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Naomi Ragen is the Jerusalem-based author of . Information on her books and mailing list can be found on her website at .
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By Naomi Ragen
April 16, 2003
Memorial speech for families of the twenty-nine victims of the Passover massacre, Yad Lebanim, Netanya.
I came here to tell you that I think about you, and I am so sorry for what happened to you - to us. To tell you that I will never forget what we went through, and that I care about what happens to you and mourn your losses, the pain you went through.
There is nothing I can say to comfort you. If God forbid, someone I loved had been killed or injured, I would be very angry at anyone who quoted Scriptures, or read Psalms said things like: time heals. Or "be strong" and other such lies people say to mourners. Time does not heal. And when we tell a mourner to be strong, we are comforting ourselves, not the mourner. Strength has nothing to do with it.
It's so easy to talk...
We were standing in the lobby of a hotel with our family, waiting for the Seder to begin. We were laughing with our children, chatting with our elderly mother in law, trying to comfort strangers whose children were late, telling them that they are probably just caught in traffic.
All we wanted was to gather with our families around the Seder table. To say the words of the Haggadah. To talk about the miracles our God performed for us in taking us out of Egypt. We wanted to sing the Hallel, and praise His holy name. To listen to the Four Questions, and try to come up with some answers for our children. We wanted to bless the wine, dip the parsley in salt water, eat the bitter herbs... To imagine that the wine symbolized blood, the salt water tears, and the bitter herbs, the bitterness of slavery and injustice that happened long ago. To remember, that once, thousands of years ago, we were not free, and we suffered and our lives were bitter.
Instead of wine, we got real blood. Instead of salt water, we got real tears. Instead of remembered bitterness and suffering, we got death, destruction and real bitterness we tasted in our souls, not on our tongues.
This Passover, I will have not have all the answers for my children. Instead, I will have so many, many questions. And I am the child, and there is no adult to answer them.
But one answer I do know. This Seder night will be different from all other Seder nights for every person who was at the Park Hotel last year and for every other Jew all over the world, and every other decent, peace-loving human being, who will remember this bestial crime against humanity that occurred in the little seaside town in Israel to innocent men, women and children. For the rest of our lives, Seder night will never be as it was. We will carry every one of you with us every Seder night for as long as we live. We will see your faces, remember your pain and fear, your loss and your mourning.
And this year, as we sit around the table and speak of the horrors of past oppressors that have caused such terrible suffering - the Pharaohs and Hitlers and Saddams and Arafats - the telling itself will bring some comfort, because in the end we survived. But from now on, will not say the Haggadah, we will live it; not with memories from the distant past, but from yesterday. My dear brothers and sisters, may God watch over you and bless you and comfort you, and may you never feel it is too late for blessings and comfort and prayers.
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