ה׳ יִקּוֹם דָּמָהּ

 

Sunday morning didn’t start with news.
It started at my Conservative shul, and it started with seeing it on someone’s face.

I learned about the massacre in Bondi from the rabbi, during Pesukei d’Zimra. I tried to stealthily check my phone before we got to the Barechu. I had to take a moment to pray for enough focus to finish my prayers. I was stunned and shocked, but I didn’t know any details yet.

After minyan, we were standing in the Judaica shop—one of those in-between spaces where life usually stays small and practical. I could tell my friend was holding everything together by force of will. She’s a Brown alum. The physics building. The night without an all-clear. Group chats that didn’t go quiet until almost dawn. People she loves stuck in place, awake all night, too hectic and terrified to sleep, just buildings away from where people were murdered.

So I asked the simplest question in the world:
“Do you need a hug?”

And she did.

She cried the way you do when you’ve been holding it in for too long; quiet at first, then not. The shop got very still. The women behind the counter stopped talking. No one rushed us. No one needed an explanation. It wasn’t a place built for grief, but grief doesn’t check zoning laws.

I didn’t have words. Not conversational ones, anyway. There are no sentences that make something like that better. There’s liturgy for this, and there’s silence, and there’s just standing there and letting someone cry into your shoulder until the world feels marginally less unbearable.

While we were there, she got a message.
The house was waking up. Pancakes. Coffee. Morning routines restarting. Life is stubborn and unembarrassed continuing. It didn’t really make anything easier.

I’ve been the person crying in a car before lunch. I’ve been the one who falls apart the moment a friend shuts the door and starts the engine. Today I was the one holding someone else upright for a few minutes. That’s not a virtue thing. It’s just how turns work.

I went to check in with my study group after that. With Hanukkah starting, we weren’t really having a session, but most of us had kids in the religious school, so we were all there anyway. (Mine’s still too young for the weekly classes.) I went home and doom-scrolled until lunch, or maybe a little after.

Then it was time for our own Hanukkah celebration for the kids. I tried not to be concerned, but I was relieved to see the usual detective in front of the synagogue.

Of course there was a whole day of programming, and a chance for my little girl to run around.... sing, decorate dreidels, and play her first real games of dreidel. This is the first year she’s been able to spin them. She got a big Star of David with wings painted on her forehead at the face-painting booth.

We left around dark and got home to light our own menorah. Four of them this year. Then a few presents, and off to bed.

Then more doom-scrolling. Trying to figure out what happened. Whether I knew anyone hurt. How many degrees of separation this was. It’s my tribe, so the answer was three.

I said Kaddish that morning.
For the dead. For the terrified. For the ones who didn’t sleep.
For the fact that none of this is abstract when it’s a building you’ve been in, a campus you loved, a phone that won’t stop buzzing. Because once again, I know someone who knows someone. And because I keep looking at these pictures and they all seem like people I know- or should know.

I don’t know what else to do with days like this except show up when I can, hold who I can, and let the quiet be quiet when it needs to be.  I don't know what to say, or what to ask. I think just writing this to another soul helps.