A month ago, my 14-year-old daughter got delayed in her extracurricular class and didn’t return home on time.
She did not answer her phone for half an hour. I ran down to the street in my pajamas to look for her.
While I was searching, my imagination was going into overdrive, thinking about where she could be, how far the person who grabbed her could have reached, and whether there was any hope left.
My pulse was racing, tears welled in my eyes, and all I felt was fear and horror.
It all felt so real.
Eventually, she answered her phone; I cried over the phone, asking her never to do this to me again, and when I met her under the streetlamp, I tightly clung to her.
She laughed in embarrassment while realizing that her mother needed a minute to breathe.
Yesterday, she went down to throw away the garbage.
We live in the central area of the country in a drowsy and peaceful town.
She took her time, and after no more than 20 minutes, I began to feel stressed out. Again.
It is the war that got my imagination all warped and turned the thoughts that run through my mind into a possible and actual reality lurking around every corner.
I called her and told her, “Ella, where are you? You know how I can’t have this now.”
Her answer was, “Sorry, Mom, the air outside is nice and cool, and I felt like making a picture out here.”
That is my experience. Only twice and just for half an hour.
What do mothers whose daughters don’t answer them for over a year and three months feel?
They cannot get their breathing in order, eat, sleep, or fill the hole in their hearts. They are yet to get a happy ending to their story.
To that, I ask, in what kind of world do we have families among us who are powerless, anxious, with a vicious roulette running through their mind of who will live and who will die, tired of hearing promises, of disappointments and of yearning that scorches their very soul.
You want to reach out and touch your daughter or son, but you cannot. You want to walk all the way to Gaza and get them out yourself. You want to get into a warm bed and sleep a bit but cannot, for as long as they are not back in their own beds.
Rachel Goldberg-Pollin, mother of the kidnapped Hersh Goldberg-Pollin, took a loudspeaker aimed at Gaza, and her first words when she cried her heart out were, “Hersh, it’s Mama.”
Einav Zangauker cried out to Matan, “Hear my voice. Mom is on her way to get you out of there!”.
Practically, the children probably did not hear them, but as the song goes, “A person cries out for what he is missing. If nothing is missing, he won’t cry.”
Every mother is a hostage alongside her son or daughter.
Bond between mothers and daughters
Many words were said about the bond between mothers and daughters that goes with us throughout our lives, even after we grow up and become mothers, trying to be like our mothers, yet slightly different.
It’s a primal and eternal tribal bond of ancient wisdom and a journey of the soul.
Anyone who watched the movie The Braid could have noticed the jolting intensity surrounding the threads that bond us together.
Meirav Leshem Gonen showed us that she is Romi’s safe haven.
I look at the girls who returned from captivity and see in the subtle nuances of their demeanor that they absorbed resilience at home, which I believe made their time in Hell slightly easier.
I see in each and every hug of every mother and father of each child that returned from captivity that they themselves are the story their child told him or herself when in captivity, helping a bit to keep him or her from breaking up.
What goes through the minds of those mothers whose children have not yet returned when doubt sneaks into their hearts, wondering when and if this will happen?
There are mothers who cannot leave their homes to face the harsh world outside; their fragile inner world is engaged in a constant struggle with the new life imposed on them, and they cannot contain the evil and cruelty that have landed on them, so they curl up for the sake of self-preservation. There are those who made the struggle into a crusade. Some sway between despair and hope and somehow manage to run between the raindrops, and others are flowing incorrigible optimism, which they wear as armor plating.
One way or the other, not only is each way legitimate, but each mother conveys to her offspring in her own unique way a message, “I am here, waiting for you.”
It is for good reason that a mother is assigned to be the first to meet her daughter upon return from captivity. I suppose that this stems from that primal moment of connection to the person who has introduced this life to the world, in the sense of rebirth and the capability of creating a new reality at that moment.
Needless to say, while I am focusing on the mothers and trying to portray their journey through the darkness, the bleeding hearts of fathers, siblings, husbands, wives, and anyone waiting for a loved one know no rest either. Watching how the girls who have returned cling to their fathers is enough for us to understand what they see as a safe haven.
Every friend surrounding me this week told me how, during these days, she cannot avoid thinking about the families of those who were left behind.
We have this internal mechanism of stimulation, allowing us to make a sudden transition from the euphoria of those who got released to the abyss of frustration for those who are still there in captivity.
In a way, this is even reflected in the tears of joy for those who returned, which are mixed with tears of sadness for all those who are still there.
And it is at the tips of our fingers. How can we not lose our minds in the meantime?
Once, I lost track of a little girl in an amusement park. I got stressed, but deep inside, I knew that in Israel, children are not abducted, and indeed, after a few minutes of searching, it was over.
Now, I know that anything is possible and that this failure, with our desistence contained within it, makes us roam our own country lost, anxious, confused, unsure, and, in a way, displaced.
I will always live in Israel. We have an endless sense of Zionism and patriotism, bordering with zeal.
My husband has a huge family in the US; he and our daughters are American citizens, yet we never imagined living anywhere else but in Israel, and we are proud of that. Even at 50 years of age, my husband still volunteers to serve the State of Israel since it is our civic duty.
In every opportunity coming my way, I urge his family to make Aliyah and wholeheartedly explain that this is the one right and moral thing to do, as well as for strengthening us as a people, society, and individuals.
Winning the war is also restoring the country and living in it intrepidly and fearlessly. Worldwide Jewry has a key role in this endeavor.
We bear responsibility for our reality over our story. We are committed to the founding generation and to our ancestors. We have a duty to join the IDF. We have an eternal bond with our country through thick and thin.
The fact that I lost the sense of security, that my heart sinks every time one of my daughters fails to answer my call, and that life became frail, painful, and bleeding saddens me to no end.
And yet, it is clear to me that Israel is still the safest place for Jews in the whole wide world. On Hanukkah, we took a trip to Jerusalem, and my heart swelled! There is, and there will be no other such place for the Jews.
Therefore, it is the duty of our leaders to return all the abducted hostages to their families, dead or alive, either civilians or soldiers and to reinstate within us the lost sense of security, allowing us to resume our trust in the world.
I am not a politician. I am not savvy in matters of security. I do not have what it takes to evaluate the price or foresee what the consequences could be.
And yet, I hope that all those orchestrating the agreements remember that this story should have only one end.
Eve is humanity’s first woman and is named after motherhood.
Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all the living. (Genesis 3:20)
In its most basic form, motherhood is typified as being the source of all life in the world.
When we give birth, very often, we check to see that our baby is breathing before taking care of our own breathing.
May this be a request to leaders – please don’t come between a mother and her children’s breath.
The writer is the Deputy CEO at Ran Rahav Communication & PR Ltd., a content specialist, a moderator, and a lecturer on communication and crises.