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I’m thinking of a family member tonight. [1]

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Date: 2023-10-10  

My family is a bit odd, religion-wise. For the last several generations we were evangelical Christians, and then something weird happened.

My aunt converted to Judaism. And then about twenty years later my sister, and ten years after that, me. My cousins are all Jewish, and so are my niblings. In the space of one generation we returned to the Jewish roots we left behind 140 years ago.

I’m happily single with no kids. My sister is happily married with two. And it’s her grandmother-in-law on my mind tonight.

Tzipporah is 102 years old. Her body is as frail as you’d expect at that age, but don’t try to take her on mentally unless you’re ready for an ass-whooping. We’ve only ever met once—at the wedding, actually—but we still pass well-wishes back and forth through my sister from time to time.

There’s a reason we’ve only met once. And it’s the reason she’s on my mind.

When she was liberated in 1945–traumatized, terrified, with a series of numbers on her arm but alive—she was given the promise of a home. A place to return to, in fact the place to return to. It’s where she’s lived since 1948.

Having watched her family torn apart by people who wanted to kill all Jews, she now sits in wait to find out if her grandchildren will also be called up to defend against people who want to kill all Jews. Here, at the opposite end of her life, nothing has changed. We’re still hated and hunted, despised and denounced.



It’s no mistake Hamas attacked when they did, and it has nothing to do with the Yom Kippur War. They attacked on Simchat Torah—the day on which we read the last passage in the Torah, then go to the beginning and start again. They picked the day on which we do that most Jewish of things: celebrating Torah, pledging to learn its lessons anew. This wasn’t just an attack on Israel, it was an attack on Jews.

Tzipporah may not live to see her grandchildren and great-grandchildren come home, if they’re called up. Not at her age and in her health.

I pray for her tonight.

And I pray this will be over quickly.

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