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Rav Yosef's remarks at the BDJ Memorial program on 10/6/24:

Perek 7 of the Book of Yirmiyahu finds Yirmiyahu standing at the entrance to the Beit HaMikdash, where he is proclaiming to all who are arriving there that God will only continue to dwell with them in the land – and protect them from the menace of Babylonia -  if they improve their ways and create a more just and compassionate society.     

And above all, Yirmiyahu begs the people who are coming for worship that day to not listen to the false prophets whom Yirmiyahu somewhat derisively cites as saying, “Heychal Hashem [the Temple of the Lord]! Heychal Hashem! Heychal Hashem!...”  By which they mean, that given the presence of God’s holy abode in the land, it is impossible that the land could be overrun and the city destroyed.       

And while we’d never ordinarily align ourselves with false prophets, we can understand, especially today, why they said what they did. They proclaimed “Heychal Hashem…” because they simply had no capacity to conceive of, to imagine, the kind of horror that Yirmiyahu was warning of. They had no frame of reference within which to place such an occurrence, within which it made any sense.  It simply defied everything they knew, and so it just could not be.  

And so, on the day when the calamity unfolded just as Yirmiyahu had foreseen it, they must have simply stood in shock, not understanding how to even process what their eyes were seeing and their ears were hearing. 

Which, as we each think back one year, is exactly the state we were in as well.  Among so many other memories of that Shmini Atzeret morning, I’m thinking about checking in every 30 minutes or so with our facilities manager Jose who was seated in the office in front of his computer, and every time I went in for an update, there were more…. more people killed, more people captured, hundreds and hundreds, Heychal Hashem! HOW CAN ANY OF THIS EVEN BE?! 

And now a year later - perhaps you also saw it this morning - YNET published the year’s grim tallies: 1078 Israeli parents having become bereaved, 226 people widowed, 921 - children and adults - orphaned. And 101 – living and dead – still hostages.  

After the Babylonians overran the land and destroyed the city, the people needed to develop a new frame of reference that would enable them to talk about, to think about what had happened. And it would be through this frame that they would not only survive, but would again live.  And we too, we too will slowly do as they did, beginning today. We will build a framework of comprehension and understanding, which will enable us not only to survive, but to return to full vitality. It’s a framework, I will add, that I believe will ultimately also need to include the orphans and widows from the other side as well, as they too are part of what has happened.  

We will get there. And once again Am Yisrael will live and flourish. 

And we will be led there by the new heroes, people who would bristle at being called that. I’m thinking today about a young mother to whom, together with a small group of rabbis, I made a condolence call toward the end of October. This was in Ofakim, a small city a few kilometers with the Gaza border. As we spoke, her children who all seemed to be between 3 and 7 years old, came in and out of the house, though never straying terribly far from their mother. She described how on that day as Hamas began tearing through the streets of the city, her husband led her and the children up onto the roof of the house and had instructed them to cross from roof to roof to a particular spot where they could hide. She pleaded with him to come with them, but he insisted that he would stay in the house, with his gun, to hold off the attackers for as long as he could, to ensure that she and the children would make it safely to where they would shelter.  

As she spoke to us, now a widow and a single mother, she projected not brokenness, but a determination to raise her children, to be for them both mother and father. And she said, "אנחנו נחיה, מצד המקרה הזה",“we will live, beside this horrific event.” 

Am Yisrael chai v’yichyeh, and we will look to our heroes, the heroes who are protecting and defending Medinat Yisrael as we speak, as well as the many accidental and often tragic heroes who are in our hearts today. 

May we merit coming to next October 7th in a place of strength and wisdom, filled with optimism and hope in the future.