Almost everyone in Israel knows someone who was killed in the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, or in the ensuing war. The scale of those losses remains overwhelming even as we pass three years since the day that shook Jews around the world.
The perseverance is equally humbling. Former hostages held in Gaza and their family members have written bestselling books and released music albums. Grassroots and volunteer organizations have been founded for visiting the wounded in hospitals, caring for children who lost parents, helping rebuild war-affected areas and many other causes related to the massacre. Israel remains among the 10 happiest nations in the world.
Part of this resilience can be traced to the enduring Jewish practices for mourning -- practices that focus on dwelling with the loss, not trying immediately to move past it. We rip our clothes on hearing of the death of a family member. We sit shiva, a formal seven days of grief in which mourners stay at home, wear torn clothing, cover mirrors, sit on low stools and silently feel their loss. We recite kaddish, a mourners' prayer, daily for 11 months.
These are rituals that create a structure for intensely feeling brokenness. And the intensity holds lessons and wisdom that extends to all humans. Loss for anyone, Jewish or not, requires space, structure and acknowledgment. The sharp pain of the wound may heal, but the scar remains -- and we must all find a way that the broken heart can both feel the truth of its brokenness and emerge enlarged and reshaped.
Years ago my wife and I lost a newborn baby to a bacterial infection. We reflected on our loss with family and friends who came to visit. Every year on the Hebrew date of our infant's death, we recite kaddish.
More recently, like most Israelis, I have been to dozens of funerals and shiva houses. Over the past three years, the educational network I oversee has lost some of its alumni in the Oct. 7 massacre and ensuing war. Faculty members' children have died, along with relatives of students. As difficult and exhausting as mourning rituals can be, they create a structure that prevents us from ignoring grief. Ritual compels us to confront our losses and integrate them into our lives.
Most of these rituals are public and communal. Death notices and shiva house addresses are shared on WhatsApp, on signs posted around the community or, in Israel, on notices posted on neighborhood streets.
In many cases, the bereaved don't attend weddings or celebrations for up to a year. This prevents the need to rush through the loss. It gives permission to mourn, to absorb the lessons of sharp grief, and to find ways to redefine ourselves and redeem the moment of loss. The mourning is also a form of group therapy, allowing those who never knew the deceased personally to hear about their legacy.
This process allows the memory to become a blessing -- hard as that is to imagine in the first piercing moments of grief. We need the dead to take on an enduring role in the lives of the living. That takes time, and the shaping of time spent mourning is one of the purposes of ritual. In Jewish practice, when one says the name of a deceased person, one adds the phrase "may his memory be a blessing." The goal of mourning is to make that phrase true: The memory of the dead actually improves our physical lives and our moral selves.
After the loss of our baby, for example, my wife engaged in a campaign that helped transform treatment guidelines for dealing with Group B Strep and premature labor, helping save the lives of other babies, a practice that continues today. Similar processes are unfolding within our community now.
We have begun hosting educational workshops promoting organ donation in memory of an alumnus who was killed -- and whose organs have been transplanted in five others. Another initiative aims to distribute one million tzedaka boxes, containers used to collect charity money, in memory of another alumnus who made daily giving part of his life. In one of our boys' high schools, which lost 13 alumni in battle on or after Oct. 7, portraits of the fallen line the library shelves, with QR codes where students can learn about them.
Shalom, the Hebrew word for peace and wholeness, appears after a crisis in the Book of Numbers, and it is written with a break in its third letter in all Torah scrolls. This scribal detail reflects a broader idea within Jewish tradition. Wholeness doesn't come from the absence of brokenness, but from dwelling honestly within that brokenness -- and allowing the memory of a lost person to grow into a blessing.
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Mr. Brander is president and rosh yeshiva of Ohr Torah Stone.
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