I arrived in Israel early in the morning, and, shortly after dropping my things off at my cousin’s house, we headed for a gathering in front of the Knesset of families who had members either murdered or kidnapped on 10/7. The protest was as personal as it ever gets. There was a small platform and some sound equipment, but, when I arrived, they were not being used. There were a couple of tables where they were selling “bring them home” T-shirts, of which I bought two, one for my cousin and one for myself. There was also a table with simple refreshments. But mainly there were people sitting on plastic chairs in small circles of six or eight, silently sharing their ineffable grief.

These little circles reminded me of a shiva, the gathering of Jews for a week in a house of mourning. Often at a shiva, a small group of guests will gather around one of the mourners. But in the case of these mourning circles, it was all, or almost all, mourners and no, or at least very few, guests like me. So, in a circle of six or eight, it was six or eight shivas all taking place at once. In a way, those who came because a loved one had been taken captive were worse off than someone whose loved one had died. There were several such circles at the gathering, and though I could not tell how many among them had a family member who was captive and how many had one who had been murdered, for all intents and purposes, being among them was like attending a vast number of shivas all at once. (READ MORE from Max Dublin: A Goldfish in Time of War)

My cousin introduced me to someone she knew in one of the circles and told her that I was a journalist who had just arrived from Toronto to listen, and they invited me to sit down and join them. It was not easy to make eye contact, but after a bit, one of the couples introduced began to speak. They had a 16-year-old daughter who had been kidnapped from the peace concert. Why were they there? In part, just to get out of the house; it was unbearable to just sit at home, and they wanted to be with other people who might actually understand what they were going through. The father did most of the speaking. He kept on repeating the simple but powerful point that every parent can understand and that I had heard from other parents before in different circumstances. To bring a child into the world is an act of optimism because you don’t know and cannot know what kind of life they will face. Shit happens. For one, all parents quietly dread that, despite the modern methods of early detection, their baby might be born with some sort of major deficiency or health problem. As a former school principal, I have met more than my share of parents who have experienced such an eventuality and were caught unawares. But other things can happen: a damaging automobile accident, a life-threatening illness. That’s life, a drama for which it has often been said that there can be no adequate preparation, no comprehensive rehearsal. And this was one of those crushing things for which one can never be prepared. So, the captive girl’s father kept repeating over and over: “We never expected that something like this would happen, could happen to our beloved daughter.” And for them, that was the gist of it. They were there because they could not bear to be in the house with four walls echoing their anxiety and grief. They had to be with others who had similar experiences and could understand what had happened; you might call it a support group, but mostly they sat in silence.

The second couple who I spoke with had lost a son who died trying to protect his family in a kibbutz saferoom near the border with Gaza. All houses in Israel have a so-called saferoom. Typically, it has fortified walls, window, and door. When this couple’s son and his wife and two daughters became aware that they were under attack, they retreated to their saferoom. Unfortunately, because it had been designed as a bomb shelter and not to thwart terrorists, it had no lock on the door. Outside the room, they heard the sound of terrorists ransacking their place and demanding that they come out, but they did not immediately force the door, which the young father was holding shut with his body and bare hands. At one point, like some other families who were desperately trying to seek cover, they heard the voices of IDF soldiers who were in and around the premises and called for help, but there was no answer. The initial IDF response was too little, too late. Finally, the terrorists decided to force the door open. The young father held it as best he could with his body and was murdered while doing so; his wife and two daughters somehow managed to escape through the window and were rescued. The reader has probably heard the theme of this story with variations. (READ MORE from Max Dublin: Poster Wars)

In time, I moved to another circle that my cousin pointed out to me as coping in a rather different manner. It consisted of a group of women who were knitting or crocheting narrow bands of yarn that were attached to one another and rolled into a ball. When I saw it, the ball was about a yard in diameter. I don’t know exactly when it had been started, but, of course, it had been steadily growing. One of the women was using her fingers as knitting needles and offered to teach me how. I thanked her but declined because I had once attempted to learn to knit but regrettably found that it was beyond me. Most of the women were middle-aged or elderly, but there was also one young girl among them; I would guess that she was about 13 or 14 years old. On her wrists she was wearing two knitted cuffs. Of all of them, the look on her face was the one that appeared most devasted, by which I mean that it was pale and flat, wiped clean of all emotion. I attempted to speak with her, but she would not or could not respond.

Though a good number of hostages have been released since I first observed the knitting, many more are still being held. So the knitting continues, and, by now, there are several bales knit.