“We are broken.” She looks down, then right at me, sitting thousands of miles away, sorrow etched on her face. “So many people whose children were killed on October 7th developed cancer and died.”

How to respond? The gap—between a tumult of emotions, the inability to discern between them, and the ability to articulate a reply beyond tears—is almost as vast as a parent’s pain.

What do I feel? The rip to hearts that are not mine shreds mine in empathy and solidarity.

Sorrow. Grief. Pain. Isolation. Anger. Sadness. Abandonment. Loss.

I do not know the people that my British-Israeli friend mentioned in our recent conversation. I do know that they carried such an immense, heavy, unfathomable, burden. The burden that they never asked for, but which was dropped on them by the inhospitable, intolerant, resentful world because they are Jewish and they live in Israel.

The horrible spreading impact of antisemitism.

The murderous result of Jew hatred.

There are those who are in pain. There are those who cause pain. There are those who want to make the pain go away. There are those who want to comfort those in pain and confront those who cause pain. There are those who don’t know and don’t care. There are those who........

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