Where Griefs Converge to Comfort One Another

by Paul Kay

In late June/early July, I participated in Shalom Hartman Institute’s Community Leadership Program in Jerusalem. I had also allowed myself some days for visits. Michael Zats wrote this short poem (“Illusions”) in the aftermath of October 7th:

Amazing/ How everything looks/ Unchanged,
Even/ When nothing/ Remained/ The same.

The sense of illusion, deception even, in the contrast of the external and the internal, describes my experience.

I was last in Israel in early 2023 with my wife Temma Gentles. In our 26-years together we had three academic sabbaticals and multiple other visits. Temma had died in July 2023, so this trip was an opportunity to “close parentheses” on shared times with friends. The one and one-half years were insufficient to alter our outward appearances, but we all had large internal changes in our lives.

Israel too was changed. Yes, drivers many cars back in line still honked impatiently before the stoplight turned green; new construction continued apace; Tel Aviv sidewalk restaurants buzzed. If one somehow ignored the news and remained oblivious to the ubiquitous “bring them home” banners, one might be amazed by how everything looked unchanged. Yet conversations with friends and others quickly revealed an overwhelming mood of exhaustion, worry, despair, foreboding. Nothing was the same.

I heard many expressions of genuine appreciation for my visit. Friends welcomed the reminiscences about Temma, and my presence as a committed listener to hear and share about “Israel tomorrow”. Rabbi Splansky had asked if I would take letters from our youth to soldiers, thus making me a shaliach with a sacred mission to ensure a safe journey. My field trip from Hartman visited Sderot and the Nova Festival massacre site, where I was indeed fortunate to deliver the letters directly to a Zahal unit. The warm gratitude of the soldiers moved me deeply, and I could barely stammer todah, l’hatzliha, shalom.

Time and again people told, even implored, me to encourage others to visit Israel. Such palpable support helps make sense of the internal “nothing is the same”.