My words at a time when there is none. Community Vigil September 3, 2024.

          I first want to thank Rabbis Mona Alfi of B’nai Israel and Steven Chester representing Congregation Beth Shalom as well as the leadership of the Sacramento Jewish Federation and Jewish Community Relations Council and Hillel of Davis and Sacramento. Your presence here speaks volumes. We are one community.

I cannot adequately describe what I felt Saturday night in words.  The closest I get is being run over time and time again by a truck. Whenever I hear of another person murdered, our hopes for their return dashed in a moment after hundreds of days in captivity, there’s nothing left to say.

  We are here tonight to come together in grief and mourning while also doing our part to get the remaining 101 hostages released. Each of us here tonight is impacted by so many things. Our feelings are genuine and authentic as they are and should be accepted free of judgment.

Tonight we are gathered in part to remember 6 precious soles: Ori Danino, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, Carmel Gat and Hersh Goldberg-Polin, originally from Berkeley, California. These 6 were among nearly 400 captured or murdered from the Nova Festival in Re’im, dubbed as “a journey of unity and of love.” Our message as a people should always be love, not hate; life, not death and destruction. I still cannot get past the fact that each and every one of those recently murdered were under the age of 40-so much potential and so many hopes and dreams falling by the wayside. The cruelty of their captors taunting the victims’ families through sending post-mortem videos and  threatening to post “last minute videos” of their lives is beyond sickening.

The question is how do we remember them? Not by how they were found Saturday night but rather by how they lived their lives! In Mishnah Avot, Rabbi Shimon said, there are three crowns: the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood, and the crown of kingship. And the crown of a good name is superior to them all. We will remember the good names of each of these six precious souls followed by an El Malei for all who were murdered since October 7^th and the Mourner’s Kaddish.

          Then we will transition to our hope for the release of the remaining 101 hostages. We will sing אחינו, the song showing that each and every one of us is united. We will recite the prayer for those who are captured followed by התקוה, the anthem that has kept our people hopeful for numerous years.

          Today we come together to grieve and to mourn; it is my prayer that tomorrow we will come together to dance and to celebrate the remaining hostages being brought home.