May 30, 2025
We enter a wilderness; every step on the journey takes a winding path. We are led deeper towards a future filled with hope, but also filled with individual moments of uncertainty. The winding path takes us to places like Rephidim, Zin, Kadesh, and Mt. Hor. Our history also winds its way through places like Babylonia, Rome, Kishinev, Toledo (Spain), Warsaw, Kyev, and New York. In every generation, the journey has been filled with challenges – from the attacks of Amalek to the Inquisition, to pogroms. Carrying history in the rucksacks of our memories, we come to a time where the wilderness feels deep, and the journey home is long.
This week, in Toronto, Beth Tikvah members, along with our broader Jewish community in Columbus, entered a wilderness of memory that began with dancing and ended with shouts of tzeva adom, red alert, and running in fear. 414 souls didn’t come home alive. We had the honor of visiting the Nova exhibit, with gratitude to JewishColumbus and the Wexner family.
We were transported to the morning of October 7, 2023, in Re’im in the Western Negev. What began in dancing and joy ended in terror. At 6:29 A.M., the attacks began. On the sandy floor of the exhibit, video screens show Hamas terrorists aiming their guns indiscriminately. One chilling audio recording plays a terrorist telling his father, “I killed a Jew, I killed ten Jews, with my bare hands. Go on WhatsApp and look.” They were murdered because they were Jews. Nothing more.
The exhibit then leads through a campground scattered with teddy bears, water bottles, and signs pleading for peace. We stood next to the bar and bullet-ridden port-a-potties, on Road 232 surrounded by burnt cars, and in roadside shelters where partygoers tried to hide—now turned into memorials. In those shelters, we imagined the stories of Aner Shapira, Hersh Goldberg Polin, and Yuval Raphael. Nova is now etched into our people’s collective memory.
Upon arriving at the exhibit, we heard from Ofer and Sara Leor whose son, Matan, was murdered at Nova. He supported cancer research and then became a sound engineer. He tried to save others that morning. He lost his voice telling people over the loudspeaker to leave and run. His parents continue to keep his story alive.
We are still in the wilderness. With 58 hostages still captive in Gaza, our hearts are with them. When we were at the Nova exhibit, we marked the 600th day. 600 days…how?! Could you have imagined it would be this long? The numerical value of the word tzitzit is 600. The tzitizit are the fringes on the corner of the tallit that serve as a visual reminder to do mitzvot. Some of us choose to wear a yellow ribbon, others wear dog tags, and others wear tape to count the days. In Israel, signs of the hostages are everywhere. They are on the minds of Israelis every day. The war is grinding on and we just want our hostages to come home. Overwhelming numbers of Israelis, nearly 70%, want an end to the fighting and for the hostages to come home. Their voices matter. And there lies the difference between discourse in Israel and discourse in America. We are living a different battle. You might read media reports each day filled with analysis and a brutalization of Israel as the most immoral pariah-state in the world. And yet, stepping into the Nova exhibit reminds us of Hamas’ brutality. To help us find a voice from within Israel, I encourage you to listen to the For Heaven’s Sake Podcast from the last two weeks (Israel at War – Moral Red Lines and Israel at War – A Nation that Dwells Alone). I also encourage you to consider the Identity Crisis Podcast from yesterday entitled, “Is the War Still Worth It?”
The deaths of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinstky will forever remind us that, they too, were killed for being Jews. Whether it is on the streets of Washington D.C., or the communities of Road 232 that is just kilometers from the Gaza border, or Re’im where they came to dance, we can be killed for being Jews. Out of the darkness and the dust grows a kalanit flower, a poppy, whose red pedals remind us of our resilience throughout the ages. The ongoing war brings a soulful pain as we long for peace and a return of the hostages – both alive and dead.
The wilderness is a long and winding road that Torah filled with counting; counting of faces and marking of places. It is filled with threats to our existence and challenges to the values that shape us. As we navigate this wilderness, we hope and pray that the memories of those killed on October 7 and the soldiers lost in the war stay in our hearts. May we carry their stories on our souls, and may we soon find days where we will once again know peace and our hostages will return home. May we journey this wilderness together, withholding judgment of our neighbor, knowing that we are all struggling to navigate this rocky, winding road.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Rick Kellner