On Tisha b’Av, Jews lower themselves to the ground—not just physically, but spiritually. We strip away comfort, quiet our voices, and mourn the irretrievable. We mourn the Temples that burned, the exiles that scattered us, the expulsions, inquisitions, and massacres that followed. We chant Eicha by candlelight and speak of loss across centuries. But this year, it felt dishonest to keep our mourning safely in the past. It felt necessary—emotionally urgent—to include October 7th. Not in euphemism. Not in vague adult whispers. Not by talking about it around the kids. But by going. By standing where it happened. By letting our children—11 and 14—see it.
We took them to the site of the Nova Music Festival in Re’im Forest. We walked among the memorials, the poles bearing laminated photographs of young Israelis who were killed there. Faces full of life, mid-laugh, dressed for dancing. As adults, we saw in them the ache of what could have been—students we might have taught, young professionals we could have hired, friends our children might have one day become. But for our kids, it was even more raw. They weren’t seeing who might have been their peers. They were seeing who might have been them. The faces on the memorials weren’t abstract. They looked like siblings, cousins, campers. They were close in age. They shared the same sandals, the same bracelets, the same innocent love of music and freedom. We did not tell our children to be afraid. We did not sermonize. We let them look. And they did.
After Re’im, we drove to the “Car Cemetery”—a clearing along Road 232 where many of the vehicles from that day are now kept. The road itself connects the festival site to the kibbutzim that were attacked—Be’eri, Nahal Oz, Re’im, and others. Some cars had bullet holes—not one, but twenty. Others were burned until you couldn’t tell the make or model. Some, we know, still had bodies inside when the flames consumed them. There were strollers in backseats, toys on dashboards. These weren’t anonymous wrecks—they were family cars, festival cars, escape vehicles that didn’t make it. And there they sit, not behind glass or rope, but out in the open, scorching in the desert sun.
We stood there and asked ourselves, again and again: How do we talk to an 11- and 14-year-old about something so cruel, so overwhelming? How do you explain an atrocity fueled not by military strategy but by hate—hate that sought out babies, burned families alive, filmed murders with pride? How do you help children grasp what many adults still refuse to understand? And how do you explain that this was not the Shoah, not a time when we were stateless or powerless—this was our sovereign country, defended by one of the most capable armies in the world, and it still happened?
We began, not with history, but with values. We told our children that to be Jewish is to remember. Not passively, but actively. Not as a matter of guilt, but as a practice of meaning. We remember not to drown in pain, but to carry it. Because memory in Judaism is never the end of the story—it’s the beginning of responsibility.
We told them: Jewish suffering is not new, but neither is Jewish courage. The world has watched us die before, and too often it has stood still. But today we have a nation. An army. A voice. And a promise—to ourselves and to each other—that our pain will never again be unguarded. That we will not be silent about what was done to us. That we will not be shamed into forgetting.
As Rabbi Benny Lau wrote in the days after the massacre, “October 7th is a foundational moment in the history of Israel and the Jewish people. We must name evil as evil. We must look it in the eye and not flinch. And we must build a society that does not recoil from pain, but transforms it into responsibility.” That is what we tried to do—on Tisha b’Av, of all days—not to recoil, but to let our children witness pain, not to be crushed by it, but to be strengthened through it. Because the weight of Jewish memory, when carried with honesty and faith, becomes the spine of Jewish resilience.
We also explained the difference between power and safety. Israeli thinker Dr. Micah Goodman has observed that modern Jews, for the first time in 2,000 years, are confronting this paradox: “We are strong, but we are not secure. That is the deepest anxiety of Israeli life.” We told our children exactly that. That Jewish sovereignty does not mean we are invincible. That hatred did not vanish when we built an army. But it gave us the tools to defend ourselves—and the obligation to do so. And to teach the next generation that Jewish strength must never again be passive or silent.
And we reminded them, gently, that our story doesn’t end at the Car Cemetery. That the same people who were ambushed on October 7th are rebuilding homes, tending fields, reopening schools. That every week, soldiers return to their bases, volunteers return to the kibbutzim, young people return to dance. That just as Tisha b’Av is followed by the promise of comfort—Shabbat Nachamu—so too our people move from grief to strength.
There’s a line in Eicha that reads: “You have wrapped Yourself in a cloud so that no prayer can pass through.” It captures the unbearable silence we feel in the face of divine absence. And yet, even then, the text pleads: “Renew our days as of old.” Our tradition insists on return. On rebuilding. On refusing to let sorrow be the final word.
That’s what we wanted our children to understand. That mourning in Judaism is never only about despair—it’s about memory, and meaning, and choosing life anyway. We wanted them to see that Jewish strength is not the absence of pain, but the refusal to be defined by it.
I am sure it was a lot for Naama and Leor. Too much, maybe. But they did not turn away. They walked with us. They asked thoughtful questions. They looked at those cars, those photographs, those charred remains of life—and they knew, with their young hearts, that this was real. That the Jewish people are not just a religion or a culture, but a family. And that being part of this family carries weight.
It is not easy to hand that weight to your children. You want to protect them. You want their Judaism to be joyful. But real love means telling the truth. And the truth is that being a Jew means standing close to the pain of our people, and still saying: I am part of this. I belong here. I will carry this with you.
Because being Jewish is not just about lighting candles and singing songs. It’s also about carrying our dead. Carrying our memory. Carrying the unbearable—and still, somehow, continuing on.
That, too, is Jewish resilience. That, too, is Tisha b’Av.