Six Worlds 

News travels faster now than ever before, reaching us instantly on our phones. So, if we try to escape the news, it chases us down until we read it.

Sitting in Aroma in Jerusalem, editing my future book “A Coffee in Jerusalem”. Moments of almost normal life. My phone sits beside me, as if waiting for a little attention—in Hebrew, it’s called “tsumat lev,” a piece of one’s heart. I’m pouring a piece of my heart into my writing, while my phone converses with the cooling coffee.

“Six bodies of kidnapped individuals were rescued by the Israeli army, the IDF, from the tunnels of Khan Yunis in Gaza,” my phone announces. If I don’t look at you willingly, I’ll force you to look at me.

At that moment, the sounds of Aroma transformed in my mind into a heavy silence, holding up a mirror to my face, saying, “This is reality. Nothing is normal.”

Six bodies, six kidnapped individuals who were taken alive and returned dead. 109 still haven’t returned.

We’re here counting the kidnapped who return dead, counting them as if it’s normal, as if saying it’s good enough that they have a grave in Israel.We’re here counting the kidnapped who return dead, counting them as if it’s normal, as if saying it’s good enough that they have a grave in Israel. I wrote that sentence twice, it’s not a mistake. It’s so I can understand myself, to think about why that sentence feels almost normal.

But even if I write it again and again, it’s still not normal. The moment we convince ourselves that a grave is enough is a moment when the foundations of the world tremble.

Six people were kidnapped, six people with whole lives, with smiles, with loves and pains. Six people with a past, a present, and a future, with memories and everyday moments that are part of life and that we don’t even remember.

Six people with names, with words, with customs, with dreams, with those who love them and those who don’t. Six people with thoughts, with moments, with silences.

Six people who are not numbers, nor are they those who are normally defined as those whose dead return lowers the number of those who remain.

Our sources say that whoever saves a soul saves an entire world. It’s not just a saying. It’s a saying to tell us that six people, with names, with loved ones, with families, with communities, with a people, with a world—six people are not six corpses.

Rabbi Uri Ayalon 

Jerusalem 

August 2024