on time. Can I smile, laugh, when hostages are trapped in the grim tunnels of Gaza, when soldiers are massing on the border, and missiles are flying overhead? But can I not? Do we grant a kind of victory to Amalek by leaving everyday happiness behind?

And, finally, most important of all: Hashem. What does He want of me? What can we as a people, and I as a Jew, do better, so that we need not go through this agony again?