Terumah: Giving When the Heart is Shattered
in memory of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas z”l
Everything I say today will be clumsy and inadequate. Everything we feel today — please, let’s direct it in memory of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas, of blessed memory. And please, direct your hearts to their beloved Yarden, who lost his wife and two children. His eulogy is necessary reading for the human soul.
(https://www.timesofisrael.com/sorry-i-couldnt-protect-you-yarden-bibass-eulogy-for-wife-shiri-sons-ariel-and-kfir/)
It is so hard to find words. But the very act of learning Torah, of saying the blessing for study, is grounding. Maybe you need that “La’asok” blessing today too as much as I do. Torah is not about memorizing — it’s about being busy (“asuk”) with its ancient words. It is a sacred practice to hold on to Torah when there is nothing else to hold.
This week’s Torah portion, Terumah, is about willing hearts.
“Speak to the children of Israel that they bring me an offering: of every one whose heart is willing to give you shall take my offering. (Ex. 25:2)”
Even in brokenness, as just-emancipated Israelite people or a global Jewish nation in grief, we are invited — all of us whose hearts remain willing — to give. “Terumah” means an offering, a gift of self. It had to be voluntary, not a tax. Holiness is built from willingness, from generosity. And yet, here we are, a people of nedivut lev, of generous hearts, now shattered across the world. The hearts that once gave so freely are now grieving beyond measure.
And tonight, as we prepare to please God bring home the bodies of four more beloveds who were murdered, we reckon again with the horror of what has been done to us. The grotesque spectacle of terror is designed to humiliate us, to break us. And yet, the heroism of our sisters and brothers remains the dominant truth. Even as we mourn, we show kavod, honor. We send our hearts to the families who will now bury their loved ones. We remember that when six young people were murdered in the tunnels just before they could be rescued in August 2024, the world knew only one name of the six. It doesn’t overshadow the others — but some names reach us more directly, and that is a painful reality. Today, all of Israel lined the route to the funeral of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir. Look what they accomplished in their short lives — they united so many of us in grief and in love. And their hearts connect us to all others whom we’ve lost, including Oded Lifshitz z”l, who, at 83, was stolen from his home in קיבוץ ניר עוז Kibbutz Nir Oz, along with Shiri and Ariel and Kfir.
It has been 509 days of aninut, the space between knowing and burial, a space of suspended grief. In Jewish law, an onen — a mourner before burial — cannot be counted in a minyan. They are not fully present. But we must be here. We must say Amen to each other’s Kaddish. We must show up.
Yehuda Amichai wrote: “El Maleh Rachamim — God, full of mercy. But if God were not so full of mercy, perhaps there would be more mercy in the world.” There are no words.
We are a people who show up even when we have no words. So please, friends — take care of yourselves today. Even in mourning, even in shiva, we eat, we rest. We have beloveds to welcome home tonight — if only they were alive. If only the world were not so cruel. If only the world knew how to say Amen to our Kaddish in a way that affirmed our right to self-determination, that called this horror blasphemous in their own eyes too. That is worth working toward. That is a world worth believing in and building.
There is no neat way to wrap up this message of Torah, except to say this: A willing heart builds the holy. And perhaps, because our hearts are broken, if we can summon even a small measure of intention, God will sense our pain and tend to the brokenhearted.
May the memories of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas, of Oded Lifshitz and so so many more be forever blessed. May all the hostages come home now. May the world hear our song and know that monsters never win.
We sing Hatikvah not in naive hope, but in defiant truth: We have not lost hope.
