A shared grief, a shared prayer - The Jewish Standard

Just a few short weeks ago, we stood together at the home of the Bibas family in Israel. It was Kfir’s birthday, and the family had asked for the country to wear orange just as his hair is orange. Was orange.

We placed orange flowers and balloons on their doorstep. And we prayed. Prayed for their safe return, for good news of their welfare.

We stood at the very site where they were kidnapped — where a mother, father, and two innocent children were torn from their home, along with their neighbors and friends, in an act of incomprehensible brutality There was still a glimmer of hope in our hearts that day. A belief that somehow they would be brought back.

Now we know that it was not to be. We have lost three more innocent souls.

Standing there together, a Hindu clergy, rabbis, and Christian ministers, we felt the deep connection of shared history. And when the news of their deaths hit, it seemed only natural for Pandita Pandya to call Rabbi Treu to offer condolences, to share in the grief.

It is so easy to feel the despair of this moment, this war. It is so easy to feel isolated and alone. For the Jewish community, we go so readily to the place of feeling hated; certainly when hostages are taken from their homes and concerts, and then the world conversation somehow turns to what the victims’ country has done wrong, and then to how Jews everywhere are at fault, it is natural to feel the age-old fear creep into our hearts. But standing there together that day, and in our sense of shared community in the days that have followed, we want to lift up that we are not as alone as we might feel. We have shared history and allies in so many communities. Among them, so many in the Hindu community who understand firsthand the pain of violence and international isolation.

Our time in Israel was meticulously planned, a coordinated effort organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council through the Jewish Federation of Greater Metrowest to bring clergy leaders of multiple faiths to a land that birthed so many religions and was now in need of compassion, prayer, and understanding. Our group was mostly Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, Unitarian Universalist, Latter Day Saints. Two rabbis and two more Jews from the sponsoring organization were with us too. Visiting Israel with other leaders, making pilgrimages to our various holy sites and also visiting places affected by the terrorist attacks of October 7 was deeply impactful in different ways for each of us. At Kibbutz Nir Oz, pausing at the Bibas home felt deeply personal. It was not just an act of solidarity; it was a confrontation with the echoes of history — our history. The suffering of the Bibas family was not unfamiliar. It reverberated through the Hindu experience as well as the Jewish one, through the centuries of trauma that Hindu people have endured.

The Hindu community, too, have seen our children taken. We, too, have watched our temples burn. We, too, have had to lose our own while the world looked away.

The pain of transgenerational trauma is not just in remembering what was lost; it is in the knowledge that history repeats itself. That innocence is too often sacrificed at the altar of hatred. People who simply wish to live in peace are made targets for unspeakable violence.

The kidnapping and murder of the Bibas family was not just a tragedy for Israel, not just a wound for the Jewish people — it was a wound for humanity.

As we stood in that place, where hope once lingered but was now replaced with grief, we made a silent vow: to never let these stories be forgotten.

Because as Hindus, as Jews, as people of faith, we know that remembering is an act of resistance. That prayer is not passive — it is power.

And that in our collective pain, there is also the unbreakable resolve to ensure that such suffering does not continue into another generation.

Om Shanti. Shalom. Peace.

Abigail Treu is the spiritual leader of Congregation Oheb Shalom in South Orange.

Fal Pandya is a clergy of the Hindu community in Livingston.