The Bibas babies died. And were returned home this week. Their bodies made it home, their souls are wrapped up in the everlasting spirit of the Divine.
We mourn together as a people, a nation. Jewish children are still not safe from terror and capture. We still pray and play on Shabbat mornings with an armed guard outside our Kol Ami building. We worry and we mourn. Perhaps the past many decades have given us a slight reprieve from our mounting. The reprieve has passed.
Where do we put our grief? How do we manage the anger, the sadness, the terror?
As we always have.
This Shabbat light candles in honor of the Bibas babies and their parents.
This Shabbat gives tzedakah to support children anywhere.
This Shabbat read some poems. Write your own. Share your mourning with friends and family. Do not be alone in your grief.
This Shabbat gathers with community, family, or friends.
This Shabbat be a proud Jew. Listening to our music, watching one of our movies, making a Jewish craft...let your Jewish spirit shine.
May God bless and keep all of our children and all of you.
Rabbi Kinberg
Poems and Prayers for Reflection
We Are All Mourners Now
We are all mourners now.
We mourn beloveds:
Family,
Friends,
Hundreds,
Thousands.
Named and nameless to us.
We are all mourners now.
We mourn:
Our hopes,
Our faith,
The Future,
The Past,
The Present.
We are all mourners now:
Needing, wanting, giving comfort
For ourselves,
For each other.
We reach out.
We reach in.
We reach up
for all mourners.
For we are all mourners now
Shema to Comfort Mourners
by Devon Spier
folded white fabric in shadows
To remember these words
not only
when we lie down in slumber
and not only
when we rise up to greet the light of the day
but when our heart breaks in loss.
A part of ourself hangs on,
while the rest of of our body
tumbles to earth.
In the suspension of disbelief,
we cling
to the in between place
that Your words fold into.
And like a note nestled in Your holy wall,
we gradually fold into each other
into the loss
and into You.
Through uncertainty, we come into Love
that picks us up
and shows us everything
we are meant to live and die for.
my body grieves
by LilyFish Gomberg
a person walking towards trees, a leaf in the foreground
My heart
is cracked
into more pieces
than I thought possible
My eyes
drowning in our tears
refuse to lift
My mouth
cannot find
the words of comfort that that I long
to hear
that I long
to provide
My belly
refuses the comfort of food
knowing how many don’t have it
And my arms
my arms
are not wide enough to hold all
of these beloveds
to hold
all this pain
to hold
all this grief
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