Six months ago yesterday, 133 people woke up on a fairly normal Thursday.
Some were up with the sun practicing yoga, while others made breakfast for their elderly partners, so that his morning medications would not be taken on an empty stomach.
Kids on Kibbutzim grew excited for holiday visitors, and begged their parents for sleepovers.
Many pressed snooze on their iPhones, just needing ten more minutes...until they remembered during the fog of waking that it was a long weekend. If they could just get through today at work, they had three days off to relax...this motivated the engineers and tech geniuses and business folks to get out of bed, kiss their partners goodbye, drop their kids off at school and head into work, where they said their good mornings and spoke of their weekend plans over a Nescafe in some tall and shimmering building in Tel Aviv.
More than a thousand young adults texted nonstop, the many-month-countdown to their epic party finally in its last 48 hours. They packed up their cars and tried on their sexy ensembles. They bought glitter for a sparkly touch, hoping a certain someone might show up at the party, and that the stars might at last align for a magical-make-out at dawn.
Others had no plans, but gave into the contagious excitement of their friends, and decided to tag along to this "soiree in the south."
As they pulled on their rainbow material entry bracelets in Re'im, they couldn't know these would soon be sold in supermarkets, that as Israelis approached the cash where they could add a pack of gum to their orders, that they would also be able to pay 10 shekels for a rainbow bracelet that said "Until all the taken are home, we are all taken." And "07.10.2023."
--
I bought one of those bracelets at a store on Ben Yehuda on November 16th, the night I landed in Tel Aviv. This was fourteen years after Tel Aviv was my home, and eleven years since I'd even visited - but I'd needed to come back, despite the warnings of some Israelis.
Just wait until you see the mood...just wait until you see...
But the mood for Jews abroad was not exactly great, and we didn't have a community surrounding us who felt the way we felt. We had a lot of eerie and unexplainable silence and less than 24 hours to be shocked and sickened before the cheering in the streets had begun.
I saw what she'd meant in this supermarket though, as I wandered the aisles for water and basics, having "deja vus" by all of the Israeli food I'd forgotten, the Milky gross puddings and the red brand chocolate bars and of course, a hundred options for humous.
There were people in the store, but it was silent.
At the cash register sat an older man with white spiked hair and a huge belly. He asked me something without looking at me and I had no clue what he said, so shook my head, which seemed to relieve him. Then he grabbed a bracelet from the bin and asked me something else. I froze completely, which really pissed him off, so he assumed I didn't know there was a war or that people were taken hostage and sort of waved me off, like "Forget about you."
So I stood up straight and said, "Ken, ani yoda'at ve ken ani rotza." (Yes, I know and yes I want.) I sound like a kid but whatever.
Of course I knew. I had just flown in to help.
--
The posters of the kidnapped had been set up in the airport when I arrived, one after another after another, face after face after face, life after life after life.
I can remember being surprised by this. Wasn't Israel the one place we didn't need advocacy? Wasn't this where everybody knew and everybody cared?
My confusion continued for a good while, to be honest, as I stared at the posters on every store window, taking pictures of their pictures.
It was only after I started to learn a fact or two behind the face of one, or the entire story of another, that I very slowly began to get it.
Now those two weren't just faces on posters to me. They were people with brothers raising three young daughters. They were people with aunts and best friends.
And I began to talk to these pictures on walls that I was starting to know a bit, as I became a "regular" in Hostage Square. I'd say hi out loud whenever I passed their faces after that. Each and every time. Even after one of the two was murdered.
--
133 people and just this tick-tock of time.
They are unbathed.
They are unfed.
They are injured.
They are abused.
But they are not unloved...
But they are not forgotten...
But they are being prayed for...
But they are being fought for...
The questions they must be asking...and the questions we have been asking...
May all of our prayers be answered. --
In case you want to help:
This is a labor of love and I feel called to do it. It could potentially become a book. I left my life in the US for 2-6 weeks in Israel in November - and couldn't get myself to leave. Ultimately, I was in Israel for four months by myself not "working" for pay, but working on this mission to tell these stories to the world in a way that they might understand. My GoFundMe helps me continue to interview mothers and sons and brothers and friends - of hostages, and of the aftermath of the trauma from this war on Israeli society. Any donation, no matter how small, will go toward accommodation and bare bone travel expenses. Anything at all will be helpful and very much appreciated. With gratitude, Melanie
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