This piece is part of our Wit­ness­ing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the expe­ri­ences of Jew­ish writ­ers around the globe in the after­math of Octo­ber 7th.

It is crit­i­cal to under­stand his­to­ry not just through the books that will be writ­ten lat­er, but also through the first-hand tes­ti­monies and real-time account­ing of events as they occur. At Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, we under­stand the val­ue of these writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ni­als and of shar­ing these indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. It’s more impor­tant now than ever to give space to these voic­es and narratives.

The night before Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s body is recov­ered, our fam­i­ly is wok­en up ear­ly. At three a.m. an uncon­trol­lable sob echoes through our build­ing. The sound of a hack­ing dog. Star­tled, I sit up and remem­ber that I’m lying on the couch. The dog is in fact a woman chok­ing on her tears. Our tod­dler lies in our bed, kick­ing his father. This time I’m the one demot­ed to the couch. Every night, my love and I take turns wrestling this lit­tle body made from our bod­ies. Sleep is no longer an island of escape from the blind­ing day­light — the dai­ly war has seeped into our nights.

I won­der whether the cry­ing is com­ing from the upstairs neigh­bor. I know she suf­fers from migraines. I real­ize that the chok­ing is com­ing from out­side, from the park next to our build­ing. A woman cry­ing in the dark morn­ing hours on a pub­lic bench. I hear my daugh­ter open­ing the door to her room. She finds me on the couch and push­es me over to make space for her body made from my body.

“I had a bad dream,” she whispers. 

“What was the dream?” I ask. ​“If you speak it, it’ll lose its powers.” 

“I heard a witch.” 

A wail­ing woman crept into my daughter’s dream, trans­formed into a witch, and shook her out of sleep. A mon­ster. I don’t have the heart to tell her that a real-life woman sits out­side, wrestling with her own body in the night. Cack­ling. Hack­ing. Chok­ing. A witch. A mon­ster. From the Latin mon­strum, derived from the verb mon­eo, ​“to warn, to fore­tell.” An omen for what the next day is to bring. A woman’s per­son­al pain made public.

My daugh­ter pokes her elbow into my ribs and falls back asleep. The couch is a cramped raft drift­ing through the night. The sound of the woman’s sobs wash­es in like waves, as I bob off into a rest­less sleep. 

That morn­ing, Rachel Gold­berg-Polin wakes up as the moth­er of all lost boys. All moth­ers wake up as the moth­er of Hersh. All chil­dren wake up feel­ing their moth­ers wrestling with their own bod­ies, in the blind­ing light of day. All of us sit­ting on that park bench, retch­ing up our insides, the bod­ies made from our bodies. 

That morn­ing is the first day of the new school year. All moth­ers sep­a­rate from their chil­dren. I leave my three-year-old son in day­care, scream­ing. It’s his first day in an all-Hebrew speak­ing gan. His right arm is held tight in a cast, bro­ken, after he fell from a slide dur­ing the sum­mer hol­i­days. For weeks he’s been writhing in his sleep try­ing to find a com­fort­able posi­tion. I look at his lit­tle arm and think of Hersh’ phan­tom limb, his arm blown off from the elbow down on Octo­ber 7. How did Hersh fall asleep for three hun­dred and thir­ty days, in an air­less under­ground tun­nel, miss­ing his arm? I leave my scream­ing son in daycare.

Mon­ster — mean­ing ​“one who devi­ates from its nor­mal form, struc­ture, or char­ac­ter.” Mon­strous. A woman who no longer com­plies with her form. A moth­er bury­ing her son becomes unrec­og­niz­able to her­self. The body birthed from her own body is now a phan­tom limb.

The next day we join the pro­ces­sion of thou­sands of Jerusalemites stand­ing along the streets of the Baka and Kata­mon neigh­bor­hoods, accom­pa­ny­ing the Gold­berg-Polins on their way to lay­ing Hersh to his final rest. Moth­ers, fathers, girls, boys, teenagers, grand­par­ents, all wav­ing flags, singing psalms and songs of com­fort as the family’s cars dri­ve past. 

My daugh­ter puts aside her flag and joins a group of chil­dren hud­dled around a bench. There, I see two flat sheaves of tree bark with heaps of snails stuck on top of each oth­er. The chil­dren are pick­ing off the shells in the hopes of find­ing their inhab­i­tants inside. But it’s the end of sum­mer and the snails have dried out. The shells are all emp­ty husks, aban­doned homes, pro­tec­tress­es with­out their lit­ter. Still, the chil­dren keep unstick­ing the shells, keep turn­ing them over to see if this time, this one snail will appear from its hid­ing place, a phan­tom, against all odds.

The views and opin­ions expressed above are those of the author, based on their obser­va­tions and experiences.

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