Just another day
This post on my Facebook feed was written by a young girl
who was supposed to get married today. From what I know, it was planned months
in advance. Grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins were to arrive from
Australia, South Africa, the UK and the US. Close friends were to attend from high
school, pre-army academy and the army. One friend was even flying in from
Canada. The post expressed sadness, yet acceptance of the situation.
The author of the post was my daughter.
Instead, she woke up early as usual and went to her job as
an office assistant at an insurance company. And as the father of the bride-to-be,
I spent the day in front of my PC contemplating what would have been, had
the horrific events of October 7 never happened.
As for our overseas guests, nobody came. Flights were
cancelled, as the situation was deemed too dangerous. In short, the wedding has
been put off to a future date to be determined. On Friday night at shabbat
services, I saw a former employer of mine and mentioned that my daughter was supposed
to be getting married today. His sympathetic response was, “you’re not the only
one.”
The thing is, he’s 100% right. Apart from those in similar
circumstances, there are others whose weddings will never go ahead because the bride,
bridegroom or both have been murdered by Hamas terrorists. Or as in the case of
one of my son’s friends, killed in the line of duty protecting our homeland.
Some are being held against their will after being kidnapped. We have no idea whether
they’re alive or dead.
So does that mean I should consider us to be among the “lucky”
ones? With the current mood in Israel, I don’t think anyone feels lucky right
now.
We may hold a small wedding in a few weeks without our
overseas guests, and whoever can come will come. We simply don’t know yet. What
we do know is that regardless of the outcome of this war, my daughter and her fiancé
will and must get married. And if it happens during wartime, they will be
following in the footsteps of both sets of my grandparents – her
great-grandparents – who were married during WWII.
My mother’s parents married in Manchester, after the synagogue
in London where the ceremony was to take place was bombed by the Nazis. My
father’s parents got married at home in the US after my grandfather was rushed
back from his posting in Guam, as my great-grandfather lay on his deathbed.
As Jews, over the generations, this is what we’ve had to do to carry on and
show the world that regardless of what they think of us, “Am Yisrael Chai” –
the People of Israel Live!
When I asked my daughter how she’s feeling today, she simply
said, “a bit sad, but we’re going to go out tonight to celebrate anyway.” But I
pray the day will come, G-d willing soon, when we will hear, as the per the words
of the famous Jewish wedding song, “the voice of happiness and the voice of
joy, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.” Mazal tov.
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