War and weddings, weddings and war
Wedding dates are usually set months, or more, in advance. The bride needs to be fitted for a dress, but first she must find that special dress. Parents search for the optimal venue and caterer. Numerous diets are started. Bands and photographers and florists are hired. How wonderfully busy it all is!
Of course, we have the restrictions, times, like Sfira, where weeks of lovely possible dates are simply not acceptable for weddings under Jewish law. But, somehow it all works out, and we are now, in this lovely time of year, late June, in the height of wedding celebrations. Every week it’s another Shabbat aufruf in shul or a wedding on Sunday. It’s good for the economy and very good for our spirits. Who can remain unenthusiastic when the chatan dances forward at the bedeken and everyone claps and joyously sings “Od Yishama.” It’s an absolutely perfect event in life, being part of a Jewish couple’s glorious moment.
We shared such an event in our family a few short days ago. It was perfect! Everything was smooth, delicious, and the young couple’s happiness illuminated the crowd of celebrants, making all of us part of a magical moment in time.
Very briefly we could focus on something else, something that was not war. Even those chayalim, those heroes amongst us, who have seen more than their elite college experiences and their high-tech careers could ever possibly prepare them for, were witnessed dancing with abandon. For that smidgen of their lives, the funerals of their young friends were replaced by the intensity of the moment’s rhapsody. That’s what weddings can do, if only briefly.
Yet even in the most incredibly special events, we remember the hostages and pray for them.
And we’ve thought things were as bad as they could possibly be. The Gaza war has been a grotesque part of our lives, even from a distance. Many of us had visited sites of Hamas brutality and come back with scars that remain unforgettable and unforgivable. We read accounts of those horrors and have family members whose feet on the ground make us all, in New Jersey or Jerusalem, part of the as yet unresolved continuing nightmare.
And now!
And now we here in America are dealing from afar with yet greater anxiety and terror and fear and horror as those we love, in our beloved Israel, are coping with rockets crashing into mamads, safe rooms, in neighborhoods where they strive to live in peace, where our precious babies lie with their innocent dreams, snuggled in their cribs, and our elders, enfeebled by their years and their memories of the Shoah and the wars that came after, sit by windows and wonder if this latest war is the reward for long life, and our newlyweds see that the wonders of their weddings were transient but these nightmares are not.
We are a people whose traditional prayers are for peace, not victory. We do not seek to murder our neighbors or defeat them in war. We seek to find harmony and live out our designated lifetimes without brutality. We ask our God to grant us shalom. Is that too much to ask? I hope not!
In our family there are those who returned from our family wedding to Israel exactly on time, a day before the world again seemed to spew its wrath upon us. There are others who lingered unknowingly a day or two too long, hoping to spend quality time with loved ones, and now find themselves searching for impossible paths to their homes in Jerusalem and Modiin and Tel Aviv. Some are separated from their families where callups came almost instantly, with not enough time to prepare children unaccustomed to life in a war zone. Each has a different story. Each yearns to, at least, be home. Resolution still awaits. Questions are frantic. Answers are not forthcoming.
So many of us are in this limbo. So many of us would prefer to be across the oceans in Israel where we could at least try to be of service.
I hope that by the time you read this, this war will be only a bitter memory. I hope that by the time you read this, our hostages will be returned to their loved ones. I hope that by the time you read this, the scourge of war will be forever obliterated and we, and all people, can finally live lives of peace.
Perhaps in all these years I have learned very little. I am naive enough to think that my hopes will be realized and shalom will reign over us.
Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of nine. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com
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