Bring them home

Eyal Yifrach.

Naftali Frankel.

Gilad Shaar.

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There really is very little that we can say.

It is a nightmare. One 19-year-old and two 16-year-olds, kidnapped. Taken. Gone.

The fears it evokes are primal. Everyone who is a parent can imagine the horror, the disbelief, the numbness, the battle between hope and despair, white and black, life and death.

Everyone who has even been a teenager can imagine the terror of being taken, grabbed, moved away from all light and love.

The world is rapidly becoming an even more terrifying place than it had been. Syria is falling apart, Russia is reverting to form, the huge-scale horrors in Nigeria are incomprehensible. Our world increasingly makes no sense.

And now this kidnapping, striking at our hearts.

There are some small grace notes that come from this nightmare. The entire Jewish world is pulling together. In Israel, we are told, the left and the right are united on this; bringing back our children trumps everything else. Here, too, in the diaspora, fear and hope and longing unite us.

Across the region, Jews are meeting to pray and talk together. From the crucible of the emotion the unfolding nightmare evokes, perhaps some new understanding can be forged.

The situation continues to intensify as time passes. Our coverage begins on page 27. Because we are a weekly newspaper we cannot update at web speed, but we urge you to follow our Facebook page. As soon as new information appears anywhere on the web, it is posted there. It’s at www.facebook.com/JewishStandard.

We join all Jews everywhere in wishing that Eyal, Naftali, and Gilad be free soon, and that they rejoin their families in complete health and wholeness.

-JP