For a moment, smiles were visible in the Modi'in cemetery plaza. On Tuesday, at a quarter to six in the evening, the host, Avshalom Kor, opened the ceremony and said, "Gentlemen, please sit down." Thousands laughed bitterly together. Sit down? Be thankful that we have room to stand.
The families had asked all speakers in advance not to talk about politics, policy, and military response. Therefore, one could have assumed in advance that the obituaries would be more personal and private, and less public. But no. In practice, the demand not to talk about current events caused the speakers to give speeches that were bigger and deeper than any statement about Hamas and the cabinet. Speakers like Netanyahu, Ya'alon, and Peres returned to the roots of our existence: the fate of the Jewish people, its message to the world, its connection to the land, and its desire to exist here in peace.
Sunday evening, Rabin Square, exactly 48 hours earlier. A rally for the kidnapped. The most thunderous applause did not go to Kobi Affello or Lior Narkis, but to the mothers. At the end of each of their speeches, the audience erupted in applause, as if it wanted an encore of some more talk about mutual guarantee and brotherhood.
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On stage, next to the mothers, stood a sign language interpreter. After dozens of mentions of this word, by the end of the evening I too knew how to translate "unity": join both palms and make a common circle.
The square is full, and so are the cafes next to it. The diners there saw reality on a kind of split screen: one of television (the World Cup, but what) and one of the square. But every time the singers came off the stage and one of the mothers came up to speak, the concentration was complete. No customer ordered, no waiter chirped.
This week I heard Rachel Frankel's speech in the square and her speech at her son's funeral. It's amazing to discover that they are almost identical. Before and after, the message is the same. "We came to the rally of togetherness, we came to ask that this good spirit remain with us," she said in Tel Aviv. Two days later she spoke about how her son's murder revealed "a spectacular display of love, Israeliness, Judaism and deep, intense, purifying humanity.".
Near the stage of the event in the square, Amir Sandler, deputy secretary general of the Bnei Akiva movement, approached me and showed me on his cell phone 200 WhatsApp groups for studying Torah for the sake of the kidnapped. Every evening, they post a quote from the sources and discuss it together. The next day, he told me that all the groups had changed their name to "Students of Torah for the Upliftment of Their Souls." Sandler says that the 18 days of concern were also a gift: "The Holy One, blessed be He, simply decided to grant us such great days.".
At huge demonstrations, participants usually approach journalists and ask: "How many?", hoping to hear that the number of participants is high. This time everyone asked: "How many?". As at a World Cup match, they wanted to know how many religious and how many secular people had come. "30-70," someone estimated after circling the square. "70 percent religious, 30 percent secular." His friend claimed he was exaggerating. 20-80. It was important for the organizers to conquer the state of Tel Aviv. To prove that they were part of the people. Even two days later, at the funerals, this bothered many in the sector.
Why, really? Why is religious Zionism so thirsty for this legitimacy, and doesn't understand that it is already self-evident? How many discussions were held behind the scenes regarding speakers, masjids, singers and locations, all to feel part of the people of Israel. I don't remember that the liar Goldwasser, in her stubborn fight for Udi, had to constantly prove her Israeliness. The members of Naftali, Eyal and Gil-Ad's public shouldn't flatter Israelis. It's time for them to understand that they themselves are the most Israeli there is.
And without us noticing, a new candlelight youth has emerged here. They don't sing "I'm going to cry for you" but "And she stood." And after every official event, they stay there with themselves, and with the candles and the music. It was like that in the square, after the ceremony ended and thousands remained in the square to sing mournful prayer songs together, and the same was true at the end of the funeral. Hours after all the dignitaries had left, hundreds of young people were still sitting around the fresh graves in Modi'in, not ashamed to cry and hug each other, and never stopping singing. "Let this be the hour," "Please, by force," "Prayer for the poor, for he will be wrapped up." A Jewish playlist that has become the soundtrack of recent weeks.
Like Rachel Frankel's words, the songs that were heard in the square were exactly the songs that were heard at the funeral. So what is the difference between before and after? What is the meaning of so many unanswered prayers, and why do we even pray now?
Rabbi Dov Singer, the head of the yeshiva where Naftali and Gil-Ad studied, spoke about this in his eulogy: "Prayer is not just a means of changing reality, but rather expresses a shortcoming. Prayer takes away the shortcoming and the broken heart and allows us to dream and say with all our heart: It will be better here. The brokenness will become a repair.".
In general, it seems that prayer has never been so present in Israeli public life, and there is something refreshing about that. We are used to thinking that political barbarism ostensibly represents the relationship between the religious and the secular. But in the fights between Lapid, Bennett and Deri, not a word is said about the relationship between man and his Creator or about our spiritual world. Bat-Galim Shaar also spoke about this in Rabin Square and said that she felt that everyone was praying with her: "Singing is also prayer, every feeling of your participation with us is prayer, from a siddur or from a siddur of the heart.".
In this week's parsha, "Balak," prayer appears as a spiritual power that even the enemies of the people of Israel believe in. King Balak asks the prophet Balaam to curse Israel. He understands that the war here is not only physical but also spiritual. Balaam is unable to curse, but only to bless. The verses he says are the ones that many have quoted this week, in light of current events.
At the beginning of the prophecy, Balaam says: "They will rise up like a lion, and they will exalt themselves like a lion; they will not lie down until they have devoured their prey, and they will drink the blood of the slain." At the cemetery in Modi'in, a young boy told me that we were not behaving like a lion, but like nerds. The dosage of all the songs and prayers seemed excessive to him. With all due respect, he also expects actions. "They murder three children and we sing? We keep saying love and hope here. It's not shameful to say words like revenge." I remembered him the next day, when the investigation into the murder of the Arab boy in Jerusalem began, and when the Frankel family immediately issued a harsh condemnation.
Another verse of Balaam in the parsha refers to the Israeli family. He looks at the tents of the people of Israel and the families who live within them, and says: "How good are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel." How appropriate this verse is for three good private tents that suddenly became public.
Jewish status:""We know the proverb 'Two Jews — three opinions.' But now we have discovered that it has a sequel: Two Jews — three opinions — one heart" (Rabbi Dov Singer, The Boys' Funeral, this week)
