The Hostages

I ask Chat:

What are the different Hebrew words for hostages?

Hostages, some still in Gaza,  חֲטוּפִים 

 

 חֲטוּפִים, שְׁבוּיִים, חבל 

It isn’t that I don’t know the word. Living here and not knowing the Hebrew word for hostage would mean I live under a rock. But my spelling is atrocious, so I ask to make sure it is correct. For you. 

Correct spelling in Hebrew makes a world difference.

A nanosecond reply:

Transliteration: chatufim

Meaning: Kidnapped people, abductees 

•  or שְׁבוּיִים

·       חָטוּף (chatuf) – male singular

·       חֲטוּפָה (chatufah) – female singular

·       חֲטוּפִים (chatufim) – plural (mixed or all male)

·       חֲטוּפוֹת (chatufot) – plural (feminine)

 Often used for civilians taken by force, e.g., on October 7 

I stopped saying thank you to Chat when my daughter AI-shamed me for thanking a computer. 

On a roll, I ask for the names of the חֲטוּפוֹת (females) and חֲטוּפִים (males) in Gaza. 

The robot directs me to the Chabad website for a more complete list. Chabad is an international organization dedicated to serving the Jewish people and bringing those who have lost their way or who never had a map—back to Judaism.

It is 6 am. Why ask now? So that I can pray with more intention (I am sharing here). It is one thing to have the hostages in mind. It is quite another to name them. 

Names, as my good friend Raya told me years ago, are important.

I read that there are 54 hostages still captive in Gaza. 

Fifty-four people, some young, some old, still captives, stolen from families and country, some mutilated, some raped, all starved, either dead or languishing in tunnels, alone. It is almost 2 years since their abduction on October 7, 2023. 

Of the 54 about 24 may be alive, 30 are confirmed dead.* 

How does that happen? How are deaths confirmed and by whom? Why do the dead matter so much, anyway? They are gone, no? Shouldn't we concentrate on the living? 

I ask why do the dead even matter, a rhetorical question, with more than a twinge of guilt. I know they matter. I am part of a big club. Members of the club have all lost someone, seemingly for eternity because that person went missing, never to be found again, likely murdered, kidnapped, or drowned. A human who left and never came back. 

We got our body back. It was not pretty.  

When he went missing 52 years ago I felt, albeit with the naiveté of a teenager, a glimmer of hope that he would come back alive, that he could come back, not as a גוף a body, the container of the soul, but as a living, breathing human being. 

It is denial to say (and I like denial very much) that it is the ones who are alive, the living that we  really do need, that we need to bargain for, need to get back at any price, the living more than the dead. 

But in Chicago, standing in front of a bronze plaque with our brother's name on it, the son of our two parents with bronze plaques next to his, I pause and give honor, shake my head. There is no feeling quite like this. It shatters denial with only a thud.   

But still, even though I know the answer, almost to test Chat GPT I type in: 

Why is burying deceased hostages in Israel so important ?

Introduction: 

Burial is deeply important, says Chat (not making a pun intentionally with the word deeply) not only emotionally and nationally, but also religiously and culturally.

There are five reasons that burial is important:   

1. Jewish people have a religious obligation. They are commanded to bury the dead promptly, decorously, an act of kindness that cannot be reciprocated. 

Deuteronomy 21:23: “You shall surely bury him the same day.”   

Before we die, when we are very much alive to hear the Old Mighty's commandments, we hear a commandment to be holy, this in our lifetime.קְדוֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ (Leviticus 19:2).

 A commandment to bury on the same day is an affirmation of the body's sanctity even after death. It should not become as bodies do after our hearts stop beating.  

2.  Seeing to the return of the deceased to Israel is a moral and national duty.  

It provides closure and honor to the victims of terror, the captives. 

3. Burial in Israel restores identity. 

No longer a statistic, the life has a name and all of the honor that name affords. The body's proper caregivers are family and friends. 

4. Burial in the land of Israel returns the deceased to the ancestral homeland of every Jew. There is spiritual merit in this. 

It is why the Jewish dead are flown to Israel via El Al Airlines for burial. No matter where in the diaspora a person dies, that person symbolizes a link in an ever-growing chain of national and historical continuity. From ancient prophets to modern heroes, a Jewish person, dead or alive, is one of the people of Israel. 

5. Returning a body delivers a blow to terrorism. 

It is one swift kick in the uh, psyche, especially today, to sociopaths who resort to this tactic, using the dead as bargaining chips, such unconscionable objectification. Bringing them home is resistance, active protestation to foul play. 

There we have it, five neat categories. And Chat didn't even mention that feeling I had at the bronze plaque.

So add the sixth and we have an explanation, cogent reasons why we need them all. Every last one of them. 

therapydoc

*From Times of Israel reporting (24 hostages alive: 22 Israeli, 1 Thai, 1 Nepali):

Over a week aga a cry rang out with the news of the death of a young soldier, Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld. The nation, memorializes him, classes are dedicated to this beautiful young man. The shiva in a small tent, standing room only, 500 others. People in Israel travel all over the country to pay respects to people they do not know. This is what it means to give honor. More assassinations followed last week. 

Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld

 

 

  

The Kindness of Strangers

 War! What do we even do it for? Absolutely nothing—say it again.

That's Edwin Starr singing the original song WAR. He's railing against the war in Vietnam back in 1969. 

I wore a black arm band. 

Because genocide is a problem

The war in Gaza, the war with Iran, the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon—these are defensive wars despite what the media says about Israel's so called colonial, genocidal intentions.* 

Waiting around for a miracle isn't our style, people. 

