A strange sense of loss...

July 01, 2014  •  1 Comment

As I sit editing my photos from yesterdays shoot, my iPad is showing Sky News coverage of the 3 murdered teenagers in Israel. 

The three bodies are laid out on the floor, wrapped in Israeli flags. Various dignitaries are at the ceremony, including high-ranking government officials. it is a National moment. 

I don't want this to be a political piece - I do not wish to get into the rights and wrongs of this age long dispute, but this is something personal that I wanted to share.

What is really hard to explain to a lot of my non-Jewish friends is the sense of loss that pretty much every Jew around the world will be feeling right now. It's a very difficult concept to share and explain. Israel treats the death of it's civilians like other countries treat military heroes. Every dead boy, girl, man, woman or child that is killed in these troubled times is painful for the country and painful for us as Jews around the world. It's a national event. The country mourns, world Jewry mourns.

We are all gradually becoming desensitised to hard-hitting news. A death of a child in Syria or Iraq is no less painful than the death of a child in Israel but the feeling and the unity that the Jewish populations show around the world is something truly special. 

We have a shared sense of loss, those boys were not just 3 boys that were kidnapped and murdered, they were members of our family, part of our culture and part of our lives, living in a troubled land which is dear to our hearts and in our souls. 

When events occur in Israel, my Facebook friends react as if it's involved members of their own family.

My phone rings - it's my mother. 'Have you heard the news, those poor boys?'

The sense of loss is extremely hard to explain, but it's very much real and very much there. 

May their souls rest in peace. 

 

 


Comments

Charlotte GC(non-registered)
Beautifully put. The same age as my son, so for different reasons this has connected with me. One can imagine their excitement at being out in the world (as my son was last week) enjoying their adventure, and it seems so cruel - regardless of political affiliation there are three families mourning a terrible, futile loss.
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