Infinity of Heartbreak, Particles of Light: Impressions of the Nova Music Festival Exhibition

I went to the Nova Exhibition hostage vigil in LA. I didn’t want to. Not really. Pre-imagining slick, event-ized grief tourism, I didn’t wish to participate. I thought it would be garish and obscene; I couldn’t fathom how this would be healing. Instead I found a deeply immersive, painstakingly recreated space to honor survivors and victims in necessary tribute since October shattering. It’s vital we know these stories. Though shouldn’t need to. Obviously.

There aren’t sufficient words to describe sensory overwhelm of stimuli. In English I am mute, amputated verbally from feeling. What can I write to ease so much pain? Writers have addressed Jew-hate for centuries. Yet it remains persistent fact of society, we exist on the fringe, we’re okay to excoriate.

We lobby, protest, write, petition. Scream, cry, plead Bring them home! We fail colossally. We come up empty. All stones uncovered, fistfuls of nothing. Global indifference.

There is no language to ease Rachel and Jon’s agony. What can be said to Eden’s father. To Alex’s wife. To each hostage family, or those killed already. Human words inadequate for inhuman unending Night. We can be there with love, and love only. We shock absorb, but can’t stop percussion. We lobby, protest, write, petition. Scream, cry, plead Bring them home! We fail colossally. We come up empty. All stones uncovered, fistfuls of nothing. Global indifference. Hostages paid the most brutal price. There should have been justice. There is supposed to be justice. Now they live on forever in us each. This changed us immeasurably, indelible ink on our DNA. We are broken, operating under thin veneer of normalcy. Sorrow too deep, impossible to articulate. Hope was not just mandatory, but sacrosanct. They took you away, so cruelly.

So I didn’t want to go; no one wants to see and know these things. But we go anyway. We go because we have not lost hope, though faith is eluding. We go because we are Jews. We go because pain unanticipated this century activates cellular memory. We go for community. We may walk in alone, but forge bonds immediately. For sharing the moment, letting us fall apart completely. We go to bear witness not just to the dead, but each other living – alive and unwell, with jagged shared understanding.

It was the shoes that got me. A sign: “lost and found”. Viscerality broke me apart from the inside. Shoah exhibits already, shoes by the Danube in Hungary. Knowing last time these were worn was by someone who died horrifically.

I overestimated my ability to manage emotionally. Angel-faced stranger enfolded me tightly, as I broke down completely from a primitive place I don’t visit much in my psyche. I love Israelis. Whatever facade of normalcy I’ve attempted all year dissolved instantly: grief, rage, sadness, confusion about the world generally, heartbreaks 11 months old and 18 hours fresh from hostage murders, leveling. Each person a universe. Totality of universes represented destroyed me.

Loss is incalculable. Statisticians assess damage numerically; we’re not math, but spirits in bodies. We don’t grieve in ratios, but littlest things about someone, contained illimitably. Our community lies bleeding, our tears called propaganda. We’re not seen as human, reliably. Carmel Gat, Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi, Alex Lobanov, Eden Yerushalmi and Hersh Goldberg-Polin were alive human beings.

A Nova survivor spoke, having never told his story. His wish for us each: live happy lives, do well, be free. Purity overpowering. He’d been trapped in the bunker with Hersh, with bodies. He had no media training, his voice was unsteady. He spoke simply, just hoping we’re all ok. That we find... life. Joyfully.

So we have to. For his sweet innocence (and that of all the victims). We will dance again, though our souls are torn. There will be music and laughter again– somehow. Because we need there to be, desperately, and create it again and again out of nothing. We don’t know how to mourn atrocity. So we try habitually to keep living.

…Her name is Daphne, the angel-Israeli. Holocaust survivor parents, she’d volunteered straightaway to collect shoes... after. Unfathomable, what she has seen. It’s why she’s traveling, representing her country. We decided in the future: I’ll come to Tel Aviv, we’ll go out drinking. For life, for love of living. Make new plans amidst the brutality. We who are lucky enough still to be living. Keep breathing, keep breathing. We need something to look forward to, we create new memories. We search every day for ways to make meaning. We don’t know what to do with the pieces, but pick them up we must, and keep running.

Kaddish, Hatikva, Star Spangled Banner. Verses known since childhood, reflexive familiarity. But by the twilight’s last gleaming I lost it again completely. A uniformed IDF soldier opened arms wordlessly. Our mismatched heights fused for stability, he lent strength, heart and silent comprehending. He’s running a race of 240 miles–one for each hostage. Just back from service, homage born from pain.

I expected to hate every moment of the evening, and feel very much alone with my grief. Rather, the world is a bit brighter and lovelier, having met a few more Jews of the few of us left in it, knowing we’re in it together and feel the same things. I even saw an old friend, because that is what happens in a tiny community. You walk in alone, and know people already. Being adrift emotionally in a group of Jews is grounding. Strangers holding strangers weeping... perhaps the most gutting intimacy.

I didn’t want to go; I went, it changed me.

Until we dance again. With everyone we ever loved and lost and miss, and mourn, who’s haunting. Carmel, Ori, Almog, Alex, Eden, Hersh -- we will dance again, your light will be our melody. We will always know your story, and strive to be worthy of surviving.