There are reasons for wars, none less convincing than wishing to avoid genocide. Simchat Torah, October 7, 2023 Hamas warriors invade the homes of sleeping Israeli citizens from across the Gazan border. They murder innocents in their beds and over 2,000 celebrants at a nearby music festival. 

Our enemies relish attacking us on holidays. It is a thing. 

No small band of marauders, either. This is a rampage of cold-blooded murders, rape, sliced genitalia, body parts, decapitations, the crushed skulls of infants, all in a very short time. The young and the old are captive, still held hostage, starving, traumatized. The words BRING THEM HOME are on the mouths of the lips of every Israeli every single day, many times a day.

Yesterday I started to write about the hostages, the חטופים (cha-too-im) and couldn't. We had an event we needed to get to in Jerusalem and the trip included a trip to Bet Shemesh to pay respects to a friend who lost his wife. We had to get going.

Then something happened on the road, a testimony to the kindness of the people of Israel and I changed course.  

New words 

For some of you, new words: 

A new Israeli citizen is an oleh chadash (male) or an olah chadasha (female). 

FD and me as a couple? O-lim chad-shim. עולים חדשים

2 stories.

1. An upper-middle-aged couple in a mall for the first time, new Israeli citizens. 

Maybe you've been there, stressed in a new or foreign country. You don't speak the language, not intelligibly, and you have a problem. Maybe it's a lost wallet or phone, a missing child or mother-in-law (joke!). You don't know what to do and ask a random stranger who shrugs because of the language barrier. 

That doesn't happen here. That doesn't happen in Israel. They don't shrug. They take a minute to try to understand, to help. Especially if you say you are a new immigrant, olah chadasha. Magic words.

The two of us are lost in an unfamiliar shopping mall, very green, exhausted having circled the mall several times in search of the right parking lot. Apparently there are several. We are hot, thirsty, and loaded down with packages. A new toaster. A coffee pot. New cut glasses (very nice). 

We ask people and they inevitably point us to the wrong lot. We can't find an information office. 

I break down in an elevator, so tired, almost in tears. I say aloud: Is there anyone here who speaks English who can help us find our car? There is and she does. She accompanies us to our vehicle.  Hugs and kisses.

Easy enough, but rental cars, driving on the hills of Israel, needing service for said car, this raises the ante. 

2. FD wants to take the scenic route from Bet Shemesh to Jerusalem. I'm driving the S-curves on the hills, a good sport but not enjoying myself. I do not like the car, a Picanto. A few years ago we had rented a Picanto with a bad transmission and on our way up north for a double Bat Mitzvah the car stalled near an Arab village about an hour before Shabbat. This, the second stall. It felt fatal, terrified my grandson in the backseat on the lookout for terrorists, but eventually the car started up and we made it to our destination, thanked the Old Mighty with feeling. We took a bus home from my nephew's little Israeli village and I still have a touch of PTSD when I think about that day.

And here we are again. In a Picanto and it stalls, again on a hill. The motor cuts out completely and it is not starting up. My heart is racing, cars are honking. FD lifts the emergency brake, I hit the flashers.  His 100-year old mother in the back seat remains where she is cool as a cucumber.  

He jumps out of the car, takes my place at the wheel, tries again. Nothing. He tells me to order a taxi, take it to a gas station, we aren't far from Jerusalem. Bring back a can of gasoline.  

But a car pulls over on the shoulder, a beautiful car. There is a beautiful person inside we will soon find this out. All I can think is that this is good.  Why would someone pull over if not to help?

I get out and rush over. He has lowered his beautiful windows. In Hebrew I say we are olim chadashim. We are new immigrants. And we are out of gas! 

FD figured that part out. 

Let me help you. 

I'm thinking FD should take over for me. Israeli men like to speak with men, not women. It is still a thing. I wave him over from his perch directing traffic and step back. 

They talk for a minute, I'm told to hop in. This fellow will take me to a gas station. We will bring back the petrol.

An angel, this guy. 

I tell Amnon (this is his name) multiple, multiple times, that he is a malach (mah-lach), an angel. He keeps waving this off. Any Israeli would do the same thing. 

No, only one Israeli did this. 

We argue over who pays for gas and Amnon ends up paying for it. He tells me that I am taking away his mitzvah if I pay,  taking away his good deed. And, he has an app, whatever that means. The gas is cheap. 

There is nothing I can do. 

On the rides to and from the gas station he asks many questions. Why now! Why would we come to Israel during a war? Israelis are leaving, he tells me. I explain that my daughter and her family took the first flight they could get, this a few months before the war, to fulfill their dream of becoming Israeli citizens. We followed the following year, as did one of her brothers, our son and his family, all of us unafraid of the war. All of us fulfilling our dreams. And now a second son is coming this summer with his wife and kids, 4 school age children. His wife visited Nova on a mission to Israel following the October 7 massacre and came back to say: We are moving to Israel.

Amnon is blown away. You come, replenish, refresh our nation. 

I tell him that the summer we arrived another 600 Jews from all over the world made Aliyah, too. 

He did not know this. Unbelievable, you have no idea, you give us so much hope, you cannot imagine. Jewish people are still coming here. Really?

Really.

Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

He's thanking me!

therapydoc 

*Jews are forever complaining that Israel is butchered in the media, the reputation of my country has suffered, has always suffered, a complete public relations fiasco. The poor victims, the Palestinians, the world has their backs. This after Hamas takes their humanitarian aid, has stolen it for years to buy weapons. This after Hamas gets them into the war with a lion. Write, people. Talk. Reverse the PR. Many drops in a bucket fill up a bucket and it doesn't have to take long, either.