For over 500 days now, we have watched the aftermath of that epically tragic moment in Jewish history. On October 7, 2023, terrorists ransacked Israeli villages and homes, slaughtering the innocent and taking hostage over 300 souls. Over 500 days of pain and sadness and grief. Our heart hurt more and more as we learned about the lives lost, those who were at the Nova Music Festival simply in search of fun and some freedom. We learned slowly about the hostages, who they were, who they left behind. And when some of those hostages came home, we celebrated their return to life, even if not a normal life to be sure. They will never be the same. Nor will Israel or Gaza ever be the same.

We welcomed Nova survivors to KI to hear their story. We welcomed Itzik Yanai to share with us his experience in the IDF. You heard me give sermon after sermon on Israel. You read articles that I and our staff wrote in EKI. We hosted vigils. We donated to Israeli causes like Friends of the IDF and Magen David Adom. A group of us went to Israel in the midst of the war to see the pain for ourselves and help where we could. 

Through it all, there has been one family that has symbolized the senselessness and the horror of these last 500 days. The Bibas family. We prayed for the mother and father, Shiri and Yarden and their two young children, Ariel and Kfir. While Yarden was released last weekend, we are now learning that Shiri, Ariel and Kfir have been killed. Our hearts break anew with this news. What could be more horrifying than the death of children, no matter their race or religion? What could be more awful? And when they are young, Jewish children, we feel like we know them, or could have known them. 

The two Bibas children were and are emblematic of a war that did not have to be. The two kids represent misguided, age-old tropes, a Palestinian people whose fate has been co-opted by terrorist leadership and an attack that did nothing to advance the cause of their sovereignty or self-determination. What have we seen since October 7? Only greater bloodshed and greater sorrow on both sides. Only greater hate and horror. 

The death of Kfir and Ariel Bibas is so brutal and so tragic. It is beyond description. They remind us that these awful days have reached everyone. Everyone in and around Israel has been affected by this war: Jew and Muslim, young and old, secular and believing, all skin colors and ethnicities. And not only in the Middle East. So many, in so many places are grieving this impossible war. We are all grieving, maybe not in the same way, but we are all grieving.

I am reminded of the poem by the late Yehuda Amichai. He wrote it in 1976 but certainly his words resonate today:

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,

with four dead and eleven wounded.

And around these, in a larger circle

of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered

and one graveyard. But the young woman

who was buried in the city she came from,

at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,

enlarges the circle considerably,

and the solitary man mourning her death

at the distant shores of a country far across the sea

includes the entire world in the circle.

And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans

that reaches up to the throne of God and

beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.

Amichai notes what we all know to be true: One death affects every one of us. May this war come to an end very soon. May all of the hostages come home very soon. May Israel see a better day tomorrow. And may peace one day prevail for all of us.