At a Crossroads

waiting for a voice

When I was in the Golan Heights a couple weeks ago with my husband, we came upon this memorial for soldiers who fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War (Natti Force). I was deeply struck by this first line from Hannah Senesh’s poem “At The Crossroads”:

קול קרא והלכתי, הלכתי כי קרא הקול

A voice called

And I went.

I went because the voice called.

I am not the same person I was before October 7^th, 2023. I do not know how to put into words what happened to me on that Friday night when I turned on my phone instead of just going to sleep (never mind observing Shabbat). But from that hour, my time clock switched to Israel Standard Time. I did not get to Israel until the first week of November 2023. All I wanted to do was see my four nephews, all either in the reserves or on active duty. My brother asked if we wanted to drive down to his youngest son’s base to drop off, of all things, his retainer. It was jarring driving there to realize that “the war” was a mere two-hour drive away from where my brother lived. This was not “the war over there” that we in America are used to. There was something surreal to me about that: you could have pizzas and falafel delivered to the troops; they could be let out for a Shabbat and sleep in their own bed overnight. But these were short lulls of pseudo-normalcy. Eventually, they all disappeared back into the mystery called Gaza, or as I thought of it, the land of terror.

There is a picture my brother took of us. It is dusk. We are sitting at a picnic table right outside my nephew’s base, his big gun flung across it, and his arms are around me and Chris. We are all smiling into the camera, but my eyes are shut, my head leaning on my nephews’ shoulder. I see in my face the utter relief I feel that he is alive. I will go back a few more times to visit over the next couple years, just because I need to see their faces. It feels compulsory. Seeing their faces allows me to keep breathing in Boulder. Once, we will go down south to volunteer in some fields, and pick grapefruits while bombs are going off. The guy next to me will reassure me, and tell me not to worry because those are “ours.” I was not worried for myself.

This last trip, we hike the Jilabun in the Golan. We hear bombs again, but this time in Lebanon, and no one seems at all worried. There are buses of school children, and they hike up to the waterfalls. When we take a different hike with my brother, this time in the West Bank, he has a pistol in his back pocket. I do not worry. I feel safe with him. Always. Truthfully, I have never not felt safe in Israel.

But I do not feel safe in America. I do not feel safe where I live in Boulder, CO. It is not that I worry about my own physical safety, although I know some of my family members have worried about me, especially after the June 1^stattack on the Boulder Run For Their Lives group. I was not there that day. I cannot speak properly to the pain of what occurred in front of the Courthouse on the Pearl Street Mall. All I can do is listen.

I don’t know how else to put it other than to say that my soul does not feel safe here. My rage over the massacre of October 7^th ravaged me. My despair over June 1^st filled me with a bitterness that sounds and tastes more accurate in Hebrew: mar, like maror. The intense indifference to the pain of Jews is bile in the back of my throat. I want to remember again the taste of honey.

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I know why I responded as viscerally as I did to that line in Hannah Senesh’s poem. “A voice called/ and I went./ I went because the voice called.” After October 7^th, I truly did feel called. When a friend of mine told me about these Run For Their Lives groups forming across the US (and across the globe), it was like the ringing of a bell. Clear as a bell. I could help make that happen in Boulder! I knew how to walk; just put one foot in front of the other. At that point, it was one of the few things I still knew how to do without thinking, without spinning. I’ve been part of the Jewish community here for thirty years, and I knew others were also hungry to do something. So, we got up and walked together. We took to the streets. We started the weekend of Thanksgiving 2023, and we walked every Sunday until every live hostage was released, and then continued advocating until every murdered hostage was returned for burial. Sometimes there were 30 of us, sometimes 40. Day 100, more showed up. Day 200, the year anniversary, there were more of us. The week the Beautiful Six were murdered in the tunnels, there were more of us. The week the Bibas’ were murdered, more of us. Sometimes, like on June 1st, 2025, there were only 29 brave people out there walking. I’ve heard many times that it was a beautiful, sunny Sunday. No one ever expected to be set on fire.

Last week, the attacker pled guilty to every single charge, including murder in the first degree of Karen Diamond, z”l (may her memory be a blessing). He was sentenced by the State of Colorado to life in prison without parole, plus 2128 years. He will never be free under a sunny sky. He can continue to proclaim his mantra that the enemy is Zionism to the four walls of his cell, but there will be no one to hear it.

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I believe our voices were heard. Let Them Go. Bring Them Home Now. HaTikvah. The Hope. We were bound up in a moment of history that extended back thousands of years. We may have been walking in the streets of Boulder, but our hearts were in another land. If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may my right hand wither. We did not forget. A voice called, and we went.

I am not always certain I am really that woman in the picture that was posted in the Times of Israel.

I also know I really am her: fierce, in love with Israel with every fiber of my being, near boiling with purpose such as I had never had before. Part of something I still have no name for.

I am also not her. I am not at ease in front of crowds. I am not a good public speaker. I feel most myself talking to people one to one. I like Shabbat dinners with 6 or 8 people. I like the weekly visits I’ve had for almost twenty years with two people in the community, reading to one, and just talking and holding the hand of the other. I love sitting at a table with six or seven vets from Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, giving them a poem, and then watching them discover that their own words hold just as much power as those on the printed page. I love when my daughters visit and I can curl up next to them on the couch or in their childhood beds, and listen to their stories. Their faces are the most beautiful to me in the world. It never ceases to amaze me that these girls – women now – are literally a part of me. I love that I am married to a man who gave me the enormous gift of being able to be a stay at home mom for so long, and who encouraged me to keep doing work that was meaningful, whether I got paid or not.

I miss quiet in my head. I miss being focused on my work of reading and writing. I despise the clamor of antisemitism, the racket of antizionism, and I do not know at all how to combat the noise, the deafening cacophony. I don’t hear a clear voice calling in this moment. No clarion bell. I don’t know where I am meant to walk next.

I know I want to look out again at the Valley of the Cross from my mother’s tiny balcony, and drink another glass of water there with her like I did less than two weeks ago. We are born on the same day; I am a part of her; I am a Jew because of her. I still want to make her proud of me.

Enough confessions for one night.

If anyone is interested in having me facilitate a poetry therapy or narrative medicine workshop, please reach out on storyremedy.com. I’d love to do some for Jewish organizations, or 1:1 with anyone struggling to find the rights words for this time.