May Their Memory Be a Revolution

I stood in my driveway last night thinking about all of the Jewish children who live in my neighborhood, tucked in their beds. I looked at the houses around mine, upstairs windows aglow with night lights and bedside lamps.

My recent text messages and Instagram direct messages are from my Jewish friends, most of whom are mothers, distraught about the murders of Kfir, Ariel and Shiri Bibas. And all I can do is let their worry land in my inboxes, giving them a place to temporarily put down the weight of their fear in a world that seems to overlook the tragedy of Jewish children being kidnapped and murdered.

It doesn't make sense — there has been global outrage about the Palestinian lives lost since October 7, 2023 (and rightfully so). The innocent lives taken in this conflict, especially the lives of children, are the true cost of decades of political grandstanding. But where is that same outrage for Kfir and Ariel, who were kidnapped from their beds at the kibbutz where they lived and whose bodies were returned in coffins this morning?

I see comments on social media blaming Israel for the Bibas' deaths, perpetuating the Hamas-promoted narrative that they were killed in a bomb strike. Even if that were true, it's lost on the masses that Hamas kidnapped these babies and kept them. They didn't have to take them as hostages; they didn't have to keep them for more than 500 days. You can hate the very concept of Israel; you can disagree with every decision made by the Israeli government since their counterattack. But how do you stay silent about the tragedy of Ariel, Kfir and Shiri while at the same time publicly mourning Palestinian lives?

I kept a strange vigil throughout the night, illuminated by my laptop screen, waiting for the news to confirm what Hamas and Israel both said was true. I waited for the Google results for "Bibas family" to change from photographs of a smiling family to Israeli-flag draped coffins. And when the news gave as much as it could, pending forensic testing, I closed my laptop and set it aside, choosing to sit in stillness and darkness… until I picked up my phone hours later and scrolled through new messages.

The worry of my friends reads like a volume of mothers' prayers, looking for reassurance of the future: C, whose kids attend a Jewish preschool, worries about the threats that facility receives; M, who walks her kids into Sunday school classrooms past off-duty police officers providing security at the synagogue; K, whose kids are older and more exposed to the violence and vitriol around them.

The increase in antisemitism in the U.S. feels deeply connected to the lack of urgency and awareness about the Bibas family. Who is talking about this tragedy? Who is paying attention? The loss of children underscored by the loss of humanity of those children because they are Jewish is too much to bear alone.

In Judaism, after someone dies, we say, “Yehi zichro/a baruch” meaning “May his or her memory be a blessing.” This puts the onus on survivors to keep the person’s memory alive through action — remembrance is not passive. In recent years, there has been a call to use “Yehi zichro/a mahapecha,” which translates to “May his or her memory be a revolution.”

May we use this moment to remember Ariel, Kfir and Shiri through actions. deeds and words that honor their lives.