Editor’s Note: The following commentary was written in mid-September. The photo of Tal Bahar is from the October 7 Commemoration program held on October 5 at the Weinstein JCC.  

By Tal Bahar

I love words.

Words tell stories. They can describe colors, and tastes, and unique landscapes. Words build, and destroy - towers and empires, and the soul of a person. Words may bring peace and begin wars, and when needed, they comfort, sometimes even more than a warm and loving hug.

Sometimes, only very rarely, words are not enough. As if they lost their power, when you try to use them, they simply vanish. They are not there.

That feeling of helplessness is also beyond description in words. Only in a painful wail, or in uncontrollable tears that could fill an entire ocean.

We have created some 7,000 spoken languages around the world, tens or even hundreds of millions of words we have uttered — and still, it is not enough.

So, we are all in a compulsive search for them, ready to find even a few words that could become a sentence to say to the mother who lost her daughter in the war, to the father whose kidnapped son is still tormented in the belly of the earth in Gaza, to the girl waiting for her father to return home from the battlefield.

Even a single word, or half a word, that can be said to the partner whose beloved will never come back, to the brother who knows only that his sister was murdered while dancing and celebrating life, to the woman whose daughter, son in law, and three grandchildren were burned alive in their home in the Gaza Envelope.

I still cannot find the words to explain to myself what happened that morning of October 7th, when we all entered the shelters without knowing that the moment we came out of them, our lives would change forever.

I still cannot find words to speak of what changed in me forever. I cannot find words that will describe the revolting reality, two years later, when they are still not home and when we do not see the end, or to express my hope that all the words I wrote here won’t be relevant anymore by the day you read them, because maybe they will finally be back, and maybe we won’t fight anymore, especially within our own people. I do not always manage to find the words to explain to the whole world why they are wrong and we are right.

And sometimes, I cannot even find the words to calm my fear about our future.

But a year ago, in the midst of a stubborn search, a parable that a friend of mine heard somewhere and shared, actually found me. and between the words, it tells of hope, and of the responsibility upon all of us, so that the darkness will pass, and the light will come.

“An old Hasidic Rabbi sat with his students and asked them how one can know that the night has ended and the day has begun, and that the time has come for the important morning prayers.
‘When you can see an animal from afar and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog,’ answered one student.
‘Not exactly,’ said the Rabbi.
‘I think it is when I can see the lines on my palm,’ said another student.
‘Not exactly,’ said the Rabbi.
‘Maybe it is when I can look at a tree and know whether it is an oak or a pear tree?’ wondered a third.
‘No,’ said the Rabbi.

‘So how do you know, our Rabbi?’ the students asked.

‘I know there is enough light when I can look into the face of a man or a woman and see that he is my brother and she is my sister. Until then, it is still darkness.’”

We are brothers and sisters. It is time to see one another. It is time for the light to embrace us, and only we can bring it.

I love words. But I have run out of them now. So, if this time I did not succeed, with words, to explain exactly what I meant, and what I think, and what I feel, in this unbearable reality — it is alright. Sometimes, precisely what lies between the words tells everything we are searching for.