How Much Can a Heart Break in One Year?
Throughout this unspeakably long year, I have felt so many things — fear, horror, helplessness, rage, indignation, despair, desperation, isolation, loneliness — and now, finally, it has settled in my chest and belly as an ocean of grief.
As I was writing these words, my phone was pinging with messages about vigils. My sweet and wonderful wife sang at two of these — a private one for our local community of Israelis and a public one at a local synagogue. She sang a song she’d written a year ago, in the weeks after the massacre, with words directed to the hostages. It’s called na’atof etkhem b’or (we’ll envelop you with light), which is what we hoped to do when the hostages returned.
She wrote it when we still believed they’d be home in a few weeks. Before we knew some of them would never return. Before hundreds of soldiers’s lives were cut short. Before tens of thousands of people were killed in Gaza — buried in the rubble of their homes, or starved to death, or shot.
Before the widespread hunger. Before millions of displaced people in Gaza and ghost towns on the Israeli borders. Before Iranian missiles fell from the sky over the city my grandmother lives in, before my best friends and their children ran to bomb shelters crying all the time.
Before I wondered whether it was safe to speak Hebrew to my children in public. Before I spent morning after morning after morning after morning deleting “Fuck the Jews” comments from the social media posts published by the library where I work. Before masked men demanded that “Zionists” get off the NYC subway and laughed. Before the queer barber who once cut my (queer, Israeli) hair posted that they believe in armed resistance against Zionists and Palestinian freedom “by any means necessary.”
Before Jewish supremacists in the Knesset (and on the streets) tore apart aid trucks for hungry Gazan children and burned down houses in the West Bank. Before Israeli police horses trampled the sister of a hostage. Before Bibi Netanyahu said the hostages are “only suffering, not dying.”
Before the Bibas family was (probably) killed by Hamas terrorists. Before the IDF shot three hostages. Before the Gazan health ministry published a 649 page document with names of the dead. Before six young, emaciated Israelis were shot at point-blank range in a tunnel. Before Hamas leadership said they’d sacrifice however many people it took to liberate Palestine.
Before Hezbollah rained down missiles for a whole year on Israeli border towns. Before hundreds of Lebanese citizens were killed. Before harbu darbu played nonstop on Israeli radios. Before college encampments. Before more, and more, and more, and more dead friends of friends, friends of cousins.
Before American friends stopped calling. Before I stopped feeling that I belong anywhere anymore.
We Will Envelop You With Light • by Ella Joy Meir
All I can feel is the weight of a world that will never be the same. We have lived a million lives this year, and died a million deaths. Our hearts break, and break, and break, but the sorrow knows no bounds.
And still, the stench of death and destruction rises above the mountains and valleys of my beautiful homeland.
When will it stop? I know less every day.
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Adapted from “This Week: We Are Broken”, an essay by Mikhal Weiner. Originally published on Welcome to the Chaos Palace, a Substack about ADHD, parenting, queerness, and Judaism — and especially how they all intersect in one messy family. Subscribe at https://chaospalace.substack.com/
